"The Book on the Beyond" by Bô Yin Râ--Part 12 of 13
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.
Over the next few weeks, we plan to publish 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 have selected this book among Bô Yin Râ’s entire body of work because of the intense interest shown by people today who are faced with both calamities and opportunities that challenge us to ponder the fundamental meaning of human existence.
This challenge can be better approached once we admit that:
a) We don’t really know where we came from before entering life on earth through birth into a human body;
b) We don’t really know where, if anywhere, we will be transported or what the nature of our ongoing experience will be like, when death inevitably completes this sojourn on earth;
c) we lack exact knowledge of why we are here or the ends to which we should devote our time and energy during our lifetime; and
d) we are uncertain as to whom, to which, or to what we should turn for guidance, despite the clamor among multitudes of claimants to playing such a role in our lives. Without such guidance, we also run the risk of succumbing to those heinous ideologies which claim that human beings are merely “thinking animals,” without an immortal spirit.
We now suggest to our readers to read and study the following selection from Bô Yin Râ’s writings and see if such an effort offers help. To better understand who Bô Yin Râ was and why his teachings are of critical value to humanity in these uncertain days, please read the Three Sages article published last September and re-posted here: Review of Bô Yin Râ's "The Book on Life Beyond".
Also please take note that Bô Yin Râ’s teachings are viewed by experienced readers as applicable to all religious traditions.
Note: Another excellent translation entitled The Book On Life Beyond 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.
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 the Beyond—Part 12 of 13
Third book of the 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:
Introduction
The Skill of Dying
On the Temple of Eternity and the World of the Spirit
The One Reality
What Is To Be Done?
What Is To Be Done?
In the three books ‘On the Living God’, ‘On the Life Beyond’ and ‘On Man’, I have given the first detailed description of the inner path everyone must take who is serious in his heart about wanting to find his spiritual nature within himself.
I have shown what the person who walks this path must do and not do.
Despite this I am repeatedly asked: “What shall we do now?” – “How shall we begin?”
It is clear to see from the formulation and motivation of all these questions that precise instructions are expected to carry out every day repetitive practices, as mysterious as possible in character, which would lead to the goal, if pursued more or less ‘mechanically’.
I feel the same towards my questioner as does as many a doctor when recommending the simplest, natural medicines and leaving his patients dissatisfied because he has not filled out a ‘prescription’…
The majority of those who ask these questions, or who are always ready to ask, had previously taken paths into the labyrinth of modern ‘theosophical’ or ‘occult’ literature and only thanks to their healthy instincts, they had found their way out again; however, not without considerable effort.
Nonetheless, this wandering had in a certain sense moved them forwards; for there is no error which could not lead indirectly to the truth after all.
For this reason no man should ‘curse’ the time he has spent wandering, for he perhaps has no idea what he owes to this. –
So, groping one’s way through the labyrinth of ‘theosophical’, ‘anthroposophical’ or ‘occult’ teachings has not been entirely useless for any of those who were eventually freed.
Their groping search gave many the conviction that concealed behind all the errors in the teaching they heard there had to be some truth.
Others began to suspect that the legend of the so-called ‘Mahâtmas’, – those mysterious, presumed founders of modern ‘Theosophy’ – could only have arisen because the Orient knows of the existence of men united with the spirit who do not practice all sorts of magic tricks ascribed to the aforementioned fakirs born from fantasy, but who are conscious and at home in the spirit even while alive on earth.
However, most searchers took with them from those labyrinthine mazes the foolish belief that they only needed to know an esoteric and doubtlessly very mysterious ‘technique’, the practicing of which would lift them from an ordinary person into a ‘higher ranking seer’, an ‘initiate’, or even a ‘master’ of spiritual works.
As correct as the first two suppositions are, the latter belief is, of course, completely false!
But unscrupulous charlatans and clever fishers for souls exploit this belief. They have given their pupils all sorts of more or less dubious instructions from ancient mystic texts whereas the ‘teachers of the occult’ have for the most part no idea what effects conscientious pursuit of these instructions could bring about.
The pupil, however, believes he is on the right path, for he sees that following the instructions he was given actually leads to certain results beyond the dreams of current psychology, – despite all the research and exploration into the human ‘subconscious’.
Many ‘teachers of the occult’ may merely gratify their own vanity when passing on instructions supposedly meant to ‘open up inner senses’, dug out of some ancient parchment, revealing nothing other than dank, decaying vaults where nothing thrives but an active form of spiritualist mediumship, the cultivation of which should far better be left to certain Asiatic charlatans. –
The honorable ‘teacher of the occult’ has absolutely no need to believe in the efficacy of his instructions himself.
Just as ‘carriers of a bacillus’ can be healthy themselves, though spreading the most awful germs, there is no need at all for those spreading methods which supposedly ‘open up inner senses’ to know that they are only promoting the development of active spiritualist mediumship in their poor victims. –
Yet it is made easy for the pupils of such teachers, who are all pests in varying degrees, to resist modern scientific criticism, as they can take it from every word of the learned critics how clueless these esteemed researchers are in experimenting in a field revealing one mirage after another, thus being drawn further and further into the desert, the surer he is of being ‘very close’ to the definitive answer to his questions.– –
One might have welcomed the attempt by modern psychology to make worthless once and for all certain extremely dubious phenomena which have gone under the name of ‘supernatural’, if this attempt were not itself made worthless by the strikingly false conclusions, immediately apparent to anyone knowledgeable in the field, which were undoubtedly drawn from events which were correctly observed by the researchers. –
Even an irreproachably pure urge to gain knowledge of the truth will end in error if the seeker after truth remains bound by his prejudices!
The consequence is that communities incapable of criticism, following cunning fishers of souls, groping around in the fog of fuzzy ideas, have long since lost the ability to seek truth within scientific discoveries. – In place of this they willingly allow themselves to be impressed by every charlatan hawking his colorful plunder, claiming that it is ‘esoteric knowledge’…
If with his ‘method’ the development of spiritualist mediumship, as mentioned previously, is attainable, he has already won the game. His every word is believed when he disseminates through mysterious intimations, the idea that he is the reincarnation of some sublime human spirit of the past.
For anyone reading my warnings with a degree of insight, it should already be clear that I am very closely acquainted with all these typical ‘methods’, ancient and modern – that it would also be very easy for me to specify many paths, beyond those mentioned, leading to so-called ‘supernatural development’, of which none of those eccentric saints, seen in modern times by their followers as ‘initiates’ and ‘experts in the occult’, have ever known anything.
There are possibilities of producing results which would seem inaccessible to not just the best pupils of these ‘teachers of the occult’; but would make even the most penetrating psychological criticism despair of making anything of them.
If it were not a crime beyond redemption to even hint at the dangerous paths of which I speak here, some clues could perhaps lead to enlightenment in some of the areas which currently psychological experimentation and metaphysical research have been unable to elucidate.
Much as I would want to perform this service to science, it is not possible for me to do so. This is not just because of the reason I have already given, nor out of the duty which binds both myself and all my spiritual ‘brothers’ through time and eternity, but also because this is a field which requires more than just ‘scientific endeavor’ from those who would enter it rightfully…
It is scarcely necessary to emphasize that we are discussing here things which are quite different from the now commonly known ‘Hata-Yoga-exercises’ and the ‘methods’ drawn from them, designed to produce certain fakir miracles!
But even if I were not duty bound in any way, I would never see myself as being capable of unveiling things which have been kept hidden for such sound reasons, for I am all too aware of the unavoidable calamity which would be caused by those hungry for power.
I have no desire at all to share in the ‘fate of Prometheus’, which would be my inescapable destiny if I were to become the instigator of such misery.
The knowledge referred to here is neither necessary nor useful in order to attain spiritual union with the First Light, – to awaken the spiritual nature of man from his sleep – to that which sublime knowledge has called ‘rebirth’.
Like all arts based on the possible use of generally unknown, high-tension psycho-physical forces, those of which I speak here have not the slightest to do with the awakening and development of eternal spiritual man.
What is primarily needed for this awakening and development is a continuously maintained focusing of all thought, feeling and earthly will on the coveted goal.
The whole earthly man must gradually reshape himself with his own powers before he can receive spiritual help.
There is little or no use in merely focusing every so often, in the way pious members of a congregation do every seven days when they dedicate a day to their God out of habit…
Every minute of the rest of one’s life, every day-to-day activity, every emerging thought, every wish and every impulse proceeding from will, conditioned by the human brain, must henceforth be under the fashioning influence of the required focusing, if the person who has started on this path is to attain real rather than imaginary results.
‘Exercises’ carried out periodically could at best lead by their repeated exertion to a deeper feeling for this focusing.
Everything which may be recommended in this respect has just the one purpose, namely to keep awake within consciousness the new focusing of all thinking and doing, so that it can not be forgotten any more at any moment.
But if this focusing is really preserved permanently so that it effectively determines the whole of everyday life, – regardless which method, suited to the individual disposition, is used to help achieve this, everything else will soon occur – ‘of itself’, that is, without our conscious contribution.
A center of strength is then created in the person who is firmly anchored in this way, leading to even greater effects and eventually producing, without requiring a particular act of will, the spiritual link to similar centers of strength on earth which have already been perfected.
As soon as this link is possible the seeker receives the spiritual help of those who have already found it, and who know of no higher duty than to help wherever their spiritual help can be received, regardless of whether it can already be experienced consciously or not.
The seeker has then become, as it were, a ‘receiver’ for a certain type of spiritual irradiation which can only be perceived internally, but cannot be apprehended by scientific experiments.
Effects from the realm of substantial spirit can only be experienced by a becoming aware; they can never provide material for an external scientific investigation attempting to give a rational definition, for we are speaking here of things alive which will immediately withdraw if there is the merest attempt to touch them. –
But do not think that you can become such a ‘receiver’ in the blinking of an eye!
He who wishes to be accepted into the teaching of the eternals must learn to wear the smock of patience…
Even the most intensively educated physical will, – which as the mere expression of the brain’s functions is to be completely separated from the substantial eternal will manifesting itself in the human spirit, – cannot accelerate the development of the spiritual receptive organs.
A dogged, ‘headstrong’ brain-educated ‘will’ only disrupts the process of crystallization of the powers here under consideration, which should merge into a new center of strength which is then not subjected to the workings of the brain. –
The more consistently the inner ‘focusing’ of the whole individual is adhered to – just as a telescope must remain fixed on the object being observed, – the sooner that point in time can be reached which brings the seeker into tangible contact with his spiritual helpers.
The practical behavior of the seeker in his daily life is the only thing of importance, – not, for example, following or ignoring any kind of ‘practices’.
This does not mean, however, that one should not dedicate oneself at regular intervals to a particular form of spiritual immersion, if one has observed that this gives one’s behavior in everyday life the desired certainty of focusing upon the spiritual.
The Book on the Beyond--Part 1
The Book on the Beyond--Part 2
The Book on the Beyond--Part 3
The Book on the Beyond--Part 4
The Book on the Beyond--Part 5
The Book on the Beyond--Part 6
The Book on the Beyond--Part 7
The Book on the Beyond--Part 8
The Book on the Beyond--Part 9