"The Teaching" by Bô Yin Râ

A Three Sages Special

Richard C. Cook comments: We are living at a time when at least a portion of media coverage is devoting itself to exposure of the crisis today whereby the survival of the human race seems at stake. Obviously this media coverage is driven and fueled by the citizen journalism available on the internet.

Most of today’s citizen journalism has good intentions. Unfortunately, some outlets seem to be making a living by a “gloom and doom” philosophy that either paints the crisis as essentially without solutions or puts forth panaceas difficult or impossible to implement.

There is also an element that aims at generating readers by playing up the chaos or even inducing a sense of hopelessness under the notion that the sooner wholesale collapse takes place the better.

Yet there are solutions that can still be found. Where to look for these solutions is, of course, the question.

Our own solution, after a lifetime of searching, increasingly takes us out of the realm of external reform, though reform is sorely needed, into the realm of consciousness itself: specifically into human consciousness where it gains access to the life of Spirit.

The religions of the world have attempted, with much difficulty and greater or lesser success, to access Spirit. But beyond any particular practice or creed, there may yet be a universal source that some have discovered .

We are convinced that in our own day and age the purest source of teachings about Spirit that is currently available may be found in the works of German spiritual master Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, 1876-1943). Writing only in German, Bô Yin Râ attracted millions of German-language readers in his lifetime. His writings in English translation only began to become available decades later.

Accordingly, here at Three Sages, we have been spending considerable time and effort over the past year posting articles about Bô Yin Râ, along with translated excerpts from his books. This has included complete English translations of several books, including On Prayer, The Book on Happiness, and The Book on the Beyond. We shall soon be posting another entitled Words of Life. To the best of our knowledge, Three Sages is the only English-language website engaged in such a project with respect to the writings of Bô Yin Râ. We are also grateful to Global Research for re-posting many of these offerings.

We have been posting these works in cooperation with Books to Light, which now holds the copyright to this English translation of Bô Yin Râ’s complete 32-volume series of spiritual writings entitled Hortus Conclusus, or “The Gated Garden.” Books to Light is currently engaged in a major project of re-issuance in both digital and print formats of the entire series that will soon be announced. A majority of books in Hortus Conclusus are also available in an excellent English translation from Kober Press in a publishing project that began in the 1970s. The final Books to Light editions will contain the original German text side-by-side with the English.

Having said all this, Three Sages nevertheless has the impression that our readers have wanted a concise short statement of the basic tenets of the teachings of Bô Yin Râ that make crystal clear the way that he put forth to solve the manifold dilemmas of the age through which we are now living.

Accordingly, we now present the chapter entitled “The Teaching” from “Part Three: The Will to Joy,” which is the final section of the first book of Hortus Conclusus, entitled The Book of the Royal Art.

We are convinced that a deep reading of “The Teaching” will address the dilemmas facing those of us who are seeking to affirm a positive outlook in the midst of so much “doom and gloom” afflicting the human race today. We are seeking an outlook that affirms and confirms our own human identity and our ability, perhaps with higher spiritual help, to choose our own spiritual destiny while at the same time preserving our empathy toward the many suffering people around us.

Copyright information: 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 appropriate attribution. Books to Light now administers this copyright within the United States.

“The Teaching” by Bô Yin Râ

On the seashore I saw a mother sitting with her child.

The child was playing in the sand with shells and colored stones.

But his whole game consisted in choosing and casting away.

Are we not ourselves children playing such a game?! —

We choose and cast away; we carry on doing this for years and decades until we prepare for the end.

Is it not the same urge that urges that child to play with shells and stones?

Let us tarry here a while.

Here we shall see the sunrise.

Why should we travel around the earth at night, chasing after the sun?

Already we have found the man who is himself question to himself, himself answer to himself.

Choosing and casting away is his activity.

You will never find man doing anything else.

Admittedly, he will give you good reasons if you ask him why he acts like this.

But man never deceives himself as much as when he wants to delve into the reasons for his actions.

The impulses for the child’s game as for all deeds come from the same deep source.

In both cases the deepest motive is found in the will to joy!

It is the key to many mysteries.

All your thoughts and acts are your “shells” and “colored stones.”

You will choose and cast away according to your own value. —

Soon you will recognize that much “can be cast away,” since it is not suitable for any lasting joy.

But there are many “colorful stones” you pile up in heaps, and your eyes take delight in them for a time.

Then you become tired of the game.

You learn to ascertain values.

You would like to find precious stones and genuine pearls—not just empty shells and colorful pebbles…

At first your courage fails you.

You see how your early joy dies from what you have learned. —

Obscured, your eyes scan the sand.

But look: — there is something glistening among the pebbles!

Swiftly you throw your colored stones to one side to acquire that dazzling object.

You find your first genuinely precious stone!

From this day on you have become wise!

You will no longer find your joy in pebbles which only glisten when the sea makes them wet.

From this day on you will cast away much of what seemed attractive to your eyes and will only look for the few things whose radiance endures.

This is what the will to joy demands:

Joy uninterrupted,

Joy without an end!

Now you will ask:

“If this teaching contains the truth, from where then comes — suffering? —”

My answer to you is this: Suffering is the condition and pledge of joy!

Everything in the cosmos lives from polar opposites.

Small and great, low and high, suffering and joy, falsehood and truth, weakness and strength, — all life lives from these!

Without suffering joy could not come to itself, for all dividing and separating creates suffering: — division and separation are needed so that joy can reveal itself in all the forms needed for its endlessly varied action from which all life is maintained.

But your will to joy will teach you to see the lie in suffering and thereby de-value suffering for you.

Suffering and joy need each other, but suffering and joy also struggle with each other without ever reaching peace.

Suffering and joy alike want to draw your powers to them.

Suffering and joy alike want to be valued by you.

Inasmuch as you increase the value of joy, you withdraw value from suffering — until one day it becomes the willing servant of your joy!

I certainly do not advise you to flee from all adversity like a coward!

The will to joy will often guide man through the dank gorges of fate to radiant heights…

Every victory needs a struggle.

Struggle means: sustaining wounds and inflicting wounds!

Suffering will come to you through others, and you will be the cause for the suffering of others. But in your will to joy beware of finding joy in the wounds you have to inflict in the struggle!

Put your suffering in fetters if it makes you suffer for no purpose.

But where your suffering challenges you to the struggle, there you shall win your victory!

All suffering is a lie!

All suffering will one day be lost in truth!

Suffering does not endure.

Only joy is eternal, for it comes from eternity!

All suffering is your opponent and adversary!

You must bind all suffering and force it into your service so that joy can be free and reign!

But do not hate your suffering.

Hatred is the color of impotence.

The will to joy will teach you the victor’s love!

Everything will be easy for you in the will to joy.

You have life’s most efficacious power on your side!

Even one who increases suffering secretly strives for joy…

Even if his will to joy is fettered, it remains nonetheless the power’s source.

Will to joy propagates all action!

Will to joy maintains all life!

Choose yourself whether, as a fighter in a false cause, you want to serve suffering, or — as a victor — to overcome suffering?!

You can only be defeated if you show fear of suffering!

But the will to joy will complete you as a fearless victor!

You will find the will to joy at work in all existence.

The will to joy requires form and measure, so that joy can be born out of love.

Love is striving for one-ness of what has been split in two!

Love alone forces hatred into its service!

Love unites everything which is opposed!

From love alone can the will to joy beget joy!

Will to joy is masculine will — but it also needs the birth-giver: — love! —

Without love the will to joy would be doomed and never at rest..

Only love gives it a goal and clear direction.

Love brings equilibrium between opposite poles.

Love places all small things within the great.

Love unifies all things of value and without value in all-embracing unity according to eternal laws.

Everything without value is dear to it for the sake of the value it must serve, — for in the realm of reality things with value and without value cannot exist in isolation.

Though of unequal status, things with value and without value will always depend on each other.

Everything which seeks to grow must strive to unify things with value and things without value.

Everything alive needs the unification of unequal parts in love.

Only in this way does permanence emerge!

You see men die and you ask:

“Where is permanence here?! — “

Rather ask: “Where is the transient here?!”

I saw the dearest die and could find nothing transient.

Observe what remained of all who lived on earth, and you will find only a new union of the parts as far as your external eyes can see!

Who will show you transience in the places where the eye of your earthly body is not able to see??

Those places it is not suitable for you to see, it also could not see when those now carried away were still there for you to sense.

Before, your senses had only made you aware that there was something specific you became knowledgeable of through its effects on your senses.

If you now think that has been destroyed which you knew to exist when it still could work on your senses — then you are truly just a “slave” to your senses! —

All grief for the dead is also derived from the will to joy which finds itself powerless to retrieve what once was an occasion for joy and now has disappeared.

This grief treacherously deceives you if it wants to take from you the belief in the existence of those whom your physical eyes can no longer see because it is only suited to see things perceptible to the senses of the body.

You should grieve over yourself for having succumbed to this deception.

You thought only those things existed which the senses of your body touched…

Now you must see that the transient joy of man due to the senses is something essentially different from the permanent joy in man itself.

Now you must learn to recognize that all which is “visible” is but a temporal witness to invisible reality.

All reality proceeds from the invisible!

If you want to find the reality of man, you will only attain it in the invisible, through what is invisible in you!…

Although you are permitted to believe in much of what is visible, you are not to believe everything!

You must learn to recognize the visible as the counter pole to the invisible in you!

We could not experience ourselves in this existence but for the will which strives towards the outermost realms in order to attain visibility by the senses of the earth.

Invisibly effectual and visibly effected will are united within us temporarily.

Still we do not approach the condition determined by the spirit’s law of permanent unity of both poles of the will.

Release from too much. —

Completion of too little: — truly, “death” is nothing other as it releases our invisible from the visible.

No longer restricted by visible forms we shall nevertheless live and work in the visible realm: — each as a whole, conscious of himself from the eternal whole…

As their “outer” became an “inner” — but your “inner” still wrestles with your “outer” — therefore you find no path to those you call “the dead.”

Although there is a path which leads to them, only very few alive in an earthly body are capable of treading this path without danger.

It begins in the outer and leads through the innermost halls of nature before reaching its destination.

The man who would tread it must himself illuminate this path lest he be lost in the labyrinths through which he must “wander.”

Night and confusion will surround him until he falls prey himself to night and confusion.

Madness is the end!

All those who can tread this path without danger — avoid it. All of them can testify to the truth of my words.

You can scarcely recognize yourself within your “inner being,” — how could you hope there to hear the tender voices of the departed!?!

And yet it is completely useless to seek for proof in the “outer” world for something which can only be found within the innermost part of the “inner” world.

Eternal life is rest and deed.

Rest and deed are in an eternal alternation, like high tides and low tides, in the eternal sea of innermost events.

Eternal rest would be true death!

Eternal deed would be true damnation!

Rest and deed united in joy, are a blessed life!

You interpret falsely your yearning, if you believe you want “eternal rest.”

Your yearning wants eternal joy in rest and deed!

Joy is human feeling of divine perfection!

Therefore you should give power within you to the will to joy!

You can never long too much for joy!

And whatever is given to you as enduring joy can never be taken away from you again…

Everywhere in the universe nature puts up its signposts.

Men frolic past them like dancing children…

You should rather learn to pay heed to the signposts! —

Still you seek after lust and allow yourselves to be consumed by desires while only joy itself can lead to enduring life…

God is in joy!

Joy is clear light!

Desire and lust are a smoldering fire.

The will to joy is will to God!

Know yourself: —

You were dormant will before one of the poles within you pushed towards the visible.

You are even now dreaming will!

But you will become more and more wakeful will, until one day your will, in joy and clarity, shall vividly permeate everything within you.

All the tables of the law are erected by the will to joy.

You are yourself will to joy and follow only your own law when you want to come in joy to yourself and in joy to God!

Everything which brings about lasting joy will serve you.

Everything which does not serve lasting joy must harm you.

You are your own judge, and your judgment is your deed!

You can “condemn” yourself for ages and can raise yourself to the highest “state of bliss” by your actions…

Yet as long as you may be erring, — you must in the end, even if it were after aeons, follow yourself!

As soon as you know yourself, you will find yourself in the light of the godhead.

Still you strive outwards onto an empty frozen nothingness.

Still you look upon a thousand goals somewhere “outside”…

One day you must learn that you should only become your own goal in the will to joy in yourself.

In your hands you hold the power to bind yourself and to release yourself!

Still you are not aware of your power. You expect to find “outside” what occurs only in the innermost realm.

But “outside” and “inside” shall become one for you only when you recognize yourself in the will to joy!

For a long time you were taught that “sorrow of the heart” and “contrition” could bring you near to God.

You have trusted these doctrines, and now you are afraid to set off on the path to yourself and to your God.

Have no fear for anything apart from what wants to make you fearful!

You will walk fearlessly in the power of joy as soon as you will yourself in the will to joy.

You shall experience eternal life in the will to joy!

Your living God reveals himself in the will to joy!

And in the will to joy, God will one day unite himself with you eternally!

Then you shall know that only gloomy idols sought to keep you away from joy in yourself as the original source of your will to joy!

The you shall discover that it was — fear that kept you from your joy!

Then you shall learn that your being is only secure for you when you can be joyful in yourself!

In sacred joy bestowed onto yourself as an eternal gift to yourself, you shall be in the will to joy forever!