Quest Magazine

Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism

By Phyllis Cole
New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Hardcover, 370 pages.

For generations, scholars have recognized an influence by Mary Moody Emerson upon her impressionable nephew, Ralph Waldo Emerson, without examining its importance. Cole's sophisticated scholarship culminates in an extraordinary landmark biography describing a remarkable woman in New England intellectual cultural history. Aunt Mary emerges as a writer, thinker, and spiritual seeker, a self-taught woman who thought independently and communicated her philosophy through brilliant conversation. Cole's biography confirms that her thought and language was assimilated discreetly by Emerson throughout his life and became the intellectual context in which the Sage of Concord developed his philosophical and aesthetic principles.

By Mary K. Neff, Henry S. Olcott, Annie Besant, Ernest Wood, J. Krishnamurti, George S. Arundale. Foreword by C. Jinarajadasa. Adyar Madras (Chennai): Theosophical Publishing House, 1999. Paperback, x +54 pages, 1st ed. 1934 as A Guide to Adyar.

These two guidebooks present an introduction to the international center or "Home of the Theosophical Society--one a new work on Adyar today and the other a new edition of an older work on the Adyar of yesteryear. Together, they give a comprehensive overview of the campus that has been the headquarters of the Theosophical Society since 1882.

The first, the new work, is lavishly illustrated with color photographs, an average of one per page. It gives an Insightful, colorful, and extensive view of present-day Adyar. It covers the history, the grounds, the shrines, the Garden of Remembrance, the international offices, the Theosophical Publishing House, the Vasanta Press, the School of the Wisdom, the Adyar Library, the museum and archives, the guest houses, the Olcott Memorial School and other welfare activities, the Theosophical Order of Service, and international conventions. The book gives an informative and handsomely appealing tour of Adyar, its physical plant, educational activities, administrative operations, charitable services, and spiritual events. From it one gains a real sense of what Adyar is and means.

The second, newly reedited older work, covers the history of Adyar more extensively, particularly in two articles by one of our most knowledgeable historians, Mary K. Neff, tracing the history of the place under the Society's first two presidents: Henry S. Olcott, who was responsible for the initial development of Adyar, and Annie Besant, who enlarged the campus and expanded its operations. The other authors listed above give glimpses of Adyar from their intimate personal perspectives.

These two booklets are works to be read by anyone who wants to know what Adyar is like now and was like in the past. They should be in the library of every Theosophist because they give, not just a tourist-guide description, but an empathetic visit to the "spiritual heart" of the Theosophical Society.

-JOHN ALGEO

July/August 2000

Reading the Bible: An Introduction

By Richard G. Walsh
Notre Dame, IN: Cross Cultural, 1997. Hardback, 620 pages.

Reading tile Bible is designed as an introductory textbook. The work begins with a ninety-two page discussion of what the Bible is and of various literary-critical approaches to its study, delineating the differences among the various academic approaches.

Walsh's interests are almost entirely literary. His eye is always on the structure of the text, not the cultural context out of which it arose. Literary analysis also takes precedence over theology, which is frequently understood in terms of symbols, motifs, and figures of speech. Or rather, literary analysis becomes theology.

Although the author shows consider, able understanding of the Biblical texts he examines, he is also quite certain that the worldview of the Bible simply does not "fit" with the modern world. Because of this, he describes the Bible as "in decay" in the West, no longer able to supply us with a worldview or "social glue" or even a "vehicle to the sacred." "In sum," he says, "the Bible is an alien myth in the modern West" which may supply certain ethical perspectives and symbols and aesthetic ideas but which no longer can unite society as a whole. It can only supply what he calls "debris," not a unified vision.

Whether the "modern worldview" is as universally accepted and impregnable to criticism as the author suggests, is an open question. In this postmodern, postindustrial age, the modernism the author describes may be also in serious decay and only supply us with "debris" itself. In every age, the Bible has been subject to reevaluation and interpretation. It may appear to us that its message fit easily into the Roman Empire or semi-pagan Medieval European culture, but it did not. In every generation, the Bible has seemed alien. Nevertheless, the great interpreters have always revealed how the Bible still speaks to the new age. Walsh is not interested in that task; his aim is not to revive and resuscitate but to provide postmortem dissection. 

January/February 2000

Mind Science: An East-West Dialogue

By The Dalai Lama et al. Ed. Daniel Goleman and Robert A. F. Thurman
Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1991. Paperback, xi + 137pages.

This slender bur comprehensive volume, covering the proceedings of a symposium sponsored by the Mind/Body Medical Institute of Harvard Medical School and Tibet House, presents a dialogue between knowledgeable Eastern and Western experts seeking to understand each other's point of view. Although published in 1991, it is still new because it cuts right to the core issues of its compelling topic.

Perhaps because Herbert: Benson, a neuroscientist and medical doctor, for some twenty years has been studying the Tibetan gTum-mo meditative practice (the ability of meditating monks to use their own body heat to dry the wet sheets covering them in freezing weather), and Daniel Goleman, a renowned psychologist, has been studying eastern meditative practices for some thirty years, their long experience with Eastern mysticism has left them with a deeper understanding of Eastern mind-science than Christopher deCharms was able to garner in his brief year at Dharmsala (Two Views of Mind, reviewed in the July-August 2000 Quest).

Robert Thurman contributes an extraordinary chapter on Tibetan psychology, which he subtitles "Sophisticated Software for the Human Brain." Howard Gardner, an esteemed researcher of human intelligence, provides a thoughtful response to Thurman in the following chapter, "Cognition: A Western Perspective."

The Dalai Lama in his opening chapter, "The Buddhist Concept of Mind," offers insight into the nature of mind as understood by his tradition. I-Ie suggests that Buddhism could serve as a bridge between radical materialism and religion, because Buddhism belongs to neither camp. From the radical materialists' viewpoint, Buddhism is an ideology that accepts the existence of mind and is thus a faith-oriented system like other religions. However, since Buddhism does not accept the concept of a creator God but emphasizes instead self-reliance and the individual's own power and potential, other religions regard Buddhism as a kind of atheism. Since neither side accepts Buddhism as belonging to its camp, Buddhists have an opportunity to build a bridge between the two.

-Alayne O’Reilly

May/June 2001