I Was Sleeping and Then Was Hit in the Head

They call it a Psychic Attack

It was just another night in my college dorm, like any other, me, sleeping on my stomach, and all of a sudden, I was hit in the head, very hard. It was as if someone had taken a 4 by 4 piece of wood and slammed it into my head as hard as they could. I awoke, of course startled, but moreso, terrified. I was so scared I could not move. I wanted to turn my head, and see who was standing over me, because I felt whoever it was, they were there, standing over me. But I was powerless. I was nothing and this person seemed all powerful, and was standing there. I was frozen for what seemed at least 30 minutes wanting to move, to touch my head, to see who hit me. But I dared not. I was so infused with terror, unlike any I had felt before or since.

Later, the presence did leave, and I did sit up, and touched my head. I was ok. And there was no blood there, no lump either. But this was not just a dream. This was a psychic attack. Some entity had come and walloped me in the head, I still don’t know why. I woke up my roommate and asked him if he noticed anything. He hadn’t. He’d slept through the entire thing.

It was a strange event, and as time passed, I forgot about it. That is, until I read Dion Fortune’s Psychic Self-Defense. Dion Fortune was an occultist from the early 1900s in England. And her book on psychic self-defense describes what psychic attacks are and tells us how to fight them off when they come.

The world around us is not just what we can perceive with our senses. In the book, Dion Fortune tells us that we stand

in the centre of a small circle of light thrown by accurate scientific knowledge, but around us was a vast, circumambient sphere of darkness, and in that darkness dim shapes were moving.

There is a spiritual world at work, constantly, around us. We live in it, but almost all of us are oblivious to its existence.

And the entities of this spiritual plane are the driving forces of the universe. Our laws of science try to understand reality based on our limited observations of the material world. But the driving forces of the universe are in this spiritual realm, a place where science cannot penetrate.

As Dion Fortune wrote:

We move among invisible forms whose actions we very often do not perceive at all, though we may be profoundly affected by them.

These beings live in this invisible world just as the fish live in the sea.

Others have addressed this world, of course.

Emanuel Swedenborg was a polymath who lived in Sweden around the time of Benjamin Franklin. Like Franklin, he had the esteem of the intelligentsia of the time, as he had created many inventions and written many books. He was offered, and refused, the chair of mathematics at Uppsala University. At age 53, Swedenborg had an out of the body experience, and continued to leave his body daily for decades thereafter. During his out of the body travels, Swedenborg communicated with many entities on the other side and from these “conversations”, he put together his understanding of the world, in a long series of books.

Essentially, like Dion Fortune, Swedenborg believed that we are surrounded by a world of spiritual beings—that is, they have no corporeal body. When we die, our souls do not perish, but rather, they entire the spiritual plane, and we often linger for decades. The entities in the spiritual plane have enhanced knowledge of how everything really works, but they don’t understand it all. The souls of the good become benevolent spirits, or angels, and they are open to more wisdom and knowledge. The souls of the bad, become nasty spirits, or demons, and have a more limited understanding. In the spiritual plane, just as in the material plane, the object of existence is spiritual maturation, that is, getting closer to God. But the rules of the game become more and more clear, the more virtuous, wise, and spiritually evolved we get.

Now, for us humans, we live among these spirits, much like we live among trees. They are everywhere, and many of them affect us, although we are not aware of it. Every instant, there is a war going on within our souls. The forces of good and evil in the spiritual plane fight it out every day as they try to claim us for their side. According to Swedenborg, whenever you have any inclination to do anything selfish or evil, be it stealing, being angry or irritable, not helping others, or just being plain selfish–these inclinations are placed into our minds by evil spirits. And when we are inclined to do good, to love and help others along their way–these inclinations come from the forces of good: the angels around us. Every one of our ideas, inclinations, urges, et cetera, is planted into our minds and bodies by spiritual forces, and it is our choice which ones we choose to act upon. We have free will and we use it every hour, as we choose between the suggestions of the forces of good and evil. And as you should know, the sure path to hell is a series of small selfish steps. You don’t realize you have created your hell until it is too late.

So, assuming Dion Fortune and Emanuel Swedenborg are right, and all around us are spirits, are we safe? Of course we are. As Dion Fortune wrote:

But we must not make the mistake of thinking that these invisible forces are necessarily evil and inimical to humanity. They are no more inimical in themselves than are water or fire, but they are potent. If we run counter to them, the result is disastrous for us, for we have broken a natural law; but they are not out to attack us, any more than we are out to attack them.

Besides the fact that the spirits try to influence us, they rarely possess or haunt us. A priest I knew told me that when he ran across people who were haunted, his cure was usually to have them get rid of any occult books and Ouija Boards they may have. That usually worked. Beckoning the spirits can cause problems, especially when you are unprepared for them. In fact, Dion Fortune believed that psychic attacks only happen when people get involved in the occult.

The commonest form of psychic attack is that which proceeds from the ignorant or malignant mind of our fellow human beings. We say ignorant as well as malignant, for all attacks are not deliberately motived; the injury may be as accidental as that inflicted by a skidding car.

The other side is full of powerful entities which can destroy us, should we enter that domain unprepared.

The Threshold of the Unseen is a treacherous coast on which to bathe. There are potholes and currents and quicksands. The strong swimmer, who knows the coast, may venture in comparative safety. The non-swimmer, who takes counsel of nothing but his own impulses, may pay for his temerity with his life.

So, I suppose I need to summarize here. I only want to state in my own way the same truths that hundreds of thousands of us have relayed throughout the ages: We are not alone. There is so much we do not know, and will never know, at least, while we still live.