"The Book on Happiness" by Bô Yin Râ--Part 3 of 8
Richard C. Cook, Editor, Three Sages: For the past year, Three Sages has included in its publishing agenda articles about German spiritual master Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken 1876-1943), along with excerpts from his works. This included a series of articles on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ that we recently published during Holy Week, leading up to Easter Sunday. We have had a strong and positive reception among English-speaking readers from the US, Europe, and elsewhere in the world, so have been encouraged to continue. Most recently we published the complete text of one of Bô Yin Râ’s major books; namely, “The Book on the Beyond,” the subject of which is the human afterlife.
We are now moving ahead with publishing another complete text of one of Bô Yin Râ’s books, this one entitled “The Book on Happiness.” Reader may justifiably ask what relevance such a book may have at this time of world crisis? How can one possibly seek happiness, and succeed in that search, with so much discord, exploitation, and violence going on around us? Our answer is simply that the troubles the world is facing make it more important than ever before that humans stay in touch with their spiritual core which we all know to some degree is the source of genuine, lasting happiness while we inhabit this mortal form. How to do this is the question.
We are also pleased to announce our partnership with Books to Light, a new publishing platform headquartered in the US and dedicated to bringing the texts and teachings of Bô Yin Râ to greater accessibility and awareness among English-speaking audiences.
So let us proceed.
Note: Another excellent translation entitled The Book on Happiness is published by The Kober Press. But while reading any translation, readers should also be advised of Bô Yin Râ’s advice to study his works in the original German. Accordingly, any translation must be viewed as transitional, with a second edition of the translation contained herein now being planned by Books to Light.
Finally, when reading and studying Bô Yin Râ, it is well to bear in mind this liberating thought:
“If it were not a millennia-old superstition which believed that spiritual reality had to be discovered through the mechanism of proper logical thought, the reality to which I give witness here would have been discovered a long time ago and removed from all doubt!”
The Book on Happiness—Part 3 of 8
From the series Hortus Conclusus: the standard-translation© of the Hortus Conclusus (The Enclosed Garden), encompassing the spiritual teachings in thirty-two books by Bô Yin Râ. (Bô Yin Râ is the spiritual name of Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken 1876-1943.) All rights, copyrights included, reserved by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam, 2014. Posthumus Projects Amsterdam is responsible for this standard-translation©. Posthumus Projects Amsterdam has provided general permission for reprinting and transmission of its publications with attribution.
Contents:
Prelude
The Duty to be Happy
‘I’ and ‘You’
Love
Wealth and Poverty
Money
Optimism
Conclusion
‘I’ AND ‘YOU’ (continued)
If you wish to become the creator of your own happiness, you will soon discover that perhaps the greatest part of the happiness you are striving to attain is very closely woven into the relationships of your ‘I’ to each and every ‘you’. –
Your happiness will also comprehend love in all its forms.
Love – and I do not just mean ‘sexual union’ here – always needs a ‘you’, even if this ‘you’ – – were you yourself.
Here too the law of compensation holds sway; you must not expect your love to be without disappointments if you are used to ‘forgetting’ reciprocity or want to receive more than you give! – – –
For everything you want to receive, you will have to offer a complete equivalent. Otherwise the totality of the human organism will one day claim from you what you owe; you should not complain if it asserts its rights in a way which pays no heed to your wishes…
It matters not whether we are talking about your behaviour towards complete strangers, whether your love and need for love are within relationships between a man and a woman, whether it is love of parents for their children or children for their parents, or whether it is love between siblings, – you may never rightfully expect more than you give. If you are given more, see to it that you compensate for this as soon as you can, unless you want someone to take from you when you least expect it and in a way which will perhaps not be to your liking! – – – –
Spiritual laws do not work any differently from the so-called physical laws of external nature. If you violate one of these laws, you know from experience that you have to carry the consequences whether you like it or not.
It would be equally presumptuous to expect, in connection with spiritual laws, ‘forgiveness’ or remission from the consequences, as it would be if you violated any physical law. – In both cases you would be expecting the cosmic order to be disrupted on account of your error. – – –
Since billions of people commit such errors on a daily basis, ‘forgiveness’ here would mean nothing other than the collapse of all spiritual worlds into the night of complete chaos…
Shake yourself free of the dull, gloomy credulity of the savage who wrestles with his idol if it seems to go against his will and create instead within yourself a belief in the immeasurable totality, of which you are a part, and as a part a center point. Thus you will understand how petty is the idea you dare to have of a godhead which is supposed to set your foolish wishes above its own intrinsic order when it does not please you to bear the consequences of your behavior as part of the totality.
If you should one day attain supreme knowledge, you will in all certainty think back with deepest shame to those days when it appeared to you to be part of a divine plan that a ‘Son of God’ had to suffer for your actions because you thought this a convenient way to shirk the consequences of your deeds…
It will then be impossible for you to comprehend any more that you did not prefer complete annihilation than bearing for just one moment the thought that an innocent man should redeem your debt through torture and death. – – – – – –
Yet even if you are among those who believe themselves to be responsible for their deeds, I still fear that you might still not realize how equally responsible you are for all your thoughts. – – –
I have already told you that there is nothing concealed from the totality of the human organism of which you are a part; even your most secret thoughts are disclosed to it.
Nevertheless, I would not like to be held responsible here for the error that I might teach about something like a ‘collective human soul’ as an individual, independent conscious being!
The totality of the human organism is only ever conscious within its ‘center points’, – the individual human beings, and in every individual it takes on a different level of consciousness, sometimes greater, at other times lesser.
When I say that “nothing is ever concealed from the totality of the human organism as such”, – I only want to make understandable that everything you may do or think will have an effect, far beyond you as a person, with automatic certainty on the whole spiritual organism of mankind in its totality; there it will have its consequence, and you will later on often search in vain for their causes because it has never occurred to you that even those least expressed thoughts you believed were hidden almost from yourself, could bring about such far-reaching consequences. – – – – –
If you wish to become the creator of your happiness, you must know that your thoughts will give loyal service as obedient beasts of burden, if you have trained them in this service. But they will wreak havoc on humanity like savage beasts if they have grown unaccustomed to serving you and are let loose without any restraint from you. – – –
You cannot really be happy unless you create as much as you can the possibility of happiness in others; but you destroy the happiness of others if your thoughts, like wild bulls, break into the flower gardens of the soul of other people…
If you think of harmony you will bring about harmony in others; yet if you think in terms of destruction and chaos, you will effect destruction and chaos in others. – – – –
You cannot keep yourself healthy without continuously holding to thoughts full of health, beauty, and strength. At the same time, your thoughts will make you into the center of an epidemic for others if your mind rummages among its shortcomings and you think of nothing other than sickness and disease.
I know someone who was declared to be ‘terminally ill’ by doctors and whose illness was such that no doctor can heal it even today. – Yet through the powers of his own thought he healed himself and has been healthy for decades.
I know someone else who was told at his own insistence that he had ‘at best four to five years’ to live; – he refused to take any of the prescribed medicines; he ignored any sort of therapy. He made it his aim to stay alive purely through the power of his own thoughts. – It has now been almost twenty years since he had been written off. He is living, without any sickness, hale and hearty; today he can hardly imagine that he once needed doctors. – – –
Such people, however, have an effect on their widest circle through the health they irradiate, even though they might not be considered, according to strict medical definitions, as de facto ‘cured’.
They feel cured, and time has proven them right, since their complaints have vanished.
The certainty imparted by success gives their thoughts an irresistible force, and so they exert influence as bearers of good health in their widest circle. – –
If you think continually of poverty and need, then poverty and need will not keep you waiting, – if you continually fear some adversity, then misfortune will surely snap at your heels!
But if in the darkest hour you still refuse to see your cause as lost, it will never be lost for you – you are bound to find a solution soon!
If you regard a misfortune which befalls you as nothing other than a thunderstorm which surprises you on a day out, then you can be sure that misfortunes will be few and far between!
You are yourself the magnet for your weal and woe!
You can ‘tune in’ to the powers you wish to attract, and they are bound to follow you. –
But you do not just act as ‘I’ alone for yourself, but for every ‘you’ bound to you spiritually within the totality of the human organism. – – –
The magnitude of your influence will be determined far less than you think by external distances. Instead, all levels of intensity are conditioned by the greater or lesser degrees of similarity your own oscillations have with those of others. – Anyone of the billions you experience as ‘you’ will somehow be reached by the last resonance of the influence you have brought about.
Therefore you bear enormous responsibility! – –
You are never alone, even though you may believe you are safely concealed behind the thickest walls…
All the time you are acting as ‘I’ in a relationship and connection with each and every ‘you’. For, although each of you is a unique ‘I’, there is complete identity of all ‘center points’ within the totality of humanity…