An educator and publishing partner
Born Eva Sellers in Albia, Iowa, in 1844, Dowling came from a family connected with the Church of Christ and education. Historian John Benedict Buescher identifies her as a former principal of a private school in Ottumwa. She married Levi Dowling in 1882, and their son Leo was born in 1892. She assisted Levi as the couple moved between towns and developed their religious work.
In Los Angeles, Eva became central to the publication and explanation of The Aquarian Gospel. After Levi died in 1911, followers elected her to succeed him under the name Leva. She and Leo continued publishing his work, including collected lectures. Eva died in Los Angeles in 1923, and Leo inherited the publishing rights.
Explaining a gospel of a new age
The held 1911 edition names Levi as the transcriber and Eva as the writer of the introduction; it also prints E. S. Dowling as the Los Angeles publisher. Describing herself as “scribe to the messenger”, she anticipates readers’ questions about the Aquarian Age, the meaning of Christ and the Akashic Records. Her introduction is a substantial interpretive contribution, distinct from the gospel narrative that follows.
She explains the book through a succession of zodiacal ages and distinguishes Jesus, the human teacher, from Christ as divine love. She also presents Akasha as a universal record of thought and experience that Levi had learned to read. These are claims of the Dowling religious system. Her confidence in Levi’s access to those records helps establish the book’s spiritual authority for believers; it does not supply historical verification of its accounts of Jesus’s life and travels.
