The Three Sages Substack continues its presentation of works by the Luminary Bô Yin Râ in cooperation with Books to Light, publisher and copyright holder of the complete English translation of the Luminary’s masterwork: the 32-volume German-language compendium of Bô Yin Râ’s spiritual guidance under the general title of Hortus Conclusus (“The Enclosed Garden”).

We continue with our new series of postings by Bô Yin Râ on the supremely important topic of love. Today’s posting is the complete text of the chapter entitled “Love” from the book Words of Life, which is the 27th volume of Hortus Conclusus. Note that there is a vast difference between Words of Life and the other volumes of Hortus Conclusus which are written in the voice of Bô Yin Râ himself. By contrast, Words of Life, according to Bô Yin Râ, is a book where “Eternal Life here speaks in solemn words of God to an awakening human soul, which in the end makes answer in a joyous vow.” We intend this chapter on “Love” to be read as a companion piece to our previous publication entitled “On the Power of Love” from the book High Goal, which is the 19th volume of Hortus Conclusus. Next, our series will present the entire text of The Book on Love which stands as the 7th volume of Hortus Conclusus.

Bô Yin Râ is the spiritual name of Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, who was born in Aschaffenburg, Germany, in 1876 and who passed away in Lugano, Switzerland, in 1943. In his explanations of spiritual realities and the inner path to realization, Bô Yin Râ openly identified himself as part of the same society of Leuchtenden des Urlichts (“Luminaries of the First Light”) to which Jesus Christ himself belonged.

The Luminaries consist of those human individuals with ultimate responsibility for the spiritual destiny of all humanity on planet Earth. Their terrestrial headquarters are located in the heart of Asia, and they have been providing their guidance for millennia. The existence of the Luminaries is hinted at in the Bible by references to the Order of Melchizedek of which Jesus was a priest (Hebrews 7:1-28).

It is extremely rare for a Luminary to work openly and in public as Jesus and Bô Yin Râ have done. Bô Yin Râ wrote that the work of the Luminaries is still at an early stage. This idea is supported by the realization that in both cultural and ethical terms humanity is not far removed from a primitive state of savage barbarism. Events in the world today show this clearly. At the same time, humanity’s spiritual hunger is shown by the proliferation of sects and cults trying to show the way, along with the course of the historic religions.

At present the number of people with spiritual hunger is substantial. During Bô Yin Râ’s lifetime over a million people in the German-speaking world read his books until they were banned by the Third Reich. More and more people are reading the books in German today, and they are also being widely translated and read in other languages, including English. Bô Yin Râ predicted that a time would come when everyone on Earth who was seeking the spiritual life would read and study his works. We at Three Sages are trying to do our own small part in making them better known and more available in the U.S. and among other English-speaking people.

One of the key facts about Bô Yin Râ’s teachings is that he clearly expressed the necessity of answering the fundamental question: What is a human being? If we are honest, we must face the fact that we really don’t know the answer to that question. Not that there is a shortage of those attempting to provide an answer, many of these being quite fantastic. Rather the problem is often that the answers are incomplete, mutually contradictory, or self-serving. In the absence of a satisfactory answer, we lack the inner assurance and self-confidence needed to resist the negative forces that would enslave and exploit us during our sojourn on earth. On the other hand, true self-knowledge as defined by Bô Yin Râ, and previously by Jesus, has the potential to assist us in becoming truly joyful and free, both in this world and in the world we all must enter at death. How to accomplish this? Bô Yin Râ’s teachings constitute what is always most rare: authentic guidance.

Bô Yin Râ’s Hortus Conclusus is a comprehensive body of work but is broken down into 32 separate books, each of which approaches spirituality from a different though complementary angle. But the core is the trilogy consisting of 1) The Book on the Living God; 2) The Book on the Beyond; and 3) The Book on Man. The first of these three volumes, The Book on the Living God, may be read in translation in an on-line version published by the Kober Press of Berkeley, CA, which is available HERE. The second volume, The Book on the Beyond, is available from Kober Press, in the Books to Light translation published by Books to Light, and in the series presented by Three Sages HERE. The third book of the trilogy, The Book on Man, was also recently posted by Three Sages and is available HERE.

We can promise that if you read these books attentively you will not view your life and purpose in the same light as you did before you began. We wish you well on this most important and personal of all journeys.

The Standard-Translation© of Hortus Conclusus (“The Enclosed Garden”) encompasses Bô Yin Râ’s spiritual teachings in 32 books. Bô Yin Râ is the spiritual name of Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken. Hortus Conclusus was originally published by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam, Inc. in The Netherlands under number 33079516, www.bo-yin-ra.org. All rights, copyrights included, reserved by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam are now held by Books to Light—USA. Posthumus Projects Amsterdam and Books to Light—USA are responsible for this Standard-Translation©. The material is posted by the Three Sages Substack with permission of Books to Light.

For the Books to Light website with ordering information for Bô Yin Râ’s books, click HERE. For the Books to Light YouTube channel, click HERE.

For the first 100 purchases, Books to Light is offering the ONLY single-volume English translation of Bô Yin Râ’s Hortus Conclusus—his complete spiritual teachings—at a special discount to Three Sages subscribers at 40 percent off the usual retail purchase price. Order this volume HERE.

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As always, we are grateful to our readers and ask that you share our postings with others as you have occasion to do so. Now for the text:

Truly, I love myself, and you should be like me and love yourself above all things!

Not your body, nor anything else that may mean ‘I’ for you, shall you know how to love ‘above all things’, even if you will bind yourself continually in love to your body and your invisible powers!

‘Above all things’ you should love only yourself in the innermost part of your inner self, – that self which shelters me in it! – – –

To love ‘above all things’ should mean for you: loving yourself more than everything outside yourself; and if you love yourself in this way, you will find in yourself your highest love in me! – – – – –

You have been badly taught if you believe you should love all things! –

Your highest love, which you can only find in me once you have learnt to love yourself, is free of every object of love; some who only knew half what can be known, have concluded from this that it must encompass all things. – –

But my love only obeys my own inherent law and is contained within myself. – – –

Everything it seeks to encompass it must draw into myself. – –

But there is nothing within me that does not will myself! – – –

So guide your love wisely, if you love external things!

Not loving should certainly not mean: hating!

You will have to exclude many things from your love, things which you should indeed not ‘hate’! – –

Free from love and hate will you have to encounter the majority of things which are not part of yourself . . .

You should love the things which bring you to yourself, and thereby to me!

All other things are forever beyond your love! – – –

But how could you know how to love what you should love, if you do not love yourself, – yourself, in whom your highest love can alone reveal itself to you?! –

Before you have fathomed yourself and love yourself ‘above all things’ all your love for external things will be but appearance and delusion. – –

You will deceive yourself if, before you have done this, you think you ‘love’, and what you claim to love will be deceived by you . . .

You will only be a true person of love when you can love yourself! – – –

All great people of love were always in love with themselves; they enveloped themselves in the passionate blaze of love! – –

But know this, where you should not love at all you must yield even less to hatred, if you want to reach me in your highest love!

Let the fact that you feel capable of hatred be proof of your power to love, – yet not everything you feel capable of helps you reach yourself! – –

Loving is the great affirmation of what you love, – not loving its negation, – – but hatred is the admission of powerlessness, in being able to clear what is negated from your path!

But you should regard all that is negated as though it had no existence for you!

You should not want to look upon it any longer; no longer should you give it powers which it gains time after time through your attention. – – – – –

But if you let the hatred within you become effective, you will continue to feed what is hated with your powers, and you will have to take care that it will not become a monster which consumes you . . .

Those true people of love who have found me in their highest love truly did not weakly affirm all they encountered; they knew how to deny strongly where necessary. Yet not one among them ever surrendered himself to hatred! –

Thus you should seek to become the master of hatred; if you do not succeed in this today, you will overcome hatred tomorrow if only you remain wakeful and intent on raising yourself above hatred. – – –

The sooner you recognize that all your hatred only nourishes the object of your hatred, the sooner you will wrest yourself from hatred!

So many sources of evil on this Earth would long ago have dried up if hatred did not always make them overflow again! –

If you really want something corruptible to be consumed within itself, you need only to completely withdraw your love from it! – –

As long as you remain active in your supposed ‘negation’, you have not really negated! –

What appears to you to be worth negating must vanish completely from your attention; in no wise must you continue to honor it with your attention. – –

In this way you will effectively weaken the object of your negation, and your love, freed from all its fetters, will be able to affirm what it loves! – – –

In your highest love you will then also find in me the highest affirmation which loves in itself eternally only itself! – – – – – – –