Worlds of Spirit
Bô Yin Râ is the spiritual proper name of the author and artist Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken (1876-1943). He was born in Aschaffenburg, Germany, and died in Massagno/Lugano, Switzerland, where he had lived since 1925. His formal education as a painter began at the Staedel Art Institute in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, and then took him to Vienna, Munich, and Paris. In the years 1912/1913 he lived and painted in Greece, where he also composed the first of his books, excerpts of which were published in 1917 from Leipzig. Bô Yin Râ's artistic legacy comprises some 200 paintings, a substantial part depicting spiritual perspectives, subjects of nonphysical reality, such as those included in the present book.The literary legacy of Bô Yin Râ includes forty titles, published between 1919 and 1939, in Germany and Switzerland. Thirty-two of these works comprise a closely related cycle which the author gathered under the title of Hortus Conclusus (The Enclosed Garden).  In his books he addresses questions and concerns that, in the language of religion and philosophy, pertain to "final things"--the mysteries of mortal and eternal life, of God, the origin and goal of human existence--and gives advice on how one ought to live this present life to "lay up treasures" in the life to come.What sets these books apart from other writings on these topics is their author's background and horizon. Thus, he does not give the reader the results of learned thinking, speculations, and beliefs, but lucid insights into the objective structure of reality, based upon direct, reliable experience. His books, therefore, as he explains, are not intended to create "beliefs," nor any new "religion," but should instead be used as maps that guide the reader safely through the labyrinth of this existence to the goal that every spiritually conscious human being finally desires to attain.