"The Path to God" by Bô Yin Râ: Part 1 of 7

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. 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. Most recently we published the complete text of two of Bô Yin Râ’s major books; namely, “The Book on the Beyond,” and “The Book on Happiness.” We are now moving ahead with publishing another complete text of one of Bô Yin Râ’s books, this one entitled “The Path to God.” Readers familiar with spiritual literature may rightfully ask whether anything new can be said on this topic. Please follow along with us over the next few weeks. You may find yourself very pleasantly surprised; perhaps even grateful! Three Sages is the only US website currently publishing Bô Yin Râ’s works, though we welcome others to join us. We are bringing you his books courtesy of the new US publishing house, Books to Light. We now proceed starting with editorial information from Books to Light.

Bô Yin Râ

The Path to God (Der Weg zu Gott)

Hortus Conclusus Book Six

October, 2024

' Der Weg zu Gott ' was first published in German language in 1924 by Rhein-Verlag, Basel, (Switzerland)

© Books to Light (the United States) The Standard-translation© into English, 2nd Edition (1st Edition was published by Posthumus Projects in 2015). The emphases used in original German are included in this new hardcopy edition (emphases edited by Books to Light to match the original writings).

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024946722

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. Published by Books to Light. Editors: Posthumus Projects (the Netherlands), Books to Light (the United States), Detlef Janssen (Germany). All rights, copyrights included, reserved by Books to Light. Posthumus Projects and Books to Light are responsible for this Standard-translation©. Primary place of publication: U.S.

Advice to readers from Bô Yin Râ:

Dearest Reader, please note, that I can not write anything that is not experienced most emphatically as spoken language. This explains everything which at first sight might appear as a deliberate eccentricity in my sentence structure and punctuation. (From: 'Letters to One and Many', middle of chapter About my Manner of Writing)

(...) no translation, no matter how excellent, can ever replace knowledge in the original language. One day we may learn German as we once learnt Latin and Greek because we wanted to understand the ancient authors in their own language. This is not a "prophecy", but an unalterable view of spiritually assured insight, which, however, refers only to my work and exclusively to its language – for its own sake ! –(From: Bô Yin Râ, 'Kodizill to My Spiritual Teachings', middle of first chapter)

Contents of The Path to God

Delusion and Belief . . . 5

Sure Knowledge . . . 39

The Dream of Souls . . . 67

Truth and Reality . . . 95

Yes and No . . . 123

The Great Struggle . . . 161

Completion . . . 175

Part 1 of 7: DELUSION AND BELIEF

“I SEE YOU RUSHING HITHER AND THITHER, MY FRIEND !

WHAT IS THE GOAL OF YOUR WAY ? !”

This is the question I have asked of many people; many have been the goals given me in answer.

Alas, so few have realiZed that they were hurrying to no particular goal as they had lost the WAY which leads to the high goal they once hoped to reach: –

The PATH TO GOD !

DELUSION AND BELIEF

I do not want to ask the question: whether it is ‘necessary’ for earthly human to believe in ‘God’ . . .

All those who have lived by this belief have always and everywhere answered in the affirmative ! This has long since brought serious discredit on both the question, as well as all answers to it . . .

I want to ask the question how it might be possible for earthly humans to claim they believe in GOD ! ? !

There are so many ‘sacred’ books from ancient traditions where you can read how a ‘God’ ‘appeared’ at some place and time to a believer.

If these fortunate people claim they believe in this God, they may justify this belief in their own estimation.

Whatever may have ‘appeared’ to them: – they believe the apparition to be ‘God’. If they then say they ‘believe’, they are saying nothing more than that they believe in the apparition and do not recogniZe the delusion which causes them to think they have seen ‘God’. – – –

But how will you, who have never had this sort of experience, claim that you believe in God?? –

You have simply conceived in your thoughts a ‘God’ after your own likeness !

In an image you have lifted yourself to perfection, and this thought up image you consider to be ‘God’. – –

You are a worshiper of graven images and a servant to the idol you created yourself !

You cannot escape from your own narrow confines; thus you keep yourself trapped in the narrowness of your own delusion !

In the way you have to create yourself those things you want to see created, likewise you imagine that someone must have created this vast world you perceive through your senses. You call this supposed creator, constructed from the confines of your delusion, your ‘God’; – you call your own bondage to delusion your ‘belief’. – –

Within this external world surrounding you, you see so many things arranged as though designed for certain purposes, and since you are likewise a product of this very same world seeking to achieve your ends by appropriate means, you imagine there must be someone resembling you behind these things seeking to achieve his ends in the same way. – –

You are untroubled by the fact that there are many more things in this world which scarcely reflect such a purpose, and that the purposeful ‘creator’ would be an utter bungler – even less capable than the supposed ‘creation’ – if, as your delusion would have it, the 'creator's' existence could be inferred from action which achieves many purposes but fails to achieve many others. – –

You are untroubled by the fact that so often what appears to you as a ‘purpose’ is achieved, only then to be destroyed by something else which seemed to you to have been promoted just as much. – –

At this point you stop; without ever being at loss for an answer, your delusions assume there is an ‘unfathomable wisdom’ which needs nonsense for sense to hold sway. – –

You conclude from the fact that people in every age and every race on Earth have created something before which they can bow down, that the product of your delusions must reflect reality, – and, since your thinking has been able to conceive it, you ‘believe’ the ‘God’ you have created – to exist, and you have plenty to say about this ‘God’. – – –

Truly, you lack modesty; even in your much praised ‘humility in the presence of the Lord’ you are not aware of how strangely you infer ‘God’s’ existence from your own ! – –

You find yourself existing here on Earth; therefore your self-created ‘god’ ‘must’ – because you will it – also be somewhere in some ‘heaven’! . . .

Whether you are merely repeating what others before you have said to you concerning ‘God’ and ‘God’s nature’, or whether you disdain these ancient fables and conceive ‘God’ on your own terms, – you are still permanently caught in the spell of the magic circle your arrogant superstition had you draw, even if you feel yourself to be ‘raised’ above all ‘belief’ and spiritually ‘free’ ! – – –

I want to free you from these delusions, my friend; I want to show you that it is, nevertheless, possible to ‘believe in God’. – –

I want to show that you can believe in a ‘God’ who is not created from my or your narrow delusions, and who can never be touched by ‘proof’ relying on thought for its effectiveness ! – – –

At the very start we must agree what we imply when henceforth we use the word ‘God’ here among us.

The lucid background of my opening comments has shown you that I do not describe as ‘God’ any image created by erroneous thought which only appears real to delusion ! –

We want to approach reality which thought can never comprehend ! – –

We want to encounter eternal being on our path ! Your inner eye must be sober and clear if you want to recognize it ! – –

You will have to forget the deceptive phenomena conceived by your thinking ! –

The One that does not know of a second one besides itself will encounter you – yet it reveals itself in infinite variety whenever it can become revelation ! – –

You are yourself its revelation, although you know nothing of it yet; only in yourself can that which reveals itself become comprehensible to that which has been revealed ! – – –

You have also found deception within yourself; now you shall find the truth within yourself ! – –

It is not too difficult for you to differentiate there between truth and self- deception ! –

Those who deceived themselves and then awoke from their dreams often lost all courage. Thus they are afraid of: falling prey to new deception, so that when the truth ever encounters them, it must struggle to convince them that it is not another illusion . . .

You must not, like them, succumb to embitterment; for what you failed to achieve ninety-nine times, you may succeed in on the hundredth occasion ! – –

Who knows whether your time already had come, for you to encounter the truth? !

Perhaps in your impatience you only wanted to encounter it along a path it must avoid? ! – – –

Yet if you are on the right path, and prepared to recognize it, you surely will no longer be in doubt as to whether it is the truth itself, or an illusion of your own making, which reveals itself to you within your own being. – –

Eternal truth will attest to what is truth within yourself ! . . .

The light that shines from itself will illuminate you; all the lamps you once made for yourself in order to enlighten your path will barely remain visible in your radiant illumination ! – –

You will encounter your own life in its eternal fullness; – you will see yourself risen by the force of light within the light from the night of your earthly grave ! . . .

You will find yourself united with ‘God’ –the original being of all being ! – –

As you address yourself with ‘I’ you will learn to understand that you shall hallow God’s ‘name’ ! – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

While I speak to you in this way, you can feel within yourself an inner force – whether it is felt with strength, or only at first as a hesitant knocking on the firmly closed door of your heart . . .

There is something within you more capable of hearing my words than your mind, which will only wants to make sense of my sentences ! – – –

This ‘something’, however, is the power of belief [German “glaube” also translated as “faith”—ed.] you carry within you, and still do not know ! –

You may scarcely accept that it can be found within you ! – –

From your youth onwards, you have relied too much on your thinking; you assumed it could exclusively provide you with ultimate certainty, insofar as it is still attainable for people ! – –

Now your thinking has deceived you a thousand times; even today you are enslaved by what you have thought up ! –Nevertheless, you are afraid of falling into an empty void if you placed greater trust in things other than your thinking ! . . .

It is this fear alone which would hold you back from giving yourself up to the power of belief [faith] ! – – –

But you will hear my words in vain if you only allow them to speak to your thinking and would only like to find them confirmed by your thinking ! –

Do not think that I am maligning the power of thinking in these words I speak !

I am well aware that there are many things here in this existence on Earth which only mature thinking can unravel; I deeply respect what mankind owes to those it calls its thinkers ! – –

Yet things which can be conceived in thought, and those things which only the exalted power of belief [faith] can make you comprehend, are quite different in nature ! – – –

You will understand that I am by no means speaking here of a ‘belief’ [faith] which only ‘accepts as true’ what it ‘believes’ itself ! –

This form of supposition seems to me unworthy of the word ‘belief’ [faith]! –

The power of belief [faith] I am speaking about is truly different in character ! . . .

Here there is no imagining, no opinion, no supposition, no deduction ! Those who give themselves over to the power of belief [faith], even if initially they only discern it most faintly within themselves, will certainly not have to give themselves over to an opinion ! –

But soon they will feel that there is a force working within them which can lead to many a new insight which ‘flesh and blood’ would never reveal to them ! – –

What you are now feeling within yourself, although you cannot interpret it, is this power of belief [faith] – perhaps still only in its very weakest form . . .

There is something in you which would like to agree with what I have said above, if your thinking did not try and stand in the way with all sorts of objections. – –

If you want to remain the obedient slave of your thinking, you can expect very little from the power of belief [faith] which would see you free and unchained ! – – –

Only when you can free yourself from your thinking will you find the power of belief faith] at work within you !

You would mock any craftsman who sought to split iron with an axe; you would be an eye-witness to lunacy if someone sought to cut a pane of glass with a saw ! –

But hitherto you have been trying to do something very similar; – still you do not notice how you are deluding yourself ! –

With completely unsuitable means you are trying to achieve something which can never be achieved in this way ! . . .

It is as though you are trying to fell trees with a pocket knife or digging for ore with your bare hands !

Yet I have to tell you that the power of thought is a tried and tested tool when penetrating things of this Earth, – but that it must immediately fail as soon as you try to attain knowledge of things which root in the spirit ! –

Only the power of belief [faith] can help you here !

Do not believe that this power is somehow less suited to give you certainty than the power of thought is, where thought alone is the appropriate tool ! – –

Still you connect the word ‘belief’ only with the concept of ‘holding as true’ that which you ‘believe’, or think you ‘believe ! The power of belief [faith] is, however, an inner certainty that you will attain what it promises ! – – –

As soon as you seek to ‘believe’ in God in this way, you will certainly not believe those who tried to pass off old delusions, hatched from the confines of their own understanding, as though they were the truth ! – –

You will only believe yourself, when you trust in the power of belief [faith]! – – –

You will find it working within you, and what it has to reveal to you will be based within yourself ! – –

You will experience within yourself

those things it is able to teach you ! – – –

Only those things you experience within yourself, my friend, will be your own ! – – –

Those things which do not become as certain as your own physical body, will never be allowed to be called ‘certainty’ to you ! – –

Those things you cannot comprehend, in the way you comprehend yourself, you surely have not in fact comprehended ! – –

Those things you cannot ‘believe’, in the way you believe in your own existence, should never be ‘belief’ [faith] to you ! – – –

I intend to guide you to ‘belief’ [faith], – to a belief you can justify to yourself !

I intend to guide you to a ‘belief’ [faith] you will never deny !

I intend to lead you to a ‘belief’[faith] which will last beyond your days on Earth !

Only then will you be able to testify that in truth you must believe in ‘God’ ! – –

Only then will the one in whom you ‘believe’, see you as a ‘believer’ ! – –

Prior to this, every ‘confession’ is a lie ! Prior to this, every ‘confession’ is merely assenting to your, or another’s, sacredly held delusion ! –

Yet once you have experienced what can be experienced, you will henceforth be freed from every delusion ! – –

Once you have experienced those things the power of belief [faith] can bring near to you, you will have attained a certainty no man can ever take away from you in all eternity ! – –

If you have entrusted yourself to the power of belief [faith], one day you will surely arrive at the point when you may justifiably confess:

“I believe in GOD !”

*

This ends Part 1 of 7.