The Three Sages Substack continues its presentation of works by the German 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 compendium of his spiritual guidance under the general title of Hortus Conclusus (“The Enclosed Garden”).

Bô Yin Râ was 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 thereto, Bô Yin Râ openly identified himself as part of the same society of Luminaries of the First Light (Leuchtenden des Urlichts) 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.

It is extremely rare for a Luminary to work openly and in public as Jesus and Bô Yin Râ have done. The existence of the Luminaries is hinted at in the Bible by references to the Order of Melchizedek of which Jesus was a priest.

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 claiming to show the way, along with the historic religions. But it is not necessary that vast numbers of people embrace the teachings of the Luminaries for the world to change. At present the number is not large, though during Bô Yin Râ’s lifetime over a million people in the German-speaking world purchased and read his books until they were banned by the Third Reich. More and more people are reading the books in Germany today, and they are now 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 interested in the spiritual life would read and study his works. So we at Three Sages are trying to do our own small part in making them known and 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 people attempting to provide an answer, many of these being quite fantastic. Rather the problem often is that these answers are incomplete and mutually contradictory. In the absence of a satisfactory answer, people lack the inner assurance and self-confidence needed to resist the negative forces that would enslave and exploit us during our brief 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 happy, 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 work but is broken down into 32 separate books, each of which approaches spirituality from a different 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 in the Books to Light translation published by Books to Light and available in the series presented by Three Sages HERE. What you are now about to read is the Books to Light translation of The Book on Man. We can promise that if you read these books carefully and 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”) 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 Posthumus Projects Amsterdam, Inc. in The Netherlands under number: 33079516, www.bo-yin-ra.org. All rights, copyrights included, reserved by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam, 2014. Copyright now held by Books to Light—USA. Posthumus Projects Amsterdam and Books to Light—USA are responsible for this standard-translation©. Posted by Three Sages 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 HERE.

For the Three Sages Subscribers’ offer of 40% off on Hortus Conclusus (32 Books in one large volume—1193 pages plus selected spiritual paintings by Bô Yin Râ) please utilize the CODE TO ENTER AT CHECKOUT: THREE SAGES 40% OFF.

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Introduction

The Mystery: ‘Man and Woman’

The Path of the Woman

The Path of the Man

Marriage

The child

New mankind

Epilogue

Final teaching!

“You must come to ‘God’ with man as your starting point; otherwise ‘God’ will forever remain – a stranger – to you!” This is what I once wrote in the ‘Book on the Royal Art’: I know of no better saying with which to begin this ‘Book on Man’ today…

Together with the ‘Book on the Living God’ and the ‘Book on the Beyond’, this ‘Book on Man’ is meant as part of a trilogy. Although every one of these three books is self-contained and constitutes a totality in itself, they are all connected by an inner relationship; many passages will be found to elucidate others.

These reciprocal elucidations can only deepen the effect made by the words on the soul. And so may the ‘Book on Man’ find its way into the hands of those already familiar with those other two books! May it find those hearts which are in need of it: souls willing to accept its contents!

Whilst being aware of the many possibilities for misinterpretation these words can unfortunately give rise to, I nevertheless see myself obliged to state explicitly that this book as well was written to fulfil a commitment I have taken on in complete agreement with the ‘most venerable’ members of that spiritual community to which I belong and to which I owe everything I give.

The teaching imparted here is the thousands-of-years-old patrimony of those to whom the holy flame, whose light proceeds from the innermost ‘First Light’, has been entrusted for continuous safe-keeping ever since the first days of humanity on earth.

We only pass on what we ourselves received, so that it might reach through us those living alongside us and future generations.

We do not claim to be the originators of this teaching. Moreover, we speak here not so much of a ‘teaching’ but of the imparting of practical experience within the living world of the substantial eternal spirit, whence every human soul on this planet comes from…

And so this book dealing with ‘man’ will also lead to the world of pure substantial spirit. –

To many that may seem a contradiction. For they have not yet recognized that true man is nothing other than the ‘fruit of love’ from male and female in the substantial pure spirit in the same way as his earthly animal body is derived from the physical erotic union of man and woman on earth…

Yet those who would consider man, and thereby learn to recognize themselves, must enter man’s homeland, – must direct their seeking onto those paths by which the lofty heights can be reached from where real man’s eternal organism originates, which can never be comprehended by earthly senses and can only be known to earth-bound reason through the influence of spiritually created impulses.

As long as we just concern ourselves with the human earthly phenomenon we shall merely stand before an animal which is by its nature disharmonious, – disharmonious because it seeks self-experience not only as animal, but evidently by other powers not part of the animal nature as well, – disharmonious, because it is prevented by these powers in particular, foreign to the animal, from savoring in creature comfort its existence unburdened by guilt. –

Therefore, we must first of all acknowledge and overcome the error of thinking that man is simply the phenomenon to which we on this earth give the name: ‘man’. – –

One cannot hold it against anyone on earth, – anyone who ‘knows men’, if all he can manage is an ironic smile on hearing elevated words which describe man as ‘the image of the godhead’, if the meaning he attaches to the term ‘man’ refers only to earthly man…

Indeed: the words ‘image of God’ would constitute the most ludicrous folly if the person who first uttered them had only been thinking of ‘man’ of this earth! –

These words could only have been coined by a fool – or – by a genuine sage to whom had been uncovered the knowledge of man’s all-encompassing being. – – –

The breadth of the concept of ‘man’, if it really is to encompass man and not just one of his countless appearances in the spiritual and physically perceptible cosmos, will be told to you in this ‘Book on Man’.

I believe you will no longer smile at the words of the sage once you have recognized in yourself the things I have to say to you…

You will then understand what this ancient holy sentence means: “The Elohim created man in the likeness of God.” – –

You will then no longer search for ‘original man’ on this planet, – you will recognize that what you hitherto have described as such should more correctly be described as a primeval animal from which the more refined animal evolved which now fulfils its role as carrier and tool of man, enabling him to experience himself in the physical world. –

Moreover, you will no longer ‘despair of man’, for everything which hitherto seemed ‘contemptible’, ‘petty’ and ‘pitiful’ about the being called on earth ‘man’ will be comprehensible to you as the necessary expression commensurate with the earthly animal which true ‘man’ seeks to use for self-manifestation, – but which often offers stronger resistance to him than he is capable of overcoming in the realm of the physical world.

You will also learn to see other things as the unavoidable ‘frictional phenomenon’ caused by the interaction of very different powers. However, you will also never again dream of ‘heaven on earth’ for you will have recognized that not even the animal, serving man in this material world, could find his ‘heaven’ here, – that true ‘man’, however, once, long ago, possessed his heaven, before throwing himself into the realm of physical creation where the ‘animal man’ must lend him its powers so that he might find his way back to this heaven…

Blessed are you, if at the end of these treatises I now pass on to you, you gain your individual insight that also you are man from the eternal homeland of man, and not merely thehigher animal to which you find yourself bound so tightly that until now you have perhaps not even had an inkling that it is something foreign and resistant to you! – –

Blessed are you, if you then raise yourself with all your strength and henceforth reach out only for what is highest within you, – for all too long you have been rooting in your lowly mire, – all too often your hands have groped in the uncertain spheres of marshy pits without having been able to find what they thought they could touch! – –I want to see you full of confidence in yourself!

You will no longer be capable of showing disdain towards yourself as soon as you – even if it is but a faint sensation – feel that nothing about you is worthy of this disdain, but for what you have made disdainful yourself through false interpretation! – – –

From that day on you will no longer rub shoulders with the common! –

From that day on you will no longer strive for what is low within you! –

You will become a ‘rebel’ pulling yourself upwards and away from the cloggy mud on well-trodden common roads!

Walking freely you will now ascend the path of rock leading you within you to your mountain peaks!

There you will encounter yourself as ‘man’ in the homeland of man. – – –