Are there dark beings in the astral?

Is astral projection demonic?

It is one of the questions I am asked most. I don’t usually talk about my negative experiences, partly because I have had so few, and partly because people easily become scared. But they do happen, so let me tell you plainly what I have found.

Many of the figures you meet out there are simply people: others who have left their bodies unconsciously in sleep, or people who have died and live in those dimensions, many of them going to work or doing chores just as they do by day. Sometimes I know instinctively not to approach, because someone feels hostile, most likely on a lower plane. A rough sign is the light: higher planes are usually brighter, lower ones often darker.

The demons we carry with us

Some of what we meet is not out there at all. In dreams and in the astral you can see the parts of yourself, the angry one, the lustful one, the one that feels sorry for itself, walking around as actual people with their own thoughts and feelings. This is where the idea comes from that we create our own demons. Are they real? They are real the way anything you see and feel in the non-physical is real: they live in consciousness, and they can be met.

In the summer of 2026 I found myself awake on the far side of sleep, in the flat where I grew up, standing in the doorway while people arrived one by one. Without a single thought I knew what each of them was. They were my egos: the resentful one, the vain one, the one who is never satisfied, each wearing a face and a body of its own. About thirty came in that night.

Years earlier, in a lucid dream, I came upon two women shouting at each other and realized I was watching a split inside my own subconscious. I watched with a silent mind, breathed, focused on my heart, and took the scene in with the intention of healing it, and everything went still. Fighting such figures by force doesn’t work: an ego you attack only changes its mask and comes back in through another door.

What I have met in the lower regions

In the lower regions I have met people so far gone in their suffering that they looked like the walking dead. In one man’s eyes I saw something human locked away deep down, and on the surface only hostility. They were not there because some divine law had sent them, but as a result of the way they had lived, perhaps for many years. I wondered whether any of them could be helped.

Beings with real ill intent are rarer. Once, a woman who seemed to want to help me kept me talking for a good five minutes, and I slowly realized she had been leading me toward a heavier presence. A large man came in, pushed me to the ground, and I woke up. For a minute or two I felt a faint pain in my head, and then nothing. In more than ten years and hundreds of experiences, that is the only time I have felt anything like being attacked, and it amounted to nothing.

The most powerful was a tall man in a black suit, standing in a quiet, sunny street. He locked eyes with me, and I found myself walking toward him against my will, as if he were a center of gravity. I think he picked up on something in me, a self-consciousness, maybe some fear. When he was within inches of me, I did the mantra of protection my teacher taught me and traced a circle of fire around myself. The world began to turn like a whirlwind, a grassy platform floated in front of me, I stepped onto it, and I was in an open field in the sunshine, somewhere he didn’t exist.

Beings like these are not interested in awakening, or love, or helping anyone; usually they are obsessed only with power. Once, when one held me fixed in the air as I tried to fly away, I begged in my heart for the masters and angels of light to help me, and help came, in a form I hadn’t expected.

Why we meet what we meet

In the astral, every thought and emotion can be felt almost at once. If you are feeling fear, you attract fear; if you are feeling joy, you attract joy. When people have negative experiences out there, more often than not they have interpreted them that way, or drawn them to themselves through fear, anxiety or misunderstanding. And a person who is very depressed or violent will naturally be more prone to those kinds of experiences.

That doesn’t mean every figure is unreal, or only yourself. One of those suffering figures ran at me anyway, because he was not my reflection; the region was. But my state chose the meeting. And darkness needs a receiver to carry on. We receive it unconsciously, which is not a reason for fear, but a reason to wake up and take responsibility.

What I do when something comes

There are surely other ways, but these are the things I have actually done in the moment.

• Don’t run. When one of those suffering figures ran at me, I stood where I was; being chased through the astral only leads to more chaos.
• Say the mantra and see the fire. The mantra my teacher taught me is Helion Melion Tetragrammaton. Say it mentally or out loud, in one breath or with a breath between the words, while you trace a circle of fire around yourself, and keep at it, with faith, until you are protected.
• Send light, not a vague feeling. If you answer with love, let it be a divine love joined with intention, will and imagination: a white light that sends the being away, or a shield of force around you. Not the love you feel for a puppy; a being of ill intent is nothing like a puppy.
• Ask for help from the heart. Call on the masters and angels of light, or by name on one you feel close to. There are thousands of beings in the astral committed to helping humanity, and many will listen to your call if you are genuine and sincere.
• Leave by intention. Hold in mind the place you want to be, and repeat it to yourself if you must. If you feel yourself sinking, turn upward with all your will. Waking up is always there too.

Watch the talk on YouTubeHow To Protect Yourself in the Astral & My "Negative" Encounters

Protection before you sleep

For anyone who still feels afraid of what they might meet, this is the preparation I set out in Beyond Dreaming. I still do the last of these every night.

• Keep a small altar. Square, with a white cloth, a white candle burning whenever you are home, and symbols you hold sacred.
• Burn real incense. Frankincense or copal resin, burned on charcoal discs in a clay pot, rather than sticks full of chemicals.
• Circle your home. Visualize a circle of fire or light around your house, three times, and ask the angels, masters and guides of the astral plane to protect it. Finish with Om or Amen, three times.
• Circle yourself as you fall asleep. Lying in bed, say the mantra mentally and see a circle of fire around you, or white light, above and below you too.

Do it with positive feeling and complete faith, not with the intellect.

The protection that goes deepest

All of this helps. But to give yourself to the divine forces within you is all the protection you need, and overcoming the ego is the same as protection from negative forces. When someone truly becomes one with consciousness, negative beings can’t even see them, because they have gone beyond that level of being.

The superior way to protect yourself is to watch your own reactions as they arise, the irritation, the anger, the fear, and to understand them; the visualizations and the mantra are there for the moments you feel weak. And sleep with the heart: go to sleep centered there, in the middle of your consciousness, not caught up in dreams outside it.

Seek understanding, not fear

Approached mindfully, detached, with unconditional love for all beings, the lower worlds are insightful places, with much wisdom to be gained. Sometimes we are sent there to help someone, or to learn something new. A suffering soul can sometimes be helped simply by someone talking with them out of compassion. Lost souls can only save themselves, but occasionally they go the right way when we show them the direction.

With understanding, even meeting a being of real ill intent no longer feels negative to me, because I seek to understand it rather than give in to the old instinct of fear. Come back to your body, meditate, stay impartial, and carry on. Acting calmly and deliberately, instead of out of fear, is how we go on to more profound levels of reality.

If you are having frequent or distressing experiences at night, or you’re unsure whether what you are going through is happening in your own mind, please talk it over with a doctor. These practices are meant to be gentle and are not a substitute for medical care.