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Unified vision

When peo­ple go beyond sec­tar­ian under­stand­ings and take the best of each tra­di­tion, they can­not but ben­e­fit. The world is so divided, and yet, every­one is so close. So much vio­lence has at least some reli­gious over­tones, and reli­gion often seems to divide more than unite. Human­ity can­not afford to live like this any longer. Peo­ple need to see the uni­fy­ing essen­tials of all faiths, real­ize God-dess is one, and we are all one fam­ily of God-dess.

Why God-dess?

We use the term God-dess as a uni­ver­sal expres­sion that rec­og­nizes the ground of being is both mas­cu­line and feminine–the Divine Cou­ple, Radha-Krishna. God-dess is not lim­ited to pre­vi­ous under­stand­ings of Radha-Krishna or the patri­ar­chal image God invokes. God-dess, a less famil­iar term than God, frees peo­ple to imag­ine new images of the divine.

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Uni­ver­sal view of God-dess

Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism speaks of God in a man­ner philo­soph­i­cally and reli­giously opposed to the term’s gen­eral under­stand­ing. God-dess does not mean the cos­mic moral­ist who gives a long list of unchang­ing, absolute laws, codes, rules, and reg­u­la­tions peo­ple must fol­low under threat of pun­ish­ment either in this life or the next. Rather, God-dess wants peo­ple to enjoy life fully in rela­tion­ship with him-her, oth­ers, and all cre­ation. God-dess gives abun­dant grace to all.
Rather than an unchange­able, pas­sion­less absolute who remains aloof from and unaf­fected by the world, God-dess inti­mately relates to the world, enjoy­ing and respond­ing to and through all beings. God-dess dynam­i­cally expe­ri­ences and adapts to cre­ation. God-dess remains ever-fresh like youth or spring.
God-dess does not func­tion as the con­trol­ling power who micro­man­ages the world, decid­ing who lives and who dies, or other myr­iad details of life. God-dess set the processes of cre­ation in motion. Those processes work accord­ing to nat­ural laws, and God-dess does not sus­pend them to per­form mir­a­cles. Act­ing within nat­ural laws, God-dess uses per­sua­sion rather than coer­cion to carry out his-her will. For exam­ple, Krishna taught Arjun the Bha­gavad Gita to encour­age him to do his duty as an act of devotion.
God-dess does not sanc­tion the sta­tus quo or will it to be so. Lead­ers can­not claim divine right of rule. The sta­tus quo is a result of human free will. A grand evo­lu­tion­ary process devel­ops higher states of con­scious­ness to more fully enjoy expe­ri­ence, and it uses the sta­tus quo tem­porar­ily to advance this end. How­ever, the sta­tus quo must give way to new ways of har­mo­nious con­scious being to ful­fill its nat­ural func­tion. Every­thing is in process and should not be concretized.
God-dess exists as male and female coun­ter­parts, Radha-Krishna, the Divine Cou­ple, engaged in an eter­nal love affair with each other and all beings. Many devo­tees see the six­teenth cen­tury Ben­gali saint and mys­tic, Krishna Chai­tanya, even in his own life­time, as an incar­na­tion of Radha-Krishna in one body man­i­fest­ing the arche­type of spir­i­tual androg­yny. Chai­tanya lived five hun­dred years ago. His con­tem­po­raries were Leonardo da Vinci, Michelan­gelo, Nico­laus Coper­ni­cus, and oth­ers who wit­nessed and ignited the Renais­sance and rebirth of human­ism in the west­ern world. How­ever, it was a much dif­fer­ent time and cul­ture in India than most west­ern­ers can grasp.

Devo­tees expe­ri­ence the inter­re­lat­ed­ness of all things as finite ema­na­tions of God-dess. They relate to cre­ation as part of God-dess and care for it as they care for them­selves. Peo­ple depend on it, and it depends on them. Cre­ation lives, and God-dess con­sti­tutes its soul. Expressed in the lan­guage of con­tem­po­rary sci­ence, God-dess expanded through the big bang to become all things. The one became many, but remains one.

Past, present, and future

The past is past and can­not be repeated. The future remains open. The present hap­pens now. The past influ­ences present and future. Many options exist for pos­si­ble future real­i­ties since peo­ple expe­ri­ence some free­dom in choos­ing their future as well as how they view the past and allow it to influ­ence them. Each instant offers a new and unre­peat­able eter­nal now. There­fore, devo­tees expe­ri­ence eter­nal life related to God-dess now.

Present expe­ri­ence includes a select por­tion of the past. Indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive expe­ri­ences led us to this par­tic­u­lar present. In the same way, the present becomes past and leads to a new future. Peo­ple influ­ence the future by how they live in the present, the con­scious­ness they develop, and most impor­tantly, the lov­ing rela­tion­ship they develop with Radha-Krishna. Devo­tees envi­sion their desired future and enlist the aid of God-dess to get them there by liv­ing in the pres­ence of God-dess constantly.

Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism pro­vides inspir­ing solu­tions to con­tem­po­rary indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive prob­lems. It rec­og­nizes the urgency of the sit­u­a­tion and the rad­i­cal shifts that will occur in com­ing decades, one way or another. The future of human­ity and the planet depend on the choices peo­ple make: are they life affirm­ing or life denying?

God-dess sup­ports full, abun­dant life. Yet, the forces of death remain strong. Peo­ple need to choose where they stand and act accord­ingly. No safe mid­dle ground exists. Not choos­ing is a choice. Not to act is to act. Devo­tees carry respon­si­bil­ity for their parts, but God-dess acts through them.