See Beyond the Veil

As a life long seeker myself, open to both East­ern and West­ern reli­gious ideas, I con­sider this book a por­tal to enlight­en­ment. Bohlert leads the reader up a spi­ral stair­case to the light, wind­ing through the Chris­t­ian and Hindu faiths as we ascend. — Nori Muster

This book comes as a cool­ing breeze on a hot day. It offers a glimpse into an eter­nal world of love that actu­ally sur­rounds us at all times. The per­fect world that Plato detected, just beyond the veil, really does exist, yet we spin our webs of karma so tightly that we cease to acknowl­edge it. As you read this book, you hear the music of the spheres, like the ris­ing choral, Ode to Joy, in Beethoven’s final symphony.

Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism — A Spir­i­tu­al­ity of Lib­erty, Truth, and Love by Steve Bohlert reviewed by Nori Muster. Nori Muster, a pos­i­tive think­ing mod­ern author of many life engag­ing books, essays and poetry. Her Betrayal of the Spirit: My Life behind the Head­lines of the Hare Krishna Move­ment, was accepted among many ex Hare Krishna devo­tees world­wide as a mind-opening nar­ra­tive and has helped thou­sands of per­sons regain their indi­vid­u­al­ity, sobri­ety and strength. Learn­ing to Flow with the Tao is Nori’s own ver­sion of the ancient Taoist ora­cle, iCh­ing. Pray for Peace Note­book: Direc­tion in the Time of Change is an edited col­lec­tion of Nori’s polit­i­cal writ­ings, 2000 to 2009. Visit her web­site to read more and explore Nori’s won­der­ful world of pos­i­tive possibilities.

Author Steve Bohlert ded­i­cated his life to find­ing the source of the music, which led him to India, where he served and stud­ied with enlight­ened mas­ters; and it took him to San Fran­cisco The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, where he earned a Mas­ter of Divin­ity from the Grad­u­ate The­o­log­i­cal Union, and became an ordained pas­tor in the United Church of Christ. He was raised in the Mis­souri Synod, chris­tened and confirmed.

Bohlert’s life is a bridge between East and West, and a merg­ing of his Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sal­ist beliefs with his strongly held bond with the eter­nal divini­ties Radha and Krishna. Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism is a prod­uct of his stud­ies, and out­ward man­i­fes­ta­tion of the bridge he first built within.

The time is right for a book such as Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism. As Bohlert points out, “We live in a rel­a­tivis­tic, plu­ral­is­tic world open to truth in all forms.” (p. 5) There is no one way to hold faith, and many in our cul­ture today are search­ing for truth. As a life long seeker myself, open to both East­ern and West­ern reli­gious ideas, I con­sider this book a por­tal to enlight­en­ment. Bohlert leads the reader up a spi­ral stair­case to the light, wind­ing through the Chris­t­ian and Hindu faiths as we ascend.

Many of the con­cepts were already famil­iar to me, com­ing from Mis­souri Synod Lutheran roots, and hav­ing spent ten years in the Hare Krishna move­ment (ISKCON). The Luther­ans started out as reform­ers five hun­dreds years ago but became quite strict, and as Bohlert points out (p. 5), “most Radha-Krishna devo­tees are fun­da­men­tal­ist lit­er­al­ists.” It is ironic, but typ­i­cal, since reli­gious insti­tu­tions tend to become entrenched in their belief sys­tems, and closed down to change.

Hun­dreds of years ago, Radha-Krishna, the arche­typal god­dess and god of love, were little-known out­side of India, and wor­shiped only within the Hindu faith. Eigh­teenth and nine­teenth cen­tury archae­ol­o­gists and schol­ars made us aware of Hindu gods, but prior to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, nobody in the West had any actual expe­ri­ence of Radha and Krishna. Even today, god and god­dess remain con­cealed behind a brick wall of fun­da­men­tal­ism, which most of us from a Judeo-Christian back­ground are pow­er­less to nav­i­gate. On one hand, we may sense truth there, but until Bohlert’s inter­pre­ta­tion, there was no way to pierce the fun­da­men­tal­ist views and prac­tices that keep these deities off lim­its. Even the Hare Krishna move­ment and sim­i­lar groups may fail to offer a sat­is­fy­ing gen­uine experience.

One of the sub­jects Bohlert intro­duces, which is for­bid­den in the fun­da­men­tal­ist world of the Hindu sects, includ­ing ISKCON, is per­mis­sion to med­i­tate on Radha-Krishna’s eter­nal pas­times. ISKCON warns its fol­low­ers that they will always remain neo­phytes who dare not dream of life in the eter­nal realm. This was tried in ISKCON in the mid-1970s, but the fifty or so mem­bers of the “Gopi-bhava Club,” as it was called, were scorned and drummed out as heretics. “Gopi” is the San­skrit word for the cow­girls of Krishna’s world, and “bhava” means “mood, feel­ings, or emo­tional state,” so gopi-bhava is the mood of the gopis.

Toward the end of the book, Bohlert offers an out­line of a typ­i­cal day in Krishna’s world with the gopis and other eter­nal asso­ciates, and invites us to imag­ine how we might fit in. He said Krishna comes around a cou­ple times a day to visit with you, find out how you’re doing, and dis­cuss what­ever is on your mind. Since read­ing the book a few days ago, I have imag­ined many things I would like to say to Krishna.

Bohlert was a mem­ber of ISKCON in the early days of the move­ment, 1967–1974, when he was start­ing tem­ples around the world for the found­ing guru, Srila Prab­hu­pada. Later, he served a one year stint in New Vrind­a­ban (West Vir­ginia), 1980–1981. How­ever, like many of us, he had to leave the con­fines of the orga­ni­za­tion to con­tinue his spir­i­tual journey.

In Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism, Bohlert speaks with­out the con­straints of fun­da­men­tal­ism, re-imaging Radha-Krishna for the mod­ern seeker. He cites the “evo­lu­tion of thought” (p. 28) and the need to rein­ter­pret reli­gion in each new gen­er­a­tion. Through his long edu­ca­tion and prac­tice, he learned that he can be part of the process of reli­gious reform. This book is his way of mov­ing the con­ver­sa­tion for­ward, min­gling two diver­gent reli­gious tra­di­tions, and mak­ing the supreme Hindu god and god­dess acces­si­ble to his read­ers. He dubs Radha-Krishna “God-dess,” which means god and god­dess together.

Bohlert dis­man­tles the fun­da­men­tal­ist notion that we come from orig­i­nal sin, that we were put in this mate­r­ial world as a pun­ish­ment, that our flesh is evil, and that god is a men­ac­ing fig­ure who sits in judg­ment. These fears played a part in the devel­op­ment of both Chris­t­ian and Hindu the­ol­ogy, and may have helped to enforce dis­ci­pline on peo­ple who lived in pre­vi­ous cen­turies. How­ever, Bohlert argues in favor of uni­ver­sal love and free­dom, which are com­mon ten­ants of most new age reli­gions. He writes that, “Like any good par­ents, Radha-Krishna want us to enjoy our­selves. This adds to their enjoy­ment.” (p. 25) He explains that worldly fun and spir­i­tual devo­tion co-exist when we learn to live in har­mony with god and god­dess, nature, and all beings.

Besides cit­ing ref­er­ences from his teach­ers in India and Berke­ley, Bohlert’s opus draws on Plato, Mar­tin Luther, Ralph Waldo Emer­son, Carl Jung, the human­ists, Jack Ker­ouac, and quan­tum physics. He shows how the truth runs through all these rivulets, from Plato’s The­ory of Forms, to Carl Jung’s arche­typal real­ity, and ties it all together in his vision of God-dess. He says, “We exist as parts or ema­na­tions of God-dess, and like a piece of a holo­gram or a frac­tal, we con­tain the image of the whole.” (p. 31).

One chap­ter dis­cusses the life and teach­ings of Chai­tanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1533), a reformer in India and con­tem­po­rary of Mar­tin Luther (1483–1546). Chai­tanya was said to embody Radha and Krishna as an incar­na­tion (avatar), and he led a revi­tal­iza­tion move­ment in India that par­al­leled the Renais­sance tak­ing place in Europe. Bohlert com­pares Chai­tanya to Mar­tin Luther for offer­ing an alter­na­tive to fun­da­men­tal­ism, and to Jesus for break­ing down caste and gen­der bar­ri­ers. He also describes Chaitanya’s influ­ence on the Moslem reli­gion of his day in India. It was refresh­ing to me to gain new insights into Chai­tanya, adding depth and detail to the intro­duc­tion that ISKCON offered dur­ing the years I was a mem­ber. This is wel­come, since Chai­tanya does not belong to any one orga­ni­za­tion, or any one region of India. Bohlert’s book will spread Chaitanya’s teach­ings to a broader audience.

Bohlert mixes the worldly and next-world expe­ri­ences, when he says that we have a duty here on Earth to enjoy this life. In Bohlert’s view, sal­va­tion is more than just for our­selves, in terms of want­ing go to heaven when we die. He explains why our expe­ri­ence here is impor­tant, and offers spir­i­tual rea­sons to stand up to the chal­lenges of today. He says sal­va­tion “includes com­mu­nal sal­va­tion, which involves heal­ing the bro­ken­ness of soci­ety and indi­vid­u­als. Soci­ety as a whole can­not be healthy until all are healthy and whole just as the body can­not be healthy if cer­tain parts are dis­eased.” (p. 42) The solu­tion, he says, is “We need to see our­selves as part of God-dess’ extended fam­ily, as broth­ers and sis­ters in the human fam­ily, and as part of cre­ation. Then we can solve our prob­lems coop­er­a­tively.” (p. 47) He explains, “The more we learn to expe­ri­ence God-dess and con­sciously live in the mate­r­ial world respon­si­bly, the more we spir­i­tu­ally evolve.” (p. 66) Put sim­ply, “The more spir­i­tual we become, the more we enjoy this life fully.” (p. 86)

The gift for read­ing the book is to go from hear­ing about god and god­dess, to actu­ally expe­ri­enc­ing god and god­dess. When we first pick the book to read it, we may feel like out­siders to a fun­da­men­tal­ist reli­gion with few entrance doors. How­ever, after a thor­ough and thought­ful read, we embody the rela­tion­ship with god and god­dess. The music of the spheres lights within our­selves. As Bohlert con­firms, “This is liv­ing the myth.” Fun­da­men­tal­ist schol­ars from the var­i­ous Hindu groups may give Bohlert grief for unleash­ing the mys­tic expe­ri­ence to his read­ers, but Bohlert has the cred­i­bil­ity as a scholar, through his life­time of prepa­ra­tion for writ­ing this book, to make this leap for his gen­er­a­tion. So never fear, any­body from any back­ground may read the book and form an eter­nal bond with the denizens of the spir­i­tual world. Bohlert asks the reader to throw off con­ven­tion, and sim­ply embrace the love ema­nat­ing from Radha and Krishna. If more peo­ple read this book, the world will be a bet­ter place.

– Nori Muster

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 18:24 and is filed under Features and tagged with book, Krishna, Nori Muster, Radha, review, Steve Bohlert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.