Festive Union 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 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. 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 claiming to show the way, along with the course of 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 of people with spiritual hunger is substantial. 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 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 often is 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 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 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 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 third book of the trilogy, The Book on Man. 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.

Part Three of The Book on Man—”The Path of the Woman”—is especially pertinent in the age of “feminism,” whatever that oft-used —and abused—term may mean. In elucidating the topic, Bô Yin Râ makes especial reference to the Biblical myth of “Adam and Eve,” which he characterizes as a symbolic expression of cosmic truths rendered long ago by spiritual initiates of profound understanding. That this myth has been passed down for thousands of years, perhaps from the dawn of time, is nothing short of miraculous. Perhaps just as miraculous is that in our own time, a genuine Luminary—Bô Yin Râ—has come to us to cut through the densest confusion to explain the myth’s meaning in clear language that anyone can understand. We have also chosen to make reference to this particular topic of The Book on Man by leading with Bô Yin Râ’s painting—shown above—depicted as “Festive Union.”

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. 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.

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Introduction (Click HERE)

The Mystery: ‘Man and Woman’ (Click HERE)

The Path of the Woman

The Path of the Man

Marriage

The child

New mankind

Epilogue

Final teaching!

Within those highest spheres of the spiritual world of phenomena, where spiritual mankind propagates itself for the first time as phenomena – yet here still as spiritual phenomena – , ‘man’ and woman’ remain closely united in the original unity of their bipolar perception of ‘I’.

With every subsequent propagation, however, the spiritual worlds into which this first spiritual phenomenon of man continues to propagate itself become, as it were, ‘more condensed’ and poorer in original given ‘light’, – yet always the closest union of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ remains as a common bipolar phenomenon.

Having finally reached its, so to speak, ‘densest’ manifestation of spiritual phenomena, – only faintly lit by original given ‘light’, spiritual man now discovers within these realms, so far from his first propagation, for the first time the worlds of physical creation.

But here it is that the feminine pole within him is overwhelmed by a novel sensation: – fear. It is fear of those monstrous powers which spiritual man, at one in his bipolarity, had hitherto still commanded; but now he sees them at work in a new form so foreign to him that he no longer dares command them here and so loses his power…

Yet behind the work of those powers which now appear threatening to him he perceives – a new world with living beings, all of which originate from his own power in the highest spiritual phenomenon: – the world of physical-sensory perception, – of a phenomenon which experiences itself physically.

Fear of powers that can no longer be mastered, and attraction emanating from the forms of the physical world, finally cause the feminine pole of the spiritual phenomenal man through an act of will – to break the wall which until that moment had separated him from the physical-sensory cosmos.

Knowledge of the newly discovered opportunity for self-experience in unfamiliar ways forcibly overwhelms him, and trembling with desire within himself, it results in his tearing away from the present phenomenal form: – in the union with the earthly animal, – in exactly the same way that a flash of lightning tears itself away from a cloud to unite with the earth. –

There are countless ‘earths’ in cosmic space on which spiritual man must now experience himself within the body of an animal: – the physical body of the animal whose surviving remains are found on this planet from times when it still did not yet carry spiritual man within it, even though it may now be described as ‘primeval man’. –

With this tearing away from the world of spiritual appearance and his new attachment to the animal body, the ‘fall’ from exalted illumination is now finally completed.

Spiritual man, hitherto ‘man’ and ‘woman’, – united in the same perception of ‘I’ and continuing to propagate in all other spiritual worlds – is now cut into two. For in the world of physical appearance the poles ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are of necessity separated from each other, since this world only exists in the continual ‘tension’ resulting from the separateness of the two original poles.

It is initially the feminine pole in the spiritual phenomenal man which causes this ‘fall’ and covets existence in animal form. – However, in spiritual realms nothing can continue to exist where only one of the two poles of ‘man’, – ‘woman’, would be effective. Thus the male pole must follow the ‘fall’ at the same time.

The animal form the female pole immediately finds in its ‘fall’, – a form already ‘created’ from spiritual men’s earliest propagation, – compels the masculine pole to covet the same form for itself.

“That the sons of the Gods saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and took them wives of all which they chose.” – (The daughters of the Gods had already here become ‘daughters of the earth!’ – The sons of the Gods followed suit! – –)

In this way we could describe in earthly terms the ever recurring process which eventually enslaves spiritual man to the manifestation belonging to the world of physical-sensory phenomena.

Nothing else has happened here than a change in the form of perception, willed initially by the feminine pole. This immediately cuts into two the previous union of poles and causes them to degenerate into one independently existing feminine pole and one independently existing masculine pole, – corresponding to the gender separation within the earthly human animal which can only be maintained in this divided state.

The myth of the Garden of Eden has ‘Eve’ tempted by the ‘serpent’, and she in turn tempts ‘Adam’. Although this myth as we know it today may not have been handed down to us in its original form, it nevertheless clearly demonstrates that one initiated in an eternally recurring process sought to convey to later generations that knowledge, symbolically concealed within an account couched in the language of his times, should they recognize his symbolic language.

Those who can interpret the words of this initiate will also find the further consequences for ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in their divided state on earth described in words this wise man has the ‘Lord’ speak to ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’, words which assign the measure of the consequence of guilt with significant differentiation.

In the continually recurring process of the ‘fall’ – in every individual fall – it is the ‘feminine’ pole, by nature passive, which first succumbs to ‘original guilt’ through fear, and first gives way to the attractive forces of the physical world.

Yet the masculine pole is in no way free of guilt, – as though it were merely the ‘victim’ of its union with the feminine pole!

The ‘guilt’ of the ‘masculine’ pole lies in the abdication of its active resistance within bipolar common life at the moment the feminine pole was threatened by fear and attraction.

Thus it is that the two poles exchange roles: – a spiritual perversion by which the feminine pole takes on the active, and the masculine pole the passive attitude, making the ‘fall’ into the physical phenomenal world inevitable.

Yet decisive as ‘original guilt’ is, it is only the positive act of will within the feminine pole. –Therefore, in the myth of the ‘fall of man’, the ‘curse’ which afflicts mankind is in the ‘woman’, – promising the woman in the earthly form physical pain, fear and distress such that cannot be spared the physical animal body, and that continual struggle with the elusive ‘serpent’ of physical sensory perception.

For the ‘man’ this form of perception itself is devalued by the curse put upon it. He is promised only the toil and torment which is bound up with existence in the physical form of perception.

Thus, further on in the myth, we find the words of the ‘Lord’ to the ‘woman’ in man: “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee!” – –

How often have these words been misused to condone the repression of feminine individuality by citing them to justify the unconditional domination of the husband in marriage, supposedly granted in the text!

Yet no bemused or enraged scorn can wipe away the powerful truth to which the initiate considered he had given significance and emphasis by putting them into the mouth of the ‘Lord’ as a command given to man and woman. –

Indeed, we find something quite different here than what those imagined, who sought to derive from this only slightly veiled revelation of the truth, a welcome divine justification for the right of the man to dominate the woman!

The path is shown here which one day will lead to the reunification within the realm of the spirit of the two poles divided on earth; this can only take place with the dissolution of that spiritual perversion of the poles which once was a precondition for the ‘fall’!

We refer here to the spiritual law which can only make use of the man on this earth if it needs human antennae to allow the ‘glad tidings’ from eternal man to be received again by earthly man lost in ‘darkness’, and to transmit to him the powers he needs to find his way back to the ‘light’! – –

Man and woman within this world of earthly phenomena still carry within them the last traces of the erstwhile connection of the poles.

Within earthly woman there still remains something akin to a ‘memory’ that she once also found her ‘I’ spiritually in the ‘male’: – in a masculine pole – ; earthly man can still discover within himself the same trace of his former union with the ‘female’: – with a feminine pole…

All striving for union of the soul between man and woman on earth is based upon what remains known of woman in man, and of man in woman. –

Even the ineffable power of sexual attraction between specific individuals of both genders existing in the worldly animal could not take effect within earthly man, had not specific resistance within the soul been virtually eliminated by a ‘memory’ of the soul – a last intuition – of former polar union. –

No ‘understanding’ of the soul between man and woman in the earthly body would be possible without the continuous influence from its former union with man in the woman, – and without what continues to be active in the man from the feminine pole, erstwhile united with it. – –

Not all spiritual phenomenal ‘men’ are subjected to the ‘fall’: – to that division into two. From those who are not divided into two, living in the spiritual region of the earth – those who have not fallen – continues to emanate the glowing, love-inspired will to save which knows only one goal: – to lead those fallen into the physical-sensory phenomenal form back to their original spiritual state.

It is these ‘not divided into two’, and they alone, who on earth make those, already committed before their birth, into the ‘awakened ones’ who are called masters of cosmic knowledge.

Those who have not fallen choose for themselves with certainty from humanity on earth those men in whom they recognize the spiritual which once had committed itself to them: – those men who can become ‘sons’ and ‘brothers’ to them, – and perfect them into ‘Luminaries’ of eternity.

These invisible, bipolar men of spiritual phenomenal form live – as I have previously testified – here in the spiritual region of this earth under the exalted, love-filled guidance of one of the originally propagated spiritual ‘men’, – one of those who are most highly exalted and always remain within the pure spirit, never wanting to continue to propagate themselves even into worlds of the spiritual phenomenon. –

According to eternal spiritual law, only the masculine pole of spiritual man who experiences himself here on earth within the animal body is capable of entering consciously the spiritual region of the earth where the ‘not divided into two’ live as helpers to earthly men.

Therefore a woman of this earth: – the embodiment of the feminine pole of spiritual man, – could never be perfected into a master of cosmic knowledge; similarly it is impossible for a genuine master to make a woman, through spiritual transference, into his adopted ‘son’ in the spirit or to initiate her properly. For all these forms of spirituality, active, enclosed within itself, and wrested from the arbitrary, presuppose the active spiritual pole in earthly man.

The ‘woman’, as the separate, passive, feminine pole of the spiritual phenomenal man, now bears the consequence in her earthly life of the impulse of her will to take on embodiment in the physical world, through which the separation of the poles ‘man’ and ‘woman’ had to occur of necessity.

Indeed, the earthly incarnated feminine pole of spiritual man can also be ‘raised’ during life on earth into the spiritual region of the earth, – yet only passively as suits its nature, without attaining consciousness in that region. This, however, does not in any way exclude the reception of spiritual influences through the spiritual effect of masculine polarity.

The male on earth, however, – as the incarnation of a masculine spiritual pole – retains his active spiritual power also in the animal body, even if it can only be released from its latent state, – either fully or partially – in the rarest of cases as I have already spoken of.

Yet this release is only possible through releasing helpers, those ‘not divided into two’ who are within the spiritual region of the earth, who can be actively experienced by the masculine polar spirit in a fully awakened or at least partly receptive consciousness. –

But since also the active masculine pole of the spirit, despite its complete, partial or only temporary ‘awakening’ effected by the helpers, could not be conscious there without the compensation of feminine polarity, a ray of the feminine polar nature enters him from the heights of unformed eternal spirit, from the ‘First Light’ which is ‘man’ and ‘woman’, merges with its ‘I’ and brings about its necessary spiritual perfection.

I hardly think that the poet was ignorant of this process when he found the words:“The eternal feminine draws us upwards”…

Yet the eternal masculine is quite capable of raising the feminine polar spirit into spiritual regions, though it is not possible to make it conscious there during its earthly incarnation.

Through the act of will which strove for the world of physical sensory phenomena and the resulting reversal of its spiritually given passive nature into purest activity, the feminine pole of spiritual man forfeited itself the power which could have liberated it from the chosen form of perception. The power paralyzed through this act of the will cannot be revived during life on earth.

Yet those who became ‘bridge builders’ to the ‘not divided into two’ in the spiritual realm of the earth as masters of cosmic knowledge, seek to liberate both man and woman from their earthly servitude…

They can accomplish this if they firstly succeed in motivating earthly man, male or female, to seek to fully unite the powers of his soul with his spiritual ‘I’. Only then can the ‘living God’ ‘beget’ himself anew in the man of this earth. –

Only then will the ‘Jacob’s ladder’ be set up once more upon which ‘the angels’ ascend and descend, and which reaches from this earth into the eternal ‘First Light’ whence the spiritual in earthly man originates.

The paths I show you are closed off to neither woman nor man.

But in addition, I speak of a path upon which at times a man is called to walk, but never a woman. I speak of active, conscious entry into the spiritual region of our earth during the life of man on earth as a possibility offered to the man – albeit in vary rare instances.

Woman – indeed I mean every woman who knowingly or intuitively walks upon paths like the ones I show – will one day attain the power to raise herself consciously into the spiritual world after a useful earthly life through one of those masters whom the ‘eternal feminine’ had ‘drawn’ upwards to the earth’s spiritual region from where they bring help, remaining close to the earth after the death of their earthly body.

The exalted path of woman, which is not exclusively reserved for woman, is thereby an indirect path, yet leads, however, just as the direct path of man, accessible to only a few, eventually back to the spiritual unification of ‘man’ and ‘woman’, and thus to self-conscious life in those worlds of spiritual ‘phenomena’ far higher than the ‘world beyond’, – in which each human spirit – even without any striving – will immediately find himself after the death of his earthly body: – beyond the form of perception belonging to external physical senses.

Yet earthly woman would seek in vain here on earth one of the masters of cosmic knowledge, so that he might procure for her during this earthly life access into the world of the spirit.

Even those holy women who once rendered service to the Master, as described by the Evangelists, only found in him the helper who was able to open to them the kingdom of the spirit once he had himself discarded the earthly body, after they had completed their life on earth.

Before that they did not ‘recognize’ him and thought he was the ‘gardener’ of earthly gardens…It was a hard saying this Master of cosmic knowledge once uttered to his own mother:“Woman, what have I to do with thee?!” – –

Yet this saying is uttered by the earthly phenomenon of every one who is united with the spirit and applies to every woman seeking help on earth in her earthly form; this help can only be given by one working in the realm of the essential spirit when he himself has cast off this earthly body. “Once I am lifted from the earth, I will draw all men unto me!” –

Primeval earthly instincts belonging to feminine yearning have all too often led the souls of women seeking their master onto erroneous paths where deceptive illusion resulting from the splitting of her own soul’s powers caused her to find the supposed ‘master’; but he was nothing other than the spawn of extravagant imagination…

All too often has earthly ‘woman’ in reality yearned for earthly ‘man’, while being pious in the belief that she was striving for an opposite pole in spiritual life, whether he be called ‘Krishna’ or ‘Jesus’.

Whether the ‘soul’s beloved’ is embraced in the utmost passion of devotion, or whether with the thirst of compassion the life and sufferings of the intended are shared in fear and trembling, – we are always dealing with a feverish delusion here, caused by spiritual split; however sublime and moving are the expressions of this illusion, the illusory experience still shakes the foundations of the victim’s physical being. However, through this upheaval powers within the invisible physical world are often released which would truly be shunned in horror, were one to know their works and nature. – –

Only when earthly woman is once again free of the earthly body she once strove to obtain, – only after an earthly life directed at later attaining being in the spirit, in a spiritual form with well united powers of the soul, filled with her ‘living’ God, – – only then can she expect a master to approach her in spiritual form. He will then return to her what once she had to leave behind as the feminine pole of spiritual man, – at the place where her power was paralyzed through the misdirection of her striving…

Then she will certainly be able to find her spiritual opposite pole with which she was once united; now reunited forever she will represent the ‘perfected’ spiritual man, – consciously experiencing herself within his ‘I’ and at the same time, within the same ‘I’, her masculine opposite pole of the spiritual man.

And yet the same thing applies for the male, unless through his ‘spiritual lineage’: – those powers of the soul from early times which united in him as a result of his committing himself spiritually as a helper of those Luminaries within the First Light, – he bore from his birth the suitability within him to enable him to be perfected as a master of cosmic knowledge, or unless he at least awoke here on earth to the extent that it was possible for a master to adopt him as a spiritual ‘son’ and to initiate him by conveying to him the capacity for spiritual experience.

But even those born to be masters, or adopted as spiritual ‘sons’, can only genuinely use the spiritual possibilities given to them if they truly and unhesitatingly fulfil those things imposed on them by their spiritual teachers. –

The hierarchy of the spirit recognizes no arbitrariness! ‘Man’ and ‘woman’, inasmuch as they are physically embodied here on earth, stand precisely at the place which they are capable of occupying; every human being will only be granted what he has made himself capable of receiving spiritually. – –

If I speak here of the ‘path of woman’, then I must tell the woman as earthly phenomenon of another particular difference of her path, even on that stretch which is accessible to man and woman in the same way.

The man who embarks on the ‘path’ will undoubtedly approach his goal more quickly if his attitude remains active, always ‘reaching out’ for the goal he would attain.

Instead of this, I counsel woman to adopt the attitude of faithful yearning – an attitude which strives towards the goal and yet does not ‘reach out’ for it, but rather allows itself to be led passively towards it.

This counsel flows from ancient practical knowledge; following it – when understood correctly – can make the attainment of the goal much easier for both man and woman…

The ‘path of woman’ is, like that of man, a path leading back to the original condition in the world of spiritual phenomena, before man plunged his spiritual senses into the physical senses of the animal, thereby rendering them incapable of perceiving the spiritual.

By converting her spiritually given passive nature into active striving, the feminine pole itself has paralyzed and even annulled the power of its original source. –

For it one day to be regained it is necessary willingly to readopt that original form of striving. The ‘living’ God wants to be born both in man and woman of this earth, – here during this very life on earth! –

The ‘path’ I have shown in its diverse forms in the first of these three books, ‘The Book of the Living God’, is a path for all men on earth, be they ‘male’ or ‘female’. What I have said about exalted spiritual guidance, the voice of the guide, the nature of the help given by those masters working in the spirit, is equally valid for ‘male’ and ‘female’.

Let no one be deceived and think that I want to demonstrate in my books only the possibilities of spiritual development of the chosen ones, – only the path of ‘disciples’ and spiritual ‘initiates’, or even the path of masters of cosmic knowledge!

The things I show and must show about those kinds of paths – indicating them from a distance – are always described in a way that leaves no room for doubt.

I have said often enough that these most arduous paths are not for the many; they are only accessible to those born unto them…

Here I have had to speak of many things common to man and woman, because there is no other way to show in what way the path of woman differs from the not communal path which is only open to man if he is a ‘Luminary’ of the First Light or called to be a disciple.

If the path of woman here on earth cannot reach those sublime heights the man who is born to be a master of purest knowledge can ascend to, evenduring his earthly life, the path of woman reaches nevertheless in the end the same goal: – conscious being in the phenomenal world of the spirit: – the new birth of spiritual phenomenal man who is ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in most blessed union and eternally inseparable in the common bipolar experience of ‘I’. –

Everything spiritual which the male can attain will one day through the male become attainable again to the woman also.

Then it will be the masculine pole of spiritual man which draws the feminine behind it, just as the feminine pole had once drawn the masculine into the life of physical sensory perception…