(St. Petersburg : LITA Publishing, 2009, 254pp.)
book review by Rene Wadlow

Harmony is a recurrent theme in Russian thought. Harmony is seen as the essence of the world of both nature and humans. Harmony is understandable through higher consciousness but is often overshadowed by temporary but strong disharmonies. Thus there is a necessity for the conscious restoration of harmony or to use a Taoist term, the cultivation of harmony.  read more »

by Hazel M. Denning.
St. Paul, MN: Liewellyn Publications, 1998, 196pp.

As we move into the Age of Aquarius, there are still those with very deep karmic ties to the Piscean past. These Piscean wounds must be healed in order to permit the individual to advance into the new age.  read more »

by Cherry Gilchrist
Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2009, 188pp.
book review by Rene Wadlow

Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone,
No ordinary yardstick can measure her greatness:
She stands alone, unique —
In Russia one can only believe Fedor Tiutchev

Cherrry Gilchrist has written a useful book on the structure of Russian folklore, its main characters such as the Firebird and the Snowmaiden, and its impact on folk crafts, mainly rural house building, painted lacquer boxes and Matrioshka dolls. There are hints of broader issues such as the use of folklore in high culture, by composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinski and writers like Pushkin. She mentions some seminars in which she participated comparing Russian and Celtic folklore but does not develop the theme.  read more »

by Robin Robertson (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2009, 182pp.)
A book review by Rene Wadlow

The most important lesson
but one that’s seldom adequately learned
is that, like sub-atomic particles,
everything with life exists
within a field of force
in which all affect and are affected
by each one of the others;
and that we, the individuals,
and all other individuals like
a blade of grass, whale or bacterium,
are not self-existent, but the products
of this unceasing reciprocity.

Adam Curle “The First Lesson”

There is a spiritual alchemy, by means of which adversity, resulting from attitudes and actions motivated by fear, ignorance and selfishness can be transformed by the deliberate exertion of energies and the enactment of deeds motivated by knowledge and love. This process of transformation of the imperfections of existence into a higher state of being is the theme of Robin Robertson’s useful book.  read more »

Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2009
book review by Rene Wadlow

Homer’s Odyssey is a journey through personal transformation to wholeness. During this journey, there is an interplay between the masculine and feminine principles. Masculine and feminine principles are part of the psyche shared by both sexes. In fact, as the masculine principle dominates in many societies, the masculine dominates in many women as well as men, and our understanding of the feminine is still very limited.

The masculine and feminine energies are the two creative forces in the world, which when working together create wholeness. If we take the yin/yang symbol of the masculine and feminine principles operating within our individual and collective psyches, they give us a deeper understanding of the evolution of consciousness and our potential for synthesising these two principles in a consciousness that is neither masculine nor feminine but embraces and transcends both.  read more »

Susan Elizabeth Hale
Sacred Space, Sacred Sound
(Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2007, 298pp.)

Now I have you
Now in a moment I know what I am for. I awake
And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs,
A thousand warbling echoes have started
to life within me, never to die.
Walt Whitman

Susan Hale has written an impressive book dealing with the setting, the sounds and the sense of sites considered sacred or holy. As she writes “a sacred space is a natural or created place where spiritual experiences are enhanced and ritual acts of worship are performed…A sacred space is a temenos, a Greek word meaning an enclosure that makes it possible to enter into a relationship with a greater reality.”  read more »

by Howard Murphet, Quest Books, 1972, 339pp.
Book review by Rene Wadlow

There is, in a period of transition, a need for individuals with the specific talents of organization and the ability to translate doctrines into social policy. Henry Steel Olcott was such an individual.

The last quarter of the 1800s was a period very much like our own — a period of transition with no firm guidelines as to the shape of the period to come. It was a period, like ours, of cross currents, of strong positive and negative movements.  read more »

Gill Farrer-Halls, Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1998, 160pp.
book review by Rene Wadlow

Eric Hoffer, who spent his working life as a longshoreman in the California ports during the 1940-1950s when labor conflicts were at their worst, has written “ Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul. Where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.”

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama who was trained from a young age for spiritual leadership also places his central emphasis on compassion.  read more »

Patrice Chaplin: City of Secrets (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2007, 336pp.)
A book review by Rene Wadlow

Patrice Chaplin is a writer of books and films, and her presentation of the hidden aspects of Gerona, an old Catalan city near Barcelona, has all the characteristics of a film script: short chapters, lively dialogue, and memorable scenes where the action takes place. Catalonia is divided between Spain and France, but there is a cultural unity to Catalan culture, and people have passed across the State frontiers when political events created the need: Spanish Republicans as the Civil War ended in 1939 moved into France; refugees from France and beyond crossed into Spain in the early 1940s as Nazi armies advanced; and anti-Franco activists moved back and forth to France in the 1950s.  read more »

Richard Power, Editor, Wheaton, IL
Quest Books, 2007, 155pp.

This is a good book with a misleading title. These are unpublished lectures by Lama Govinda given at the Human Dimensions Institute in upstate New York to a largely Western audience but not published. The lectures were hardly “lost” but are a welcome addition to his published books such as the well-known The Way of the White Cloud and his more technical writings such as Psychological Attitudes of Early Buddhist Philosophy and Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism. Secondly, Lama Govinda is not a Tibetan Master but a German scholar of Buddhism, born as Ernst Lothar Hoffman.  read more »

I do daily perceive that while everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and re-creates. That informing power or spirit is God. I see it as purely benevolent, for I can see in the midst of death, life persists. In the midst of untruth, truth persists. In the midst of darkness, light persists. Hence I gather that God is life, God is light, God is love. God is the supreme good.  - Mahatma Gandhi

by Kathryn Tidrick (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006, 379pp.)
A Book Review by Rene Wadlow  read more »

by Gary Lachman, Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2008, 261pp
Book Review by Rene Wadlow
 read more »

by Elena F. Pisareva  (Wheaton: Quest Books, 2008, 113pp.)

The thirty years prior to the 1917 Russian Revolution were years filled with the discovery of Asian religious thought and practice including its more Westernized forms. In the 1870s, the Russian Tsarist empire started moving east to absorb what is today’s Central Asia. The Crimean War prevented Russia from moving toward the west, and British expansion in India made the Russians fearful of British control of Afghanistan and Central Asia. Russian troops started moving into Central Asia — the decisive battle of Tashkent was 1865. Along with troops, the Russian government sent scholars to study the way of life, and they started to write about Islam, the Sufi dervish movements, the Tibetan forms of Buddhism found in Mongolia and among other Central Asian peoples.

Along with government-sponsored scholars, there were independent individuals who went to Central Asia on a personal spiritual journey such as G.I. Gurdjieff. The reports of these finding created an interest in Asian thought among the educated elite.

At the same period, from the mid 1860s to the eve of the Revolution, wealthy Russians would spend the winter in Western Europe and sent their children to elite schools in Switzerland, Germany and France.  read more »

A Study in Synthesis (James H. Cousins, Madras: Ganesh and Co. 1934)
Book review by Rene Wadlow

A national culture is impossible without the individual creative artist; the individual artist is important and unintelligible safe in his relationship to his national culture. Where either tries to do without the other, degeneracy ensues nationally and individually…The true artist is the true patriot, speaking the language of eternity but in the vernacular of his own time and place…Where art does not rise from authentic springs, but is piped from distances by subterranean ways, it becomes troubled, muddied, and at best only reaches a dull mediocrity. But art that embodies the creative impulse of the universe, with high vision and deep emotion, in its own time and place and way, will by the force of its authenticity pass beyond these limits into universal appreciation.  read more »

Mahmoud Watad and Leonard Grob
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007, 221pp.)

The authors introduce their book by writing:

“During the summer of 2004, we interviewed thirty-four Palestinian and Israeli teenagers. These teens were asked to share various aspects of their ordinary, day-to-day lives and their dreams for the future.  We chose to interview young people between the ages of twelve and eighteen as we strongly believe this is an age group that can make a difference in the world…Even after a political solution has been reached, it may still be a matter of generations before demonization of the ‘other’ — Israeli or Palestinian — is replaced by an ongoing process of humanization.”  read more »