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.”

My intention was to review the book then, but for whatever reason, I have been amiss in so doing, which is more than just a minor oversight. This book is sufficiently important that its wide dissemination amongst devotees is a desideratum. Indeed, with the book Subal sent an ebullient review written by former ISKCON public relations officer and author, Nori Muster, which shows that it can answer at least some of the doubts and fulfill the desires of erstwhile devotees who are seeking to use their religious experiences to grow after becoming dissatisfied with their ISKCON experience. Another review has also been posted more recently by Scottsdale Arizona religious studies professor Michael Valle on Facebook.

Subal has an interesting history… and the Krishna Consciousness Movement has been around long enough for most of us early birds to have had interesting histories by now. One of Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s earliest disciples who broke open several regions for ISKCON, Subal also spent three years in India, during which time he encountered Srila Lalita Prasad Thakur and was initiated into the raganuga-bhakti path.

Though he continued in ISKCON for a while thereafter, he eventually left and went to the prestigious Graduate Theological Union (GTU)in Berkeley, California, where he picked up a Master of Divinity degree. This led to ordination in the United Church of Christ, a liberal denomination in the Reformed tradition.

Eventually, Subal’s Vaishnavism sprang back to the fore in his consciousness and he became convinced that it was necessary to attempt to synthesize his experiences. In his book he mentions that his personal history as a Vaishnava has always been a part of his identity, and it was even welcomed and appreciated by his mentors and teachers at the GTU and in the liberal tradition where he became a pastor. Nevertheless, his studies and life in the liberal Christian milieu have enriched his understanding of spirituality, which he has now applied to the Gaudiya tradition. The ways he does so may not please everyone, but he certainly makes a valuable contribution to the discourse and his work will be, as Nori Muster puts it, like “a cooling breeze on a hot day” for many.

My own experience mirrors Subal’s in many ways. I spent a longer time in ISKCON than he, and more time in India studying and practicing the Gaudiya tradition into which Lalita Prasad Thakur had initiated me, though I also came into contact with the Gaudiya Sahajiya traditions during this nearly eleven-year period. But I also returned to a Western university setting with the intention of objectively studying my personal experiences and contextualizing it through critical methods of study. Nevertheless, my area of research at the Ph.D. level was rooted in the Sanskrit tradition rather than theology. Whereas Subal’s gestation period was spent in the Christian ministry, I eked out a living primarily as a translator and editor. Nevertheless, despite our completely separate paths, somewhat different orientation, linguistic and cultural commitments, we have an amazing amount of common ground, no doubt due to our similar backgrounds in Krishna bhakti and the sharing of certain universal liberal values.

Liberal Christian influences

I have often said to devotees that they have the tendency to criticize Christianity, usually using straw man arguments and rarely appealing to the best in progressive Christian thought, whether it is its social activism,  serious interaction with modern philosophical thought, deconstruction of mythology and the like. Like most fundamentalists, they feel that liberal Christianity is excessively rational and incompatible with true religious experience.

The fact is that experiential Christianity has been in contact with scientific and modern philosophical thought far longer than any other religious tradition, and though it sometimes seems that they have been playing defense, those of integrity recognize that the only moral approach is to accept Truth wherever it is found. They recognize that even as they bow to well-founded critiques of their own church’s history, myths and traditions, they can still find legitimacy in their own spiritual experience, and the meaning and moral force that it gives them. Thus, anyone who has struggled with such critiques, regardless of which tradition they swear allegiance to – Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim — can still learn something from Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Barth, Teilhard de Chardin, Niebuhr, and many others.

This is of course the basis of the universalism in “Universalist Radha-Krishnaism.” Devotion to the Divine Couple is only one religion amongst many, with things to teach as well as to learn to the worldwide community of faith. An arrogant sense of privilege in any religion will ultimately lead to rotting from within, no matter how much short term success it may claim. So Radha-Krishna devotion should be ecumenical, in the true spirit of interfaith dialogue and participation in the progressive evolution of human society as a whole.

The liberal approach is multifaceted, but it begins with a healthy relativism that has long been known in Hinduism, but is rejected by zealous sectarians or those who are politically motivated. Such people are the bane of progressive spirituality.

Subal has very correctly stated that Bhaktivinoda Thakur is a great inspiration to anyone who seeks to reform or move the Gaudiya tradition forward, and he cites many of the Thakur’s most famous passages supporting this idea. In particular, he adopts, as do I, the term “essence seeker” (sāra-grāhī) as by-word for this progressive approach and as a stance against the regressive literalism that is prevalent in ISKCON and much of the Hindu world.

Subal further equates the progressive theological position with “process theology,” which he says  forms a “fabulous combination” with Chaitanyaism (p.40). He was impressed by how his own church was constantly reforming itself and realized that this kind of dynamism needs to be applied to the movement started by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. As in Christianity, there is of course a strong resistance to such reform in the Krishna consciousness movement, as the Truth is seen as an unchanging complete whole that was given at one time by a historical Master, rather than one that is constantly revealing Itself through history.

In many of my own writings on my blog and elsewhere, I have tried to show how this has never been the case, that the traditions of India have undergone constant change through debate and interaction with each other. There is no reason to think that we, as modern Vaishnavas with a totally different experience of life, will not transform Vaishnavism — whether we intend to or not. ISKCON, in order to preserve its institutional integrity, is obliged to enforce loyalty to Srila Prabhupada’s doctrinal vision, which severely hampers its ability to maneuver. As is often the case, most of the original thinking will come from outside of ISKCON, and I think Subal’s contribution is an important and welcome one.

Second Naivete, Reenchantment

Some of the terms Subal borrows from liberal theology are very useful. One is “hermeneutical leap”, which is the leap of insight that comes when old beliefs are given apparently radical new interpretations that widen their scope and potential for meaning.

Another, taken from his Old Testament professor at GTU, Marvin Chaney, is “second naivete”, used to describe the renewed zest one feels for deconstructed historical, theological or mythological themes when they have been reinvigorated by a broader understanding. This indicates the richness of the renewed faith that comes when we accept the challenge of doubt in the dialectic of faith, rather than trying to crush it with false zealotry.

Disenchantment comes from the loss of a spiritual point of view due to an excess of rationalism. For many, this is dealt with by either a retreat into the shell of fundamentalism or hypocrisy when the challenges become too strong. For others it results in a crisis of faith that leads to total rejection of a specific faith or of any faith at all.

Those who accept the challenge of doubt and investigate religion and their own religious experiences as an objective phenomena in all their aspects—mythological, theological, philosophical, anthropological, psychological, sociological, etc.—often find that their faith takes on a new enlivened form, if their samskara (the faith based on the original religious experience) is strong enough. One then interacts with God through his symbolic manifestations with much the same innocence and love that he or she did when they were entirely new and presented themselves in all their original mystic splendor. In that state, he makes genuine further progress internally.

This is what the Bhagavata infers in 3.7.17 when it talks about going beyond intelligence. You cannot hide from reason and, if you try to suppress it, you run the risk of hypocrisy and all the ugliness it entails. Facing reason means undertaking a dark night of the soul, but the rewards are so much greater, because the nature of evolved faith is so much sweeter and satisfying than the struggle to remain true to received dogmas.

One of the problems I see in the whole “enlightenment” and rationalist discourse is that it is essentially a desacralizing movement. In my own experience, certain conditions of extreme innocence and rejection of so-called “rational” social order were necessary in order for me to even chant Hare Krishna and discover the sacred in the first place. Jiva Goswami talks about ruchi-pradhana and vichara-pradhana devotees, while making it very clear that [despite clearly being in the latter category himself] that those who can move directly into the path of sacred experience are more fortunate, for the vichara-pradhana devotee will only have to return there when his faith has been renewed. The trouble is that the genuine simplicity of a ruchi-pradhana devotee who never interacts with rational doubt is extremely rare.

In view of my own pilgrimage, I agree that by developing a more sophisticated understanding of religious experience, we make it possible to deepen it and communicate it to a wider audience. But an overly sophisticated attitude may also make it difficult to enter into direct communion with symbols like Radha-Krishna that are God’s way of revealing himself to us.

Christianity has the advantage in some ways of dealing with modernity and its sophisticated secular critiques of religion for a longer time than India. In many ways, India is still fighting the rearguard, trying to defend the literal word of God, however confused, hyperbolic and self-contradictory it may be. Bhaktivinoda Thakur clearly stated that the “word of God” is the words of inspired men, rishis or seers. It is sad that the progressive tendencies of Bhaktivinoda Thakur have been overrun by a regression to old-style fundamentalism.

I have pondered over the question of whether the narrow vision of the kanishtha adhikari serves some necessary function in the development of one’s devotional life. But the great problem of the kanishtha is that he has little understanding of what psychological changes and real difficulties there are in stepping up to the madhyama level. Because there are so many precious preconceived notions and cherished ideas that must be jettisoned, there is a great deal of fear that must be overcome.

The sad fact is that kanishthas are the kinds of religious people who start wars and pogroms. They are also the ones who are susceptible to the greatest hypocrisies because they do not face the existential challenges of doubt and so become empty internally while continuing to exploit the credibility of the neophytes they surround themselves with for personal gain.

One of those great fears is that of Mayavada. Subal has done a great service by introducing or naming the Vaishnava concept of deity as panentheism. For those who have not studied comparative religion, this term will mean nothing. But it really is the best English language term for Mahaprabhu’s achintya-bhedabheda, because while recognizing the personal nature of the God and our relationship with him, it gives full importance to his immanence and identity with us.

How this plays out in practical terms is of course something that I am deeply interested in, because it completely changes the nature of our sadhana.

Cultural Directions

One of the areas in which Subal is attempting to make headway is “establishing an indigenous Radha-Krishna devotional culture” (116). As stated above, I think it presents the broad outlines of the direction we want to go, and though culturally, just in the way of our spiritual development, we are in slightly different frames of mind, the grand strokes of his vision are fairly close to mine.

Both Subal and I are, let us say, deviants from the tradition. We have both consciously and willingly allowed ourselves to be influenced by thinkers outside the tradition, and this makes us suspect when we claim to defend it. I often find myself in the odd position of defending the tradition or even ISKCON while simultaneously seeming to be arguing against what so many identify as its core beliefs!

Now, where did Lalita Prasad Prabhu really stand on these issues? As far as I can see, most of his present-day disciples are so influenced by the Gaudiya Math, since the GM is the main publisher of Bhaktivinode Thakur’s books, and mostly don’t understand (who does or did?) Bhaktivinode Thakur’s innovative and modernizing tendencies. Since it seems that Bhaktivinode Thakur himself came into a second naiveté at a certain point in his life, he was able to drop his concerns with philosophy and modernism and concentrate on bhajan; thus to them he appears to be a traditionalist.

This is where everyone is wrong. Bhaktivinode was practicing, but not necessarily simply accepting things at face value. A century down the road from Bhaktivinode (his 100th disappearance day is in 2014), the kinds of secular criticisms of fundamentalism are so much stronger and the synthetic position which both defends against the excesses of literalism and pinpoints the essence of the spiritual search have become so much more sophisticated.

Natural Vaishnavism

Subal uses the word “natural Vaishnavism” or “natural devotion” to refer to rāgānugā bhakti. “Natural” is clearly a translation of the word sahaja, so we must inquire into the appropriateness of his usage of the term.

Bhaktivinode Thakur himself used the term with some frequency, but I question whether he intended it as a translation of rāgānugā bhakti or that he was following the long tradition of sahaja in Buddhism or Sant Mat or indeed in Vaishnava Sahajiyaism.

This word has such a long tradition in Indian thought, particularly in (a) Buddhism (Sahaja-yana) and (b) in the Sants like Kabir and Raidas, as well as in © post Chaitanya Vaishnava Sahajiyaism, that it seems almost aberrant that BVT would choose to use it. We need to go back and do a thorough study of his use of the word to see exactly how he meant it in every single instance. But it is clear to me at least that there is a convergence of these expressions.

Subal also takes this natural Vaishnavism to imply a position against renunciation, which he feels leads to ***. At the same time he advocates for enjoying the things of the world within reason and with detachment, just as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu instructed Raghunath Das during his householder life. Indeed, Subal asks whether God may not ask at the time of death whether we have “enjoyed enough”.

When describing the sadhana of Universalist Radha-Krishnaism, he frequently repeats that one is to follow in the footsteps of the residents of Vrindavan, Krishna’s eternal associates, as exemplars or ideal human beings.

Later in his book, Subal (influenced it seems by Dimock’s Place of the Hidden Moon) takes a more directly Vaishnava sahajiya position.

There are some articles by Joseph O’Connell rebutting Dimock, and both certainly bring out some of the historical uses of the term. But I think there is very little understanding. It is here that the crux of the matter comes. Sexuality. I am becoming more and more adamant that the rejection of or deep ambivalence about sexuality is not only the target of “sahaja”, but is also the fundamental problem that vitiates the Mayavada-permeated spirituality of India and thus its social life and individual personal development.

In many ways, Rajneesh (Osho) is much closer to my way of thinking–even as a non devotional thinker –than the devotees who reject woman and sexuality as the principal obstacles to their spiritual advancement. But, of course, for those in the ISKCON/Gaudiya Math tradition, the word sahaja (“natural”) implies some kind of antinomian, id-directed and thus immature sensuality. That is not the case; it is simply the redirection of the most powerful forces in the psyche towards spiritual culture and prema.

We use the symbolic vocabulary of Radha, Krishna, Vrindavan and the gopis, to train our minds and then through mantra come into harmony with our partners on a deep level of inwardness, so that the experience of love pervades our being and radiates outwards. Though the celibate lifestyle may mean the outward redirection of sexual energies into other kinds of service, as Freud so rightly pointed out, sublimation has its limits.

Not only that, I believe, but it is not what the Vaishnava tradition, with its overriding sensual nature, is about. We are NOT an ascetic tradition, at least not in its external flaunting of sannyas, celibacy, misogynistic world view, etc.

But the question here is, obviously, can we hold the above beliefs and still claim to be followers of Bhaktivinoda Thakur? Where did the Thakur stand on these matters? He clearly was not a Sahajiya in the traditional sense as found in the Bengali culture of his time. He was a Victorian and, let us face it, influenced by the British culture of that époque. I think that as an educated and sophisticated aristocrat of the period, he would have been repulsed by the uneducated and unsophisticated Sahajiyaism that was rampant in the underclasses of Bengal.

But it is clear that undergirding this uneducated and unsophisticated Sahajiyaism in practice, there is a very sophisticated and philosophical defensible system of understanding. Can we connect the Thakur’s understanding of sahaja to this “despicable” target of so much of his and Bhaktisiddhanta’s preaching?

Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur and his followers opposed rāgānugā-bhakti itself because they felt it would lead to the above kind of aberration. I favor rāgānugā, as it seems does Subal, precisely because it favors this reformation of sexuality. It is about transforming kama into prema. It is about reforming the id-controlled ego into a love-permeated ego. We need to reread Bhaktivinoda Thakur to see if he had any glimmers of this perception.

But, like Subal, I think that my conclusion is not based on what Bhaktivinoda Thakur did or did not believe, do or  practice, but what we have concluded is the right course and appropriate sadhana, which ultimately stands in consonance with the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition as presented by the Goswamis of Vrindavan. I have already defended that position on these pages [his blog] and will continue to do so in the future, with ever increasing commitment and conviction.

The last verse of the Rasa-lila says that by hearing these erotic pastimes of Krishna the sensual desires of the conditioned soul, the disease that vitiates human life, kama, is cured. How on earth is that supposed to happen? No one seems to have a clue. Everyone simply assumes it means that you become a celibate monk.

This “otherworldiness” or underlying assumption of the falseness of this world is the essence of Mayavada. And unless we recognize the dual nature of femininity and masculinity, learn that their unity is a potential dual-nondual miracle of spiritual felicity, we will always be misdirected into the anti-love concept of Mayavada.

So in a sense we may have a difficult time claiming direct adherence to Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s beliefs. We can only say as I think Subal does, that we have taken the ball he passed to us and are running with it. If this is where it takes us, through our sadhana and our long years of reflection, then we must not deny our inner inspiration, but embrace it and pursue its implications, and experiment with the practices, and learn through experience about its consequences, its limitations, its joys and sorrows.

Social Involvement

Besides these approaches to one’s own textual tradition, Subal takes another page from liberal Christianity an orientation to social involvement. If the world is real, as is a fundamental element of the Vaishnava doctrine, and if compassion is an essential characteristic of the devotee, then surely social involvement should be a part of the broad scope of a religious movement’s activities.

There is no doubt that Subal’s is an important brick in the wall of religious discourse about Vaishnavism. Many of the things that he says are those I have been saying repeatedly. His great contribution, of course, 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.

I really hope that all of the friends I have here, especially those who are disenchanted from the enchanted world of Krishna consciousness, but still have a lingering taste for something, they are not quite sure what, of the Krishna conscious experience (See Bhagavata 1.5.19), it will help get their juices flowing and their intelligence focused on what exactly it was or is that they are still holding on to. Or what, as I think Subal shows both from his personal life and intellectual evolution, what they need to hold on to.

by Jagadananda Das from his blog Jagat

While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses.
– Bible, Numbers 15:32–36

I’ve heard something like the following at least a hundred times in my life:

Just chant Hare Krishna maha mantra purely and be happy!

Or seen people believing in something like this:

The ideal all devotees strive for is exclusive dedication to sri guru. […] The purity of spiritual advancement depends on the grace of sri guru. Only when he or she is pleased with the disciple can the disciple attain purity, and no one can please their guru by abandoning or relativizing him or her — by not being chaste.
– Harmonist, July 2009

Why is God bound by purity to bestow happiness unto us, little flock on a tiny planet Earth, a mere speckle within the endless universe? Sounds silly and paradoxical.

It very much reminds me of the psychology that propels a market mechanism, especially stock market. People reach deep into their pockets, grab some money to buy investment shares, real estate, government bonds, valuables like jewelry, original art, rarities, and so forth. Utilising money to purchase happiness, comfortable living in this life and utilising purity to bargain for some happiness, God’s mercy or good prospects in future life — what’s the real difference between them? They both illustrate a market approach to get what we need to “feel secure” and to be “saved from the blazing agonies of material existence”.

Bizzare rules of purity

The true trick with every market is that is not ruled by the abundant offer — no matter what that can be — but only by means of acquisition, which in this case becomes purity. In traditional stock markets money rules. Similarly in spiritual markets of this world purity rules. When purity becomes currency, then nothing else matters for currency can “buy you anything”. You live not to spend it, buy things with it and then forget about it, but the market entails: you need to be constantly liquid. Liquidity means being able to easily convert all your assets into currency, or in our case in purity. Gordon Gekko, a ruthless multi-millionaire character played by Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone’s masterpiece movie ‘Wall Street’ would call that “You become a player.” A player in the stock market of purity.

Purity puts a pressure on you. You need purity. Desperately. Purity gets you everything. Therefore you work hard every day to earn purity. However, oftentimes that is not enough to play in demanding market games, so you need more income flowing in. What can help? Selling something, rather than pouring in penances and hard work alone? Or filling up pockets with other valuables appreciated in the stock market of purity? Both are absolutely necessary. As Gordon Gekko further said in the movie, one third of the wealth comes from hard work and two thirds from everything else: mainly from inheritance, interest accumulated, stock and real estate speculation.

Let’s see inheritance. In markets of purity inheritance is something you get by belonging closely to someone who was recognised as a great player and was considered a wizard of purity. Being in the line of some well known market guru, for example. Being born in a family of priests, imams or brahmins is considered to be very propitious. Or being their good friend, or a distant relative. You scratch your back on your ancestor’s life of achievements, the resulting social status and use it as a winning bid to get more currency and investment options. Your true achievements don’t really matter because inheritance puts you instantly forward. Suddenly your voice matters and you’re in the game.

Interest accumulated is everything you gain on assets properly invested into purity market options. Spiritual markets of purity claim God, as a supreme treasurer and a bean counter, carefully calculates all your deposits and adds on a proper interest that you can withdraw at a certain time, or use to reinvest. The choice is yours, but obviously market indeed wants players to accumulate as much currency as possible because that’s the true goal. Liquidity. So you’ll probably tighten up your waist belt and reinvest.

However, even all that is not enough, as market has tremendously high expectations from its players. Often you ask yourself does this frantic game makes any sense, but you have little time to reconsider and change your life, as you’re firmly bound to market rules by different sets of fears for your very existence. Can you find courage to challenge them? But you don’t have enough time even to earn enough to stay in the game. Now when you’ve reaffirmed yourself this is the only way to go, you’ll shout out one more loud banzai and continue.

What major promise keeps you in the game? An oracle that says you should never forget that one percent of all players possess half the spiritual wealth available in those markets, and only one percent of those one percent will even attain God’s mercy. You really want to be one of them. You indeed need to venture into stock and real estate speculation.

What is that? It is following: you need carefully observe the bids on the market and try to predict where’s best to invest. Is there someone or something really popular at the moment in spiritual markets of purity you should come close to? Invest in his or her shares? You need to monitor everything carefully, for you never know who’s gonna appear next, with a more comprehensive portfolio, inheritance capital and thus more promising future for investment. Be careful, for investing into stocks of ‘wrong saints’, ‘out-of-ordinary gurus’ or some suspicious religious thoughts may cause banishment from the circle of your friends and mentors. You surely don’t want that.

You should also re-evaluate your assets regularly. Do they yield enough purity? Should you get rid of something? Perhaps that which is not pure enough, that doesn’t earn a high interest rates in purity markets at the moment. That can be some real estate of your life, say, relationships with others which the culture of purity markets call ‘impure and non-winning bid’ relationships? Say, abandoning school, family, young children, wife or a husband, friends? Or it can be your own industry, talents, hobbies, ideas and fruits of your knowledge and thought that is considered impure and not worthy of God’s mercy?

Greed for purity is mighty. Those who give up just everything impure in people eyes are considered sheiks in the purity stock markets. They are “top players”. We also call them renunciates. But however you call them, everyone looks at them attentively, watching how they bid in order to learn few tricks ‘from the best’. That’s why they, like Gordon Gekko, have thousands of poor Bud Foxes who want desperately to become like them and will do anything.

“Save us master, we are fallen. We want to become as pure as you are,” they pray in exhaustion. A whole new paradigm of spirituality arises, which rules this world by mockery and fear, and drives it downhill.

Who can say, “I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin”?
– Bible, Proverbs 20:9

In his book ‘Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time; The Historical Jesus & The Hearth of Contemporary Faith’, postmodern Christian thinker and theologian Marcus Borg reflects on matters of purity which are old as eons. He writes:

“The famous words of Paul also negate the world of purity and cultural boundaries and express the same inclusiveness: In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female. Paul is not here announcing an abstract ideal; rather this verse reflects the new social reality of the [Christian] movement itself. In short, there is something boundary shattering about the imitatio dei that stood as the center of Jesus’ message and activity: Be compassionate as God is compassionate. Whereas purity divides and excludes, compassion unites and includes. For Jesus, compassion had a radical sociopolicital meaning. In his teaching and table fellowship, and in the shape of his movement, the purity system was subverted and an alternative social vision affirmed. The politics of purity was replaced by a politics of compassion”.

And it came about when He went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread, that they were watching Him closely. And there, in front of Him was a certain man suffering from dropsy. And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” But they kept silent. And He took hold of him, and healed him, and sent him away. And He said to them, “Which one of you shall have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day ?“
– Bible, Luke 14:1–5

Compassion vs purity

Compare this act of Jesus with an act of Moses and Aaron, who sentenced a poor man to death for breaking purity laws on a Sabbath day, mentioned at the very beginning of this essay? They stand opposite, startlingly different. One is an act of compassion and causeless love despite laws, yet other a cold-hearted exercise of purity laws that seldom make any sense at all. Can a sane person today really believe that God indeed demanded a poor man collecting wood (and thus breaking some obscure social rule of purity) to be stoned to death? What a poor man should do to please God through Moses and Aaron? His purity market stock options were obviously low, and he was not a friend or a relative of anyone ‘important’. Then he was a good scape goat to show people, to scare them profoundly, what will happen if they don’t obey laws of purity. However, I wonder has God thundered his command for the execution of a man from the sky above, so everyone could hear it, or it was Moses who claimed he was the one who heard it?

Can a thoughtful person really believe we need purity to get few drops of happiness, or a step in ‘spiritual advancement’? We find infinitely more mercy in scouts organisations, or just one hospital by practicing doctors and nurses who save endless lives than in hundreds of asylums of Moses-like gurus and teaches who ‘hear God’s voice’ and whose mercy ‘thou hast to yet deserve’. What is so ‘advanced’ and ‘worthy’ in the climate of purity, which is always ruled by fear? What a horrifying God demands all that? Do we really want rules that create such a sadistic, hopeless, heartless world with its roots in bigotry?

With a following paragraph I want to conclude: everything we do is better to do with love, no matter how small, or how insignificant we think it is. We cannot measure love. Loving attitude is better than purity of any kind, no matter how big the latter one is. Love is a higher principle than purity. Purity is a serious impediment and becomes a goal in itself, which is a sad truth in all spiritual practices today and of antiquity. Purity is disgrace that denies our humanity, denies life, denies compassion. It always needs some ‘impurity’ to justify its sorrowful life, and thus it lives to find blemishes and spots in everything and everyone. It rules by fear, stops people to think and to feel outside its boundaries. It has nothing to do with spiritual, or life affirming. Quite the opposite — it’s life denying.

But if I said it just like that, without any elaboration, who’d believe me a word?

– Zvonimir Tosic