>>15834In connection with the term demon, we encounter a hapless confusion, which springs from different meanings ascribed to the term. Due to Socrates’ claim that he had been guided through life by the voice of his
Daemon (which obviously to him meant inner voice, intuition, and to a certain degree, conscience), many Christian authors criticized him for being in contact with demons. Socrates’ term obviously had quite the opposite meaning – it was an expression and symbol of good and moral behavior. Plato and Xenophon also used the term
daimonion, characterized by Cicero as something divine (divinum aliguid), However, the terms demon and demonic took root and are widely accepted in many religious teachings as well as in everyday speech, and as such signify the forces of evil that man sometimes encounters.
Negative and evil Entities appear in a multitude of shapes. Some have human appearance, others look like concentrated masses of darkness, small condensed black clouds, dark spots and points or shadows that change shape. Again, some appear in the shape in which religious texts and medieval alchemists and painters portray demons – as monstrous and terrifying creatures. They can also manifest as unpleasant bodily sensations: cold chills, sudden blasts of wind in a closed room, the strong smell of a decomposing corpse, or a feeling of pressure that comes from invisible sources outside of man.
Besides these forms of manifestation of the negative Entities, possession with “demon- ic energies” can manifest itself in the following symptoms: an impression of hearing voices ordering the person in question to do things she/he would not normally do; short periods of darkened consciousness, without knowing what happened during that time; experiencing intellectual blockade or speaking as if in a trance in the middle of a normal conversation; walking, talking, or behaving in a strange way, or in a way she/he has never done before – as if being someone else; sudden asocial behavior, which is not typical of the person; uttering strange words or sentences in an unknown or incomprehensible language (this is extremely rare).
There are several categories of negative Entities, which we can perceive as hierarchi- cal: Entities range from the lowest and most common, whose influence may be characterized as a disturbance, to the stronger ones that threaten or impose aggressive, paranoid, or suicidal thoughts. What further complicates the situation in the last few decades is the popularity of channeling, that is, transmitting messages from the levels of consciousness considered dominant and hierarchically exalted. Some persons actually receive such messages, but evil Entities often disguise themselves as sources of the messages of the higher consciousness. They manifest as bodiless Masters from high spiritual levels, deceased yogis and sages, heavenly messengers and the like, who communicate by “direct voice”, “automatic writing” or intuitively received messages. Many prominent practitioners and authorities point to how dangerous such ”channeling” may prove to the mental health of human beings. One of those authorities, a famous psychotherapist of theosophical orientation, Bendit Phoebe, warns: “There are independent Entities who disguise them- selves in divine beings, saints or Masters, and who can try to seduce spiritual disciples or lead them to temptation…”
Rene Geunon, another famous authority in the esoteric field, points to the possibility of fake messiahs becoming unconscious instruments in the hands of evil supernatural forces.
Roberto Assagioli, the founder of the Psychosynthesis system, suggests the same degree of caution: “…we should handle their messages with common sense and discrimination, and not let ourselves be influenced by the unusual source from which they come, nor any sublime statements of the transmitters…” He points to the same fact in his book
“Psychosynthesis”: “We should not ascribe any value to messages that contain certain orders and demand blind obedience, nor to the ones that have a tendency to inflate the personality of the receiver of the messages.”
Common sense requires that channelers be skeptical if an Entity informs them that they are chosen as the transmitters of significant messages because they are in some respect superior to other human beings. Spiritual Intelligences never stimulate the human Ego.