About

Spir­i­tual teacher, Steve Bohlert (Subal Das Goswami) makes the bold move of redefin­ing and reform­ing the six­teeenth cen­tury mys­tic Krishna Chaitanya’s teach­ings from an indige­nous, West­ern post­mod­ern intel­lec­tual per­spec­tive. Oth­ers present a tra­di­tional per­spec­tive which tends toward lit­eral inter­pre­ta­tion, that often leads to fun­da­men­tal­ism. Many schol­arly books also exam­ine this devo­tional tra­di­tion along with its his­tory and influ­ence as one of the lead­ing branches of Hin­duism. How­ever, Bohlert presents a major ref­or­ma­tion of Chai­tanyaism adapt­ing it to the needs of today’s cul­tural cre­atives, also known as new pro­gres­sives. Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism is the fruit of a life­time of spir­i­tual teach­ing and prac­tice in mul­ti­cul­tural contexts.

Uni­ver­sal­ist is a per­son first, then a worldview

Steve Bohlert helped lead the Hare Krishna Move­ment to its early suc­cess (1967–74). Its founder, A.C. Bhak­tivedanta Swami named him Subal Das Goswami. Steve served as asso­ciate edi­tor and busi­ness man­ager of Back to God­head mag­a­zine, and started eight tem­ples in North Amer­ica, India, and Fiji. He preached widely in West­ern Europe and India as well.

He lived in India for three years as an itin­er­ant monk and gained first­hand expe­ri­ence of Radha-Krishna devo­tion in its home­land. While stay­ing in Vrind­a­ban, he was befriended and men­tored by O.B.L. Kapoor, a promi­nent devo­tee, doc­tor of phi­los­o­phy, retired pro­fes­sor, and author of over thirty books. Dr Kapoor directed him to Lalita Prasad Thakur (1880–1980), the son and dis­ci­ple of renowned nine­teenth cen­tury reformer and West­ern­izer of Chai­tanyaism, Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur (1838–1914).

In 1974, Lalita Prasad ini­ti­ated Steve into the eso­teric prac­tices of nat­ural devo­tion. This path frees us from unnec­es­sary depen­dence on rules and reg­u­la­tions while facil­i­tat­ing our expe­ri­ence of eso­teric spir­i­tual lev­els of devo­tion. These teach­ings, gained by eight years of ardu­ous study and prac­tice, form the basis of Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism. Although he planned to stay in India per­ma­nently, Lalita Prasad asked him to go back in the West, to preach and inspire peo­ple as his disciple.

In 1988, he began his stud­ies at San Fran­cisco The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary and the asso­ci­ated schools of The Grad­u­ate The­o­log­i­cal Union in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia. There, he learned crit­i­cal inter­pre­tive tech­niques, the­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tives, and spir­i­tual prac­tices which he later applied to Chai­tanyaism. He learned how the church was reformed and is always reform­ing. Each gen­er­a­tion con­tributes to its progress.

In 1991, he grad­u­ated with a Mas­ter of Divin­ity degree and received ordi­na­tion as a pas­tor and teacher in the United Church of Christ. He served three churches in Iowa, North Dakota, and Michi­gan until 2002. In 2002, he began an inde­pen­dent eclec­tic min­istry and devel­oped it into Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism.

Steve adds,

Fol­low­ing the path of nat­ural devo­tion, I feel I am part of the global com­mu­nity, and I feel moved to work on a sys­temic level to relieve the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers. I worked for peace, a liv­ing wage for all, an end to poverty, gay rights, holis­tic health care, alter­na­tive energy devel­op­ment, bio-regionalism, pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment, and other causes. Rather than set­ting myself apart from oth­ers, I rec­og­nize our com­mon human­ity and one­ness with all things. God-dess, or Radha-Krishna, unites all.

Why this major project?

Ben Reist, my reformed the­ol­ogy pro­fes­sor, said, “If a lit­tle Bud­dha rubs off on Jesus, and a lit­tle Jesus rubs off on Bud­dha, so much the bet­ter for both of them.” As an eclec­tic uni­ver­sal­ist, I firmly believe the cross pol­li­na­tion of reli­gions brings us a higher under­stand­ing of truth. The lib­eral reformed tra­di­tion wel­comed my back­ground as a Radha-Krishna devo­tee as an asset for my Chris­t­ian min­istry, and I saw my Chris­t­ian min­istry as a West­ern ver­sion of my Radha-Krishna devotion.

Now that I no longer min­is­ter in the Chris­t­ian church and focus on my Radha-Krishna devo­tional prac­tices, I find that most Radha-Krishna devo­tees are fun­da­men­tal­ist lit­er­al­ists who think they have the ulti­mate answers to Truth and that their answers are supe­rior to any­one else’s. When I interned at Cal­vary Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, Pas­tor Larry Peter­son said, “Remem­ber, your truth is truth with a small ‘t’ just like every­one else’s.”

We live in a rel­a­tivis­tic, plu­ral­is­tic world open to truth in all forms. Our unique oppor­tu­nity at this time allows us 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 alone could.

I hap­pen to find the eter­nal asso­ci­a­tion of Radha-Krishna in their spir­i­tual realm of Braj to be the most attrac­tive vision for eter­nity. Yet, I feel a need to update it, give it a new look, and adjust for life in the West. In this way, I present a non­sec­tar­ian ver­sion of Radha-Krishna devo­tion, which I feel pleases my grand-guru, the nineteenth-century vision­ary, Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur.

– Steve Bohlert

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