57. That all those things which are said by the orthodox at the present day concerning the "sending" of the Holy Spirit fall to the ground as soon as it is known that the Lord is constantly present with every man and causes him to live as man; and that He dwells with man in order that man may go to meet the Lord; and that even if he does not go to meet Him, he still has rationality from Him, which is impossible without the Lord's presence. If the Lord were absent from man, he would not be an animal, but a kind of corpse which would be disintegrated. This is meant in Genesis by "God breathing into him a living soul" (Genesis 2:7).

Bones are strong and supportive, providing a framework for our bodies and making motion and action possible. They are also the least "alive" part of our bodies, with much of their structure made up of a mineral matrix. As such, they represent a strong, supportive, functional but innately nearly dead part of our spiritual makeup: the "proprium."

The proprium is the part of us that feels life as our own, that perceives our loves and our thoughts as originating within ourselves. If we simply follow the proprium without looking to the Lord, it will lead us to a hellish state, in which we believe ourselves to be all-powerful and deny the existence of the Lord altogether.

Bones, on their own, will go dry, brittle and completely dead. If, however, we acknowledge the Lord and follow him, that's like putting flesh on the bones and being alive. In that case the bones – strong, supportive, protective and as alive as they can be – represent the proprium in relation to intellect, the part of us that perceives our thoughts as our own but turns them toward the Lord.