III. Exorcisim

III. Exorcisim

Anton gave me an exorcism ritual to perform to get rid of Bomo. He explained to me, for the first time, a principle that has been brought home to me a hundred times throughout my spiritual training: you cannot accomplish anything by merely saying "No!" to something. There is nothing spiritual about a negative. The spiritual path is all positive, saying, "Yes" to all the possibilities of beingness. In order to rid yourself of any negative trait or situation, you must counteract it with a positive analog. Anton made me understand that Bomo had a grip on my heart, and the only way to rid myself of her was to replace her with a benevolent influence. Therefore, I stood before my bathroom mirror and waited for her to come. I felt that familiar, creepy tingling, that feeling of invasion, and saw my eyes turn bloodshot. (I have neglected to mention, so far, that I have occasionally been able to perceive, that is not to say "see" necessarily, spirits deep in my eyes.) Bomo was so hateful and angry and haughty I cannot understand why I never saw her before  that all my life I thought that horrible, disgusting pathetic thing was me, that smoldering angry sneer was mine.

I repeated the ritual Anton had given me:

Do the om three times and shout at the demon,

"Begone! I invoke the power of the highest of the high masters to destroy your power over me. I

banish you from my house, from my body, from my car, from every sphere in which I do business.

You are no longer a part of me. n

and prayed for Jesus to come into my heart. That was it. There were no fireworks, no cathartic experience.

I noticed my eyes cleared up slightly, that was the only 22.

outward sign that indicated that anything happened. I did not feel particularly hilarious either. It was a small kind of joy, a tiny seed of light that, over time, would continue to grow brighter and brighter, as faith added blessing upon blessing. The main thing at the time was that Bomo was gone, and she never came back.

I realize now that the ritual Anton gave me was no big deal, that his ritual functioned like all religious ritual: that is to dramatize the moment and raise the consciousness of the people involved. I could have just prayed to any high master for assistance and the demon would have been exorcised, but my previous link with the teachings of Jesus and my growing relationship with Him made Him the best choice for this particular procedure.

The exorcism of Bomo was extremely important and was a giant step along the path of faith and love for me, but I might have merely mentioned it in passing, and not devoted an entire chapter to exorcism if it were not for the dramatic story of another exorcism which took place soon after this one.

My good friend Matthew was raised in a family environment where religion was a fairly poohpooh subject. There had been a certain amount of churchgoing over the years, but there was no uniform belief system maintained by the family members, and spiritual matters were generally undiscussed. Therefore, when I related the secret of all this wierd stuff that had been happening to me, he was so taken aback he couldn't make sense of it. I vividly described my struggles with Bomo, read him the communications from Anton, and played him the music. He acknowledged that there was something real about what was happening to me, but he couldn't say what.

One night Matthew asked for a reading from Anton about himself. Contained in the reading was the unhappy news that

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Matthew had a demon too, and that he could make no further progress in his search for truth without getting rid of it. As soon as Anton began to describe the demon's effect on him, Matthew never doubted the reality of Anton's statements. He was completely convinced that there was something terribly wrong, but it was very difficult for him to imagine himself doing battle with the supernatural. He was the kind of person who found it difficult to stand up for himself at the grocery store or a restaurant. "How," he said, "am I going to stand up to a demon?" How was he going to ask Jesus to take his life, when he didn't even particularly believe in Jesus?

As in all spiritual things, personal experience was necessary to create belief. It did no good for me to stand and tell him a certain thing was true. He had to go through it personally to truly understand, and his problem was that he had had no direct experience of Jesus, or the demon, for that matter. All he had was his crazy composer friend telling him he had to do this embarrassing thing  with a mirror, no less; a ritual given us by some funky qhost, for crying out loud!

He tried it for me anyway, and of course it didn't work. The demon, Chickleshlee, fought for its prey, vitiating the power of each word spoken with unbelief, doubt, and embarrassment. I was mad at Matthew for what seemed to me was a screwup, but we got the message from Anton that if Matthew would try again, there would be a special reward for his efforts. Of all my tales of the supernatural, Matthew had been most impressed by the story of the angels singing through my little church choir. He was an amateur but serious tenor in my present church choir, and commented quixotically that he wished he could sing like an angel. Anton said that Jesus had heard this prayer and would give Matthew an angelic musical present if he would have the courage to do what had to be done. Matthew

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secretly hungered after the power of spirit and agreed to try again. Anton gave him this encouraging message:

Here we are together to rid you of your ghastly demon who plays more than ugly pranks on you. Chickleshlee has tormented you for fourteen years. Now you must believe the truth here and go into that room with a firm resolve, not like last time. Your friend will be gone. No one will hear but you and the demon. Your friend has called Jesus to your aid.

One big problem with the first exorcism attempt was that I had been in the house, and Matthew could not tolerate the idea of screaming at a demon if anyone else could hear. So our new plan was that I would come over and take the dog for a walk to the beach and back, about a halfhour long trip, and when I got back, Matthew would be free and the angel would be there. This was the longest halfhour in my life.

One time, years ago, there was a very strong earthquake here; I stepped outside, the earth shaking beneath me, and I actually fell down. This is how the earth felt to me on that walk. I could feel the tension in the air as I left the house. I knew that there was a tremendous battle between good and evil taking place' and that there was more at stake than I could imagine. All around me there seemed to be an activity, a buzzing, but in the center of my path there was calm. I was in constant communion with Anton and Jesus. My excited mind filled with questions. They counseled me to stay quiet and send love vibrations back to Matthew. I felt a tremendous backward magnetic attraction as I walked toward the beach sending all my power and concentration to the house behind me. I was channeling positive, healing energy

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through my consciousness with all my might, while fighting off the distracting, buzzing going on peripheral to my main focus. I walked halfway there with my eyes closed, the dog leading me patiently. I remember noticing that the dog was not her usual snuffly self, but was very subdued, as if she too could sense that something out of the ordinary and somewhat dangerous was happening.

As we approached the esplanade, a halfblock away, a man appeared around the corner walking toward us. He was tall and hefty, dressed in old khaki. My attention became riveted to him. There were three very attractive elements to his appearance: first, his old somewhat sloppy kind of grimy, butternut clothes seemed extremely comfortable and wholesome, like something a boy might wear, like something I might wear; second, his build was exactly that of my great, wise music teacher at the university, the man I trusted most in the whole world; thirdly his face reminded me so much of my father, I can barely distinguish them in my mind, his beardcoarse cheek almost kissable it was so familiar. It is only on reflection that I am conscious of these things, since I laid eyes on him for less than fifteen seconds, yet that face is etched indelibly on my memory. I was so attracted to him, I liked him so much.

Then I heard a voice in my mind scream, "Stay away from that man!. I don't know if I knew at that instant who or what he was, or was just informed later, but I do know that when I looked past the face, the smiling teeth, the kissable cheek, into the eyes, I saw unutterable evil and darkness. He was a predator; he said "Hi." and stopped, as if to strike up a conversation, but my inner voice said, "Keep moving, keep moving." I knew he was the kitten murderer holding the knife slyly behind his back, saying, "Here kitty, kitty, pretty kitty. n and smiling all the time. I felt a coldness in the air as I stepped past him, and could feel his anger as he felt the power that was protecting me.

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He was the only incarnated agent of Satan I have met; I cannot know who he was, but my feelings are sure of what I felt: Evil.

I have asked myself many times if this whole experience was imaginary, whether the emotion of the moment caused me to attribute demonic qualities to some innocent old guy who happened to look like my father; then I remember what happened next, and all doubt is swept from my mind. As my dog and I crossed the street, a strange gust of wind blew up, blinding me in the exact middle of the street, and leaving me weeping with sand in my eyes. We crossed safely, but it took five minutes to get all the sand out of my eyes and mouth. This occurrence would not seem to be particularly significant either, except for the fact that I have crossed that same street probably four hundred times, at all times of day, under identical conditions as this particular day, and never has anything like this happened to me. My teeth were full of sand. I spat out the energy (and the sand) and looked back. The man was gone.

If the purpose of the episode was to distract my attention from Matthew, it failed, because I prayed more fervently than ever in those few moments. A feeling of victory washed over me as I spat over a cliff into the ocean, and watched the waves wash away the carnal vestiges of the demon. I was buoyed back to Matthew on wings, hearing the message constantly, "It worked, it worked, praise God, it worked."

As I approached the house I heard singing. Matthew said he had just finished. He described how he had screamed at the mirror and prayed. How he had felt a familiar, cruel fist around his lungs, diaphragm, and abdomen, suddenly let go and he could breath for the first time in recent memory. How he had seen a tiny diamond of white light in his head, and been urged to sing. The he sang, a Schumann song, and we both heard the angel channel through him. It was not

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just a better sound, there was a phrasing, a manly nobility, |

a depth, a maturity and a lovingness that spoke to the heart. I have never again heard solo singing like it, though I will tell soon enough about many other great wonders I have heard. 

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