Evil powers

It is the purpose of this book to demonstrate and explain the workings of evil powers within the human make-up as it partakes in other-worldly dimensions through its etheric and astral bodies. In the previous chapter we described a case of actual invasion or activation of such a demonic structure in connection with an expansion of ordinary consciousness, showing itself in the low astral form of a trickster-figure or magician. We pointed to the possibility that evil powers in general, and particular entities of evil like demons, lurk behind some spiritual techniques and aspirations and are involved with any spiritual enterprise as such. Again we must stress that we have no intention whatsoever to pinpoint any specific demonism to A or Adam for that matter. Only in rare cases, when a person for occult reasons, for the sake of power or lust and out of a very bad character, invite and utilize evil forces, would it be fair to identify and characterize that person with demonism. Evil forces and demons are all over and use humans and human activity as their vehicles and agents. That is the condition of human life itself since time immemorial. The transactions of this case are only unusual in as much as careful introspection made it possible to shed some light on the exchange and because the interactions took place in an extraordinary setting, making the threat of demonization more imminent. But of course we are each responsible for the shadow we cast and any evil that takes place under its cover, even if there is no recognizable motive or conscious consent. Normal man with his ignorant, sleeping conscience is ill advised to consider himself pure and place a mark of denunciation on the haunted person with his tormented mind! Let us remind everyone that we all share in humanity and its predicament, in which evil is a mutual, binding and collective structure. If we think we have a clean sheet, we are only conveniently shuffling dirt off on others, but let us discuss the differentiation of evil and personal responsibility later in connection with the Christian values. For the present we shall follow up on the admittedly unusual idea of extrasensory evil powers, which is after all a rather common and universal theme of folklore, mythology and religion. Again we will use one of Adam’s occult experiences as an introduction in order to give our presentation a meaningful and existential approach and thematize our discussion.

Initiation Dream 1975

When Adam was coming of age and the powers of his self and soul was first awakened, one night he had a highly intuitive and prophetic dream-experience related to these motives of evil. He experienced himself on a long and arduous wandering, a vivid picture of the transmigration of the soul. Other people came from other places and directions, but everybody shared a common goal. It was night and very dark, and Adam saw faces at random in the light of torches. Then he noticed that he was moving uphill like all others. As they went along, groping their way in the darkness, Adam started to sense a staggering, strange phenomenon. Peoples progression very gradually slowed down in pace with a cosmic event of gigantic proportions as time came to an absolute standstill. The ceasing flow of time was replaced with a condensation of space and events, intensifying meaning and importance. The whole scenery vibrated and increased in gravity. Every step and breath now happened in slow motion. Then everyone entered the ruins of what seemed to be an early Christian church, a mystical place, and some of them sat down in a circle and started to join their hands together. Adam sat down with them. The gathering had something to do with the Second Coming of Christ and inscriptions in the flags of the floor referred to predictions of this event in the Gospels. There was a monk present who signalled people in the circle to place dark hoods over their heads, and then the circle started to fall in space. They whirled downwards in some other dimension and Adam saw huge images starting to move upwards from deep below – powerful pictures with tremendous energy. He was terrified and started to crawl upwards again because the circle was not closed and the journey therefore unsafe. Getting up and out seemed to take ages and for a moment Adam was getting panicky. Then at last he woke up totally beside himself, exhausted and deeply mystified.

This experience had an initiatory effect on Adam’s life and changed its course dramatically. From then on he gave a very high priority to spiritual questions and motives, and that is understandable when we look at the dream. No doubt it was an individual and karmic dream of warning, but in its very nature it is also a collective dream and as such it bears meaning and significance to every single human of our epoch. The highly multivalent motives of the land of the dead and approaching incarnation through a tunnel together with a group of souls are mingled here with the images of a cosmic night, the standstill of time, the reappearance of Christ, a huge gathering of souls and the confrontation with impending images and motives impregnated with decisive spiritual value, which indeed represent the very essence of our present time-spirit. For Adam personally it was a wakeup-call that took him completely by surprise. He was not prepared for this kind of reality, neither by family, upbringing, education or culture. But the motives and images of the soul is a creative power in itself, shaping our lives. Consequently Adam was thrown into a direction of personal development in which studies of theology and a beginning process of deeper introspection and confrontation with darkness [the hood] played a significant role. He was clearly destined from early on to make a descent into the collective unconscious and afterwards ingress upon the other-worldly dimensions of evil powers.

Because, you see, humanity is actually groping its way forward, surrounded by the impenetrable darkness of sensual materialism and lacking any sufficient contact with the soul-level. In doing so, humanity is absolutely unaware of the real evolutionary dynamic determining its fate and situation right now. It stumbles along in a spiritual night and due to the absence of introspection and extrasensory perception does not realize the determining and evil powers inhabiting its inner and outer darkness. But in reality humanity is currently at a turning point, a standstill, facing a crucial decision! It can embrace the reappearing Christ and join hands in a real community, or it can fall down and debase itself to the level of evil, creating a real hell on earth. Because this is a time in which the ways of the old pagan gods are revived. The idols are resurrected and the chthonic powers will rise again and begin their great feast on human values and make a mockery out of God’s image in man.

The dream intoned this collective theme in Adam’s young life and pushed him towards his faith while still blind and bewildered, but the perspective of a downfall of humanity has not changed since then and is now more manifest than ever before. In later life, with the unfolding of destiny and experience, Adam became more clear-sighted and he witnessed where this downfall takes humanity. Not in any comprehensive vision overlooking the total complexity of motives, forces, cultural developments and future events, but shown to him anyway in an extraordinary situation completely surrounded and suffused by a metaphysical power and reality – presented in a sequence of minute holographic images of earth as a floating globe with its evolutionary perspective dominated either by the higher or lower aspects. Motives often repeat themselves this way in a lifetime, and every time they mark a new point of departure. This is why Adam felt a need to share his concern with other people.

Let us conclude these introductory remarks with yet a few of Adam’s astral dream-experiences that took place some years after the aforementioned vision, before we dwell on the collective theme of a fall of man. A reoccurring dream-motif of entering deep tunnels and caves with almost no source of light culminated, when one night Adam finally made his entry into an enormous underground structure, very much like the image of the interior of the earth pictured in Jules Verne’s famous novel, only pitch dark. The space was gigantic, huge, stretching in all directions, and he only carried the feeble light of an electric torch with him. When Adam directed the beam of light out into the cavern, it simply faded away reaching only emptiness. At last he glimpsed some very dim structures, the meaning of which he was unable to decipher. This was not the cavities of cultural remnants, nor the underground classical heritage from earlier dreams. This was from time immemorial, an abysmal chthonic reality. Intuitively Adam understood, that man had not been here for thousands and thousands of years – or maybe one visitor was here now and another visitor somewhere else in this infinite underworld in a hundred years, separated by utter darkness and oblivion. In a dream-vision to the other extreme Adam witnessed during astral expansion the heavenly scenario of a line of figures, silhouettes of beings of a manlike form, stretching from over the top of mountains and far up in the sky, with auras of beautiful green and blue light, the next one more powerful than the preceding, reaching from one twelfth to a full scale. These fragmentary images can perhaps give us some idea of the higher and lower dimensions, the realms of creative form and beauty and the infernal chaos, constantly shaping human evolution. They are only glimpses and any attempt on our behalf to sketch out this vast and complicated geography is futile. Therefore we will have to search elsewhere for guidance and orientation in our discussion of the collective evil of our time.