La Iniciación Vol. 1, No. 5 - September 1942: Document 1 of 9
Title Page and Editorial Context
Original Title: La Iniciación - Año 1, Septiembre de 1942, Nº 5
Monthly Publication of the Independent Group of Esoteric Studies
Mensuario del Grupo Independiente de Estudios Esotéricos
Montevideo, Uruguay
Translation Document 1 of 9
La Iniciación Vol. 1, No. 5 - September 1942: Document 2 of 9
The Venerable Personality of Master Aurobindo
Complete East-West Spiritual Synthesis Biography
By Jehel, S.I.
My dear brothers and readers: surely you will remember the details that I gave you about the wise and venerable Master Maharishi, the ACTIVE SILENT of the mountain of Arunachala, or Sacred Mountain, or Mountain of the Holy Sign. I already told you that his personal doctrine, fully realized by HIM and which makes his disciples LIVE that active silence in which the search for the Self is perceived. So concise and silent is this Venerable Master that, despite his great talent as writer and poet of the Tamil language, he has condensed all his doctrine into only forty quartets, that is, 160 lines. Such beautiful work is called "Ulludu Napardu," "Forty quartets on what is." The principal path of Master Maharishi is, then, the profound knowledge, or Jnana-Yoga carried to its extreme acuteness. Therefore, Master Maharishi demands nothing of his disciples; he recommends to them that profound introspection, that eternal pursuit of the true "Self" and helps them, silently, to realize such union with the universal SELF, in proportion to the sincerity and reality of the effort. His way is typically Oriental, truly mystical, and in the West, only beings like Saint-Martin, Jacob Boehme and some true Rosicrucians can be compared, keeping the inevitable differences.
But the Venerable Master AUROBINDO, of whom I wish to speak to you today, is, in his external manifestation, completely different. Already by his life you will see the difference of preparation and application. Although today the Ashram of Venerable AUROBINDO is found in the south of Madras, a few hours from Maharishi's Ashram, what a difference between one and the other!
THE CAMBRIDGE FORMATION
Sri Aurobindo Gosh, as he was called civilly, was educated from seven until twenty-one years of age in England; he was a brilliant student and in 1892 won the palm of classical studies at King's College of Cambridge University. He completely dominates English, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, French. Suffice it to say, to understand to what point he dominates the genius of French, that he has even written commentaries on sonnets of the poet Mallarmé. He is considered as the contemporary author who handles English with the most purity and precision, remarkable for a Hindu.