"The Book on the Beyond" by Bô Yin Râ--Part 4
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 4
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 Skill of Dying (continued)
Although the use made of this life on earth is of greatest significance in preparing for states of consciousness in the afterlife, you should not think that you have to lead the life of one of those anxious saints with little faith – those who are continually concerned with securing ‘salvation for their souls’; those who are selfish in their hearts, fearful of every ‘sin’ but inwardly rejoicing in their certain belief in the ‘damnation of the wicked world’.
Such an attitude to life would, with all certainty, only land you one day in one of those deceptive ‘shoreline realms’ of the spirit which human delusion has constructed without realizing it was the architect.
A life of loyal fulfillment of duties, imbued with love for all living things, full of striving for goodness and truth, seeking order in the household of your will and refinement in your joys, – a life full of cheerful faith in the ultimate fulfillment of your supreme and purest yearning, – this will always be the best life on earth for you, especially if you endeavor at the same time to learn those things I call the ‘skill of dying’ in this treatise.
Granted, there is also another special spiritual way on high of which I have spoken elsewhere. But until you have given your life the form my counsel teaches you to give it, you will scarcely be able to proceed on such a path…
He who would walk on this path must be free of everything which could hinder the sureness of his steps.
‘Sulking’ hanging of heads is as reproachable as the hollow gesture of ‘renouncing the world’!
The path leading man to the place where his ‘God’ can be born within him may not seem accessible to all yet; but all should at least know of this path, – everyone should prepare himself to walk upon it, whenever possible, here on earth.
Many may still lack the strength and endurance needed; but all spiritual powers grow through use, and endurance is given only to those who dedicate all their love to a deed. – –
Every thought, experience and deed in this physical dimension of the world exerts a continual influence in the world ‘beyond’.
The fruits of all deeds carried out by man in the physical realm will remain with him far beyond death, even if his deeds on earth were directed only towards physical purposes.
Assuming the possibility of moral responsibility, in all your deeds here on earth it is not a question of what you do, but how you do it. – –
The humblest form of work here on earth can cause a stream of unimagined strength to flow to you for your later life within the spiritual dimension of the world, if only you carry out your duties loyally, joyfully and to the best of your abilities, as though the state of the whole universe depends on the quality of your work alone…
You alone, and only you, are responsible for yourself!
In everything you think or do – in everything you carry out in this dimension of the world which can be experienced by the physical senses – you are always the unconscious creator of your later destiny in the world perceived by the spiritual senses. –
What you here on earth call your ‘destiny’ is but a ridiculously small segment of an immeasurable totality. If you ever curse your destiny here, your ill humor may be understandable, even forgivable, from a human perspective, but nonetheless you are like the child who foolishly demands things which he can not be given yet because they would harm him, while later on he will have at his disposal whatever he desired in great abundance…
Once you have attained a high level in the spiritual world, you will be able to understand your destiny. Then you will smile when you recall the thoughts you once had. – –
Then you will see that your mind’s best reasons which lurked you into forming your judgement were just as many stupidities, because you sought to open up the beauty of blossom and the sweet deliciousness of fruit from the tangle of roots your hands dug up from the dark earth.
Only those capable of releasing themselves from constricting images grown perforce from a form of perception reliant on the physical senses, will gradually be able to suspect a little of the great totality in which they are rooted, and which they can never approach with means gained through knowledge of the physical senses…
It was no empty saying that was used by a wise man long ago when, almost overpowered by the majesty of what he beheld, he found the words:
“Eyes have not seen, nor ears heard what God has prepared for those that love him!”
But to ‘love God’ means: – to ‘love’ all the toils and troubles of the earth, to accept them so willingly, as though we had willed and sought all things in exactly the way they came into our lives! –
To ‘love God’ means: – to love the earth and all things living on it, – exactly as they are, – even though they may be contrary to our wishes! –
To ‘love God’ means: – to love oneself, and for one’s own sake to accept joyfully all the burdens given us to bear on the long and difficult path which leads us out of error and confusion finally to ourselves, so as we are eternally in God! – –
From all this you will now also know the best way to honor those departed ones: – those to whom you were close during their lives on earth, and who are still today, as before, alive, though now removed from the ability of perception of your physical senses…
You will now know how you can continue to help them, and how you, if needing help yourself, can obtain it from them.
Truly, it is a misdirected start to set up ‘spiritualist circles’ in order to get into contact with those who have departed this earth!
Even assuming the honesty of all the participants, and the guaranty that there will be no fraud, even unintentional, you will surely be too ignorant about the powers manifesting themselves in such ‘séances’ and you are not capable of identifying the real creators of the phenomena.
It matters not if you are rejecting all preconceived beliefs in order to examine what might be true about the whole business!
The forces active in genuine spiritualist manifestations are full of lies, caprice and deceit, – ever ready to make themselves known with the help of your own power, – yet far from willing to submit to being objects for experimentation… (of course I will leave aside the manifold possibilities for deception carried out by ‘mediums’ and their collaborators at séances.)
The demonstrations in which you think you are seeing powers of the ‘beyond’ at work are, if we exclude earthly deception, nothing other than a game played by invisible beings from an almost unknown region of the physical world. –
It is possible in isolated cases for those who have really ‘awoken’ in the spirit – those who, as conscious in the beyond, can already be numbered among ‘those in the beyond’ despite still inhabiting an earthly body in the physically perceptible part of the world, to make use of these beings we have mentioned, in the same way as you would deploy any other available source of help. However, it would never occur to any of those who have ‘awoken’ in the spirit to contribute to the entertainment of participants in a séance, or to want to make the attempted experiments interesting…
Even where one has the impression that one is ‘without doubt’ dealing with the entelechy of a deceased person, the danger of deception by lemuroid beings so greatly exceeds any probability of genuine communication that one cannot warn forcefully enough of going along any path leading to ‘spiritualist’ phenomena.
He who speaks words of warning here is acquainted with all possible manifestations in the area of ‘spiritualism’ from his own, certain and abundant experiences.
But he is just as well acquainted with that invisible physical intermediate world which constitutes the proper element where those supposed ‘spiritualist’ specters feel at home. If called upon to do so, he can use these beings and forces in the same way as one uses a horse for riding or a hound for tracking prey.
Those who are spiritually empowered use these beings with their powers when they so require it, without first needing the services of a ‘medium’ or ‘spiritualist séances’.
He enters the realms of these twilight beings with the same certainty as when he moves within purely spiritual worlds.
Admittedly, approaching these beings is far from pleasant. No one capable of deploying them according to his will ever does so unless it is necessary; he will always have to overcome a feeling of disgust.
You will mainly come into contact with these creatures, comparable in earthly terms perhaps to the jellyfish of the southern seas yet normally, unlike them imperceptible physically, and their yet purely physical powers, when you imagine that you are communicating with your ‘departed loved ones’; – unless your own unknown powers, coming from the same region to which these invisible physical creatures belong, are causing demonstrations on their own, and you are in this way staging a spectral drama yourself, without knowing it…
For your spiritual and physical well-being, however, this unwitting self-deception is far less fateful than real contact with the lemuroid beings described here; as they will suck out your strength like leeches, and can only produce the supposed ‘miracles’ of your ‘spiritualist séances’ with the help of the energy they have drained from you.
Even the most unbiased of researchers who encounters these phenomena merely as an observer is far from immune to the power of the tentacles invisibly wrapping themselves around him.
However much he thinks he stands ‘above the situation’, he cannot help but let his most secret powers be drawn from him without even suspecting the injury being perpetrated on him by the invisible parasites of his ‘medium’ whilst capturing his interest. – –
The Book on the Beyond--Part 1