American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace

American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace

By John C. Culver and John Hyde
New York: Norton, 2000. Hardback xi+608 pages.

Few figures in modern American public life have been more influential or enigmatic than Henry A, Wallace, New Deal Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President of he United States during World War II.

On the one hand, Wallace was as down, to-earth as the cornfields of his native Iowa. A brilliant agricultural scientist, he developed a highly successful hybrid corn-seed. As the youngest member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet in the 19305, he engineered agrarian policies, price supports, and the rest of it, which revolutionized the lives of American farmers for the better.

In the early years of the New Deal, the Department of Agriculture was the largest, most innovative, and most exciting branch of government. Wallace, its pleasingly rumpled, affable, and energetic Secretary, epitomized the New Deal spirit of liberal but pragmatic reform at its best. He seemed to be everywhere, speaking across the country, talking with plain dirt fanners in their fields, and working late hours in his office developing new programs for their benefit.

During the war years, Wallace traveled widely, from Latin America to Central Asia, always delighting ordinary people with his informality and his eagerness to chat with the local fanners about soils and seeds. On the platform and in books and articles he articulated an idealistic, "one world" vision of the postwar years that expounded on basic themes of human brotherhood and the twentieth century as "the century of the common man."

Yet the vegetarian and teetotaling Iowan was also often perceived as a "mystic" who had somehow strayed into the uncongenial corridors of power, given from time to time to strange enthusiasms and "impractical" dreams. Powerful forces mistrusted him and determined to curb his influence. In 1944 he was dropped as vice presidential candidate in favor of Harry S. Truman. Wallace reappeared in 1948 in a typically quixotic bid for the presidency as standard-bearer of the new Progressive Party, which sought to recover the idealism of the early New Deal and to find an alternative to the Cold War; no doubt naive about communism, it was crushed amid the harsh passions of that "War."

How can we understand a statesman as puzzlingly many-sided as this? One important clue could lie in Theosophy, Wallace was seriously involved in Theosophy and related spiritual movements in the years before his going to Washington in 1933, and seems always to have been within the orbit of their influence. He carried on a long correspondence with the Irish poet, mystic, agricultural reformer, and independent Theosophist George Russell (“A.E,"), took correspondence courses in Theosophy from the Temple of the People in Halcyon, California, was active in the Liberal Catholic Church in Des Moines between 1925 and 1929, and was a member of the Theosophical Society in America from 1925 to 1935. From the late 1920s to 1935 he had a much publicized and criticized relationship with the Russian artist, idealist, and mystic Nicholas Roerich. In all of this, several basic Theosophical ideas emerge as important both to Wallace's inner life and, on the profoundest level, his political life: the oneness of spirituality and science, world progress as spiritual reality, and the ideal of unity out of diversity. (See my article, "Henry A. Wallace as Theosophist," Quest, February 1997, 14-15.)

This new biography of Wallace is in many ways the best to date, particularly in respect to the subject's political life. It is eminently sympathetic and extensively researched, and its authors-one a fanner Democratic congressman and senator from Iowa, the other a political reporter clearly know the political territory. American Dreamer is, however, disappointing in its treatment of Wallace's Theosophy and therefore, in my view, fails fully to illumine the deep spiritual impulses that gave coherence to the man as a whole,

The facts about Theosophy and Wallace are mostly there, though the authors regrettably seem unaware of two articles by Mark L Kleinman (cited in mine) which treat Wallace's spirituality fully and perceptively; and although the authors of this book state, "It is unclear whether Wallace ever formally joined the Theosophical Society" (78), documentation of his membership can be found in the archives of the Theosophical Society in America in Wheaton, Illinois, They gratuitously speak of H. P. Blavatsky as "one part philosopher and-two parts fraud" (p. 80), an unsubstantiated characterization that might better have been applied to some of the political figures with whom Wallace had to work.

For background infonuatiou on Theosophy and Liberal Catholicism, Culver and Hyde unfortunately rely on Charles Braden's 1949 book, These Also Believe. Though then a pioneering study of alternative religious traditions, this work is by now very dated and moreover sometimes assumes the condescending manner characteristic of such writing at the time, but long since left behind by the best scholars.

Culver and Hyde seem in fact rather uninterested in Wallace's spiritual quests, if not slightly embarrassed by them; one gets a feeling of their getting through this part of the writing as quickly as possible. Had they consulted such distinguished recent authorities on the role of alternative spirituality in American life as Laurence Moore, Catherine Albanese, or Mary Bednarowski, they might have found a perspective by which Wallace could be placed in a rich and fruitful tradition of interaction between alternative religion, social idealism, and effective policy change, beginning with the mid-nineteenth century connection of Spiritualism with abolitionism and early feminism, and the Theosophy of such reformers as Katherine Tingley or, overseas, Annie Besant.


The Lives and Liberation of Princess Mandarava: The Indian Consort of Padmasambhava

The Lives and Liberation of Princess Mandarava: The Indian Consort of Padmasambhava

Trans. Lama Chonam and Sangye Khandro. Intro. Janet Gyatso
Boston, MA: Wisdom, 1998. Paperback, xi + 227 pages.

This is a Tibetan "treasure book" that is claimed to have been buried in the eighth century by Yeshe Tsogyal, the Tibetan consort of Padmasambhava, and then discovered as buried treasure by Samten Lingpa (b. 1871). If this account is to be believed, the story dates from the very founding of Buddhism in Tibet. Skeptics, however, will read this as an important example of hagiography composed in the early twentieth century.

In either case, the work is extraordinarily important, for its chief character is a woman who becomes a Buddha. It is, in fact, a proto-feminist document that reads right back into the very foundations of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism a very anti-patriarchal, liberating feminist dharma.

The work conforms to an archetypal pattern established early in the history of Buddhism in which the protagonist of the story relives the basic pattern established by the life of Siddhartha Gautama. The first several chapters describe Mandarava's previous incarnations, beginning with the "primordial mother," Pandaravasini. Long before she was born as Princess Mandarava into the royal family of Zahor, she had already achieved great spiritual awareness and was filled with tremendous magical power. She was, in fact, a Buddha.

From her birth as Princess Mandarava, she exhibits all the marks of an enlightened being and becomes known for her extraordinary power. Nevertheless, her father treats her often as a weak and innocent girl in need of protection and direction. Unlike Shakyamuni who escaped in the night from the confines of the palace, she is sequestered and in some ways humiliated by her father, who thinks she should be married off to a suitor. Eventually she convinces her parents that she wishes to be wedded only to Dharma. They agree, but send five hundred handmaidens to look after her. She is, after all, a princess.

When word is noised abroad that in her sangha lives also a male guru to whom the Princess has become attached, her father becomes incensed. He tries to kill the guru and imprison his daughter. The guru is, however, the great tantric master, Padmasambhava. He defends himself with his miraculous power, and the couple are eventually completely vindicated. Thereafter, they set out to defeat demons and negative-minded people all over north India and illumine one kingdom after another.

Mandarava enters parinirvana long before Padmasambhava and therefore never actually participates in his conversion of Tibet, but that, in fact, exalts her as a tremendous spiritual force that should be acknowledged and worshipped everywhere.

The story, filled as it is with magic and deeds of unimaginable spiritual power, may not convince the modern reader of its factuality. But that is beside the point, for its real message is that women can be enlightened just as fully as men and char everyone should recognize the potency of feminine spiritual accomplishment. To all those patriarchal Buddhists who denigrate women, this story offers a strident rebuttal. Surely this is a work which many American Buddhists will cherish. Perhaps it is a vision of what Buddhism in the twenty-first century will become.

The work is admirably translated by Sangye Khandro with the assistance of Lama Chonam and is introduced by Janet Gyatso, a well known scholar of Buddhism.

-JAY G. WILLIAMS

May/June 2001


Relax, It's Only a Ghost: My Adventures with Spirits, Hauntings, and Things That Go Bump in the Night

Relax, It's Only a Ghost: My Adventures with Spirits, Hauntings, and Things That Go Bump in the Night

By Echo L. Bodine
Boston, MA: Element, 2000. Hardback, xxxvi + 123 pages.

This book is a series of purportedly real ghost stories drawn from thirty years of personal experience by the author, a psychic from the St. Paul-Minneapolis area of Minnesota, so most of the stories are of ghosts in buildings from that area. The author calls herself (and her brother, who often accompanies her on her investigations) a "ghost-buster." In other words, it is her intention when she's called to a haunted house (or other building) to attempt to communicate with the ghosts and "send them to the light." She often speaks of their going through a tunnel in order to get there. She states that she is paid a fee for doing so.

Each chapter concludes with some advice on how to handle different types of ghosts. She also often confesses that she has considerable apprehension, even great fear, associated with her visits to such places and sometimes has to call upon her "spirit guides" to assist her in her (apparently successful) work. That is very different from the experience of some Theosophical psychics (Geoffrey Hodson, Phoebe Bendit, and Dora Kunz) I have known. I find some of her stories unbelievable. And there is no attempt to describe the nature of "electronic equipment that measures ghost activity" (chs. 13, 15), so one is left quite skeptical about it.

I recall something Phoebe Bendit once told me when I was a young Theosophist working at Olcott in 1957 between my undergraduate and graduate studies. It was Halloween and a group of us had gathered in the library to tell or read our favorite "ghost stories." Phoebe, who was at Olcott with her husband, Laurence, at the time, suddenly walked in, and I asked her to tell us "some real ghost stories." Her reply surprised all of us. She said something to the effect that we didn't really want to do that because "ghosts are the most boring things imaginable." It seems the ghosts could tell that Phoebe was clairvoyant and were constantly bothering her with requests to contact their relatives and tell them they were all right. Phoebe asked, "Don't they realize that I'm a busy person and don't have time for such trivial concerns?"

Echo Bodine's stories have none of that quality. Her interpretation of her psychic experiences is taken at face value and obviously heavily influenced by her Christian background. For example, she makes no attempt to discriminate between earth-bound discarnate souls and what are termed in Theosophical literature "shells," i.e. astral corpses left behind by persons who have already gone on to devachan, as her description of some of them suggests they may be. All the ghosts she experiences are considered by her to be people who have, for one reason or another, not gone on to "heaven" to be with "God."

There is not just one ghost haunting the houses she visits, but usually there are a large number of them. Many of them frighten her. I am not clairvoyant, but my experiences in investigating so-called haunted houses over the past: twenty-five years has been very different from hers. And my interpretation of the paranormal events occurring in these houses is obviously influenced by my study of Theosophy-although I must confess that not everything I have heard fits conveniently into Theosophical theories.

If you enjoy reading ghost stories not told to frighten, you may find this book entertaining, even reassuring. If you are looking for insights into the phenomena, you will be better served by reading the Bendits' This World and Thatrelevant portions of The Secret Doctrine or the Mahatma Lettersor any number of C. W. Leadbeater's writings.

-RICHARD W. BROOKS

May/June 2001


Letter to a Man in the Fire: Does God Exist and Does He Care?

Letter to a Man in the Fire: Does God Exist and Does He Care?

By Reynolds Price
New York: Scribner, 1999. Hardback, 112 pages.

Written as a letter to a fellow cancer sufferer (Price himself survived cancer of the spine), this book explores the question of its subtitle: "Does God exist and does He card" It is a heartfelt, honest, meditative exploration, not a superficial trotting out of clichéd answers, so it offers insight into one man's Job-like struggle; yet one wonders how consoling it might have been for the "man in the fire," had he not died before it arrived. For there are no answers here. Indeed, early on, Price confesses that few of the book's ideas "would seem new to well-read adults."

The author's own belief is that, yes, there is a God and He does care (if we expand our understanding of caring to include the concept that what appears to be evil may in the long run be for a greater good). That belief rests on "personal intuition," the centrality of the figure of Jesus to the author's worship, and a few brief experiences which, though lasting only seconds, appear to be consciousness- expanding. They were rare moments when it was demonstrated to him that "all of visible and invisible nature is a single reality."

Price does not doubt the universe was created by a single, divine intelligence, probably a male one (he thinks we should be glad that the darker side of the Divine has been treated as part of the male aspect, and not imputed to the Virgin Mother). Yet the concept of God as Father, Abba, has no resonance with him. Recognizing that his eighty-six-page discussion of the nature of evil, of the Trinity, and of religious belief has been brief, Price adds seventeen pages to point an inquirer to further study. It is here that he makes a curious passing reference to "the all but uncrossable deserts of 19th century Theosophy." One wishes he had explained that reference, but he does not.

The Letter is thoughtful, but reveals the limitations of belief in a personal Creator.

-JOSEPHINE A. WOLLEN

May/June 2001


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


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