ABSTRACT
When referring to bhakti we normally have in mind a religious phenomenon which is peculiar to certain theistic movements within the Hindu tradition. In the highest form of bhakti the personal relationship between the devotee and the divine personage he worships becomes so intense that its experience amounts to the total obliteration of his personal identity. He becomes one with the deity in a blissful union which may sometimes be temporary in this life, but is expected to become absolute in eternity. This experience of unification is often referred to, in the literature of mysticism, in terms of a perfect sexual union between lovers who may achieve, in their ecstatic embrace, a kind of temporary obliteration of their separate individualities and thus, in a brief moment, get a foretaste of the ultimate oneness. The ontological nature of this union is, of course, another matter.
