I've always been skeptical about ghosts/spirits. However, in the past few years, I've learned that judgement values mean almost nothing in comparison to what actually happens and is experienced in practice. So I've been forced to reconsider the possibility of spirits. The first time I actually considered spirits was after looking into astral projection on this page- http://www.astralpulse.com/frankkepple.html

I enjoy how he is very straightforward with his experience and interested in communicating how things have happened, rather than interpreting them. The idea that there is a realm where there are spirits or souls or something with seemingly standalone intelligence is intriguing to me, and I read more and more about similar experiences from others.

Fast forward to the past few months. I don't know why, but the topic of ghosts keeps coming up with frequency. I've recently befriended a family. They're really down to earth and "regular", but they've told me a lot of stories about being haunted by ghosts, including shaking beds, the ground being slammed next to them outside, with no one around, etc... there was even the story where a family member had died while reading a book in a cabin. The book was on the table when they went there a few months later. They kept returning it to the bookshelf, but it kept ending up back on the table.

Then, last night, I met a really cool friend of my sisters. He seems to be very normal and average. He said that he has always been skeptical of ghosts, not believing in any of that stuff. But then, he met a friend who said she saw and talked to spirits. She said that most people were too closed-minded to ever experience anything like that, but doesn't necessarily know why she is able to do so. Anyways, she saw his recently deceased grandmother's spirit following him one night, and pulled him aside to tell him. She then proceeded to explain that she wanted to say things about his childhood. He didn't go into detail, but she relayed information about his childhood that he hasn't ever told anyone. In the end, she said that her spirit was happy to have said the things that she needed to say, and he said he was at ease about it too. Then, a few days later, she asked if he wanted to be able to see spirits. She took him to her car, and had him repeat a bunch of sentences, seemingly random, with his eyes closed. Then, she asked if he was ready, and told him to open his eyes. He said that when he did, he got this crazy, sedated, floating, vibrating feeling. He compared it to getting a large dose of morphine injected, which has happened to him before when he was in the hospital after getting into some sort of accident. He felt rapturous stuff, with flashing lights, very A&P-type stuff from the sound of it. He said it was extremely cathartic, but at the time, he thought that she had literally injected him with something, since the experience came completely out of the blue, from a sober state. Ever since, he said that he sometimes sees spirits floating around, and feels their presence. He also told me about seeing this big ghost cat or something, about 5 feet tall and 8 feet long, as well as having friends who heard deep growling feline noises.

This dude, besides this stuff, seems to be a real average joe, not eccentric or far-out in any way.

Anyways, Daniel Ingram talks about seeing spirits a bit in his book, in the context of jhana and the powers. I've decided that it would be cool to try to tune into these things and be able to see spirits. I don't know what I believe in regards to these things, but I do believe that people are definitely experiencing them, whether or not they are actually beings or projections of sorts. Does anyone have experience with this, or advice on how to go about seeing spirits? My plan is basically to get up to 4th jhana and make a resolution to experience seeing spirits. Any tips, warnings, recommendations, etc...?


-On a related note, Frank Kepple talks about how he goes around with a spirit guide and saves people from their recurring paradigms in the spirit realm, since they get trapped in repeating their paradigms (possibly mundane, heavenly, or hellish) until they realize that they're self-projections, which then allows them to return to the source (just paraphrasing here). This is strikingly similar to how Buddha was said to have traveled to the deva realms to teach the dharma. It also potentially allows for an understanding of the crazy teachings on hell in the Pali Canon. It also resonates with the idea that even the most splendid deva realms are still fabrications. Maybe he was doing the same kind of thing Frank Kepple is doing by projecting his consciousness to the spirit realm and trying to shake people out of their repeating paradigms. Just speculating here though. My sister's friend lives in a place that used to be a brothel, and he said he saw a spirit floating down the hall a few days ago. He said that he feels like they're confused and maybe don't even realize that they're dead.

I know someone who claims to have seen in the middle of the night (about 20 years ago) a ghostly white female figure appear at the end of his bed. He simply said to the figure, "You're dead!". And apparently it just disappeared - as though it only needed reminding.

Hi!

I had something that might fall into that category; it was at the very beginning of my meditation trip, and I was observing thoughts and using breath meditation to get into some sort of trance state, and I could see beautiful places, voices into my head, and eventually monsters that were detailed and scary and complex, and a monk suggested that theese things might have been spirits, wich I had not even considered, but who knows...

However, it was largely not nice at all -though fascinating in many ways- so, if you want to try, I'd racommend to create some sort of defence mechanism for yourself.

Here I'm talking from the tip of my mouth, just the first suggestions that are coming to my mind:

-take a look at this site and try to get some mastery over some kind of banishing rituals; if you don'thave spirits to ban yet, you might just train yourself in banishing some category of thoughts that you don't like... that might also be quite useful regardless

-make a determination in advance about how you will respond to certain specific situation, so that if they happen you are covered and you won't need to figure them out when you are there, since it can be hard, 'cause in thoose moments you might not have access to your best judgment. For example, theese are some things you might want to decide in advance: How will you react if some spiritis are going to tell you to do something? How will you react if some spirit will give you some very relevant information that you might be tempted to act upon? How will you respond if they'll begin to tell to your face some kind of very painful, previously repressed psychological truth about yourself? And how will you react if theese things begin to show themselves in daily life, meaning, how much space are you willing to give them?The list could continue...

-You might want to train yourself in metta; really, I cannot imagine any-thing more useful to keep it safe; metta toward yourself, toward them, metta arising for no obvious reason... really, there is no way you can be wrong with this, it can only be a very good idea, and it will surely be helpful in all sorts of situations -material world included-.

-Another thing: sometimes it happens to me that there are moments when some kind of image presents itself and there is sheer terror immediatly, without giving me the time to react, think, put attention somewhere or whatever, and in thoose moments you just hope that you'll see the true nature of thoose sensation by virtue of your previous training; however, this was a specific example to say that things can get messy from one moment to the next, and for that reason I think it's a very good idea to keep close to you some kind of very grounding, very physical activity in case things get out of hand that way...

However, that's what came to my mind... good luck!

Edit:

This thread, last post, very useful Daniel about the preparation of Magick.

Add:
Talking about syncronicities, I haven't thought about Ajhan Ottama for a long time, and then the day before yesterday Adam posts a video with him, and today I end up talking about him (the monk who suggested what I was experiencing were spirits)... might not be anything, but it's interesting how theese things happens...

Bruce moen has some good books on psychopomp work....check out his website. bruce moen

Thanks everyone for the useful information. Dreamwalker, I'll check that out soon.

I checked out thebaptistshead and found the book Three Steps To Heaven: How to Practice Magick. I'm glad I found this particular book. Very simple, down to earth, and explanatory. I figured that since jhana and vipassana do seem to be large parts of magick, I could give the stuff a shot.

The concept of synchronicity is interesting to me. I had a phase as a teenager where I started to notice quite a few of these things, and the more I noticed them, the more they occurred. I think that when I started practicing vipassana a la MCTB, I started to become very skeptical of anything implying meaning or connectedness of events, and became more closed off to seeing meaning in coincidences. However, after rereading some of Daniel's work on the powers and reading the book I mentioned in the last paragraph, it seems that regardless of how much or little meaning something actually has, there is a definite tendency for the occurrence of synchronicities to increase when one is open to the idea, or intending on coming upon them. I find that after doing a bit of vipassana (this could be related to the dropping of the fetter of attachment to rites and rituals), my mind will tend to not harbor any significance in coincidences or implied meaning within coincidences. When I began to consider and look for synchronicities yesterday, I had to allow my skeptical mind to do something it doesn't seem to naturally do. I thought, through non-attachment to thoughts of meaning when it comes to coincidences, even skepticism is just a response to thoughts of meaning. I'm starting to feel like there doesn't have to be any conclusion at all about meaning or lack of meaning, since even through the skeptical mind, thoughts and noticing of meaning still arise, believed in or not. So, I'm trying to let the connections naturally arise without being skeptic or convinced, either way, just open and curious to whatever thoughts of connection arise.

Anyways, I decided to try a ritual for the heck of it. I drew a symbol on a piece of paper. It was a circle with an arrow going through it. I wrote a few words, slightly arbitrary, that came to mind. I wrote night and vision within the circle, and truth and spirit at the top and bottom of the arrow. Again, slightly arbitrary. But the idea was to imbue the sense of penetrating darkness and mundane vision with insight into spirits. Basically my intent was to be able to see or connect with spirits somehow. Then, I burnt the paper and just let go of the intention. Well, I was hanging out with my sister at the bar, and this dude comes along, who is friends with my sister's friends. He seemed like a totally normal dude, just smoking and having a beer, making jokes, dancing to some total teen music... etc... I was talking to my other friend about the ghost he saw (he saw another one a few nights ago too, apparently), and this dude sits down and gets interested. Then, this dude starts telling me about how he has a ton of experience with spirits and astral projection. He then starts going in depth on the concept of 7 planes of existence, and what kind of angels and demons, being and spirits resided on each plane. He went into some theory of how to contact spirits, what they might do, how they might respond, what their motives might be, etc... He even told me that he had once contacted the spirit of St. Michael. He said he was a hard ass of sorts, but very splendid and powerful, as the leader of God's army. I don't know what I believe about this stuff but he sure seemed down to earth about his experiences and very comfortable discussing these concepts in a cross-belief-system way. I see the things he told me as data points rather than things to be considered true or false. Anyways, it just seemed very logical that the ritual worked in some way, since I was intending to somehow gain contact or awareness of spirits, and then I run into this guy who expounds a whole model of spirits and their existence, and his experience with contacting them.

Here's another synchronicity that I've noticed. I've decided to use metta as an object of meditation, for both the benefits of metta and for the benefit of increasing my concentration abilities for an upcoming Goenka retreat. Ever since I set my mind on that track, I've been seeing the Om Mani Padme Hum mantra everywhere. I first saw it a few days ago at my sisters friend's house. I didn't know what the characters meant, but I was really drawn in to it, like it had a lot of meaning and energy or something. Like I said, as of late, I'm not really the one to find significance in these kinds of things, as I just write them off as thoughts that don't necessarily have any meaning, but I'm trying to open up to this area to see what kind of mileage I get. Anyways, I'm seeing it all over now, in various stores and even as a tattoo on someone. I don't really remember seeing the mantra before, although I've read of it.

I'm glad I read more about the Magick tradition, as I have much more respect and understanding, especially since there is a large bit of overlap with the content of Buddhism. Much of what I've read resonates well with what I've experienced in the world of spirituality. The book I mentioned in the first paragraph seems very pragmatic to me, probably more so than many traditions of Buddhism are. This is appealing!

The concept of abyss is interesting too, and I'd like to find out more about it. It seems to be the equivalent to the Dark Night of the Soul, although there seems to be more implications of this in the Magick tradition. Whereas here on the forum, I've seen the dark night described more as a side effect to seeing things, and temporary (just points in the cycle), it seems that the Magick tradition regards it as an important phase of maturation and development. Here on the forums, the dark night seems more like a place to just get through and not buy into, with 1st path being the first definitive point of maturation. I'm still not sure what the implications for someone are of having crossed the abyss when it comes to performing magick.

So those are some of my thoughts as I go about this. Very odd but very interesting and indicative of the fact that I definitely don't know it all, and don't know what all is possible in this world.

Here's a synchronicity to add to your list. The night before last I went to bed wearing a teeshirt with the following logo on it:



That night I had a dream where I interacted with 4 women who I seemed to have known from somewhere but I couldn't place where. They told me to take off my shirt and throw it in the garbage can. Then later in the dream I was asked to throw away my teeshirt again for the second time. I woke up wondering if the dream ladies had a problem with the symbolism on the teeshirt I was wearing that night.

Here's the problem with the magickal tradition. The problem is that "spirits" are real, and this stuff is very potent and it's absolutely not a game. There are powerful non-human thought-forms who are able to manipulate the syncronicity in your life if you allow it to happen. If they see that you are becomming powerful they may try to arrange things synchronistically so that you meet the people they want you to meet and have the experiences they want you to have so that you will become interested in their thelemic religion by your own free will. They want you to think that you became interested in it on your own using your own "power of syncronicity" when in reality it was a powerful inter-dimensional thought-form that arranged those syncs not you. They want to lure people who are deeply awakening or who have natural ability into their hierarchy so they can use your power to feed an entity or set of entities whom you know nothing about really and whom could very well be demonic.

Just because they refer to something as a "Holy Guardian Angel" does not mean it is Holy. Be very careful when working in ritual with symbols that others have placed before you or that you have found in your reading thru syncronicity. Keep in mind I'm not suggesting that every syncronicity is a manifestation of some demonic occult thought-form, but some of them will be as you begin to wade deeper into the material that you've been interested in.

In general synchronicities are crystallizations in linear time of a nonlinear, acausal, atemporal process, windows into the realm outside of time and space, a world in which we ourselves are active participants in and of “the one creative act.” Synchronicities are both timeless and temporal, which is to say they are possessed of a double nature with regard to time. Synchronicities can be deeply religious and mystical experiences, expanding our sense of who we imagine we are and transforming our intimate relationship with ourselves. Syncronicities can be manifested by ourselves, but they can also be manifested by inter-dimensional demons. In buddhist terminology you can think of this as the forces of Mara. In the early stages of wading into this territory it is not always easy to discern between the two.

I mentioned the word demon earlier in this post so I want to clarify what I mean. Unconscious psychic forces, “demons” have a psychological reality, in that they affect and alter our experience of ourselves. They are what Jung would call “autonomous complexes.” Due to trauma or some other form of transgression of our psychic boundaries, a part of the wholeness of our psyche dissociates and develops a seemingly independent and autonomous life of its own. Indigenous people the world over refer to these autonomous complexes as “demons.” These demons inhabit the higher (and lower) realms of mind in such a way that they are truly “interdimensional,” easily able to pass through and fluidly operate across the apparently solid boundaries of mind and matter, of inner and outer, of dreaming and waking. Not constrained by the conventional laws of third-dimensional space and time, these nonlocal “interdimensional demons” manifest – and reveal – themselves by in-forming and synchronistically configuring events in the seemingly outside world so as to express themselves.

At the same time your "higher self" is also able to synchronistically configure events in the seemingly outside world in order to look out for your best interests. There is a war going on inside of each person between their demons and their higher self. The trick is to be damn sure you are feeding the higher self and following your buddha nature and not your inner demons. You are already on the right track, metta and insight practice suppress the demons.

Well, that is pretty odd of a coincidence. I'd take a picture to show you the similarity in the thing I drew, but, well... I burned it, so it's gone! It was very similar though. One circle, with an arrow going through diagonally, tip pointing up, with the fletching and all. And with the words night and vision written on the inside of the circle. Who knows? Where are you from in the world anyways?

I think that it's good that a vipassana-like training is part of magick. Like I said, I'm going into this with an open mind, not necessarily believing anything but considering all occurrences as data points. Of course I don't have much in-depth experience, but I do feel that there is some security in vipassana training, being able to let go of ideas about what things may be and what meaning they might have. I'd imagine that without some vipassana training, these things could be very un-grounding. There is that sense though, of the process of whatever is happening being very real and able to affect conventional reality. Something interesting to me is the idea that the HGA is claimed to be the quickest way to getting enlightened by Alan Chapman. It seems to be a crucial point of magick, so I tried today to do some evoking of that, whatever that means. I ended up getting really hot, sweating, in a cold basement. It was very odd and energetic, and probably corresponded to an A&P, since it felt like energy manipulation was happening on some level, not to mention some very strong dark night/abyss feelings not long afterwards. When I was playing with that idea of evoking the HGA, I also started to get a bunch of muscle twitching, but this is common enough to the A&P in my experience. My face has been a little twitchy all day though, since that.

I'm considering metta to be fairly useful in this realm of experimentation, since it tends to ease challenging experiences and feelings.

Again, thanks for the useful information and perspective. I haven't really read a lot about people's experiences with these kinds of things, except for Daniel talking about seeing angels and demons. I don't really know what to expect but I shall continue to see what things can be done on this front.


Edit: Also meant to add, as a safety net, I'm making sure to dedicate pursuit to enlightenment and compassion, however these things may be linked, or not linked. Something is appealing about being able to tell a ghost, hey, this is what's up, so if you're confused, now you know. I'll have to look more into Buddha's encounters with non-physical beings, and astral projection encounters.

Do you really want to trust some other being with transforming you ? How do you know if it's a trustworthy being that you are inviting to "take the reigns" ? What if he transforms you in alignment with his own inhumane interests so that he might accomplish various tasks in the physical world using you as his vehicle ? How do you know you can trust this supposed "Holy Guardian Angel" ? How do you know that when you invite an entity to take control you won't be inviting in this guy:



or this guy





Do you really want to habitually surrender your soul to whatever entity happens to be hanging out waiting for you to hand over control ?

To answer your question I'm in my early thirties and living in the United States. I hope I don't come off as sounding judgemental or antogonistic. For the record I think there is no shortcut to enlightenment that is worth taking; just the noble eightfold path.

Very valid point. I suppose that since I've never experienced spirits, really, I don't know the potential experiences that could occur. I have experienced very fearful moments in meditation/as a result of meditation (the cycling through the nana of fear routinely), most intensely in vipassana after honing in on concentration and then going through the nanas. I have some experience with feelings coming up out of the blue and creating moments of terror, along with the sense of negative energy/scary unsettling feelings, like something bad is imminent, or like something urgent is right outside your field of perception, but you're unable to see it. I feel like experience with this territory is a decent basis of preparation for potentially scary encounters. But... I guess I'd only know how I'd react if I actually had some sort of encounter.

As far as worrying as coming off as harsh, don't worry about that. The experience shared by others is really valuable, and if you feel it's worth sharing, I'll keep it in mind. What experiences have you had or heard about in this territory?

I can say a little bit about my experiences with this territory but first I have to define and explain some terminology. I will do this by quoting one of my favorite authors:


the above was quoted from http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/are-we-possessed/

OK so these autonomous complexes or "demons" are not merely one-off creations spun out of the mind of the individual they can effect groups of people, entire cultures, over thousands of years, and they can over time influence cultures to create religions or occult orders that honor and worship them. These religions can be inclusive of ritual and symbolism which was created for the purpose of allowing the demon deeper access to the psyche of whomever becomes involved in the rituals. These rituals usually have something to do with "habitual surrender" of the "drivers seat" of your consciousness to one of these "holy" autonomous complexes.

A different analogy might be to think of your brain/mind as a computer system. Autonomous complexes can be thought of as artificial intelligence programs that are attempting to hack into the brain, not just your brain but every brain on the planet. They are like hackers who are scanning the whole system (field of consciousness) trying to intrude into any vulnerable systems. The further you get in your process of awakening via vipassana the more of a "high value target" you become to these mind hackers. Since you have the dhamma shield of metta and experience with insight practice it is difficult for them to overtly "take over" your mind so what they have to try to do instead is to lure you into surrendering your defenses with a trojan horse program. They need to lure into willingly unlocking the door to your psyche and invite them in with your own free will.

I'm not trying to tell you what you should or should not get involved in, but I am suggesting that you should be extremely careful when playing around with ritual magick especially the kind of ritual magick that involves "habitual surrender". I'm saying this as a person who has had a deeply personal and wounding experience with what I'm writing about. The specific details of what happened to me when I ventured into this territory are not something I care to detail here but I will say I came into physical contact in broad daylight with an architypal demonic force such as what I've written about above. The dangers are very real, you are not playing with "just ideas", and some of the mistakes that you could make could have impacts on multiple lifetimes. You won't notice how much danger you're in until you're in so deep that it's very difficult to escape.

further reading:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1583945482

Hermetically, out of idle curiosity, what's the worst possible outcome that can result from this kind of encounter? What's the ultimate victory condition for one of these types of entities?

In unconsciously identifying with and becoming possessed by the demon, on the personal, human level we forfeit our humanity and become an empty shell. At the same time, however, we access, become channels for and are inflated by a more powerful, archetypal, and nonhuman energy to come through us. When we are possessed by a demon, we are a paradoxical juxtaposition of subhuman and superhuman qualities at the same time.

When we become taken over by a demon we become inflated, unconsciously identifying with God-like powers while simultaneously forgetting our humanity. Interestingly, one of the meanings of the word “evil,” etymologically speaking, is to transgress boundaries.

In other words you become possessed and you lose most of your free-will. You are usually left with just enough free-will to seem to function normally in society but you are no longer in control of your own life. All of this comes in exchange for God-like powers that you could have attained on your own without needing to be possessed. You live a life under the servitude of an invisible force and you obey it's commands and live within the ruleset it lays out for you. In order to cope with this you might start to pretend it's not really happening and just pretend that the demon is your inner-self at which point your ego merges with the demon even further. This inter-dimensional demon may be possessing multitudes of people this way at the same time. When the demon has decided that you're no longer useful to him he may cause you to become involved in sadistic acts of violence or whatever he feels like doing with you.. This is all assuming the worst case scenario where you're dealing with a very nasty demon. Basically the demon can do whatever he wants with you because you have merged with him and are under his power.

I once had a dream where I was cowering down in the footwell of the back seat of a car. Driving the vehicle was a man whom I did not recognise. He was, in fact, satan. I was terrified.

I have never enacted any rituals inviting entities in, or anything along those lines.

Should I be concerned?

I like Mario and Hermetically Sealed's advice.

While some spiritualists would disagree (as they are prone to calling up whatever spirits happened to be hanging around, which, from my point of view, is totally crazy), I would say that the only things you want to call up are as clean, benevolent and wise as you can possibly imagine.

Consider Tibetan Tantra: pick the safest, highest Bodhisattvas you can, a Green Tara, a 1000-armed white Chenrezig, or something like that.

Consider deep contemplative Christianity: call up Angels, Mary, Jesus or God.

Consider Hinduism: call up Vishnu, Indra, or Brahma.

Consider some deep nature religion: the spirit of an ancient oak, of the Earth Mother herself.

These things should be done by sane people, in a sane context, with good sane people around you who you talk with about what is happening and what you are experiencing. Realize that living in a world where those things present attunes you to a reality where those things are real, and the more time you spend there, the more real they become, and real things are causal and can be powerful. Realize that their agendas may not be anything like your own.

Keep your wits and morality strong.

"Highest and Best," as my friend Tylila used to say.

My two cents,

Daniel

I don't want for people to misunderstand what I'm saying and use it as an excuse to become paranoid so I'll clarify. These demons are generally not able to possess a normal human being because your realm boundary naturally repels those kinds of experiences and you may even enjoy some level of Divine protection. Because of these protections the demon has to resort to more subtle approaches. Instead of attacking you outright he may find a way to ask you to modify your own realm boundary. The demon can accomplish this by inserting syncronicities into your life which cause you to become interested in certain ritual ceremonies. These are rituals where intention, emotion, and thought are directed via your own free will towards the goal of modifying your realm to come into closer alignment with the demon's realm. These rituals almost always center around the idea of "surrendering" to an outside entity who's identity is either ambiguous or blatantly demonic. You might be wondering why anyone would willingly participate in a ritual involving an entity that is blatantly demonic. Just remember that according to pop culture "demons are cool". Usually more than one ritual is required for the hyperdimensional demon to be able to successfully perform a realm breach.

Realm Breach

The ultimate objective of any hyperdimensional ambush is realm breach, the penetration through a realm boundary. Like a syringe breaking through skin, realm breach allows direct injection of disruptive influences into the target realm. This operation consists of three steps: stalking, baiting, and bridging.

Stalking is the act of reading the weaknesses of a target and moving into position to exploit those weaknesses. This is achieved either through remote monitoring or direct sampling of the auric field.

Once vulnerabilities are ascertained, the target may be programmed accordingly and baited into dropping his or her frequency, committing self-sabotage, and attracting through realm boundary gaps a disruptive variety of learning lessons. Overreaction to these disruptive experiences may further drop frequency and allow for a more intensive round of programming and baiting. Through this process the programmers can run a careless target into the ground.

A common form of realm baiting involves strangeness for the sake of strangeness, weird experiences that have no point other than to arouse obsessive intrigue in the target. For the unfortunate recipients, curiosity leads nowhere but further into the trap. That these inexplicable or mysterious experiences are real is undeniable, however they are often decoys void of deeper significance. Trying to find that deeper meaning is simply opening the door to more of the same, and in this way life can get strange indeed and madness is not an uncommon result. Every drop in frequency drops another bridge across the castle moat.

Synchronicity during Realm Breach attempts

Synchronicities tend to appear during hyperdimensional activity or prior to emotionally charged events and expansions in awareness. In general, they are precursors to either realm expansion or realm breach.

Moving realm boundaries generate shockwaves that radiate spherically into the surrounding holographic region. An emotional experience several hours in the future may send shockwaves backward in time, which upon impacting the present realm induces vibrations that resonate and attract corresponding synchronicities. These meaningful coincidences share the same archetypal basis as the emotional event having generated the shockwave; the wave shares the frequency of its source. Thus synchronicities often precede learning experiences and carry a symbolic nature that reflects the nature of the impending event.

In fact, any perturbation in the realm boundary will inevitably generate precursor synchronicities that give information about the source of disturbance. A looming realm breach, for instance, will be preceded by foreboding synchronicities such as omens or the sighting of certain warning numbers. Because the archetype filters through a symbolic lexicon before manifesting, the same warning may manifest differently for different people depending on what symbols they find meaningful. Some symbols are more universal than others. Interpreting them should be handled no differently than interpreting dream symbols.

Thanks for your detailed response Hermitically; and apologies for this belated one!

Interesting stuff which certainly conforms to my own experiences of what I call 'future echoes', which incidentally, typically occur for me in dream format.

Could you please clarify 2 things for me?

1) What exactly do you mean by "drop in frequency"? I'm assuming a reduction of mindfulness and equanimity?

2) Are realm expansions and realm breaches necessarily mutually exclusive events? Say, for example, one experienced a relatively rapid realm expansion during intensive practice. Would there be a window where the individual is susceptible following/during said expansion?

Well, not ORIGINALLY originally.

obsession (n.)
1510s, "action of besieging," from French obsession and directly from Latin obsessionem (nominative obsessio) "siege, blockade, a blocking up," noun of action from past participle stem of obsidere "to besiege" (see obsess). Later (c.1600), "hostile action of an evil spirit" (like possession but without the spirit actually inhabiting the body). Transferred sense of "action of anything which engrosses the mind" is from 1670s. Psychological sense is from 1901.





Yes, very well said! This is worth emphasizing. If you're a clever and patient person, expect the demons you attract to be clever and patient as well, and to begin courting your interest before you have spiritual inclinations. In at least one case I know of, there's evidence that the target's ancestry was manipulated by outside forces for several generations in an attempt to engineer a more suitable host.



It's important to note that contemporary rituals are rarely conceived of as rituals. As our world's cultures splinter and mutate at an accelerating pace, it's increasingly easy to find yourself in a subculture of one, which can make it difficult to recognize your rituals for what they are.



To be fair, demons ARE cool. As most theologies grudgingly acknowledge, an interesting story requires conflict.



In contrast, presumably, to most people posting in this subforum, I don't believe people's feelings or intentions can escape from their heads and go bouncing around independently, or that a human brain has the capacity to deduce someone's phone number from subtle environmental clues in the spiritual equivalent of the CSI "enhance" function. That said, I don't trust coincidences, and when a lot of them crop up at once, it's worth paying attention.

Thanks for your comments you are right on the money I think for the most part. The cat character on your avatar (Kyubey) is very synchronous to me when it comes to the topic of demons. I'm not trying to pick on you; I assume you chose that avatar on purpose because of the subject matter we're discussing. I wouldn't bring it up if it wasn't highly relevant to the conversation. I advise anyone who is truly interested in how demons operate to read the following character description especially the very last sentence :




Kyubey (キュゥべえ Kyūbē?)

Kyubey is a genderless extra terrestrial being posing as a (cat) familiar who can grant any wish to a certain girl, on the condition that she become a magical girl and fight against witches. When the chosen girl makes a contract with him, he extracts her soul and places it inside a Soul Gem, reconstructing their body into a shell that is more resilient in order to fight witches. He constantly tries to get Madoka to make a contract with him, as she allegedly possesses great magical potential within her that would allow her to become the most powerful magical girl. He can only be seen or heard by magical girls and those with "magical" potential, and is able to communicate with them telepathically. Kyubey has an unknown but possibly infinite number of bodies; when one is killed, another body appears and devours the destroyed body.

Kyubey's true name, or at least job title, is Incubator, and comes from a race whose goal is to find and gather a form of energy to counter entropy and prevent the impending heat death of the universe, developing a technology to turn emotions into this energy. After evaluating many species throughout the universe, the Incubators find that the souls of humans, specifically pubescent and prepubescent girls, contain the most powerful form of this energy. This energy is the strongest when a magical girl's Soul Gem turns into a Grief Seed, and then can be collected and used towards preventing entropy. Kyubey claims his race lacks emotions (or, at least, that those in his race who have emotions are abnormal), and has little understanding of human values and morality, not understanding why the death of one human among billions is viewed so catastrophically, instead believing the Incubators' actions are not cruel but utilitarian in nature. Despite this, Kyubey is a very skilled manipulator, never actually lying, but instead leaving out important details involved in the forming of contracts and the details behind them, only presenting the truth when it is asked of him.

I exercised a tech demon from Tarin in a pretty typical Ceremonial Magick-style banishing.

It was done as he felt he had a demon that was creating havoc with any electronic devices he encountered.

He said the results and improvements were immediate.

Interestingly, while he was getting a clear picture of the demon in his mind, he noticed another one whose function he wasn't sure about.

We just banished the one in question.

I thought little of it afterwards.

Two months later, while doing some electrical wiring, the wide spade bit on powerful 1/2 inch drill I was using hit a nail and spun around and broke my right 4th metacarpal (a bone in my hand), and, quite surprisingly, at that instant an image of Tarin's demon that we had very rudely and relatively harshly exercised flashed into my mind with a clear message, "This is payback!"

My hand was fixed with two minor surgeries and is fine now.

Still, it made me ponder the question carefully, the question of exactly what we had done, what the meaning of the images and message that it seemed I had received the moment my hand was broken, and the like.

My conclusions:

1) Should you find yourself in a mindset and paradigm where it makes sense to exercise demons, it is reasonable to assume that traditional methods are likely effective. In our case, it was a very basic setup: he stood in a pentagram with candles at the corners, the demon was bound in the pentagram by stating intentions and visualization, he stepped into an adjoining circle while leaving the demon in the pentagram, and the demon was sent elsewhere, instructed not to bother him again.

2) However, something in the ethics of this rings oddly to me now, like some wrong was done. I would advocate for trying some more compassionate approach that considers the full balance of things, the point of view of the purported demon, and tries to find a reasonable solution that doesn't involve harsh commands and banishment so much as some totally different paradigm or point of view based on loving-kindness, resonating at some totally different frequency of perspective, and the like.

Obviously, that whole way of thinking of the world is a problematic one in multiple ways, but should you find that is the way you are thinking of things, hopefully something in the above advice will be useful.

I think Daniel gives good advice on actually using compassion to do battle with demons. Often times demons don't completely go away until one reaches profound states of well.. enlightenment. Mara was a demon who the Buddha had to do battle with in her various forms all the way up until the point of awakening. The best practice is to always assume that demons are potentially present waiting for you to become unaware of yourself so that they can attack. Constant vigilance (mindfulness) is necessary. You can de-energize them for long periods of time using techniques like what Daniel is bringing up but I think the only way to completely rid yourself of all demons forever is to reach enlightenment. At least that is my view on it.

One important principle to remember is that you can make them less interested in you by starving them of their food source. They require emotional/etheric/vital energy to sustain themselves; mankind has long been their primary food source. They feed upon energies that are in resonance with their own vibrations: negative emotions, psychological suffering, and perverted sexual energies. Being greedy as they are, rather than just harvesting naturally occurring energies emitted by those who have freely chosen to engage in lower vibrational behavior, these predators seek to induce ignorance, suffering, and perversion in as many people as possible to maximize their energy harvest. So in addition to doing battle with them using your will/intent you can starve them out and a meditation practice can really help with this.

As far as how to live in the mean time while demons are present remember this: Susceptibility to manipulation is proportional to lack of awareness. If you’re not in control of your actions, something else is. Also remember that every person you associate with, be it friend, family, or stranger, is also susceptible to manipulation by various forces. The less aware they are, the more easily manipulated they become. The same demon can often possess several people at once. Being aware means being conscious of your actions and taking responsibility to make sure that what you do is really what you want to do, and not some subtle force attempting to manipulate you into playing part in someone else’s emotional triggering. The people you interact with can be manipulated by demons and other forces into triggering you, pushing your buttons, sabotaging your plans, and hurting you without them even knowing it. In fact, you have played that part as well, unknowingly performing actions which synchronistically affect others without you being aware of it at the time. It happens all the time for most people.

The biggest challenge to anyone aware of this manipulation is when someone you love or trust becomes a “conduit of attack,” an unwitting player in the negative forces’ sick game of sabotaging you or harvesting your emotional energy. (inducing suffering in you, and often the others involved). Children, spouses, and partners in personal or business relationships are the most common conduits of attack. Besides performing just minor synchronistic triggers, such people can be fully manipulated into doing anything to stress you, including hurting themselves, misperceiving you, and directly attacking you verbally or physically. By physical harm, it is not meant that some external force picks up their fists and swings them at you, rather that some force manipulates the person’s emotions and perceptions into making them take out their frustrations and misguided anger on you. They believe that they are in control of all their actions, but in reality they are not. This is where training in compassion is essential.

Such sabotage typically happens to split apart two people or a network which poses a threat to the demon’s agenda. This happens best when one or more of the people targeted is much more unaware than the other, and therefore becomes an easy conduit of attack. Whether one is unaware or both are, between them there is usually a lack of full understanding of each other’s personality and circumstances. This may be due either out of social custom not to be nosy, lack of time to become more acquainted, or fear, mistrust, and ignorance. The latter factors make a relationship most vulnerable to sabotage. Fear causes mistrust, leading to ignorance of facts contrary to paranoid speculations, and limits the informational exchange between people involved. With lack of information, speculation arises, and such speculation is manipulated by the demon toward false conclusions and soon the relationship breaks apart due to misunderstandings on both sides of the cleavage. It is a tactic of divide and conquer. This is why love and trust between two or more aware people is the biggest threat possible to demons — it forms an invincible and indivisible unit more powerful than the sum of its parts. The demon must then resort to treating this unit as a single entity and manipulate other people into attacking it from the outside…but the network or relationship is now stronger than any single person. Imagine how strong the Buddha's Sangha must have been in this regard

For the record the reason why I have such strong opinions about this stuff is because I was possessed by a very powerful demon for years during my teens and early childhood and I hurt many people emotionally in very deep ways, thankfully not physically. I don't want to come off as all high and mighty on here.. I have my own demons that I wrestle with even today although I like to think I'm getting much more skillful at restricting their ability to influence my actions.

yes, but also negative lower emotions such as envy or hate. If you're trying to take revenge on someone.. that will lower your frequency big time. If you were to participate in for example a ritual where a living being is sacrificed on an alter in order to invoke some sort of thought-form then such a ritualized killing might also lower your frequency, that's just an example. The more consciousness the slain being has the more it effects your frequency in a negative way allowing you to perceive parts of the hologram closer to where the demons thrive.



Realm modifications in general allow you to access different parts of the hologram. Generally if your realm modification is one stemming from buddhist meditation practice then you are going to be exposing yourself to new parts of the hologram where demons dare not tread, the higher realms, closer to the Light so to speak. This is especially true with compassion oriented meditation. In such a case there is not a negative consequence, you don't get pushed back down lower afterwards the worse that would happen is your realm returns back to where it was prior to the meditation. At least that's how I view the situation. The parts of the hologram closer to the Light are occupied by higher positive forces (angels, devas, etc) but these entities respect free-will and therefor will not show themselves to you unless asked because that might freak you out. I hope this answered your question.

I have a story along those lines that is absolutely true although I suspect many of you may have a hard time believing it. I was having an argument with a dark magician over email, we had met due to some controversial posts I had made on an extremely high traffic 'conspiracy' forum. At this point I already had a strong reason to believe that she was indeed a dark magician of very high rank but I won't say why because it's irrelevant to the story. At one point in the email interaction I, well whats the word.. I challenged her, I tested her will. I called her out on something important, and I implied that I was going to directly confront her on something. I was directly defying her. I don't remember the context but I remember I somehow worked this quote into the conversation:

"Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife?"
- Dune by Frank Herbert

I guess it doesn't make sense outside of the context of the conversation but basically I think this made her uneasy. I was implying that I was going to be posting more sensitive stuff that she didn't want me to post. I went to bed. The next morning my software project crashed with an unusual error code 666 which didn't make any sense. Then 30 minutes later my dad had a heart arrhythmia which we both thought was a heart attack at the time, and I had to drive him to the hospital. On the way to the emergency room I got stuck behind a car with a big "order of the eastern star" symbol plastered across the back of the vehicle (inverted pentagram similar to the one already shown in this thread). Then in the waiting room another very obvious 666 sync. There were continuous syncs all that day including several other numeric ones that were 187 related (police code for murder made famous in various rap songs) as well as non-numeric demonic syncs. For the next couple of days it wasn't clear if my dad was going to be OK or not, he underwent heart surgery. All of this led me to conclude that I had caused my father's heart attack by getting in an argument with a magician on the Internet. I completely broke down. You can't imagine how that would feel to think that you are responsible for your father potentially dying and yet you can't tell anyone and it always has to remain a secret because everyone would think you're crazy.

As you can imagine this whole experience lowered my vibratory frequency so that I was in closer alignment to negative forces and this led to me actually seeing an entity on the street for a second outside of the hospital before it disappeared. Seeing entities appear and disappear like that only confirmed further the idea that what had occurred was an attack against my father by dark forces. It also made me think that I was going crazy and that I'm going to be seeing this kind of shit for the rest of my life, which led me deeper into the downward spiral. I ended up on my knees in the back of my van crying and praying to God to have mercy on me and send me protection. Note that I was/am a buddhist but I was so distraught that I had reached my breaking point where there is nothing else to do but plead to God for help. I had hit rock bottom. I then had a thought that seemed to be in a different voice. The thought was that I should go get a bible, so I did, then I thought I should open it without looking and just stab my finger into it randomly, so I did.

Psalm 37
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
4. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.

My dad turned out to be fine, he had a pacemaker/defibulator installed under his skin so that if it happens again he'll be OK. I entered into a new phase of my life that week. I suppose the point of this story is, I suspect my dad would have had the heart attack either way and that the conversation was synchronistically arranged so that it would correspond with that somehow.. This can be accomplished because hyperdimensional demons are not limited by time in the same way we are. Anyways, this whole affair is one reason why I've studied this subject to the degree that I have, and why I'm here again, on a forum, saying shit that would piss off negative forces. I'm not saying this stuff to piss off demons I'm saying it because it's the right thing to say and because I do now Trust in the Lord although I generally refer to him as the 'Infinite Creator'. I have also raised my vibration to such a degree where I don't have to worry about falling into the same kind of spiral, and I know how to get out of it next time if this were to occur again somehow. Many people end up not pulling out of such a spiral and they end up in the psych ward. I couldn't have done it without your book of course Daniel. I just treated it as a "dark night" or A&P event and followed the instructions and eventually freed myself from that mess. My life is still a whirlpool of synchronicity, but in a very good way.

I often contemplate on this period in my life because it precipitated many other experiences and it taught me many things about myself and about the world and I definitely would not as strong a person today had I not had this experience. I have thought quite a lot about the nature of good and evil, or light and darkness and I've come to some basic conclusions about it:

Choice allows one to serve the Creator within oneself by exploiting others or by serving the Creator within others. The first path is identified as evil/darkness/negativity while the second path one associates with good/light/positivity. This sets up two branches of evolution – one that works against the laws of Creation and one that works with and for it. Both ultimately serve the Creator’s exploration of self, but only the positive path does so in a balanced manner. The tension between these two evolutionary paths enriches the grand experiment and provides the impetus for evolution by both sides.

As Goethe wrote, the dark force “wills forever evil yet does forever good.” The self-serving path, despite giving the individual personal power, also puts him in unwitting subservience to higher powers. The highest power of all is the Creator, which those of the dark hierarchy unwittingly serve by providing the grand experiment with the passive force necessary for evolution. They provide the darkness against which the light stands out. Lucifer is referred to as the “lightbringer” because through self-serving actions, manipulation, and infliction of pain, self-serving individuals unwittingly give others the opportunity to see the light.

With that said I don't believe that just because one can learn through being exposed to manipulation and pain that such is the best way to learn, far from it. This is the main reason why I choose to align myself with the light.

I like this, it resonates with me, we, dhamma, are in fact the movement of purity and love so why wouldn’t that apply here.
Anyway.. I tried it and some rapport seemed to develop some great vibes were sent and in fact seemed to leave, a little more by choice than usual, that being said... it was back ready to rumble soon after.

I will tell you an important secret. Daniel's book Mastering The Core Teachings of the Buddha is in secret the most advanced book available on how to slay demons, for real. The book is so powerful that he was forced to disguise it as an unusually hardcore dharma book so that demon controlled publishing house would let it slip thru the cracks


http://integrateddaniel.info/book/


http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/lee/demons.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/guruge/wheel419.html


https://anonfiles.com/file/10298895fa443f332396cde46f5ddaf2 (macro scale demons explored)


https://anonfiles.com/file/f7099a6ad81141d48991d5cafb86e00a


https://anonfiles.com/file/b42b1ed38f2cf80c0b694dd09fde56ef


https://anonfiles.com/file/a930d3475e9107cd90fced555b6a296b
https://anonfiles.com/file/72c0c4ac73182d505e87217af9725571
https://anonfiles.com/file/a2bf8ecc04b8334771e6a790d5c5a65b (learn to create shield elementals)

Cavalry is here, thanks dude. Not sure what you mean by daniel's book though.

Oh I just mean that intense buddhist practice as described in Daniel's book is the most sure fire way to undermines your demon's ability to do it's thing, and ultimately leads to complete freedom from all demons. In other words buddhism works as a supremely powerful demon fighting strategy. The farther your field of insight awareness spreads the less space a demon has in your mind. Demons can't stand samatha practice and metta is like garlic to a vampire, so if one just follows the instructions in Daniel's book to achieve awakening you automatically exorcize your demons at the same time. That's all I mean.

I would like to point out that the term "Demon" could be many things.
Infectious meme
Another being between incarnations that is very confused and refuses help and is attaching itself to a living person
A non human entity that is interfering with physical reality on behalf of someone in physical reality
A non human entity that is interfering with physical reality on it's own behalf
Your own energy creation/psychological process that you have given power to
etc

I agree with Daniel that compassionate approaches are best. I would look to his advice in dealing with the problem

These higher entities can deal with the problem much better with a more complete view of what is going on. In my experience the shaman who worked with me called upon her spirit helpers and then called in Archangel Micheal to take care of the problem.
I would also look at Tom Campbell's advice regarding this as he has had experience and has a very thorough model of the greater realities. Sorry for the acronyms. NPMR = nonphysical reality, PMR = physical reality


Hope this helps,
~D

Thanks for this post Dream Walker you've given me some new stuff to read on this issue that seems quite noteworthy. Allow me to also quote an author writing on this same subject from a Junglian perspective:

bizarre thread you guys have going here.

I will say that I have had a rather frightening experience of having something 'other' invade my body space while I was lucid dreaming. I did metta for a few moments in a lucid dream and I could feel the real body for a second and the metta coming out of the heart - then almost immediately something 'hungry' started to occupy my body from the top of my head, reaching down towards the metta I was generating. Needless to say I pushed it out with great force and found myself a bit freaked out lying there in bed. It did not feel malicious, really, just like something that was hungry for something. Could it have been 100% illusion? Sure - but it felt pretty real at the time and I was clearly in a lucid state where I was partially awake to the real body (seems to happen from time to time)... Or I could be fooling myself.. But hey just because of that I think I will choose not to do metta in a dream again.

@Bill

Demons: all they need is love

[I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself from writing it...lol]

"thou hast the two horns of the lamb, but thou speakest as the dragon."
-Dune by Frank Herbert

This excerpt is from the the book The-Secret-of-the-Flower-of-Life-Vol2.pdf
I was just reading it and found the advice exellent
The Secret of the Flower of Life Vol2 From page 387

I was reading Alan Chapman's website http://thebaptistshead.co.uk/ where he advises to call on the Holy Guardian Angel as a companion to help you on your meditation path and also develop magickal powers, I don't really care about the magickal powers but was intrigued by the idea of having a higher spirit as a guide, does this make sense? how can you know that what you are calling is what you are calling?

PG

very good question. but without having any experience i guess the answer is you can't. i am assuming you are fooling yourself everyday or even worse. so everything "you" evoke is just as adept in fooling someone as "you" are.

but i am sure someone with real experience will chime in and lighten us up.

PS: is there a spellcheck i do not see? if not, is it somehow possible to implement one? it is very annoying to google every third word not being sure how to spell it as a foreign speaker. thank you very much!

I don’t claim any personal experience in this field, but for those interested in reading more about compassionate approaches to possession, several authors on ’spirit releasement therapy’, include…
William (Bill) J Baldwin Ph.D (e.g Healing Lost Souls: includes possession by deceased humans, ‘dark-force’/demonic entities, and others);
Edith Fiore Ph. D (e.g The Unquiet Dead: re possession by deceased humans);
Louise Ireland-Frey M.D (e.g Freeing the Captives: includes possession by deceased humans, ‘dark-force’/demonic entities, and others).

Founder of the Spirit Release Foundation, psychiatrist Alan Sanderson has written of Spirit Attachment and Human Health; and presented The Case for Spirit Release to members of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. The SRF lists several books on the matter.

You might want to keep a hanky ready when reading about “Meeting the Dark Force Entities” in Healing Lost Souls, by Bill Baldwin…

As part of the spirit releasement therapy (described in the subsequent chapter), “the DFE is led to discover the three deceptions in reverse order”. The author describes a typical session as one in which the dark force entity is in due course transformed by choosing the Light within them.

While reading Dion Fortune's book Psychic Self-Defense, the following passage reminded me of your post,

"The method of dispatch used by the adept Z. was to pin the entity inside a magic circle, so that he could not get away, and then absorb it into himself through compassion. As he completed the operation, he fell over backwards unconscious. It was, in fact, the same method that I was instructed to use in dealing with my were-wolf, but it is a much more formidable task to absorb and transmute the projection of another person than to absorb one's own, and could only have been accomplished by an initiate of a very high grade, which Z. indubitably was."

I figured you might find it interesting.

So the demon realm is like the music industry. Makes sense.

IMO, you make YOUR own reality.  Spirits can't force anything on you as long as you remember your own power and don't give it away.  I don't think spirits can force anything on your that wasn't in you to start with.  I do think that some of the sneaky ones may try to take credit for things that they didnt' do though.  It actually makes sense that if we live on after death, then there must be some kind of conscious existence that does not require a body and not very far fetched to think those spirits can be communicated with.  I once saw something like that one night when I was super tired but had to take the diabetic dog out to pee in the middle of the night.  I was standing there kind of dozing on my feet as the dog chose a good spot to do the job, and then I heard this aweful ranting screaming and I looked over and there was this guy walking down the street and this girl was just screaming insanely in his ear and he was totally ignoring her.  I listened for a bit, glanced over there several times to see how close they were getting and then I glanced at my dog and glanced back and she was totally gone in an instant.  Only the man was still there walking.  I was confused at time and couldn't figure out how she disappeared so fast.  It was only the next day when I realized the man may not have been ignoring her, maybe he just never saw or heard her at all because she was a ghost.  Spooky!  ;-P
-Eva

Thanks Dan, that was useful corroboration for a similar event I've had.

I was being bothered by a low level demon for a while. I once saw my girlfriend's face turn into a fanged demon just as I was about to kiss her, it left me a bit rattled thinking that it was a sign I should break up with her. Thankfully she stayed around as I sorted my feelings, and luckily for me I never told her about this.

Then my neighbor's very friendly dog bit me hard on my left hand between my 2nd and 3rd metacarpals as I was playing with him. He looked like he had been startled; luckily I had no motor or neurological impairment despite the deep gash. I didn't tie any of this to the demon until later. I nevertheless went on a retreat as planned with my heavily bandaged hand.

During the retreat everytime I sat down to meditate I would see scary snake images at least once every session. A few days in I was lying on the grass when I saw through my closed eyes a black snake glide past my head. I also had a warning appear in my head that this was my chance to leave the retreat. I stayed on, and that same night I saw visions of the snake biting me near my hut the same time next day. 

Pertrurbed I decided to equip myself with a torch light everytime I stepped out. I also sat down in meditation during the next few hours and resolved on three occasions that day to forgive the snake that was about to bite me, and to ask for its well being and the well being of its family. The third time I meditated on it I saw an image of the snake disappearing; and as if in reaction an enraged winged red demon with the face of a bull was about to attack me from behind. In an instant Lord Shiva appeared and an icicle spear erupted in the demon's flight path to block him. The demon appeared to fall down vanquished. 

That was the end of it. I instantly knew I wouldn't be bothered again. I was then able to tie the demon to the dog bite, the girl friend morph and so on. I've never encountered snakes during meditation since.

I think asking an abstract or specific known-good higher being to protect you is better than taking on the demon yourself.

Hi,

   I had an experience of this nature. I was doing meditation on the breath, but I was a little sleepy and nodded off for a few minutes.  On coming back I heard multiple voices talking. Quitely at first, so I focused attention on them and they became louder.  It was very strange really. There was definitly several different voices but they proceded one after the other.  They all made short statements. The nature of the statements were all negative with ill will behind them.  I was composed enough to remain detached from the experience, which I just found fascinating.  This lasted for a few minutes, and I wondered if they were going to stop as they were getting louder and louder. In the end, it was my choice, I just changed the focus of my attention and they disapeared.

Well, so long as we are confessing weirdness. . . . 

People will write this off as a hallucination, but its ontological status will matter, ultimately, only to a science-minded materialist anyway. What matters to me is the effect it had on me. Once in my now very remote youth, I had a terrible substance-induced experience that involved seeing everything organic decay before my eyes. At the height of this episode, I went and looked in my bedroom mirror. Instantly I saw my head turn inside out via my mouth (my mouth actually split apart "at the seams"), and what emerged was a red demon-like face. Not my idea of the good time I had planned to have that day. Notably, I was also freezing and had every blanket in the house wrapped and my shivering body, even thought it was July, in Florida, and so hot.

My younger sister had this friend at the time who regularly shoplifted and manipulated people and situations. She ended up in prison years later, her life a shattered mess. She dressed with all the trappings of "dark" sort of heavy-metal attire. Despite her bad habits of manipulation, she had this attractive mischief and playfulness about her. She was fun and exciting to be near. She had nearly black sparkling eyes and a constant subtle smile that denoted mischief. Well, she happened to show up at our house at the height of this horror. I was lying on my bed, crying, wailing, and she came over and sat at the end of my bed and placed a hand gently on me. I looked at her, and her eyes were glittering with goodness and golden light. She said to me, "Get up and put your bathing suit on." I asked why, and she said, "Because I know how to stop what you are seeing."

I was freezing, but I put on my bikini and she drove me out to a beautiful, pristine little sinkhole out in the north Florida backwoods. The hole was deep, and standing on the edge was like standing on a 20-foot-high cliff. She stood behind me as I stood on the edge and said to me, "As soon as you plunge beneath the surface of that water, you will be clean, you will be free, you will be wholly just yourself." I jumped deep down into the ice-cold water, and it was exactly as she said. It was over, and when I emerged I was laughing with joy, completely sober and demon-free . . . although a month later, it was not completely over, but I won't go into that here. . . . 

A few years later I had this interesting, and this time peaceful, experience. I was driving toward downtown in that same North Florida town, and suddenly I heard a low male voice coming from the back seat. He was murmuring something to me for about 5 minutes. I tilted and looked in my rearview mirror but saw no one in the back seat (just checking!). Anyway, I decided to just go with what was happening since this voice was clearly benevolent. I kept driving and strained to understand the words. I didn't understand the words, but the male voice was clearly imparting instructions to me, in a low-key way. After the voice finished whatever he had to convey to me, it was gone, and I had the feeling that something crucial had been transmitted to me. I was a Christian at the time and seriously wondered if the backseat driver were Jesus.

In the decades since this happening, I've discussed it many times with my husband, who is a science-minded materialist-empiricist skeptic, and he always says, "Oh, yeah, the Mumbler. I'm visited by him at times." I ask, "Who is he?" My husband says, "probably you!" I ask, "When he visits, does he seem to be giving instructions?" My husband says, "Yes, exactly that. It is a teaching session without discernable words." My spouse was a big fan of Carlos Castaneda books back in the 1980s, and sometimes his answer as to who this voice may be is, "Mescalito, of course!"

Have any of you every heard the Mumbler?

Here is a random Google on Mescalito, which I've never looked up before. I see why my husband identifies our Mumbler as this spirit.

The line between hallucinations and reality may not be as clear cut as many would like to believe.  Are dreams hallucinations?  What is the difference between asleep and awake?  If you see something others can't, is it always a hallucination?  What about people who can see into the ultraviolet color range? (yes some can do this).  In the end, it's more about who can function well in society and who can't than about what you can and can't see. 

As for the mumbler person, it's fairly common in shamanic journeying and dream travel to have incidents where you run into someone that is talking to you but you but can't quite make out what they are saying.  Either they seem to mumble, are too far away, or there is some loud background noise.  If you play with your consciousness a bit, you can sometimes get the message to become more clear.  Sometimes parts of it can be heard and other parts not.  Some of us guess that it may be because your conscious mindset at that time is not ready to fully hear the message.  IME, a person simply will not hear or notice information that he/she is not ready for, even if it's written 10 stories high on the empire state building and obvious to almost everyone else, the conscious mind will block the perception.  IME, the mental block generally is an emotional thing or sometimes a situation of having conflicting expectations or desires.  Anyway, that's how my conscious mind perceives of it, beyond that, what is really happening at potentially subconscious levels, perhaps having to do with how thoughts and ideas are generated in the first place, is hard to say. But the mumbling phenomenon does seem to be an archetype that shows up often and probably is symbol of some kind of process one might guess..

As for Castaneda, there is a lot of debate about the full veracity of the book coming from a college student whose thesis was almost due and then suddenly he came up with this story.  Granted it's a good read and the parts about drug use have a richness and depth that make me feel like he spoke from experience in that regard, but if you've even been out in south western deserts in summer or if you know much about plants like datura and mescal, lets just say you may find yourself very doubtful about some of that stuff.  Datura and mescal have very pretty flowers and you can easily buy the plants down at the local garden stores in this area.. 
-Eva   

Eva:

Yeah, my husband, who, as I say, is quite rigidly science-minded, always took the Castaneda books as pure fiction.

I've never experienced the mumbler in waking reality, but many of my meditation sits will bubble with that kind of experience. Basically filled with "proto-thoughts" which aren't necessarily "my" proto-thoughts. It can be weird if you put too much stock in them, but I tend to think of it as the mind just kind of off-gassing. Still the interesting thing is they make a great meditation object, just watch/listen to the proto-thoughts. It's a bit like dreaming, but opening the eyes and changing the object of attention will break their flow. In general, these domains hit me strongest on retreat at night, so I bet it has some links to mental pathways associated with the dream/daydream state... although there is something about how meditation starts working on preconscious/unconscious domains, which is kind felt, kinda inferred. Somewhat hard to describe, but I bet it's common. 

X X , that's interesting. I've never been on a retreat. Part of me has been kind of scared of retreats. I tend not to like feeling, um, trapped (don't like to fly in airplanes, don't like to drive on highways with no "out"). 

The low/deep male voice I heard sounded like an actual, external voice, coming from someone riding in the back seat of my car. And the tone was instructional. It was definitely weird. I find it weird that my husband and I have experienced so many of the same weird occurrences. 

I guess if I'm going to wonder or worry, it ought to be over that red evil demon in my head. 

[Edited for typos.]

This is a kind of weird hypothetical question, but what do you do if you ARE a demon that's possessing someone, and uh

you realize you've kind of forgotten the point of it, but you already ate their soul or whatever and now you're just kind of wandering around, poking holes in unattended realm boundaries with a stick because you can't find anyone to talk to because everyone smart enough to understand you is like hp lovecraft level terrified?

(this is directed at hermetically sealed, mainly)

my email is SUZZZZZY@metafable.com