THE BOOK ON MAN by Bô Yin Râ -- Part Four: "The Path of the Man"
Bô Yin Râ at age 54.
Editor’s Introduction by Richard C. Cook
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 his spiritual guidance under the general title of Hortus Conclusus (“The Enclosed Garden”).
Bô Yin Râ was 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 thereto, Bô Yin Râ openly identified himself as part of the same society of Luminaries of the First Light (Leuchtenden des Urlichts) 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 claiming to show the way, along with the course of the historic religions. But it is not necessary that vast numbers of people embrace the teachings of the Luminaries for the world to change.
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 purchased and read his books until they were banned by the Third Reich. More and more people are reading the books in Germany 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 often is 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 happy, 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 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 in the Books to Light translation published by Books to Light and available in the series presented by Three Sages HERE.
What you are now about to read is the Books to Light translation of the third book of the trilogy, The Book on Man. 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.
On Part Four of The Book on Man—”The Path of the Man”
Bô Yin Râ makes it clear that for the vast majority of humanity—us—there is no difference between the spiritual path of man and woman. Each carries within their deepest essence a tangible memory of the union of the two genders they once experienced while in the spiritual world before the “fall”—i.e., before they entered into life in an earth-bound animal body as separate genders. This happened to our original planetary forebears, with the same thing happening ever since with the birth of every human being. It is only the rare instance when a Luminary comes into the world—like Jesus or Bô yin Râ—that both the male and female genders exist within an individual in perfect conscious union. At the same time, all Luminaries appear as members of the male gender. Male disciples of the Luminaries may achieve union with their teachers while alive on earth, while female disciples do so in the next world. An example might be Mary Magdalene. Confusion may arise among people when a man views his active nature as superior to the passive nature of a woman. Bô Yin Râ attributes this to “megalomania,” a fatal error which brings spiritual development to a halt. By contrast, a man working on the right path will feel himself drawn upwards toward his inner spiritual destiny by awareness of the “Eternal Feminine” calling to his soul.
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. 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, 2014. Copyright now held by Books to Light—USA. Posthumus Projects Amsterdam and Books to Light—USA are responsible for this standard-translation©. Posted by Three Sages 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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For the first 100 purchases, Books to Light is offering the ONLY single-volume English translation of Bô Yin Râ’s Hortus Conclusus—his complete spiritual teachings—at a special discount to Three Sages subscribers at 40 percent off the usual retail purchase price. Order HERE.
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THE BOOK ON MAN by Bô Yin Râ -- Part Four: “The Path of the Man”
CONTENTS
Introduction (Click HERE)
The Mystery: ‘Man and Woman’ (Click HERE)
The Path of the Woman (Click HERE)
The Path of the Man
Marriage
The child
New mankind
Epilogue
Final teaching!
THE PATH OF THE MAN
After speaking thus far of the ‘path of the woman’, it now appears almost superfluous to speak of the ‘path of the man’ in particular.
In the vast majority of cases the path will not be substantially different for man and woman despite all the spiritual differences in the poles. Only the way in which a path is walked by a man can be different from that of a woman. –
If man as ‘male’ sees before him a part of the path which is never accessible to woman in her incarnation on earth, this is that most extreme exalted path accessible only to the few born to work fully consciously in the regions of the spirit during this life on earth.
It is that last, highest part of the path of those few whom the others – male or female – would not follow anyway, even if it were possible for them during their life on earth.
It would be vain presumption in the extreme for a man on this earth to believe that he possessed a particular spiritual ‘superiority’ merely through being male, and possibly to regard woman as having a lower spiritual potentiality than himself!
I intentionally say: ‘having spiritual potentiality’ because I am speaking here of the eternal spirit, – not of intellect and the power of thinking which are but products of earthly breeding.
Within the spirit there is no difference in value between the masculine and feminine poles! Female passivity and masculine activity are given in spiritual man equal power and strength from the beginning!
The few who genuinely have spiritual ‘prerogative’ over the earthly embodied female pole of spiritual man during their lives on earth, have always been aware of their exalted duty to offer ‘woman’ particular help, as she, through the impulse derived from her to take on physical embodiment, has entered a more difficult situation following the ‘fall’ than has man. –
None of those few has ever valued female beneath male or even despised the female form of man. Even if one among them sought through harsh words to make a clear distinction between his earthly relationship with a woman of the earth and his spiritual essence, – each of them who have the prerogative as meant here over men as well as women, have demonstrated that the woman was truly worthy of high regard – even in her earthly embodiment…
Within the spirit of each among these few to achieve perfection no longer lives, from the moment of that perfection, just the masculine pole of the spiritual phenomenal man, but, united with it, – in place of the feminine opposite pole he will one day regain, – that ray of feminine polarity from the eternal First Light which alone enables the masculine human spirit to regain consciousness in worlds of spiritual phenomena: –the ‘Eternal Feminine’. – –
How could a man of this kind – even if he embodies in his earthly, animal-conditioned life merely the masculine pole of the animal in man, – ever value the feminine spirit, which he experiences within his spiritual nature united with the masculine pole of his spirit within the same ‘I’, less than the masculine spirit?! –
The ‘path of the man’ at the very outset requires from the man who walks upon it a serious but also well-practiced will to understand the nature of woman.
The man who allows this will to be missing is never to achieve the goal he could reach… A woman who has rediscovered her passive nature is much more inclined to recognize willingly, and very often admiringly, the given nature of the man.
The active nature of man can, however, all too easily cast man into ‘megalomania’, causing him to see in woman no longer one who is of ‘a different’ but equal value, but someone of lower value.
Here lies considerable danger for so many men who would wish to walk upon the ‘path of the man’!
Many think they are on their path; they even consider themselves to be ‘full of the spirit’. They think they have acquired the right to look down condescendingly on woman from their imagined position of superiority. However, in this way they lose every chance of attaining the spirit. –
The man, on the other hand, who has really comprehended that, even as he took the first steps on his spiritual path, it is the spiritually feminine which draws him upwards, – flowing from the highest spiritual hierarchies down to his spiritual helpers in earthly man in order to reach him, – this man is surely protected against the danger of regarding himself as being of higher value than woman…
He will render to woman what is of woman, and to man what is of man, – knowing that man of the worlds of spiritual phenomena can only rise again in continual perfection when masculine and feminine are one day united in a spiritual being in which he then experiences himself and his opposite pole within his own ‘I’. –
Phallus and yoni united showed this truth symbolically to the Indians already in ancient times, – whereas phallus or lingam by itself, as the correlative physical male organ, symbolizes that power which propagates from the man who is born for this purpose as the initiated masters of cosmic knowledge…
Even the ritual burning of widows in ancient India which originally was merely execution of the religiously conditioned will of the surviving wife, can only be understood as the sad expression of an experienced spiritual truth, though in a most distorted form, passed on from an even more ancient tradition.
What was intended to be understood as purely spiritual had been transferred to external superficiality; for it is the fate of all truths which reach this earth that they can only briefly radiate in their purity and are understood by only a few with unclouded clarity, – before becoming ‘common property’ in an all too earthly distortion.
If ‘woman’ is to be really ‘restored’ through ‘man’, and ‘man’ through ‘woman’, then both: – man as well as woman – must search for the path upwards to the spirit with understanding of the soul, at one in will, just as they once lost the exalted world of spiritual phenomena together.
One will have little doubt that, from togetherness of the soul in striving for the spirit some rays of light must fall onto those problems of external life which have burdened man and woman until that time and seemed virtually insoluble to them.
Having then reached the goal which is attainable to all here on earth who would reach it with seriousness and perseverance: – the ‘living’ God in one’s own heart, – man and woman will finally be swept along by those highest powers which at all times flow through the few of whom divine love avails itself to guide upwards whatever yearns for light and liberation from the chaotic night of uncertain will.
More reliable than teaching in words and texts could ever do, all those honestly striving are guided by those worlds of clear light which, among all who live on this earth, only the masters of cosmic knowledge are capable of entering consciously and knowingly acting upon that knowledge during their days on earth. –
Freed one day from earthly captivity, ‘man’ and ‘woman’ will be united in a single ‘I’, yet preserving their individual nature in the most perfect way – in distinctive polar difference as two spiritual beings contained within themselves – ; for in the newborn spiritual man both separate ‘I’s will ‘coincide’ perfectly, and each individual ‘I’ will experience simultaneously the ‘I’ of his opposite pole in himself as himself. –
What was two and divided into two will thus become a third, as a newly united spiritual being comprising ‘man‘ and ‘woman’ always bound through all eternity. – – –
The masters of Love, the masters of cosmic knowledge, are born into this earthly life in order to bring help and guidance so that this goal can one day be reached by every man and every woman after their days on this earth – in order to be able to teach how to make use of this existence and avoid the dissipation of powers and detours.
It is not what these few men possess by way of earthly intellect which qualifies them to serve their fellow men as helpers!
It is not ‘talent’ or ‘knowledge’ which makes them into what they are!
It is not earthly vision which gives them insight into spiritual occurrence!
All their ‘recognition’ is loving penetration! –
All their ‘knowing’ is certainty coming from spiritual being! – –
They alone are able to walk upon that ‘path of the man’ leading to wakeful effectiveness in the world of the substantial pure spirit; only from this spiritual region is derived the help which the ‘Luminaries’ of the First Light can offer unto other men. – –