"The Book on Happiness" by Bô Yin Râ--Part 7 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 7 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
OPTIMISM
For those who are determined to create their own happiness there exists no longer the ‘greyness of everyday life’, no longer is there fear and no longer worry!
They know of a power within them which conquers everything desolate and menacing.
They will give no thought today to what ‘tomorrow’ may bring; yet each day they live will prepare them in the best way possible for the following day.
They will be able to learn how to live in the present and, as creators, to give form to the present-day.
They will be the sculptors of their own lives, and, through example, teach those who are near to them the art of making life worth living.
Although they will not regard all that many as their disciples, every one taught by their example will be ‘healed’ by this teaching and will in his turn ‘heal’ others, thus helping to reduce the sick cells within the total organism of humanity.
Truly, it is necessary for the ‘sick cells’ in the spiritual body of humanity to heal, and every individual has a duty here to make his contribution to their healing.
Everyone bears the guilt of aeons within him which need to be paid off, and for whatever remains sick and imperfect in the body of humanity as a whole, every individual is indebted through the ‘initial dissociation’ when mankind separated itself from its Godhead…
The whole unending cosmos could be a garden of ineffable bliss if that initial dissociation, which only aeons can remedy once more, had never taken place.
But even today, on our journey through these aeons, it is possible for the earth to witness greater happiness than humanity can imagine or is willing to believe in, even though in this world cycle it will certainly not be possible to achieve ‘heavenly’ life on earth.
It is not a question of creating new social forms in the external life of nations and countries, if the fullness of earthly happiness which can exist is to become living reality.
All external forms of social life are but a stopgap which a faint sense of our unity within the spiritual human organism advises us to construct, lest we completely lose consciousness of our unity within the spirit.
An ‘awareness of belonging’ is all that is preserved through the ‘building of states’, ‘nations’ and ‘popular custom’. Yet for those who do not succeed in experiencing themselves as part and center point of the whole spiritual body of humanity the awareness of belonging to a part of this spiritual body may suffice, lest they become separated completely from all unity and from all the fluid of life of humanity’s wholeness. – – – – –
However, all hatred and contempt by one of these parts of humanity towards another is folly and amounts to self-defilement!
It is – the odor of corruption, which spreads with the hatred of these individual parts of humanity…
It always manifests decay and putrefaction in its individual cells!
It is also often the poisonous stench of a pestilential sore, the rank smell of a purulent abscess feeding on the sick part and threatening to plunder the marrow of his life. – – – – –
‘Whoever shows no honor to a stranger and a man of a different tribe is not worthy of being called the son of a noble people’, is a saying found in the profoundest wisdom of the east which, with supreme knowledge, was anxious to teach its own people to respect themselves …
You can only achieve real respect for yourself if you know your responsibility; you cannot know your responsibility if you do not know that, as part of the spiritual totality of humanity, you owe responsibility not only to yourself but also to this totality. – – –
If you are a creator of your happiness you shall increase the amount of happiness on this earth and thereby give greater service to the whole of humanity than if you sought to realize the most utopian theories in the external world. –
Meng-tse said: ‘Doing the right thing involves doing the obvious; yet everyone seeks it in the extraordinary. Doing the right thing is doing what is easily accomplished; yet everyone seeks it in what is achievable with difficulty.’ – – –
Perhaps you too seek in this way, deluded that you must do ‘great things’ and seeking those things which are ‘difficult to achieve’, – you seek high goals external to yourself, whilst your highest goal is so near to you as it is only to be found within yourself. – – – –
Educate yourself, and through your example you will become an educator of mankind, without assuming rights that no man has conferred upon you! –
Create your own happiness and you will create happy people around you; you will prepare a passage for ‘the happiness of humanity’! –
You must, however, in order to create your own happiness, fight with unshakeable energy for your faith in the victorious power of all that is good, despite all evil and despite all the bad things you may meet.
You must never lose courage however black the storm clouds which gather menacingly above your head! – –
If you are ill, use your faith to make yourself well again; if your body can still be saved, the doctors to whom you entrusted yourself will be grateful to you for the help you have given in the recovery! However, if your body cannot be saved, than you have created a supply of energy through your faith which will be of use to your spiritual body as soon as you have shed this body, belonging to the visible earth and which brought you agony.
If you are in material need, use your faith to bring yourself material help; do not stop keeping your faith alive and effective with all the means at your disposal until help has arrived. Meanwhile, continue in all quietude along the paths from which you might, normally speaking, expect help without the magic of your faith.
The magical power of faith will perhaps attach itself to these paths; perhaps help will come to you from a source you certainly did not expect.
Yet your trust in the power of faith must never entice you into folding your hands idly in your lap; likewise you must not, in the event of sickness, turn away external help offered to you. –
The power of your faith would lose its vital nerve, when not at the same time all your other energies worked in the same direction. – If eventually help comes to you from a direction you never searched, even if it might seem that your external efforts were ‘completely superfluous’, do not be led astray in a future case into disdaining the external means at your disposal.
You would regret it bitterly, for the power of your faith can never do without the exertion of all your energies, if it is to be effectual for you. – –
Without the exertion of all your other powers, the power of your faith will be as pliable as lead. – Only by activating, even externally, despite all your trust in the power of your faith, every source of energy found within yourself, in order to help yourself, will the power of your faith take on the resilience of steel. It will have the strength of a ‘Toledo’ blade which shatters not even against the hardest resistance and will eventually cut through the knots which otherwise cannot be loosened…
In every worry, in every kind of need, this way of acting applies equally if you wish to put to the test the magical powers of faith in your everyday life.
Most people do not understand how to use faith effectively because they once vainly tried on some occasion to force the magical power of faith to serve them. But they had omitted to use all their energies to attract help from without at the same time …
So now they make the opposite mistake and seek all help only from external sources; they labor and struggle with little success because they did not know how to make proper use of the greatest power at their disposal and thus they no longer have any trust in the helping power of faith. –
Lack of insight into the ways spiritual powers take effect prevents most people from building their earthly happiness according to the rules.
So they arrive at a situation where they see themselves as excluded from any possibility of happiness; and indeed, in this state of mind all happiness does escape them. – –
The Book on Happiness -- Part 1
The Book on Happiness -- Part 2
The Book on Happiness -- Part 3
The Book on Happiness -- Part 4