This PDF is multilingual, where the German original text has been presented alongside the Standard-translation© in English, so that any one being sufficiently conversant in German is able to ascertain the correctness of the translation and also benefit (as hinted by the Author) from the exposure to the German language the book has originally been written in. Also the emphases (in bold text) on words/phrases used in original German is reflected in this new edition (emphases match the original writings). Any remarks or amendments are invited at [email protected]. File Preview available. For a hardcopy edition please see below*. ________________________________________________________________________ BÔ YIN RÂ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken) was a German writer, poet and painter (1876-1943). He lived in Germany (Frankfurt, Görlitz, Berlin, Munich, Königsberg), Austria (Vienna), France (Paris), and Switzerland (Horgen, Massagno). Bô Yin Râ expressed his insights into the metaphysical structures of the eternal spiritual reality through art and writings. His spiritual written teaching Hortus Conclusus is compiled into a series of 32 books. As a whole, it consists of books as well as spiritual paintings. – GERMAN BÔ YIN RÂ FOUNDATION (to learn more about Bô Yin Râ, his life, his writing and painting, visit www.bo-yin-ra-stiftung.de) ________________________________________________________________________ The high goal of which the words speak in this book is higher than all earthly goals. Yet you will vainly seek to attain this goal if you imagine it lies far away! The path leading to your high goal is within yourself; you will one day reach the high goal only within yourself! All the help you require on your path will be given to you also only within yourself! Only within yourself can you take hold of the helping hands reaching out to you! Do not confuse the teaching which seeks to show you the goal and guide you on that path towards the goal with the walk on the path within yourself! The teaching can only bring you benefit if you seek its advice within yourself. – Only then will you also find help within yourself! If therefore the words of this book are to bring you to your high goal you will have to let them resound within yourself. In your inner being you will then discover the steep path; if you seek to climb it bravely, it will make you too find the high goal within yourself! – – (...) It is more timely than ever in today’s age to point out again and again that not everything ‘mysterious’ around us leads to that last and most sacred mystery which alone can bring redemption to the soul. Indeed, it is perhaps necessary to counsel even against an all too ‘readily’ reading of this warning it-self. For confusion in many minds has mutated into the grotesque to such a degree that they can no long-er, in their state of exalted blindness, recognise the sharpest rejection of their delusion and turn words of warning into words of approval. (...) I shall help you seek within yourselves; there alone remains your hope of finding what you have al-ways sought for yourselves. (...) No thinking and speculation can ever teach you to find your way to the ultimate solution to all those questions which continually rise from the darkness of earth-bound knowledge before your soul demanding answers!––– – THE HIGH GOAL They have never heard the teaching telling them of the duty to use life on this earth in the way that it becomes a source of continual happiness. (...) But those who would attain happiness must strive alone for their happiness; everything else they would like to achieve must be subordinated to this striving and wisely woven into it. – – (...) No other task can be higher than the duty to attain the purest enduring happiness and to increase this Earth’s happiness within oneself and thereby in others too. – THE BOOK ON HAPPINESS What I have to say is beyond belief and disbelief! I'm not a prophet who needs "confessors" – nor a fighter, who is looking for "followers" behind him, but only a mediator of spiritual insights about the real home of mankind. My writings shouldn't be "believed" but taken up objectively, to awaken innermost experience. – ABOUT MY WRITINGS Countless people – and in truth not just those whose souls are the most frigid – continually await an immense experience to shake their innermost depths. Since all their longing is incapable of summoning up this experience, they rush restlessly searching from experience to experience, caught up in the delusion that the hoped for experience is bound to be attained, if they could only locate the powerful phenomenon capable of overpowering their souls with its immensity. – SHOWING THE WAY A yearning is passing through the world, – a consuming desire, – and every soul not yet completely hardened and incapable of awakening feels gripped by it. (...) One ‘may’ once again believe in things which cannot been proven by 'experiments’, and one is no longer mocked for recognising that we are surrounded and influenced by the invisible, even if we cannot solve its mystery… The ‘miraculous’ would again become reality; the realm of faith extends its borders. – THE BOOK ON THE LIVING GOD The design of pages, emphases placed on particular words, use of spaces, long hyphens, exclamation marks etc. — included in this English translation enables ‘heart-Readers’ to meditate, to breathe-in while willingly absorbing the text as a ‘spiritual sustenance’. – Sarah Havah Theebaum, historian of ideas, painter, poet. ________________________________________________________________________ The Standard-translation© into English * Currently the hardcopy/hardcover edition of this book is published on the Amazon sites via the Kindle Direct Publishing - and is now available through all major Amazon country sites (including UK, Canadian and Australian sites). This is the U.S. Amazon link (on other Amazon sites you can look up available publications by searching for Books to Light or Posthumus Projects): U.S. site direct link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVWYS5TL UK site direct link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CVWYS5TL