In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men….But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become sons of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:1-4,12)

Thus far it has been shown that the Word in the natural sense, which is the sense of the Letter, is in its sanctity and in its fullness. Something shall now be said to show that the Word in that sense is also in its power. The greatness of the power of Divine Truth, and its nature, in the heavens and also on the earths, may be evident from what has been said in the work on Heaven and Hell concerning the power of the angels of heaven Nos. 228-233. The power of Divine Truth is directed especially against falsities and evils, thus against the hells. These must be combated by means of truths from the sense of the Letter of the Word. Moreover, by means of the truths that are with a man, the Lord has the power of saving him; for by means of truths from the sense of the Letter of the Word, a man is reformed and regenerated. He is then taken out of hell and introduced into heaven. This power the Lord assumed even as to His Divine Human, after He had fulfilled all things of the Word even to its, ultimates. [2] Therefore, when He was about to fulfil what yet remained, by the passion of the cross, He said to the chief priest:
Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven. Matt. xxvi 64; Mark xiv 62.

The Son of Man, is the Lord as to the Word; the clouds of heaven are the Word in the sense of the Letter; and sitting at the right hand of God means omnipotence through the Word. (Doctrine of Sacred Scripture 49)

Last time we looked at the idea that the actual texts of Divine revelation are the Word and as such are the Lord, being the very form which he Divine Good and Divine Truth take on the material plane of creation. We saw that the statement in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity that the Lord is the Word, is not meant as a figure of speech but is to be taken as a fundamental truth describing the essential nature of reality itself. This is of course a somewhat abstract idea for the natural man, whose thought, being embedded in worldly notions of matter, person, place, time and space, can only think of the Lord’s Divine Human in terms of a natural person in time and space. This limitation of the natural led to the Word accommodating itself to this level of life by becoming flesh so that the Lord was born onto the natural plane in accordance with the same laws that govern all natural human births.

This means that the life of the historical person Jesus Christ, as captured in the Word and expounded so wonderfully in the teachings for Spiritual Christianity, serves in the salvation of human race by providing a concrete illustration of what the Word is and how, when read as to its spiritual meaning, it undertakes the regeneration of the human mind. Essentially all that is said of the life of the Lord God Jesus Christ in the Text is equally true of the Word, so that what is said of the Lord’s activity as to His person in the world carries within it a deeper spiritual meaning that reveals the activity of the Word as goods and truths operating to reform and regenerate the human mind.

In Logopraxis our interest in the historical level of the Texts of Divine Revelation, including the Lord as a historical figure acting in a historical context of time and space, is to come into an understanding of the corresponding spiritual realities to which the natural content points as a representative sign. By spiritual content we don’t mean something abstract and ethereal – we simply mean the phenomena of consciousness, this being the thoughts and affections that make up the activity of our mind, or our mental life. And it is to the world of our mind that the spiritual teaching of the Word is directed to bring us into an awareness of the quality of the thoughts and affections that directly influence the quality and experience of our life. From a Logopraxis perspective, to apply truths to life means to apply them to the life of our mind, which means to see our inner mental activity (i.e. its life) in the light of what truths teach.

Why is this important? It’s important because it is the repeated patterns of affection and thought which we entertain that give rise to our sense of self. And until we begin to work with truths, this sense of self is based on falsities that are have been built up from a sense-based life of living in the world. The spiritual work we are given then is to cooperate with the Lord as the Word so that we can be created anew. This new creation is not of the material sense-based world but is a spiritual creation being a new form of mind that lives consciously from the Lord. To live from the Lord is to live from the Word and so we are given a Word in the form of the Texts of Divine revelation from which we can, if we choose to, begin to draw our mode of life. Every human being lives by means of its reception of life from the Lord into the deepest recesses of their being. We are not in direct contact with this level of our being but that life which flows in is pure love and as such seeks only to do us good. But that life, as perfect as it is in itself, when entering the minds of finite human beings, is limited in its capacity to do good by the form and quality of the mental structures it has to work with.

So it is, that our subjective experience of this inflowing life takes the form of the natural affections which rule in us and give form to the beliefs that we hold about our experience of being alive. For every person comes to believe that the life force within them is their own and that it is intrinsic to themselves. In fact, this is so much taken for granted that few are willing to reflect on what is actually going on within them or call into question the beliefs which they hold about “their” experience of this life force that is unfolding within them moment to moment. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity speaks of the nature of evil and that its origin is believing the appearance, or the deep set feeling that this life force is somehow intrinsic to our being as its source and so arises from us. But this belief stands in direct contradiction to what the Word teaches is the case. And if the starting point of our sense of things is in something directly opposed to what the Word teaches, then the only kind of life that can arise from a state opposed to what the Word teaches is evil and falsity. So what we believe matters. It matters because what we believe concerning what we experience as our life has consequences; it has a direct bearing on whether we have formed within us a mind capable of receiving the Lord’s inflowing life so that it is experienced as heaven or a mind formed around what is evil and false whereby that inflowing life, having being removed from its true source at least insofar as our beliefs about it are concerned, is claimed as our own and thus giving rise to a state of hell.

…it is to be noted that it is one thing to believe a person and another thing to believe in him; as to believe that there is a God and to believe in Him. To believe in God or in His name signifies both to do and to have faith, as in John:

As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become sons of God, to them that believe in His name; who were born, not of bloods nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man (vir), but of God (1:12, 13).

Those born “not of bloods” are those who do not falsify the Word; those born “not of the will of the flesh” are those who are not in lusts from love of self; those born “not of the will of man” are those who are not in falsities from the pride of self-intelligence; those “born of God” are those who are regenerated by the Lord by means of truths from the Word and a life according to them; these are they who believe in the name of the Lord, and thence are called “sons of God.” (Apocalypse Explained 802{7})

We see then that heaven and hell are in essence states of mind first and foremost and that any experience of them as an external perceptible reality for those in the spiritual world is a representation which perfectly corresponds to how the mind’s affections, as extended through the core beliefs a person holds, are ultimately organised. This very fact should give us pause for reflection on the state or quality of what we experience on an ongoing basis as our inner mental world. We are born natural, into natural loves that are opposed to what is spiritual. Around this disordered starting point we build a sense of self that is quite literally hell bent. Natural spiritualities promoted in the world begin in a psychological space that says we are essentially ok as we are. That we merely need to tap into the power within our “self” to realise our “divine” potential. This is not what the Word teaches, for that “self” inherited through birth and developed in the world is of the world and all efforts to build this self up and strengthen it is to invite disaster from an eternal perspective.

The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity make it clear that the only solution offered in dealing with this proprial self that we have inherited and are so identified with, is to work with the Word to have it stripped bare so that its true nature can be seen in the light of what truths teach thus allowing for a new sense of self to be established within us that is squarely grounded in higher heavenly loves.

In respect to man’s self it is to be known that it is nothing but evil and falsity therefrom; the voluntary self [proprium voluntarium] is evil, and the intellectual self therefrom [proprium intellectuale] is falsity. This self man derives mainly from parents, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, in a long series back, so that at length the hereditary, which is his self, is nothing but evil gradually heaped up and condensed. For every man is born into two diabolical loves, the love of self and the love of the world, from which loves all evils and all falsities therefrom pour forth as from their own fountains; and as man is born into these loves he is also born into evils of every kind (respecting which more may be seen in the New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine, n. 65-83).

Because man, in respect to his self is such, means have been given by the Divine mercy of the Lord, by which man can be withdrawn from his self; these means are given in the Word; and when man cooperates with these means, that is, when he thinks and speaks, wills and acts, from the Divine Word, he is kept by the Lord in things Divine, and is thus withheld from self; and when this continues there is formed with man by the Lord as it were a new self, both voluntary and intellectual, which is wholly separated from man’s self; thus man becomes as it were created anew, and this is what is called his reformation and regeneration by truths from the Word, and by a life according to them. (Apocalypse Explained 585{2&3})

For a new sense of self to be built, for new creation to come into being, we must be born again, or born from above. In more familiar terms, our understanding has to be re-formed and our will re-generated. We need to come into a state where we can think from truths and love from what is good. To have the understanding re-formed new ideas are needed to replace the old and if the will is to be regenerated then these ideas have to be able to provide a mental environment that supports the development of affections for higher things. To this end, the Lord provides us with the Word and through these Texts of Divine revelation we are provided with the primary and sole means by which a new mind can be created within us. John in the opening of his Gospel declares of the Word that…

All things were made through Him; and without Him nothing was made that was made…

While the natural mind is inclined to focus on the creation of the external world of “things” when reading this more standard translation of the Greek, the mention in the very next verse that…

…in Him was life; and that life was the light of men

…shows that it is spiritual or mental realities that are actually being spoken about here. For the spiritual mind, not being limited by ideas of space, time, person, place, and matter as the natural mind is, thinks not in terms of material things but in terms of mental states and so sees a deeper more internal application and meaning in this life which is said to enlighten human beings. Such light is not the natural light of the world but is the spiritual light of Divine truth which is clearly evident in the statement found in verse 12 that speaks of our spiritual rebirth…

But as many as received him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

This becomes even more clear when we remove ideas belonging to time and space from verse 3, for then the statement that… “All things were made through Him” – becomes –

All come into being through the Word.

Note that the word “things” has been removed, so rather than “All things” we simply have “All”. This is because a word for “things” is not strictly found in the original Greek text but has been added by the translators as it is implied in the term for “All”. The effect of including the word “things” impresses an unhelpful material idea upon the mind of the reader that only serves to draw the thought away from the non-material or spiritual realities being unfolded here in the Text. So by removing “things” we have –

All were made through Him.

This brings us to the temporally loaded phrase, “were made” which describes something coming into being in the past, in time. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity says of creation that it is a constant coming into being, which describes a dynamic process of life that is neither past nor future but eternally present. This idea is better captured through the removal of the past tense inference. The actual single Greek word that is translated into the two English words, “were made” is the word ginomai* which means to become or come into being. So rather than “All things were made through Him” we now have,

All come into being through Him.

And it is clear from the opening two verses that read…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

…that by the pronoun Him is meant the Word, giving us,

All come into being through the Word.

We see then that a deeper spiritual meaning which deals with states of consciousness is not beyond the apprehension of even the natural mind if it is open to having the Text translated in the light of what the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach. Spiritually speaking to come into being is to be born again from above, for prior to their spiritual rebirth a person has not yet truly even begun to live. Thus using the same approach to the verses we have just examined the final part of verse 3 which reads…

and without Him nothing was made that was made

can be read as

…and without the Word no one coming into being comes into being.

The English word “nothing” found in the more traditional rendering, “and without Him nothing was made that was made” is a translation of two Greek words, one meaning “not” and the other meaning “one” hence its rendering as no(t) one and, as previously, the words “was made” is a translation of ginomai which is better rendered as, to become or come into being. This Greek word also carries the meaning to generate. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teaches that the subject of creation in the Word has to do with the regeneration of the human mind. This being the case we can transpose this idea into verse 3 which gives us…

All are regenerated through the Word and without the Word no one is regenerated who is regenerated.

The power of Divine Truth is directed especially against falsities and evils, thus against the hells. These must be combated by means of truths from the sense of the Letter of the Word. Moreover, by means of the truths that are with a man, the Lord has the power of saving him; for by means of truths from the sense of the Letter of the Word, a man is reformed and regenerated. He is then taken out of hell and introduced into heaven. This power the Lord assumed even as to His Divine Human, after He had fulfilled all things of the Word even to its, ultimates. (Doctrine of Sacred Scripture 49)

*http://lexiconcordance.com/greek/1096.html

And He went out from thence, and came into His own country; and His disciples follow Him. And the Sabbath having come, He began to teach in the synagogue; and many hearing wondered, saying, From whence has this Man these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to Him, that even such works of power are worked by His hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and° the brother of James, and Joses, and Judah, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us? And they were offended at Him. But Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honour, except in his own country, and among kinsfolk, and in his own house. And He could there do no work of power, except He cured a few who were ailing by laying hands on them. 6 And He marvelled because of their unbelief. And He went round about the villages, teaching. (Mark 6:1-6)

The Lord is the Word because it (the Word) is the Divine Truth of the Divine Good. That the Lord is the Word He teaches in John in these words: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:1, 14). (Divine Providence 172{3})

While we all might affirm the truth of this statement as something we believe, this passage goes on to say that few have grasped its implications, stating that

…this…has hitherto been understood to mean only that God taught men through the Word, therefore it has been explained as a hyperbolical expression, implying that the Lord is not the Word itself. (Divine Providence 172{3})

How we view the Word directly impacts on the depth and quality of our work in Logopraxis. This passage points out that there is a tendency to dismiss the claim that the Lord is actually the Word as mere hyperbole. Indeed, the natural man, whose thought is imprisoned in ideas of space and time, finds it impossible to think of the Lord apart from the idea of a historical person. Therefore the idea that the Lord is fully present in the world as the Texts of Divine revelation, or, is actually the Word, tends to be dismissed as a mere figure of speech if not in word then in thought. The question often asked, when this claim is put before the natural man, can be framed something like this; ‘Are the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity, in making this claim, actually referring to the written Texts of Divine revelation, perhaps they are referring to something much greater than these Texts themselves?’ And of course, the Divine Truth fills the heavens, being the very light of heaven itself. In the celestial heaven the Divine Truth is received by the angels there as the celestial sense of the Word, as it is received by those in the spiritual heaven as the spiritual sense of the Word, while those of the natural Heaven receive the Word in its celestial-natural and spiritual-natural senses, and finally those of the Church or the Lord’s heaven on earth receive the Word in the form of its letter or what is also known as its historical sense (Arcana Coelestia 1143, 5095). In the work, the Apocalypse Explained 630{2} it states that…

…as there are three heavens, so in the Word there are three distinct senses: the inmost sense, which is called the celestial sense, is for the inmost or third heaven; the middle sense, which is called the spiritual sense, is for the middle or second heaven; and the ultimate sense, which is called the celestial-natural and spiritual-natural sense, is for the lowest or first heaven. These three senses, besides the natural which is for the world, are in the Word and in all its particulars; and as the three heavens have the Word and each heaven is in its own sense of the Word, and from this is their heaven and also their worship, it follows that what signifies heaven signifies also the Word and worship.

We see then that the form that the Divine Truth takes varies in accordance with the state of the mind receiving it. It is important to understand that this variation is not in the Word itself, but is an appearance that arises from the form of the minds within which it is being accommodated. The Word takes on a celestial form, or appears in its celestial sense, to the minds of celestial angels precisely because the form of their minds are such that they are of a celestial quality and so are sensitive only to those things in the Word that can nourish their celestial form of life. The same is true for spiritual and natural angels, whose form of mind determines the specific form the Word takes for them. The same law of reception-according-to-form also determines the form the Word takes for those in the world. The point being that these different forms don’t constitute different Words, but that it is the one and the same Word perceived differently according to the differing forms of mind doing the perceiving as can be seen from the following…

…although [the Word] differs in its sense in each heaven, still it is the same Word, because it is the Divine itself, which is in the Word from the Lord that becomes Divine celestial when it comes down to the inmost or third heaven, and becomes Divine spiritual when it comes down therefrom to the middle or second heaven, and becomes Divine celestial-natural or spiritual-natural when it comes down from that heaven to the ultimate or first heaven, and when it comes down therefrom into the world becomes a Divine natural Word, such as it is with us in the letter. (Apocalypse Explained 593{2})

So when the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity speaks of the Divine truth, it speaks to all its forms simultaneously so that what is said of the Divine truth on any level is equally applicable to every other level and that includes the “Divine natural Word such as it is with us in the letter.” This same letter, the texts of Divine revelation, the Word as it exists with us in the world, the Lord’s Divine natural, has undergone a relentless assault by hellish forces for centuries who have sought to discredit it in people’s minds, and especially in the minds of those who belong to the Church. This was foreseen by the Lord who, in making His Second Advent through the letter of the Word as its spiritual sense, provided the true light by which ignorance regarding the true nature of the Sacred Scriptures could be dispelled once and for all, for those who are willing to receive it as the Lord and so experience the power of the Word to transform their life.

The implication is that on the material plane of existence, the most perfect embodiment of the Word is to be found in the Sacred Texts of Divine revelation. From a Logopraxis perspective by the Word we mean the Texts themselves and all that they contain, and this being the case, the Word, in the form of these Texts, are held to be the LORD. They are provided by the Lord as the means by which He is able to be reflected back into our awareness so that we can experience His presence within. He is to be found in all His fullness and power in the letter of the Sacred Scripture and cannot be found anywhere else in the same fullness and power apart from these Sacred Texts of Divine revelation. This is seen in that when the Lord came into the world He did so to fulfil the Scriptures and in doing this made His Human Divine by becoming the Word down to the very letter itself. There are many, many, passages in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity that openly declare the truth of these facts, of which the following are but a few…

…that the Word in the sense of the letter is in its fullness, in its holiness, and in its power; and as the Lord is the Word (for He is the all of the Word), it follows that He is most of all present in the sense of the letter, and that from it He teaches and enlightens man. (Doctrine of Sacred Scripture 50)

…the Word is from the Lord, and consequently the Lord is in the Word, even so that He is the Word; for the Word is Divine truth all of which is from the Lord. (Apocalypse Explained 790b)

…the Lord is the Word, wherefore when the Word is opened the Lord appears. (Apocalypse Explained 612)

Further: it is through the Word that the Lord is present with a man and is conjoined with him, for the Lord is the Word, and as it were speaks with the man in it… The Lord is indeed present with a man through the reading of the Word, but He is conjoined with him through the understanding of truth from the Word.. (Doctrine of Sacred Scripture 78)

the Lord is the Word, so is He also the doctrine of the church, for all doctrine is from the Word. That the Lord is the doctrine of the church, because all truth that is of doctrine is from the Word, thus from the Lord, (AC n. 2531, 2859, 3712). (Apocalypse Explained 19)

For, if you will believe it, the Lord is the Word itself, because the Word is Divine truth, and Divine truth is the Lord in heaven, because it is from the Lord. Wherefore they who love Divine truth for the sake of Divine truth, love the Lord; and with those who love the Lord heaven flows in and enlightens them. (Arcana Coelestia 10355)

Few understand how the Lord is the Word, for they think that the Lord may indeed enlighten and teach men by means of the Word without His being on that account called the Word. Be it known however that every man is his own love, and consequently his own good and his own truth. It is solely from this that a man is a man, and there is nothing else in him that is man. It is from the fact that a man is his own good and his own truth that angels and spirits are men, for all the good and truth that proceeds from the Lord is in its form a man. And as the Lord is Divine good and Divine truth itself, He is the Man, from whom every man is a man. That all Divine good and Divine truth is in its form a man may be seen in Heaven and Hell (n. 460)… (Doctrine of Sacred Scripture 100)

If we accept these statements as true then this has profound implications regarding our understanding of what the Word as Sacred Texts truly is and how we engage with it. It stands to reason that if we really believed this then it would be reflected in our level of commitment to the Texts of Divine revelation as the source of our life. The very openness with which this truth is stated in the teachings for Spiritual Christianity presents anyone willing to give it serious thought with many challenging questions; questions that have the potential to radically alter their sense of how the Lord works to regenerate the human mind and the paramount importance of the Word in accomplishing this wonderful transformation. But ultimately they are questions that can only be explored when a person is willing to lay down the objections of the natural man and actually engage with the Word in an effort to practise its truths. Logopraxis helps in this for it seeks to place the practise of the Sacred Texts of Divine revelation at the centre of people’s sense of spirituality by supporting them to experience first-hand the LORD as the WORD working in their life. All that is required is for a person to do what Logopraxis asks of them which is to consciously apply the truths of the Word to the life of their mind using the spiritual disciplines of self-examination and repentance.

It’s all about what we are willing to give authority to in our life. Just as the natural minds of those who came into contact with the historical Jesus were confronted with the challenge of accepting that this man, who by all external appearances was a finite being like themselves and subject to the limitations of finite life, was not as He appeared to be but was in fact God in human form, so too we are being asked to accept that the written Texts of Divine revelation, which to all finite appearance seem to be limited and lack a certain sophistication, are in fact that same God. What the historical Jesus was to the first Christian Church or natural Christianity, the Word is to the Spiritual Christianity. And just as the Lord’s power was hampered in his home town of Nazareth due to their unbelief, so to the power of the Word to transform our life is rendered relatively ineffective to the degree that we view the statement that, the Word is the Lord, as a figure of speech and not statement of fact.

We need to take care that we don’t diminish the status of the Word in our thinking. For it to be viewed as anything less than the LORD goes against the central tenant of angelic wisdom and so can do nothing but weaken the Word’s power to effect change in people’s lives. For the Word to carry authority in our life it has to be seen to be Divine, viewed as anything less it becomes subject to the judgment of the human proprium and natural reasoning. So if you are unsure of the status of the Word, and if you are struggling to see how it can be what the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity claim it to be, then lay aside the objections of the natural man to at least entertain the possibility that the Lord is the Word so that you can test this truth for yourself through a sincere effort to practise its truths. The letter of the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity points to the Word being the LORD even as John the Baptist pointed to Jesus;

Again on the morrow, John stood, and two of his disciples. And looking upon Jesus walking, he says, Behold, the Lamb of God! And the two disciples heard him speaking, and they followed Jesus. And Jesus turning, and seeing them following, says to them, What do you seek? And they said to Him, Rabbi (which is to say, being interpreted, Teacher), where abidest Thou? He says to them, Come and see. They came and saw where he abode, and they abode with him that day, and° it was about the tenth hour. (John 1:35-39)

It is only through intentionally practising truths, which is what it means to follow the Lord, that we can verify them so as to know their truth in the reality of our experience. This kind of knowing, experiential knowing, far surpasses intellectual knowledge about truths. It is to know that the Lord’s abode is the Word and is the kind of knowing spoken of in the following…

Then said Jesus to those Jews who believed in Him, If you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciples, 32 and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:31-32)

So just in case there remains any doubt about what the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity have to say on the nature of the Sacred Scripture, consider the witness provided through the work True Christian Religion 6 where we read that…

The Sacred Scripture is the fullness of God…

Logopraxis seeks to place the central tenant of angelic wisdom front and centre by highlighting this truth, as the basis from which the spiritual practise of the Word is to be carried out and our regeneration effected.

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his practice (Greek praxis). (Matthew 16:24-27)

You perhaps would have noticed that the last word of this text was changed so that it reads…

…and then he shall reward every man according to his practice.

instead of the more familiar reading…

and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

The Greek word more commonly translated as works is the word praxis, which can also be translated as practice. The concept of practice is much more helpful for us as a support for living a spiritual life than the word works in that it provides a slight change in emphasis from thinking of a reward tied to the works we have banked over the course of our life, to the concept of the actual mode of life which we have cultivated and made our own. In the light of this, the word translated reward would be better translated as render as in …He shall render every man according to his practise.

Reward carries the idea of receiving something in recognition of positive efforts and is based in the idea of having earned or merited something and so is inconsistent with what the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach regarding the spiritual life. Render on the other hand is more neutral, having more to do with the notion of receiving what is due as a logical outcome of an unfolding process. So the word render better reflects the operation of the spiritual laws which govern a process of rendering something down to its essentials. This places us in front of the idea that we shall all be rendered down to our practice, in other words – we become our practice. So spiritual laws dictate that we become whatever our practice or lack thereof makes us. The question before us then is, What is our practice? and How shall we fare or rather how will we respond when, “the Son of Man comes in the Glory of His Father with His angels”?

This coming of the Son of Man isn’t a future event but an ongoing spiritual unfolding in the here and now. This is particularly the case for those who are engaged in intentional inner work with the Word. The term Son of Man means the Word, being that through which the Lord comes to all who look for Him within it. Those who receive the Word are those who seek to practise it, with the intention of living from it through exercising the spiritual disciplines of self-examination and repentance. You see to reject the Word has nothing to do with what we profess we believe, even devils are capable of acknowledging that the Word is true when held back from their phantasies. In Logopraxis, to accept or reject the Word is a matter of whether we are willing to practise it through applying its truths to the inner life of our mind or not.

If we accept that the quality of the life we come into is a reflection of our practice then it’s reasonable to assume that the practise of the Word will take a high priority in our life. For the quality of our spiritual life is directly linked to our willingness to use truths from the Word to examine the quality of our inner mental life with a view to shunning the evils which we find there as sins against what the Word teaches.

When a person shuns evils as sins he or she daily learns what a good work is…. Cease therefore, from asking in yourself, “What are the good works that I must do, or what good must I do to receive eternal life?” Only cease from evils as sins and look to the Lord, and the Lord will teach and lead you. (Apocalypse Explained 979{2})

Did not the Lord preach repentance? Did not His disciples also? and John the Baptist? Isaiah declares that a man must first cease from evils, and that then he will learn to do good [Isa. 1:16, 17]. Before this a man does not know what and of what quality good is. Evil does not know what good is, but good thence knows evil. (Charity 26)

Let’s take a moment to consider the terms being used. Terms like repentance, evils, and sins. There is a current of thought that holds that such terms evoke wrong associations in people, or at least associations that may risk the casual hearer/reader to reject the Word’s teaching all together. And this may well be true for the casual hearer/reader who has yet to be initiated into a spiritual practice but within the sphere of Logopraxis these terms represent, amongst many other supposedly archaic terms found in the Word, a precise language that accurately describes what’s involved in the spiritual life. It should also be pointed out that the Word itself provides the definitions through which its terminology is to be understood. In Logopraxis we look to affirm in our own experience through using truths to examine our mental life, the truth of what the Word teaches. The best way to do that is to work from a clear sense of the terms and their meanings as defined in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity.

In our practice, by evils are meant what truths reveal to be opposed to the heavenly life. Anything that inhibits our ability to receive the inflowing life that the Lord provides by twisting it to serve the loves of self and the world, is an evil. These evils are to be removed through conscious acts of repentance in response to the Son of Man coming in the glory of His Father with His angels. For the Lord comes as the light of the internal sense of the Word, with His truths or angels to reveal the quality of our states of mind. Our response to these truths as they challenge us, will reflect the form of life which we are choosing to make our own through our practice. The following passage from the teachings for Spiritual Christianity illustrates how our responses to the Word form the basis for our spiritual life…

…no one in the other world suffers punishment on account of the evils that he had done in this world, but only on account of the evils that he then does; although it amounts to the same and is the same thing whether it be said that they suffer punishment on account of their evils in the world or that they suffer punishment on account of the evils they do in the other life, since everyone after death returns into his own life and thus into like evils; and the man continues the same as he had been in the life of the body (n. 470-484). They are punished because the fear of punishment is the sole means of subduing evils in this state. Exhortation is no longer of any avail, neither is instruction or fear of the law and of the loss of reputation, since everyone then acts from his nature; and that nature can be restrained and broken only by punishments. But good spirits, although they had done evils in the world, are never punished, because their evils do not return. Moreover, it is granted to know that the evils they did were of a different kind or nature, not being done purposely in opposition to the truth, or from any other badness of heart than that which they received by inheritance from their parents, and that they were borne into this by a blind delight when they were in externals separate from internals. (Heaven and Hell 509)

We see from this that once we are separated from our physical body what remains are the essential patterns of affections and thoughts that have come to be established within us as our mode of mental life. These form our spirit and are given expression through a corresponding spiritual form or body. This spiritual law means that the quality of what we really think and feel, when all external constraints are removed, is who we essentially are. And that if we make no effort to build a new basis for our life from the Word, then we shall continue to live a life which is spiritually impoverished due to its unrealised potentials. Our spiritual potential is only awakened through conscious efforts to acquire a spiritual life. Such a life must be developed consciously through gathering and applying truths from the Word to life. It is clear from the opening verses that if we are to awaken to spiritual life it involves denying that self which has naturally developed without effort…

…If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. (verse 24,25)

The following passages from the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity give us the inner meaning of the word cross…

The “cross” means temptations because the evils and the falsities therefrom that cling to man from his birth infest and thus torment those who are natural when they are becoming spiritual. And as those evils and their falsities that infest and torment can be dispersed only by temptations, temptations are signified by the cross. Therefore the Lord says, that they must deny themselves and take up their cross, that is, that they must reject what is their own, their cross meaning what is man’s own [proprium], against which he must fight….without [the] acknowledgment [of the Lord’s Divine, that all good is from Him] no one can abstain from evils and do good except from self and as meritorious good, for the good that is good in itself and that is not meritorious good is solely from the Lord; consequently he cannot be saved unless the Lord is acknowledged, and it is acknowledged that all good is from Him. And yet before anyone can act from the Lord he must undergo temptations, for the reason that the internal of man, by which he is conjoined with heaven, is opened by means of temptations… (Apocalypse Explained 893{3})

Verses 24 and 25 of our opening text provide the general framework for what’s involved in a true path of spiritual development. If we wish to follow the Lord then it requires a conscious choice on our part to fight against the desire to delight in those affections, thoughts, and behaviours which we recognise as being opposed to what the Word teaches. This is what is meant by having to deny our self, or our own, or our proprium. To deny our self requires that we know our self and we cannot know our self unless we are instructed as to the nature of that self. Logopraxis offers a way of changing the basis for our mental life through supporting our efforts to live from what the Word teaches as opposed to living from the natural inclinations of the proprium. This is why we need to develop a regular practice of engaging with the Word.

…those have life from the Word who read it with the intention of drawing Divine truths from it, like water from the spring, and at the same time with the intention of putting them into practice in their lives. (True Christian Religion 191)

Logopraxis is a daily practice structured around an effort to draw Divine truths from the Word with the sole intention of putting them into practise in life which, as we see from the passage quoted above, is what it means to have life from the Word. Divine truths from the Word are what provide the spiritual light needed if we are to gain insights into the quality of the inner life of our mind. To read the Word requires us to do something, but this reading must carry within it an intention to put what is drawn from the Word into practise in our life. This kind of reading is a reading for application and not merely a reading for information. In Logopraxis, to read with intention is to read from the will, or from the affection for truth, so that we are consciously present to what we read with the aim of having the Word speak into our life and provide direction as to our inner work.

To read with this kind of intention requires us to bring conscious attention to our reading so that we are actually present to the act of reading. This requires the Logopractitioner to compel themselves to divide their attention so that they can be present to the Text as well as to the states of thought and affection that arise as they read. This is a totally different experience to our normal mode of reading during which we, as a conscious being giving full attention to our spiritual states is almost if not entirely absent. To read with intention takes work and is only possible if we make an effort to bring our attention to what we are doing.

Because reading with intention involves being conscious of our self in relation to the Text, and of being sensitive to the activity of our thoughts and affections, as well as the requirements the Text is asking of us, we find that we become much more aware of the nature and quality of our inner mental world. This is not only true as we engage directly with the Word but it is also true in external life. Through our work with the Word in Logopraxis, we cultivate an ability to read the events, situations and circumstances of life in a way that lends support to our inner work.

The Word is vital in this regard due to the fact that it alone, being the Lord with us, stands as the only objective witness to our inner mental life and its quality as we respond to the Text and external life events. Through the intentional use of truths to examine the life of the mind the specific evils that belong to our unregenerate self begin to become apparent. This is the point at which the cross that we have to carry, if we are to follow the Lord as the Word, comes into view. To take up our cross is to consciously embrace the work set before us, in the spirit of, not my will but Thine be done. This involves being willing to embrace temptation as a necessary part of the process by which the old proprial self is weakened, and the new heavenly self is established in its place as our life.