Sub-personalities, Invisible Forces, Spirit Attachments, And An Alternative Perspective On Mental Illness

By Bernhard Guenther, June 27, 2024

Chapters:

• Introduction
• Ask yourself, who do you “think” YOU are?
• People are Machines
• Suggestions & Influences from the Outside
• Collective Suggestions
• Suggestions from People Surrounding You
• Influences and Suggestions from Conscious Non-Terrestrial Beings, Spirits, and Entities (Occult Forces)
  • Claim 1: There is no proof that spirits and occult forces exist
  • Claim 2: These beings and entities are our own creation, imagination, or shadow parts of ourselves
• How to differentiate what is “mine” and what may be coming from the outside in the form of an Occult Interference?
• There is no such thing as “Mental Illness”
• The Detrimental Spiritual Effects of Psychiatric Drugs
• Spiritual Crisis and Initiation instead of “Psychosis”
• Some Human Beings are not Human
• Important Considerations

Introduction

Our view of ourselves, others, and the world as a whole is shaped, for the most part, by the assumption that we are an independent person,  separate from everything and everyone else. Many also tend to assume that their mind is located in the brain, enclosed like a fortress, existing independently of other people’s minds and the external physical world.

We tend to assume that everyone has their own “mind bubble,” that we alone are the creators of our thoughts and that they are generated from signals between neurons inside the brain.

The idea that the brain is the organ of the mind is based on a materialistic view of reality and ourselves as perceived by our five senses. We live in a materialistic age. The opinions of mainstream consensus science and medicine are based on this physical perception of reality.

Humanity was not always disconnected from the spiritual world as we are now. Still, the split between spirituality and materialism has exponentially increased since the dawn of the “Age of Enlightenment” (also called the Age of Reason) in the 17th century.

Humans have become increasingly “mentalized,” not only disconnected from the spiritual realms but also dissociated and disconnected from their bodies, living exclusively in the head. The dawn of transhumanism/A.I. and the exponential increase of technology keep humans even more externally focused and stuck in their heads, to the detriment of their inner lives and soul beings.

The sense of an independent identity and persona, separate and impenetrable from everything else, is the greatest illusion and spell we’ve fallen under. The truth is our mind is porous and permeable. We are transducers of cosmic, universal, and environmental forces, and we are influenced by conscious non-physical (spiritual) beings of the higher and lower realms, elementals (nature spirits), and the unseen forces of nature.

The porosity of the mind (porosity: the state or quality of being permeable) has been known to all occult esoteric traditions:

“We live in the midst of invisible forces whose effects alone we perceive. We move among invisible forms whose actions we very often do not perceive at all, though we may be profoundly affected by them.

We need to realize that human consciousness is not a closed vessel. Cosmic forces circulate through it all the time, like seawater through a living sponge.

Whatever emotional state may arise within us is reinforced from the outside. The subjective self only has the kindling; the Cosmos supplies the fuel. Once the fire is started, the cosmic forces of the appropriate type will stoke it.”

– Dion Fortune, Psychic Self Defense

Ask yourself, who do you “think” YOU are?

Before we dive deeper into the different types of “suggestions we receive from the outside” and other conscious forces that can influence [and manipulate] us from non-physical realms THROUGH our minds, let’s look once again at the ultimate question: “Who am I”? [I have discussed it HERE before]

This is the ultimate question to “Know Thyself.” It sets the foundation for the Great Work.

The more sincere you are with this internal inquiry via psycho-spiritual inner work, self-reflection, and meditation (which is an ongoing process and not just brief contemplation), the more you will realize that many of “your” thoughts, feelings, desires, wants, needs, etc., are not your own but have been conditioned or inserted “externally” via “suggestions” which you have accepted (unconsciously) as your own.

The person who you think you are (who you refer to as “I” or “me” and identify with) – meaning, your persona –  is made up of or influenced by these unconscious programs (social/cultural conditioning), memories, biological drives, wounds, traumas, fragments, and experiences (“good” and “bad”); accumulated over lifetimes based on the universal law of cause and effect (karma). (The idea of rebirth and multiple lifetimes is also shunned and laughed at by the consensus science establishment.)

“In a certain sense, we are nothing but a complex mass of mental, nervous and physical habits held together by a few ruling ideas, desires and associations – an amalgam of many small self-repeating forces with a few major vibrations.”

– Sri Aurobindo

As I’ve written in “The Most Important Realization On The Path Towards Awakening,” :

[…]I’ve come face to face with the “terror of the situation” [Gurdjieff] within myself many times. It is truly terrifying to see and experience it as a witness looking at “me” [my personality] and observing all the mechanical behaviors, feelings, actions, thoughts, desires, and impulses that are entirely automated and happen without any “free will” involved – all of which the personality identifies with as its “own.” It is even more terrifying to witness that none of that is my “true self.” I realized that I was living a “lie.”[…] 

Once you embark on this inner journey and reach a higher level of self-awareness and self-observation [establishing the impartial witness within], you will also realize that you have different personality parts within yourself that most often contradict themselves.

Many people even admit to these different parts when they say, “A part of me wants/thinks this…, but another part wants/thinks this…”. They don’t realize that they are referring to the different subpersonalities living within them, which they mistake for their true self.

There are many different subpersonalities in Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS); for example, they refer to wounded inner child parts as “exiles,” shut off from conscious awareness. These inner child parts tend to be “stuck in time” at a particular developmental age due to trauma from childhood wounding.

Everyone has these wounded parts because the ultimate “perfect childhood with perfect parents” doesn’t exist. Each part has its own personality, voice, thoughts, needs, and desires, and they affect and influence you more than you are consciously aware of.

All these parts also seem very contradictory, and if you are somewhat conscious and have the capacity for self-reflection, you may start to question who the real “I” or “you” is.

“Man has no individual “I”. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small “i”s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, “i”. And each time his i is different. just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man’s name is legion.”

–  G.I. Gurdjieff

What Gurdjieff described 100 years ago is known and taught in all esoteric spiritual traditions. The goal of esoteric work is to establish and connect with the real “I,” your true self/essence hidden behind many layers and parts of the false personality.

From an IFS (Internal Family Systems) perspective, these subpersonalities/parts and exiles often blend with the conscious surface personality and override our ability to experience the true Self. In fact, most people live in a state where they are blended and identified with these “parts,” which they mistake for the true Self, while their true soul Essence gets shoved deep into the cellar of the unconscious.

Many grown adults can act like children when their wounded parts take over. If you are honest, you will see it in yourself as well. We all can easily mistake these parts for the true self at any moment when a trigger or unconscious trauma response activates various parts to come out with all their various defense mechanisms.

People are Machines

For the most part, people’s various parts and inner child parts argue, debate, and communicate with each other like mechanical automatons; hardly ever does the essence of the true self appear in the average human being, where they can then connect to others from Self to Self. That is why Gurdjieff said that people “are machines” who don’t know themselves and “dream to be awake but are deep asleep.”

“People are machines. Machines have to be blind and unconscious, they cannot be otherwise, and all their actions have to correspond to their nature.‘Progress’ and ‘civilization,’ in the real meaning of these words, can appear only as the result of conscious efforts. They cannot appear as the result of unconscious mechanical actions.

And what conscious effort can there be in machines? And if one machine is unconscious, then a hundred machines are unconscious, and so are a thousand machines, or a hundred thousand, or a million. And the unconscious activity of a million machines must necessarily result in destruction and extermination. It is precisely in unconscious involuntary manifestations that all evil lies.

In speaking of evolution it is necessary to understand from the outset that no mechanical evolution is possible. The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness. And ‘consciousness’ cannot evolve unconsciously. The evolution of man is the evolution of his will, and ‘will’ cannot evolve involuntarily. The evolution, of man is the evolution of his power of doing, and ‘doing’ cannot be the result of things which ‘happen.’

People do not know what [a human is]. They have to do with a very complex machine, far more complex than a railway engine, a motorcar, or an aeroplane—but they know nothing, or almost nothing, about the construction, working, or possibilities of this machine; they do not even understand its simplest functions, because they do not know the purpose of these functions.

[…]You often think in a very naive way You already think you can “do”. To get rid of this conviction is more difficult than anything else for a (hu)man. You do not understand all the complexity of your organization and you do not realize that every effort, in addition to the results desired, even if it gives these, gives thousands of unexpected and often undesirable results, and the chief thing that you forget is that you are not beginning from the beginning with a nice clean, new machine.

There stand behind you many years of indulgence in every kind of weakness, of shutting your eyes to your own errors, of striving to avoid all unpleasant truths, of constant lying to yourselves, of self-justification, of blaming others, and so on, and so on. All this cannot help affecting the machine.

The machine is dirty, in places it is rusty, and in some places artificial appliances have been formed, the necessity for which has been created by its own wrong way of working. These artificial appliances will now interfere very much with all your good intentions. They are called ‘buffers.‘”

– G.I. Gurdjieff, [from “In Search of the Miraculous” by P.D. Ouspensky]

Gurdjieff’s “buffers” in his analogy of humans as “machines” are our beliefs, excuses, distractions, addictions, rationalizations, identifications, etc., and other protective personality parts [called “managers” and “firefighters” in IFS], which act as defense mechanisms to cover up the true self/essence and protect the wounded exile parts.

Buffers keep people from facing all that they have suppressed within themselves and experiencing the death of the false personality, which is necessary for the true self to emerge.

These buffers and parts are not bad in themselves. They play their role and function from a psychological perspective, which becomes apparent when working with them consciously. The problems come when they take on extreme roles and overtake the whole being when we identify with them and mistake those personality parts/buffers for the true self.

The foundation of these parts and exiles are unconscious core beliefs driving the person’s whole life as a result of trauma and early childhood wounding, popular beliefs such as: “I’m not good enough, I don’t deserve it, I don’t trust myself, I don’t trust life, I’m flawed, I’m invisible, no one loves me, when I ‘m authentic I’ll be rejected, I don’t want to be here,” etc.

Since it would be too terrifying to bring these suppressed parts to consciousness and feel all the pain they are carrying, people create “buffers,” as well as external coping mechanisms, and try to fill the hole they have inside with external trappings, relationships, experiences, distractions, addictions, etc. – anything to avoid feeling and facing that core belief.

The shadow of this suppressed pain and their unconscious negative emotions (shame, guilt, grief, self-disgust) is then most often projected externally on others via hate, anger, jealousy, envy, vengeance, etc, creating “psychic epidemics” that result in wars and even cataclysms on a collective level, as Carl G. Jung talked about.

“The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of physical or biological order but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree, we are threatened by wars and revolutions, which are nothing other than psychic epidemics.

Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche.”

– Carl Jung

This is also what Gurdjieff meant when he said, “It is precisely in unconscious, involuntary manifestations that all evil lies.”

Disconnected from essence and their true selves, acting like machines, people become easily programmable and conditioned by the latest hype, trends, outrage, propaganda, and artificial social engineering. They quickly identify with labels, a side, ideology, belief, etc.

Most often, they take on a new spiritual identity (Christian, star seed, lightworker, etc.), engage in spiritual bypassing, or use activism or anything else to avoid facing themselves. Getting trapped in victim/blame consciousness is also very common. As Carl Jung said:

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.”

– Carl Jung

All of this happens unconsciously if the person is not self-aware and engaged in sincere inner work to know the difference between these parts and the true Self.

Suggestions & Influences from the Outside

Beyond our wounded inner parts and exiles, we are also influenced by the vibrations, thoughts, and energies of the environmental consciousness, which consists of:

• • The place and time you were born (looking at your astrological natal chart can give insights into that)
  • The influence of your parents, family, and people you surrounded yourself with (not just their conscious influence but what you picked up unconsciously through their unexpressed thoughts, desires, beliefs, and emotions)
  • The shadow and unprocessed trauma of your family and ancestral line
  • The energetic imprint and history of any place (city, country) you have lived and currently live
  • The constant stream of thoughts and feelings of people you’re surrounded by
  • The thought creations (elementals) of others you mistake as your own
  • Group hive-mind entities (egregores)
  • Your own [most often contradictory] thought creations that have become living thought entities feeding on you and enticing you into compulsory behavior and self-sabotage
  • The pronounced influence of media, education, society, and culture

All of these influences alone can create specific drives and thoughts, influencing you with needs and desires that are not your own but that you mistake as your own and even base your life decisions on. These influences can affect the work and life partner you choose, all without you ever questioning where your desires actually come from and who you truly are.

An observation I’ve made based on having worked with thousands of people over the past 15 years: The number #1 reason for their suffering & unhappiness was that they pursued desires & goals that were not their own but were based on social, cultural, parental conditioning, or trauma responses.

Hence, when someone asks me, “How can I fulfill my dream of [insert goal]?” or “How can I manifest [insert goal/desire]?” I usually reply first with,

• • Is that what you REALLY want?
  • Have you ever examined where your desires and aims are coming from?
  • Are they aligned with your true self, or could they possibly be conditioned into you?
  • Are there suggestions/thoughts you may mistake as your own?
  • Could they be trauma responses, trying to fill an empty hole within?

Answering these questions involves deep self-inquiry and can not be answered in a short contemplation. In fact, going deeper with these questions already requires a consistent engagement in psycho-spiritual work.

As long as you live on the surface consciousness of the personality, you have no true free will or true freedom.

The task of the Great Work toward awakening and embodying the true Self is to rid yourself of these accumulated suggestions or, at the very least, become conscious of all the different parts within you and where they originate from so you can consciously choose what to keep and what to reject.

There certainly can be helpful influences. I’m not suggesting that all conditioning is bad, but it can limit you and, at worst, vector you off your deeper soul purpose for being here. The goal is to establish “pure will” that is not part of past and unconscious programming and conditioning but aligned with Divine will expressing itself uniquely through you.

The influences we receive from the “outside” through the porosity of the mind can be categorized into three major areas:

1. Collective suggestions
2. Suggestions from other people
3. Suggestions from conscious non-terrestrial beings and entities (occult forces)

The first two can be included in the influences of “environmental consciousness.” The third one goes deeper into the hyperdimensional aspect of reality and other beings interacting with and through us.

The Mother Mira Alfassa describes these three types of suggestions from the outside:

“Without knowing it or at times even knowing it, you are moved by influences coming from outside which enter in without your even being aware of them and arouse in you what you call the “will” that a certain thing may happen or another may not, etc.

Naturally, these influences are of very diverse kinds. In very few people, and even in the very best at very rare moments in life, does the will of the being express that deep inner, higher truth.

What you call yourself, the individual being enclosed within the limits of your present consciousness is constantly penetrated by vibrations of this kind, coming from outside and very often presenting themselves in the form of suggestions, in the sense that, apart from a few exceptions, the action takes place first in the mental field, then becomes vital, then physical.

Most of the time, these suggestions enter you without your being in the least conscious of them; they go in, awaken some sort of response in you, then spring up in your consciousness as though they were your own thought, your own will, your own impulse; but it is only because you are unconscious of the process of their penetration.

These suggestions are very numerous, manifold, varied, with natures which are very, very different from each other, but they may be classified into three principal orders….“

Collective Suggestions

“…First – and they are hardly perceptible to the ordinary consciousness; they become perceptible only to those who have already reflected much, observed much, and deeply studied their own being – they are what could be called collective suggestions.

When a being is born upon earth, he is inevitably born in a certain country and a certain environment. Due to his physical parents, he is born in a set of social, cultural, national, and sometimes religious circumstances, a set of habits of thinking, understanding, feeling, conceiving, all sorts of constructions which are at first mental, then become vital habits and finally material modes of being. You are born into it.

Naturally, when you are very young, you are altogether unaware of it, but it acts on your formation – that formation, that slow formation through hours and hours, through days and days, experiences added to experiences, which gradually builds up a consciousness.

You are underneath it as beneath a bell glass. It is a kind of construction that covers and, in a way, protects you but, in other ways, limits you considerably. All this you absorb without even being aware of it, and this forms the subconscious basis of your own construction.

This subconscious basis will act on you throughout your life if you do not take care to free yourself from it.

And to free yourself from it, you must, first of all, become aware of it; and the first step is the most difficult, for this formation was so subtle, it was made when you were not yet a conscious being when you had just fallen altogether dazed from another world into this one, and it all happened without your participating in the least in it.

Therefore, it does not even occur to you that there could be something to know there and still less something you must get rid of. And it is quite remarkable that when, for some reason or other, you do become aware of the hold of this collective suggestion, you realize at the same time that very assiduous and prolonged labor is necessary in order to get rid of it. But the problem does not end there….”

Suggestions from People Surrounding You

“…You live surrounded by people (family, friends, strangers in dense cities). These people themselves have desires, stray wishes, and impulses, which are expressed through them and have all kinds of causes but take in their consciousness an individual form.

These formations, according to each one’s capacity of thought and the strength of his vitality, are more or less powerful, but they have their own little strength, which is usually much the same as yours, and so what those around you want, desire, hope or expect from you enters in this way in the form of suggestions very rarely expressed, but which you absorb without resistance and which suddenly awaken within you a similar desire, a similar will, a similar impulse….”

If you want to learn more about the influences of “environmental consciousness” (people, places), listen to our podcast Environmental Consciousness and How Places Affect Us, where we discuss this topic in more depth.

Influences and Suggestions from Conscious Non-Terrestrial Beings, Spirits, and Entities (Occult Forces)

At the same time, as I’ve written about extensively over the years and summarized in a previous article, we are also influenced by the forces of nature and conscious forces from the higher and lower realms. We are subjected to the suggestions of occult hostile forces of the lower astral world, but we also receive insights, creative and inspirational impulses from spirit guides, and divine forces, which also manifest as thoughts.

We all receive a mixture of these impressions/thoughts from the whole range of lower to higher realms, depending on many factors. Based on our level of Being [level of soul embodiment and conscious access to Self], our intentions and aspirations in life can either be guided by the lower nature or aligned with our higher nature. The direction we bring awareness toward determines which realm we tune into.

As long as we live on the surface of the ego-personality with all its fragmented parts, most of our actions will be unconscious and mechanical, as Gurdjjef discussed.

The more soul-embodied you are, living from the true Self, the more free will you have and the more access you have to Divine forces and guidance.

Most people are influenced by forces of the lower nature who take advantage of people’s unconsciousness, conditioning, unconscious trauma, shadow, and personality identifications. They also tag into exiled parts of ourselves. The Mother continues:

“…If that were the end of the problem, one could yet come out of the mess; but there is a complication. This terrestrial world, this human world, is constantly invaded by the forces of the neighboring world, that is, of the vital [hyper-dimenional] world, the subtler region beyond the fourfold earth-atmosphere, and this vital world which is not under the influence of the psychic forces or the psychic consciousness is essentially a world of ill-will, of disorder, disequilibrium, indeed of all the most anti-divine things one could imagine.

This vital world is constantly penetrating the physical world, and being much more subtle than the physical, it is very often quite imperceptible except to a few rare individuals.

There are entities, beings, wills, and various kinds of individualities in that world who have all kinds of intentions and make use of every opportunity either to amuse themselves if they are small beings or to do harm and create disorder if they are beings with a greater capacity.

And the latter have a very considerable power of penetration and suggestion, and wherever there is the least opening, the least affinity, they rush in, for it is a game which delights them.

Besides, they are very thirsty or hungry for certain human vital vibrations, which are a rare dish they love to feed upon. So their game lies in exciting pernicious movements in man so that man may emanate these forces and they may be able to feed on them just as they please.

All movements of anger, violence, passion, desire, all these things that make you abruptly throw off certain energies from yourself, project them from yourself, are exactly what these entities of the vital world like best, for, as I said, they enjoy them like a sumptuous dish.

Now, their tactics are simple: they send you a little suggestion, a little impulse, a small vibration that enters deep into you and, through contagion or sympathy, awakens in you the vibration necessary to make you throw off the force they want to absorb.

If you are in the least sincere and observe yourself attentively, you become aware that it is something in the being which is responding to an influence, an impulse, a suggestion, even something at times very concrete, which enters and produces similar vibrations in the being.”

– The Mother Mira Alfassa

Many people are very skeptical about the idea that spiritual beings exist in non-physical realms, affecting and influencing us. The two most common arguments people have brought up to me are:

1. 1. There is no proof they exist, and it can’t be proven
   2. These beings and entities are our own creation and imagination, shadow parts and aspects of ourselves and our “psyche”

Let me briefly address both of them.

Claim 1: There is no proof that spirits and occult forces exist

Modern civilization does not acknowledge the recognition of spiritual reality and conscious beings inhabiting it because materialistic science cannot prove it. As long as humans operate from the level of mind-consciousness and five-sensory perception, it cannot be proven via physical instruments in the current state of science and the limitations of the five-sensory mind apparatus.

It’s as simple as that.

As I addressed at the beginning of this article, consensus materialist science operates on a false foundation/assumption. What is left out of the equation is humans’ “level of being/awareness” and activating the “spiritual organs of perception” [Rudolf Steiner] within that would allow us to perceive these non-physical realms and beings directly via sixth-sense psychic cognition, which doesn’t have to be necessarily clairvoyant/visual but can be clairsentient and higher intuitive perceptions.

Activating the “higher organs” of spiritual perception is essentially a byproduct of the Great Work to spiritualize the being and bring it into union with the Divine, realizing our spiritual nature.

As long as humans operate from the surface of ego-personality, they won’t be able to perceive these forces directly.

According to esoteric science, attuning to the spiritual realms and developing (or activating) organs of higher perception requires deep inner work. Some people may already be naturally more attuned to these realms, have psychic gifts, and perceive these forces easily (for better or worse.)

However, on a collective level, in our current state of evolution, we are still in kindergarten and far away from developing and embodying higher perception en masse [this may change in future incarnations]. In fact, we are currently being distracted by external technology to the detriment of developing our “inner technology” – our organs of spiritual perception.

“Our difficulty in discovering the [hidden] forces of life is due to the nature of the normal or ordinary consciousness of the human being at the present point of his evolution. For the ordinary consciousness, which is mental, can apprehend things only through the sensorium, that is, the sensory and intellectual apparatus.

Consequently, our knowledge of forces is indirect and limited to what the senses can perceive of the outward effects of forces and the intellectual inferences that can be drawn from such sensory perceptions.

It is when the consciousness develops and becomes more subtle that it comes into a more direct contact with the inner reality of things and gains an awareness of forces.”

– A. S. Dalal

It is about developing extra-sensory perception (“yogic consciousness,” as Sri Aurobindo talked about, which is part of the awakening/embodiment process via esoteric self-work) – which will also help you to separate external suggestions from your internal guidance.

This higher-level embodied consciousness will also help us understand the difference between the true self and aspects of the personality.

The mind/intellect (and our limited five-sense ordinary consciousness) will never be able to perceive these forces and will, in fact, often deny their existence. Anyone looking for “proof” (from a five-sensory scientific perspective) will never find it.

Sri Aurobindo elaborates:

“Modern thought is aware of no invisible forces other than those revealed or constructed by Science; it does not believe that Nature is capable of creating any other beings than those around us in the physical world, men, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, germs and animalculae.

But if there are invisible cosmic forces physical in their nature that act upon the body of inanimate objects, there is no valid reason why there should not be invisible cosmic forces mental and vital in their nature that act upon his mind and his life-force.

Whatever reality or mythical unreality we may attach to the traditional figures of past human belief or experience, they would then be representations of things that are true in principle. In that case, the first source of good and evil would be not in terrestrial life or in the evolution from the Inconscience, but in Life itself. Their source would be supraphysical [non-physical], and they would be reflected here from a larger supraphysical Nature.

This is certain that when we go back into ourselves very deep away from the surface appearance, we find that the mind, heart, and sensational being of man are moved by forces not under his own control and that he can become an instrument in the hands of Energies of a cosmic, character without knowing the origin of his actions.

It is by stepping back from the physical surface into his inner being and subliminal consciousness that he becomes directly aware of them and is able to know directly and! deal with their action upon him. He grows aware of interventions which seek to lead him in one direction or another, of suggestions and impulsions which had disguised themselves as original movements of his own mind and against which he had to battle.

He can realize that he is not a  conscious creature inexplicably produced in an unconscious world out of a seed of inconscient Matter and moving about in an obscure self-ignorance, but an embodied soul through whose action cosmic Nature is seeking to fulfill itself, the living ground of a vast debate between a darkness of Ignorance out of which it emerges here and a light of Knowledge which is growing upwards towards an unforeseen termination.

The Forces which seek to move him, and among them the Forces of good and evil, present themselves as powers of universal Nature; but they seem to belong not only to the physical universe but to planes of Life and Mind beyond it.”

– Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine

The critical point in Sri Aurobindo’s words is that human beings are “THE LIVING GROUND of a vast debate between a darkness of Ignorance out of which it emerges here and a light of Knowledge which is growing upwards towards an unforeseen termination.“

In other words, we are transducers for these cosmic forces, and the spiritual battle of Dark vs Light is THROUGH us.

Claim 2: These beings and entities are our own creation, imagination, or shadow parts of ourselves

This claim is true and false at the same time. Yes, we can mistake our own thought-form creations, unconscious shadow aspects, or even exiled parts of ourselves for “entities.”

However, not everything we’re dealing with and uncovering within ourselves is our shadow self or an exiled part that needs to be integrated. It could also be hyperdimensional interference from other beings, thought projections from other people, or your own thought creations coming back around (occult law of rebound).

They can be suggestions of the environmental consciousness or stuff we have taken on energetically from others (especially through sex). It is essential to discern what is “mine” and what is not.

The idea that these occult forces and entities are just part of our disowned shadow is a distortion of Jungian shadow work. Carl Jung talked about the difference between the personal shadow that needs to be integrated and powerful archetypal forces, which are NOT parts of ourselves but have access to our psyche and should never be integrated.

“Jung believed that when we stop talking about the demons, we become more vulnerable to their destructive force. So, I want to suggest that there is more to this archetype of spiritual warfare than simply integrating your personal shadow or merely learning how to love those denied parts of your personality.



It involves learning how to tell the difference between the personal shadow that comes from your individual experience and the archetypal forces which have access to your psyche from within, that you can never integrate, and had better not try to integrate.“

– Robert L. Moore, “Facing the Dragon: Confronting Personal and Spiritual Grandiosity”

The vast majority of entity interferences are very subtle, nuanced, and often hardly distinguishable from your own childhood trauma, triggers, shadow projections, and fragmented exiles.

For example, in his work on “Spirit Releasement Therapy,” Dr. William Baldwin emphasized the importance of knowing your psyche and yourself very well, including all the different parts of your personality, such as the exiles of the inner child, inner critic, inner manager, and so on, similar to Internal Family Systems (IFS), before assuming that you may be dealing with an entity or an earthbound spirit attachment.

How to differentiate what is “mine” and what may be coming from the outside in the form of an Occult Interference?

In other words, what do we need to integrate as part of our shadow or split off parts of ourselves due to trauma and childhood wounding – like a soul retrieval – and what do we need to reject as not parts of ourselves?

First of all, it is very important to understand and acknowledge that it takes a higher level of Being and soul embodiment [self-awareness] —connected to your true Self/essence—with a still mind, an objective inner witness, and grounded psychic sensitivity—and most importantly, an in-depth understanding of your own psyche and mind to discern what is what. In other words, Know Thyself! 

Key point #1: As long as you are not in Self, you won’t be able to tell the difference.

Achieving this already takes advanced inner work. I’ve seen many people overestimate their level of being and awareness, rush into all kinds of assumptions about having entities without being grounded in Self, and become very fixated on this topic without doing the groundwork on a psychological and embodiment level.

The more connected you are to your true Self and Essence, the more naturally clearer your discernment will become in the process of sincere psycho-spiritual work and soul embodiment.

Key point #2: Unless you are absolutely 100% certain that you may be dealing with an entity or external occult force, treat it as if it is a wounded part of yourself 

One of the worst things you can do is reject a part of yourself you mistook as an “entity.” These wounded and defensive parts can also be very hostile and angry, especially if there is a history of suppressed anger and severe childhood trauma. Beneath anger is usually unconscious pain, shame, grief, and guilt, which must also be processed.

If you mistake a very wounded/exiled/shadow part of yourself for an “entity” and attempt to reject or, even worse, forcefully exorcise it, it will create more severe psychological issues and soul fragmentation that will be harder to retrieve. People offering all kinds of questionable “entity removal” modalities are doing much damage that way.

Key point #3: Entities and non-terrestrial beings need an entry point WITHIN you to be able to come in

Unconscious blind spots, Trauma, childhood wounding, unintegrated shadow aspects, giving in to the temptations of the lower nature: lust, greed, power over others, mechanical reactive behavior, ego blindspots, pride, arrogance, hate, rage, self-importance but also self-pity, victimizing yourself, blaming others – all serve as entry points for other forces to come in through the cracks of your un-integrated being, They can also attach to wounded parts of yourself.

Removing an entity is not enough, or it will come back tenfold if the original “entry point” has not been closed, healed, or integrated.

For a more comprehensive list of entry points, read my article “The Hidden Spiritual War Through Us” and listen to our podcast episode #119, “Beginner’s Guide To Occult Forces.”

Key point #4: The psycho-spiritual inner work is imperative in all cases, dealing with occult forces or not

Ultimately, consistently engaging in sincere inner work to bring forth your true Self/soul is the best clearing and protection strategy. The more you live from Self as the ground of your being, the less these forces affect you. Anything else is just symptom management and is temporary.

The more you integrate your shadow and exiled parts of yourself (due to trauma), the less any entity can get a hold of you or interfere with you – the less you are also influenced by any malevolent suggestion from the outside as you start to live from and are grounded within your soul being.

As a result, you will have more access to a creative life force and more free will as you become more aligned with Divine Will, divine guidance of a higher nature, and divine forces.

There is no such thing as “Mental Illness”

Considering everything we have explored so far about the porosity of the mind, the different personality parts within a human being, and the suggestions of occult forces and environmental consciousness, what really is “mental illness”—do we accept the materialistic explanation that this means it is something biological and there is something “wrong” with the brain? What are “hallucinations,” “hearing voices,” and “psychosis”?

The term “mental illness” was invented by the materialistic medicine establishment in the modern West, which led the Pharmaceutical Industry to medicalize complicated feelings like sadness, grief, shame, melancholy, anxiety, and depression. It started a multi-billion dollar industry and gave people pills to make them feel “better,” which often means more numb and dissociated.

The pharmaceutical approach doesn’t do much other than temporarily suppress the feelings, which eventually need to be processed emotionally and spiritually. In fact, this drug-induced suppression often makes things worse in the long run and only enriches Big Pharma.

These so-called “negative” emotional and mental states are symptoms [not causes] related to suppressed unconscious trauma (including intergenerational trauma and past life trauma) or childhood wounds and exiled parts that need to be processed and integrated internally.

There can also be normal ups and downs in everyday life that we all must get accustomed to experiencing. We are not robots; we are human beings with emotional waves like the tides of the sea. Some people are also more sensitive than others to places and environmental energies and can more easily pick up emotional states from other people and crowds.

Mental and emotional suffering, depression, and anxiety can also be a “cry of the soul” as modern humans try to adjust to a world and live in a society where pathologies have become normalized. It can also be a symptom of the loss of meaning in our current culture, as we become increasingly disconnected from spirit, nature, and our own soul being and authentic Self.

But like Krishnamurti said:

“It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

– Krishnamurti

The more you identify with and live from your false self, trying to find happiness externally and not living an authentic life, the more you stifle your creativity and life force, which in turn creates more disease and what the status quo calls “mental illness.” It’s a “betrayal” to your soul as you go against your true nature and deep inner calling.

This downward spiral [of identification with false self] can also lead to nihilism, addiction, suicide, getting caught in victim/blame, “black pill” doom&gloom territory, and projecting one’s own misery onto a world where “everything and everyone sucks.” Identification with a counterfeit version of ourselves is also an aspect of being taken over by wetiko. 

Most people live in a constant state of anxiety, fight or flight, or a dissociated “checked out” frozen state without realizing it because that state of living is all they know.

It’s a vicious self-defeating loop that produces more emotional and mental dis-ease – all of which provides “loosh,” which malevolent occult forces feed off of.

The Detrimental Spiritual Effects of Psychiatric Drugs

Big Pharma and the allopathic medicine cult stuck in materialism take advantage of billions of people’s suffering and keep them sick and addicted, for you cannot make a profit from people who are healthy in body, mind, and soul.

Nor can you control and manipulate a person who is holistically healthy, living authentically from the true self. 

Rudolf Steiner has been correct; over the past 100 years, the modern medical cult has been in the process of (in Steiner’s words):

• “abolishing the soul via a medicine,” 
• “[creating] a terrible belief in authority as far as matters of health are concerned,“ and  
• “hardening humans into materialism.”

“The soul will be made non-existent with the aid of a drug. People will invent a vaccine to influence the organism as early as possible, preferably as soon as it is born, so that this human body never even gets the idea that there is a soul and a spirit….Materialistic physicians will be asked to drive the souls out of humanity .”

– Rudolf Steiner, “Fall of the Spirits of Darkness – Changes in Humanity’s Spiritual Make-up”, 1917

All potent psychiatric drugs, like anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, anti-psychotics (to name a few), opiates, and vaccines, have detrimental effects on the energy/astral body. They can negatively affect the afterlife experience and keep the soul earthbound after death.

In his book “Covid Vaccines from a Spiritual Perspective: Consequences for the Soul and Spirit and for Life after Death”, Thomas Mayer describes several cases of the detrimental effects of not only vaccines but also psychiatric drugs and other allopathic medicines on the astral/ether body during life and in the afterlife.

The damage can keep the spirit stuck in the lower earth realm [earthbound] and vulnerable to the influence and attachment of soratic occult hostile forces. Mayer also observed that it disconnects people from their angel (higher self or primary spirit guide).

It’s not black and white, and it is not implied that ALL allopathic medicine and pharmaceuticals have these effects on the astral body and afterlife experience. It depends on the frequency you take it, the dosage, strength, and the body/mind/soul constitution of the person taking it.

Spiritual Crisis and Initiation instead of “Psychosis”

People who are suffering from what modern psychiatry calls “schizophrenia” or other severe “psychotic” states are not “mentally ill,” nor is there anything wrong with the brain, rather these symptoms can be directly related to an entity or earthbound spirit attachments, possession, and interferences. They can also be subpersonalities that took on extreme protector/exile roles due to trauma.

Ironically, we all are a little bit “schizophrenic” since we all have multiple personalities within us – all the different false “I’s” we mistake for the real “I,” as Gurdjieff alluded to when he said that “Man is a plurality.” A psycho-spiritual modality like IFS shows that as well. We all are also subject to the influences of hidden forces.

Traditional cultures, still connected to nature and the spiritual world, recognize and understand “the porosity of mind,” they understand that we are constantly influenced and affected by forces or beings flowing and working through us. Yet now, “modern materialistic man” dismisses these ideas as “woo woo” or “superstitions” of “primitive people” taking pride in their disembodied intellectual rationalism.

The mind is not isolated in the brain, disconnected from everything else. All kinds of forces, beings, and energies manifest as thoughts and sensations come from the outside and non-physical realms and constantly flow through us.

“We are enclosed in an individual, personal body only through a stubborn visual delusion; in fact, we are porous throughout and bathe in universal forces, like an anemone in the sea.

Our sole freedom is to lift ourselves to higher planes through individual evolution. Our only role is to transcribe and materially embody the truths of the plane we belong to.

These planes [of consciousness] do not depend upon us or upon what we think of them any more than the sea depends on the anemone; they exist independently of man.

Modern psychology, for which all the levels of being are mixed together in a so-called collective unconscious, like some big magician’s hat from which to draw archetypes and neuroses at random, betrays in this respect a serious lack of vision:

first, because the forces of these planes are not at all unconscious (except to us), but very conscious, definitely more so than we are; and secondly, because these forces are not” collective,” in the sense that they are no more a human product than the sea is the product of the anemone; it is rather the frontal man who is the product of that Immensity behind.”

– Satprem

Cultures that recognize this porosity of the mind and the spiritual world also understand that people who have what we call “psychotic breaks” or “schizophrenia” may be having a spiritual crisis [intensified via spirit attachments/possession] that serves as a potential for transformation, like a shamanic initiation. 

The shaman, healer, or medicine man/woman can help the possessed person in this spiritual process and inner journey. It’s a rite of passage that contains a vital soul lesson and not a sign that something has broken or has gone wrong, i.e., “mental illness.”

People who have gone through his process most often become powerful healers or spiritual teachers/masters, as the lessons of these dark nights of the soul tend to align them with their deeper soul purpose.

But in the modern world, we lock these people up in mental institutions and/or pump them with psychiatric drugs, which creates tremendous damage to the soul on a metaphysical level.

If you want to learn more about this topic, check out these podcasts where we have discussed it in depth:

• • The Real Causes of Mental Illness
  • Jerry Marzinsky – Schizophrenia, Entities & Mental Illness

Some Human Beings are not Human

Some people who we would label as psychopaths, narcissists, and sociopaths can actually be incarnations of demonic asuric hostile forces and only appear “human.” They can’t be healed or changed in this lifetime.

Powerful asuric and demonic entities can take over a person over time (through various entry points and temptations), slowly driving out the human personality and soul until only the empty human vessel remains, occupied by the asura. In rare instances, they can also take birth in a human body.

“Asura” in the original Sanskrit is the term for adversary occult spirits. The Asura are non-evolutionary hostile beings.

It’s very important to point out that the external human appearance can be deceiving when possessed by an Asura. They don’t usually appear as “crazy” or “psychotic,” like in a Hollywood horror movie.

They are often highly intelligent beings who know how to manipulate and seduce. In human form, they can appear as very confident, charismatic beings and are most often very beautiful in physical appearance. Hence, the average human is easily distracted and fooled by their outer appearance. They can be very successful and established in life.

Asura-possessed humans can be charming and have a very cunning personality mask, which most people fall for because it’s hard to discern. They seem “too perfect.” Only psychically sensitive people, already connected to their essence/true Self, can pierce through this “mask of sanity” and faux appearance.

Women possessed or influenced by asuric hostile forces can use their looks, sexuality, and lower nature in overt or covert ways to gain more money/power. They may even exert powerful sexual magnetism, which is initiated by the Asura to manipulate other humans (especially men) as they feed off of the attention they get.

That lower sexual vital energy is also a feeding ground for predatory occult forces, keeping them entrapped on a soul level. Still, they can be highly successful on a social appearance and worldly level.

Sri Aurobindo referred to the Asura in “Letters on Yoga”:

“The Asuras and Rakshasas, etc., do not belong to the earth but to supra-physical worlds, but they act upon the earth life and dispute the control of human life and character and action with the Gods. They are the Powers of Darkness combating the Powers of Light. Sometimes they possess men in order to act through them, sometimes they take birth in a human body.

The ordinary Asura is not an evolutionary but a typal being. It represents a fixed principle of creation that does not evolve or change and is not intended to do so. These Asuras, as well as the other hostile beings, Rakshasas, Pisachas, and others, resemble the devils of the Christian tradition and oppose the divine intention and the evolutionary purpose of the human being.

The Asura has no soul, no psychic being which has to evolve to a higher state; he has only an ego and usually a very powerful ego; he has a mind, sometimes even a highly intellectualized mind, but the basis of his thinking and feeling is vital [lower life force] and not mental, at the service of his desire and not of truth. He is a formation assumed by the life-principle for a particular kind of work and not a divine formation or a soul. They prefer to get hold of human beings and make them their instruments.”

The Mother elaborates further:

“[Some human beings] are not human; there is only a human form or appearance. They are incarnations of beings from the world that are just next to the physical beings who live on the plane, which we call the vital world. It is a world of all the desires and impulses and passions and of movements of violence and greed and cunning and every kind of ignorance, but all the dynamisms too are there, all the life-energies and all the powers.

The beings of this world have by their nature a strange grip over the material world and can exercise upon it a sinister influence.

There are others, far more dangerous, who have never been in human form; never were they born into a human body upon earth. Most often, they refuse to accept this way of birth because it is slavery to matter. They prefer to remain in their own world, powerful and mischievous, and to control earthly beings from there. For, if they do not want to be born on earth, they do want to be in contact with the physical nature, but without being bound by it.

Their method is to try first to cast their influence upon a man; then, they enter slowly into his atmosphere and, in the end, may get complete possession of him, driving out entirely the real human soul and personality.

These creatures, when in possession of an earthly body, may have a human appearance, but they do not have human nature. Their habit is to draw upon the life force of human beings; they attack and capture vital power wherever they can and feed upon it. If they come into your atmosphere, you suddenly feel depressed and exhausted; if you are near them for some time, you fall sick; if you live with one of them, it may kill you.

The vital power incarnated in these beings is of a very material kind, and it is effective only within a short distance. Ordinarily, if you do not live in the same house or if you are not in the same company with them, you do not come within their influence. But if you open some channel of connection or communication, through letters, for example, then you make possible an interchange of forces and are liable to be influenced by them even from a far distance. [Note: ore the Internet/social media nowadays]

The wisest way with these beings is to cut off all connection and have nothing to do with them – unless indeed you have great occult knowledge and power and have learned how to cover and protect yourself – but even then, it is always a dangerous thing to move about with them. To hope to transform them, as some people do, is a vain illusion, for they do not want to be transformed. They have no intention of allowing any transformation, and all effort in that direction is useless.

These beings, when in the human body, are not often conscious of what they really are. Sometimes, they have a vague feeling that they are not quite human in the ordinary way. But still, there are cases where they are conscious and very conscious; not only do they know that they do not belong to humanity, but they know what they are, act in that knowledge, and deliberately pursue their ends. The beings of the vital world are powerful by their very nature; when to their power they add knowledge, they become doubly dangerous.

There is nothing to be done with these creatures; you should avoid having any dealings with them unless you have the power to crush and destroy them. If you are forced into contact with them, beware of the spell they can cast. These vital beings, when they manifest on the physical plane, always have a great hypnotic power; for the center of their consciousness is in the vital world and not in the material, and they are not veiled and dwarfed by the material consciousness as human beings are. “

Important Considerations

It’s important to note that these full-blown “demons in human disguise” are not very common. They are not to be confused with “Organic Portals” or what people nowadays call NPCs.

We must be careful not to label people prematurely. It takes a lot of observation, inner psycho-spiritual work, connected to one’s true soul being, grounded psychic awareness, and occult knowledge to perceive the hidden forces in others correctly so our perception is not polluted and overlaid with our stuff and shadow projections.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen many people abuse this topic and use it to demonize and blame others preemptively. There can also be varying degrees of possession and variations in how much influence an entity has over a human vessel.

Remember, from a higher perspective, in light of the evolution of consciousness, it’s very important to understand that these entities and occult forces serve a teaching function. They highlight your issues and are to be seen as tests and lessons. 

“The hostile forces have a certain self-chosen function: it is to test the condition of the individual, of the work, of the earth itself and their readiness for the spiritual descent and fulfillment.”

– Sri Aurobindo

Before looking only at how other people can be possessed or influenced by these beings, I suggest taking a look into the mirror first and clearing your inner being for potential entry points of occult forces affecting you.

This world is a learning experience where we experience both light and darkness, ignorance and truth, and we must rise to greater levels of non-dual reactivity and true Self-awareness if we are to truly transcend the influence of these occult forces, who play on our weaknesses, core wounds, and mechanical nature like we are puppets on strings.

For a more in-depth exploration of the teaching function of evil and the interrelationship between the Divine and Anti-Divine, check out these podcasts:

• • The Divine and The Un-divine: The Problem of Evil
  • What Facing Evil Can Teach You

To learn more about Occult Forces, check out my articles HERE and my in-depth course “Occult Forces of Hyper-Dimensions: Entity Attachments & Interferences.”

---

WORK WITH US