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Universalist Radha-Krishnaism: The Way of Natural Devotion; A Practitioner’s Handbook

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXCERPT:

ABOUT THE BOOK

A REVIEW OF THE NEW EDITION

Steve Bohlert has dared to break the shackles of fundamentalism to deliver a much-needed re-visioning of an ancient religion of India, giving it new life for those of us in a multicultural 21st Century world. He has extracted the essence of Bengali Vaishnavism, and while staying true to its person-ality, has planted the seed back into the human body, so we may again receive the Original Blessing. I do not hesitate to call Steve Bohlert a prophet, not only as one gifted with spiritual insight, but also as one who foretells the future — of a path that must be something like he sees it or not be at all. That is, without such a re-birthing of Vaishnavism, its soul will never plant roots in the world at large. The orthodox will of course decry it and condemn him. “The dogs may bark, but the caravan will pass.” — Daniel Cooper Clark, longtime Radha-Krishna devotee

FROM REVIEWS OF THE FIRST EDITION:

Many Westerners are attracted to diverse aspects of Hinduism and, in particular, devotion to Radha-Krishna, but soon find themselves alienated by two factors: an inescapable emphasis on ‘Indian-ness’ and the uncompromising literalism of the movement as it has come to the West.  Steve Bohlert’s approach to spirituality merges Western and Eastern thought by de-emphasizing cultural trappings and literalism, while maintaining a passionate emotional bond with the Supreme Being in this especially effective form of the Divine Couple, Radha-Krishna. — Dr. M. Valle, who teaches philosophy of religion

Hundreds of years ago, Radha-Krishna, the archetypal goddess and god of love, were little-known outside of India, and worshiped only within the Hindu faith. Eighteenth and nineteenth century archaeologists and scholars made us aware of Hindu gods, but prior to the twentieth century, nobody in the West had any actual experience of Radha and Krishna. Even today, god and goddess remain concealed behind a brick wall of fundamentalism, which most of us from a Judeo-Christian background are powerless to navigate. On one hand, we may sense truth there, but until Bohlert’s interpretation, there was no way to pierce the fundamentalist views and practices that keep these deities off limits. — Author Nori Muster

This book is sufficiently important that its wide dissemination amongst devotees is a desideratum.… old beliefs are given apparently radical new interpretations that widen their scope and potential for meaning.… Subal [Steve Bohlert] has done a great service by introducing or naming the Vaishnava concept of deity as panentheism.… I favor rāgānugā [natural devotion], as it seems does Subal, precisely because it … is about reforming the id-controlled ego into a love-permeated ego.… There is no doubt that Subal’s is an important brick in the wall of religious discourse … His great contribution … is that he has gone out on a limb and attempted to make a coherent and systematic presentation of Radha-Krishna according to his vision. This means of course that he has set himself up for criticism, but that kind of courage is what is needed to push the discourse further. — Jagadananda Das/Jan Brzezinski, translator and scholar.

Steve Bohlert appeared again on Common Threads, November 20 & 27, to discuss his new book. It can be heard world-wide as a podcast.

Common Threads is a program heard weekly on Grand Rapids, Michigan NPR affiliate, WGVU-FM. It is hosted by Interfaith Dialogue Association President, Fred Stella. Steve Bohlert, author of Universalist Radha-Krishnaism was the guest speaker Sundays February 7th and 14th, 2010 and November 20th and 27th, 2011.

In this world of sound bite journalism and confrontational hit and run radio, Common Threads is a welcome relief.  Guests come from virtually every point on the spectrum of spirituality & religion. In the past dozen years they’ve had Tibetan Buddhist lamas, Catholic priests, Hindu monks, Jewish Kabbalah teachers, Evangelical pastors and many, many more share the microphone.

The format is quite simple. In the tradition of such NPR programs as Fresh Air or Speaking of Faith, they invite guests to share informal conversation with host, Fred Stella. There is almost no editing in this process.

You can download and listen to shows as podcasts here:

November 20, 2011

November 27, 2011

February 7, 2010

February 14, 2010

Or, you can download podcasts of previous shows by logging on to http://www.wgvu.org. On the top panel, click on “Radio/News.” Once there, see “Common Threads” in left column. If you want to listen after the show has aired click the left side. That will take you to the archives.

About the host: Fred Stella has been involved with Interfaith Dialogue Association for over 15 years, and has held the office of president for 12 years. He has lectured internationally on inter-religious matters.  Mr. Stella brings over 3 decades of broadcast experience to Common Threads.

Another satellite internet provider came to my home Saturday. He also said there are too many tall trees to be able to get a clear signal. Again, my only option for high speed is dashed. Oh well, that’s the price for jungle living. I don’t think I’m missing much.

Meanwhile, I can light a fire in the wood-stove and work on my memoirs, which is now my main writing project. I”m reading a couple of memoir writing books as I prepare to revise and complete the manuscript I’ve been working on for over twenty-five years. This should keep me busy for a while. Aloha.

Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex

by James Ledbetter, editor in charge of Reuters.com. Yale University Press, 2011.

I grew up in a Republican family admiring Ike as a military leader and a president. People said “Everybody likes Ike.” After reading this book, now I know why. Raised in a Mennonite family, he became a distinguished top military leader, president of Columbia University, and then president of the U.S..  Still he was unprepared for what he encountered. What he called “the military-industrial complex” was already in place. It controlled much public policy independent of and often contrary to the wishes of the president/commander-in-chief.

At the end of his second term, he was disappointed at not being able to do more to set the country on the right track for world peace and human betterment. He gave a powerful farewell address warning the nation about “the military-industrial complex”, which today we may call the military-corporate-congressional complex that relies on a perpetual war economy. It created a garrison state and is bankrupting the country–funding the war machine at the cost of public services and individual freedoms.

Fifty years after Ike’s speech, this book is well worth reading to get a better understanding of what todays protests are about. I think Ike would be quite supportive of them. Get it at the public library or Amazon.com.

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American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan by Peter Dale Scott

This book took my reading from the ancient warfare and politics of the Mahabharata to the current day situation that is affecting all of us regardless of nationality. It provides a thorough history filled with little known facts and normally unasked questions that point to the unseen forces that control our lives. I’ll quote from his “Final Words”:

This has been a book about an imperfectly perceived but pernicious, murderous, ongoing, and often criminal interaction between the forces of covert operations and of drug trafficking–and interaction I have called the gobble drug connection. I have argued that this global drug connection (including whatever ancillary dark forces are working with it) has been a seriously under-recognized factor in America’s deep events, in American politics, and particularly in the wars and other foreign adventures of the U.S.  war machine. As a result of early unauthorized decisions by small groups, using secrecy as a cover and drug traffickers as assets, Americas’s war machine grew to be able to induce preemptive wars repeatedly in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan, was that were deceptively disguised, by deceptive deep events, as responses to enemy provocations. In the case of Afghanistan, it is particularly remarkable that the tragedies of the Laos and Vietnam wars were willingly and consciously prolonged or repeated by later presidents, including President Obama, whom to office promising change. (255)

For more than a century the land and people of America have provided hope and insertion to freedom-seeking peoples elsewhere. That could continue to be the case–but only if a mobilized American public can restore rightful priorities to its broken political system, corrupted by drugs and war. (257)

It confirmed my thinking in more detail and ruthless premeditated disregard for life than I could imagine. It shows what people on the streets are protesting against.  I highly recommend reading this book. I got it at the public library or you can buy it from Amazon.com.

Review of Steve Bohlert’s Universalist Radha-Krishnaism

There are books which are the result of a life-long engagement with a subject. They impress us by the depth of experience and the profundity of thought. Steve Bohlert’s Universalist Radha-Krishnaism is such a book. It is an outcome of the author’s thirty-five year long spiritual quest. The book is a personal account of his spiritual practice and journey which started as a leading disciple of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (his diksa-name is Subal das Goswami), continued with initiation into the practice of raganuga bhakti by Lalita Prasad, a deep study of Christian theology and the work as a pastor, and culminated in developing the concept of Universalist Radha-Krishnaism.

Steve Bohlert’s book touches upon the most important problems of being a devotee of Radha-Krishna in the twenty-first century. The cult of Radha-Krishna originated in medieval India. But now we live in the twenty-first century, in a world in which one cannot ignore the cultural and scientific developments of the West (and of the whole world, of course) if one cares for one’s intellectual honesty. Steve Bohlert’s parama guru, Bhaktivinode Thakur, recognized the challenge Western world presented to Indian culture. He was ready to accept the Western critical scholarship and science, abandoned the literalist interpretation of Indian mythology, and developed his own approach to Indian scriptures in general and Gaudiya Vaishnava texts in particular. ‘Progress is the law of nature and there must be corrections and developments with the progress of time’, says Bhaktivinode in The Bhagavat, Its Philosophy, Ethics and Theology. Bohlert notices that Bhaktivinode understood that revelation is not completed, that it is ever-evolving, and finds a similar idea, called process theology, in contemporary Christianity, and argues that the follower of Chaitanya can benefit from it.

Western philosophers have dwelt upon issues which ancient and medieval Indian thinkers did not pursue to the same extant and in the same manner. One of such issues is epistemology. The achievements of Western epistemology have tremendous importance for our understanding of Gaudiya Vaishnava texts. From present perspective one cannot interpret them literally, although the tradition does. It is therefore evident that sastra must attain a different epistemic value. However, a symbolic interpretation, which is a possible alternative left, represents a threat to its infallibility and authority. Bohlert writes: ‘The scripture writers wrote to the best of their knowledge and ability at the time. We do not think they tried to deceive anyone—however, if we find discrepancies in their words, we can use scientific and philosophical methods to understand why such things occurred.’ (p. 110) Sastra, he mentions elsewhere, ‘contains a great mine of spiritual wisdom developed over millennia by a highly spiritual civilization. Yet does this make it all objectively real? No, it does not. Does it contain a wealth of relevant spiritual insights? Yes, it does.’ (p. 69)

The question then is how to deal with Gaudiya texts after their deconstruction. Bohlert suggests developing a “second naïveté,” which is a term proposed by French philosopher Paul Ricœur, but in the book it is attributed to Marvin Chaney, his professor at  the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. The idea of second naïveté sounds appealing, but unfortunately does not solve the most important problem of ontology. As Bohlert acknowledges, ‘[t]he existence of God cannot be conclusively proved or disproved […] it comes down to faith […] (p. 76). The epistemological crisis leaves us no other option than faith. Or in other words, one has to make a choice. Bohlert even speaks of ‘the chosen path’ (p. 73). In the glossary, he mentions Pascal’s Wager, i.e. the argument that even if the existence of God could not be proved, one should wager as though God exists, because the benefits of believing in Got outweigh the possible loss. Bohlert, however, does not elaborate on the idea anywhere in the book. What significance can Pascal’s Wager have for devotees of Radha-Krishna? The goal of Gaudiya Vaishnavism is to attain uttama bhakti, which is defined by Rupa Goswami in Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu (1.1.11) as anyAbhilASita-zUnyam jJAna-karmAdy-anAvRtam anukUlyena kRSNAnuzIlanam, i.e. bhakti should be devoid of all desire other than to serve Krishna. One is supposed to give up all other desires including the desire for liberation (mukti). So there is nothing to get from bhakti. If this is the case, is there any use of Pascal’s Wager? Apparently not. But Bohlert seems to suggest an answer to the question why worship Radha-Krishna. Through the book he propagates raganuga bhakti, or natural devotion, as he calls it, which does not depend on scriptural injunctions but on raga, hankering. Raga itself appears in the heart of the devotee by the mercy of God or an anuragi devotee. As Katha Upanishad (1.2.23) says: yam eSaiva vRNute tena lAbhyaH, ‘He whom the Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained.’ There is apparently nothing we can do. Should this be the way out of the crisis? With this question, however, I have gone further than Bohlert himself argues.

Bohlert addresses many other important questions: renunciation and enjoyment; the dialogue between science and religion (for example, the acceptance of evolution theory); and the practice of raganuga bhakti, which would be more suited for the people of the twenty-first century (for example, he imagines Radha-Krishna as twenty years old cowherd girl and boy, participating in the village community life at day and enjoying in a forest love cottage at night). Bohlert elaborates on these and other issues with varying degree of consistency and depth. Some issues are left unexplained or only suggested. Some are controversial. But, be it as it may, throughout the book one can feel the power of his experience and intuition. It is a sincere, courageous and thought-provoking account of a spiritual journey.

KRISHNA DASA: a Western-educated intellectual and an initiate in Gaudiya Vaishnava Sampradaya trying to understand God, the world, one’s own existence, and their mutual relationships. From his brahmajijnasa, a blog dedicated to the understanding of the ground reality.

Steve Bohlert has dared to break the shackles of fundamentalism to deliver a much-needed re-visioning of an ancient religion of India, giving it new life for those of us in a multicultural 21st Century world.

He has extracted the essence of Bengali Vaishnavism, and while staying true to its person-ality, has planted the seed back into the human body,

so we may again receive the Original Blessing.

I do not hesitate to call Steve Bohlert a prophet, not only as one gifted with spiritual insight, but also as one who foretells the future — of a path that must be something like he sees it or not be at all.

That is, without such a re-birthing of Vaishnavism, its soul will never plant roots in the world at large. The orthodox will of course decry it and condemn him. “The dogs may bark, but the caravan will pass.”