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"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

From the earliest extent Gospel of John, a more linguistically accurate translation from the Greek might be "In the origin there was the Logos, and the Logos was present with God, and the Logos was god;"  the term Logos has been said to be untranslatable.  there is no way Logos can be defined by words, which makes it ironic that the word word is chosen as a placeholder for it.  John does go on the clarify that "In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not conquer it."  Interesting to bring light into the description.  Maybe some vibration like the heliocentric focus of ancient Tibet and more ancient Egypt. 

But maybe the word word is an apt representation.  Words are the bricks of language, a cognitive adaptation found in the left hemisphere of the brain, where the Parietal, Temporal and Occipital lobes all juncture.  (Interestingly, at the corresponding juncture you find what humans consider musical.)  Fluency has grown rapidly, these past couple thousand years, in the species.  In The Doors of Perception Aldous Huxley suggests that the human's verbal cognition has grown so dominant that it obscures other forms of consciousness like the sun blocks out the stars in the sky.  Maybe our appreciation of John is tied to an impulse to reason, to understand as much as obey.

The word Logos goes back at least far as the Greek Classic period.  An organizing force of divine reasoning, that supports the creation of all things.  John seems to be adapting it as something both intrinsic to and also identifiably separate from God.  It's tempting to suppose that even in the original Greek, he purposely write in a way that both describes and yet eludes clarity. 

Both Hellenized and Roman political/cultural forces exposed the Jewish population with other cultures and concepts.  Logos may not by much different than that of Dharma, which was central to the religious beliefs that developed in India.  Again it comes no closer to providing specifics, but instead reflects on a way of behaving that is conducive to promoting enlightenment and spiritual progression. With some reference to the clear and spotless vision of truth.  The "light" again.   Coming from the root word dhri, which mean to support or hold, there is the suggestion of something that promotes change or creation, without itself being changed.  Something that was also attributed to early Jewish reflections on God. 

To me, this suggest the word catalyst, which we recall from basic chemistry as a substance that promotes chemical changes and reaction in other substances, while the catalyst itself retains its original structure.  I remember the Reddleman, in Thomas Hardy's Return of the Stranger, referred to by scholars as a kind of catalyst, who himself promotes much of the development of plot, without being a central participant in the action.  But does this bring us any closer to the elusive understanding of what is being spiritually wrought?

one of my favorite teachers in school was a practicing clinical neuropsychologist.  he said that one of his primary gigs was working with neurosurgeons to test cerebral function just before tissue is excised to reduce seizures.  he said he was fascinated by the patients who expressed extremely strong feelings of religion/spirituality, etc. when the right parietal lobe, near the junction, was stimulated.  so you could say that religion is the over excitation of neural tissue.  however, if neural tissue develops to promote and support cognition, then it's interesting that the species has evolved with that predilection.