Reformed
Buddhism, Vietnamese Spiritism. New Religion in Eurasia .
Translated from the original French
by Pham-Xuan-Thai.
Being an
eminent polyglot, an indefatigable inquirer in the world of the Spirit and
spirits, novelist, historian, journalist and teacher, Gabriel was a curious man
and himself a curiosity.A Great soul, by his overflowing intellectual
generosity, he was an ardent polemicist.
He was
curious indeed, but without dilettantism: when he thought to have discovered a
spiritual beauty, a philosophical or religious truth, he liked to make it known
and shared by others at once.He would not hesitate to fight, always with
passion,
against those, who, in his eyes, wanted to put the light under a
bushel.It is in the way that he discovered Caodaism, and also in the way that
he fought to his last breath, praying for his illumination.Gabriel Gobron, a
great intellect, was above all a great heart.
After a
period of research, study and discovery beginning in 1930, Gabriel Gobron
became a convinced propagator, a well informed, and before long officially
accredited initiator of Caodaism in the West and more particularly in France
Lectures,
articles and observations succeeded one another, and with the remaining
unpublished texts, they form a copious collection of which the present
posthumous book is one of the main parts.
Thus, the
present work constitutes an authentic message from the Beyond.It was a
consoling task to us to work out this text.
“A Message
from Heaven” this posthumous work, we are sure, will be particularly honored by
the numerous spiritist friends of the author who has done so much, by his pen,
speech and experimentation, for Spiritism.
His printed
works number ten volumes and hundred articles or published essays everywhere,
in the world, in the languages which he spoke and wrote besides French:
English, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.
Gabriel
Gobron, being the author of several novels, had written a great many rustic pages
about the life of the workers in country and city.
Truly,
Gabriel Gobron was a delicate, sensitive, even tender soul, who very often hid
himself voluntarily behind this rude aspect in the manner of Leon Bloy.
This secret
sensibility of the heart and the soul had more than once inspired pages of
remarkable delicacy and finesse.
Delicate and
modest tenderness, reaction of the romantic poet who would not deny the little
blue flower of popular romance or the archaic complaints of a folklore which he
loved.
Having
exhausted himself writing big books inspired by the petty miseries of daily
bourgeois life, like Henri Heine, he could write little songs from a wealth of
painful experience.
It is
certain that Gabriel Gobron, throughout his lifetime, was a rebel, a
non-conformist, an “outsider”, like Théo Varlet and Macolm Mac-Laren, the poets
whom he liked and had made acquaintance with at the Mercure Universel.Along
with and in his scholastic, historic and journalistic works, we find irritated,
nervous and bitter pagers to the point of crying out and invective.They have
been called “quibbling and rancor”, but the truth is that: all Gabriel Gobron’s
works imbued with truth and suffering life, belong to the literary class which
is so rightly named Dolorism of which Julien Teppe is the founder.
The style
and the rhythm of the sentences of the writer, Gabriel Gobron, adapt themselves
spontaneously to the subject treated.
The style
and the form adapt themselves to the sentiments to such a point as to appear unequal
and different, and the general impression given is that no professional
machinery has presided over the composition of this work, which grew up freely
and courageously, like nature in its liberty, with thick copses and fine
glades.
Gabriel
Gobron seems to be aided in the completion of his work by one of those
sorceresses painted by Breghel-le-Jeune, who mix and blend the best with the
worst, the most diverse and repulsive ingredients.The pot boils, the lid is
lifted, and Gabriel Gobron, the writer, is not satisfied with veracity of the
facts simply recounted: he must pose in the most direct terms, he delights in
the densest materials as much by the style adopted as by the vocabulary
employed.
I considered
“Notre Dame Des Neiges”to be a great philosophical document in which a man
expresses himself without constraint, even esthetically, and without any trace
of social hypocrisy.Whether it pleases or not, the fact is: the man frees
himself by writing, and the present case, it not only concerns an individual
deliberation, but numerous heredities which, tired of being repelled or
sublimated, express themselves.
Thus, the
‘beings” which exist in man, free themselves from constraints, injustices
imposed by life: social, individual, collective, economic injustices, etc … And
at bottom, in the very depths, but real, animated, tenacious and captivating,
the mystic torture of the soul which needs God and justice, cries out: “Blessed
are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled”.
The
“Messages” received by certain attentive and receptive mediums, prove that
Gabriel Gobron is now among those who are satisfied.
The social
and economic injustices, the oppressions of the rich against the poor, and the
wrongs of one and the other, are rudely handled in the various works of Gabriel
Gobron among others, in “Les Couarrails de Pont-a`-Mousson” published by
Berger-Levrault and in “Barbandouille” Mercure Universel and in “Tournemol”, a
novel about a bad professor.
In these
works, Gabriel Gobron does not proceed by allusion; his style is direct, loaded
with invective.He insists rigorously on the facts that he has exposed, but he
also speaks frankly about the reforms and transformations of present society,
of which he anticipates the corruption and degeneration to mediocrity.
Let me cite
anew the preface of the study of 1938, which exposes the “case” of Gabriel
Gobron.
It is the
“case”, because Gabriel Gobron is a gentle lamb, who endeavors in vain to
become enraged, whence the attitude of vituperation, which makes us think of
(as I have mentioned above) Léon Bloy and of the Old Testament prophets.
Gabriel
Gobron is a mild man and his dreams are magnificent:
“And we were
dreaming, since our primary school days, to learn how to teach the little
people of the world, to create a “Cosmis Home” by the side of the “House of
God”!Do not make teaching an immediate, utilitarian business and materialistic
matter, but make education bio-cosmic to show the students that we are as much
the glorious sons of the Universe as the obscure children of the hamlets!Reveal
the divine that slumbers in us, the subconscious by which we are in relation
with the most improbable and mysterious entities and occult faculties, and
which assures the triumph of the Spirit over animality, over the brute that
growls within us!
Reveal the
divine that slumbers within us, and seek again for God as much as God seeks us,
then it will be possible to envisage the fusion of the“House of God” and the
"Cosmic Home” into an immense Fraternal Temple
We are still
far from this harmony of the mystic; we are still far from it as much through
the fault and incomprehension of some, the dogmatics, as of others, the
rationalists.The “House of God” and the “Cosmic Home” will still be opposed to
each other for a long time to come.They are, however, the fraternal and
permanent expression of the “ad Deum” which is in the heart of all human
beings, living tabernacles of the divine.
The book of
Gabriel Gobron is crammed with just, interesting, and elevated ideas on
education to be given, on liberty to be respected, and on spirituality, etc
…His literary form is then more serene, sober and harmonious; it is an immense
sheet of water, limpid and fresh before the dam and torrential rapids and the
overflowing of the crude polemic style.
We must
defend “Jean Peuple”, we must protect the exploited from exploitation, but we
must not let “Jean Peuple” think that he is a little saint, for as soon as a
“Jean Peuple” happens to be on the other side … we quickly find that power
corrupts.
Therefore,
while he defends him, at the same time Gabriel Gobron exposes the manias, vices
and misunderstandings of this good “Jean Peuple”.
In addition,
it is too bad for the too fond ears, for which the “ostendite testes” of Saint
Bernard must be translated into “Be Men” for fear of a literal translation.
Gabriel
Gobron writes, “Vanquish animality, conquer the brute that growls in us”, and
by his style, he, the new Doctor Jekyll, lets Mr. Hyde whom all of us bear in
us, speak freely.However, as in Stevenson novel, it happens that Mr. Hyde
disengages himself from the wise Doctor Jekyll.We may then ask ourselves
whether Gabriel Gobron would not have too fixed a tendency to separate forcibly
matter from spirit.The Brute is what it is, useful and capable of perfection
destined to transmute itself, to evolve and elevate itself from heavy planes to
the ethereal.It is thus for example, that he speaks rudely of sexuality and
even of sensuality, initiated in the secrets of Stanislas of Guaita.Gabriel
Gobron knows well that the human center of “G” of the sacred Pentagram bears
precisely on him, all the possibilities of evolution, and of transformation on
all planes: cosmic, carnal, mystic and divine.By the letter “G”, matter exalts
and purifies itself toward the spirit, the spirit incarnated in matter.The
whole forms one.
Beside their
literary and philosophical merits, the works of Gabriel Gobron constitute and
contain some psychological documents.They have been the expression of social
retrogressions of several generations.This was true of some books of our
author.
Injustices
borne, sincere and pure dreams unrealized, atavistic restraints, all the
accumulated hereditary traits, these are what the author relates to us, for the
author is urged by a thousand demon-inspirers, who blow us the best and the
worst in the long genealogy, which Gabriel Gobron gives us.
He sometimes
touches grandeur while his simplicity shows what it is and what he is.But soon
Mr. Hyde returns and here is our author, lost in massive details, which however
may have their own significance and reasons for existence.
The reader,
tasting the paragraphs of a very good observation (where harmonized sensibility
dominates the style and simplifies it), tells to himself that the dispersion,
the loss of self-control, the ebullience of the atavistic rancors really
constitute, with “the pride of being what he is”, the psychological document,
about which I have spoken; and the author is the actor at the same time, though
without acting or posing in the “Human Comedy”.
This must be
said because in the present posthumous work, the “History and Philosophy of
Caodaism”, the psychological case is surpassed: the present work is a metapsychic
testimony.
These are no
more the deceased ancestors of Gabriel Gobron expressing themselves through him
as a literary medium, but rather Gabriel Gobron himself, the Brother Gago from
the Eternal Orient, who gives us his message.The present book is a precious
testimony and, may we venture to say, a fundamental book, the spiritual
repercussions of which will be considerable.
The word
Caodaism derives from Cao-Đài, the literal translation of which corresponds to:
“Supreme Palace
The new
religion (its essential message dates from 1926) is rooted in the most tried
tradition of Buddhism, and its purest revelations.
Caodaism is,
up to a certain point, comparable to what Protestantism had been in its origin,
compared to Catholicism.For the rest, even this possibility of comparison is
already outweighed in the beneficent sense, that is to say, in the sense of
good understanding.Permitting the vision in a more or less remote future, the
union of the Christian Churches in a total Catholic Unity.
What
characterizes Caodaism it its spirit of synthesis.That is why its conciliating
role can render a great service to religions peace and thence quite simply to
peace.
There is no
sectarianism in Caodaism, and also instead of tending toward the opposition of
religions among themselves, this new religion constitutes and will constitute
more and more a permanent call to good will among the various creeds:
religious, mystic, philosophical, or esoteric.
Understanding
among all spiritual forces will give the world the best harmony at all levels.
Caodaism, as
we shall see, is a religious synthesis which, in spirit and in Truth, tends to
harmonize all human beings with the laws of the Cosmic Order.
In order to
penetrate the rites of this new, and at the same time, very old religion, it
suffices to be spiritually free, intellectually sincere, cordially kind and
physically at the service of Good.
The
spiritual freedom required is that which relieves the being from dogmatically
imposed restraints and mental frauds due to the undemonstrated “a priori”, and
that in the practice of the Universal Good.
We can say
and we shall see it in following the present book, that Caodaism, beside the
inspired part, possesses in itself, aside from the “Message”, a whole set of
propositions, the distinctness and precision of which are a charm to the Reason
as well as an evidence for the Intelligence.Whether these reasonable
propositions be first of all “messaged” or “inspired”, the effect is still that
of a mystic progression in the attractive radiance of the Doctrine which tends
with all its divine and human force to fundamental Truth, to integral Beauty in
the practice of the Universal Good.
What will
surprise certain readers is that Caodaism arises from contemporary revelation,
and that this revelation is attained though the course of Spiritism.
We should
rather surprise the conformists who love their readymade ideas, well-ordered
classifications, and relationships as logical as they are artificial, if we
would reveal the “spiritist sources” of the principal, great human movements
from Joan of Arc to Caodaism.
The
“spiritist” character of the military genius of Joan of Arc was demonstrated by
the work of Lieutenant Colonel, Collet, who published at Nancy, 1920, a “Military Life of Joan of Arc”, with technical
precision and rational statement, for he is competent to judge concerning
inspiration through the luminous analysis of the theories of Spiritism of
Gabriel Delanne, Brierre de Boismont, Léon Denis and some others.
That which
inspired Joan of Arc also inspired in the Occident one of the greatest poetic,
literary, political, esthetic and religious movements which we put under the
general term: Romanticism.
In fact,
Ossianism, as we know, is one of the roots of European Romanticism.It was
engendered by the work of a medium, James Macpherson.It is a case of the
so-called “spiritist medium prior to literature”, James Macpherson, who
produced in English prose the bardic messages, originally expressed in the
Gaelic language by the poet King Ossian, a bard of the 3rd century.
James
Macpherson has been accused of literary fraud, because, naturally he had
employed the “Gaelic poems” in every document.These message-poems were dictated
to him by the spirit of Ossian in the very language of the medium-writer, but
in a style and rhythm so original that they forced the enthusiastic admiration
of most of the great writers of his age and the following Turgot, Diderot
contributed to making these poems known to Europe; and Mme de Stael considered
Ossian as the “Homer of the North”.Chateaubriand did not withhold his
admiration even after the accusation of literary fraud.We have these messages
(1760-1763) in a French translation by P.Christian (Lavigne, publisher, Paris
1842).
P. Christian
is the author of the famous, basic “History of Magic”.
The messages
of Ossian were dictated (or inspired, as we like to say) to James Macpherson
during a period of three years (1760-1763): Fingal, in six songs; Comola, a
dramatic poem, the war of Inistoma, the Deliverance of Carrictura, Cathon,
Darthula, war of Temora, etc . . . on the whole, about a score of poems of
various lengths.
These poems
lost their prestige in the eyes of the public when they were attributed to
literary fraud.We have reason to believe that Shakespeare, Walter Scott and
some others were, like James Macpherson and Victor Hugo, the inspired mediums
of Romanticism.They transmitted the messages as James Macpherson transmitted
from Ossian.
It would be
interesting to publish some day “the Spiritual Origins of Romanticism” and
Gabriel Gobron brings us to this subject an inspiring and documented source of
incontestable originality and authenticity.
What is
curious to us is that: it was P.Christian, a man initiated into the occult, and
a medium himself, who translates into French the works of Ossian, the 3rd
century bard, the Gaelic poems “received” by James Macpherson.P. Christian
closes his introduction with these lines, regarding these poems which
“maintain” here and there a comparison with those of Homer, and often lean
toward Hebraic poetry which has been so much praised, and perhaps so poorly
understood”.
The proofs
of the spiritist origin of Caodaism will be easier to demonstrate than that of
Ossianism; and it is also to render homage to, and by this means to communicate
with the Hereafter, that the present work was published, recast, clarified, and
completed.
Spiritism
led Gabriel Gobron toward Caodaism, as the latter has been revealed by
Spiritism.
Caodaism is
a true, reformed Buddhism, it is also a particular form of Spiritism: the
Vietnamese Spiritism.
We add
today, in order to make it complete, the synthesis of religions, because what
we desire to reveal to the public is revealed in the present edition.
Since
Caodaism, born of Spiritism, reformed Buddhism, and afterwards expanded into a
harmonious synthesis of all religions, it did so without losing the best of its
spiritist origins or of its Buddhist formation.
Being true
theosophy, the Caodaist doctrine draws to it through perfect selection all that
was good, beautiful, and above all essential in the other religions, whether in
the practical, the moral, the ritual or in philosophy.
Due to the
great modesty of Brother Gago (Gabriel Gobron is so-called by the Caodaists of
Indochina), he willingly limited his role to that of polemist-advocate,
propagandist of the new religion.His essays, his meditations, his study of
mysticism merited more.We can say today that he is the first philosopher and
the first historian of Caodaism.
His work
seemed to be unfinished when he left the earthly life for the Eternal Orient,
but with the publication of the present work, his value as historian of
Caodaism is confirmed.
From the
Beyond, Brother Gago enlightens and protects us still, for such was the
profound will of his faith.
Piously, let
us listen to him, accepting his mission with a wholly Caodaist humility.
If we have
accepted this ungrateful role of first historian of Caodaism, it is because our
brothers and friends of Vietnam
Feeble
health hardly favors the overwhelming duties of such a charge.We apologize to
the attentive reader, for all the imperfections of our work.We ask him only,
above all, to pardon us when we cannot stay “in line”, that is to say,
fraternally, even toward our adversaries and enemies: It is then that the
Caodaist will have proved Unworthy.He will not have attained self-mastery.The
patient will have torn his cap in a fit of ill-humor, and stamped the most
sublime pages of Christ, Buddha and Confucius . . .
By
compunction, we have transmitted the message.It only remains for us to turn
over in silence to the reader, relieved of our comments, this posthumous work
of Gabriel Gobron.
Tham Khảo.
2 -
3 - ON THE PLACE OF CAOĐÀISM, CULTURALLY AND
POLITICALLY. M. SARKISYANZ; Journal of Asian
History
4 - http://anyflip.com/uisu/gqen/basic (Book)
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