"The Book on the Beyond" by Bô Yin Râ--Part 8 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 8
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?
On the Temple of Eternity and the World of the Spirit (continued)
Let every reader of these words ignore the outward personality of their author and seek within their own hearts confirmation for all the things imparted here!
Assent by the heart will initially only be gently registered, if the reader still harbors thoughts and imaginings influenced by the lower frontier lands of the spiritual sensory form of perception.
The higher he has already raised himself above this sphere of influence, the more clearly he will experience the truth of my words in his innermost being.
But those who collaborate even unaware in the creation of lower worlds in the spiritual-sensory frontier land and are thereby spellbound by the repercussions from their self-created imaginary structures, will find it hard to gain the impulse to free themselves from the captivity of their own making.
Likewise, all those who think that the realm of abstract thinking is the realm of the spirit, will only smile on hearing of the supposed existence of a world of eternal fulfillment in the spiritual which shows so many aspects of the physical world of phenomena.
The realization that the whole of the physical-sensory world of phenomena is a projection in details large and small, of the spiritual-sensory worlds of phenomena, is apparently beyond their grasp…
And so some will feel justified in consigning, without examination, everything I have to say on these matters to the realm of fables and human wishful thinking.
Yet this false judgement will change nothing in the given structure of reality. –
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 creeds of the ancient systems of religion come much closer to the truth; for in their wealth of imagery they have preserved until today things betraying the clear mark of those conscious in the beyond.
I shall be saying nothing unfamiliar to those who today can still interpret the language of this imagery when I teach that there is no other truly eternal ‘bliss’ for the lasting spirit of man than in the innermost light-begotten world of the spirit, with its endless wealth of forms and primeval symbols – with its many and various endlessly varied possibilities of fulfillment of the highest and purest will…
Those, however, who think that man’s experience of himself ends in the death of his physical body, will only see corrected through experience their fateful error after this death!
They will think little of the ‘assent by the heart’, and despite all their intellectual acuity they will not see that they themselves are obstructing the only way which already now, during their earthly life, could lead to clearer understanding.
They are certainly not the worst of men who believe, for supposedly good reasons, that the death of the physical body is synonymous with the utter annihilation of consciousness. Yet it is hard to tear them from their error, since appearances have bound them so tightly that they see the indisputable notion of earthly transience as even conclusive when transferred to a sphere which obeys completely different laws…
To be sure, man as apprehended by physical senses is annihilated forever with the death of his earthly body!
But what continues to exist is the eternal self-formed will in the way that expressed itself before death through the body and its powers, and the consciousness, recognizing itself in this expression of the will, exactly as it experienced itself by the senses, until the last moments of lucid experience in the body.
Truly, both are sufficient in themselves to name the subsequent state ‘a continuation of life’, for even earthly life is but an ‘expression’ of the eternal will clear to the senses, which is itself determined by its own formation and thereby determines its self-consciousness.
Rational thought justifiably resists the supposition that this will, or the self-consciousness determined by the attained development of the will, is raised immediately after the death of the physical body either into a state of ‘eternal bliss’ or cast down into ‘eternal torment’.
The intransient, which previously created its self-expression within the physical body, does not in any sense ‘flee’ into the distant clouds or ‘to the stars’.
All that occurs is a change in perception; consciousness of the eternal will, released from the physical form of perception, becomes capable of perception with the sensory organs of its spiritual body. Only through these did it once gain spiritual experience during life on earth, experience which may have been rich or slight.
I have already described in detail in the first treatise in this book what is perceived once physical sensory organs are lost to consciousness.
Despite all the special forms comprised within it, the way of perception is the same in the lowest of the worlds which can only be experienced through the spiritual senses, as in the highest, most innermost world of the spirit.
Only the perceived forms are different, – different is the clarity of individual recognition within the sphere of perception.
The higher the level of this recognition, the more purely eternal will, now already crystal sharp in form, experiences itself within self-consciousness as the creator of phenomenal forms of spiritual substance, – the more lucidly eternal reality, bearing all forms of being, reveals itself to consciousness.
Only indistinctly formed will, not yet sure of itself, strives to become ‘formless’. –
But eternal will which is purified, structurally taut and secure in itself, embodying order in dimension and number, must at every level of its realization lead to the creation of phenomenal forms. It finds its greatest happiness in fashioning its own creation of itself to its inherent level of perfection…
Truly every really creative artist and also many other ‘fashioners’ on earth know a faint reflection of this happiness. But it is only in the spiritual dimension of the universe that those things find their fulfillment, which on earth were a presentiment.
For that reason, training of the will by using its own drive to give form, is the initial and most necessary spiritual schooling, and the first step on the way leading to the eternal world in the innermost spirit.
Truly, we are nearer to you than you think, – indeed we are with you, wherever you are, for what is of the spirit within you, has its eternal being in the spiritual world open to us, although you are not yet able to experience your identity with your eternally spiritual.
You cannot have this experience of identity before your eternal will has in purity and lucidity of form, itself [been] perfected in order and legitimacy.
Only he who works unceasingly to tear himself away from the cloud of dismal twilight mists in which blurred ideas of the spiritual cause him to wander aimlessly, can at some time reach the clarity of spiritual light which is our life’s breath. –
Then the seeker will learn that the thousand ‘questions’ he asked himself in vain at the very beginning of his path can only receive their absolutely satisfying answer when the goal is finally reached. –
This is the reason why all who guide towards the spiritual light must first require ‘belief’ which as living power releases the impulse to press ahead.
‘Belief’ must stand at the beginning of the path leading to the temple of eternity, for ‘knowledge’ can only be attained by those who have reached the final goal of the path.
Those who cannot ‘believe’ that they will one day reach this goal will surely not make the commitment this path requires of them, and those who shirk this commitment can certainly not attain here on earth certain ‘knowledge’ of spiritual things!
But you can attain this ‘knowledge’, even if you are not capable during your days on earth of experiencing yourselves freely in the highest realms of the spirit.
He who has become ‘knowledgeable’ in the things of the spirit has truly achieved more than if all the knowledge on earth were his…
He will recognize himself in us and united with us, the kingdom of light will be his eternal abode!
Yet truly one should not think that spiritual knowledge is only open to those who arrogantly imagine themselves to be above all ‘book-lore’.
Although spiritual knowledge cannot be attained through rational discovery, it can help reason to discover many new things…
Spiritual knowledge cannot be gained in the same way as worldly learning just as rational knowledge of physical circumstances can be gained in no other way than by rational effort.
What earthly reason learns from investigation based on physical senses can never be the object of spiritual sensory investigation, and never can there be a contradiction between both forms of knowledge, unless it were ascribed to imperfect cognitive powers.
Only where everything ‘conceivable’ finds its end is knowledge by spiritual perception possible: – beyond all scientific knowledge of earthly man!
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