Unique and Important

Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism is the first attempt to artic­u­late a “pro­gres­sive” or “mod­ernist” form of Vaish­nava Hin­duism. Draw­ing upon the resources of the­o­log­i­cal trends in West­ern schol­ar­ship, Steve Bohlert offers a syn­the­sis of East­ern and West­ern thought that makes the heart of Radha-Krishna devo­tion fully acces­si­ble to West­ern­ers who have no Indian back­ground. This book fills a void and does it well. I antic­i­pate that this book will emerge as a cru­cial impe­tus to fur­ther devel­op­ments in this field.

Dr. M. Valle, a chair­man of phi­los­o­phy of reli­gion at Scotts­dale Com­mu­nity Col­lege (AZ) reviews our book Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism, A Spir­i­tu­al­ity of Lib­erty, Truth, and Love.

In this review, I will first sum­ma­rize the ideas in the text, then I will eval­u­ate them from my own perspective.

Con­text of the Project

In Hin­duism, there is a highly influ­en­tial and pop­u­lar devo­tional ori­en­ta­tion that focuses on Krishna and his lover Radha as the supreme form of God. This branch of Hin­duism became excep­tion­ally pop­u­lar in India in the wake of the life of Chai­tanya, who flour­ished around 1500 A.D. This form of Vaish­nav­ism has become fairly well known in the West since the six­ties; in fact, George Har­ri­son of the Bea­t­les con­verted to it. It has been char­ac­ter­ized by a fairly uncom­pro­mis­ing fun­da­men­tal­ism, by which I mean that it is essen­tially com­mit­ted to the lit­eral truth of the often fan­tas­tic mythol­ogy that is asso­ci­ated with Hin­duism. Some exam­ples that con­front one early on include the idea that Krishna as a child held a mas­sive hill above his head with his fin­ger to pro­tect peo­ple from Indra‘s hail­stones, that Krishna lived with 16,000 wives simul­ta­ne­ously, that Krishna was con­ceived with­out a sex act, and so on.

Many peo­ple, often West­ern­ers but not exclu­sively, have been deeply attracted to the the­ol­ogy that accom­pa­nies Vaish­nav­ism. They are attracted to its rit­u­als, aes­thet­ics, mythol­ogy, lan­guage, music, enthu­si­asm, and opti­mism. It “speaks” to them, but they find so much empha­sis on fun­da­men­tal­ism that they even­tu­ally aban­don this path. They also dis­cover that Indian norms and cus­toms are so strongly fas­tened to the path that they feel cul­tur­ally dis­con­nected. Bohlert, by the way, caters to this tar­get audi­ence by fore­go­ing the com­pli­cated and often tedious ter­mi­nol­ogy that often attends such lit­er­a­ture and instead opts for exclu­sively Eng­lish terms at the most com­pre­hen­sive level of complexity.

Steve Bohlert has been through all of this, and the depth of his expe­ri­ence shows. His cre­den­tials in this arena are beyond impres­sive. This book is a sys­tem­atic attempt to offer a spiritual/religious sys­tem called “Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism” (URK) that does the fol­low­ing things, among oth­ers: sketches the his­tory of Chai­tanya Vaish­nav­ism (CV), inter­prets Vaish­nava mythol­ogy in a non-literalist way, asserts and defends the fun­da­men­tals of the CV con­cep­tion of divin­ity, sketches the rela­tion of divin­ity to the uni­verse, asserts the neces­sity of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between sci­ence and reli­gion, and offers prac­ti­cal advice on how to put the the­ol­ogy into daily prac­tice. Bohlert’s approach is grounded in the work and prac­tice of the well-respected the­olo­gian Bhak­tivin­oda Thakur, and of Bhaktivinoda’s son, Lalita Prasad Thakur.

Sum­mary of URK

The basic meta­phys­i­cal view of divin­ity of URK is as fol­lows: Bohlert’s view is explic­itly “panen­the­is­tic”, which means that God exists, is greater than the uni­verse, and com­pletely inter­pen­e­trates and includes the universe.

There is a hint of deism here, as when he writes that “[…] God-dess does not sus­pend [nat­ural laws] to per­form mir­a­cles […]” (25), but he views God as far more per­sonal and acces­si­ble than deists typ­i­cally do, as when he writes “God-dess remains inti­mately involved with cre­ation and crea­tures, rather than the dis­tant High God who sets cre­ation in motion and now lets it work accord­ing to nat­ural laws with no fur­ther involve­ment” (82). He asserts that God urges us to seek a lov­ing rela­tion­ship, so con­nec­tion and con­tact are always avail­able to creatures.

Along the lines of Plot­i­nus, Bohlert states that the uni­verse itself is an expres­sion of God’s ever-expanding love, which is always seek­ing to love more and more. The uni­verse is the means by which God accom­plishes this desire. Bohlert also leans heav­ily on clas­si­cal Pla­tonic meta­physics, as when he writes, “The mate­r­ial uni­verse exists as a tem­po­rary mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the spir­i­tual world” (103). His view also has a strong meta­phys­i­cal ide­al­ist ori­en­ta­tion (that inci­den­tally reminds me of Berkeley’s ide­al­ism): “God-dess’ energy forms every­thing, and noth­ing exists sep­a­rate from God-dess. There­fore, every­thing is ulti­mately spir­i­tual” (104).

Bohlert sees God not as lack­ing any gen­der so much as being both gen­ders fully, as when he writes, “God-dess exists as male and female coun­ter­parts […]” (25). This explains his use of “God-dess”, which empha­sizes the two poles of divin­ity. These poles are per­son­i­fied as Radha the female and Krishna the male. All peo­ple par­tic­i­pate more or less in one or the other, but we all need both to be com­plete. God is there­fore “God-dess”, the “Divine Cou­ple”, and “Radha-Krishna.” We there­fore have a kind of a unity in diver­sity, which char­ac­ter­izes much of Indian thought. Bohlert prefers “both-and” think­ing to either-or and neither-nor.

Bohlert also strongly endorses the clas­si­cal Chai­tanya view that God has three lev­els of man­i­fes­ta­tion. Each level is pro­gres­sively higher and includes the pre­vi­ous. The first is Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One­ness (Brah­man), the next is Cos­mic Con­scious­ness (Para­matma), and the final is the Supreme Lord (the Divine Cou­ple, Radha-Krishna).

Because God-dess doesn’t per­form phys­i­cal mir­a­cles, we can­not take scrip­tural sto­ries and mytholo­gies lit­er­ally. They are sym­bols, metaphors, and alle­gories that point to higher real­i­ties. Bohlert believes in “pro­gres­sive rev­e­la­tion”, which is the idea that God-dess never ceases to prompt new reli­gious visions and imag­in­ings in us as we con­tinue to explore this creation.

Rein­car­na­tion is real for Bohlert, but he does not feel the need to spec­u­late about its exact nature. The essen­tial idea is that souls develop through cycles and steps to attain the direct pres­ence of God-dess. The goal of URK, and Vaish­nav­ism in gen­eral, is not to become “one” with the whole (as in the case of Advaita schools of Hin­duism, or as in the case of Bud­dhism), but rather to enjoy a kind of indi­vid­u­al­ity in which one expe­ri­ences the bliss of ser­vice to the Divine Cou­ple in their love play, which is ulti­mately inde­scrib­able but which can be approached through mytholo­gies, espe­cially those of the famous Hindu text called the Bha­ga­vata Purana. How­ever, Bohlert feels free to adapt these ancient sto­ries in the light of moder­nity in order to make them more acces­si­ble to dif­fer­ent cul­tures and gen­er­a­tions. He does this by re-imagining cer­tain ele­ments of the pas­time nar­ra­tives in ways that remove them from the ossi­fi­ca­tion that is caused by lim­it­ing them to cer­tain times, places, and cultures.

URK is “uni­ver­sal­ist”, which is the idea that all legit­i­mate reli­gions can serve as vehi­cles for the advance­ment of the soul. Dif­fer­ent peo­ple have dif­fer­ent needs and so on, and God-dess makes Him/Herself acces­si­ble in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent ways.

Bohlert advo­cates some tra­di­tional Vaish­nava prac­tices so that peo­ple can keep God-dess in mind at all times. These include chant­ing and visu­al­iza­tion tech­niques. In Chap­ter Nine, he briefly sum­ma­rizes the daily activ­i­ties of Radha and Krishna so that the devo­tee can play a role in the Divine Play. Bohlert explic­itly rejects the asceti­cism that often char­ac­ter­izes Radha-Krishna devo­tion. The world is good–it should be enjoyed with­out crav­ing and attach­ment, while giv­ing due con­sid­er­a­tion to those around us. He writes, “God-dess […] may ask us, at the time of death, why we did not enjoy life more” (25).

Per­sonal Reflections

I have stud­ied the world’s reli­gions with a great deal of seri­ous­ness, and have exper­i­mented with many of them to one extent or other. I have a very deep his­tory with athe­ism, and then was deeply affected by Chris­tian­ity, Vaish­nav­ist Hin­duism, and the ancient Euro­pean hea­then reli­gions now known as Asatru. There is no won­der that these sys­tems of thought have per­se­vered for so long and have meant so much to so many people–they all say pow­er­ful things and speak to pow­er­ful needs.

I have come to see a rela­tion­ship with Divin­ity as essen­tial in my life, and have found the nar­ra­tives of the pas­times between Radha and Krishna to be the most pow­er­ful metaphor for the Divine love that is avail­able in the world‘s reli­gious lit­er­a­ture. I under­stand that oth­ers may dis­agree and may find other metaphors more pow­er­ful, and that’s totally cool with me.

Steve Bohlert’s sys­tem­atic the­ol­ogy is a much-needed attempt to fill a deep void in reli­gious thought. I know that it will speak pow­er­fully to many peo­ple who find this view of God to be com­pelling, but who, under the influ­ence of moder­nity, can­not view mythol­ogy as lit­eral descrip­tions of phys­i­cal real­ity. His URK sys­tem also has the ben­e­fit of focus–too many pro­gres­sively reli­gious peo­ple (“spiritual–not reli­gious”) fol­low what I would call the “smor­gas­bord” approach, which has the devo­tee tast­ing from every dish but lack­ing the focus to eat an entire plate. This approach then becomes an ill-defined sense of “feel­ing good about the uni­verse”, but lacks many of the gifts that focused reli­gion can bring. Bohlert’s sys­tem has a focus and spe­cific rit­u­als that have a pedi­gree in the world’s old­est religion.

Bohlert’s the­ol­ogy is a novel revi­sion­ing of ven­er­a­ble the­is­tic tra­di­tions. Although he uses ter­mi­nol­ogy, like “God-dess”, that might dis­tract some, his the­ol­ogy is based in all kinds of clas­si­cal the­o­log­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal works. Most of his notions of the Divine are per­fectly plau­si­ble to almost any reli­gious tradition.

More con­tro­ver­sial is his uni­ver­sal­ism, which is absent in most ortho­dox Chris­t­ian and Islamic the­ol­ogy. The idea the God works through a vari­ety of reli­gions can be accepted in only a most atten­u­ated form by a Chris­t­ian or a Mus­lim, both of which will tend to believe that ever­last­ing pun­ish­ment attends those who will­ingly refuse the cor­rect path. That’s fine with me, as long as every­one under­stands that some dif­fer­ences in reli­gious think­ing are essen­tial and can­not be rec­on­ciled. He writes, “[…] no one with a par­tic­u­lar spir­i­tual belief should go to other coun­tries and preach that what their teach­ers taught is supe­rior to all other teach­ings” (115). Gen­er­ally, Chris­tians and Mus­lims will see things dif­fer­ently, and, in all fair­ness to Steve Bohlert, I think that his beliefs are cer­tainly supe­rior to a fairly wide range of dan­ger­ous reli­gious beliefs in the world that I‘ve come across. Bohlert’s mod­esty is nev­er­the­less admirable.

Bohlert, in a per­fectly legit­i­mate man­ner that is com­mon with many other uni­ver­sal­ists, expects and hopes that a com­mit­ment to a pro­gres­sive the­ol­ogy will bear fruit in a pro­gres­sive polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion. Oddly for me, I am as con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cally as I am pro­gres­sive the­o­log­i­cally (which is why my brief flir­ta­tion with the Uni­tar­ian Uni­ver­sal­ist church didn‘t last long). In any case, for the over­whelm­ing major­ity of those who would seek this book, this will not be a prob­lem at all. Exhibit­ing love of God in one’s life should be a goal of any­body who takes God seri­ously, and I sin­cerely admire the author for his pas­sion. I hope God will respect our noble inten­tions, even if we end up wrong!

This book is, within the con­text of devo­tees of Radha and Krishna, no mere curios­ity. It is, in fact, a ground­break­ing book. Many already in the move­ment will be attracted to this approach, and per­haps many who feel the ten­sion between fun­da­men­tal­ism and moder­nity will find this book to be noth­ing short of a God-dess-send. I find that one of the great­est strengths of his approach is to ele­vate the truly reli­gious and spir­i­tual above the superstitious.

Bohlert offers a com­pre­hen­sive the­ol­ogy in his book that com­bines clas­si­cal Indian the­ol­ogy with mod­ern philo­soph­i­cal devel­op­ments. It will be inter­est­ing to see how his thought will progress from here. I eagerly antic­i­pate those devel­op­ments! This book is sim­ply essen­tial read­ing for any­one in its tar­get audience.

There is a great deal in Bohlert’s work that I have not men­tioned, so if you are inter­ested in this project, you will ben­e­fit greatly from read­ing the entire book.

– Dr. Michael Valle

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