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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steve Bohlert (Subal Das Goswami) lived in India as an itin­er­ant Hindu monk and later served as a Chris­t­ian pas­tor in the Mid­west. His inti­mate knowl­edge of tra­di­tional Radha-Krishna devo­tional prac­tices and Chris­t­ian spir­i­tu­al­ity inspires seek­ers to forgo dog­mas, embrace life and progress on the path to full, inti­mate God-dess real­iza­tion. He presents a rare, inspir­ing insight from a uni­ver­sal­ist world­view that is intel­lec­tu­ally charm­ing, philo­soph­i­cally invig­o­rat­ing and spir­i­tu­ally joy­ful. It inspires, increases our enjoy­ment in this life (and we’d like to add) in the next too.
Steve Bohlert’s biog­ra­phy and more info.
Steve Bohlert’s PR image [JPEG, 250 KB].

u•ni•ver•sal•ist
noun — A per­son advo­cat­ing loy­alty to and con­cern for oth­ers with­out regard to national or other alle­giances.
adjec­tive — Uni­ver­sal in scope or char­ac­ter.
u•ni•ver•sal•ism
noun — The plu­ral­is­tic per­spec­tive of the essence seeker who finds truth in all authen­tic spir­i­tual paths, see­ing them as man­i­fes­ta­tions of the peren­nial phi­los­o­phy. It is a stance that is open to truth in all its var­ied forms. It does not claim to be the only way. Rather, it seeks to find com­mon ground with diver­gent spir­i­tual communities.

Front cover high res­o­lu­tion [250 KB]
Back cover high res­o­lu­tion [250 KB]
Intro­duc­tion chap­ter [PDF, 128 KB]

Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism:
A Spir­i­tu­al­ity of Lib­erty, Truth,
and Love
by Steve Bohlert
ISBN 978–0-918475–02-2
List price: $16.00, €14.00, £12.00
5″x8″, 160 pages, per­fect bound

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1· Intro­duc­tion
2· Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism
3· Our his­tor­i­cal roots
4· Means of know­ing God-dess
5· Man­i­fes­ta­tions of divin­ity
6· The indi­vid­ual spirit soul
7· The world of expe­ri­ence
8· The way of nat­ural devo­tion
9· Remem­ber­ing Radha-Krishna through­out the day
Glos­sary
Bibliography

Avail­able now, from Amazon.com, other inter­na­tional sources  found at Sky River Press, and book­stores everywhere.

In the Intro­duc­tion of his new book, Steve Bohlert opens up his heart and tells us the rea­sons that ignited the writ­ing of Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism, A Spir­i­tu­al­ity of Lib­erty, Truth and Love …

As a pas­tor, I was impressed with Mar­cus Borg’s book, Meet­ing Jesus Again for the First Time, in which he re-imagined what Jesus may have been like. More recently, I read his The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dog­matic Reli­gion to a More Authen­tic Con­tem­po­rary Faith, in which he takes on the even big­ger task of re-visioning God and the Chris­t­ian faith based on this “new” vision of God. This is the sort of schol­ar­ship I admire in the Chris­t­ian tradition—the abil­ity to bring out alter­na­tive voices and inter­pre­ta­tions from scrip­ture and tradition.

Borg and oth­ers like Matthew Fox, Dominic Crossan, and John Spong present new, excit­ing ways of think­ing about faith rooted in the mys­ti­cal wis­dom tra­di­tion, which remains rel­e­vant today. While these lead­ers are not uni­ver­sally accepted, they are respected by per­sons seek­ing a more pro­gres­sive Chris­t­ian vision, and a large seg­ment of the church is clearly mov­ing in that direction.

But Steve is also aware of the per­ils of this task — the cur­rent audi­ence of Radha-Krishna devo­tees is every­thing but recep­tive to new, mod­ern out­looks on the nature of God, faith, this world, ques­tions of sal­va­tion and much more. He adds:

I would like to see such a pro­gres­sive reform move­ment develop within the fol­low­ers of Radha-Krishna devo­tion in the West. So far, this has been slow, and dis­si­dent voices tend to be squashed or mar­gin­al­ized. I do what I can, and am slowly attract­ing like-minded intel­lec­tual, spir­i­tual col­leagues. […] Now that I no longer min­is­ter in the Chris­t­ian church and focus on my Radha-Krishna devo­tional prac­tices, I find that most Radha-Krishna devo­tees are fun­da­men­tal­ist lit­er­al­ists who think they have the ulti­mate answers to Truth and that their answers are supe­rior to any­one else’s. When I interned at Cal­vary Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, Pas­tor Larry Peter­son said, “Remem­ber, your truth is truth with a small ‘t’ just like every­one else’s.”

We live in a rel­a­tivis­tic, plu­ral­is­tic world open to truth in all forms. Our unique oppor­tu­nity at this time allows us to take the best teach­ings and prac­tices of all paths and inte­grate them into a mul­ti­fac­eted whole, which gives a more com­plete pic­ture of Truth than any one path alone could.

hat con­nects west­ern lumi­nar­ies and dis­tin­guished schol­ars such as Joseph Camp­bell, Paul Tillich, Mar­cus Borg and India’s own like Kedar­nath Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur? They all rep­re­sent a unique voice in the inter­pre­ta­tion of the real­ity of faith, myth and reli­gion. Mar­cus Borg, inter­na­tion­ally known in both aca­d­e­mic and church cir­cles as a bib­li­cal and Jesus scholar, has ded­i­cated his life in what we may call ‘re-thinking the big ques­tions: God, the Bible, Jesus and the Chris­t­ian life.’ Joseph Camp­bell, an Amer­i­can mythol­o­gist, writer and lec­turer needs lit­tle intro­duc­tion as well. He is best known for his work in com­par­a­tive mythol­ogy and com­par­a­tive reli­gion. Paul Tillich was a German-American the­olo­gian and one of the most sig­nif­i­cant Chris­t­ian exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­phers of the 20th cen­tury. Kedar­nath Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur was a unique man among Indian schol­ars in the tra­di­tion of Radha-Krishna devo­tion. Unlike many oth­ers, he saw the rev­e­la­tion of truth as pro­gres­sive and its cul­tural appear­ance sec­ondary to its spir­i­tual mean­ing. Steve Bohlert draws much inspi­ra­tion from their deep insights in his book Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism, A Spir­i­tu­al­ity of Lib­erty, Truth, and Love and adds more, by uniquely re-expressing the Indian-born idea of Radha-Krishna devo­tion and its myth into a post-modern, west­ern context.

See Beyond the Veil,
by Nori Muster
As a life long seeker myself, open to both East­ern and West­ern reli­gious ideas, I con­sider this book a por­tal to enlight­en­ment. Bohlert leads the reader up a spi­ral stair­case to the light, wind­ing through the Chris­t­ian and Hindu faiths as we ascend. […]
If more peo­ple read this book, the world will be a bet­ter place.[…]
This book comes as a cool­ing breeze on a hot day. It offers a glimpse into an eter­nal world of love that actu­ally sur­rounds us at all times. The per­fect world that Plato detected, just beyond the veil, really does exist, yet we spin our webs of karma so tightly that we cease to acknowl­edge it. As you read this book, you hear the music of the spheres, like the ris­ing choral, Ode to Joy, in Beethoven’s final sym­phony.
Read full review …

Unique and Impor­tant,
by Dr. Michael Valle
Dr. M. Valle, a chair­man of phi­los­o­phy of reli­gion at Scotts­dale Com­mu­nity Col­lege (AZ) says,
“Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism is the first attempt to artic­u­late a “pro­gres­sive” or “mod­ernist” form of Vaish­nava Hin­duism. Draw­ing upon the resources of the­o­log­i­cal trends in West­ern schol­ar­ship, Steve Bohlert offers a syn­the­sis of East­ern and West­ern thought that makes the heart of Radha-Krishna devo­tion fully acces­si­ble to West­ern­ers who have no Indian back­ground.
This book fills a void and does it well. I antic­i­pate that this book will emerge as a cru­cial impe­tus to fur­ther devel­op­ments in this field. “
Read more …

A post-modern map of faith,
by Zvon­imir Tosic
Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism is a spir­i­tual jour­ney and a mod­ern syn­the­sis like you have sel­dom seen before, and never in this unique con­text. It’s a bridge between the East and West, past and present, old and new. Con­tin­u­ing in the tra­di­tion of pro­gres­sive, pro­lific west­ern thinkers like John Shelby Spong, Mar­cus Borg, Joseph Camp­bell, Paul Tillich, and sci­ence vision­ar­ies like David Bohm, together with India’s own lumi­nar­ies like Kedar­nath Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur, Steve Bohlert adds new acts in an ever unfold­ing play of human self-discovery and its rela­tion­ship to the divine.
Read full review …

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.
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.
— Steve Bohlert