"Words of Life" by Bô Yin Râ -- Part 6 of 6
Richard C. Cook comments: Today we are continuing our series of articles by and about Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, 1876-1943) with Part 6 of 6 from Words of Life.
To the best of our knowledge, Three Sages is the only website that is regularly publishing this material from the individual that we consider the most important spiritual teacher of our era. We are also grateful to Global Research for reposting these articles. We are doing this work in bringing the writings of Bô Yin Râ to English-speaking audiences through the help and cooperation of Books to Light, the publishing house that holds the copyright to the Standard Translation. Excellent English translations of some of Bô Yin Râ’s writings are also available from Kober Press.
We are also in close touch with individuals and organizations in Germany who are engaged in the study and propagation of the master’s works, including the Bô Yin Râ Foundation. As Bô Yin Râ was a prolific visual artist as well as an author, we are hoping to publish material relating to that aspect of his teachings in the near future.
It is extremely fortunate for the future of humanity that Bô Yin Râ’s complete works—both written and visual—are available for seekers to appreciate. It is now time that English-speakers begin to avail themselves of more of the material than they have been able to do thus far.
Now on to Words of Life. This book is unique even with the context of Bô Yin Râ’s entire 32-volume compendium, entitled Hortus Conclusus (Gated Garden), in that it consists of a direct representation of God speaking to the spiritual seeker. We can only say in addition that each of the 32 books contains a complete account of the teaching in differing formats.
Now for Words of Life Part 6 of 6:
“Words of Life” by Bô Yin Râ — Part 6 of 6
CONTENTS
Appeal
‘I’
Retreat
Love
Deed
Struggle
Peace
Power
Life
Light
Trust
Enlightenment
Vow
TRUST
You will achieve everything you want to achieve if you trust in my words!
You have already wanted to achieve much and have not done so because the foundations of your trust were too shallow. – –
Your trust must be grounded in the deepest depths of your consciousness, so that nothing that happens to you can uproot it! –
You must protect it like a tree that is to bear you precious fruit, so that wild animals cannot gnaw at the young trunk and thereby hinder its growth!
You must remove in good time all the shoots running wild, so that the trunk can nourish itself from all the strength in the ground, and nothing can be taken away which it needs to strengthen it. –
Yet even when the tree of your trust shows branches and boughs on its tall, powerful trunk – when its crown seeks to fully unfold – you will, as a good gardener, continually have to take care to cut back the over-luxuriant twigs so that the strength of the tree is not withdrawn from its growing fruit and it can soon produce an abundant harvest. – –
If until now you have often thought that your trust has come to nothing, I say to you that you have not spent enough attention to growing your trust powerfully strong before demanding fruit of it! –
If you are honest with yourself, you will have to admit that you have, to a certain extent, trusted ‘experimentally’, and that an intended, artificially nourished feeling of almost stubborn certainty has appeared to you to be the unlimited trust which, so you have heard, could endow you with magical power . . .
But this way of ‘trusting’ is an act of presumption and in truth cannot bring you any benefit! –
If you truly want to see the great trust I speak of here taking root and growing within you, you will have to beware of all the folly of imagination and desire, for here true things shall come into effect, and these true things cannot demonstrate their effectiveness if an entity of your imagination still takes up too much room within you! –
Behold, the trust I want to find in you follows an unswerving law, and no arbitrariness can bend it in the way that it will manifest an effect as long as its inherent lawfulness is disregarded – whether you are aware of your actions or not! –
You can also certainly not see this great trust take root in your inner self and grow overnight!
It will, like everything you wish to bring into existence in your temporal form, need time to take shape, and you will calmly have to banish all your hasty wishes, which would only provide obstacles for it! – –
Begin by awakening within you all the powers of feeling so that you might intuitively comprehend what is to come forth within you!
If you have already grasped this, if only by intuition, hold fast to what you have received and place all your thoughts in the service of your high striving to protect from harm the seed you have grasped in this way!
Let no day pass without becoming aware once again of what you can already intuit, and resist all doubting thoughts which like fluttering birds will try to destroy the tender seed before it can take root in the deepest ground!
Hinder not its taking root, but loosen yourself the spiritual soil within you and leave it to the dew of grace in order that it might be fully pervaded into those fine roots which are to nourish your trust! – –
In this way you will see it grow stronger and ever stronger; you will, as I said at the start, have to beware that wild animals do not harm it, and that rampant shoots do not deprive it of its strength . . .
But if your trust has been strongly developed in this way, you will then have to test whether you have indeed cultivated the noble growth whose fruits you want. – –
In no other way will you gain certainty than by undertaking to call upon your innermost being to give an answer; from your innermost being will then come the confidence that you may truly expect noble fruits, – unless you have from the very beginning only sunk your wild desires in your inner soil. – – –
Until you receive the confirmation from the innermost part of your being that your trust has promised a noble harvest, you should in wise modesty deny yourself the expectation of fruits! – – –
Hitherto I have spoken to you in images, yet you should also be able to understand without an image or parable what must be understood here . . .
Hear then, and consider in your heart: it is primal eternal power which shall take effect within you!
You can only awaken this power through that inner attitude which is described in human language as ‘trust’. – –
In no sense should you trust blindly that any desires might always find fulfillment, as long as merely trust in their fulfillment is present in you!
Greater things are required of you, and greater things you shall attain! –
I want you to trust me completely, and such absolute trust inherently includes that you leave to me alone the fulfillment of your wishes. – –
Only when you have surrendered to me alone the fulfillment of your wishes can you confidently expect me to endeavor to fulfill them! – – –
Do not think you must give me an indication as to how they are to be fulfilled!
I alone know how they are to be fulfilled, and whether their fulfillment is to be a blessing to you! –
I alone also know in what way your desires can attain fulfillment, as long as they do not conflict with the higher law within me! – –
I alone know with sure knowledge when the time is right to fulfill your wishes, inasmuch as they can be considered before me as desirable! – – –
If you were to attain fulfillment otherwise, by craft and cunning, it is certain that this fulfillment would in the end bring only calamity upon you, and that you would then have to curse the day your wishes were fulfilled! –
Trust me in the way you should trust: – with absolute trust, and you may be sure that I will grant you everything which will bring you and others salvation!
Do not quarrel with me if I fulfill your wishes differently than you had imagined!
Do not quarrel with me if I do not fulfill what seemed to you so easy to fulfill, indeed, if I allow to happen to your wishes the opposite of what you would call ‘fulfillment’! – –
Await with patience the outcome of events, and only then make a judgment as to whether I took care of your salvation, or whether I have effected something different for the sake of your salvation in order to attain in this way the ultimate goal of your desires! –
Unreserved trust in me means that you will not withdraw your trust from me, even if my way of fulfilling it does not in its wisdom correspond to what you had expected! –
Trust then too, and you will recognize in the end that your wishes truly find their fulfillment, even if the path to that fulfillment appeared to you initially as an unpleasant diversion, or even put your trust to a hard test! – – –
For the most part you will see that your wishes will be fulfilled promptly, insofar as they simply respect the boundaries which determine the course of events, and if you were able to take care that their fulfillment meets all the necessary preconditions. –
I shall surely not move in any other way towards fulfillment than you expected, as long as you do not compel me to do so by the nature of your wishes!
But know that you may only then surrender to your trust in me when I myself have entitled you to have this trust through the inner certainty imparted by me! – –
You will be able in all certainty to feel this inner conviction within you, as soon as you have sufficiently secured that inner attitude within yourself which will remove you from all the folly of delusion, and which will demonstrate genuine testimony of strength to serve as a solid point of leverage to my power . . .
Beforehand, however, you must have gained the hard-won recognition that you will always need my power, – that you can only be the support point upon which my power, continually residing within yourself, can bestow itself. – – –
You must become firm in yourself and be able to trust in yourself before you may put your trust in me! –
To the same degree that I can trust you, because you trust in yourself, you may trust me! – – –
Behold, towards such trust shall my words guide your soul!
Such trust will find in you its purpose and nourishment!
In such trust you will truly attain everything you ever wanted to attain! – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –– – – – – – – – – – –
*
ENLIGHTENMENT
I will fill your soul with light, – I who experience myself within you and who am the eternal radiance of all light!
Only from me can you attain your enlightenment, and there is no light to be found, if you seek outside yourself, which could ever set you alight! –
All light you perceive outside originates from me; – but I am hidden within your innermost being, and only from within your innermost being here can I fill you with my light! –
Oh, you who hides in darkness, I myself am all light, – I myself am the radiance of all light, – I myself am enlightenment to all who carry the desire for me! – –
I have shown you a variety of paths which you must walk to the end if you wish to reach me.
It is not so that all must walk the same paths; but each will recognize some of these paths I have shown you as his own paths, and will no longer be able to doubt if they are on their way to me or is trusting in mirages tempting them into the endless desert of error. . .
If you have, however, walked with inner constancy upon those paths you recognized as yours, you shall with all confidence finally meet me at the end of one of these paths; then the day will have come when I can set you alight so that everything which previously was dark within you must now transform into shining brightness in my light! – –
‘Enlightenment’ means: making everything visible which previously lay in darkness and was not recognized!
‘Enlightenment’ means: lighting up all the nooks and crannies in the house of your soul, so that there can no longer be any hiding place for poisonous toads and vipers!
‘Enlightenment’ finally means: filling the house of your soul with light in such a way that pure rays of light pour far out into the valleys of darkness, and all nighttime creatures return full of fear to their holes!
You often used to think that you saw everything clearly in the gloomy light the Earth gave you, the Earth to which you willingly bound yourself!
The light of reason then appeared to shine brightly for you, and what it could illuminate seemed to you to have become so recognizable that you scarcely asked for any brighter light. – –
One day you will find out that everything your reason hitherto claimed to be able to brighten, still lay in deep darkness; – that you did indeed make out the outlines but had no idea about the things limited by those lines! –
It seemed certain to you that all the light you could comprehend could only illuminate things from without; – but now it becomes evident to you that you can see in my light, so that things must disclose their innermost essences to you! – – – – –
Truly, this is no trifle you are to receive, as soon as you have through love, deed and struggle, found peace, power and life in me: – in me who is the light in you which will eternally enlighten you!! – – –
There have already been so many who have striven for enlightenment before walking the paths which alonecould have led them to light. . .
But a thousand illusions stalked them on their paths, and thus they fell prey to that one best capable of deceiving them. They imagined they were ‘enlightened’, whereas they had sunk more deeply into the night than all those who sought aimlessly because they recognized deception as deception but could not find the path upon which they were to walk. –
They who are fearful of the paths they first must walk before they can encounter me and be enlightened in my light are indeed not worthy of enlightenment and deserve to grope for things in the desolate night like a dreamer, instead of recognizing them in me in the way one can only recognize in me: – perceiving what is there; for all that exists could only come into being in me, and I bear its existence in me like the mother bears the fruit of her womb! – – –
Those who seek enlightenment before they have made themselves worthy of it deserve to be mocked by deception; for they confuse reality with their delusion, so that it is well-founded if delusion presents itself to them as real. – – –
Alas, how full is this earthly world with those deceived by their own delusions, and how high are the obstacles they have put on all the paths by which they could reach someone who could still tear them from their delusion!!!
Truly I would not see you among this horde of the deceived, therefore I counsel you whom I love, for in you I have my tabernacle: – do not flee from the paths which will lead you to me, even if they may often seem to you to be dark and miserable; for behold: I am like the sun, and when dark clouds have previously hidden me from human eyes, then shine most brightly! – –
Also for those who hide in the darkness in this way I am likewise innermost light and have in them my holy shrine, – but they envelop it with a thick covering and seek outside those things which could reach them only in their innermost being . . .
In proud arrogance they believe themselves able to discover the light that can enlighten them without those helpers I created from among them, so that my radiance might find through them a form of expression still comprehensible to those deeply surrounded by night, lest I blind their eyes with the rays of my light, surpassing the blaze of the sun, and they must be forever bereft of all ability to see. – –
No one can approach the sun, but all can participate in its light, and even though millions walk in its light, each one of them will receive all the light, and none would receive more light if that one were the only one exposed to it. –
The Sun’s rays must firstly penetrate through many different layers of cosmic space, finally to be transformed in theEarth’s atmosphere so that you can bear it.
If you could approach it at the place it leaves the Sun, you would inevitably be annihilated in its fire at that very moment. –
Anyone who believed that the Sun’s light could reach them without there being any substance in which light waves can oscillate between themselves and the blazing star would surely seem to you as the paragon of folly. – –
But similar things are expected by all those who wish to find me within themselves without first opening themselves up to the current I created for myself through their own kind, as the transforming substance for my Light’s rays. – – –
Truly you carry me within you, and I am nearer to you than your own body; – but only your consciousness can reveal me to you!
Yet your consciousness is limited in many different ways and could never sense me in itself unless I had generated in some like you, who live as men here on Earth, a transforming power which abundantly flows from them and is thereby accessible to all human consciousness if only it approaches this current of power through deed and life! –
For many millennia I have been known in this way to the consciousness of earthly men, and as long as men live on this Earth, there will always be some among them whose spiritual nature I will use to generate this transforming power. – – –
Even if there were only one individual in the whole of mankind in whom I could generate this power, since he offered themselves freely for this purpose in his spiritual nature even before receiving the body of this Earth, all human consciousness would yet receive this transforming power from this one. For what I demonstrate in one of these men is in no way confined to him alone, but is effectual through oscillations all over this earthly orb, causing the same oscillation in every consciousness which, knowingly, or only following its feeling by faith, calls for me with all the powers of the soul! – – – – –
Those I have created for myself since times unimaginable by further propagation as the Luminaries were always required to remain unknown, remote and cut off from all human activity, and very rarely did one receive the call to carry out his own activities among other men.
Only when the fullness of time demanded the sowing of new seed which was to germinate in my light, did I issue such a call.
Yet the transforming power which I continually generate in those who became my Luminaries is one thing, and another is work in the realm of the visible which at times I have commanded one of them to carry out! – –
But no other than one of these Luminaries could ever be the performer of this work! – – –
Regard the things which are given to you by one of these workers as teachings which can guide you when preparing yourself; – yet what gives you the ability to find me in yourself, you should recognize only in that transforming power which I continually generate in each of my Luminaries, whether he works in the turmoil of the world out of obedience and duty, – or whether, in deep solitude inaccessible to all human calls, he only has to steer the power which is generated by me in his spiritual nature and now flows forth from it and thus is able to reach the sphere of consciousness of all on this Earth! –
Do not seek in these matters to cast light from the dullness of reason upon those things which can only become truly light and clear when fulfilled through your own experience!
But know that many thousands have sought me and have not become finders. Dreaming in their earthly consciousness they have been too entangled in the fetters of their own delusion until the thought that they could ask for enlightenment had become unfamiliar to them and they were no longer able to knock where the door is straightaway opened to those who know how to knock!
If you seek enlightenment, open your heart wide and create in yourself the condition of one who wants to be given what he does not yet possess!
Be like one who knocks on the door of a treasury, knowing he is entitled for the door to be opened unto him!
But do not seek, like a thief, to open the door with counterfeit keys; and do not be like a soldier breaking down the door!
You would succeed in neither case, and wearily you would sink into sleep before the door, then to be deluded by mocking dreams that you had made your way in. – –
In the same way be very careful of wanting to take before you have been given!
Here too you would never be able to seize what you think you see before you, and all reaching for what you desire would leave you grasping at thin air! – – –
If you act in accordance with my words your futile searching will soon be at an end!
You will know how to find by fulfilling the law which here seeks to be fulfilled!
Opening your heart to grace which knows no arbitrariness, you will attain the enlightenment which will forever enlighten you! – – – – – – –
*
VOW
Oh You, unfathomable, primally powerful One, You who sends the shining stars of Your Word into my night of ignorance, let my thanks rise up to You like clouds of incense and fill the immensity of Your Temple!
Truly, I know not how I shall call You, unless Your ‘Name’ were – sanctified by Your Being – the same by which I learnt to call myself, by coming to myself and saying:
I!
You, Primal I, Primal Light, Primal Word are the Primal Ground of my being!
As the reflection and image of Your ‘Name’, You yourself taught my soul – to name me! – –
Cast in darkness by all the intervening walls I built myself to hide me from You, nevertheless Your Light has streamed through to me!
As ‘Lucifer’, as the bearer of Your Light, I was once near to You, before I allowed myself to sink into dreadful darkness, since I thought myself the
Light
to be! – – – – –
Now You beget yourself in my own kind, in order to release to me, the incomprehensibly exalted power of transformation of Your Love, so that in me – arising from the virgin womb of the soul – ‘Christos’ the Lord: Your
Word
could be born to lead me back from hellish torment and light-deprived darkness to You! – – – – – – –
You, the Primal Ground of my being, proclaim Yourself to me, – teach me in human words: to find my way to You, and show me that grace which resides within You, which, far removed from all arbitrariness, is law and demands fulfillment, if my soul is to be able to reach it . . .
Oh, how far from You were those who spoke to me of ‘grace’ as if You, changeable like the earthborn, could release guilt or have it weigh down upon me according to Your whim! – –
Now You yourself came to me to teach me, and I know You, even though my eyes are blinded by the overbright clarity of Your Light!
Now I know that I am only a likeness of Your Life, and that everything I attributed to myself was solely the effect of Your Omnipotence! – – –
To You, You my innermost being, shall my soul henceforth turn!
In You alone can it rest secure!
From You alone may it expect salvation!
From You alone can its rescue come!
Alas! I did not recognize before how I might gain redemption, and kept looking for the coming of redeemers whilst carrying within myself You, the redeemer! – – –
Yet I do not want to complain now, nor will I lament my fate.
Today, on this very day, I have gained my salvation!
Praised be forever the day and the hour when You, my innermost being, wanted to turn to me!
Never could I have escaped from You even if I never turned towards You!
Sunk in deepest night, losing myself, I nevertheless remained, even unknowingly, the reflection of the miracle of miracles, which You yourself are in all Eternity! – – –
But now, since You yourself have called to me, I truly would not ignore the call!
Oh, I have passionately waited so many years for Your call! – –
Oh You, whom my soul carries within itself, lead me henceforth by means of that transforming power that You beget in human-spiritual forms, so that I may come to recognize and understand, like those You created as Your helpers for my salvation!
Behold, I am Your Own and there is nothing left in me that could lay claim to me!
I belong only to You, and I have nothing anymore that would not want to be seized by You!
In You alone I want to find my salvation and my blessedness!
To You alone shall every breath of mine be praise from now on!
To You alone shall all my thoughts turn!
Through You alone I want in days to come to be in Life eternal! – – – – –
You, –
who:
‘I am!’
*
THE END
This ends Part 6 of 6
Words of Life is Book 27 of the Hortus Conclusus: the Standard-Translation© of the Hortus Conclusus (The Enclosed Garden), encompassing the spiritual teachings in 32 books by Bô Yin Râ. (Bô Yin Râ is the spiritual name of Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken 1876-1943.)
Published by Books to Light, February 2025. Edited by: 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©.
Hardcover bilingual edition of Words of Life available here.