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Eight numbers, from May to December 1942, printed in Montevideo by a body calling itself the Grupo Independiente de Estudios Esotéricos. The name is not incidental. Papus had founded a Groupe Indépendant d'Études Ésotériques in Paris in 1888 and given it a review called L'Initiation; Nº 6 of this magazine names him as its president and founder in so many words. What you are reading is a deliberate re-founding of that institution on the other side of the Atlantic, half a century later, with the same name and the same title over the door.
The first number sets out what the review means to be: the organ of an independent society of thought, open to criticism from its readers, "not a business either, nor anyone's means of livelihood", falling into "no particularism, and still less into any personalism". That claim is worth holding onto, because the volume keeps testing itself against it. A commentary on masonic ritual praises the symbols and then says plainly that the institution has forgotten what they mean. An article on Schopenhauer complains that philosophers and occultists each miss half of him. A poem on the second page rebukes the very piety the editorial has just described.
Four long series run through the volume and none of them finishes: Jehel's commentary on the masonic degrees, which reaches the raising of Hiram; Surya's astrology course, which builds one real chart for one real birth in Montevideo across six instalments; Asuri Kapila's course in the postures, with a Sanskrit glossary that reaches its seventy-third entry; and a treatise on the planetary hours that does conclude, in Nº 8, with Saturn and Jupiter. Threaded between them is something stranger — a Uruguayan woman signing herself Maya, who went to India, sat on the floor of Sri Ramana Maharshi's hall, and wrote it down. He asked her, as she left, whether she would visit the temple at Madura. She said the chance had gone. A railway official then sent her eight hundred kilometres in the wrong direction and she arrived at Madura. The magazine gives that sequence three issues and lets the reader draw the conclusion.
The volume closes in French, with Saint-Martin's "Le Cimetière d'Amboise" — begun in Nº 6, continued in Nº 7, still unfinished at the end of Nº 8.
On the apparatus. Every page of this volume carries commentary: 392 notes across 179 pages, marked by evidence tier, saying where a claim has been checked against a text the Press holds and where it has not. Quotations have been verified where verification was possible. Dante is misquoted here — nostri for vostri, which turns a rebuke of humanity into a shared observation. The "Prayer of Saint Francis" on p. 9 of Nº 4 is not by Francis; it first appears anonymously in 1912. Three arithmetical faults in the astrology course are identified, including one that does not affect its result and is marked as such. Where a contributor is right, that is recorded too, and he often is: the Gita is quoted accurately, the elemental triangles are correctly assigned, Montevideo's coordinates are right, and the mean daily motion of the Sun is given correct to the arcsecond.
On what is withheld. Five passages in this volume are not reproduced, amounting to 1,153 characters — about two hundredths of one per cent of the text. Each is marked where it stood, with the reason. The Press does not reproduce racial theory, racial-improvement doctrine, or period race-language used in pseudo-historical claims. Nothing is removed silently and nothing else has been altered; passages that merely use the vocabulary of 1942 while arguing against racial distinction — and there are several — stand as printed.
On the medical claims. The courses in this volume promise cures: of sterility, of gallstones, of arteriosclerosis, of spinal deformity. Nº 7 prints two clinical reports describing a man whose grey hair, baldness and wrinkles are said to have reversed over eleven years. These are reproduced because they are what the magazine said, and they are endorsed by nobody. Read them as evidence of what this readership was invited to believe.
1AÑO 1 SEPTIEMBRE DE 1942 Nº 5 La Venerable personalidad del Maestro Aurobindo Por Jehel, S. I.
2Mis queridos hermanos y lectores; seguramente recordaréis los detalles que os di sobre el sabio y venerable Maestro Maharishi, el ACTIVO SILENCIOSO de la montaña de Arunachala, o Montaña Sagrada, o Montaña de la Santa Señal.
3Ya os dije que su doctrina personal, realizada plenamente por ÉL y que hace VIVIR, a sus discípulos ese silencio activo en el cual se percibe la búsqueda del Yo.
4Tan conciso y silencioso es este Venerable Maestro que, a pesar de su gran talento como escritor y poeta de la lengua tamil, ha condensado toda su doctrina en sólo cuarenta cuartetos, o sea, 160 renglones.
5Tan hermosa obra se llama “Ulludu Napardu”, “Cuarenta cuartetos sobre lo que es”.
6La vía principal del Maestro Maharishi es, pues, el hondo conocimiento, o la Jnana-Yoga llevada a su extrema agudeza.
7Por lo tanto, el Maestro Maharishi nada exige de sus discípulos; les recomienda esa profunda introspección, ese eterno perseguir del verdadero “Yo” y les ayuda, silenciosamente, a realizar tal unión con el YO universal, en proporción con la sinceridad y realidad del esfuerzo.
8Su vía es típicamente oriental, realmente mística, y en Occidente, solamente seres como Saint-Martin, Jacob Boheme y algunos verdaderos rosacruces más pueden ser comparados , guardadas las diferencias inevitables.
9Pero el Venerable Maestro AUROBINDO, del cual deseo hablaros hoy, es, en su manifestación externa, completamente diferente.
10Ya por su vida veréis la diferencia de preparación y de aplicación.
11Aunque hoy el Ashram del Venerable AUROBINDO se encuentra en el sur de Madrás, a pocas horas del Ashram de Maharishi, ¡cuánta diferencia entre uno y otro!
12Shri Aurobindo Gosh, como se llamaba civilmente, fue educado desde los siete hasta los veintiún años en Inglaterra; fue brillante alumno y en 1892 se llevó la palma de los estudios clásicos del King’s College de la universidad de Cambridge.
13Domina completamente el inglés, griego, latín, sánscrito, francés.
14Baste decir, para comprender hasta que punto domina el genio del francés, que hasta ha escrito comentarios sobre sonetos del poeta Mallarmé.
15Se le considera como el autor contemporáneo que maneja con más pureza y precisión el inglés, cosa notable para un hindú.
16Fue durante doce años colaborador del joven Maharajá de Baroda, en cuyos dominios, situados al norte de Bombay, ocupó varios cargos, desde el secretario de aquél Maharajá hasta el de Vicerrector de la Universidad.
17Allí, en Baroda, desde 1893 hasta 1906 estudió varias lenguas y todos los clásicos de la India, siendo reconocido como una de las
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1YEAR 1 · SEPTEMBER 1942 · Nº 5 — The Venerable Personality of the Master Aurobindo — By Jehel, S. I.
2My dear brothers and readers: you will surely remember the details I gave you about the wise and venerable Master Maharishi, the SILENT ACTIVE ONE of the mountain of Arunachala — the Sacred Mountain, or Mountain of the Holy Sign.
3I have already told you of his personal doctrine, realised fully by HIM, which makes his disciples LIVE that active silence in which the search for the Self is perceived.
4So concise and silent is this Venerable Master that, despite his great talent as a writer and poet in the Tamil language, he has condensed his whole doctrine into only forty quatrains — that is, 160 lines.
5That beautiful work is called “Ulladu Narpadu”, “Forty Quatrains on That Which Is”.
6The principal way of the Master Maharishi is therefore deep knowledge, or Jnana-Yoga carried to its extreme acuteness.
7The Master Maharishi therefore demands nothing of his disciples; he recommends to them that profound introspection, that eternal pursuit of the true “Self”, and helps them silently to accomplish such union with the universal SELF, in proportion to the sincerity and reality of the effort.
8His way is typically Eastern, truly mystical; and in the West only beings such as Saint-Martin, Jacob Boehme and a few other true Rosicrucians can be compared with him, the inevitable differences being allowed for.
9But the Venerable Master AUROBINDO, of whom I wish to speak to you today, is in his outward manifestation completely different.
10From his life alone you will see the difference of preparation and of application.
11Although today the Ashram of the Venerable AUROBINDO is in the south of Madras, a few hours from the Ashram of Maharishi, how great a difference between the one and the other!
12Sri Aurobindo Ghose, as he was called in civil life, was educated from the age of seven to twenty-one in England; he was a brilliant student and in 1892 carried off the palm in classical studies at King's College in the university of Cambridge.
13He has complete command of English, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and French.
14It is enough to say, in order to understand how far he commands the genius of French, that he has even written commentaries on the sonnets of the poet Mallarmé.
15He is considered the contemporary author who handles English with the greatest purity and precision — a notable thing for a Hindu.
16For twelve years he was a collaborator of the young Maharaja of Baroda, in whose dominions, situated to the north of Bombay, he held various offices, from secretary to that Maharaja to Vice-Rector of the University.
17There, in Baroda, from 1893 to 1906, he studied several languages and all the classics of India, and was recognised as one of the
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
Ramana is compared to Saint-Martin and Jacob Boehme as the West's nearest equivalents. Both are now held in full — Saint-Martin's two major works, and ten works of Boehme — so the comparison can be tested rather than accepted. It is also a revealing choice: Jehel reaches for the mystics of direct interior knowledge, not for the ceremonial tradition his own Order descends from.
→ thread:aurora_boehme_sparrow
The biographical detail on Aurobindo is accurate: educated in England from seven to twenty-one, King's College Cambridge, a year in prison in 1908–09 at Alipore, then withdrawal to French India — Pondicherry — and the abandonment of politics. The date given as 1923 for his entry into public life is wrong by some fifteen years; his nationalist activity belongs to 1905–1910.