Essential teachings

Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism comes under the head­ing of panen­the­ism, which the Oxford Amer­i­can Dic­tio­nary defines as “the belief or doc­trine that God is greater than the uni­verse and includes and inter­pen­e­trates it.” God-dess man­i­fests per­son­ally as Radha-Krishna, imper­son­ally as the Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One, and as an imma­nent, all-pervading presence–Cosmic Consciousness.

The more lim­it­ing and con­strain­ing our def­i­n­i­tion of God, the eas­ier it is to dis­prove. God-dess is unlim­ited and unde­fin­able. We do not want to wor­ship a God that is too small and can­not stand up to intel­lec­tual scrutiny.

Our Essen­tial teachings

1. God-dess means God-Goddess, the Divine Cou­ple, Radha-Krishna, Energy-Energetic, the Ground of all Being, the Pri­mal Cause.

2. God-dess is known through scrip­tures, spir­i­tual teach­ers, Krishna Chai­tanya and his fol­low­ers, other devo­tional sects, our innate know­ing and wis­dom, and the spir­i­tual teach­ings of all cul­tures through the ages to vary­ing degrees.

3. While rec­og­niz­ing the truth in all authen­tic spir­i­tual paths, we focus on cre­at­ing an indige­nous, West­ern expres­sion of devo­tion to God-dess using the teach­ings of Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur as our basis. We employ inter­faith stud­ies and post­mod­ern, crit­i­cal ana­lyt­i­cal meth­ods of inter­pre­ta­tion, like Bhak­tivin­ode did.

4. Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism estab­lishes a liv­ing, evolv­ing process of God-dess real­iza­tion rooted in tra­di­tional, Indian devo­tion, yet updated to pre­serve the essen­tials and dis­card unnec­es­sary cul­tural prac­tices, which alien­ate prac­ti­tion­ers from con­tem­po­rary society.

5. We prac­tice a nat­ural style of devo­tion based on lib­erty, truth, and love. We com­bine the path of the heart, devo­tional love, with intel­lec­tual hon­esty and open­ness. Rather than bas­ing our faith on a rigid set of beliefs, we open our­selves to God-dess’ lead­ing by our total self-surrender.

6. We learn to live as spir­i­tual beings here on earth, one with the earth and life. God-dess per­vades all. We embrace a lifestyle of sim­ple liv­ing and high think­ing, offer­ing all to God-dess as a liv­ing sac­ri­fice of love. We act as ves­sels of divine love. Act­ing in accord with eter­nal spir­i­tual val­ues, we live in the present as fully par­tic­i­pat­ing mem­bers of local and global soci­ety, work­ing for the well-being of all, accord­ing to our ability.

7. We work in coali­tion with those of like mind to address issues of peace, jus­tice, and the envi­ron­ment. We seek com­mon­al­i­ties rather than dif­fer­ences. May love unite all as we man­i­fest the realm of God-dess on earth.

8. This tran­si­tory life involves much suf­fer­ing even in the best of times. There­fore, we only pass through the mate­r­ial plane to evolve our con­scious­ness enough to enter an indi­vid­ual, eter­nal spir­i­tual exis­tence beyond time-space. We then dwell in the abode of Radha-Krishna with their eter­nal spir­i­tual associates.

9. We do not earn our way there, but open our­selves to the love and grace of God-dess, which is freely given. All God-dess asks in return is our love. Estab­lish­ing a lov­ing rela­tion­ship with Radha-Krishna is the key. There is no one way this love devel­ops. We each find our unique way to God-dess as God-dess attracts us.

10.  By clar­i­fy­ing our vision of the spir­i­tual world and trans­fer­ring our thoughts and desires from here to there, at the inevitable time of death, we let go of this life and enter the next as if walk­ing through a doorway. 

11.  We pur­sue our ulti­mate best inter­ests in this life and the next. 

Eter­nity exists now. This life nat­u­rally flows into the next based on our actions and desires. We seek to make the next life the full real­iza­tion of our true nature in lov­ing rela­tion­ship to Radha-Krishna in their eter­nal spir­i­tual abode.

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