Ravidasi beliefs and practices

Ravidasi beliefs are an off-shoot of the Bhakti and Sant movements of the fifteenth century, a religious renaissance in India.

Guru Ravidass, the founder of the Ravidasi faith taught the following principles:

* The oneness, omnipresence and omnipotence of God, who is called Hari.

* The human soul is a particle of the Divine; the different between the two is like the difference between gold and the ornament, water and the wave.

* The rejection of caste.

* To realize God, which is the ultimate end of human life, man should concentrate on Hari, giving up rituals.

* Birth in a low caste is no hindrance in the way to spiritual development.

* The only way to Moksha is to free the mind from duality.

* Pilgrimage and bathing in holy lakes is in vain.

The Shri Guru Ravidas Mission London states that:

* Ravidas is the founder of the Ravidasi religion.

* One who believes in Guru Ravidas' philosophy is a Ravidasi.

* It is not a condition that one should have been born in the Ravidasi community to become or initiated as one.

* The holy scripture for the Ravidasi religion is the Guru Sikhya Sahib.

* To celebrate Shri Guru Ravidas Jayanti according to the Indian calendar, Sunday, Sukhal Falgin Parvithta.

* To meditate on 'Sohang’ or ‘Har.'

* Whenever any Ravidasi receives, meets, writes or addresses a fellow Ravidasi, he or she should say “Jai Gurudev”