In recent years calls have been made by influ­en­tial and aca­d­e­mic Vaish­navas for a reform of Vaish­nav­ism, par­tic­u­larly, but cer­tainly not solely, as it is prac­ticed in the West. Fol­low­ing Prabhupada’s suc­cess in intro­duc­ing West­ern­ers to the Radha-Krishna-centered Vaish­nav­ism of Chai­tanya, many peo­ple have yearned for a Radha-Krishna-centered form of spir­i­tu­al­ity that can be […]

Radha Krishna are the feminine-masculine poles of God-dess. When we see the two as one, we see the androg­yny of God-dess and by reflec­tion, of our­selves. Chai­tanya is the embod­i­ment of Radha Krishna and there­fore, con­sid­ered their incar­na­tion. The intro­duc­tion to the Chai­tanya Chari­ta­m­rita beau­ti­fully describes Krishna’s rea­son­ing for incar­nat­ing as Chai­tanya. He wanted to […]

I am not a strict fol­lower of Bhak­tivin­ode, or any­one else, in the sense of accept­ing his opin­ion as the final word on things. He lived in Vic­to­rian, British India and geared his teach­ings to the edu­cated Ben­galis and British whom he inter­acted with reg­u­larly. As gov­ern­ment ser­vants, he and Lalita Prasadji asso­ci­ated with all […]

While med­i­tat­ing on what gopis might be like today and how we might trans­late “gopi” so that it has mean­ing for con­tem­po­rary West­ern devo­tees, I had an insight. “Gopi” is tra­di­tion­ally trans­lated as “cowherd damsel, girl, woman or maiden.” They are Krishna’s lovers in the cowherd vil­lage of Vrind­a­ban who serve Krishna in a mood […]

Let us assume that all the gods and god­desses, heav­ens and hells all exist within us. This would be con­sis­tent with the Upan­ishads, Jung, Camp­bell and oth­ers. Many of Chaitanya’s fol­low­ers are said to have expe­ri­enced Krishna within their hearts. Rather than an exter­nal, tran­scen­den­tal expe­ri­ence, per­haps we seek an inner, imma­nent expe­ri­ence of divin­ity.
There […]

God-dess refers to the Divine Cou­ple, Radha Krishna, God and God­dess, energy and ener­getic, the ground of all being, the cause of all causes.
God-dess is the basis of exis­tence, the source of all life and love. God-dess is eter­nal. God-dess exists before the begin­ning of time and beyond time in eter­nity. Time and space began […]

I am influ­enced by the Brahma Vaivarta Purana and other later devel­op­ments which ele­vate Radha from a mere shakti of Krishna, to the Supreme God­dess. C. Macken­zie Brown dis­cusses this in God As Mother: A Fem­i­nine The­ol­ogy in India. There is also some good dis­cus­sion of Radha in The Divine Con­sort: Radha and rthe Goddesses […]

I’m pretty much fin­ished with the addi­tion to my home that con­sumed much of my energy the past sev­eral months. I am tak­ing some down time to shift gears from being an owner-builder to being a full-time the­olo­gian again.
I am work­ing with Neal Del­monico / Nitai Das and oth­ers on his forum, The Chai­tanya Sym­po­sium, to […]

In my mind and expe­ri­ence, the basic beliefs of Chai­tanya Vaish­nav­ism are:
Belief in God-dess as the Divine Cou­ple, Radha Krishna. Radha is supe­rior to Krishna in the sense of dom­i­nat­ing him by her love which is what is really impor­tant and worship-able. Oth­er­wise, they are co-equal God and God­dess, two halves of one whole, the embodiment […]

In The G.O.D. Exper­i­ments, sci­en­tist Gary Swartz makes a good case for a guid­ing, orga­niz­ing, design­ing principle/field/force that is active through­out the uni­verse on all lev­els of exis­tence. He sees this force as per­sonal, with a sense of humor even.
This goes along with God-dess being the Ground of All Being. There­fore, God-dess does not exist as […]