The Need for a New Vision

I write about an ultimate or all-consuming concern or passion that takes over one's life and leads to total, complete surrender of one's entire being acting in accord with the object of faith. Faith is devoid of belief in and of itself. It is much deeper and probably an innate character of humanity. How can we live without faith in something? be it ourselves, the state, capitalism, religion, dogma, creed, tradition, or whatever?

As for myself, my consuming passion is the God-dess, Radha-Krishna, Yugal Kishor. I often say, "I don't believe in God-dess, I experienced God-dess." The thing is this. I had many experiences of the divine. I touched holiness. I had dreams and visions. These things kept me going along with my ongoing experinces of the divine in everyday life. However, franklly, none of these experiences are completely definitive and convincing. I experienced various aspects of God-dess and they are all real. When one is dealing with the Absolute, the Ground of All Being, God-dess, in faith, what is really being asked is total surrender and absorption in God-dess's service for eternity.

Now, if I'm going to spend eternity somewhere, doing something, serving somebody, it had all better really be cool and totally blissful and engaging for me so that I'm really loving it. I have been totally charmed and captivated by the beautiful Radha Krishna leela. However, the Indian stories also chafe my Western psyche and I think I don't really want to live like that for eternity. So, since I have faith in God-dess and not just faith in certain stories about God-dess, my faith is not disturbed if I question those stories and try to imagine them in a way that is more relevant for myself and perhaps some others. Faith is healthier when it is dynamic and not static. To be dynamic doubt needs to be encouraged and a questioning enquiring spirit engaged in further ellucidation of the unllimited glories of God-dess.

A Vision for Today

I seek to find the essence of the myth and give it a Western makeover. I'm kind of doing that in my own mind, but to make a public presentation, I would like to collaborate with you and other learned, mature devotees who can reimagine this. They language of faith.

I believe the kind of knowing I have come to depend on is what Bhaktivinode called sahajia samadi or self revelation. I have not been with my guru physically for 33 years, so I have come to depend on my inner guru. I don't feel there's much that Indians can teach me about being a devotee any more. I learned what I needed to learn from them, and now my challenge is to discover how to live it in my Western context.

It's like Chinese Christians depict Jesus and his disciples as Chinese, Africans as African, European as European. Radha and Krishna are the ideal young Indian couple. What would the ideal Western couple look like and what would their pastimes be? These things can't just be made up intellectually, but must transcend the intellect while including it in a revelatory experience that comes through persons like us. Who else but Westerners could produce an indiginous Western saddhana?

This requires quite a break with the past, and naturally a lot of feathers are going to be ruffled, but I feel driven by my guru's mandate to preach in the West and to do so in a way that is relevant to today.

It was while trying to remember the pastimes 24/7 last year, by reading various books of pastimes that are now available, that I realized how Indian those descriptions were and how disfunctional by current psychological standards much of their behavior is. Even from the view point of aesthetics which much of it is based on, much of it is not aesthetically pleasing today. It's also hard to visualize stuff when half of it is flowers, trees, fruits, ornaments, etc. that can't even be translated into English because there is no English equivalent. I very much want to spend eternity serving Radha Krishna, but not in some dysfunctional, antiquated, Indian version of Goloka.

Question Authority

I simply cannot believe that India is the one culture that has been so blessed that it is dirrectly modeled on an exact revelation of the spiritual world without any cultural influence. Rather the stories are full of Indian cultural influences that existed before Radha Krishna were written about.

I believe in revelation, including my own revelations, and do not hold anyone so high their views cannot be questioned or developed upon. Bhaktivinode Thakur was a spokesperson for such intellectual freedom.

What I'm doing is equivalent to the Protestant Reformation. Have your own relationship with God-dess directly. The infallible popes, dalai lamas, gurus, acharyas, saints, scriptures are no longer infallible. They are all part of the accumulated tradition which may be questioned, revised and developed as needed. Revelation is real, but as soon as it is over and you try to put it in words, it becomes culturally conditioned. Aloha until later.

More on Faith

When we place our faith or ultimate concern/passion in something that is not ultimate, that is idolatry. This can take the form of nationalism, success, Jesusolatry, or taking the symbol to be the object itself, whether that is the myth, the sect, a particular concept. Remember, God-dess is beyond the limits of our language and conception.

What makes all this vital is that faith calls us to make a central act of total surrender to the object of our faith. If we are going to take this seriously, it's an awesome thing. What if we're wrong? What if this really isn't real? Therefore, doubt is an inherent part of faith. The seriousness of our doubt should reflect the seriousness of our faith. This doubt must be met with courage. Therefore, last December, I resolved to stop believing and open my beliefs to scrutiny. This only deepened my faith. A dynamic faith must include and encourage doubt. That way it will grow and not stagnate.

Why God-dess?

In the progressive, Protestant wing of the church, there is a strong effort to use inclusive God language which often takes the form of Mother, Father God. Yet this often leads to inadequate, cumbersome language. Actually there is no English word for God which is inclusive of male and female. So, I made one up.

I define God-dess as Radha Krishna, the Divine Couple, etc. It is not meant to stand alone as a concept. Rather it is meant to replace the terms God, Godhead, etc. so one need not repeat Radha Krishna again and again or resort to the thousands of other names they have which only tend to confuse the average Western reader or hearer.

My objective in suggesting the changes I do are not an attempt to be novel, but rather an attempt however humble to begin the process of developing an indiginous Western Radha Krishna devotion as Bhaktivinode Thakur envisioned. I would like to reclaim devotional yoga from the sullied image it has in the West so that intelligent, thinking persons who do not wish to be fundamentalist literalists who simply accept whatever the guru or scriptures say, may benefit from the wonderful nectarean love and grace of God-dess.

Faith and Belief

I'm a bit of a follower of Paul Tillich, and in his Dynamics of Faith he describes faith as "ultimate concern" and a centered act that involves the whole person. He also says what it is not. It is not believing the unbelievable. Our beliefs may change over our lifetime as mine certainly have, yet my faith remains solid. In fact, last December, I decided to stop believing anything. I adopted a beginners mind and read widely on spiritual matters. In the end, I'm back with Radha Krishna devotion but on a higher level.

What do we have faith in? Do we have faith in God-dess, Radha Krishna? or the teachings of a guru? or what it says in some old books? or the process of devotion? the grace of God-dess?

We need not believe anything to have faith, yet beliefs form the content of faith. Those beliefs are expressed in symbol and myth. They may be changed and altered over time just as we may rearrange the furniture of our home. The symbols and myths point to God-dess, but are not God-dess per se. Yet they partake in the nature of God-dess and are therefore simultaneously one and different from God-dess.

Bhaktivinode was influenced by Unitarian theologians and his views are very similar to Tillich's. One important point for Bhaktivinode was that these symbols were not based on material conceptions, but on what we may call spiritual archetypes, and here Jungian thought and Joseph Campbell are relevant. This world is seen as an emination of the spiritual world, and therefore, the patterns seen here are derived from there rather than projecting our patterns on the spiritual world.

I am very impressed by Tillich's view of faith, and one of the writing projects I have lined up is to write an essay on it. I think it is very important to make this distinction between faith and belief so that when we find out the Bhagavad Gita wasn't written by Vyasa, 5,000 years ago and transmitted to us exactly by the infallible disciplic sucession, or when someone like me says we need to transform these myths and symbols to make them relevant, we do not lose faith because our beliefs are challenged. This is a progressive Protestant way of thinking. I think we need a reformation of our own. Let's transform some sacred cows into gourmet burgers (metaphorically speaking of course).

Myth Builds Worlds

As I learned it, myth builds worlds. It creates a world view that encompasses both this world and the spiritual world. It is something that springs forth from the collective unconscious or spiritual plane manifesting the archetypes or gods and goddesses in a language we can relate to. These universal truths are revealed according to time and circumstance and therefore are culturally conditioned.

I am dedicated to extracting the essence of the Radha Krishna myth, stripping it of many of the cultural externals and reviving it in a Western context. This is a huge undertaking, and I hope others are of like mind and interested in developing such a revisioning. Myths have their limits, and if they are not constantly renewed and revitalized to make them relevant to current recipients, they may die.

One significant change I made is to use the term "God-dess" to refer to the Divine Couple, Radha Krishna. This signifies the two in one, God and Goddess in one inclusive term that may give preference to the Goddess, Radha, but the patriarchal God has been dominant long enough and is really the slave of Radha anyway.

Life in Paradise

It’s a beautiful day in paradise. The sun is shining, a breese is blowing, I’m listening to misia on the stereo. Life is good. I’m feeling better after a cold that lingered for two or three weeks.

We’re getting ready to begin construction of a stick built kitchen and bath addition to our yurt. We’ve been using outdoor, tarp kitchen and bath for two years. Now we look forward to plumbing and solar electricity, being able to cook and bathe away from the flies and mosquitos. It’s been a good experience living as simply as we have, but it’s time to move on. We’re not getting any younger.

Life unfolds in ever more beautiful ways as God-dess manifests her ever increasing beauty and grace. May her love ever enfold us. Radhe! Radhe!

Welcome to stevebohlert.com 3.0

The latest version of my site is now up. Check it out.

Update

My new web design is almost ready to publish, just going over final changes and details. I'm also working on an addittion to my home, so I have plenty to keep me busy. A really bad spring cold really slowed me down the past couple of weeks, but I'm getting better now. Summer is here in Hawai'i now and they say it will be a pretty dry one. Lots of people are hauling water already. When the indoor temperature hit 98 yesterday, I decided it's time to buy an electric fan.

As I sat on the front porch this morning contemplating the sunrise, I thought, "I consider this place to be like Vrindaban, the spiritual world. Others see it as a battle field to practice shooting their big guns, poluting the environment. Others see it as a resource to exploit for money." How we view life does make a difference. Does our world view contribute to peace, happiness and the good of all? We can each make that choice daily. Aloha.