The Way to the Logos: Idams and Daemons

The question of identifying the “ideal nature” of both the mind itself and its individual stream is one of the central questions on any Path of spiritual development.

At the same time, different cultures and Traditions have developed three principal approaches to this task:

• attempts at direct “vision of the Logos,” for example, the “Ritual of the Bornless,”
• approaching the individual Logos by “ascending” to it, “contact” with the ascending stream of consciousness, the evolutive psycho-elemental – Mezla or shedu,
• realization of one or another “Enlightened matrix,” also leading to seeing the individual Logos “from above,” by “descending” to it from Absolute Mind.

The first approach is methods of “pure vision,” various Higher search Rituals and technologies which, nevertheless, in most cases end in error: the “vision” of a disguised predator or, at best, the discovery of one or another Light matrix – shedu, daemon, or another suprapersonal entity of the psychocosmos. Such rituals require lengthy preparation, substantial purification efforts, and many external aids so that the mind can enter the “Halls of Light” and preserve its identity under the onslaught of this radiance.

The second approach is, properly speaking, the classic Western theurgic approaches that we have repeatedly discussed. The search for the “divine foundation” of mind, contact with higher matrices of mind, activation or even realization of these matrices gradually fills the mind with light, which ultimately leads to discovering its absolute nature. In general, one can say that these approaches boil down to “building up a daemon,” since “contact” with the higher matrices of mind occurs on its behalf, and the “energy of divinity” adopted from them is also accumulated by the psycho-elemental. Thus, gradually it is precisely the daemon that becomes the dominant force in the psychocosmos, which is accompanied by the ordering and clarification of the space and stream of mind. Nevertheless, due to a certain relativity, the limited nature of the daemon, associated precisely with the stream of mind, in order to surpass it after sufficient development, either a new search is required or a change of matrix from a relative one to an Enlightened one (or, as Buddhists say, from “worldly” to “otherworldly”).

Accordingly, the third approach is “yoga of deities” in its highest form, practiced in Vajrayana Buddhism. In fact, we are talking about the same theurgic approaches and methods which, however, in this case immediately rely on the nature of the Absolute Light, the inseparable unity of Emptiness and Clarity as the basic characteristics of enlightened mind. Yidams, ishtadevatas — “personal deities” of mind — are unique precisely in that their images and forms are the pure “play of light”; they do not have that support in reality which is characteristic of the “gods of being,” and therefore the activation and realization of such matrices is a direct “introduction of the mind into the Light,” free from the limitations that are characteristic of the “unenlightened” gods of being.

In fairness, let us note that even a sufficiently “pumped-up” daemonic matrix, at its highest level, flows into the Absolute nature; that is, any limited god can also be considered as a certain aspect of the Absolute, and therefore, in the highest manifestation, the daemon turns out to be a yidam, the god turns out to be God.

Thus, regardless of which of the three approaches the mind uses, the mind can find and realize its ideal, free nature; the main thing is to clearly understand what it is doing, what methods it is using, and what traps it must avoid.