Hindu thought recognizes several paths (margas or yogas) toward moksha, the way of knowledge, of devotion, of disciplined action, of meditation, with the Bhagavad Gita presenting them as complementary routes suited to different temperaments rather than competing methods, though later teachers and lineages have often emphasized one path as superior or as the natural completion of the others. Moksha is the fourth and crowning aim of life (purushartha), transcending dharma, artha, and kama, the three worldly goals of duty, prosperity, and pleasure that occupy the earlier stages of a well-ordered life in classical Hindu ethical thought.
The schools differ, beyond the metaphysics of Advaita, Vishishtadvaita, and Dvaita, over whether liberation is normally realized within this very life or only after death, and over whether it means the extinguishing of individual identity into the absolute or an eternal, conscious relationship with a personal God who is loved and worshipped forever. Devotional (bhakti) movements, historically influential across many regions of India from roughly the medieval period onward, tend to favor the relational, Vaishnava-inflected picture of eternal loving union over the more austere Advaita image of dissolution, and this tension between moksha as union and moksha as merger remains a live and unresolved question within Hindu philosophy and practice rather than a settled doctrine all schools share.