DAS GLÖCKLEIN (The Little Bell) by Bô Yin Râ

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 series of postings by Bô Yin Râ on the supremely important topic of love. Today’s posting is the third of nine separate articles that serialize the complete English-language translation of The Book of Love, which stands as the 7th volume of Hortus Conclusus. Previous postings on the topic of love are the chapter entitled “On the Power of Love” from the book High Goal and the chapter entitled “Love” from the book Words of Life. We would advise our readers to take all the time you need to peruse and absorb this material. While it is written in crystal-clear language that retains its clarity and power even when translated into English from German, it also contains ideas that go well beyond customary treatments. Also bear in mind that Bô Yin Râ wrote his books in a cadence that more resembles the spoken word than any academic or journalistic treatment. This is also reflected in the fact that several volumes of Hortus Conclusus are actually written in free verse. It might even be said that love is the central idea of Bô Yin Râ’s written expositions, perhaps reflecting his witnessing to love as the central force of all creation. This would naturally make love the focal point of human spiritual development as well. Indeed, what could be more important to understand in the present-day world crisis? And it is characteristic of Bô Yin Râ that he should begin his discussion of love with praise of the one he considers the greatest example and exponent of love who ever walked the earth—Jesus Christ. Part 2 of the chapter “The Great Man of Love” continues Bô Yin Râ’s explanations of who Jesus was, what his teachings really signified, and what is the correct way to interpret his mission. Readers will find this material much different from what they are accustomed to yet deeply profound and moving. Indeed, they may find themselves pleasantly surprised at the manner in which Bô Yin Râ cuts through many longstanding misunderstandings.

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.

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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:

Introduction Click HERE

Chapter 1: The great man of love – Parts 1, 2, and 3 Part 1 Click HERE

Chapter 2: On love’s primordial fire – Parts 1 and 2

Chapter 3: The redeeming light

Chapter 4: The creative power of love - Parts 1 and 2

Let no one imagine that this death as such [i.e., Jesus’s crucifixion] contained this ultimate act of love!

Here is a mystery that I have, in awe, dared to reveal elsewhere – but only because duty required it of me…

Let those who can comprehend this, comprehend it!

A stream of spiritual power was opened up here to every human spirit through love, the love this book proclaims to you, a stream of power which could only be disclosed by the sacrifice of one omnipotent in love.–

Here the ‘God’ of vengeance, – the most malicious demon among the invisible powers within the physical cosmos, – was vanquished by an earthly man through the absolute eradication of every impulse for revenge: – an act possible only to the highest form of spiritual love…

The events narrated by the ancient account concerning what is supposed to have happened after the death of the greatest of men of love are, if you wanted to understand them historically: – myth, yet this myth contains within it the deepest truth.

The Master did indeed ‘rise’ from the grave; – however, his earthly body could in truth have been of no further use to him. –The ‘young man in white apparel’ was indeed no delusion on the part of anxious women; – however, note also the clues to the truth which the writer of that ancient record was unable to erase, since they were neither visible nor comprehensible to him, – and had to report against his will, however much he subsequently tried to wipe them from the account: –

Indeed, it was not the exalted Master’s disciples who had taken his earthly corpse; so that with good reason the chronicler could claim that this was a false ‘rumor’.

But the Master had in his days on earth often met with others in the solitude of the mountains, well away from other people.

These others were not of his own people, but were of his kind, united with him in that community of light in which he was a brother, and with which he was spiritually interwoven.

When he took three of his twelve disciples on one occasion with him to the mountain where he was accustomed to ‘pray’ and there allowed them to see his ‘transfiguration’ into his spiritual form, his loyal followers believed, on seeing two men in white apparel next to their Master, that they had to be two of the prophets of old, – ‘Moses’ and ‘Elijah’ – so that the Master, full of disappointment when seeing their error, forbade them to tell the others about it.– – –

He perceived that all his teaching was unable to liberate them from the narrowness of their tribal faith and that he would only create confusion if he sought to clear up the error.–

Yet those ‘men in white apparel’ and the ‘young man’ the women found in the tomb were not strangers to each other. As they wanted to avoid a cult growing up around the dead body of their exalted brother they did what is still today customary in their land with earthly remains:– – they consigned them to the consuming flames after having carefully chosen and prepared a location where they would be completely undisturbed…

I speak here as one taught by him who could truly say of himself that he would remain with men “until the end of the world”, – as one taught by those Imay call my exalted brothers who in that night once caused the guards to sink into a deep, deathlike sleep so that they could carefully fulfil their brother’s own will, which was at the same time also their own.–

I am well aware that many will here accuse me of self-deception; indeed, the ‘blind who lead the blind’, may self-righteously hurl much worse at my words.

It is the mark of crippled souls to deny any manifestation of life where they lack the spiritual organs to record it!

I am well aware that I am touching here upon things many regard as ‘sacrosanct’. Yet the redemptive teaching of the greatest of men of love truly undergoes greater transfiguration through truth than through the most ancient pious deception, unwittingly perpetrated and passed on through custom, – and what is more, it would cease being deception if it were to be regarded as a fantasy which merely intended to wrap a cloak of symbolism around truth.

Not even that mass awakening which took place in Jerusalem at the ‘Jewish festival of Pentecost’ was able to strip away all veils from the souls of those who now believed in the Master since they had ‘seen’ him repeatedly after his death.

These souls were too confined for the ‘spirit of truth’, once promised by the Master, to be able to bring them to perfection from within themselves.

Thus Paul, that true man of love, called the ‘Apostle to the Gentiles’ and ‘preacher unto nations’, had a difficult task when he, who once truly experienced in himself the ‘spirit of truth’ in deepest trembling and thereafter knew who the exalted Master was, – met those who were all too confined, yet daring to call themselves disciples of the ‘Anointed One’! –

And yet even the former pupil of the Pharisees, having become a witness to Christ, had not shaken off all his prejudices.

In good faith he was to mingle with the Master’s teaching some old elements with which he was familiar. Nevertheless, he saw much more clearly than those others, calling themselves ‘messengers’ of a teaching which was once described by the Master himself as ‘glad tidings’.–

Unfortunately the teaching turned out to be far from glad.

In the course of centuries it gained power over souls, self-righteously basing itself on the Master’s words about ‘glad tidings’! – –

John, however, whom the Master ‘loved’ according to the ancient account, kept silent and those who kept their silence stayed with him.

He alone possessed what the Master had once written down for him with his own hand. It was at a later date that he allowed a few he deemed worthy to make a copy of it.

Had Jesus, as is commonly thought, just taught through the spoken word and written nothing down, one can be sure that not a single word he spoke would have passed down to us! – –

The original text and the copy were then, as I have said elsewhere, destroyed by those who possessed their greatest treasure in these writings of the Master, since they feared that the sacred might one day be profaned.

This fact too has been shown to me only by those who are spiritually united with me in the First Light; they alone can ‘know’ about this.

But later generations may well stumble upon textual or other clues which will reveal the truth of my words from outside, for I have a spiritual vision of such fragments and texts still existing on earth, even if I cannot say for sure where exactly they lie at rest.

Certain traces are plainly visible to everyone in that part of the ancient account which has been attributed to the one the Master once ‘loved’.–

The inadequacies of this part of the ancient account are easily understood when it is known that their author, who was close to John’s circle of disciples, whilst basing his record on the Master’s writings, sought to weave into them bits of tradition and legend in his possession.

Clearly, nothing that has been attributed to the disciple the Master ‘loved’ was written by his hand; only, the nature of the texts which bear his name is not far removed from what he might have written, – had he put pen to paper.

Yet all these questions only have importance for those who would like to comprehend from without those things which can only be comprehended from within.–

They are also the ones to ask who taught the exalted Master, and are all too ready to give credence to the many legends telling how Jesus had been in India during that period in his life of which the account has nothing to say; – alternatively: that he had reached his perfection in Egypt.

None of this is true!

It is true that his earthly father sought work in Egypt, where artisans were well paid at the time, to provide for his family and return home with his savings in precisely the way craftsmen from Italy and other countries still do today.

However, at that time, he to whom his radiant nature was later revealed, was still a child and really not mature enough to reach the perfection of his earthly nature, which is the precondition for each one who is to experience his own radiance within the First Light in a consciously earthly manner.

But there was really no need for him to set off on a journey to India, for what was bound to come to him ‘from India’ did indeed come. The wondrous depiction of the ‘wise men from the Orient’, priest-kings who saw ‘his star’ and brought him their gifts – was only backdated to his early childhood because the writers of the account only knew it themselves as a vague story, and because it better suited the miraculous they sought to attach to the Master’s early childhood.

The pious ancient authors of the account found alien to them the thought that spiritual matters can only be comprehended in the spirit, just like those who seek miracles in our days, though the Master emphasized that God could only be sought ‘in the spirit’.–

Of necessity there was not even the slightest element of the miraculous about the external events of the Master’s childhood.

He was a child just like his playmates, and when he acquired enough strength to help his father with his physically demanding work, he learnt to ply that trade like every other carpenter at the time, building houses and fashioning various wooden artefacts.

His inner development, however, remained secret, as it is with everyone of the same spiritual kind.

What was needed for this spiritual development in no way hindered his external activities. As a man of this earth who had learnt to comprehend his spiritual might, which had been perfected long before his mother’s body had brought him the garb of the earth, he was far from being one to stand aloof where life made demands.

Indeed, he would never have achieved his high goal if he had been estranged from life.

He was a craftsman until the hour came which called him to a different vocation where he could demonstrate that he knew how to ‘read’ the ‘scriptures’ better than the ‘scribes’ – without being ‘qualified’, as they were.

He never performed the fakir miracles which the writers of the account heap upon him; – yet many of the ‘miracles’ attributed to him have deep symbolic content, and are therefore full of truth; whilst his innate power of healing made him capable of many deeds which may have appeared ‘miraculous’ to those around him, but had not the slightest connection with his spiritual mission.

It is indescribably blasphemous to say that he who really knew what is of the body and what is of the spirit made allusion to his ‘wondrous signs’ in order to exact belief in his message,– – and only naïve ignorance could attribute words to him which he supposedly uttered to draw attention to his miracles in the expectation that this would give some external confirmation to the Master’s teaching.

For the sake of ‘fishing for men’ his teaching has been sinned against in a way that is hard to put into words. These sins, committed by foolish disseminators of badly distorted doctrine, still exert an influence today.

There is no end in sight for such misleading practices!

May I succeed here in shedding just a little light for all men ‘of good will’!

The violation of faith suffered by many who only know the distorted version of the Master’s teaching, and who are continually led into further doubts by recent outward research into the ancient accounts, has truly reached an intolerable level. Now at last a clarification is needed which can only be expected from those who know the herald of this teaching who lives interwoven within their circle.

For he went out from that circle, sent by the ‘Father’; and to that circle he returned, once his work on earth appeared to be accomplished!

Only from here can present and future generations find the key to unlock many ‘mysteries’.

Scholarship too, taking this approach to its investigations, can one day find what it is capable of finding; thereby making its discoveries suitable for those who can only comprehend what can be ‘grasped’.–

All of man’s questions which search beyond his mere physical existence on earth will one day find their answer, once one has learnt to recognize with greater understanding the influence of that spiritual hierarchy whose most significant and important emissary was the Master of Nazareth.