Sometimes people say, “Paths are many, the goal is one.” Like there's a mountain and you can approach the peak of the mountain from any of the 360 degrees around that mountain. But no matter what path you take, you're going to reach the peak. So the goal is one, the paths are many. This analogy is exactly wrong. Exactly opposite of the truth.
The path is one, bhakti. Bhakti means surrender to God to receive His grace. Whatever you want in the Divine world, you can only get it with His grace and you can only get His grace by surrendering to Him. Therefore the path is one, wholehearted surrender. But the options in the Divine world are many. You could attain formless God. You could attain God in a personal form. This is the first major division. Subala Upanishad says, “God, the same God, has two main aspects, with form and without form.” What is the way to achieve either? The same - surrender. That's it.
So the path is the same, but you have this option, attain formless God or attain the personal form of God. The experience of attaining formless God is not multifaceted, however. There's just one way to attain formless God. You leave behind your material body and just you, the pure Divine soul, merges into that ocean of Divine bliss, formless God. After which there's actually no conscious experience, although you're technically merged into the ocean of bliss. This is attaining formless God.
But on the personal side, when you attain sakar Brahm, God with form, here again there are divisions. There are, we can say, two main divisions. Almighty God or loving God. Almighty God means God revealing His aishwarya. Aishwarya means all of those qualities and powers of God that relate to His glory, power, dignity, greatness. He's revealing that in full and blissfulness, of course. The devotee who attains God in this almighty form, experiences the bliss because they also get a Divine body with Divine senses and a Divine mind to experience the bliss of God's personal form, the bliss of God's unlimited beauty. They also get unlimited Divine knowledge and unlimited Divine life. Sat Chit Anand.
Even within this, there are many almighty forms. You could attain Vishnu. You could attain Shiva. You could attain Durga. And each of them also has many affiliated forms.
