A Spontaneous, Intuitive Approach to Theology


A spontaneous, intuitive approach to my theology. Click to email me.	What It Is The Beginning “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1 “In the beginning.” In the beginning of what? In the beginning of the creation of the material universe. In the beginning of time. In the beginning of space. Before the beginning of creation, there was no time or space. There was just eternity, without beginning or end, just the eternal now. There was something at the beginning. What was that something? It was the logos, it was the Word, it was God-dess. BANG! The big bang. OM! My God, what’s going on here? What’s with all this racket? I believe it is the event horizon exploding from the primal singularity. Of course, no one can adequately explain the beginning of creation. No one was there—not scientists or religionists. It’s pure speculation, mythology. Yet persons want to know how creation began. Where does all this stuff, including ourselves, come from? There are many versions both from science and religion, each trying its best to explain the unexplainable. People want to know. Yet, it is unknowable. Give us your best shot. Give us something to hold on to. Humans want to know where we come from, what is our purpose, why are we here. Various religious traditions tried answering this question for millennia in numerous ways according to the understanding of the persons addressed in particular times and circumstances. Therefore, we have diverse religious interpretations of the creation story. Many of these interpretations are allegorical and many are based on the best scientific understandings of the day. To teach these mythological stories as scientific fact equal to the cosmology of the 21st century is absurd just as 21st century cosmology will seem absurd in the 31st century. While myths are “true” on a spiritual level, they are not scientific truth. The ancients who wrote these stories had completely different goals in mind when writing them than do modern scientific thinkers. They were not concerned with facts as much as meaning. What is the spiritual meaning of creation? That is what they were trying to address, and these mythological explanations are “true” from a spiritual, ontological perspective although they are not objectively factual. I also love reading the scientists’ explanations of the universe and believe the big bang theory and evolution to be valid, truthful scientific explanations of how creation came about. Yet there is also not consensus among the scientific community. They are also engaged in creating a sort of myth that appeals to the modern imagination and world view. Gary Swartz speaks of a G.uiding O.rdering D.esigning principle as the basis of creation. Both the scientific and mythological explanations can be “true” at the same time. They deal with creation on different levels of reality or understanding. One is to be taught in science classes and one in religion and theology classes. While science and religion are separate endeavors, their cross pollination can produce wonderful results. Religious interpretation can add meaning to science, and science can add grounding in 21st century cosmology to religion. The two do not have to be at war with one another. They are complementary. When both views are held simultaneously, a fuller understanding of multi-dimensional reality is attained. But, back to the beginning. “In the beginning…was God.” God? What do we mean by God? It is such a confusing, misunderstood word. The Nature of God-dess God-dess (to use an inclusive term I coined) is the ground of all being, the cause of all causes, the beginning and the end of all things, the source of all life and love. God-dess is eternal. God-dess exists before the beginning of time. Time begins with that big bang. God-dess was and is before and after that. Where and how does God-dess exist? That’s a complicated question. The old mechanistic view of a creator God up in the sky kind of puttering around creating the earth in six days is quite obsolete. We now know that the universe is much bigger than the ancients could conceive. Let us postulate that there is an eternal, infinite spiritual universe that exists prior to the creation of this material universe. While this material universe is many light years across, it is not infinite or eternal. The material universe is a reflection of the spiritual universe like a tree reflected on water. The tree is real while the reflection is illusory yet it has a basis in reality. The material universe is a temporary manifestation. It appears real just as the world we inhabit in dream seems real, but when we wake up, we realize it was an illusion. We consider this waking world to be reality, but it is another level of illusory dream. Let us consider that God-dess is both formless and yet has infinite forms. Suppose one of those forms of God-dess is sleeping and dreaming and this world is God-dess’ dream. Yes. God-dess’ dream is so powerful that it creates a “reality” that goes on for billions of years and billions of light years and seems so solid and captivating that we believe it is all there is. Yet it is a dream, an illusion. Still we have a longing, a strange unfulfilled desire to be somewhere else. We sense that things are not quite right here, that there is a place somewhere, far beyond where everything is right, a place where the ills and suffering of this world do not exist. We long to be home, where we came from long ago, where our soul will find rest. You see, it is possible to be conscious while dreaming. We can dream and experience all kinds of things, but on some level we know we are sleeping in our bed. We can engage in all sorts of activities that are not possible in our waking state. We can be on the brink of death, and then we wake up and are home safely in our bed. In the same way, we can live this life knowing it is a dream. We can know that no matter what happens in the dream we will be alright. We can develop a certain distance and detachment from our dream experiences and still engage in them with gusto enjoying every moment of it with great pleasure and happiness because it is what is happening now. We can be awake and dreaming at the same time. We can know this is only a dream, we cannot be harmed in any way and when the time is right we will wake up and be back in our spiritual home where everything is eternal, full of knowledge and bliss. That home is the spiritual world. It exists in another, transcendental dimension that is separate from this material plane, and yet it pervades this entire material creation. It is not far off light years away beyond the boundaries of creation. It is right here and now. We just have to turn in and it is there. It is possible in this life to develop a dual consciousness so that we are conscious of our life in the material and spiritual worlds simultaneously. We can learn to switch our attention back and forth between the two consciousnesses and live in both simultaneously. But now, let’s get back to the nature of God-dess. God-dess’ consciousness pervades the entire material creation which is God-dess’ dream. Everything is God-dess’ energy and nothing is separate from God-dess. Therefore, everything is spiritual. It is because we see things as separate from God-dess that they are called material. As soon as we realize that this is God-dess’ creation, simultaneously one and different from God-dess, and that God-dess and God-dess’ energy is all that exists, then we are enlightened. Then we are awake within the dream. We know what’s what. God-dess is all pervading, the ground of all being and cause of all causes. God-dess’ presence in every atom, in every galaxy, in every rock and tree and person is what sustains the creation. God-dess keeps the electrons spinning around the nucleus, the stars orbiting in the galaxies and the whole creation alive with wonder. God-dess is the super soul and the universe is God-dess’ body. God-dess is incredibly close and immanent. We can talk to God-dess and God-dess hears and knows and feels and experiences our lives right along with us. God-dess talks to us and guides us on the path of life. God-dess is a constant presence with us. We are free to acknowledge God-dess’ presence and follow God-dess’ guidance or not. The Upanishads describe the relationship between the super soul and the individual soul as two birds sitting on a tree. One bird is trying to guide the other as to the best course of life to follow. The other bird is busy eating the fruits of the tree and pays no attention. Yet the first bird is always there waiting for its friend to turn to it for guidance. So God-dess is the super soul, the universal guru, the cosmic Christ. Yet there is another aspect of God-dess that is formless, attribute less, indescribable and like the light of the sun—this all pervading white light is eternal consciousness. The Vedic literature calls it Brahman. Some yogis aspire to merge with it and become one with God. They liken it to a drop of water merging with the ocean and becoming one with the ocean. They seek to loose their individuality and enter that realm of undifferentiated oneness. This is very difficult for the embodied soul to do. Some are successful in attaining liberation this way however. They escape from the cycle of repeated birth and death entering into this state of pure consciousness. However, the soul is eternally individual and desires a variegated existence in relationship to other individuals engaging in diverse, blissful pastimes. Therefore, they return to the material world just as the sun evaporates drops of water from the ocean and they fall back to the ground as rain. You see, we are all eternal, individual persons and desire to be in relationships of love and joy. God-dess is the same way, only God-dess is infinite and we are infinitesimal. God-dess is a person who is able to manifest in unlimited forms on unlimited worlds and engage in unlimited pastimes. This is what God-dess does. God-dess also creates innumerable individual souls with free will to interact with as “others.” God-dess is love, and a lover needs a beloved. We are God-dess’ beloveds. Yet love must be freely given and received to be true love. It cannot be forced or coerced. Therefore, souls in the material world can think they are independent of God-dess and forget about God-dess until they want to reestablish their loving relationship with God-dess at which time God-dess brings them to the spiritual world. There are innumerable planets in the spiritual sky on which God-dess lives in various forms in various types of relationships with God-dess’ devotees. God-dess reciprocates the ways in which the devotees approach. Therefore, on various planets, God-dess lives as Radha Krishna, Lakshmi Narayana, Chaitanya, Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, Christ, Great Spirit, etc. God-dess has innumerable names and forms. Everything on these planets is eternal, full of knowledge and bliss. There is no birth, death, disease or old age. Once one attains to one of these planets and establishes their eternal relationship with God-dess, there is no need to return to the material world. Then we are inour eternal home. As for myself, I am most attracted to God-dess in the form of Radha Krishna. In 1966, I read the Bhagavad Gita (Song of God) and some devotional poetry describing the love of Radha and Krishna. In 1967, I was initiated by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami into the Bengali devotional practice that focuses on love of Radha Krishna, and I studied under him and other Indian gurus for eight years. Although I have adapted the practices to fit an American lifestyle and combined them with other spiritual practices, I still maintain devotion to Radha Krishna as the basis of my spiritual life. Devotion to Radha Krishna is so attractive because they are the embodiment of love. Radha Krishna is the supreme personality of God-dess, but they relate to their devotees in an intimate manner so their divinity is not an issue that might create any kind of artificial, reverential distance in the relationship. Devotees relate to them as parent, friend or lover. In the transcendental abode of Vrindaban, they enjoy a simple yet abundant pastoral life. Radha is Krishna’s eternal consort. She and he are the two halves of the one whole. Together, they form the complete God-dess. Devotees do not like to worship Krishna without Radha and consider her to be the better half. Krishna is totally under the sway of Radha’s love. Their devotees’ mission is bring the two of them together and facilitate their pastimes. I am Radha’s eternal servant. She is the divine embodiment of love and grace who is most compassionate and allows us to approach Krishna easily. We cannot approach Krishna directly through our own efforts. We can engage in his devotional service through grace, and we will ultimately attain to him and his spiritual realm through grace. One cannot storm the gates by one’s own efforts. Fortunately, God-dess is very merciful and makes every effort to help us go to the spiritual world. God-dess comes personally in various incarnations such as Radha Krishna and Chaitanya, sends messengers and prophets empowered to carry his message such as Isaiah, Jesus, Mohammad, gives us scriptures and other inspired writings to guide us, gives us innumerable spiritual teachers and guides to help us and guides us from within the heart personally. God-dess loves us and wants the best for us. We are all children of a loving God-dess. Living In the Material World We are part and parcel of God-dess, one in quality, different in quantity. Due to our infinitesimal size, when we take birth in the material world, we come under the spell of maya or illusion. Our remembrance of our spiritual nature is covered over and forgotten. We develop a false ego in which we identify with our body and conditioned mind, our family, society, nation, possessions and so on. Actually, the soul does not necessarily have a human body in all of its incarnations. If we go back to the beginning, there were no humans here. Souls inhabited single cell organisms, fish, amphibians, birds, reptiles, mammals and other life forms as they developed through the evolutionary process over millennia until human life evolved. Evolution has to do not only with physical evolution, but also spiritual, conscious evolution. Humans have a more highly developed consciousness than the plants and animals. We have more opportunity to exercise free will and to realize our spiritual nature. There is a process known as transmigration of the soul. The soul transmigrates from one body to another until it evolves to the human form. If the soul misuses the freedom of human life seriously enough, it can go back down to a lower life form. Otherwise, we may remain in the human form for many lifetimes until we attain full enlightenment and go to God-dess. The earth is considered to be a middle planet somewhere between heaven and hell. There are parts of this planet that are quite heavenly and others that are hellish, and it seems impossible to find purely one or the other anywhere. Conditions on earth are good for enlightenment because there is opportunity to satisfy the material necessities of life without having to spend our entire life doing so, yet there is enough suffering to make us want something more. On the truly hellish planets or in the hellish parts of this planet, persons suffer and struggle too much just to exist and therefore have little energy to devote to self realization. On the heavenly planets and in the more heavenly parts of this planet, persons may be too busy enjoying material pleasures to spend a lot of energy seeking enlightenment although attainment of such a life usually implies a more developed consciousness. It should be understood that humans are not the pinnacle of the evolutionary process. Some of the demigods and residents of the heavenly abodes are as advanced above us as we are above the monkeys. Others in the hellish realms may have very little developed consciousness. Neither these material heavens nor hells are eternal. What determines whether we wind up in heaven or hell or somewhere in between? It is called karma or the law of cause and effect. We create our own destiny. Everything we did in this life brought us to where we are right now. Everything we do in this life will carry us on to the next life. You may have heard about how when persons are dying, their life flashes before them. Your actions and experiences in this life carry you on to the next life. If the wind blows over a garbage dump, it picks up a foul odor. If it blows over a rose garden, it picks up a sweet odor. In the same way, the experiences of this life carry over into the next and help determine the course it will take. It is very difficult to break this cycle of birth and death, but by the grace of God-dess, it is possible. Grace is given freely and is open to everyone. However, some persons are more open to grace than others. The best way to open oneself to grace is to become a devotee of God-dess. Devotees engage in the transcendental, eternal religion of serving God-dess in the midst of this material world. In this way, their lives become spiritual because the only thing that differentiates matter from spirit is separation from God-dess just as darkness is separation from light. When we acknowledge God-dess’ presence in our lives and engage in loving service of God-dess, our lives are spiritual. Another example is that if you place an iron rod in a fire and leave it there, it becomes hot, hotter, hotter, until finally it is no longer cold iron but fire. In this way, there is no need to withdraw from the world or renounce the world. Everything can be used in God-dess’ service and made spiritual. So long as we are incarnated, we may as well enjoy what this life offers while maintaining an attitude of detachment. God-dess did not put us here to suffer. There are abundant opportunities for enjoyment and they should not be neglected due to a severe, ascetic attitude. We can have it all, material and spiritual happiness. The more spiritual we become, the more we are able to enjoy life fully. If spiritual life is eternally blissful, why not enjoy this life? Of course, there are limits to our enjoyment and inevitable suffering so long as we are in the material world. We should not become too attached to the pleasures of this world however or they will cause us to reincarnate here. Devotional service includes remembering God-dess, glorifying God-dess, worshipping God-dess, preaching and teaching about God-dess and dedicating all our actions to God-dess’ service. Anyone can engage in devotional service. One may preach and teach, another sings God-dess’ praises, another may clean the place of worship and another tends a garden. Whatever talents God-dess gives us can be used for God-dess’ service. It is not as necessary to change one’s lifestyle as much as to change one’s consciousness. It’s not so much what we do but the consciousness we do it in. The more we direct our consciousness to God-dess, the more we are open to God-dess’ grace. The more we are attached to God-dess and God-dess’ service, the less we are attached to this material world. The more we think of the spiritual world and long to be there, the more we actually live in the spiritual world right in this lifetime. This does not mean that we should stop being attentive to the necessities of this world. Rather it is like a person who is at work but cannot stop thinking of the person they love and longing to be with them. This love in separation is very powerful. Love is the key. Jesus summed things up nicely when he said, “’you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and with all your energy’…’You are to love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31 Jesus not only advocated love, but also lived a loving life. He showed us how to be fully human, loving God, self and neighbors. We are able to love because God-dess first loved us just as we learn love from the love of our parents. God-dess created us to love just as loving parents have children so that they can love them. Just as children can reject the love of parents, we can reject the love of God-dess. By doing so, we hurt ourselves most. Like a loving parent who forgives all the offenses of a rebellious child, God-dess forgives us and works to reestablish the broken relationship. The relationship is broken from our side, not from God-dess. No one is beyond restoration to their natural, eternal loving relationship with God-dess. God-dess always seeks to restore the relationship through loving guidance and attraction. We just need to be open. The more we recognize that we are created in the image of God-dess, the more we can see that image of God-dess in others. As we heal our broken relationship with God-dess, we can also heal our broken relationship with our neighbors, including those of the nonhuman species. As we engage in this process, we become part of a very elaborate dance of love which is the very basis of life. We learn to love extravagantly just as our creator extravagantly loves. I devoted my life to the spiritual path because I believe it is the cure of all the world’s ills.
Copyright ©2003-09 Steve Bohlert

What It Is

The Beginning

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1 “In the beginning.” In the beginning of what? In the beginning of the creation of the material universe. In the beginning of time. In the beginning of space. Before the beginning of creation, there was no time or space. There was just eternity, without beginning or end, just the eternal now. There was something at the beginning. What was that something? It was the logos, it was the Word, it was God-dess. BANG! The big bang. OM! My God, what’s going on here? What’s with all this racket? I believe it is the event horizon exploding from the primal singularity.

Of course, no one can adequately explain the beginning of creation. No one was there—not scientists or religionists. It’s pure speculation, mythology. Yet persons want to know how creation began. Where does all this stuff, including ourselves, come from? There are many versions both from science and religion, each trying its best to explain the unexplainable. People want to know. Yet, it is unknowable. Give us your best shot. Give us something to hold on to.

Humans want to know where we come from, what is our purpose, why are we here. Various religious traditions tried answering this question for millennia in numerous ways according to the understanding of the persons addressed in particular times and circumstances. Therefore, we have diverse religious interpretations of the creation story. Many of these interpretations are allegorical and many are based on the best scientific understandings of the day.

To teach these mythological stories as scientific fact equal to the cosmology of the 21st century is absurd just as 21st century cosmology will seem absurd in the 31st century. While myths are “true” on a spiritual level, they are not scientific truth. The ancients who wrote these stories had completely different goals in mind when writing them than do modern scientific thinkers. They were not concerned with facts as much as meaning. What is the spiritual meaning of creation? That is what they were trying to address, and these mythological explanations are “true” from a spiritual, ontological perspective although they are not objectively factual.

I also love reading the scientists’ explanations of the universe and believe the big bang theory and evolution to be valid, truthful scientific explanations of how creation came about. Yet there is also not consensus among the scientific community. They are also engaged in creating a sort of myth that appeals to the modern imagination and world view. Gary Swartz speaks of a G.uiding O.rdering D.esigning principle as the basis of creation.
Both the scientific and mythological explanations can be “true” at the same time. They deal with creation on different levels of reality or understanding. One is to be taught in science classes and one in religion and theology classes.

While science and religion are separate endeavors, their cross pollination can produce wonderful results. Religious interpretation can add meaning to science, and science can add grounding in 21st century cosmology to religion. The two do not have to be at war with one another. They are complementary. When both views are held simultaneously, a fuller understanding of multi-dimensional reality is attained.

But, back to the beginning. “In the beginning…was God.” God? What do we mean by God? It is such a confusing, misunderstood word.

The Nature of God-dess

God-dess (to use an inclusive term I coined) is the ground of all being, the cause of all causes, the beginning and the end of all things, the source of all life and love. God-dess is eternal. God-dess exists before the beginning of time. Time begins with that big bang. God-dess was and is before and after that.

Where and how does God-dess exist? That’s a complicated question. The old mechanistic view of a creator God up in the sky kind of puttering around creating the earth in six days is quite obsolete. We now know that the universe is much bigger than the ancients could conceive.

Let us postulate that there is an eternal, infinite spiritual universe that exists prior to the creation of this material universe. While this material universe is many light years across, it is not infinite or eternal. The material universe is a reflection of the spiritual universe like a tree reflected on water. The tree is real while the reflection is illusory yet it has a basis in reality. The material universe is a temporary manifestation. It appears real just as the world we inhabit in dream seems real, but when we wake up, we realize it was an illusion. We consider this waking world to be reality, but it is another level of illusory dream.

Let us consider that God-dess is both formless and yet has infinite forms. Suppose one of those forms of God-dess is sleeping and dreaming and this world is God-dess’ dream. Yes. God-dess’ dream is so powerful that it creates a “reality” that goes on for billions of years and billions of light years and seems so solid and captivating that we believe it is all there is. Yet it is a dream, an illusion. Still we have a longing, a strange unfulfilled desire to be somewhere else. We sense that things are not quite right here, that there is a place somewhere, far beyond where everything is right, a place where the ills and suffering of this world do not exist.

We long to be home, where we came from long ago, where our soul will find rest. You see, it is possible to be conscious while dreaming. We can dream and experience all kinds of things, but on some level we know we are sleeping in our bed. We can engage in all sorts of activities that are not possible in our waking state. We can be on the brink of death, and then we wake up and are home safely in our bed.

In the same way, we can live this life knowing it is a dream. We can know that no matter what happens in the dream we will be alright. We can develop a certain distance and detachment from our dream experiences and still engage in them with gusto enjoying every moment of it with great pleasure and happiness because it is what is happening now. We can be awake and dreaming at the same time. We can know this is only a dream, we cannot be harmed in any way and when the time is right we will wake up and be back in our spiritual home where everything is eternal, full of knowledge and bliss.

That home is the spiritual world. It exists in another, transcendental dimension that is separate from this material plane, and yet it pervades this entire material creation. It is not far off light years away beyond the boundaries of creation. It is right here and now. We just have to turn in and it is there. It is possible in this life to develop a dual consciousness so that we are conscious of our life in the material and spiritual worlds simultaneously. We can learn to switch our attention back and forth between the two consciousnesses and live in both simultaneously. But now, let’s get back to the nature of God-dess.

God-dess’ consciousness pervades the entire material creation which is God-dess’ dream. Everything is God-dess’ energy and nothing is separate from God-dess. Therefore, everything is spiritual. It is because we see things as separate from God-dess that they are called material. As soon as we realize that this is God-dess’ creation, simultaneously one and different from God-dess, and that God-dess and God-dess’ energy is all that exists, then we are enlightened. Then we are awake within the dream. We know what’s what.

God-dess is all pervading, the ground of all being and cause of all causes. God-dess’ presence in every atom, in every galaxy, in every rock and tree and person is what sustains the creation. God-dess keeps the electrons spinning around the nucleus, the stars orbiting in the galaxies and the whole creation alive with wonder. God-dess is the super soul and the universe is God-dess’ body.

God-dess is incredibly close and immanent. We can talk to God-dess and God-dess hears and knows and feels and experiences our lives right along with us. God-dess talks to us and guides us on the path of life. God-dess is a constant presence with us. We are free to acknowledge God-dess’ presence and follow God-dess’ guidance or not.

The Upanishads describe the relationship between the super soul and the individual soul as two birds sitting on a tree. One bird is trying to guide the other as to the best course of life to follow. The other bird is busy eating the fruits of the tree and pays no attention. Yet the first bird is always there waiting for its friend to turn to it for guidance.

So God-dess is the super soul, the universal guru, the cosmic Christ. Yet there is another aspect of God-dess that is formless, attribute less, indescribable and like the light of the sun—this all pervading white light is eternal consciousness. The Vedic literature calls it Brahman.

Some yogis aspire to merge with it and become one with God. They liken it to a drop of water merging with the ocean and becoming one with the ocean. They seek to loose their individuality and enter that realm of undifferentiated oneness. This is very difficult for the embodied soul to do. Some are successful in attaining liberation this way however. They escape from the cycle of repeated birth and death entering into this state of pure consciousness.

However, the soul is eternally individual and desires a variegated existence in relationship to other individuals engaging in diverse, blissful pastimes. Therefore, they return to the material world just as the sun evaporates drops of water from the ocean and they fall back to the ground as rain.

You see, we are all eternal, individual persons and desire to be in relationships of love and joy. God-dess is the same way, only God-dess is infinite and we are infinitesimal. God-dess is a person who is able to manifest in unlimited forms on unlimited worlds and engage in unlimited pastimes. This is what God-dess does.

God-dess also creates innumerable individual souls with free will to interact with as “others.” God-dess is love, and a lover needs a beloved. We are God-dess’ beloveds. Yet love must be freely given and received to be true love. It cannot be forced or coerced. Therefore, souls in the material world can think they are independent of God-dess and forget about God-dess until they want to reestablish their loving relationship with God-dess at which time God-dess brings them to the spiritual world.

There are innumerable planets in the spiritual sky on which God-dess lives in various forms in various types of relationships with God-dess’ devotees. God-dess reciprocates the ways in which the devotees approach. Therefore, on various planets, God-dess lives as Radha Krishna, Lakshmi Narayana, Chaitanya, Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, Christ, Great Spirit, etc. God-dess has innumerable names and forms.

Everything on these planets is eternal, full of knowledge and bliss. There is no birth, death, disease or old age. Once one attains to one of these planets and establishes their eternal relationship with God-dess, there is no need to return to the material world. Then we are inour eternal home.

As for myself, I am most attracted to God-dess in the form of Radha Krishna. In 1966, I read the Bhagavad Gita (Song of God) and some devotional poetry describing the love of Radha and Krishna. In 1967, I was initiated by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami into the Bengali devotional practice that focuses on love of Radha Krishna, and I studied under him and other Indian gurus for eight years. Although I have adapted the practices to fit an American lifestyle and combined them with other spiritual practices, I still maintain devotion to Radha Krishna as the basis of my spiritual life.

Devotion to Radha Krishna is so attractive because they are the embodiment of love. Radha Krishna is the supreme personality of God-dess, but they relate to their devotees in an intimate manner so their divinity is not an issue that might create any kind of artificial, reverential distance in the relationship. Devotees relate to them as parent, friend or lover.

In the transcendental abode of Vrindaban, they enjoy a simple yet abundant pastoral life.
Radha is Krishna’s eternal consort. She and he are the two halves of the one whole. Together, they form the complete God-dess. Devotees do not like to worship Krishna without Radha and consider her to be the better half. Krishna is totally under the sway of Radha’s love. Their devotees’ mission is bring the two of them together and facilitate their pastimes. I am Radha’s eternal servant.

She is the divine embodiment of love and grace who is most compassionate and allows us to approach Krishna easily. We cannot approach Krishna directly through our own efforts. We can engage in his devotional service through grace, and we will ultimately attain to him and his spiritual realm through grace. One cannot storm the gates by one’s own efforts.

Fortunately, God-dess is very merciful and makes every effort to help us go to the spiritual world. God-dess comes personally in various incarnations such as Radha Krishna and Chaitanya, sends messengers and prophets empowered to carry his message such as Isaiah, Jesus, Mohammad, gives us scriptures and other inspired writings to guide us, gives us innumerable spiritual teachers and guides to help us and guides us from within the heart personally. God-dess loves us and wants the best for us. We are all children of a loving God-dess.

Living In the Material World

We are part and parcel of God-dess, one in quality, different in quantity. Due to our infinitesimal size, when we take birth in the material world, we come under the spell of maya or illusion. Our remembrance of our spiritual nature is covered over and forgotten. We develop a false ego in which we identify with our body and conditioned mind, our family, society, nation, possessions and so on.

Actually, the soul does not necessarily have a human body in all of its incarnations. If we go back to the beginning, there were no humans here. Souls inhabited single cell organisms, fish, amphibians, birds, reptiles, mammals and other life forms as they developed through the evolutionary process over millennia until human life evolved.

Evolution has to do not only with physical evolution, but also spiritual, conscious evolution. Humans have a more highly developed consciousness than the plants and animals. We have more opportunity to exercise free will and to realize our spiritual nature.

There is a process known as transmigration of the soul. The soul transmigrates from one body to another until it evolves to the human form. If the soul misuses the freedom of human life seriously enough, it can go back down to a lower life form. Otherwise, we may remain in the human form for many lifetimes until we attain full enlightenment and go to God-dess.

The earth is considered to be a middle planet somewhere between heaven and hell. There are parts of this planet that are quite heavenly and others that are hellish, and it seems impossible to find purely one or the other anywhere. Conditions on earth are good for enlightenment because there is opportunity to satisfy the material necessities of life without having to spend our entire life doing so, yet there is enough suffering to make us want something more.

On the truly hellish planets or in the hellish parts of this planet, persons suffer and struggle too much just to exist and therefore have little energy to devote to self realization. On the heavenly planets and in the more heavenly parts of this planet, persons may be too busy enjoying material pleasures to spend a lot of energy seeking enlightenment although attainment of such a life usually implies a more developed consciousness.

It should be understood that humans are not the pinnacle of the evolutionary process. Some of the demigods and residents of the heavenly abodes are as advanced above us as we are above the monkeys. Others in the hellish realms may have very little developed consciousness. Neither these material heavens nor hells are eternal.

What determines whether we wind up in heaven or hell or somewhere in between? It is called karma or the law of cause and effect. We create our own destiny. Everything we did in this life brought us to where we are right now. Everything we do in this life will carry us on to the next life.

You may have heard about how when persons are dying, their life flashes before them. Your actions and experiences in this life carry you on to the next life. If the wind blows over a garbage dump, it picks up a foul odor. If it blows over a rose garden, it picks up a sweet odor. In the same way, the experiences of this life carry over into the next and help determine the course it will take.

It is very difficult to break this cycle of birth and death, but by the grace of God-dess, it is possible. Grace is given freely and is open to everyone. However, some persons are more open to grace than others. The best way to open oneself to grace is to become a devotee of God-dess.

Devotees engage in the transcendental, eternal religion of serving God-dess in the midst of this material world. In this way, their lives become spiritual because the only thing that differentiates matter from spirit is separation from God-dess just as darkness is separation from light. When we acknowledge God-dess’ presence in our lives and engage in loving service of God-dess, our lives are spiritual. Another example is that if you place an iron rod in a fire and leave it there, it becomes hot, hotter, hotter, until finally it is no longer cold iron but fire.

In this way, there is no need to withdraw from the world or renounce the world. Everything can be used in God-dess’ service and made spiritual. So long as we are incarnated, we may as well enjoy what this life offers while maintaining an attitude of detachment. God-dess did not put us here to suffer. There are abundant opportunities for enjoyment and they should not be neglected due to a severe, ascetic attitude. We can have it all, material and spiritual happiness. The more spiritual we become, the more we are able to enjoy life fully.

If spiritual life is eternally blissful, why not enjoy this life? Of course, there are limits to our enjoyment and inevitable suffering so long as we are in the material world. We should not become too attached to the pleasures of this world however or they will cause us to reincarnate here.

Devotional service includes remembering God-dess, glorifying God-dess, worshipping God-dess, preaching and teaching about God-dess and dedicating all our actions to God-dess’ service. Anyone can engage in devotional service. One may preach and teach, another sings God-dess’ praises, another may clean the place of worship and another tends a garden. Whatever talents God-dess gives us can be used for God-dess’ service. It is not as necessary to change one’s lifestyle as much as to change one’s consciousness. It’s not so much what we do but the consciousness we do it in.

The more we direct our consciousness to God-dess, the more we are open to God-dess’ grace. The more we are attached to God-dess and God-dess’ service, the less we are attached to this material world. The more we think of the spiritual world and long to be there, the more we actually live in the spiritual world right in this lifetime. This does not mean that we should stop being attentive to the necessities of this world. Rather it is like a person who is at work but cannot stop thinking of the person they love and longing to be with them. This love in separation is very powerful. Love is the key.

Jesus summed things up nicely when he said, “’you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and with all your energy’…’You are to love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31 Jesus not only advocated love, but also lived a loving life. He showed us how to be fully human, loving God, self and neighbors.

We are able to love because God-dess first loved us just as we learn love from the love of our parents. God-dess created us to love just as loving parents have children so that they can love them. Just as children can reject the love of parents, we can reject the love of God-dess. By doing so, we hurt ourselves most. Like a loving parent who forgives all the offenses of a rebellious child, God-dess forgives us and works to reestablish the broken relationship. The relationship is broken from our side, not from God-dess. No one is beyond restoration to their natural, eternal loving relationship with God-dess. God-dess always seeks to restore the relationship through loving guidance and attraction. We just need to be open.

The more we recognize that we are created in the image of God-dess, the more we can see that image of God-dess in others. As we heal our broken relationship with God-dess, we can also heal our broken relationship with our neighbors, including those of the nonhuman species. As we engage in this process, we become part of a very elaborate dance of love which is the very basis of life. We learn to love extravagantly just as our creator extravagantly loves.

I devoted my life to the spiritual path because I believe it is the cure of all the world’s ills.