definitely not patting myself on the back, but it is what it is..LOL
The Daimon Speaks
Almost all of us at least once in our lives, during a sleepless night or an illness, have heard a voice which, coming from nowhere, and as it were, speaking silently, gives us advice — usually very wise advice. It is always when we are in solitude and most often at moments of exaltation that this silent voice speaks to us. Certain men of spiritual genius have heard this voice so plainly and so often as to make them believe that an intelligent being was about them, directing them with inspired counsel. The Greeks called this intelligent being by the name of “daimon.”
Between God and Man
Of what order is this daimon, which manifested itself to Socrates in childhood but was also heard by Apollonius of Tyana only after he had begun to put into practice the Hermetic principles? “They are intermediate powers of a divine order. They fashion dreams, inspire soothsayers,” says Apuleius. “They are inferior immortals, called gods of the second rank, placed between earth and heaven,” says Maximus of Tyre. Plato thinks that a kind of spirit, which is separate from us, receives man at his birth, and follows him in life and after death. He calls it “the daimon which has received us as its portionment.” The ancient idea of the daimon seems, therefore, to be analogous to the guardian angel of Christians.
Possibly the daimon is nothing but the higher part of man’s spirit, that which is separated from the human element and is capable, through ecstasy, of becoming one with the universal spirit. To an organism that has been purified, therefore, it’s daimon would be able in certain conditions to transmit both the vision of past events, the image of which happens to be accessible to it, and that portion of the future the causes of which are already in existence, and the effects of which are consequently foreseeable.
But the fact that the daimon had preferences among Socrates’ friends, that it chose between them, seems to show that its intelligence was different from that of Socrates himself. Socrates often said that this inner voice, which many times deterred him from doing one thing, never incited him to do something else. Now, it is a rule among adepts never to give any but negative advice; for he who advises someone to do a thing not only takes upon himself the burden of the consequences but also deprives the man he advises of all merit in the action.
Apollonius believed that between the imperfection of man and the most exalted among the hierarchy of creation there existed intermediaries. One of his intermediaries was the ideal of beauty that we make for ourselves, an ideal that is formless but is nonetheless real on another plane of life. This ideal was the daimon, the reality of which became the greater in proportion as the idea of it became the more powerful in its creator’s mind.
Srila Prabhupada once said:
Therefore, in the Srimad-Bhagavatam it is said that this is the incarnation of God in this age. And who worships Him? The process is very simple. Just keep a picture of Lord Chaitanya with His associates.