On the 23rd April 1888, under Taurus sign (or Aries in Vedic astrology), two months before the birth of the famous portuguese esoteric poet Fernando Pessoa, Jacques de Marquette entered the stream of physical life in Paris, France, son of Emma Jeanne Ward, a french-irish woman and Fréderic Demarquette, a musician and painter. As a young student, wandering by differents schools and corners of France, he had his first inner mystical experience in 1902, and would have many in life, assuring him a direct knowdlege of the subjective subtle world and even of the spiritual life providinh a good basis for understanding the mystical and spiritual teachings of mankind.»
As his mother was the first lady with a diploma of dental-surgeon in France, which she exerced from 1891 to 1908, helping the family of two sons, he began studying in Paris to become a dentist. In 1905 he become a vegetarian through a book, found in the Paris's bouquinists, of Daniel Foward, The case of butchers meat, condemning the unnecessary suffering of animals, and mentioning many valuable vegetarians. He was then learning to contemplate the beauty expressed by art, through visits to Louvre Museum, which his father recomended, admiring it specially in Greece civilization and practicing the Rythmic Gymnastic of Jacques Dalcroze, that we would maintain forthy years. His interest in India and Hinduism was awakened in 1906, when he read his first book on Yoga, by Ramacharaka, or William Walter Atkinson. He finnished his scientific studies as a dental surgeon from the Faculty of Medicine in Paris in 1907, where he had very good teachers, and tried to understand the effects of food on human's psyche and behaviour, having, some years after, for example, to accept by experience that crudivorism was not good at all for him. He was engaged in a struggle for an all level harmony and a certain enlightenment.
He went in 1908 to USA to have his doctorate in the University of Pennsylvania and got it in 1909. Meantime, he discovered in a magazine in the library of the University the existence of Theosophical Society, and so he become a member in 1908, in Philadelphia, and was welcomed in the groups or branches of the Society in the cities where he went. He met and become friend of Dr. Hanish, the founder of Mazdaznan mouvement, based in Zoroastrian Madzeism and Yoga teachings, and frequented others leaders or groups of positive thought, christian science, rosicrucianism and esoterism.
After returning to Paris, he founded the first Naturist society in France, as he explains in Confessions: «Under the name of naturism, then unknown to the public and exclusively reserved for a medical school of antiquity, I bundled vegetarianism, abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, sport and excursions and camping, rounds and folk songs, which had then fallen into complete oblivion, and in October 1911 I founded Le Trait d'Union, Societé Naturiste de Culture Humaine, inviting young people to create a new world of health, beauty and joy. This was the beginning of the organised naturist movement in France.» And was also one of the co-founders of the Boy Scouts in France, animating them very much.
He participated as a medical officer in the I Great War, 1914-1919, where he got strong spiritual visions and experiences of war, pain, blessings, and was emprisioned for some months, after that being sent to Zeitlink, in Greece, as dentist, and then another time to the French trench warfare. In 1918 he could listen in Paris Annie Besant, asking, in a theosophical conference, that everyone should participate psychically against the German army, what he had done in a magical meditation, but feeling after some hours bad returning influences. When peace began to smile on Europe and in the French countryside he organised the first naturist camp and campsite in France, in Chevreuse, in 1920, whose programme started at 5.00 a.m. with the gymnastic's class he gave, and ended at 10 p.m. with the songs he led, in a strong mouvement of pacifism. It become a famous meeting point for the young pacifists between 1924 and 1928.
He participated in Paris in the 1920 World Congress of the Theosophical Society, where Krishnamurti was presented as the new avatar or world teacher, and dynamic adherence of the members was asked and, although feeling some resistances, he couldn't dare to reject the expectation of the new coming of Christ, of the World Master, and so he didn't discord completely, as Rudolf Steiner had done. And in 1922 at the German Theosophical Convention in Hamburg he, a bramacharya until then, met the dutch Joy Arden, a singer of higher quality, who become three weeks after his wife, and they would have a wonderful relation until 1928, and then with ups and downs, making him suffer very much, until they separated in 1936.
In 1922, keeping the ardent flame of knowledge alive, and working as a dentist, he graduated in Philosophy, at Sorbonne. Henri Delacroix was one of his masters, as he call it, considering him one of the most subtle psychologists, and another master was Lévy-Bruhl, as he will mention them in his books.
After founding the first Naturist cooperative, Trait d'Union, which would have 23 regional groups, four restaurants in Paris and five branches in province, in 1924 he published Le Naturisme Integral, his first book after some small brochures on scoutism, and was as that time also much engaged in mouvements, meetings and conferences for peace, in 1925 publishing Pour creer la Paix, an essay on the creative pacifism, and graduated in Higher Studies obtaining a doctorate in Literature in 1928. That same year, a difficult one, he founded the first Universal Youth Congress for Peace, in Ommen, Holland.
In 1930 he travelled with his wife, when already the relation was not so good, to Autralia by boat, having is first contact with India, in one of the scales, Alippé, Travancore, where he visited a temple with good Advaitin pundits who impressed him strongly.
He stayed in Australia some months, with much social life, courses and conferences, adventurous travels, notably in Hebrides and its canibals, having made a film of them. From there he went to Indonesia for six months and apreciated very much the beautiful Bali (nurtured by many roots of Indian culture), Java and the subtle peace of Islam, and had great meditations in the buddhist temple of Boroboudour; then in Saigon, Angkor, Thailand, Birman, from which he proceed to India.
This first pilgrimage in India in 1931 was full of bright encounters: entering in Calcutta by boat from Rangoon, he met prof. Sanyal and his guru; then successively Motilal Roy and his Prabatak Sanga (that he felt similar to Le Trait d'Union), in Chandernagar; the old Swami Shivananda, direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, in Belur Math, where he had good meditations in the mahasamadhis of Ramakrisna and Vivekananda; Rabindranath Tagore, in Shantiniketan, through the dutch D. Bake; prof. Radhakrishnan in Madras, in a Philosophical Congress; Theosophical Society in Adyar; darsham of Sri Aurobindo and Mother in Pondichery; Dr. Srikrishna Pandit in Kolhapour (in which University he gave a conference), who had visited him already in Paris; Taj Mahal, Golden Temple in Amritsar, Cachemire; Mahatma Gandhi in Karachi, in the Indian National Congress session; M. Wadia, a parsi philosopher and of the United Lodge of Theosophists, in Bombay, where he stayed in Wilson College; and Meher Baba, who didn't impress him.
In his Confessions..., chapter X, Return to Ocident, he draws a detached syntesis of his encounter with India, mentioning guru Ranade, although not relating the meeting, as he had done with the others gurus:
«Naturally, I had not learnt much new about the doctrines I had been studying for thirty years, but I had considerably enriched my stock of human contacts. The stay with Tagore, the visits to Sir J. C. Bose, the embrace of the Yogini, the Darshan with Sri Aurobindo, the stay with Ganhhi, my meetings with Pandit Ranade and Professor Radhakrishnan were human events of the highest importance, as well as the trusting hospitality of dear friends and the memory of the monumental and natural beauties of the vast Indian world had filled my memory with a stock of grandiose images. The truly precious result of this journey was the new terms of comparison that my spiritual experiences, in various religious milieus, provided for my efforts to interpret the various aspects of inner ascensions.»
Returning to Europe, he was invited by Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn to give two conferences on Yoga in Ascona, where so many remarkable conferencists, from 1935 onwards, would made important contributions, published in the Eranos Jahrbuch. There he met his friend Masson-Oursel, Carl G. Jung and Alice Bailey, who invited him to become the teacher of his students in Paris, and so he began to teach in Theosophical Society, the normal theosophy of Blavatsky and is followers, and the one from Alice A. Bailey and his presumed Tibetan master, in a difficult entente cordiale that I guess (as there is no records available) Jacques de Marquette achieved because he would be mostly approaching and teaching the levels of man and Universe and meditation through his inner experiences and the Indian darshanas.
After some time, around 1935, after Denmark and Norway, new world voyage departing from Alger, in a ship, 40 days, to Tahiti, and then New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia and then India, where he stayed some weeks in Cachemire, and the Little Thibet of Ladak, then Kangra, where he visited Nicholas Roerich center in Kulu, having dinner with Helena Roerich and his son Svetoslav. And then Simla where he guided meditations at Sardar Umrao Sing Shergill home. From there he went to Bombay and through ship to Peking, China, whre he stayed at the College of Chinese Studies, of Christian Missionaries, and then Japan, where he enjoyed very much the deep wisdom of professor D. T. Suzuki, considering him a "mahatma buddhist".
Returning to USA, he passes in Hawai where he could dialogue with the specialist of the Maoris, Dr. Buck, who confirmed him about the value of books on The lost continent of Lemuria, one published by W. Scott Elliot in 1904 and other by the rosicrucian Harvey Spencer Lewis, in 1931, both following and developing the ideas or imaginations of H. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine, and of Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, and the answer was: " It's all rubbish". It was already in California, on the villa of Encinatas, the center of Mazdaznan mouvement, of the Dr. Hanish just desincarnated and that he couldn't help, that he wrote in french From Beast to Angel, the three stages of humain apotheosis, 1937, a summary of the Indian visions and his ideas about the spiritual evolution of the souls and the possibility of the reincarnation being proved by the psychologic human evolution.
From there he went to Mexico to feel and meditate in the sacred places and ambiances of the Maya civilization, and he will draw an interesting clairvoyant caracterization of the Indian one:«In India and in Buddhist countries, in the background of the approaches to spiritual communion, that is to say transcendent, there is first of all a highly colored
and very rich and complex fringe, constituting like swirls of halos
radiating in all directions and all dimensions, both qualitatively and
spatially and temporally. It is a bit like the shimmer of Maya's scarf,
the great illusion whose elements Ishwara projects through his Trimurti and whose rippling and sinuous currents will constitute the fabric of
the experiences of the centers of consciousness in labor.» (In Confessions of a Contemporanean Mystic, ch. XII)
From 1939 to 1944 he was for the fifth time in USA, and was not accepted to work on the Secret Inteligence in II Great War, as his love for France was higher than the one for the United States of America. He read and study very much about comparative mysticism in New York libraries and in his encounters we gave much value to the time lived in the ashram of Crescenta, of 100 hectares, founded and directed by Swami Parananda, of the Ramakrishna Order, from 1925 to 1935, but then already in an autonomous way of governing itself. In 1941 he bought a good villa in Lagouna Beach, where he could see the sunset and meditate, a pratice he loved very much, and finished the course on Comparative Mysticism, given in 1944 in lessons at Lowel Institute of Boston and published it as Introduction to Comparative Mysticism, 1945, writen in english and now online in the Internet Archive, which was also translated by himself to french, with a third edition in 1967. The institution Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, who had already printed in India in 1964 his book Religion in the light of Sciences, published this one also, in 1965.
In the course and book he aproaches the mystical teachings of the main religions in five chapters: Indian Mysticism, its scope and methods. Buddhist Mysticism: a) Historical Development of its Metaphysics of Salvation, b) The Quest for Enlightenment. Greek and Hebrew Sources of the Christian Mystical Theology. The Mystical Apotheosis of Christianity. Islam trust in Unity. Love and Beauty in Sufi mystical tradition. And in the others chapters, the first and last, Nature and scope of Mysticism, and Conclusion: the Message of Mysticism, he shows their affinities and recognizes mostly two values: the experiences of other levels of life, and the study of methods «for developing the faculties which enabled men to rise above ordinary experience and attain a first
hand contact with the transcendent realities.»
He begins with the Indian Mysticism, because considers it the most ancient
and the one having adressed almost all questions before the others
traditions and having given to the Buddhism most of its mystical
theology, but its scope is so large that he would need others enlarged
books, in this one he is just giving an introduction to the Yoga school and
its metaphysics and pratices, that he approaches mostly through the Upanishads,
but also with quotations from Vaishnavas, Shivaism, Samkya, showing
their affinities with the others religions and entering
sometimes in more detailled approaches not so easily seen in westerners,
like the correspondences of the action of Saguna Brahman as Iswara, first in the manifested universe: Atman or Purushottama, the eternal soul of the world, Purusha, the spiritual principle, active and temporal, and Mulaprakriti, the eternal and essential principle of matter, and second in the real man or spirit: Jivatama, as the lower spiritual soul, immersed in karma and reincarnation, the Pratyagatma,
the middle spiritual soul, that is not completely emerged in the Karma
but as by its relation with the jivatman, and then the supreme soul, Paramatma «completely free, existing by it-self, real, eternal, and closely united to the Purushottama,
not encarcerated in the bounds of reincarnatio, neither suvbject in any
way to retrictives effects of Karma». Then he enters in the gunas, states of consciousness, etc.
A few times he may suggest some characterizations and correspondences
that may be are not so much as he read or thinks. For example,
describing the five types of Samadhi or Moksha according to some
schools, but not the of the Vaishnavas as they give very different meanings or
states of consciouness to them, he says:«The first, Salokya Moksha,
results from the intuitive urge to strive towards God without knowing
Him. This quest is prompted only by the intuition of the necessity of
Union. The second, Samipya Moksha, consists in drawing near to the Sacred One through constant prayer. In the third, Sarupya Moksha,
the devotee purified from all selfish bonds attains to the likeness of
God. Like the pure in heart of Christianity, he sees God. The fourth, Sayujya Moksha, leads to full access to the Divine and the last, Sarshtitwa Moksha,
is the permanent union with God after the last aspirations to worldly
life have been severed. It corresponds to the final mystical wedding of
Santa Teresa». It will be in the chapter The Mystical Apotheosis of Christianity that he will try to discover and prove in the Confessions of S. Teresa de Avila that she attained the higher levels of samadhi.
The course was given in sucessive lectures and with much sucess, and it was in one of them that Ananda Coomaraswamy come and at the end invited him to dinner at his house and they would have very deep conversations during six weeks about «the subtle realities of the laws of the ontogenetic currents at work in the levels without form and from which Albert Gleizes [french cubist], one of my friends who was also of him, awakened the intuition in his genial paintings», and he passed even some days with him and his wife D. Luisa at his house.
For many years he was a personalist, a disciple of Charles Renouvier and
Paul Janet, giving perennial onthologic value to the human individuality
or persona, and now with Ananda Coomaraswamy he began to accept more the Advaitic views about the One
Spirit in human beings and the probable inexistence of the typical cicle of reincarnations.
Before, for example, in 1931, the year of his first great voyage to the East and to India, when discussing with a Buddhist abbot in Bangkok he couldn't be convinced by him of the inexistence of the Jivatman, "a spiritual principle individualized".
He was astonished with the capacity of Ananda Commaraswamy to elevate himself through the inteligence of the symbols to the worlds of norms, and to get intuitions about the modalities of the real in the way to the manifestation, penetrating in the inefable realms and discovering the occult sources of the metaphysics and ethics, that he shared with such wisdom and sobriety, with the help of the vast perennial philosophy embraced by him as a genial polyglot, iconography gnostic and meditator. Coommaraswamy also suggested Marquette to go on sharing his knowledge in the world and not stay out of it like a sannyasin, as young people were so much in need of enlightened messages.
After
the sucess of the Lowell lectures in 1944 and of a tour of
conferences in USA and Canada universities, at invitation of the
Federation des Aliances Françaises and California University, where he
admired a great awakening of spiritual mouvements (500 religions in Los
Angeles in 1945), he created even a hebdomary symposium with great philosophers or sages in Los Angeles for some months, like the swedish professors Boodin and Stromberg, the romanian platonic mathematician prince Matila Ghika, the spanish Elian de Casafuerte and the protestant theologian Dr. Richard, but it was not enough for his aspirations, and he decided to return to Europe.
Having divorced in 1936 from his first wife, Joy Arden, he married
in 1946 Phyllis de Marquette (1902-1971), MD in Psychology from the University
of Michigan, who would be a good companion in the Panharmony or spiritual quest, travelling with him already in Abril of 1947, when he decidd to return to Europe ("to make her know the cultivated and idealists milieus of the old world"), by boat to Portugal (from where already in 1940 he left Europe under the nazi threat), and then Tanger, at this time a kind of Alexandria, where he bought a good house, entered well in the milieu and choosed to stay half year, the other half divided with Paris studies in Nationl Library and conferences. And so stayed some years, creating even an association Les entretiens culturels de Tanger, «to contribute the prepare the city for its role as a spiritual crucible.» And probably in Paris a mysterious World Spiritual Council, publishing with the patronage of André Lalande, Masson-Oursel and others, in 195o, a bilingual publication, Harmonie, but without any sucess, beyond the thousand of copies sent during two years to 1.200 public libraries in USA and France. There he formulated a pacifism based on a broad humanism, uniting psychology, new conceptions of science and the perennial wisdom of the mystics, but very few people adhered, and even a course "From Existentialism to Personalism" didn't generate waves of interest.
So he decided in 1951 to leave with his wife Phyllis and travel to India, to make a film and see gurudev Ranade that he had already met in the University of Allahbad in 1931. In fact, prof. Ranade having then read his book Introduction to comparative mysticism, given to him by Dr. Pandit de Kolhapour, invited Marquette to come.
A great traveller, Jacques de Marquette was in Tibet two times, and in India seven times in several ashrams, specially in the ones of Swami Shivananda of Rishikesh, Sri Aurobindo in Pondichery and Guru Ranade's, in Nimbal. In this one, in December 1954, he and his wife were initiated by Guru Ranade, and a part of his account was well included by Rajendra Chauan and Deepak V. Apte in the important work Tributes to and Remembrances of Gurudev R. D. Ranade, The Saint of Nimbal, book to which I have already dedicated an article on-line.
But it is in the Confessions of a Contemporanean Mystic (Confessions d'un Mystique contemporain, 1965), chapter XVII, that he will describe, in some pages, how it to come to happen, with what experiences, the intimate connection felt with gurudev Ranade and also the better understanding of the inner psychic and spiritual subtelities attained, even if he was already studying, meditating and writing about them for long. I translate and transcribe a substantial part of it at the end of this article.
But already in 1958 in his book De l'Âme a l'Esprit, the full title being From Soul to the Spirit or the ascension to the eternal life, by the Yogis of India, the Buddhists and the Judeo-Christians Traditions, dedicated
"in memory of A. K. Coomaraswamy, Paul Masson-Oursel, and R. D. Ranade,
in affectionate gratitude", he mentions Guru Ranade (p. 196), but discreetly:«Studying Hinduism since 1906, having done five stays in India,
attending many great ashrams (schools of spiritual initiation), and
having been acepted as disciple by one of the more famous Jnana gurus,
that sent me to give conferences to the groups of his disciples
disseminated in North of India, from the Gujerate to Bengal; on the
other hand, having finnished a complete cycle of philosophical studies
at the Sorbonne until the University
doctorate, and having directed many social and idealistic activities in
Europe and America, we can discern more and less clearly the way the
problems and the pratice of the spiritual life are transposed when we
pass from the West to the East, or vice-versa. Surely there is still
very much before we have penetrated to the bossom all the mysteries and
acquired all the masteries. Such a pretention would be more than
grotesque and would be enough to classify us on the ranks of the
shameless charlatans. But the proverb assures us that in the kingdom of
blinds, one-eyed are kings»
 |
| Photo received from Kiran Dabade and Rajendra Chaun, disciples of gurudev Ranade. |
Published in 1958,
already after his initiation and contact with gurudev Ranade, he describes the main conceptions or visions of the soul in the West, from the
Egyptians and Greeks to the french philosopher Charles Renouvier, and his equation of the creative
monad with the persona, hence the philosophical concept and mouvement of
Personalism with which Marquette identified himself, establishing a correspondence of the Western divine personalism with the Jivatman, the spiritual individualized principle in man of the East,
deepening well the metaphysics of the various bodies (upadhis), planes of the universe, and the four modes or levels of consciousness, based on traditional Indian texts, from the Samkya, Vedanta, Upanishads to the Vaishnavas Puranas.
Trying to investigate the personal and the impersonal, the persistence
or extinction, the mutable and the transcendent and imperturbable, he
inclines himself to an advaitic position about the One Spirit, but
still allowing or accepting a personnal immortality during the time of Manifestation.
In fact, during his last two decades and after his initiation Jacques de Marquette wrote very much about the Indian Tradition, and the subtle Man, Universe and God seen by Vedanta and the Sanatana Dharma and also by his own meditative and strong inner experiences, visual or cosmical. Already in 1951 L'Avenir de l'âme dans la Pensée Orientale, in-8º 46 pages, divided in two chapters. In the second chapter, The Personalism in face of he Hinduism, he describes based on the main shastras, as for example the Manusmriti, the vision of the Hindu cosmogony, from the Paramatman or Nirgunabrahman to the Sagunabrahman,
already with qualities, considering Him «the creator of the Universe
and being a manifesting trinity: Sat: being; Chit, conscience; Ananda,
happiness. He is the indestructible spirit to whom Prakriti is closely
embraced for all te duration of the univers. He is Atma, Nitriyami,
Amritha, The Self, The Internal Immortal Ruler. He is omnipresent,
bidding in all the elements and all beings, including the Devas»,
confirming that with a quotation of the Brihadaranyakopanish III, 7, 23: "He is
the Self, the Inner Imortal regent. What is other than him, perishes".
And then: «that He is the Ego self conscience universal,
established in the hearts of all beings and to whom is opposed the
not-self ephemerial. In its essence, he is identical with
Nirgunabrahman, but he manifests the qualities engendered by Prakriti.»
Then he enters in the study of Mulaprakriti and the three gunas of Prakriti,
explaning them as: «Tamas, principle of resistence and stability (from
which torpor and obscurity, usually considered as it properties, are
only effects); Rajas, the movement inherent to the matter; Sattva, the
rythm, equality of movement in time and is displacement, producing the
vibrations that are the base of all modalities of beings», and then
develops the relation between Iswara, Saguna Brahma with Maya and its creative will or Shakti, and the creation of worlds and yugas, the three forms of Iswara, the trimurti: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, with their shaktis. After he will describe the creation of particular beings, with the relation to the elements, from devas to humans, where the Jivatman has, as Ishwara, a triple nature: wisdom, Jnana, will, Ichaha and power of action, Kriya. And then shows the path of the awakening to the divine reality of himself, through the lokas, or planes of existence, the shariras, or vehicles, and the margas, or paths.
In the antepenultimate paragraph he shares one of his understandings of
Hinduism:«the end of the evolution seems to be a progressive
deification of the Person, with the transference of his conscience to
more subtle and universal planes, where the conscience is less and less
restricted by the submission to the limitations of space, time and
attributes. Yoga furnishes the techniques of this deification.»
He publishes in 1954 Les septs Raisons du Vegetarianisme (Hygiene, Economie et Morale de l'Alimentation). And in 1956 Des Hounzas aux Yogis, De la Santé du corps à celle de l'Esprit, and refounded in1966, as Des Hounzas aux Yogis. Du régime des centenaires à celui des grands initiés or, translated, From the Hounzas to the Yoghis. From the diet of the centenariam persons to the one of the great initiates, where he hints at the importance of lifestyle and diet for attaining happiness, based in the Hounzas people, living at 1500-2,500 m in the Himalaias, and others findings.
Let us only add that the members of the Panharmonie Association were invited to perform "short meditations in the morning, mid-day and evening, before meals, during which they were united by thought to the union of our whole group with the sacred essence of the Universe. They thus prepare themselves to become effective channels, by their consecration, for the transmission to the world of Peace and Light from the Higher."
His Association Internationale Panharmonie embodied truly both an ideal and methods based on naturism, humanism, personalism and yoga, and organized biweekly banquets and meetings, with conferences and meditations (guided by him), and edited works and a valuable monthly magazine of universal spirituality Harmonie (where colaborated regularly the comparative philosopher, orientalist and friend Paul Masson-Oursel), since for Jacques de Marquette the appreciation of the intellectual and spiritual heritage of Mankind was the surest basis of a universal peace.
He briefly explained it in this way: "Panharmony is not only an ideal of life in conformity with the laws of the Universe. It is also a program for the realization of this ideal in the life of individuals and societies, over and above the human division into nations, races and religions (...) Since the pursuit of happiness is the primary end of human activity, it is important to understand well the fundamental nature of this pursuit, and to avoid confusing happiness with pleasure». And considering that greater or lesser happiness depends on the development of our qualities, Jacques de Marquette, in his Panharmonie method, association and in the periodical Harmonie, recommended the systematic elimination of what weakens and degrades us and, at the same time, the cultivation of our highest qualities, through "the development of all the causes of health and physical, intellectual and spiritual progress".
He lived until August 22, 1968, eighty very deep, harmonious and dynamic years.
From his book From the Hounzas to the Yogis, 1956, where he confesses some biographical aspects, such as having been in India already seven times, four more prolongedly, let us note how he devaluates Hatha Yoga, the merely physical practices of postures, when they are not inserted in a spiritual quest, which is normally that of Ashtanga Yoga, the yoga or union of the eight limbs or Raja Yoga. And how he values the Bhakta Yogis who follow the path of devotion and adoration, and "live almost entire days engrossed in ardent love for the object of their devotion", generally one of the aspects of Vishnu, and also the Raja Yogis, who do "strong asceticism to develop their will and increase their dominion over the body and the passions that rest on it" so as to control "materialistic thoughts, the greatest obstacles to the manifestation of the divine Presence in our life, to the activation of the 'Kingdom of Heaven' which is within us, materialist thoughts which make us forget our divine filiation".
It is this struggle that those who practise meditation must be more aware and sages, in order that by persisting on the Path over days and years, they can interiorise or integrate themselves sufficiently to begin to feel more the Spirit, the Atman, that is in them, individualized or not, or to see its Light, or feel its happiness and love, Ananda, or to have acess to the subtle and higher levels of consciousness and life, certainly deserving it from a just, wise, loving, courageous or panharmonious life...
So let us strive to live more in harmony with Pan, the Whole, or all the three levels explained by him as material and economical, intelectual and cultural, and spiritual and divine, or in other words, more in Panharmony, in a way that we can escape or transcend the egoistical limitations and the oppressive social manipulations of the media and corporations, and attain and commune creatively, fraternaly and holistically the anima mundi or the unified energy field of information, or Mahat, or the Unity of the Spirit, for the good of All and in tune with the Divine source.
Annexes from the book Confessions of a Contemporanean Mystic, 1965:
It is in chapter XVII, Ascension towards the Guru, of his autobiography Confessions that Jacques de Marquette relates his initiation as disciple of gurudeo Ranade, happening in his fifth travel to India, where he arrived in a boat from Gibraltar to Bombay in three weeks, done with the objective of preparing a movie about Hinduism and based in religious life of the four castes and their public celebrations (a schema that would be considered after unrealist), to which it was added an encounter with Ranade, because having anounced his project to the Dr. Pandit of Kolhapour and sending him an specimen of his Introduction to Comparative Mysticism, he gave it to his guru, Ranade, who apreciated so much that told Dr. Pandit that he would accept Marquette as his disciple, and then he tell us: «I had met him already in 1930 at the Allahbad University, where he made me the honors of his teaching position, asking me to give a course to his students. And now he invited me to stay in his ashram of Nimbal.» Dr. Pundit, in his last letter before Marquette entered the ship, told him, in the so deep and proverbial Indian hospitality, that some disciples of gurudji Ranade would be in Bombay waiting and taking him on charge.
The chapter XVII, Ascent to the Guru, has fourteen pages, and in the subchapters 1, 2, 3, he speaks about the changes he noticed: «The first impression when crossing Bombay from the port to Malbar Hill is a profound westernization. Already in my first visit in 1929 and in the third in 1935 there was a big jump in the general aspect of people». Then describes the family Karsendas, who welcomed and hosted him so nicely for three days. After it is the ashram Nimbal, the reception by the Guru, the schedules, ambiance and story of Nimbal and then his initiation and experiences. From all that is contained in this chapter XVII, I shall transcribe some parts, under the names of their subchapters:
Subchapter 5. The approach of the guru:
«After my visit to his university in Allahabad in 1931, I thought I knew him. But when I arrived in Nimbal it was not the same man I had met before. I had an impression as extraordinary as it was contradictory. On the one hand, there was an absence of human presence in this smiling personality affable and emaciated. His benevolent interest comes from far away, from 'another world', 'beyond the mysterious and the inexplicable'. A bit like those yogis in Alipé in 1929, who seemed empty of content, consumed by an all-burning inner flame. Here, instead of an incendiary blaze, it was a soft penetrating light, but harmonious and serene, which constituted a kind of telescope through which the accomplished sage put himself within our reach. And this light, enveloping the sort of bridge emanating from the aspatial and timeless spheres that he projected towards us, was like a halo formed by the metamorphosis and transubstantiation of a series of worlds of values synthetising the varied summits of human experience.»
Subchapter 8. Bhadjans (where he describes his clairvoyance, from his subconscious associated memories, when participating in the Nimbal religious songs:
(...) the main factor is the spirituality of the atmosphere. It is very pure, very bare and above all gives a great impression of rich competence. She reminds me, mutatis mutandis, of the friendly banquets of engineers (...) where each of the participants is someone, a leader accustomed to solving problems and obtaining efficient realizations. That is the adequate adjective. We do not feel the sweet refined emotivity of the tomb of Ramakrishna at Belour Math, nor the powerful and penetrating tension of the atmosphere of the Tapasyas. It seems that each of the Orants of the Bhadjan is like a soft point of emergence of mental light tending towards a slightly golden and luminous white, through clarifications of the various hues of the color spectrum. The chapel and its audience are somewhat reminiscent of a large basket containing a crowd of multicolored children's balloons in bright but very light colors, or like an agglomeration of very distended and almost colorless luminous soap bubbles, nevertheless forming a fairly homogeneous whole although each bubble was distinct in size and iridescent coloring. It was at the same time very pleasant, beautiful, moving in its simplicity and absence of any staging, of any spectacular effort, sometimes so apparent elsewhere, but also of calm and competent plenitude.»
Subchapter 10. Nocturnal meditation:
A deep silence pervades the warm obscurity of this meditation room (...) The whole gives the impression of a deep, fundamental, essential peace, in these quiet familiar sounds that have not changed for thousands of years. An atmosphere eminently favourable to meditation. This one is excellent. The successive stages of releasing from psychological automatisms are overcome with the minimum of resistance. If I were not afraid of being a victim of the imagination, I would say that just as the presence of a large number of intellectuals at work in the large hall of the National Library makes reflection much easier, so meditation in the midst of a group of Jnani Yogis of the highest quality alleviates and in a certain way erases the rigidity of psychic fossilisation and its obstacles to ascesis and other transformations of the states which it calls for.»
Subchapter 13. The Master speaks:
«After settling down on his mat, the Master spoke. The initiation that day had a special significance: it was the long-awaited fulfilment of a prediction made by his own initiator and guru.
... Nearly 50 years ago, the guru admitted him to his ashram, when he was still a thin, slender young man, barely 20 years old and looking even younger. His main disciple asked him why he accepted this slip of a boy, this little weakling. The master replied that, "despite appearances, the young Ranade was a very rich and brilliant soul, destined for a luminous future and that, what's more, he would be the instrument for transmitting the ashram's doctrine to the West". Since then, decades have passed, bringing many visitors from the West, none of whom had the necessary aptitude for admission. Last year still an American philosopher had spent several months in the ashram without getting beyond the doctrinal interest; but this time, it was a question of an American. But this time, it was a disciple [Jacques de Marquette] who, while possessing
the intellectual baggage necessary for the exposition of the doctrine,
had a sufficient spiritual intuition to understand it and attain the
levels or planes of the essential harmonizations. I was not a little surprised!»
Subchapter 15. Initiation to What?:
« (...) However, I expected to receive didactic teachings from the Guru or an advanced disciple. But like Sister Anne, I waited in vain. My instruction took a very unexpected form. The Guru asked me to give a lecture on immortality to an assembly of disciples in a few days. A request from him was an order. There was only to bow, with a certain surprise of the rest, because alas I was too aware of the thinness of my means. But while preparing my presentation, I realized that my ideas changed direction. With an exquisite delicacy and probably in view of my white hair and the fact that I had given courses in religious philosophy in several great universities in Europe and America, Guruji did not want to subject me to the small humiliation of treating me as an ordinary disciple, respectfully and traditionally seated at the feet of the Guru. I have heard him say to other disciples: "but, he is a teacher".
So instead of ordinary word-to-mouth teaching, he would telepathically suggest me broadenings and elevations of viewpoints as I reflected on the themes he proposed to me. I was naturally very moved by so much delicacy and generous consideration. My first lesson given in the chapel of the ashram, at the end of the afternoon, was marked by one of the rare mystical-spiritual experiences that I would experience during my fifth stay in India. All my fellow students were seated around the chapel. The Guru had placed me near him and after the pronunciation of some mantrams, he gave me the word.»
Subchapter 16. Affabulation:
«The hour was singularly solemn for me. I was able to realize the high value of the Yogis around me and I had immense respect for Gurudev. But abandoning myself to my intimidation would have been a lack of respect and I had absolutely no right. So I began my presentation with a double feeling of very respectful gratitude and of my intimate relationship with the high spiritual values of the collected, attentive and serene men who listened to me.
It was once again a question of the so important problem of the elaboration of expressive forms which are not too inadequate to the description of the relations between the ontogenetic processes at work in the preparation of the vague and formless intuitions, on whose sub-planes where the cosmic laws are in the way of focalization, and of their concentration in the passage from their cosmic virtuality or potentiality to the efective action on a particular being; and the increasingly clear awareness by this being of this action and its modalities in what constitutes an intuition sufficiently formulated to be perceptible and expressible explicitly.
Naturally the task was doubly arduous because of the nature of the subject and because it was not only being presented in a foreign language, but also because I was speaking to a mixed audience, some of whom didn't understand English very well; so I tried to load each sentence with as many clear, factual, mental representations of the processes described as possible to facilitate telepathic reception. Naturally, this led to a kind of intense polarisation of my conscious processes on the most subtle and universal aspects of the Mahar loka, the plane of universal laws at the level of cosmic consciousness not yet engaged in what might be called the formal, bound by the limitations of the world of forms.»
He describes then a kind out of the body experience, in an ascensional mouvement that perturbated him, but he could regain control and advance with the conference. And he finishes the chapter XVII, saying «The guru sent me to give courses to different groups of disciples in the region an even to Bombay, as I was returning in that town to begin the activity of collecting the scenes needed to my films».
It will be in the next chapter XVIII, called Theory and Pratice, that he explains how his ideas about India and of needed scenes on the four castes and Hinduism were utterly inadequated, as the disciples in the ashram and some of the twenty valuable persons recommended by gurudev would given other visions or understandings, which he confirmed in two great tours of India, of thousands of kilometers, where he would meet acharya Vinobaji, the Sankaracharya of Puri, mahatma Gandhi, the royal fammily and court of Sikkim, through Appa Sahib Pant, etc. He observed in some ashrams and places, with the passage of 20 years, less intensity of faith and religion due to the intensification of the western modernization and mentality.
As his films exposed in four sessions in the famous salle Pleyel in Paris, in a bad epoch of the year, 6 to 12 January and at elections moment (and an investigation about the present localization of these films would be important), were a economic faillure, he prepared some conferences to show the films in a tournée, and from that preparations come some books, as he explains in the beginning of the chapter XIX called After India, Israel, where we find some interesting reflexions about India and his gurus: «My new tour in India and the need to review very attentively the fundamentals data of Hinduism in order to give some expositions as sucint as possible under the light of the new ideas from Coomaraswamy and the Ashram [of Ranade], stimulated my productivity? Anyway «I produced one following the other five works in less than five years [1955-1961]», beginning with the two versions From the Hounzas to the Yogis, and then he add another valuable reference: «In France, there was a lack of small works giving a safe and brief introduction to Hindu doctrines. I therefore wrote a summary of Hinduism [Introduction to Hinduism] which filled this gap. Without categorically exposing the teachings of Buddhism and of the High Advaitists on the most austere aspect of reincarnation, I nevertheless indicated very quickly the new views to which I had arrived on this so important point. Almost simultaneously I published: the French translation of a short work by my dear Guru The sources of spirituality in Gandhi's work. He had known the Mahatma intimately and used his insights in the philosophical field, and the publication of his study on the spiritual formation of the noblest leader of peoples of our epoch, is both an interesting source on the spiritual atmosphere of India and the fulfilment of a pious duty to the great sage of Allahabad.» It is interesting to remark the expression "pious duty" and we can look it as one reference to a certain fulfillment of the idea that Marquette would be the transmitter to the West of Ranade teachings, and also a piou reverence to gurudev and his departure from the physical life in 6 June of 1957.
Then he mentions the next book From Soul to Spirit, for which were important the dialogues with Ananda Coomaraswamy, and «the aquisitions of the psychology, physics and metaphysics of the West» trying to clarify the genesis of the feeling of individuality, and discovering in the philosopher Maimonides almost the same views. I made already some transcritions of it here.
The next book, the forth, was Panharmonie, where he departed from the Hindus and Buddhist cosmo-conceptions, «as it was difficult to ask the means of accepting so exotiques bases to the Western people», and admited that modern discoveries of Science made it approach or confirm Religion only if this one would loose "the historical-antrophologic baggage" and accept, following Spinoza path, «its aspect of eternity, impersonality, amorphism of the essences and universal laws"».
This book was indeed very challenging as he questioned the objectivity of spiritual experiences and even of his former ones, as he admited that the images of the celestial or spiritual visions of the inspired mystics «could be created by their imaginations at the moment, or after, their extasis, when consciousness crosses the stores of memory acessories and that is very difficult to take some information that is not a confirmation of what he believes».
Anyway he didn't fall in the relativism of the subjective imagination, as he acknowledges «at the bottom that is also the pinnacle of consciousness, the assurance that is grafted on, or rooted or projected in being by a Transcendence which, by putting on the restrictions of being, confers on the essence of it a value and a power of infinite rectitude justifying in an absolute way, the importance and authenticity of moral values.»
And in the next paragraph, alluding towards the dwaita bhaktas, probably the most prevalent in the world religions and in India, at least in the normal people not attaining the Advaitic realizations, Marquette explains or condescends: «it is absolutely not a question of asking the pious worshipers of personal Gods adorned with the complete perfection of all the values evolved on earth, to renounce the worship of their beautiful gods, their good gods, their just and generous gods, to devote himself almost exclusively to the adoration of what is not even a hidden and unknown God; but only a Transcendence, superior even to any quality whatsoever. This is indeed the domain where any discussion, as any definition is Verba flatus vocis», or made of words which are only a breath of the voice, as the nominalists philosphers wanted.
And so he thinks the most important is to develop new psychological faculties that will contribute to form «a impersonal, timeless and transconscious that could attain the eternity of the timeless Spirit, and it is our highest duty towards the essence of the Universe, organize our existence in order to use all the means made disponible to us by life to create the maximum of immortality elements», and in this way we will be faithful to Eastern sublimest soarings and to the injunctions of the God of Israel, of Jesus and of Islam.
So after the failure, and as the objective of the films about India was to make light «on the intense devotion that is shown through the religious pratices of all religions and to make sensible the existence of a spiritual faculty in human nature», he decided to go to Israel, after the war of 1957, «to increase the code of references that he could use at the service of the extension of an really universal Eucumenism», asking then, may be a bit unexpectely: «Why to attach less importance to the compreenhsion of the Israelis, living between us, than to the Hindus, from which we are separated by half of the world?»
And so he decided to film and live there sometime, admiring specially the kibbutz and their aspirations or ambitions, which he develops in the penultimate chapter, From Marxism to Spirit, believing they were advancing to a higher spiritual civilization. In the last chapter he gives also very much value to the national and colective sense attained by some nations and that himself experienced. The soft inner realizations of India seems a bit already on the past for Jacques de Marquete an adventurer of the eucumenic and utopian new civilization that he felt and imagined springing from the kibbutzs either religious either atheists of Israel, and so the dream of [french] socialist Idealistics of 1848 of the City of the Future was being realized through their solidarity and «refusing to bow down to the materialist consequences of the capitalist concentration to dream of a society full fraternal», seing that «as a promise of the blossoming of the prophetic idealism of Israel into a fraternalism on a planetary scale». He will extrapolate for other strong nationalists or internationalists ambiances or egregoras that he felt, from the cannibals in the Hebrides, to the Commonwealth Empire (felt in New Zealand, 1936) and the Yamato or Japanese one, which he considered valuable emotionaly galvanized elevations of the humans consciences reaching a communion with a certain timeless Transcendence, that he will call also the panpsychism of the Cosmos, and so he could say: «now I have the impression that the qualities of certain higher values of humains are exceeded by the value almost mystic of that colective sentiment so subtle and alive that doesn't seem to be the oucome of the acumulation of values coming from individual perceptions».
So through his imaginaive-intuitive sensibility he saw emerging from the creative energies converging to a better and loving society, the ascending formation of a subtle collective conscience «approaching the level of the cosmic norms from which proceeds the cathegoric imperative of Kant, from which resulted a kind of exaltation of transubstantiation of these forms emanating from the cooperation terrestrial and humain of their collectivity.»
From that he imagines or prophesies that «We would be observing in the laic Israel, in a atmosphere embraced by elans towards the realization of the ideal human and social, the apotheosis of the human consciousness, coronation of the evolution of the natura naturata [Spinoza classical terms] reaching the subconsciente but creative communion with the norms immutable and timeless of the natura naturante, ascending until the subtle planes where the phases most etherical of the consciousness are tangents to the timelesseness of the Spirit.»
The last chapter of this last book of Jacques de Marquette, published when he was already 77 years old, is a testament, called Conclusions, where he shares his understanding of what would give the human being the needed elements of immortality, dividing the supranatural experiences, or parapsychological, in two categories: the ones with forms, colors, sounds, smells, that he considers less elevated than the ones of only sensations or sentiments of transcendental presences. He divides this second category in perceptions around the junction of a point in space and an instant in time; the diffused presences into which a person feels included or absorbed; and last «the perception of a benediction, of a grace and one message more and less global or timeless, that is to say, without "history".»
What are preconditions that provoke or facilitate the experiences, or negatively the factors that should be avoided on the path of ascension: no alcohol; vegetarianism; sexual control or even bramacharya; no drugs; ascension through the experience main levels (or chakras, but he doesn't use the term), such as under the wrist on the younger people, the cardiac, the throat and then the higher mental centers from the base of the crane to the summit; soul hygiene, not allowing negative energies to enter; prophylaxis of the subconscious introducing good energies; auspicious times, as from 3.00 to 10.00, from new moon to full moon, 21 December to 23 June; and two lines of spiritual contact: striving ascending humain efforts, by prayer and yoga breathing pratices, and descending graces, or "Holy Spirit touches", coming from higher levels of conscience and Cosmos.
He finnishes his message of his life experiences, saying that although having «not accepted the poetics ilusions of beautiful stories that would transform my inner experiences in encounters with traditional Divine messages» he could still feel the magnificience transcendence and unity of the Universe and its life and so he considers, a bit in a buddhist frame, that the developed capacities to hold conscious communions with the infinite flux of the Cosmos show that the Theatrum Mundi «is a Temple of a unimaginable majesty in the Cosmic Oneness of the Transcendence whose accessories, with the great galactics ensembles and the infinitudes of their multitudes, rejoin the "fulness of the Void", the Sunyata of the Buddhic Nirvana».
Let us salute the soul or spiritual personality of Jacques de Marquette, as well of his Gurudev Ranade, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Paul Masson
Oursel and his other friends. May they be brightly in the spiritual realms and bless and guide us!
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