"The Word" in spiritualuty/religion

"In the beginning was The Word," is a well-known bible quote, and a seeming identity (or at least a very close although tantalizingly ambiguious relationship) exists beetween "The Word" and the Lord throughout the bible.

However, to my mind, the exact nature and function of logos has never fully been explained.

I don't think there is any need to limit this discussion to Christianity...the various mantric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism posit a very close relationship (if not identity) between words/sounds and divinity. High Magic operates in a similar way, evoking or manifesting various paranormal entities through incantations or "calls." In Judaism, the Secret Name of God (variously in 4, 42, 72, and other numbers of words) is one of the most powerful words and can either never be pronounced or only be pronounced under certain highly ritualized situations of extreme purity. And so on.

There is even a movement of extreme Russian Orthodox believers called the Imaslavie who posit absolute identity between God and His name. Similar forms of extreme "name veneration" can be found in certain Buddhist strains, such as the Amidist or Nichiren schools, in addition to more "straight-up2 mantra work.

What do you make of all this? The relationship between "The Word" and divinity? I must admit its a topic that continues to perplex me.

Well i can tell you what i have heard. That according to String Theory and it is just a theory, the smallest particles are made of sound. I hope that helps.

[edit on 7-7-2009 by Conclusion]

reply to post by silent thunder


i think about this often, "the word",
the word- word,
sound and its make up in everything,
the word of god, (what is the one word of god?, because it is a word.)

and when you put words together they become a "sentence"
the sentence is a group of words that try and convey a meaning, but inevitably can tie you down if the group of words are misinterpreted. ( like a prison sentence)

Poets have a devil of a time putting their visions into words, the best succeed, but how often do we hear the term "tortured poet "

ahhhh...I dont have the words to go on, but i get where you are going and feel the same Silent Thunder.

a spoken word is like a cast stone, once let go it cannot be retrieved. (something like that)

I think it has to do with an evolutionary process, where manifestation is tied to proclamation. It has to do with distinctions, and a continual process of differentiation and reintegration, something which can only be delimited via meaning. QM is beginning to grapple with the meaning aspect of creation. Meaning collapses the probability wave into an actuality, and it can also generate a new wave of possibility. This imho, is the Logos, or The Word. It ties into Consciousness and conscious awareness. In the Gospel of John, word made flesh simply denotes God-consciousness in human form, or a sphere within a sphere.

I also think Jesus was or became, through the same process, a walking pineal gland, the gateway, the true vine, etc. the way, the truth and the life, and in his word and world, the way of being that he had achieved was distinct and unique, so he could not help but to differentiate himself from everyone else, with his cross being an attempt to reintegrate with everyone, by taking on all the damage caused by their faulty thinking and separation. A rather ingenious attempt to resolve a fundamental paradox regarding human suffering imo.

By this definition, the Logos is like an arrow of civilized progression, and the Christ, a universal man of such progress embodied, made manifest in the physical universe, here on earth of all places! Yes, that is very solipsistic, but so too are the implications of modern quantum physics.

When looking at Jesus Christ as the Logos, it is also important to consider the mind/body connection and the human mind-universal mind connection.

In this way, a cosmos absolutely filled with life and intelligent civilizations, would do nothing to undermine the Christian faith, maybe only bolster it, revealing that the highest always serves the lowest, where the last shall be first and the first, last. It's an evolutionary proposition of non-locality (you saw it here first), where man, being last, is, at the most fundamental level, no matter how undeveloped from a socio-political-spiritual basis, the most evolved being in the universe, made, by intelligent design, to contain non other than the spirit of the living God, with Christ being the first among many to make manifest or to actualize, the promise made, with integrity.

I know that minds prejudiced with contempt prior to investigation will cry foul, and say that I just posted a bunch of pseudo-science woo woo to support an unfounded Christian faith, and for them, it will not compute. There are many others here reading this, however, who WILL "grok" it most fully, "all those with the ears to hear let them hear."

To better understand the revelation that I'm driving at here, for the Logos, or The Word, look to the Phi Ratio or the Golden Mean, relative to the sacred geometry of the Seed of Life, and then consider man as the most recent, and therefore the very highest expression of the creative principal, in the universe, due to what I call evolutionary non-locality ie: nothing in the universe evolves in isolation, with the whole universe being a non-local, instantaneously interconnected, holographic phenomenon, or in terms of order from chaos, an open system.

This places imo, the whole Biblical framework and human spirituality as an evolutionary phenomenon, in a whole new light (of course you can ignore some of the cultural baggage which got towed along in the process) as well as the political power aspects involved in trying to use "The Word" for the raw temporal power of domination and submission. One has to get around or over their bias against "Churchianity" to see the truth at the very heart of it all.

So you see, in a non-local, holographic universe, local matters, especially here of all places, where the rubber really hits the road in terms of the ongoing struggle in the midst of the paradox of good and evil and of civilized leadership and the neccessity to influence for the greatest possible good of one and all in the house.

And remember too, that the technology of any advanced civilization would be indistinguishable, from magic. Perhaps we live in a universe where there are many players, and unimaginable technologies, the very highest of which is imo, The Word itself, as a type of God-NLP for the creative spiritual evolution of the human being.

"And as my father hath sent me, even so send I you." so there again, it's organic and holographic and progressive, with continuity.

Or, maybe I'm just starting to take in too much '___' from all the meditating I've been doing lately!

[edit on 7-7-2009 by OmegaPoint]

Good answer so far, thanks for your input people.

Another point...I remember reading a bit about the the Mahavairocana Sutra (or Dainichi-kyo )...Unfortunately as far as I know it has not been translated into English, but there has been some English scholarshp on it. Plus the text itself, even in the original Chinese, is kept secret by the Shingon sect and copies are hard to come by. I have been privilaged to look at some sections of this text, but my ability to read medieval Chinese is pretty rudimentary, to put it kindly.

Anyway, apparently the text states that it comes in THREE versions. The "orthodox" version of this sacred text (long enough in itself), is seen as a digest of a second, much longer version that was so large as to have to be stored in multiple volumes in a library-like tower (almost certainly a myth). The THIRD version of the text is the UNIVERSE ITSELF. Thus, everything that comes to happen is seen as TEXT or WORD itself, spoken by the great universal Buddha, Dainichi Nyorai (A.K.A. Mahavairocana). There is a portion in the text that speaks of him unrolling his unimaginabally large tongue and sort of "speaking forth the cosmos" or manifesting it through...the word.

The text itself is interesting because the first part describes these things and then the second part sort of segues directly into the sacred words that Dainichi Nyorai speaks...to the reader it seems like an almost incomprehensible list of mantric phrases or "magic words." In other words, the book is both a description of the way the cosmos is created through the utterance of sacred words and, simultaneously, an example of some of such sacred words. Written 1000-1500 years ago, it is a most elegant example of the theories of modern semiotics (which place a great deal of emphasis on the roles of words and symbols in creating reality).

Perhaps if you go back far enough, when man was first learning to speak, he grasped and was awed by the power to manipulate reality through thought and word. Perhaps some of that primal awe has never quite left us, and we can see this reflected in faiths around the world.

[edit on 7/7/09 by silent thunder]

Originally posted by silent thunder
Perhaps if you go back far enough, when man was first learning to speak, he grasped and was awed by the power to manipulate reality through thought and word. Perhaps some of that primal awe has never quite left us, and we can see this reflected in faiths around the world.

That's a brilliant insight.

Apparently, Hellen Keller, before she got language, experienced the world as essentially formless and undifferentiated, and then as soon as she got language, the world came into being for her.

I think language is like a knife which cuts through, and sets apart, and, which can unify and integrate, depending on the frame of reference and who is doing the speaking.

"Heaven and Earth may pass away, but my word will never pass away."
~ JC

Originally posted by OmegaPoint

Originally posted by silent thunder
Perhaps if you go back far enough, when man was first learning to speak, he grasped and was awed by the power to manipulate reality through thought and word. Perhaps some of that primal awe has never quite left us, and we can see this reflected in faiths around the world.

That's a brilliant insight.

Apparently, Hellen Keller, before she got language, experienced the world as essentially formless and undifferentiated, and then as soon as she got language, the world came into being for her.

I think language is like a knife which cuts through, and sets apart, and, which can unify and integrate, depending on the frame of reference and who is doing the speaking.

"Heaven and Earth may pass away, but my word will never pass away."
~ JC

Nice post.

I especially like the Helen Keller reference. It puts a lot of things into perspective

Incidentally, and not to derail the thread too much, but one of my all-time favorite quotes comes from Keller: "The world is indeed full of suffering, but it is also full of the overcoming of suffering." She must have been a wise woman.

[edit on 7/8/09 by silent thunder]

You know, it's absolutely astounding, in no uncertain terms, just how clued in the ancients were regarding the metaphysical nature of reality! How the HECK did they figure that all out - wheren't they too busy farming, hunting, gathering etc. It's like sometime, around 10,000 years ago, or maybe it was 20,000 in reality, suddenly, here we have a degree of wisdom unparalleled, a wisdom which we are only just beginning to re-appropriate, thanks in no small part to the internet.

Modern man has been living in a dark age, in spite of all this so-called progress and discovery.

"The kingdom of heaven is like a storekeeper, who brings forth from his storehouse, both something old, and something new."

Originally posted by OmegaPoint
You know, it's absolutely astounding, in no uncertain terms, just how clued in the ancients were regarding the metaphysical nature of reality! How the HECK did they figure that all out - wheren't they too busy farming, hunting, gathering etc. It's like sometime, around 10,000 years ago, or maybe it was 20,000 in reality, suddenly, here we have a degree of wisdom unparalleled, a wisdom which we are only just beginning to re-appropriate, thanks in no small part to the internet.

Modern man has been living in a dark age, in spite of all this so-called progress and discovery.

"The kingdom of heaven is like a storekeeper, who brings forth from his storehouse, both something old, and something new."

It really is amazing, isn't it? Water erosion on the Sphinx is pushing the timetable for that monument as far back as 10,000 years before presesent (the last time there would have been enough water to cause such changes), easily making it the most ancient such monument (although he head was probably careved and re-carved at least once). All we have for evidence for these ancient people are bone and stone...I'm convinced they had more technology, used reeds and fabrics abd wood that have sice disintegrated, who knows...this would give a picture of a more advanced societry than we imagine.

People (and especially aristocratic people) in civilazations like Egypt, Babylon, and China, had plenty of time to play with night sky, keep records, and suss out its various mathematical implecations...there were almost certainly civilizations before fist-dynasty Egypt as well...not much to do out there in the deep desert but watch the stars and their paths...look at egyptology and the picture gets even weirder...some of their swan-necked bottles were carved out of solid rock using drills with speeds faster than modern power drills (a thousand slaves turning a wheel at once?) The whole egyptian Great Pyramid necropolis and related smaller pyramids perfectly recapiutualte Orion's belt, and star-shafts stragegically let in light to certain chambers at certain times...these people had high intelligence, probably collected and formed over thousands of years.

Heck, 100 years ago we were hitting mules with hickory sitcks to get our baskets of barley to the trading post. A lot a can change in a hundred years. A lot more can change in 10,000 years.

Yes, and their cosmologies were very advanced, the Egyptian employing Jungian archetypes in what appears to be a symbolically rooted technology involving the transmigration of the soul, for real..!

There was something to it - they don't appear when you really look into it, to have been nothing more than superstitious barbarians with a few star charts and some advanced mathematics, it was much much deeper, richer and more profound than that.

I also have the sense that it wasn't really a master/slave society, but that the workers had great dignity, inclusion and integration into the entire system, and may have been immensely satisfied with their work, given it's meaning and significance, something which I believe was well understood by the whole society, the whole of which was initiated into it's mysteries.

There's no other way to explain how long it lasted, or it's impact, even to modern day via the Greeks who like Pathagoras travelled to Egypt and was indoctrinated into their mysteries.

Check this series out

www.youtube.com...

[edit on 8-7-2009 by OmegaPoint]

A genesis from the gnostic Corpus Hermeticum:

4. E'en with these words His aspect changed, and straightway, in the twinkling of an eye, all things were opened to me, and I see a Vision limitless, all things turned into Light - sweet, joyous [Light]. And I became transported as I gazed.

But in a little while Darkness came settling down on part [of it], awesome and gloomy, coiling in sinuous folds, so that methought it like unto a snake.

And then the Darkness changed into some sort of a Moist Nature, tossed about beyond all power of words, belching out smoke as from a fire, and groaning forth a wailing sound that beggars all description.

[And] after that an outcry inarticulate came forth from it, as though it were a Voice of Fire.

5. [Thereon] out of the Light [...] a Holy Word (Logos) descended on that Nature. And upwards to the height from the Moist Nature leaped forth pure Fire; light was it, swift and active too.

The Air, too, being light, followed after the Fire; from out of the Earth-and-Water rising up to Fire so that it seemed to hang therefrom.

But Earth-and-Water stayed so mingled with each other, that Earth from Water no one could discern. Yet were they moved to hear by reason of the Spirit-Word (Logos) pervading them.

6. Then saith to me Man-Shepherd: Didst understand this Vision what it means?

www.sacred-texts.com...



Everything is ultimately consciousness. But "the word" comes from much more refined consciousness, and is like fuel to the fire of the constant yin/yang struggle, in that it carries "divine command."

The very quote I use above, from the Corpus Hermeticum, caused a burning and a fire to leap forth from my own mind when I understood it, and in that way it is exactly like "the word" that descends from the light and causes much commotion on the earth and watery nature, causing it to belch forth smoke and make noises, and reach towards the heavens.

Any spiritual text, scientific article, anything you read that enlightens you to the universe around you, is causing a churning in your mind that can be likened to a burning. Information is fuel to a very real spiritual fire. It is not the words themselves, but the message and meaning they carry and convey to the consciousness itself.

That is "the word"; it informs change.

Originally posted by bsbray11
A genesis from the gnostic Corpus Hermeticum:

4. E'en with these words His aspect changed, and straightway, in the twinkling of an eye, all things were opened to me, and I see a Vision limitless, all things turned into Light - sweet, joyous [Light]. And I became transported as I gazed.

But in a little while Darkness came settling down on part [of it], awesome and gloomy, coiling in sinuous folds, so that methought it like unto a snake.

And then the Darkness changed into some sort of a Moist Nature, tossed about beyond all power of words, belching out smoke as from a fire, and groaning forth a wailing sound that beggars all description.

[And] after that an outcry inarticulate came forth from it, as though it were a Voice of Fire.

5. [Thereon] out of the Light [...] a Holy Word (Logos) descended on that Nature. And upwards to the height from the Moist Nature leaped forth pure Fire; light was it, swift and active too.

The Air, too, being light, followed after the Fire; from out of the Earth-and-Water rising up to Fire so that it seemed to hang therefrom.

But Earth-and-Water stayed so mingled with each other, that Earth from Water no one could discern. Yet were they moved to hear by reason of the Spirit-Word (Logos) pervading them.

6. Then saith to me Man-Shepherd: Didst understand this Vision what it means?

www.sacred-texts.com...



Everything is ultimately consciousness. But "the word" comes from much more refined consciousness, and is like fuel to the fire of the constant yin/yang struggle, in that it carries "divine command."

The very quote I use above, from the Corpus Hermeticum, caused a burning and a fire to leap forth from my own mind when I understood it, and in that way it is exactly like "the word" that descends from the light and causes much commotion on the earth and watery nature, causing it to belch forth smoke and make noises, and reach towards the heavens.

Any spiritual text, scientific article, anything you read that enlightens you to the universe around you, is causing a churning in your mind that can be likened to a burning. Information is fuel to a very real spiritual fire. It is not the words themselves, but the message and meaning they carry and convey to the consciousness itself.

That is "the word"; it informs change.

Very nice. I like the idea of words (and in a broader sense, information itself) as a kind of "high-octane" version of the general ebb and flow of yin/yang that characterizes reality in gerneral. Through this model, one can see the Word as a super-saturated version of creation, or at least activity. Nice piece of the puzzle.

I wonder if the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" in the garden of Eden myth plays into this on some level...many people sloppily render this as the "tree of good and evil," but the real name uses the word KNOWLEDGE. I wonder if this implies the tapping into of that kind of hyper-saturated "fuel" you mention in connection with The Word (since The Word and the act of knowing -- which is really the act of discriminating, making divisions -- are closely related).

I always saw the Garden of Eden as connsumate, sublime symbolic mythology rather than a literal accout of events. To me, it is a demonstration that when humanity learned to THINK, to USE WORDS, and to MORALIZE it lost that earlier, animastic "go with the flow" immersion in the Primal Tao (or call it animal instinct, whatever).

Our "punishment" for this "transgresssion" (which is, actually, simultaneously enormously useful on a raw survival level) was to be ejected from a garden where "everything's OK" and "stuff just kinda happens" (instinct) to our current world of "thorns and thistles" full of harsh words and difficult moral connundrums, not to mentiion various forms of mental anguish that don't (seem to) plague animals that operate purely by instinct. Thus, the Fall from the Garden of Eden represents a kind of "devil's bargain" where we gain the ability to speak, use words, have knowledge, and moralize -- but at the expense of our most basic, natural, animalistic instincts.

[edit on 7/8/09 by silent thunder]

Hi/

The Divine Dilemma and its Solution in the Incarnation...

Man, who was created in God's image and in his possession of reason reflected the very Word Himself, was disappearing, and the work of God was being undone.
The law of death, which followed from the Transgression,
prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape.
The thing that was happening was in truth both monstrous and unfitting.
It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption.

What is the WORD?
A little information on the above ~On the Incarnation~

Written By Saint Athanasius, (c. 297 - 373)...Early Christianity Fathers of the Church...
Also Plato, Reason~Philosophy~

In the Begiining was the WORD, and the WORD was with God, and the Word was God~

There's alot of reading,Hope that helps,


ICXC NIKA
helen

I have heard several speak of "The Word" and must admit I still find it hard to understand what it is exactly. For me I thinks its when the creators initial thoughts turned into an actual sound. The thought wave manifested into an actual sound, a word, The Word. The thought became denser in its frequency and became sound.

reply to post by helen670


Thanks for the links. Will check them all out. I am a big fan of the Christian Classics Etheral Library...oh, the hours I've idled away there! But I've never read the St. Athanasius work you linked to.

You seem to be very knowledgeble on Orthodox Christianity...I'm guessing you've come across this site in your travels but if not I recommend it highly:
www.monachos.net...

reply to post by silent thunder


i've often thought the "word" was simultaneously the "perfect waveform" and the "word" as in the "name" .. as genetic code that is found in the new jerusalem/solomon's temple.. the new human body that man can experience connection to god throguh.. this "genetic code" .."spells" the "name".. etc..

-

reply to post by silent thunder


Hi Silent!
If you like reading, then there is alot to read and read some more.,Im still learning and understanding!
Yes I do know of the Web site 'Monachos" It actually means Monastic...one who is a type of hermit,a practise of early Chistianity Monks!
Still in practise today...Mount Athos!
The web site is very informative with lots of information and links.
Thank you!

ICXC NIKA
helen

You will also find mention of the "word" or "words" in the Popol Vuh.
And of the singing words of the creator in Native American myths.

reply to post by DaisyAnne


What is the true meaning of your avatar, I've always been curious about it, do you know it's true origin and what it really signifies?

Originally posted by OmegaPoint
reply to post by DaisyAnne

 

What is the true meaning of your avatar, I've always been curious about it, do you know it's true origin and what it really signifies?

I did have that images true meaning somewhere, its something to do with the two sides/parts of the kundalini being fully in balance, rising and igniting the phoenix from the flames, becoming re newed and awake from the crown chakra. The actual meaning is buried in my e mails but the above is on the right lines.