Bô Yin Râ
The Inner Journey

 

From The Book on the Living God  second edition, chapter 4 “The Inner Journey,” 2014. Translated from Das Buch vom Lebendigen Gott, second edition, published in German in 1927.

 

All great goals in life need faith and courage.

Before you suffered on the cross” you cannot celebrate your resurrection.”

Before you learned to summon faith, the fiery pillar” cannot guide your foot on dry land through the midst of the sea.”

There still is much in you today that you will have to overcome, and even more you must in future learn to master if you are truly to move forward on your way.

The sea will threaten to devour you and in the desert you shall search for food in vain. Yet you must never let timidity and doubt detain you even for a moment if you have once resolved to enter on this inner path, which is to take you to yourself and, in your self, to your eternal Living God.

How difficult this is you will discover only on the way itself.

But do not be afraid!

For on this inner journey you are not alone.

All those are by your side who went that way before you.

They, too, had once to face and overcome all dangers.

Not one of them had found the journey any easier than it will be for you.

But now they have ascended to the promised land.”

They now have reached the end of all their labors and, from sacred mountains, are sending you support and inner strength.

From the domain of those who, in their God’s most radiant light, are unified as One, a single, everlasting sun of suns—beings that, in godlike splendor, illuminate all suns and worlds the inner journey within creation—down to those abiding here on earth unseen, in spiritual form and, finally, the Mediators, who still experience life as mortals: through this eternal hierarchy descending, the Spirit’s radiant current flows through all infinity; uniting, in sublime identity of will, all those that manifest its power.

But on the lowest rung of this eternal Jacobs ladder,” the level nearest you in life on earth, there you will find the inner helpers who can offer you their hand, provided that you want their guidance.

They shall abandon none of those who strive to make their way through all the horrors of the night, searching for the peaceful, radiant sanctuary in which their Living God is to be born—from light to light—within their timeless soul.

Do not expect, however, that their help will reach you from without; for they shall be connected with you in yourself, as soon as you courageously begin your inner way. Your way shall be the same which any soul that ever found its Living God has had to journey. The inner guides, who now are helping you, have also gone that way in their own day, even though their spiritual self and essence had long before been carefully prepared, for thousands of years, in order to endow them with the power to perceive and clearly comprehend all spiritual reality.

Unless your guide be one of them, he cannot ever lead you to your goal, no matter what astounding feats or miracles he elsewhere might perform.

You will encounter many teachers who are false; teachers who themselves need sorely to be taught, and numberless conceited braggarts will flaunt their knowledge” to impress you.

Also, you may come upon self-righteous holy ones” who are consumed with vanity and count it as a worthy deed to see that others are seduced to honor their pretended holiness” and dignity.”
Again, you may be startled by outlandish pseudo-priests, seeking to bewilder anyone they can attract with the mysterious glitter of the magic symbols which, in their delusion, they stitched in imitation gold on their magician’s costume.

And if you should be careless even once, you also may quite easily get caught in sundry hidden snares, which few are able to escape again unharmed who once had been entangled. Only being constantly alert can keep you safe from danger.

Beware of all whose so-called wisdom touching God is taught and learned like any other subject studied by the human mind.

Beware of all who would seduce you by displaying occult powers.

There truly still are many things which even in this self-assured, supposedly enlightened” age might strike you as a miracle.” Nor is there any doubt that wondrous faculties lie hidden deep in human nature. But never could the Spirit of Eternity so utterly mistrust its own reality that it would stoop to proving” its existence by performing public miracles.” If some mysterious faculties reveal themselves in a particular person, it proves no more than that such faculties exist. It is no proof whatever that their owner has awakened in the Spirit as a conscious being and, therefore, can bear witness to eternal Truth, whose source is spiritual Reality.

Authentic witness of the truth is only proved by virtue of the miracle of spiritual awakening, which final truth is able to effect within the human soul. Therefore, you should not regard as truth whatever is not borne out by your innermost experience; provided you fulfill the spiritual conditions on which all such experience depends.

Forget as well the foolish notion that by consuming only certain foods, or by engaging in some foolish exercise, you might just eat or breathe yourself onto a higher plane of spiritual life.”
The Mediators of the light that shines through all creation shall never tell you to employ such means.

Nor shall they ever ask you to withdraw from life among your fellow humans, so that you might indulge in secret, mind-deluding practices or esoteric rites.

They never shall invest you with arcane degrees,” strange-sounding titles, or especial the inner journey honors,” which merely would abet your vanity and kindle foolish pride.

Only what is manifest in you as spiritual reality— because your own endeavor made it so—has any value in their eyes and it alone will tell them where you stand.

To be sure, you will not find these Mediators holding forth from rostrums, imitating actors of the stage, nor in the market place surrounded by large crowds.

Rather, they shall offer you their help in words that you may weigh within your soul, in quiet, when you are by yourself, not swayed by cunning rhetoric.

Their help will reach you in your soul, and they shall never seek to show themselves in person.

You need not recognize the Spirit’s Mediators, if in this life you ever were to meet one.

Nor is it necessary that you find them in their mortal form.

It is they who shall be finding you, and they know how to help you, even if you cannot fathom who that helper is.

Truly, they have other means of reaching you than do the vain impostors who seek to lure their flock with hints of hidden mysteries and ringing, hollow phrases.

Nor shall they ever ask for, or expect, that you pay money for their guidance; indeed, they all would rather give you their last penny than take from you so much as half a penny for their help.

What they have to bestow are treasures of the Spirit, and none who has the power to bestow such gifts would ever trade them for material things.

Only work that needs the tool of a material body may justly ask for payment in material coin.

Let all readers who have eyes to see and ears to hear protect themselves against pied pipers and deceivers.

They will not find it difficult to see through their disguises.

The Spirit’s Luminaries, who mediate eternal Light, are not, by contrast, quite so easy to identify.

You scarcely will detect them among your fellow mortals in this life, and nothing strange or special will betray them to your eyes; for they prefer to live in undisturbed obscurity.

Compelled to live amidst the turmoil of this world, they will be indistinguishable from all other honorable persons who go about their daily tasks.

Wise are those who put their trust in them!