{"id":4513,"date":"2013-03-09T22:58:41","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T05:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/?p=4513"},"modified":"2013-04-09T21:00:05","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T04:00:05","slug":"becoming-aware-of-the-logos-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/?p=4513","title":{"rendered":"Becoming Aware of the Logos – Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, <\/span><\/p>\n

and the Word was God. <\/span><\/p>\n

The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; <\/span><\/p>\n

and without him was not any thing made that was made. <\/span><\/p>\n

In him was life; and the life was the light of men. <\/span><\/p>\n

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.<\/span><\/p>\n

[Max Heindel recommended that\u00a0the beginning verses of Saint John’s Gospel be used for the Rosicrucian students’ morning concentration exercise.\u00a0 The following\u00a0book review\u00a0appeared in a 2002 Rays from the Rose Cross magazine.]<\/p>\n

Becoming Aware of the Logos — Book Review<\/strong><\/p>\n

A<\/strong>ccording to the Gospel of John, the Word already was at the beginning.\u00a0 At the beginning of what? Of anything and everything, made or not made, in any place, at any time. The Word that is all-creating and all-signifying, that is creation and creativity, significance and signifier, already was in God as that which God before time willed in superabundant love to \u201cspeak\u201d out from Himself as God the Son, the Logos. Before He spoke forth from darkness brighter than all created light, the Alone-Begotten was in dialogue with the Father, and the Father with Him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a>

Two Owls – Thomas Moran 1837 – 1926<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This Word is the foundation for all and any meaning. Physical forms, their etheric matrices, astral structures, mental archetypes, and the languages that convey their meaning and their reason for being\u2014all originate in and by the Word. The mind that conceives and even the identity that carries on conceptual activity and knows itself purely as I, even this, and especially this, is rooted in the <\/span>Word, for the I AM is the Word, and each human Spirit was in the beginning in and with the Cosmic I AM, the Logos\u2014but knew it not.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Meditation on St. John\u2019s Gospel, especially the first eighteen verses, is the subject of George K\u00fchlewind\u2019s Becoming Aware of the Logos<\/i> (Lindesfarne Press, 1985). In the book\u2019s preface the author writes that our everyday consciousness may find the text of the John\u2019s Prologue \u201cincomprehensible, even contradictory,\u201d unless our understanding can be illuminated by \u201cexperiences on the plane of consciousness corresponding to\u201d this text.\u00a0 Which is why Max Heindel and other spiritually evolved persons recommend concentration on this passage as particularly favoring both the search for higher knowledge and the awakening of faculties for acquiring that knowledge first-hand.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Three words serve as nuclei around which K\u00fchlewind\u2019s meditative exposition centers and from which his insights emanate: the central term Logos and what the Logos makes possible\u2014grace (Greek, ch\u00e1ris) and truth (Greek, al\u00e9theia). For grace and truth came with the Word incarnate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While academic philology may be seen, with some justification, as largely an exercise in pedantry, etymologically and actually the \u201clove of words\u201d is the response of a call in the heart to know the soul of things, their life, their meaning. It is a yearning for the original ever-sounding Word, evinced in a study of the Word\u2019s \u201cfall\u201d into things, Its fissioning into innumerable orphaned syllables that carry a resonance of their supernal home.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Al\u00e9theia means \u201cnot to forget\u201d (a, not + lethe, forget), which suggests, as Plato teaches, that prior to embodiment the human spirit is irradiated by the <\/span>presence of universal forms or Ideas. When the spirit takes on a physical body, it forgets the Truth, it suffers amnesia and must make an effort to remember, for which Plato employed the term anamnesis (literally, to bring again to mind, mens), and others the Latin cognate reminiscence. Since the science of spirit describes Ideas or Archetypes as living spirit beings whose lowest \u201cbody\u201d consists of thought substance, we can appreciate the conception of artists who depict the aura of divinity as composed of countless celestial beings. In other words, the Idea of all ideas, the Word comprising all possible words, is the Logos Who was in the beginning, the Alpha and Omega of all alphabets.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Greek mythology describes the river Lethe in the underworld whose water induces forgetfulness.\u00a0 This is an effective symbol for the human inability to remember former incarnations, which nescience gives \u201cone-life\u201d advocates what they think is lethal \u201cproof\u201d for their contention. The point is that in becoming aware of the Logos we are unforgetting, we re-member truth, al\u00e9theia, into our conscious being. When we are ignorant of the truth, we are in a state of spiritual lethargy. Then the invisible light shines into the darkness of our material minds and we do not comprehend it, we cannot see it, we do not re-cognize the Christ, the Word, living in creation and, most fully, in human beings.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Christ came not to teach the way of truth.\u00a0 Rather, being its embodiment, he came to show it, to demonstrate that truth is here (Emmanuel, God with us). Before Christ lived in Jesus, eye had not seen nor ear heard what God had planned for those that love him\u2014that Christ abides and speaks His Word in individual human being. John\u2019s Gospel states that no man has seen God at any time, but the Son declares him. In response to Philip\u2019s request to \u201cshow us the Father,\u201d Christ is more positive: \u201che that hath seen me hath seen the Father.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Christianity announces the revelation of God in man; through Christ humans are called to know their Logos-bearing nature, as it has ever been known by God in Whose image He created them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Christ affirms, I in thou and thou in me. Yet, he comes unto his own, who have been His from the beginning, and His own know him not. When as Jesus He was face to face with them, His was simply the face of the son of Mary and Joseph; at most, He was the Messiah, the emancipator of the Jewish people, esoterically, the liberator of the Spirit in man from the domination of race-consciousness and the bondage to things. The seeing that discovers Christ is not physical sight. It is based on a prior Self-seeing, prior Self-conceiving.\u00a0 Knowing the Word does come from coupling a percept with a concept, sense data with its defining thought. To know spirit we must know that flesh and blood are, at most, media of understanding, not its message. Mortal flesh is the glass through which we see, darkly. If we see true, we see in spite of the flesh. It does not obscure the spirit because other eyes, eyes of the spirit, are open. John the Baptist had attained to a certain level of supersensible vision. His preaching of repentance was actually a charge to change thinking, in Paul\u2019s words, to be not conformed to the world. But John says of the Lamb of God, \u201cI knew him not.\u201d John could see the Spirit that alighted like a dove on Jesus. He had attained to an apprehension of the region of abstract thought, the domain of the Human Spirit, whose cosmic counterpart is the Holy Spirit; but the Logos, the Son of God, typically has His lowest manifestation in the World of Life Spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The witnessing given by the author of John\u2019s Gospel is of a higher order. \u00a0For it is primarily he who speaks of the Logos. It is John the Beloved who listened at the heart of his Master. John\u2019s testimony is given by the Greek word martyr\u00eda. It implies such an understanding of what is encountered that the witness\u2019 report compels belief. Such testimony is often given in the face of opposition to its content, as in the phrase \u201cmartyrs for the Word.\u201d The individual human spirit is the martyr\u00eda, the inner witness that seeks to bring truth to the too <\/span>often skeptical or scorning lower mind that is in and of the world and would not be unseated.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Christ\u2019s words of truth are also words of grace (ch\u00e1ris), which signify discourse that has the power to convince, power over \u201cunclean spirits,\u201d and power to bring about \u201csigns and miracles.\u201d The word of ch\u00e1ris is always a doing, a doing that gives above what is asked, or above what is merited.\u00a0 Ch\u00e1ris comes from above. It is full of grace.\u00a0 It issues from love and \u201cunconditioned intuition.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Grace, as used by John, pertains to what ultimately issues from the world of Life Spirit, the realm of seminal reality. From here love precipitates into human affairs from the future, as truth or al\u00e9theia refers to the living present, and \u201cthis world\u201d refers to the past, the dying present, to what we think we know and prefer to perpetuate as forms through which the new is experienced as the familiar.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The student can meditate on John\u2019s Gospel without having recourse to any aid or commentary.\u00a0 K\u00fchlewind\u2019s book shows how fruitful such meditation <\/span>can be, thus strengthening one\u2019s desire and resolve to become more aware of the Logos. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014C.W.<\/span><\/p>\n

54 RAYS 02<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[417,416,415],"class_list":["post-4513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","tag-concentration","tag-gospel-of-john","tag-logos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4513"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4526,"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513\/revisions\/4526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}