God Beyond Religion: Consciousness and "The Logos."

"THE ALL is MIND; The Universe is Mental." 

~The Three Initiates. The Kybalion: A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece (Illustrated) (p. 5). The Kybalion Resource Page. Kindle Edition.

Cognitive science and quantum mechanics is pointing toward verifying this first, of the seven principles of the Kybalion. And, of course, the Kybalion presents the ideas of the Hermetica. The Kybalion resonates with me at such a high level, and yet it was written anonymously in the early 1900’s. While it was most likely written by William Walker Atkinson, it is still very recent and that can lead to being suspect. However, let me reiterate, it resonates highly with me. After being exposed to the Kybalion, it caused me to do some research which ultimately led to me finding a book by Tim Freke and Peter Gandy entitled “The Hermetica, The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs.” Let me add, this book highly resonates with me as well. The two make a great pair!

It also fits right in with those scientists and philosophers who are on the cutting edge of understanding consciousness as the creative source of the material universe as we experience it, and likely is also at the cutting edge of understanding multiple dimensions and even the multiverse. I am referring to Donald Hoffman’s “A Case Against Reality,” and Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of Morphic Resonance, and Bernardo Kastrup’s ideas of mentation and dissociative personalities. They are people that I strongly recommend as voices to explore. Each of these people while fringe, are in my view, impeccable scientific and philosophical minds. They all have arrived at similar conclusions about the mental nature of material reality, and it resonates nicely with the Hermetica.

It is likewise important to look at the historical development of the concept of the Logos being the creative source and force of material reality. Of course, the word Logos is Greek and it goes back to Heraclitus, Plato, and the Stoics, but while Logos is a Greek word, the idea likely goes all the way back to Pythagoras and his journey’s to Egypt and Sumer. The word Logos is the conscious expression of an individual, but it is also implied to be consciousness itself. If through Pythagoras, then the origin of the idea is likely Egyptian or Sumerian.

You may be wondering so what? What is the importance of understanding the Logos in relation to consciousness? Well, for what I consider a very good reason, especially if you are raised in western civilization and have a western view of reality. There is a similar theme, thought construct that goes back thousands of years in western civilization that was expressed in a similar way over the millennia. Essentially it is explained in the quote from the Kybalion above. The All is mind, the universe is mental. If one accepts the idea that the Hermetica is ancient, first introduced in Egypt and possibly Sumer, then this even takes the concept back further in history to at least five thousand years ago. According to the Freke and Gandy book, the creative source, Atum, was the parent of the word. The word was the force that Atum used to create material reality. Atum was mind, in other words consciousness, and Atum’s word was the expressive force that turned the infinite possibilities that existed in the mind of the All into materiality. This was found to be written on hieroglyphs in Egypt that are 5,000 years old, but at the very least, this concept can be traced back to Heraclitus, Plato and the Stoics 2,500 years ago, and Plato claimed that his information came from Pythagoras and dated back thousands of years before him.

The scientists that I mentioned above, are beginning to show that consciousness is the creative source, and so you have a circle that extends over at least 2,500 years, and likely spans an additional 2,500 years for a total of 5,000. Christian orthodoxy talks about the doctrine of the Logos as IF it was first introduced by Jesus Christ in the first century. That is not the case. What Christianity introduced was the concept that the Logos had become incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus went on to teach that the Logos was incarnate in each of us, yes, in all of humanity. So then, as Jesus was the incarnation of the word so are we. John said the same in his epistle… “As he is in the world so are we.”

So the concept of the Logos, and that the universe is mental has a continuous history which has been passed on from culture to culture over the ages. It is logical that if this idea has been prevalent over thousands of years that there must be something to it. If as Hermes Trismegistus reported, the word is Atum’s son, then it follows that as the incarnation of the Logos, we are all children of the creative source.