I. Demon

I. Demon |

The winter of 1983 was a winter of hunger. I felt I had reached a plateau that remained flat as far as I could see. I was bored. I felt like a failure, professionally, and that the rest of my life stretched out in front of me with no exciting prospects of any kind.

I had a job teaching kiddy chorus class at a private school, I was a church choir director, I had a class of young students, and I played violin and viola in several small town musical organizations a few string quartets, a few pick up orchestras; occasionally I was called on as a soloist; it was all low pay, low energy stuff, all leading nowhere.

I had moved to the small town from the big city to protect myself from fast lane corruption of my gifts. I had come to the wilderness for purification and to find myself. Now, I had found myself and all I had found was a small time musician boasting only a series of small town accomplishments. Gone was my thirst for fame that had motivated me for so long in the city; gone, even, was my ambition to write timeless music, for I knew that without fame my music, no matter how great it was, would die with me. I was a man who had been sustained by grand, impossible visions for fifteen years, and now, having just stepped over the thirty year old threshold, there was not a grand scheme in sight, not a plan, nary a dream.

Christmas break often brings a season of clarity, a mental breather that puts things in a _:little better perspective. On this particular Christmas I decided the new frontier to be explored was the psychic world. I had little idea where to begin, so I took the tourist route I bought a Ouija board.

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I was amazed at how quickly I made contact. I had been exposed slightly to such things years earlier, and knew that people really could converse with supernatural beings, but I had no idea that within five minutes I would be speaking to someone "on the other side" merely by paying fifteen dollars for a painted piece of wood.

I reached an entity who identified itself as Bomo. Bomo said she was a little Chinese baby who had her brains bashed out on a rock as her tribe was escaping from an invading army in 1000 B.C. She said she was an aspect of myself. She was sweet, simple, fetching, adorable. She implored me to "See. See. See."

I was terribly excited. This was what I had been looking for to extend the boundaries of the physical, to reach into the infinite for meaning, for validation. I was on top of the world. I had found an astral friend. I had broken through. A thousand questions about life, death, God, were all being answered by a baby a tragic baby girl still innocent in death after these many centuries. This sense of elation and discovery lasted about two days; after that things began to go wrong.

First, the method of spelling messages with the Ouija board became tiresome, the flow of information was too slow. Bomo suggested we try automatic writing. Again, I was astonished at how quick and easy it was to do these spooky supernatural tricks I had read about things that had always seemed to me as far away as the magic spells in fairy tales. The feeling of this autonomous force pushing my pen across the page, making intelligent sense without my interfering in the slightest, was fascinating and fun.

Then Bomo started to toy with me. She gave me messages from other spirits on the "other side", spirits who had just died, etc., who wished to communicate some important confidence to the living; for example, a young boy ~ shed to tell his grieving mother that he was all right\. I was

anxious to be of service, and also to validate with physical confirmation the information I was being given. However, when she would tell us the name of a hospital where the grieving mother might be located, there was either no such hospital, or no such person registered. Another time, Bomo told me to make a trip to San Francisco at six o'clock in the morning to meet a guitar playing prophet who would answer all my questions, and satisfy my desires; but when I pressed her for more information so that I might better be able to recognize this person, she became sulky and wouldn't talk.

At this point, she suggested that she enter my body and speak through my own voice "to save more time". I heard a voice inside me shouting "NO! NO!", but I went ahead and invited her in. I'll never forget the feeling. My whole body, from my head downwards began to tingle like a foot that had gone to sleep. It was kind of neat, kind of magic, I swear I heard a harp glissando. But there was also something repulsive about it; it had a super richness to it like a drink heavily sweetened to disguise the taste of poison.

Then came the breath. She took a great big breath through my lungs. It was the deepest breath I had ever taken. My wife said when I exhaled, she could feel the force of the breath from where she was sitting, several feet away. Bomo tried to say "Bomo" several times with my voice. Somehow this was not like automatic writing. This was too close. This was letting her have too much. It just did not feel right. I ordered her out of my body.

When I went back to automatic writing, Bomo began to confirm my sinister suspicions. She became abusive. She started hurling all kinds of filthy oaths at me. The more closely I questioned her the more violent were her responses; I could feel her anger and hatred through the pen. Her final words to me were, "I deserve your body because I'm going to get it." I can almost see an ugly,

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tortured face screaming this at me a~ I write it down. I relive the vivid fear I felt at that moment. I realized then that I was facing an evil demon who had tricked me (idiot!) into inviting it into my body, and now it was intent on taking possession of my body permanently just like in the movies.

At that point I knew what she had been doing. She had led me on to get me to trust her. She had fed me lies to tempt me and had finally tricked me into letting her into my body. Now, having let her in once, there was an open door into me through which this evil, gross, disgusting demon could pass, any time my guard was down. Thus began the most terrifying, traumatic period of my life.

During my waking hours I still had conscious control. Bomo was not a very powerful demon, merely a lower astral entity, and could not withstand my conscious will. If I had not invited her into my body she probably would not even have been able to find me, since that barrier that separates us from them also separates them from us, but since I had given her a vibrant point of reference, she could stay in contact with me and wait for my guard to go down in sleep. Thus, the nighttime became a time not of rest but of terror.

I would startle awake with that tingly fee~ing I felt the first time she entered my body, and then I would have to fight to force her out. Then there would typically follow a cat and mouse game where she would force her way back in, I would throw her back out, she would attack again, I would repel again, she sometimes waiting until I was dozing off, sometimes attacking repeatedly in quick succession to tire me and fill me with despair. This might go on for an hour, or it might go on all night.

One night she tried to kill me. I awoke as one awakens to a dream consciousness and realized I couldn't breathe. As the seconds ticked by I realized it was no dream and I really could not breathe. I struggled but my lungs were

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paralyzed. I panicked and wrenched myself out of that state gasping for air like a diver who miscalculated his depth.

Another time I had this dream: I was outside my church at night with some choir members when suddenly a bright sphere of light shone above us. It seemed like a distant sun at first, then it began to fall upon us, dazzling all around. It seemed to be high in the sky one moment and then literally dropped on top of me. I fell to the ground and it struck me. I can still remember feeling the wind knocked out of me, then a strange lightness; I seemed to be up among the stars. I realized, after a moment, that this had ceased to be a dream, and that I had been knocked out of my body. I thought of Bomo down there in my place doing some horrible thing and plunged back down. I landed with a thud back in bed and threw her out. She did this to me twice over the next several weeks.

It was ironic that the very thing that I had wanted to change and enrich my life should turn into the most horrible thing that had ever happened to me. Previously, I had suffered periods of severe depression brought on by brooding upon the bleak face of death; I used to become obsessed for months at a time with thoughts of a great faceless void; I would have nightmares about disappearing into nothingness and I would wake up in a cold sweat. When I thought of my consciousness ending forever I would quake with a terror near to panic. Now, glory be! I knew without a shadow of a doubt that there is life after death, that my consciousness exists independently of my body, and that there is more to life beyond the physical. What a laugh Bomo must be having that this much sought after knowledge of the soul should come hand in hand with what I thought was a soul threatening situation. I was uneducated in any theory pertaining to such matters, and I did not know the extent of Bomo's power. As far as I was concerned the demon had the power to damage my undying soul; I imagined myself eternally enslaved by this treacherous, vicious being.

[I must here insert two words of warning: one concerning Ouija boards, the other concerning drugs.

First, let me emphasize that it was not the Ouija board that was responsible for my terrible experience. The Ouija board merely created a context for something to happen which might have happened any of a dozen ways. We all are in constant touch with the astral world, and traffic thoughts and feelings back and forth for all kinds of reasons, during many states of consciousness. We are simply not aware of this because our attention is usually focussed on matters in the physical plane; in this regard alone, the painted board is as much for our sakes as for the astral entity's sake, as the symbology directs our attention toward the realities therein represented. The Ouija board, therefore, focusses our attention and gives astral entities a convenient focal point for communication. As I have already mentioned, the barrier between the astral and the physical works for entities on either side, and for there to be communication (desired or undesired) there must be a point of reference. Once the point of reference becomes established in consciousness (the only true reality) the board becomes a meaningless prop.

The dangers involved in such psychic activities as communication with astral entities have to do with the fact that (as I most uncomfortably discovered) only entities on the lowest astral levels are interested in casual contact with the physical dimension. Most inhabitants of that plane have attained a level of consciousness that is upward looking; they are not interested with our veil of illusion, but rather in overcoming energy veils that keep them as low as the astral. They seek greater and greater God consciousness so that they might rise to the next level, leaving their astral bodies behind, just as we leave our physical bodies behind when we are graduated out of this mortal coil.

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The lower astral plane is filled with low life, blood sucking (figuratively speaking) parasites whose progressive spiritual disintegration is only forestalled by draining other people's life force out of them. I came to know, later, that Bomo was not new to me. She had been attached to me since I was six, constantly sending subtle messages into my consciousness, shaping my attitudes and causing me pain by putting wrong thoughts in my head, and causing me to act in numerous anti social ways. Before the advent of the Ouija board she located me and fed off the vibrations generated by negative emotions such as anger, frustration, anxiety, worry, etc. These feelings are the media through which life force is used up, exhaled, in a way, and Bomo would be right there soaking it up, reveling in my pain. When the Ouija board came, I believe Bomo saw an opportunity to gain more control over me. Fortunately for me, her voracious greed caused her to tip her hand and let me know there was something terribly wrong happening. This enabled me to begin dealing with her on a conscious level.

Let me hasten to add that we all are constantly sending up feelings which penetrate the lower astral plane and attract such low life entities as Bomo (some not as bad, many much worse). We are constantly being influenced by non physical entities, and the sooner we face this fact the sooner we can get conscious control of our thought processes and become aware not only of the evil but the good forces God has set in motion in our lives.

In a sense, the Ouija board is good because it is a way we can become conscious of these entities, and start to have some control over the situation; however, the dangers, as Bomo has amply demonstrated, by far outweigh the possibilities for good because the nature of the Ouija board is to give the entities greater power to focus on us and harm us, while we, powerless, end up like sitting ducks waiting for more entities to take advantage of the open door.

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Speaking of open doors brings me to my second warning: drugs work just like the Ouija board they open a door through which low life entities may invade our very being and do us immense spiritual harm. During the time of which I am speaking, and, indeed for many years before, I was a marijuana addict. I was stoned every day, for many hours. Facing this crisis made me all the more dependent on dope, and my intake increased accordingly. I felt a nagging sense of unrest all day until I got high, then the feeling would subside and I would feel relatively safe and at ease. Then, of course, sleep would lead to the nightmare of demon possession, and in the morning I would once again feel tense and afraid. Only much later, through the study of certain spiritual literature did I come to understand the role that drugs were playing in all this, but I offer the explanation here for the sake of those who mistakenly believe that recreational drug use is nothing but a harmless distraction.

There is a membrane separating the physical plane from the astral plane called, by some, the etheric web. This membrane is a sort of net or filter whose function is to protect both the physical and the astral from possible inappropriate influences which might flow from one plane to the other. This is why, in the waking state, we cannot remember the out of body experiences we have when our bodies are asleep, and this is why we cannot usually see ghosts and demons like Bomo whenever they wish to appear. Now, the effect of drugs (whether it be marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, or even emotionally traumatic feelings like fear, anger, panic, or deep sorrow) is to tear the etheric web a little, causing some two way leakage. We like to get high because the light of God shines from the astral plane through this little rip, lighting our consciousness like a beacon and showing us visions from the higher worlds; the religious experiences people have on LSD and mescaline and cocaine are a consequence of this leakage of astral

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light. However, once the user comes down from his trip, that rip in the etheric web is still there, an open door inviting anybody or anything who feels like it to come down and suck off our life force. A more proper explanation might involve the idea that as our own consciousness plummets from the heights to the depths we attract, by virtue of our own lowered consciousness, the undesirable element. In any case, the result is that our reality becomes intolerable and we constantly crave the mind altered state relinquishing more and more of our free will to active agents who do not not have our best interests at heart.

A large part of drug addiction is the influence of low life astral entities needling the victim to take drugs and stir up some life force so they can suck it out like blood through a straw. Anybody who says that marijuana is not physically addictive does not understand the level at which these entities can reach us. We tend to experience feeling, the primary medium of astral communication, as a combination mental~physical experience, biased heavily toward the physical. Since these entities have learned to tap into our emotional life, they have just as much control over our bodies as we don't have over our emotions. Thus, the influence of demons on us can result in any imaginable

consequence from slight irritation to mass murder.

So, night after night as I sought release from my problems and a haven safe from the ravages of Bomo, I was unwittingly opening the door a little wider for my worst enemy to come in. I do not pass judgement on drug users. I was a drug abuser. My problem is not everyone's problem. Nevertheless, the principle I have stated is universally true, and you must know that your every slightest drug experience, whether frequent or infrequent, is shaking hands with the devil.]

Earlier that preceding fall I had begun developing a

friendship with a man named John. Several weeks after my disastrous introduction to Bomo I told him of my plight and asked for advice. At that point John revealed to me that he was quite psychic, having much knowledge and experience in matters concerning the supernatural. He gave me instruction on how to rid myself of Bomo.

First, he made me quit smoking marijuana. For the first time I began to see the relationship between drugs and the demon; whenever I would break down and let my addiction overwhelm me and get me high, I would inevitably have to face an hour or more in the middle of the night fighting off Bomo. When I was able to resist temptation things went much better. Giving up drugs did not completely handle my problem with Bomo; she already had too strong a grip on me. Nevertheless, quitting smoking dope gave me an edge on the situation, and I began to have some control. Obviously, this realization made it much easier to give up drugs for good.

John also gave me some visualization exercises of a protective nature that were effective in short term defence against the onslaughts of Bomo. I painstakingly visualized my house surrounded by a blue light, and formed a five pointed star at each entrance into the house. These methods seem primitive to me now, but they were the beginning of my introduction to the reality of imagination. As I will have cause to speak much more of this later, it is not appropriate to dwell on it now; let me just point out that I was beginning to discover that the higher realities of spiritual life are in large part realities created by each one of us (within certain guiding parameters), and that with time, practice, and enlightenment through grace, the supra physical becomes much more real than the physical.

For example (albeit a negative example), the supra physical experience of demon possession cannot be compared to any physical dilemma I have ever faced. I somehow feel that I have not been vivid enough in describing

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that slimy, unutterably gross experience. Words like horror, and panic seem inadequate as passing, slight indicators of a condition that was sustained, oppressively constant for more than a month. Imagine a gun at your head every minute of the day; now imagine Satan holding the gun pointed at your soul that is approximately how I felt every minute of every day until help came.

To be possessed is very much like what I imagine it is like to be raped. First, you are attacked in a way that makes you feel extremely powerless. You feel that there is an actual struggle for control of your arms and legs. The tingly feeling is almost like your consciousness being pushed out of your pores. You can sense the evil of the entity, and the glee it feels at displacing you, but you also know that this force is somehow brutish, ruthless, unconscious of any feeling but the lust for you; you are its prey, a thing it wishes to use, to defile. By force of will you can eject the entity, but the moment your concentration is distracted, or you think a negative thought, the entity is back in your body struggling for control. Imagine your worst enemy toying with your brain, your skin. Imagine the grossest excremental material being poured over your body while you lie helpless, paralyzed this is what I had to put up with every night. My heart breaks when I think of the poor brain damaged individuals who have no defence against such invasion. I cry out when I think of the countless millions who are unwittingly being led astray by wrong thoughts put into their heads by Bomo like creatures. I have begun to understand the function God has designed for these entities, but I cannot help feeling sympathetic for those who must suffer as I have suffered.

John finally took me aside and prayed a prayer to the "High Masters" to come and dwell in my house and drive out the demon. We thoroughly cleaned the house (especially the fireplace where I had burned the Ouija board), steam cleaned

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the rug, and set up a new vibration in the house. There was no miracle Bomo continued to haunt me, but John's prayer initiated a positive process which was to change my life utterly and forever.

I want to tell you how I met Jesus, but first I have to backtrack a little. I mentioned in the Foreword how previously, in the big city, I had acquired a job as choir director of a small Methodist church. I was at that time not an atheist (for drugs and music had opened me up far enough for me to see cosmic power at work); I knew there was something larger than what I could see here around me, but I was positively certain of nothing else, least of all whether or not there was life after death. I sat in church week after week and began to ponder many religious questions. I have realized that you simply cannot be around the sayings of Jesus all the time without starting to see how much sense they make. I was therefore sure that jesus was a smart man. However, I did not go for all this Son of God crap.

One Easter, I began to change my mind even about that. The minister, a very liberal young man had begun to get through to me when he said, "No matter what else we say about that first Easter, SOMETHING HAPPENED." You could not consider the two thousand years of world history without admitting that something truly significant had HAPPENED. When I thought about this something clicked in me, and something happened. Accepting the possibility of Jesus's divinity allowed me to hear his words with greater and greater attention. I came to consider myself a Christian. I still didn't believe in life after death, including people raising themselves from the dead, but I did begin to toy with the possibility in my mind. I began to listen to the words of Jesus spoken from the pulpit, and I began to admire and to love this great, wise, dead man.

Meanwhile, back in Bomoville, my left lung was really

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hurting. Remember, I mentioned that big breath Bomo took through my lung? From that moment on my lung hurt whenever I took a deep breath. It was not excruciating, but it was everpresent, like a headache starting to throb, tangibly reminding me of Bomo's presence. I worried more and more about it. I thought Bomo was killing me. I thought she had given me cancer.

One day about a month after the invasion, and shortly after John had invoked the presence of the High Masters, I was sitting in front of the heater (the heat eased the pain). I was frightened by the pain. Driven by despair, I prayed the first prayer of my life. It was one of those bargaining prayers that aren't supposed to work very often. I said, "Jesus, if you exist, heal my lung." Almost instantly I heard a voice inside my head say, simply, "Raise your arm." And, more than a voice, I felt a presence, saw a face, a beautiful peace and lovingness. I actually felt a tug on my arm, and I involuntarily raised it above my head to an eccentric position. I stretched a little and felt something come loose in my spine. The pain was completely gone. Bomo's breath had pushed a vertebra out of position causing it to pinch a nerve. This little pinched nerve had been the thing that caused me all that pain and anxiety. One little motion and I was free; the pain disappeared instantly.

It was so joyful, and so completely appropriate that Jesus should come to me for the first time as a healer; He came not as an agent acting upon me, but as a teacher, showing me how to heal myself. It was most precious. But the big breakthrough, the big blessing was yet to come.

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