"The Book on the Beyond" by Bô Yin Râ--Part 10 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 10 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?

The One Reality (continued from Part 9)

Even if we have only mentioned hypnosis in this context to aid understanding, and even if the insights it allows us into spheres of the spiritual senses are very limited and superficial, this example can still show you that your current way of perceiving through the physical senses is not the only one which exists.

Here on earth we are all, as it were, in a collective hypnotic trance, so that we are incapable of perceiving in any other way than our ‘hypnotist’, who is here our own ‘in-born’ will, makes us perceive. That will would not be in the earthly realm if it were not striving for self-experience in phenomena of the physical senses.

As soon as we understand how to redirect our eternal will, now temporarily directed at the physical dimension, we shall know other forms of perception and their laws. –

In truth, this is possible only for very few people during their days on earth; – but it will be a necessity for all, once death of the physical body deprives conscious will of the hitherto available sensory organs.

All ‘fear of death’ arises from the resistance of the will directed at the physical world to a reversal of the direction it took when ‘falling’ from the First Light. – –

Now you will be able to understand that all those who have not yet arrived at their spiritual ‘awakening’ on earth will in ‘the beyond’ initially feel only a ‘frontier world’ which corresponds to their own imaginings and to those who share their outlook, – that they must first become complete masters of themselves within their own will, before they can be led upwards to the eternal spiritual light-world of absolute fulfillment.

We have no need of anyone who has not renounced all his selfish desires, for his mere existence in the spiritual region which encloses us would be identical to sinking into anarchy and chaos, – assuming it were possible for such a person to rise into the most sublime light-world.

Perhaps you understand now why I have emphasized the fact that here we are all one in the will whose goal cannot be redirected...

We have become sovereign rulers of the one and only reality in the spiritual realm – through the fusion with it of the unity of our will within which every individual will find itself as universal will…

Thus we became knowing creators of the highest and purest phenomenal world within the spirit.

Inasmuch as within a state which knows neither beginning nor end, being always both in itself, can nevertheless be spoken of [as] ‘perfection’, we know that our perfection is conditioned by ever-conscious creation and preservation of the highest and most radiant phenomenal world in the spirit which became for us [a] workshop, as well as [a] temple of devotion…

We ‘are’ nothing other than what our united, eternal will wills!

What is termed here on earth and in everyday speech ‘will’ is but a desire, a longing, or expression of some inclination determined by some function of the brain.

If the real, eternal will of man on earth were to pursue desires, every wish and desire would have to be fulfilled.

But that is not the case, as every one knows. In truth, we can thank heaven that ‘will’ does not stand behind every wish here on earth…

Our eternal will ‘wills’ something here on earth only within the limitations imposed on it by the willed physical way of perception, even though wishes would only be too pleased to cross these limitations as often as they could.

Only within the spiritual realm – in the other form of perception – can our ‘will’ will differently.

There the hypnotic spell of ‘this life’ is broken, and the other possibilities to perceive within us can reveal themselves.

Here again you will be able to see why it is nonsensical to believe that those who have died unto this world could ‘materialize’ themselves so as to communicate with the living on earth.

This would mean that those who have finally been freed from hypnotic enslavement to their physical perception could once more become its prey. –

Even if the ‘laws of nature’ permitted, they would not be capable of willing this return, since the will freed itself already from its hypnotic spell, completely regardless of the fact that physical and sensory way of perception depends on the function of physical sensory organs.

As I stated previously, everything in spiritualist séances that has been taken to be the ‘materialization’ of a dead person, or indeed any physical apparition perceived during such events, is merely the work of beings which, although normally remaining imperceptible to human physical senses, still belong to physical nature.

Their invisible organism is in no way ‘spiritual’ in nature, and they can perceive nothing that is spiritual.

On the other hand, they possess highly developed sensory organs in their physical bodies normally invisible to earthly men, sensory organs which, although physical in kind and capable of effecting only ‘physical’ perception, surpass to an extraordinary degree all the functions of man’s physical senses.

Moreover, these beings are endowed with senses which physical man does not possess, but tries to compensate for – as well as he can – through the functions of mechanical devices. –

Although those beings of whom we speak here are invisible to human eyes, – but perceived with great precision by many animals on earth, – are capable for brief periods, and by using human powers, of taking on forms which must be perceptible to human physical senses.

The temporary creation and use of these forms is effected by a kind of amalgamation with the will of certain people (so-called ‘mediums’) while using their ‘animal soul’ at the same time.

The inhabitants of this part of the physical world of phenomena, not consciously perceived by human senses, are in a certain sense very ‘similar’ to human beings; however, they have never been human beings in the past, nor could these beings ever become human.

We are rather discussing creatures which are as close to man’s invisible physical organism as the animal world is to his outer physical organism.

The sphere of influence assigned by nature to these beings lies in the inner regions of the organic structure of the physical world.

The ‘gnomes’, ‘goblins’, spirits of earth, air, and water found in the ancient fairy-tales and legends are – leaving aside obvious additions made by popular imagination – mostly presented in such a way that allows one to suppose that we have here not mere fables but accounts of real human experience.

The description of them as ‘nature spirits’ must, however, not allow us to forget that we are dealing with beings with physical senses, for whom the spiritual dimension of the causal world is not only inaccessible, but not even a part of their consciousness…

Only ignorance about these connections rooted in nature appears to excuse people supposing or even believing that they are communicating with entities from the spiritual world when they attend spiritualist séances.

It is certainly possible for purely spiritual entities, and therefore also the dead, to make themselves visible and perceptible under certain circumstances, – only you see and hear them in these instances through your spiritual senses, even if you think you see them with physical eyes and hear them with physical ears.

But real spiritual entities will never produce any physical sign of power! –

For you to be able to perceive a genuine spiritual entity by means of your spiritual senses, it is necessary that you are being freed temporarily by the spiritual dimension from the ‘hypnosis’ of your way of perception through the physical senses.

Those around you uninfluenced by this liberation will neither see the shape you see, nor hear any of the words you hear; yet there is no need to see your experience in any way as a ‘hallucination’ which would simply be a product of your vivid imagination…

If you receive a genuine spiritual experience without having sought it, accept it in awe and preserve in your heart those things you were permitted to experience!

However, it would be foolish to wish upon you such experiences, for it is part of a very highly developed critical ability to differentiate genuine perceptions of the spiritual senses from vivid hallucinations; and you will hardly set out to see a ‘ghost’ if you cannot know whether or not it is a masked projection of your own making.

Cases of genuine spiritual perception are so rare that it is better not to believe in real influence from spiritual regions until severest criticism has excluded beyond any doubt the possibility of a hallucination.

Only a wealth of experience can teach judgement in these matters, and a secure judgement is only made by those whose spiritual senses are permanently open.

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