Saturday 27 June 2020

An Experience of Demons

I apologise for touching on such an unpleasant subject, but I recently experienced what I feel was very probably a psychic attack and reflecting on it afterwards has given me a clue into what damnation might involve. The attack took place in the form of a dream, though it was like a waking dream in which you are neither completely asleep nor completely awake, and consisted of a pair of incidents in which a sort of mind disintegration appeared to be attempted. I'm not saying that could have really happened in this case but it did give me an insight into what might be a permanent state if a particular course is followed to its bitter conclusion.

Damnation is loss of the soul. Loss of the soul must mean loss of the self and a self is lost when it is disintegrated into existential chaos. The demons' work is destruction, the returning of cosmic order to the black pool of nothingness. This may be what damnation is. There are many forces in the modern world that aid and abet this disintegration, preparing the ground one might say, and some of them are happily pursued by foolish people because they give a kind of false ecstasy as the moorings of the mind are loosened and a horrible freedom is offered, freedom from the boundaries of order. In music we have rap, electronic dance or rave music, heavy metal and punk. These all dissolve structure into chaos in a more or less brutal fashion in which the rational mind is aggressively broken down to a sub-human instinctual maelstrom. The examples of modern art and literature follow a slightly different, possibly more cerebral, course but to the same end. Order into chaos. This can potentially be valid if a new and higher order is formed from the chaos but that is a rare, very rare, thing, and is certainly not the goal of the examples I have cited. These are all to do with a sort of celebration of chaos. When you break boundaries there is an initial ecstasy as the freed energy flows out but it is soon dissipated and you have nothing left.

My experience was as follows. My next-door neighbour had a party in his garden. Only about 10 people but the houses share a wall and it might just as well have been in our garden. There was loud talking, music playing and raucous laughter. This neighbour is frequently noisy until late. The main group broke up around midnight so I thought I could go to bed but had to open the window because it was so hot. There were a few people left, talking and music still going. I put in ear plugs but could still hear them.

At around 1.15 I had had enough so stuck my head out of the window and asked them to go inside, none too politely I admit though I wasn't rude. They said they were talking about something important and it was none of my business. I should just shut my window. I said it was my business if they kept me awake and that I found their behaviour unbelievable. Besides, I could hear them even if the window was shut which would also make the room like an oven. Then I gave up and went back to bed. They carried on for another 20 minutes and finally left. 

I suppose I got to sleep around 2. Then I had this very vivid dream. I dreamt they had come back again but this time with some other people and were making a lot of noise. I tried to put my head out of the window but it had been covered up with some material so I couldn't. Eventually I got the material off and put my head out to ask them to be quiet. As is the way in dreams the scene had changed slightly. The garden had moved a bit but the main thing was the people were now skeletons that glowed a lurid green colour. They mocked me and made more noise. Then they began attacking me psychically by which I mean they projected evil at me, some of which was expressed as this same lurid green in the form of 'dark light'. I can't describe it better than that, I'm afraid. The psychic attack grew stronger so I prayed to Jesus for protection. But when I tried to banish them in the name of Jesus Christ I couldn't say the words 'Jesus Christ'. It was as though my brain had been drenched in a kind of treacle which blocked it. Eventually, though, I succeeded and I found myself back in bed with them apparently gone.

But that wasn't the end of the dream/experience. While lying in bed I felt someone or something come in through the window with, of all things, (don't ask me to explain!) a supermarket trolley. This creature went through the room and downstairs where my two children sleep. I got up and followed it and found it outside their room with its trolley. I could clearly sense the aura of naked evil. It wasn't just bad. It was evil in a very pure way, dispassionate but absolute. Again, I tried to banish it using the name of Jesus and again, I couldn't get the words out. The thing began attacking me, not physically but on a spiritual level which I have known before and is very different as you feel as though something is trying to disintegrate your mind which will not function properly. Finally, I managed to call on the Masters, the teachers I describe in my book, and this thing was driven away. I knew I couldn't have dealt with it on my own. Then I woke up.

Now, a conventional psychologist would say that I had been disturbed by the neighbours and my mind made up this scenario as a result. I'm sure that had something to do with it but I am also convinced that is not all there is to it. I think the initial disturbed state created a kind of entry through which evil beings could attack. I am well aware most people would dismiss this as preposterous or else as evidence of mental derangement, even paranoia, but there was a very clear difference between this dream and the normal run of the mill sort, few of which I ever remember. This was more intense and vivid by several orders of magnitude. I was not particularly frightened because even in the dream world I find I can trust in God, but it was pretty terrifying purely as an objective experience. 

Assuming this was a psychic attack, and, as I say, I have experienced similar things before though not often or to quite the same degree, I have to ask what its purpose might have been and what it can teach us. The purpose can perhaps be summed up by some words of the Masters who told me that the greater progress you make the more you will be assailed by evil in all its forms. This is because every person who breaks free of evil by turning to God represents a nail in the coffin of evil, a step towards its eventual destruction

But why was it allowed? I don't wish to self-dramatise and I have a suspicion that one is not supposed to talk very much about personal inner experiences, but maybe one of the reasons this happened to me is that I have this blog and can share such experiences so that if anyone reading encounters something similar they might know what to do. And what to do is very simple and very traditional. Call on Jesus Christ. You might find, as I did, that something tries to stop you doing this. In my dream my brain turned to mush but I called in my heart as well as my head and I was answered. I also realised my utter dependence on God. In your waking existence you can pretend this is not so but in the vulnerable sleep state where you are exposed to the psychic plane the room for self-deception and self-aggrandisement is very much reduced. Everything is more raw and open.


I reflected on the 'things' that attacked me and I came to the conclusion that they were more like things than beings with individual consciousness. The being in the second episode particularly just seemed to be a kind of embodied malevolence. After first appearing as a dark shadow, it took the form of an old friend of mine but the eyes were pools of dead malice. I believe that demons are lost souls that have had their individual selves hollowed out and have become vessels for evil in a ghastly parody of saints who can be vessels for God. The saint has offered himself in love to God and God fills him with himself. The lost soul has by his thoughts and behaviour given himself to the devil but instead of being filled by goodness and truth is taken over and used. It's as if the devil literally consumes them and then operates through them though he can only do so to the extent of their personal attainments of power, intelligence and such like. It's horrible to think of and I apologise for putting this thought out there but it may be a reality of the spiritual universe of which we should be aware.


As I was writing this I sudden realised that's exactly what the Nazgul were in The Lord of the Rings. As usual, Tolkien's spiritual instincts are pointing in the right direction. Then the figure of Weston occurred to me as described in C.S. Lewis' Perelandra where we are shown a human soul that has been taken over by the devil and entirely lost its humanity. Weston has become a 'thing'. His soul has been disintegrated and its life energies taken over by Satan.

There are many forces in the world today that are seeking to prepare us for spiritual dissolution, a dissolution that may well happen to those who have been sufficiently 'softened up' in this life after they depart this life. I have spoken of certain forms of music and art. Drugs are another obvious example but there are also ideologies that seek to reduce everything to a uniform oneness. Shun these like, for they are of, the devil. Focus on the Good, the Beautiful and the True which are necessarily hierarchical and separative, two words which have been given a bad connotation today but simply mean not everything is equal which it could not be for absolute equality can only exist in nothingness. Always aspire upwards. Do not deny or dismiss the lesser for it too is of God but know that things are closer to or further away from him. They are not all at the same distance even though he dwells in all things.

Evil is running riot all over the world today but we should not pay it too much attention. The manifestation of good conquers evil more effectively than actively fighting it. We should certainly be wise to evil but the more we focus on the good, the more we can help bring that out. I have written this piece because of an experience a couple of nights ago but I would like to end it by praising God who is the author of all good and who waits to welcome us into his kingdom if we will accept the invitation.

7 comments:

John Fitzgerald said...

Thank you William. What you have written is important and true and more vital than ever to hear at this time. You've made a very significant statement here. Yes, we absolutely need to call on Christ, all the time now, from and with our hearts. In a world which has become flatly horizontal and where even that horizontally is now being chopped up and dismembered, we have to seek out and connect back to the vertical dimension, because that's where we find Christ and that's what saves. It's a Holy War, to be honest - against (dare I say it?) the pandemic of disintegration and formlessness that's currently rampaging through the world. Well done and good work. This is a powerful and timely witness. You can be sure that Old Nick won't be happy, but that the Lord and all the saints and angels gathered around his throne will.

William Wildblood said...

Thank you very much John. I really appreciate your comment. I do believe with all my heart that just the name of Jesus if uttered sincerely is the most powerful spiritual tool we have at our disposal. Now that even Jesus himself appears to be under attack in that his image, which was surely given to us by God as a means to enter into his Presence, is being, shall we say, dismembered, it is all the more important we hold fast to traditional truth. The fact is that if Jesus is represented in non-traditional ways it really won't be him anymore. I believe the Turin Shroud is a genuine image of Our Lord and that does show the traditional image now under attack.

JMSmith said...

Even on its surface, your story is a good illustration of the meaning of loving your neighbor as yourself. If your neighbors had loved you as they loved themselves, they would have seen that you have a natural right to sleep at one in the morning. But you had no reciprocal obligation to respect the non-right of drunks to keep their neighbors awake. This surface meaning leads to the deeper spiritual meaning because something natural and right was disrupted by something unnatural and non-right, but declaring itself to be important. Your noisy neighbors assertion that their no doubt stupid and soon-forgotten conversation was "important" hangs there like a bad smell. I say this as a man who did some self-centered carousing in his youth. But even then I recognized that I was wrong and the man banging on the wall was right. His sleeping was "important" because it conformed to the order of the cosmos, whereas my carousing was frivolous and unimportant (except as an indictment of my own bad character).

I've had some preternatural experiences of evil. Many years ago when I was a very wayward soul, I hitchhiked to Cape Hatteras on the coast of North Carolina. It was the middle of winter and I hiked down the beach of the barrier island, camping each night in the dunes. As I said, a very wayward soul. One evening, a large black dog joined me and accompanied me down the beech. It was friendly and would fetch sticks that I threw for it. But when I crept into the dunes to look for a campsite, the dog became menacing and I tried to drive it away. I was passing through a very shallow flirtation with Zen Buddhism at that time, and therefore resolved at last to sit on the sand in a lotus position and do just what I am not sure. When I did this the dog came very close to my face and growled in a very menacing way. Given my spiritual disorder at that time, I'm surprised that I didn't spring up and attempt to run away. But I didn't, and when after ten minutes I opened my eyes, the black dog had gone. The next day I hitchhiked home. To this day I believe that was not a physical dog, and that what happened behind that sand dune was a spiritual crisis that I survived by unmerited grace.

Epimetheus said...

Very interesting. These experiences seem indeed to be a kind of spiritual gladiatorial training, if that makes any sense.

It's fascinating what you say about chaotic music. Several years ago, I was asleep and dreaming the usual normal nonsense, when suddenly the whole dreamscape was shoved aside bodily by a gigantic force, and I was transported to another place - my childhood bedroom.

The sensations were completely lifelike, though I felt an icy wind on my face, impossible indoors. I had been teleported physically from my adult bed to the bedroom of my childhood, which was filled with moonlight. Anyway, to cut out all other details, after I arrived, I immediately received a phone call from a demon, who spoke to me in a language identical to nightclub music - though far more "stabbing" and brutal than anything humans could make.

If you can imagine a demon laughing through the language-medium of horrifically-licentious nightclub music, you get the idea. Anyway, I escaped back to my adult bed through some force of will and prayed fervently. The experience drove me desperately back toward Christ. It sounds crazy, but there it is.

Last week, I had another much milder experience. I was slightly drunk and drowsing off to sleep, when a great vibration began inside my skull. It was as if someone was tuning a radio that vibrated my whole mind-brain, my whole consciousness. I had my eyes closed, but a beam of white light shone around me, and I began to levitate off the bed. It was identical to alien abduction stories - something outside was trying to pull me out through the window, outward and upward. The levitation wasn't physical, I don't think, but I can't be sure. Maybe it was astral? I remained half-asleep throughout.

I began to call Christ's name internally, and the "tuning" became more frantic, and accelerated - the wavelengths shortened - and I understood that I was winning, that the attacking person was panicking. After a process much like a drowning swimmer clawing upward to the surface, I finally managed to utter "Christ" out loud. The warbling vibration ended instantly, the light blinked out, and I fell back in bed and woke up. The whole experience lasted perhaps four or five seconds.

Oddly enough, I slept fine after a short prayer, and forgot about it all in the morning. The experience appears to have had no emotional impact on me whatsoever, certainly no trauma or fear, and I didn't bother to tell anyone else.

But that name of Christ is key, like you say. It seems to be one of the most powerful magic spells we have on the Good side. It seems weaponized, somehow, as if it stabs through all evil spiritual things. In Revelation 19:15, it mentions a sword proceeding out of the mouth of a rider. I wonder if that sword is a word or name, where the mere utterance kills physical and spiritual evil. It's certainly strange that the human race has a recurring fascination with magical words and magic spells, and that these words are in ancient languages like Latin, Aramaic, Old Egyptian, Sumerian etc.

William Wildblood said...

Two fascinating stories that ring completely true to me, thanks for contributing them. What you say about neighbours, JM, is quite right. We are enjoined to love our neighbour as ourself, an important part of the statement, often overlooked which implies, to me anyway, there must be mutual respect. You don't love yourself when you behave badly, not if you have any kind of conscience at least. Though you would ask for forgiveness and understanding and that's what you should also extend to anyone else who seeks it.

'a process much like a drowning swimmer clawing upward to the surface, I finally managed to utter "Christ" out loud." That was just my experience too. My mind seemed to be immobilised and I had to make a great struggle to break out of that. Like you as well the experience has had no emotional aftermath other than an interest in the mechanics of it and what it might have to say about the damned state.

Hamish said...

It’s interesting you bring this up, as I had an uncanny experience with evil recently. It so happened I was reading a biography on the life of Jesus and I was about to read the chapter where he begins his ministry. The next day I had a terrible argument with my mother over a trivial matter to begin with, but it got very heated. I had to think hard about all the good qualities about her and forgive her failings and ask Jesus forgiveness for my own. I must say it was very hard for a while as I would try to remember the good and forgive, but then immediately afterwards be reminded of the bad as a sort of wrestling match going on in my mind. It feels like when I make some spiritual progress, something comes up to try and throw me off or distract me from the path.

William Wildblood said...

Hamish, what you describe is similar to things that have happened to me. I don't know if you are aware of what started me off on this blog but I had certain encounters with spiritual beings who guided me in the first half of my adult life. One of the things they stressed to me was that evil beings would try to influence my thoughts and emotions and those of people with whom I came into contact, creating arguments and unpleasantness. This, they said, could only happen if I let my guard down i.e. gave way to some kind of negativity myself. I regret to say I still do that and more often than I should but i have at least learnt the mechanism and try to watch out for my own inner reactions.

What you did is exactly what you should have done. Conquer evil with love and forgiveness. Not always an easy thing to do! You say that you feel that whenever you make some spiritual progress something comes up to distract you from the path. Yes, I'm afraid this is how it is but what it means is that when you do make progress it is real not superficial. We are tried and tested all along the way but that is good as it helps build real character. Stay the course knowing that God is always there and watches you every step of the way. From many little setbacks comes eventual triumph.