Unified vision

When we go beyond sec­tar­ian under­stand­ings and take the best of each tra­di­tion, we can­not but ben­e­fit. The world is so divided, and yet, we are so close. So much of the vio­lence we see has at least some reli­gious over­tones, and reli­gion often seems to divide more than unite. We can­not afford to live like this any longer. We must learn 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 to rec­og­nize that the Ground of All Being is both mas­cu­line and fem­i­nine, the Divine Cou­ple, Radha-Krishna whom we choose to wor­ship, and yet, not to limit it to pre­vi­ous under­stand­ings of Radha-Krishna, while not lim­it­ing it to the patri­ar­chal image God invokes either. God-dess is also a less famil­iar term than God, which frees us to re-imagine new images of God-dess.

Uni­ver­sal view of God-dess

Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism speaks of God in a man­ner philo­soph­i­cally and reli­giously opposed to the term’s gen­eral under­stand­ing; there­fore, we use the term God-dess. God-dess does not mean the “Cos­mic Moral­ist” who gives us a long list of unchang­ing, absolute laws, codes, rules, and reg­u­la­tions we must fol­low under threat of pun­ish­ment either in this life or the next. Rather, God-dess wants us to enjoy life fully in rela­tion­ship with him-her, oth­ers, and all cre­ation. God-dess gives abun­dant grace to all and may ask us, at the time of death, why we did not enjoy life more.

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 the other myr­iad details of what hap­pens and what does not. 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 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. He man­i­fests 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. Among many other things, it is the task of this project to bridge the world of dif­fer­ences between then and now.

We expe­ri­ence the inter­re­lat­ed­ness of all things as finite parts or ema­na­tions of God-dess. We relate to cre­ation as part of God-dess and care for it as we care for our­selves. We depend on it, and it depends on us. Cre­ation lives, and God-dess con­sti­tutes its soul. Expressed in the lan­guage of con­tem­po­rary sci­ence, we can say God-dess expanded through the big bang to become all things. The One became many, but remains one.

Our past present and future

The past is past and can­not be repeated. The future remains open, not pre­de­ter­mined. The present hap­pens now. The past influ­ences the present and the future. Many options exist for pos­si­ble futures. We expe­ri­ence some free­dom in choos­ing our future. Each instant offers a new and unre­peat­able “eter­nal now.” There­fore, we can expe­ri­ence eter­nal life related to God-dess now.

Our present expe­ri­ence includes a select, lim­ited por­tion of the past. Our indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive expe­ri­ences led us to this par­tic­u­lar present. Sim­i­larly, the present becomes past and leads us to a new future. We influ­ence the future by how we live in the present, the con­scious­ness we develop, and most impor­tantly, the lov­ing rela­tion­ship we develop with Radha-Krishna. We envi­sion our desired future and enlist the aid of God-dess to get us there by sur­ren­der­ing to and liv­ing in the pres­ence of God-dess constantly.

Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism pro­vides true and inspir­ing solu­tions to the prob­lems of con­tem­po­rary life, indi­vid­u­ally and col­lec­tively. We rec­og­nize 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 we make: are they life affirm­ing or life denying? 

God-dess sup­ports full­ness and abun­dance of life. Yet, the forces of death and destruc­tion remain strong. We need to choose where we stand and act accord­ingly. No safe mid­dle ground exists. By not choos­ing, we also choose. Not to act is to act. We carry respon­si­bil­ity for our part, but we should not for­get that God-dess acts through us.

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