From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
~ traditional Scottish prayer

This is the first post that I ever have written about something that I never have deliberately studied, I have no interest in whatsoever, and frankly I want nothing to do with. But you can’t do the work that I have been doing for the past fifty years without coming across quite a bit of information about nasties of various kinds. And I keep getting emails from people who think they are outwitting me when they remind me that Jesus cast out demons, so there must be some sort of devil after all. So I guess it’s time. Here is my obligatory demons post.

Jesus was said to cast out demons more than sixty times in all four Gospels. And He seemed to be almost on casual terms with them. For a long time I made up excuses. I told myself that He was using the demons thing as an artifice with these primitive people, who could not possibly understand His sophisticated methods for healing the sick and what-not. We’ll come back to that. But first, let’s deal with the larger overall issue of nasties in general. We should add, of course, that none of what we perceive as nasties are real demons, in the sense of being servants of an actual devil. But rather, they are just invisibles of one sort or another, and usually they are either dead people or the memories or fragments of dead folks who have lost their way temporarily. They are negative, in the sense that they are under negative influences; but you will be relieved to hear that they are not actually evil.

And first, as we always do when we talk about invisible entities, it’s important that we again discuss the fundamental role of Consciousness in reality. What we experience in a dim way as human consciousness is the only thing that actually exists. We must keep that fact always in mind! And I apologize for the fact that whenever the topic of Consciousness comes up, I go through the same song and dance about it. But it is so easy for us to keep slipping back into the illusion that there is solid matter around us, and that our bodies are who we are. If we don’t keep the truth always in mind, we can become so easily sidelined into forgetting the larger implications of what really is going on around us. The plain fact is that we live every moment of our whole earth-lives in what amounts to an illusion. We live these lives in a dream, and Consciousness is both the dream and the dreamer, so whenever we talk about that dream, I do you a disservice if I don’t help you to first immerse yourself deeply again in the basic truth of this illusory reality.

Very simply put, Consciousness is an energy, and it is the base creative force. Like all forms of energy, it vibrates. At the low and slow end of the Consciousness vibratory range are all the awful emotions like fear, anger, hatred, and grief, while at the high end are love and joy. It really is that simple! The material reality in which we live these illusory earth-lives is at the low end of the Consciousness range, and we are told to assume that there is no top. Furthermore, we know that God is love. God is where we live and move and have our being. Wherever we are, God is. If you think of Consciousness as a pail, negativity is the dregs at the bottom of it and the pure love of God fills all the rest, which is why when we briefly leave this material reality in our sleep at night or in a near-death experience, and we travel in the astral plane, the atmosphere there feels so light and love-filled by comparison. The only part of the astral plane that is negative is the lowest level, which Jesus calls the outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.

All of this material level of reality is below the astral plane, and therefore all of it is at least somewhat negative. Until we achieve a certain level of spiritual development, we all find it necessary to come here in order to experience these negative matter-based lifetimes which make it easier for us to grow spiritually, although that is a discussion for another day. But that is also why we might encounter nasty entities here, at the bottom of the Consciousness pail. But those negative entities are of no concern to us unless we foolishly make ourselves vulnerable to them.

Many kinds of low-vibration entities exist! A lot of them aren’t even sentient, but instead they are mere fragments of beings, or memories or shadows of beings. There is not, and there cannot ever be any powerful devil for one simple reason: the more evil an entity is, the weaker it is, while the more loving an entity is, the more powerful it is. To cynical human ears that sounds unbelievably corny, doesn’t it? But it is perfectly true. My beloved Thomas tells me that the power of the Godhead Collective is infinite. He thinks, though, that his Friend might be as powerful all by Himself as the whole Godhead Collective put together, after He has spent the past two thousand years deep in loving service to people on earth and in the astral plane. I think Thomas may be allowing his friendship to color his judgment a bit; but on the other hand, I have been near Jesus recently when He wasn’t toning down His personal energy by much, and perhaps Thomas has a point. The Lord’s personal energy is amazing. It is absolutely loving, extraordinarily powerful, yet perfectly sweet and kindly.

The most evil entities are so weak that they are in danger of falling out of existence altogether. Most luckless of all are the shadow men. They are generally seen all in black, at night because they cannot bear any light, and they lurk in closets to scare people because they feed on fear. I kid you not! Shadow men are rare but they do exist, and occasionally they have been spotted at dusk. If they find someone to latch onto in early childhood, they will try to maintain that connection for life. Keeping a nightlight on in every small child’s bedroom is enough to keep them away.

But as I have said above, for the most part what we think of as demons are just disembodied people who have temporarily gone astray. They are among the twenty-five percent or so of folks who don’t manage to transition right away, mostly because of plain ignorance, and they never would deliberately harm you. They might, however, inadvertently give you quite a start! Here are some ways that they can plague the unwary:

  • Drug and Alcohol Addicts. Each of us has a protective energy shield which extends around us for a foot or two in all directions. Sensitives can see these shields, which glow in various colors depending on our state of spiritual health, and for so long as we maintain our energy defenses in good order it is difficult or impossible for any sort of negative energy to penetrate our defenses. But if we become drunk in a bar, or if we shoot up in a needle alley, our defenses will temporarily tatter, and then we are almost guaranteed to pick up the spirits of waiting addicts, who will be eager to make us ravenous drunks or drug addicts thereafter. My father was a regular weekend drunkard until he quit cold-turkey when I was eleven, and I didn’t realize until much later that the odd greenish glow to his eyes when I was a child and he had been drinking was a typical sign of someone harboring one or more drunken spiritual passengers.
  • Roving Dead Folks Are Attracted to Ouija Boards. We are told by people not now in bodies that for some reason Ouija boards act like literal magnets to stray disembodied people. There have been cases where lowlife disembodied types have so infested a house that the flesh-and-blood inhabitants have felt the need to vacate it.
  • Executed Criminals. An execution sets a convicted lowlife free of his body and makes him invisible at the height of his worst and most negative emotions, and with revenge on his mind. Who considers this to be a good idea?
  • Ghosts. A ghost is simply a disembodied person. Most of them aren’t inclined to wander, but they can make sounds or even be seen in some circumstances. And if you frequent places where people die, you can on occasion pick up invisible hitchhikers.
  • Impressions and Fragments. People who have suffered extreme emotions can leave impressions, shadows, or fragments of themselves behind where this happened, which is why old houses can have some odd cold places.

So these creatures are nothing for you to fear. They aren’t real demons, in the sense of doing a nonexistent Satan’s bidding. They possess no power of their own to harm you unless you make yourself vulnerable to them. Simply stay away from Ouija boards, avoid taking recreational drugs and getting drunk in bars, and try to stay away from battlefields, unnecessary hospital visits, abortion clinics, or anywhere else where people are dying. And first and foremost, keep yourself sensibly free of superstitious fears! Those cold spots that many old houses harbor might have tales to tell, but they lack the power to harm you.  

Now let’s talk about the many times in the Gospels where Jesus cast out demons. This one is typical: At the start of His ministry, Jesus entered a synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath, and “In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an impure spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, ‘Go away! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!’ ‘Be quiet!’ Jesus said sternly. ‘Come out of him!’ Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him” (LK 4:33-35). Note that here the demon is defined simply as an impure spirit. And it wasn’t only impure spirits that Jesus was commanding. Later that day He rebuked a fever in Simon’s mother-in-law so she could get up and make their dinner (LK 4:39).

Jesus’s remarkable power to heal the sick quickly brought Him a large following. “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him” (MT 4:23-25). We can surmise from the references to demons taken in context that the Lord’s ability to cast out demons was a catch-all term for the various kinds of mental and neurological diseases about which in the Lord’s day they could have had no comprehension. And as we know, one secret to Jesus’s great healing powers was His ability to use His patients’ own minds in the healing process (see e.g. MT 9:22; MK 5:34 &10:52 and LK 8:48 & 18:42).

So the whole idea of demons is one more thing that you can happily purge from your mind. There are no demons. There never have been demons. And as more and more of us learn at last that our lives really are eternal, and that each of us is God’s best-beloved child, perhaps the day will come when everyone will know what happens after death, and we all will transition home as soon as our bodies die in accordance with what is a tenderly planned and universal process. And then perhaps we will stop creating all these pointless fears!