The Book on the Living God by Bô Yin Râ
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I read this because Eckhart Tolle had listed it as being one of the books that so fascinated him. Bo Yin Ra really builds up a case for arguing for a very narrow spiritual path. The basic idea is that such a path does exist — and like many of the esoteric spiritualities, the idea is simply that what is ultimately spiritual is real. And thus, being of the universal sense, it must exist outside of human meaning making.
Over and over he emphasizes how difficult it is to do this. What’s interesting is that spirituality must be about getting outside of your ego. So anything that has to do with ego, or building ego is the opposite of what is spiritual. This includes anyone who leads, or has spiritual followers… which is a very human meaning making activity, and thus not truly spiritual.
So the book has a hard dichotomy in it, which is taken to extremes. I find this work so interesting in that he ends up saying things that you may not think about. But in some of his moves to be “complete” I think he runs up against some very odd points.
If you are interested in spirituality and being spiritual… and want a window into a strange approach to what is an intensely personal experience, I would say go and read it. Of course, if writing such a book, predicated on expressing the path to spirituality while avoiding the “pitfall of human meaning making” seems like a direct contradiction in terms to you, you can bet that it literally is.
He does have some interesting ideas about desires/drives/feelings/chora — whatever you want to call it. The only thing he doesn’t explain is the book itself. But then again, you got to start somewhere right?
I guess this is the second book of this series… I have not read the first book.
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