Bô Yin Râ teaches: Do not make an image of the appearance and character of the man in which your spiritual teacher here on earth might live. The external life of the spiritual teacher is his business; he does not want the spirit in which he works to be confused with his earthly appearance. – He does not want his ‘pupils’ to revere his ‘personality’ but only the spiritual power from which he performs his works. (From:Book 02-The Book On The Living God: (The light dwells in the east)
Behold, my friend, I too once walked along a road which enticed me into many errors, a road which seduces human spirits here on this planet… …Believe me – I have also often enough experienced such danger in the past, so that I can indeed warn you of it! … I can truly feel your pain, for I have seldom been completely spared from suffering. – – And so, I may truly speak of suffering too and of its overcoming through the form in which you can endure it… I know only too well how much the suffering of the body can weigh upon a person, and how, despite this, it can be restrained when given form. – (From:Book 25- Spirit And Formchapters:The form of joy, The form of suffering )
I wrote about the three syllables ‘Bô Yin Râ’ in a publisher’s pamphlet – that they were not three ‘words’ whose ‘meaning’ could in some way be demystified, despite the fact that as syllables they follow the linguistic roots of ancient languages, but that these seven letters form the ‘name’ which is equivalent to my substantial spiritual being because the value of their sound and sign corresponds to my eternal spiritual type of being in the same way a group of notes shown in characters corresponds to a certain chord.
If I was always conscious in my eternal essence of what the formula of the three syllables Bô Yin Râ means, I still had over the course of time to become conscious of it also in the consciousness of my brain.
My spiritual instruction made me understand most conclusively other concepts of the essence of a true ‘name’ than those commonly found on earth. I had attained through my education of the soul, the awareness of secret paths which lead from one ‘name’ to a new ‘name’, whereby certain characters of these ‘names’ work like spiritual antennae through which those who are invisibly led in this way always gain new spiritual help. I professed that I had had myself many such ‘names’ during my training led by the spirit, which I had to learn to overcome in continually renewed self-overcoming before I could become spiritually worthy of my eternal name also in my transient earthly state insofar as external natural development gradually permitted this.
For long enough I had walked upon the path of ‘names’ marked out for me and I knew indeed from my own experience about the way spiritually formed names can awaken powers. Yet it seemed impossible to me to create for my eternal name, known by me for years, an earthly equivalent in sounds and letters conscious of its substance, until my spiritual teacher opened up my eyes and ears to the possibility, – indeed, necessity … From then on I had the earthly sound formula and its signs for what is substantially my ‘name’ within the eternal.
This is the true mystery surrounding the name Bô Yin Râ!
(From:Book 31- Letters To One And Many: chapter: In conclusion)
As to the ‘unusual manner of writing’ you mention, with which I have always approached the subject matter of my books, I can say quite objectively that there is not a single treatise I have written where has been left to arbitrariness to say what had to be said at that given time in any other way than the one expressed.
I have never sought a style of speaking and writing at any time or place; instead I have always written everything in the way it had to be fashioned according to the spiritual laws of sound values.
(From:Book 31- Letters To One And Many: chapter: About my manner of writing)
Moreover, I can not write anything that is not experienced most emphatically as spoken language. This explains everything which at first sight might appear as a deliberate eccentricity in my sentence structure and punctuation. As you are now in possession of what I have written over two decades, you will notice, in some of the first published books, a liberal use of hyphens. This is explained by the need to have some sign for shorter or longer pauses between the words as spoken sequences. The catastrophic misunderstanding of this intention subsequently made me limit these hyphens to the bare minimum.
(From:Book 31- Letters To One And Man: chapter: About my manner of writing)
I put no value whatever upon rational ‘assent’ and nothing lies further from my intention than to seek to ‘convince’ through persuasion.
I call upon a practical testing of my words. But in order for them to be tested practically they must be felt until they are as substantial feeling personal property of those who receive them. Above all, my words: – carry feeling, convey feeling and awaken feeling. What they have to say in terms of ‘meaning’ is secondary, even if they will certainly help counsel the soul to accept the substantial feeling offered to it. In terms of ‘meaning’ too, my words are first and foremost to be received as awakeners of feeling!
(From:Book 32- Hortus Conclusus: chapter: On the meaning of all teaching)
I willingly admit that in this book I have often had to create words for things difficult to explain, and that these words will only reveal themselves to those who willingly empathise with them.
(From:Book 4- The Book On Man: chapter: Epilogue)
Those who think, however, that they have to use their shrewdness to discover ‘contradictions’ in the words I use, may rather consider that the things they regard as important finds might well have not escaped my notice also. – –
(From:Book 2- The Book On The Living God: chapter: Eucharist)
Far from all comparisons of value, my treatises on spiritual matters remind me always of certain drawings by Rembrandt where the intended subject is gradually brought to the fore by countless lines which try to follow the image more and more distinctly. It is not only impossible for me to bring the things of eternity into other people’s sphere of intuition in any other way, but for everyone who know eternal reality!
(From:Book 31- Letters To One And Ma: chapter: On the strangeness of time in the eternal)
In the meantime I have brought my spiritual teachings to a conclusion with the book ‘Hortus Conclusus’; I have also given the complete work the symbolic description which has lent its name to the last volume. What I bequeath in the thirty-two organically united parts of this complete teaching, would experience a most inadequate reception, were one to comprehend it solely as a ‘literary output’. Although the whole teaching had not been available without my having given it expression in language, its content is with me: – with my continuing being from which I live – identical, and not just a ‘literary production’, not the product of the earthly urge to create! Until my own times there have been, among all the peoples of the earth, less than ten men in temporal being who were capable of identifying in language their own eternal being with the substance of earthly feelings. Those who had that capability were always fully entitled to say: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my WORDS will not pass away!”
(From:Book 18- More Light : chapter: Preface)
And so:
WHAT THOSE FEW
WITH WHOM I AM UNITED IN SPIRIT,
MY BROTHERS, AND BOUND TO ANCIENT FORM,
OF TRADITIONAL THINKING
INHERITED THROUGH THE BLOOD
EVEN TODAY KEEP SO
SECRET
ONLY ALLOWS SPARING INSIGHT
TO SEVERELY TESTED PUPILS
AFTER HARD AND PERSISTENT
TRAINING.
I AM PERMITTED TO REVEAL TO ALL MEN
WHO COMPREHEND MY WORDS.
ALL CONCERNS WHICH SOUGHT TO
PREVENT THIS MESSAGE BEING REVEALED
HAVE BEEN DEPRIVED OF THEIR POWER, –
AS THE REVELATION
REMAINS HIDDEN
FROM ALL THOSE WHO THEMSELVES
CAN NOT YET SEE.
YET CONSCIOUSLY I SHUNNED THE
WESTERN WAY:
CALLING ‘REALITY’ ONLY
WHAT THE BRAIN SEES AS SUCH. –
FOR I AM PLACED INTO
ETERNAL ORDER
AND FOLLOW LAWS
MADE BEYOND TIME.
(From:Book 1- The Book Of The Royal Art: chapter: Epilogue)
The series of texts in which these teachings are now definitely presented will, however, remain for each of my fellow men who wants to find something in them other than his eternal being a ‘hortus conclusus’: – a garden locked to him and strictly guarded, even if the narrow gate which provides access to the garden is open wide to him. Nothing is further from my intention than to procure access for those who are uninvited, and to bring in what must remain outside! With so much more pleasure do I send my blessings to all those who without care leave their earthly being where it belongs and only seek their eternal selves in my teachings! I do not give any system of instructions but living teaching! In the thirty-two individual texts which form an equal number of parts of my spiritual teaching, everything is contained that earthly man must know about the eternal and about the relationships which connect him with the eternal, if it is important for him to find the entrance within himself to the eternal and one day to become capable of experiencing the eternal.
(From:Book 32- Hortus Conclusu:chapter: To conclude and goodbye )
Also the teaching itself will become useless as soon as the goal has been reached for then everything it once had to open up through words will be eternal presence and permanently conscious. The meaning of life which was sensed with such deep longing has been found forever! –
(From:Book 20- Resurrection:chapter: Fruitless effort)
You tell me that you find much in the ‘Book of the Living God’ which you have for a long time felt belongs to your own soul, although you have not succeeded in expressing ‘in words’ what your soul has experienced.
(From:Book 31- Letters To One And Many: chapter :On the possession of the soul)
The way I have come to proclaim will allow the seeker who entrusts himself to it to reach the land of reality without narrowing his vision within those walls a faith born of fear built for anxious hearts … Whoever sets foot on this way will find reliable guidance within himself, if he only makes himself worthy of this guidance by a change of will. This change will unite all his spiritual powers in an unbending striving for the highest goal. –
(From:Book 16- Cult-Magic and Myth: chapter: conclusion)
The ‘path’ is in yourself, – within your own ‘I’!
This is the path which alone leads to your highest goal: – to ‘awakening’ in the world of spirit!
(From:Book 2- The Book On The Living God: chapter: The Path)
Only he who works unceasingly to tear himself away from the cloud of dismal twilight mists in which blurred ideas of the spiritual cause him to wander aimlessly, can at some time reach the clarity of spiritual light which is our life’s breath. –
(From:Book 3- The Book on the Beyond: chapter: On the ‘Temple of Eternity’ and the World of the Spirit)
You will not discover spiritual worlds from outside nor by developing the perceptive range of your physical senses!
You shall be transformed in the deepest depths of your inner being by the transmission of spiritual power, until – if your physical organism permits – you are capable with alert earthly senses, of elevating yourself, as one of the wisest of your faith puts it: to the seventh heaven!!
(From:Book 10- The Secret: chapter: Southern night)
Then the seeker will learn that the thousand ‘questions’ he asked himself in vain at the very beginning of his path can only receive their absolutely satisfying answer when the goal is finally reached. –
(From:Book 3- The Book on the Beyond: chapter: On the ‘Temple of Eternity’ and the World of the Spirit)
But now – since your God has been ‘born’ in you, and you in him – your spiritual counsellor, in union with the voice of your God and with you, will only reveal himself in the supreme life of his spirit.
You will think he is fully identical with you for the time he is with you…
He will no longer guide you through teaching but open himself up to you; you will take from his treasure of inner life the things you lack. – –
You will see before you an eternity whose deepest depths hint at things even deeper; you know that you will continue to walk eternally through the deepest of its wonders, united with your God.
(From:Book 2- The Book on The Living God: chapter: The Path)