Book on the Living God

by Bo Yin Ra

Overview

In this central text of the Hortus Conclusus cycle, the author shows the difference between the numerous subjective, man-made images of God--ranging from the fetish of the savage to the intellectual constructs of the philosopher--and the objective spiritual reality that human beings are capable of knowing through experience. The phantom gods that human minds create owe their existence and their power to nothing more than man's own will; they vanish when there are no more believers willing to sustain them. What in this book is called the Living God is something very different. It neither is a "person" moved by human passions, nor an omnipotent, all-knowing potentate who made the cosmos out of nothing in order that it worship him. Man's individuated Living God is, rather, shown as the sublimest self-creation by and of the Spirit. It is a spiritual scintilla that is born, as light from light, within each human soul that has prepared itself to be a fitting vessel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788120734258
Publisher:	Sterling Publications
Publication date:	09/28/2007
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

Read an Excerpt

The Spirit of eternity, which consciously exists in its own light, is not some nebulous mirage that only pious faith might fathom.

Eternal Spirit is not only quite as "real" as is a tree, a stone, a mountain, or as a bolt of lightning that flashes from a cloud, but its reality is absolute within itself. It thus provides the justifying grounds for our mental concept of "reality" which has no true equivalent in the contingent realm of matter.

But given that not even objects of contingent, physical reality are altered in their nature by any thoughts about them held in human minds, how can one seriously presume that mental notions might affect events of absolute reality?

The mental image of a thing reflected in your thought will never even touch the smallest object in the world of matter in its real essence. Nor can the Spirit of eternity be comprehended by anything you may call "spirit" while you have not yet grasped its radiant substance in your self.

Today, and at this moment, you well may think you sense the truth my words convey, but come tomorrow, you are likely once more spellbound by the "spirit of the world." Today you may be willing to escape it, to seek the Spirit of eternity, but I fear that by tomorrow you will again be blinded by the "spirit" of the mind.

Today perhaps you feel that you have sensed a glimmer of the Spirit's radiant light, but tomorrow you will likely be beset again by doubts and indecision, and thus give up the effort to pursue what you this day felt almost within reach.

This is what man always did when someone spoke to him about the Spirit of eternity, whose radiant light embraces all creation; someone who had leave to speak about that Spirit, because he lived in it awake and, therefore, could bear witness of its essence from personal experience.

Perhaps however, there truly are a few among you determined to exert all energies, so that they may one day themselves experience the reality of which I speak in its ineffably majestic, uttermost simplicity.

To them I shall address myself, for they alone can profit from my words.

Table of Contents

Word of Guidance
"The Tabernacle of God is with Men"
The "Mahatmas" of Theosophy
Meta-Physical Experiences
The Inner Journey
The En-Sof
On Seeking God
On Leading an Active Life
On "Holy Men" and "Sinners"
The Hidden Side of Nature
The Secret Temple
Karma
War and Peace
The Unity among Religions
The Will to Find Eternal Light
Mankind's Higher Faculties of Knowing
On Death
On the Spirit's Radiant Substance
The Path toward Perfection
On Everlasting Lif
The Spirit's Light Dwells in the East
Faith, Talismans, and Images of God
The Inner Force in Word
A Call from Himavat
Giving Thanks
Epilogue
Reminder