How can the Word exist without the Speaker? How can Word be God?

Those sentences which are colored in orange are from Maharishi Dayananda Saraswati book Satyarth Prakash (The Light of Truth) and those which are colored in black are Jerry Thomas’s response.

"In the beginning was the Word, and Word ea with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him: and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life: and the life was the light of men." 1:1 – 4.)

C. The word could not have existed in the beginning without the speaker: and therefore to say that the Word was with God, is useless. The Word can never be God. Since the Word was with God in the beginning, neither of the two can be said to have existed prior to the other. The world could not have been made by the help of the Word unless the material cause (of the universe) also existed.

The maker could create the universe even without the Word by keeping quiet. What was life and where was it? This verse (In him was life, etc.,) would make the souls eternal (beginningless), and if they be eternal the statement of Genesis which says "The Lord God breathed the breadth of life into the nostrils of man" would be wrong. Is life the light of men alone and not of the animals and other living creatures?

Answer: Maharishi erroneously assumed that the Word here is the vocal sound. While the oral or written revelations of the LORD God can be called as the Word of God, in the Old Testament at times Word of God was personified and at times directly referred to God Himself.

1 Samuel 3:7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, nor was the word of the LORD yet revealed to him. 

I Samuel 3: 21 Then the LORD appeared again in Shiloh. For the LORD revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the LORD.

1 Kings 19:9 And there he went into a cave, and spent the night in that place; and behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and He said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 

Note that in the above verse, the Word of the LORD is called as HE. And in the following verse, the Word of the LORD is said to have tested Joseph. Again the Word of the LORD is considered as a person.

Psalms 105:19 until the time that his word came to pass; the word of the LORD tested him. 

LORD God created the world by the Word of the LORD.

Psalms 33:6 By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. 

The Word of God that Heals and is said to have delivered people from their destruction.

Psalms 107:20 He sent His word and healed them, and delivered [them] from their destructions. 

The Word of God gives life:
|
Psalms 119:50 This is my comfort in my affliction, For Your word has given me life. 

Apostle John when writing the Gospel of John were alluding to the attributes of the Word as seen in these Old Testament passages and not mere the voice or speech of God.

Maharishi probably was unable to grasp these truths due to his ignorance of the Holy Scripture.