“Steve’s Musings” from 2003 to 2009 are archived here. They trace my development over the years leading to the writing of Universalist Radha-Krishnaism. I hope you will appreciate its new home here and the changes that will be happening to the the rest of the site.

My active blog is now “Jungle Dispatch” which is also found on this site. Look there for the latest writings and information. Aloha.

God-dess is perfect, without wants, and all his-her acts are without motive or conscious effort. They arise from overflowing intrinsic bliss. Called sport, play, or pastimes, they manifest in the hearts, minds, and lives of devotees.

God-dess’ names, forms, abodes, associates, and sports exist within us, along with everything else we can imagine. There are different planes of existence, and consciousness pervades everything. Devotional practices help us attain the plane of consciousness where God-dess lives and enacts eternal pastimes with his-her dear friends.

Radha-Krishna embody the highest, most concentrated bliss known to us, and it is quite different from ordinary happiness. Ordinary happiness is material, while bliss is spiritual. Ordinary happiness is transient and limited, while bliss is eternal and unlimited. Spiritual bliss is quantitatively and qualitatively vastly superior to our everyday happiness. Transcendental bliss is unique and indescribable.

Radha-Krishna embody bliss and enjoyment as the object enjoyed and the enjoyer. Their transcendental enjoyment is astonishingly wonderful, and it totally absorbs the mind and senses. God-dess entails infinite variety and newness along with embodying all enjoyment.

Chaitanya’s philosophy says God-dess’ blissful energy increases a thousand-fold when implanted in the heart of a devotee. Devotees develop a passionate desire to serve God-dess according to their different moods. The love of devotees aware of God-dess’ power and majesty is enjoyable, but divine love remains shy before opulent majesty. The more awareness of majesty, the less intense the spontaneous love.

Devotees who, unaware of God-dess’ power and majesty, serve Radha-Krishna as a sweet, loving couple with ordinary human wants and weaknesses, give them the highest enjoyment. Radha-Krishna enjoy such divine love more than anything else. This highest development of divine love occurs only when neither God-dess nor devotee is conscious of divinity.

Rupa Goswami was a learned playwright and poet, well versed in classical Indian aesthetics. He used the Tenth Canto of the Bhagavat to elaborate the play of Radha-Krishna, and he hierarchically systematized the various forms of God-dess, moods of devotion, devotional symptoms of love, forms of sport, and how to enter into those sports. His brother, Sanatan, and nephew, Jiva, philosophically systematized those concepts.

Thus, we arrive at a point where the highest human conception of God-dess and the highest service one can render them is for them to be a loving young couple, with us as their friends and lovers, totally unaware of their divinity. Deep, intense love remains the key element. If we apply the principle “as above, so below,” see ourselves created in the image of God-dess, and understand this world as a temporary, imperfect reflection of the spiritual world, then we understand God-dess and the transcendental abode must bear some resemblance to the highest, most enjoyable aspects of human life.

Radha-Krishna also live in Braj, the spiritual abode. Like them, it consists of existence, consciousness, and bliss. As such, it differs from the material world. Braj and Radha-Krishna remain inseparably related. We cannot think of Radha-Krishna without Braj, nor Braj without Radha-Krishna. In their blissful forms, they eternally stay in Braj and metaphorically never leave it.

Just as there are infinite manifestations of Radha-Krishna, there are infinite manifestations of their abode. For each manifestation of Radha-Krishna, there exists a corresponding manifestation of their abode. Braj is the original and highest abode because it represents an ultimate place to be, just as Radha-Krishna are the original and highest forms of God-dess we can relate to. Highest means the most excellent, complete, or full manifestation we can comprehend.

Radha-Krishna and their abode are highest because their sweetness eclipses their majesty. They do not appear as God-dess, or even sovereigns, but as young lovers, eternally engaged in amorous sports with their beloved confidants and friends on the bank of the river, in the green groves laden with sweet smelling flowers, all of which breathe an enjoyable atmosphere of freedom and sweetness.

All other forms of God-dess we know of and their abodes are partial manifestations of this sweetest lushness. Devotees with perfect spiritual vision see Radha-Krishna’s sports all over the world, as well as in Braj, India, and in their own hearts. We enter the spiritual Braj and Radha-Krishna’s pastimes only through natural devotion, the way of the heart. Devotion through regulative principles leads to different, more majestic, and less sweetly innocent forms of God-dess.

Braj is a place of pilgrimage in Uttar Pradesh, India, but the spiritual Braj exists in the hearts of devotees wherever they are. Radha-Krishna’s pastimes go on there now and forever. One can see them only by the grace and sweet will of Radha-Krishna or their beloveds.

Eternal friends enrich God-dess’ pastimes by participating in various relationships in these spiritual realities. From our perspective, some of them engage in these sports without beginning because in the spiritual world there is no beginning of time as we experience it here. To us, others attained their roles through grace and devotional practice in the material world, but from the perspective of the spiritual world, they have always been there as eternal participants in Radha-Krishna’s pastimes. An eternity in this world is less than the blink of an eye there. We can describe it as “anti-time.” Thus, in a manner of speaking, we already live in the spiritual world and are temporarily dreaming this world. It is as real as we want it to be.

They manifest in different forms with countless conceits to experience unlimited pastimes. These expansions of God-dess live in their own spiritual abodes where they engage in eternal pastimes with their devotees. The different religions are based on experiences of various forms God-dess revealed according to time and circumstance. This accounts for the different descriptions of God-dess who manifests in the material world to create and maintain the cosmos and impart spiritual wisdom. They are not subject to material energy. They operate in the realms of consciousness and sometimes manifest on the material plane through highly evolved humans such as Jesus and Chaitanya.

These archetypal forms live in the Cosmic Consciousness and appear in our consciousness to communicate with us. Since we are also parts of Cosmic Consciousness, sometimes they possess a person and appear in human form through that person. His devotees consider Chaitanya the incarnation of Radha-Krishna who appeared in the guise of a devotee to teach the religion of divine love. Sometimes he experienced the mood of a human devotee. At other times, he was completely possessed by God-dess. He manifested the moods of Radha-Krishna as well as other divine manifestations. He was seen and acknowledged as God-dess by learned devotees and scholars in his own lifetime, and this belief continues today among many of his devoted followers all over the world.

The innumerable manifestations of God-dess are all perfect, but they manifest different degrees of perfection based on how many divine qualities they manifest fully or partially and how many we can perceive and relate to. Radha-Krishna remain the source of all manifestations and all divine qualities fully manifest in them.

Radha-Krishna constitute the supreme reality. They are both concrete and expansive. Their infinite nature encircles the whole universe, but that infinitude is centered in concrete form. Their being consists of an all-embracing, organic unity. Their concrete form does not limit or restrict their freedom because the modulations of their being pervade the infinite expanse of existence. They combine breadth of spirit, intense modulations, eternal peace, and calm perfection with dynamic, eternally self-revealing, self-fulfilling creative activity, and quickness of movement with intense harmony and grace. Radha-Krishna awaken these modulations in us, satisfying our longings for love, knowledge, and peace in an integrative synthesis. They awaken freedom, flexibility, harmony, and everything needed for a rich, full spiritual life.

In our progressive aesthetic view which uses the amount of sweet taste as a measure of spiritual rapture, Undifferentiated Oneness is considered the lowest manifestation of divine self energy and Radha-Krishna are the highest manifestation.

We cannot develop a relationship with an Undifferentiated Oneness (or unmanifest spiritual potential) because we are manifest and realize some spiritual potential. Since we are capable of so much more, merging ourselves in an Undifferentiated Oneness would mean cessation of our active potential. Such a state resembles dormancy.

Some even like a stronger concept and talk about “cessation of existence.” To them, existence is the source of suffering.

However, we could not think about nonexistence if we did not exist. All ideas about nonexistence are drawn from existence, and we simply imagine what a nonexistence may look like. Existence forms the underlying basis for understanding ourselves, our potential, and the world around us. Thus existence is a wider concept than nonexistence. Nonexistence (as an opposite concept) cannot really take place because its foundation is existence.

An injured person resting in a deep coma may not be aware of anything, including the self, relatives surrounding the hospital bed, or the beautiful spring day in the park. Although alive, such a person remains deeply unconscious. To the conscious world, that person seems almost dead. “Cessation of existence” resembles this. We witness existence only through consciousness. A serious injury may put a person in a coma, but after awakening, a new life of possibilities and potential lies ahead. Spiritual death is impossible because existence denies it, but philosophically it seems possible to cloud the consciousness and put it into deep slumber.

“Emptiness” and all things spring from fullness. Radha-Krishna are identical with God-dess whose potential is fully realized. Between Radha-Krishna and Undifferentiated Oneness, an infinite hierarchy of partial manifestations exists. Each has a different form due to different combinations of majesty and sweetness manifest in them. Different forms do not imply difference in the identity of God-dess. All forms inhere in God-dess.

Swamiji touted renounced life as best for spiritual realization. I was devastated, open, and receptive to Swamiji’s advice that I forget about women and live as a vanaprastha preparing for sannyas. In 1970, I got a phone call saying that Swamiji wanted me to go to L.A. to take sannyas along with several others. I was 23 years old, about the same age Chaitanya took sannyas or younger (Sarvabhauma told him he was too young).

I was the president and founder of the Philadelphia temple. I looked forward to sannyas as an opportunity to be freed from management and devote my time to preaching and spiritual practices. However, after a six month preaching tour of Europe, I was called to India to do the PR for major festivals in Bombay and Delhi, start a press in Vrindaban, build temples in Vrindaban and Hyderabad–when all I wanted was to be a babaji in Braj.

I did a preaching tour of Canada and the U.S. for nine months in 1973. I found I could no longer encourage people to join ISKCON temples because they were exploitive. Sankirtan had become distribution, change-ups, wigs, get Lakshmi scams. I went back to India and received the mercy of Lalita Prasad Thakur. I went to Mayapur for Gaur-purnim and then to Vrindaban for a tour with Swamiji. There he told us we should convert people at gunpoint when we got powerful enough. I knew it was time to go.

Sudama Maharaj, GBC for the Pacific also from the Haight Ashbury temple, invited me to Honolulu where he kept things mellow like in the early days. I handily got a temple donated by Alfred Ford. Swamiji immediately ordered me to Fiji to start a temple. Thrown back into management, business, and politics, I lasted less than three months, returned to Honolulu, found my friends ready to resign because they were being taken over by mainland ISKCON, and resigned with them in December, 1974 giving up sannyas. Celibacy and the other rules of sannyas life were not a problem for me to follow. What was a problem was business and politics which make sannyas a farce.

I come in the line of Jahnava Thakurani, shakti of Nityanand Avadhut, who even as a renunciate lived outside the bounds of social convention. Then took two wives to show that renunciation was not required for devotion. Actually, Jahnava was not his wife, but part of her sister’s dowry.

So, when I get down on renunciates, I know what I’m talking about. The things some of them do are disgusting and criminal. Their teachings are life-denying. They often use their positions to exploit others at the cost of their spiritual progress.

While I am a universalist, some things are just plain wrong, must be labeled as such, and people warned about the dangers. I concluded in 1974 that ISKCON was no longer useful for spiritual growth or as a preaching platform. I don’t know how they’ve managed to go on attracting new people. However, it’s not just ISKCON that is the problem, but all fundamentalist, life-denying, exploitive systems whether they be Hindu, Muslim, Christian, or Jewish.

I offer Universalist Radha-Krishnaism as a positive life-affirming alternative way of spiritual life that is not another organized religion.

Krishna manifests infinite partial forms of the divine. Radha manifests infinite divine energies. Their relationship exhibits simultaneous oneness and difference. One entity assumes two forms to enjoy divine love sports. Radha’s body, like Krishna’s, consists of bliss and consciousness. They share spiritual love. To maximize Krishna’s bliss, Radha expands into innumerable partial manifestations as her confidants, the sensuous women of the spiritual abode, who assist in Radha-Krishna’s amorous pastimes and increase their bliss unlimitedly.

The blissful energy exists above all others, identified with the intrinsic, perfect self of God-dess. Other energies remain subservient to it, associated with partial aspects of God-dess. Conscious energy is identified with Cosmic Consciousness and existential energy with Undifferentiated Oneness. The gradation of energies closely corresponds with the gradation of the three aspects of God-dess. Just as God-dess includes Cosmic Consciousness, and Cosmic Consciousness includes Undifferentiated Oneness, blissful energy includes conscious energy, and conscious energy includes existential energy.

The supreme bliss of Radha-Krishna’s divine sports attracts even liberated souls. According to the aesthetic philosophy of Chaitanya, only the sensuous women of Braj–Radha-Krishna’s transcendental abode–enjoy the highest form of bliss known as “the sweet taste.” They engage in the most confidential, loving pastimes of Radha-Krishna. Indeed, the sweet taste is the very essence of Radha-Krishna.

Universalist Radha-Krishnaism offers a dynamic conception of reality. Since the energies relate either externally or internally to God-dess, God-dess creates both the material and spiritual planes. The spiritual energy manifests the eternal sport of God-dess. The eternal sport manifests unparalleled transcendent beauty, sublime spiritual life, bliss, ease, and grace of movement.

Since all movement relates directly or indirectly to the integrating center, acknowledgment of the absolute’s dynamic nature calls for a new view of life. It leads to an aesthetical-teleological understanding of reality, making all knowledge and experience concrete and meaningful.

God-dess relates to conditioned living beings and nature through Cosmic Consciousness. God-dess creates the world and enters into it as Cosmic Consciousness. God-dess pervades, sustains, and regulates the living entities and the entire universe collectively and individually as Cosmic Consciousness.

God-dess possesses infinite energies, or modes of distinction, but from our perspective and level of understanding, the three most important are the spiritual energy, material energy, and the living entities. They inhere in the nature of God-dess. Spiritual energy constitutes the essence, or intrinsic self of God-dess, and forms the substratum of the entire transcendental world where God-dess displays transcendental forms and activities. Material energy relates externally to God-dess and causes the material world. It relates to God-dess in the sense that all energies ultimately inhere in God-dess. God-dess’ intrinsic, perfect selfhood transcends the duality of matter and exists totally free of its influence.

We perceive the material universe as a space-time manifestation. It appears real just as the world we inhabit in dream seems real, but when we wake up, we realize it was an illusion. We consider this waking world to be reality, but it is another level of illusory dream.

Vedic metaphor suggests something like this: suppose an expansion of God-dess sleeps and dreams this world. God-dess’ dream creates a “reality” that goes on for billions of human years, measures billions of light years across, and seems so solid and captivating that some believe it is all that exists. Yet it is a dream, an illusion.

This does not mean we do not exist. We exist as eternal, individual spirits. The illusion is our false identification with our temporary, material body and its products. Even if life seems one big nightmare, it is good to know we can wake up and a better life awaits us.

God-dess’ consciousness pervades the entire material creation, which is God-dess’ dream. Everything is God-dess’ energy and nothing is separate from her-him. Therefore, everything is ultimately spiritual. Because we see things as separate from God-dess, they are called material. When we realize this is God-dess’ creation, simultaneously one and different from God-dess, and only God-dess exists, then we reach enlightenment. Then we remain awake within the dream. We know what’s what.

God-dess regulates and controls material energy through Cosmic Consciousness. Material energy, being unconscious, cannot function by itself. The three modes that set material energy in motion–goodness, passion, and ignorance–exist in a state of equilibrium before creation. According to the Vedic view, God-dess starts the process of creation by glancing at material nature, which disturbs its equilibrium and energizes it. This glance also impregnates material nature with the living entities as an expression of God-dess’ exuberant joy and love. Creation provides the entities an opportunity to consciously evolve and learn to relate with God-dess. Material creation is neither eternal nor unreal. It is real but subject to change and annihilation, unlike the transcendental abode of God-dess.

It is primordial sameness, but not a barren stillness; it is indeterminateness, but not an indeterminateness that totally denies distinctions and definiteness; it has distinctions, but the distinctions are not clearly brought out; it is a creative potentiality, but a potentiality that is eternally actualized in its most perfect state as [God-dess]. (92)

God-dess’ attributes and potencies exist in him-her essentially and eternally and are not unreal or superimposed. God-dess and her-his attributes and energies remain inseparable.

God-dess indulges in spiritual pastimes eternally. God-dess manifests a spiritual body, an eternal abode, and eternal companions. Followers of the path of devotion realize God-dess’ highest, most perfect form. From our perspective, followers of the path of knowledge realize Undifferentiated Oneness, which symbolizes the outward glow or divine luster of God-dess’ spiritual body. Similarly, followers of the path of meditation realize Cosmic Consciousness pervading all.

God-dess’ majestic qualities include:
*supporting and protecting the universe
*unfolding and sustaining the natural function of devotion
*leading devotees to attainment of the transcendental realm
*containing all beings
*existing within all.