IS GOD MALE OR FEMALE? God is neither and is both. Lets see how.

. Before we can understand whether God is male or female, we need to clearly understand that we ourselves are neither male nor female. We are at core spiritual beings, souls, whereas our gender refers only to our shell, our physical bodies. Our spiritual identity is eternal, our gender is transient. According to the law of last thought described in the Bhagavad-gita (8.5), we attain in our next lives a body as per the thought that predominates our consciousness at the last moment of this life. So a male in this life may become a female in the next life, if the person dearest to him happens to be a female and vice versa. Hence both male chauvanism and feminism are both two sides of the same coin of physical misidentification. Only when we distance ourselves from our temporary physcial gender can we set aside the ideological preconceptions that we will otherwise inevitably drag into our discussion on the gender of God. The Vedic scriptures give a highly inclusivistic definition of God as the source of everything, the cause of all causes. This leads naturally to an egalitarian understanding of God as both male and female, as seen from the fact that almost all Deities are worshipped as Divine Couples. Lets consider the divine dialectic of Radha and Krishna. Here Radha personifies the primordial cosmological feminine principle and Krishna the primordial cosmological masculine principle. They are not symbols denoting mere abstract hypostases or metaphysical principles. As divine embodiments, they are fully concrete, particular individuals, yet they are universal individuals, being wholly identical with the ontological principles they personify. Personification is not a literary device, but illustrates a cosmic truth. Ultimate reality is irreducibly personal, relational, variegated, dynamic and progressive. Krishna is compared to the sun and Radha to the sunshine. Both exist simultaneously, but one is coming from the other. Still, to say that the sun exists prior to the sunshine is incorrectas soon as there is a sun, there is sunshine. More important, the sun has no meaning without sunshine, without heat and light. And heat and light would not exist without the sun. So the sun and the sunshine co-exist, each equally important for the existence of the other. It may be said that they are simultaneously one and different. Likewise, the relationship between Radha and Krishna is that of inconceivable identity in difference. They are, in essence, a single entityGodwho manifests as two distinct individuals for the sake of interpersonal exchange. God is the person who does everything best. As Krishna says in the Gita, Hes the first and best in all fields. Of mountains Hes the Himalayas, of bodies of water Hes the ocean, and so on. So, of worshipers of Him, Hes also best. Who could worship Krishna better than He Himself? No one. Therefore, He manifests as Radha, His female form, and shows that He is His own best worshiper. As Radha He is God the worshiper, and as Krishna He is God the worshiped. Both par excellence. In terms of tattva, or philosophical truth, Krishna predominates for He is the origin of everything. But in terms of lila, or divine loving activity, Radha predominates for She controls Krishna with her love. Moreover on the path of spiritual growth, Radha acts as the divine mediatrix, without whom access to Krishna is not possible. Thats why devotees always chant her name before Krishnas, as is also seen with Sita-Rama and Lakshmi-Narayana. Like the Bride-of-Christ concept in the Christian tradition and the Kabbalistic conception of the Feminine Divine in Jewish mysticism, the truth behind gopi-love is theologically profound and constitutes the zenith of spiritual awareness. Gopi-love represents the purest love a soul may have for its divine source; the only correlation this may have to mundane lust is in appearance, an appearance that falls short once one studies the texts left by the pure, self-realized authorities on these topics.