What Do We Mean by Universalist?

God-dess is present in other reli­gions, but usu­ally in a more lim­ited stage of real­iza­tion. For exam­ple, the Abra­hamic reli­gions tend to focus on a male cre­ator God who started out as sort of a storm god, war god or tribal god who grad­u­ally evolved to become a more uni­ver­sal God as Karen Arm­strong nicely explained in her A His­tory of God. Bud­dha is con­sid­ered to be an incar­na­tion of God-dess, even though he taught an athe­is­tic reli­gion which is what some peo­ple need. 

Sim­i­larly, Radha-Krishna evolved out of the Vedic con­cept of God in dia­logue with other con­cepts, both indige­nous to the Indian sub­con­ti­nent and imported. A long process led up to the rev­e­la­tion of Chai­tanya and his fol­low­ers, which I con­sider to be a sub­lime achieve­ment of mythol­ogy and the­ol­ogy. I am uni­ver­sal­iz­ing these teachings–freeing them from the Indian con­text in which they were born and mak­ing them more acces­si­ble to per­sons of dif­fer­ent backgrounds.

Reli­gions with a more lim­ited scope of real­iza­tion may make claims that their God is bet­ter or their way is the only way. I say their God is too small. God-dess has no rival, and indeed is all-in-all. Every­one real­izes God-dess accord­ing to their nature. There­fore, God-dess is known as Radha-Krishna, Par­vati Shiva, Brah­man, Para­mat­man, Yah­weh, Father, Allah, Great Spirit, Holy Spirit, Cos­mic Christ, Ground of Being, Cause of all Causes, the Great Mys­tery, the Higher Power and many other names which are vir­tu­ally limitless.

We are uni­ver­sal­ist in our views, mean­ing we see all faiths as steps or stages of God-dess real­iza­tion accord­ing to the level of con­scious­ness of per­sons in dif­fer­ent times and cir­cum­stances. Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism is a liv­ing, evolv­ing process of God-dess real­iza­tion that takes the best of past teach­ings from var­ied sources and updates them so they are rel­e­vant in today’s con­text. We do not seek to con­vert mem­bers of other faiths, but offer a sweet, nat­ural and easy alter­na­tive for essence seek­ers who want more than they find elsewhere.

I live in a rel­a­tivis­tic, plu­ral­is­tic world that is open to truth in all forms. I feel it is our unique oppor­tu­nity at this time to be able to take the best teach­ings and prac­tices of all paths and inte­grate them into a mul­ti­fac­eted whole which gives a more com­plete pic­ture of Truth than any one path could do alone.


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