Logos (lo´gos´,
lòg´òs´) noun
1.Philosophy. a. In pre-Socratic
philosophy, the principle governing the cosmos, the source of this principle,
or human reasoning about the cosmos. b. Among the Sophists, the topics
of rational argument or the arguments themselves. c. In Stoicism, the active,
material, rational principle of the cosmos; nous. Identified with God,
it is the source of all activity and generation and is the power of reason
residing in the human soul.
2.Judaism. a. In biblical
Judaism, the word of God, which itself has creative power and is God's
medium of communication with the human race. b. In Hellenistic Judaism,
a hypostasis associated with divine wisdom.
3.Theology. In Saint John's
Gospel, especially in the prologue (1:1-14), the creative word of God,
which is itself God and incarnate in Jesus. In this sense, also called
Word.
[Greek.]
Logos
Logos, in ancient and medieval
philosophy and theology, the divine reason that acts as the ordering principle
of the universe. Sixth-century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus asserted
that the world is governed by the Logos, a divine force
that produces order in the flux
of nature. In Stoicism of the 4th century BC, the Logos is conceived as
a rational divine power that directs the universe. Through the faculty
of reason, all human beings share in the divine reason. According to 1st-century
AD Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher Philo Judaeus, the Logos can be understood
as the Divine Wisdom that is inherently part of the world.
-Philip K. Dick - _Man, Android & Machine_
- Terence
McKenna - _Tryptamine Hallucinogens
And
Consciousness_
from: _TRUE HALLUCINATIONS_
by Terence McKenna
Well, when I talk about the Logos I always invoke Philo Judaeus, who introduced the concept of the Logos into the Hellenistic world but who was unsatisfied with it and spent a great deal of time talking about the more perfect Logos, the Logos that goes from being heard to being seen without ever crossing over a definable moment of transition. In a sense, my position is that all of history is a making of the Logos more and more concrete. In the same way that McLuhan saw print culture as replacing an earlier, eye-oriented manuscript culture, my hope is that cyberdelic culture is going to overcome the linear, uniform bias of print and carry us into a realm of the visible Logos. I really believe that not only human society is involved in what could be looked at as a conquest of dimensions but that biology itself is, as well. This is the great overarching theme of evolution---this is why we go from being slime mold to having binocular vision and bipedalism and then adding memory and language at the top end of animal organization. It’s because the thing which we are, whether you call it bios or logos incarnate or whatever, is striving to ascend to higher and higher dimensions.
- Terence McKenna