Last blog introduced John’s Prologue as a meditation. Now let’s go line-by-line deepening our esoteric understanding:
In the beginning was the Logos, Why “Logos”? Why not “Christ”? Why not “The Son”? We can conclude this gospel is primarily about the Logos, not any other person or god. But what is the “Logos”? What would be the understanding of “Logos” to contemporaries of this writer?
And the Logos was with God. “With God, or can this be translated “within God”?
A God was the Logos, Some translations will omit “A”. How might this change the intended theology? How many hierarchies in the heavens did theology of the time regard? Which levels might its beings be called “gods”? If not of the Holy Trinity, of what hierarchy might the Logos be?
This same one was, in the beginning, with God. Why is this seemingly repeated? This gospel writer does not waste words, does not repeat, so what’s going on? Is the “one” referred to different? It says this “same one”. Is this “same one” still with God?
Through Him became all things. Does this make the Logos the creator of “all things”? Note it does not say “all beings”. Are heavenly beings included in this creation? Are evil beings? How did contemporaries view matter? Read up on the Gnostic theology for one view of contemporaries. What was being purified in baptism, in the public baths before entering the temple?
Not one thing became without Him. What does the writer mean by “became” or “to become”. Aristotle and Plato were considered the pinnacles of philosophy in those times – what did they have to say about “becoming”?
In Him is Life. Life as a “substance”? All of Life? What is Life? What is my Life? How might my memories be related? Is Christ in me in my Life? Where is my Life? What happens in a near-death-experience (NDE)? Where goes my life when I die? Where is my life before I am born? Does my life evolve?
Life is Humanity’s Light. Oh my! How are we to understand this!? Life is Light – really? Where is my light (this little light of mine)? When I conceive of a new idea, cartoonists show a light bulb turning on in my mind. Creative thinking has long been associated with an inner light. Typically our every-day thinking is a dead-thinking, not light, nor dark, but dead, like that “thinking” in a computer. A living-thinking glows and not only enlightens, it reveals other things. Do our senses only receive or do they, as Plato claimed, shine out to the object of our attention? If so, what kind of shining is this?
This light shines in each soul’s darkness, So there is both light and darkness in my soul? Compare this concept again to the Gnostics and other contemporaries. What does it mean to shine? Does it mean all-giving? What is darkness? All-receiving? What might light in the spirit be? How might it be different from light in the physical realm? What does the name Lucifer mean? (Light bearer). What being represents darkness in the spirit? Can the soul “see” the physical?
And the soul’s darkness comprehends it not. That sounds as if the writer is saying I have two aspects to my soul; one, with light, and one with darkness and the one with darkness does not understand the one with light. What is this darkness? Is it a being within me? Is it me?
Lots of questions! Why am I not offering answers as well? The story of Sphinx of Thebes describes how unanswerable questions once drove people mad. The time was about the 8th century BCE. Oedipus, as representative of the new soul forces with intellectual capacities that would declare “I know!” were beginning to form. When Oedipus comes to the sphinx, she asks him a question. Because Oedipus is able to answer it, she must no longer torment him. We are now well passed the development of the Intellectual Soul so each one of you are able to answer these questions, especially through meditation.