Der Regenbogen (“The Rainbow”) by Bô Yin Râ
Editor’s Introduction
The Three Sages Substack continues its presentation of works by the Luminary Bô Yin Râ in cooperation with Books to Light, publisher and copyright holder of the complete English translation of the Luminary’s masterwork: the 32-volume German-language compendium of Bô Yin Râ’s spiritual guidance under the general title of Hortus Conclusus (“The Enclosed Garden”).
“The Book of Love”– 1st article: “Introduction,” from the 7th volume of Bô Yin Râ’s Hortus Conclusus, posted on Three Sages in nine separate articles
We continue with our series of postings by Bô Yin Râ on the supremely important topic of love. Today’s posting is the first of nine separate articles that serialize the complete English-language translation of The Book of Love, which stands as the 7th volume of Hortus Conclusus. Previous postings on the topic of love are the chapter entitled “On the Power of Love” from the book High Goal and the chapter entitled "Love" from the book Words of Life. We would advise our readers to take all the time you need to peruse and absorb this material. While it is written in crystal-clear language that retains its clarity and power even when translated into English from German, it also contains ideas that go well beyond customary treatments. Also bear in mind that Bô Yin Râ wrote his books in a cadence that more resembles the spoken word than any academic or journalistic treatment. This is also reflected in the fact that several volumes of Hortus Conclusus are actually written in free verse. It might even be said that love is the central idea of Bô Yin Râ’s written expositions, perhaps reflecting his witnessing to love as the central force of all creation. This would naturally make love the focal point of human spiritual development as well. Indeed, what could be more important to understand in the present-day world crisis?
Who is Bô Yin Râ?
Bô Yin Râ is the spiritual name of Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, who was born in Aschaffenburg, Germany, in 1876 and who passed away in Lugano, Switzerland, in 1943. In his explanations of spiritual realities and the inner path to realization, Bô Yin Râ openly identified himself as part of the same society of Leuchtenden des Urlichts (“Luminaries of the First Light”) to which Jesus Christ himself belonged.
The Luminaries consist of those human individuals with ultimate responsibility for the spiritual destiny of all humanity on planet Earth. Their terrestrial headquarters are located in the heart of Asia, and they have been providing their guidance for millennia. The existence of the Luminaries is hinted at in the Bible by references to the Order of Melchizedek of which Jesus was a priest (Hebrews 7:1-28).
It is extremely rare for a Luminary to work openly and in public as Jesus and Bô Yin Râ have done. Bô Yin Râ wrote that the work of the Luminaries is still at an early stage. This idea is supported by the realization that in both cultural and ethical terms humanity is not far removed from a primitive state of savage barbarism. Events in the world today show this clearly. At the same time, humanity’s spiritual hunger is shown by the proliferation of sects and cults trying to show the way, along with the course of the historic religions.
At present the number of people with spiritual hunger is substantial. During Bô Yin Râ’s lifetime over a million people in the German-speaking world read his books until they were banned by the Third Reich. More and more people are reading the books in German today, and they are also being widely translated and read in other languages, including English. Bô Yin Râ predicted that a time would come when everyone on Earth who was seeking the spiritual life would read and study his works. We at Three Sages are trying to do our own small part in making them better known and more available in the U.S. and among other English-speaking people.
One of the key facts about Bô Yin Râ’s teachings is that he clearly expressed the necessity of answering the fundamental question: What is a human being? If we are honest, we must face the fact that we really don’t know the answer to that question. Not that there is a shortage of those attempting to provide an answer, many of these being quite fantastic. Rather the problem is often that the answers are incomplete, mutually contradictory, or self-serving. In the absence of a satisfactory answer, we lack the inner assurance and self-confidence needed to resist the negative forces that would enslave and exploit us during our sojourn on earth. On the other hand, true self-knowledge as defined by Bô Yin Râ, and previously by Jesus, has the potential to assist us in becoming truly joyful and free, both in this world and in the world we all must enter at death. How to accomplish this? Bô Yin Râ’s teachings constitute what is always most rare: authentic guidance.
Bô Yin Râ’s Hortus Conclusus is a comprehensive body of work but is broken down into 32 separate books, each of which approaches spirituality from a different though complementary angle. But the core is the trilogy consisting of 1) The Book on the Living God; 2) The Book on the Beyond; and 3) The Book on Man. The first of these three volumes, The Book on the Living God, may be read in translation in an on-line version published by the Kober Press of Berkeley, CA, which is available HERE. The second volume, The Book on the Beyond, is available from Kober Press, in the Books to Light translation published by Books to Light, and in the series presented by Three Sages HERE. The third book of the trilogy, The Book on Man, was also recently posted by Three Sages and is available HERE.
We can promise that if you read these books attentively you will not view your life and purpose in the same light as you did before you began. We wish you well on this most important and personal of all journeys.
Copyright Information
The Standard-Translation© of Hortus Conclusus (“The Enclosed Garden”) encompasses Bô Yin Râ’s spiritual teachings in 32 books. Bô Yin Râ is the spiritual name of Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken. Hortus Conclusus was originally published by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam, Inc. in The Netherlands under number 33079516, www.bo-yin-ra.org. All rights, copyrights included, reserved by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam are now held by Books to Light—USA. Posthumus Projects Amsterdam and Books to Light—USA are responsible for this Standard-Translation©. The material is posted by the Three Sages Substack with permission of Books to Light.
Ordering Information
For the Books to Light website with ordering information for Bô Yin Râ’s books, click HERE. For the Books to Light YouTube channel, click HERE.
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Now for the Text
As always, we are grateful to our readers and ask that you share our postings with others as you have occasion to do so. Now for the text:
“The Book of Love”– 1st article: “Introduction,” from the 7th volume of Bô Yin Râ’s Hortus Conclusus, posted on Three Sages in nine separate articles.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: The great man of love – Parts 1, 2, and 3
Chapter 2: On love’s primordial fire – Parts 1 and 2
Chapter 3: The redeeming light
Chapter 4: The creative power of love - Parts 1 and 2
INTRODUCTION
At a time when the muddy deluge of hatred brings calamity to all the meadows of humanity, this book sets out to speak to you of love! (The Book of Love was first published in 1922.)
You, who would experience yourself, will find supreme freedom here!
The freedom your soul needs, just like your lungs need air to breathe, only love can give you. Without love the seed of life from which you shall arise to a growth which knows of no ending will die within you.–
In these pages we shall speak of a power which has spiritual dominion over all the powers of this earth – a power which only the very few experience within themselves.
For while they give the name ‘love’ to many things they know, they are too easily satisfied and do not delve deeply into their innermost being, where the power of love could reveal itself to them.
Only he who delves deeply into his innermost self will find there the foundation of those wise teachings on love preserved in the ancient texts of the holy books, which everyone probably ‘knows’, insofar as the words of these books have reached them.
Yet, only rarely have these words been spiritually comprehended, as no one suspects that a law is revealed in these teachings, before which even the mightiest must bow lest sooner or later he is, despite his might, smashed – against himself.–
If only one knew what love truly is, the countenance of this earth would have been changed long ago; all life would have long since wriggled itself free from constantly recurring torment.– – –
The words of divine wisdom which talk of this love are still today, as in the past, concealed by dense veils; only rarely has someone been able to lift these veils and gain knowledge.
What he then came to know was no longer that ‘love’ which he once thought he knew.
For he now experienced a primal force which sent a trembling through the very marrow of his bones, – which caused him to quake in his innermost experience, and made him master where once he had been slave! –
This book brings you tidings of this love!
It shall bring your soul to this love!
He who speaks to you here of this love, lives from this love himself!
Only he who lives from this love, who has become knowledgeable of love through life and experience, should be permitted to give witness to love -
He alone can really speak of the incomprehensibly sublime power which is the subject of these words.
There have been so many who believed they lived in love because they were incapable of hatred.
Yet this incapability is absolutely no guarantee of knowing love!
Hatred is the opposite pole to love; it is the same power inverted; – whoever is incapable of hatred, though he knew a long time ago that only folly results from hatred, will never find the love within him of which Paul, truly a man of love, said:
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”–
He will also certainly not understand the meaning of that legend telling of the Shakya-Muni, the Indian Buddha. It tells of how one of his enemies drove a raging elephant onto his path.
The Enlightened One, to everyone’s astonishment, tamed the beast which, shaking, knelt down before him; for he had confronted it with the powers of love which he carried within himself …
The Indian legend and the words of Paul, preacher unto nations about Jesus Christ, make those digging below the surface aware that this is not a message about emotional intoxication, – rather, that here should be glorified the sublime power alone, which, as I said at the beginning: – is the spiritual master of all earthly powers! –
The revelation of this power in earthly life takes different forms.
You will find it in every plant and every animal; their mating instinct is a testimony of its omnipotence …
Yet you find it there at just at the lowest level of its influence and you will surely not recognize here its most sublime form of influence, although here too, very much more becomes apparent than you have perhaps hitherto been capable of discerning.– – –
If you had ever at this lowest level of love – though this ought indeed to be close to you – allowed the creative profusion of enflamed mating instincts to be testimony to you, you would have recognized a long time ago that this primeval force can achieve so much more than propagating earthly things from what is earth! –
Long ago you would at the same time have recognized that this creative profusion must also belong to the highest form of love.
You would certainly not have fallen into the sweet misunderstanding which erroneously satisfies you with cozy feelings of affection and pious gentleness in order not to be, to use the words of the loving one, a ‘sounding brass’ or a ‘tinkling cymbal’.–
All that the true man of love, here referred to, has to add about the ways in which love announces itself are merely signs which follow in love’s wake when it reveals itself in its supreme form.–
But you have taken these signs to be love itself, and strive to bring about those signs which would be yours of their own accord if you had love!– – –
I shall have to heal you of many errors, if I am to make you capable of love…
You have been ensnared since your early youth by a thousand-year long delusion!
Those who once should have taught you had themselves heard nothing different from what they passed on to you.
It would be folly indeed to harbor resentment against them!
They imparted to you what had been imparted to them, in the same way I now impart to you what was once imparted to me before I had learnt to draw from the well with my own vessel.
Perhaps you will recognize that it does indeed make a difference from which well the teachers fill their vessels! –
If you are already acquainted with the teachings I have been permitted to express in my other books, you will know that for me flow the deepest sources from the rocks, from which has issued forth all the spiritual wisdom that has ever made this earth
fertile.
Blessed are you if the ‘living’ waters from these sources revive you!
Blessed are you if you do not take ‘offence’ at my words, though I am compelled to show you that true spiritual revelation lasts forever and puts to task the one who reveals it at every moment!
I would certainly not be who I am if I sought to devalue what in the religious teachings from ancient times originates from men like me.
Everything in all these teachings from the far- and middle- Eastern worlds which bears the sign of the spirit of eternity was once imparted by the revelation of those who are of my kind.
It must be said that my ‘genealogy’ extends considerably further than the biological family tree of the man of this earth which serves me as an instrument: – as a necessary vehicle here on earth…
And I call upon you now to differentiate between the things of the spirit, which are imparted only by those in spiritual union, who reveal themselves to this world very rarely, – and those things belonging to sterile, inflated human opinions found in those scriptures of ancient peoples whose words you revere just for their mystery.
Through me you should experience how you can learn to differentiate these ancient words!
I shall teach you here as the only one amongst all my kind who is today working in public, – and as the only man on earth who today can say that only he is able to shape the form of words for eternal propagated spiritual good.