Non-physical entities: An encounter and theoretical musings
Exploring the potential for abiological creatures which feed on human suffering
There is more to reality than meets the unadorned eye.
Something lurks beyond the veil of physicality—a nameless, formless, unbound beast of ethereal composition.
On multiple occasions throughout the wildest periods of my life, I experienced what can only be called spiritual warfare.
Here, I will relive one of these encounters and discuss the implications of its unfolding.
A short and real story
In my final weeks of active addiction, I was wholly out of control, oscillating frenetically between various traumatic, depraved and dangerous situations.
On a fateful evening in the heart of inner-city Calgary, a crippling opioid dependency drove me to join a crowd of homeless individuals in search of fentanyl—a common street drug that is magnitudes stronger than heroin.
To ensure I wasn’t a cop, they had me draw a few long breaths of vaporized crystal meth from one of their pipes.
Comforted by the ease with which I welcomed the drug’s intoxication, I was handed a miniscule baggy of clay-red powder.
As I left, a grizzled man offered me a stern warning: “don’t take that shit alone.”
Unfortunately, his wisdoms hardly registered—my body, mind and life were raggedly unkempt and, as a shell of genuine self, the wheel of my destiny turned at the whims of deeply-ingrained, self-destructive tendencies.
Shortly thereafter, holed up in the book-crammed office of an empty house, I found myself haphazardly chopping up thin lines of powdered death.
In years prior, I took the time to measure my drugs, especially for something potentially lethal; however, the progressive nature of addiction had caught up with me and, frankly, any concerns I had for my wellbeing were suppressed by an undeniable urge to evade my wicked life, if only temporarily.
Regardless, I maintained a semblance of personal safety—before beginning my endeavors, I prepared two naloxone shots and a sizable mound of crushed amphetamines, both designed to counteract the depressant’s effects, should they overtake me.
As I started insufflating, I immediately realized that my doses were far too large.
An extreme heaviness consumed me while my vision constricted into a narrow tunnel, and a swirling blackness closed in upon my awareness, rapidly, alarmingly.
Before losing consciousness, I snorted the small mountain of speed and labored to jab my quadricep with a shot of Narcan.
I awoke hours later—it was bright outside and something was intensely wrong.
My home was in shambles and the record player sat eerily spinning—looping repeatedly at the end of an album by Mac Miller; beside it was a half-written suicide note, penned chaotically in blood-red ink.
Instantly, I became aware of a demonic presence in and around me, permeating and manipulating my mental and physical environments.
Seemingly, a malevolent, abiological entity had attached itself to me as a result of my risky consumption of street-drugs.
It was painfully obvious, unmistakable.
Distorted, devilish voices rang loudly in my mind, convincing me of evil falsities and compelling me to behave based on bizarre, fantastical stories.
Simultaneously, a system of invisible yet potent forces acted upon my literal surroundings—closing doors and windows against my pushing, tripping electrical breakers which became impossible to switch back, and conspiring against me as I struggled to pack my valuables and escape.
Just as swiftly as I had overdosed the night prior, I was thrust into an absurd landscape of survival.
The sinister musings circulating my psyche soon persuaded me to mount my way into the attic and navigate the dusty beams—using climbing shoes to garner friction—in search of critical wires I was meant to sever.1
As alluded to, the house’s power was nullified and, as I efforted to reset the breaker, the switch broke as if a shearing counterforce were imposed by an unseen hand.
Suddenly, the oxygen content became noticeably diminished, as though an abyssal void had opened—vacuuming breathable air into an infinitesimal sinkhole.
Doing everything I could to not succumb to creeping panic, I wrought to prop open nearby windows to avoid suffocation; however, every time I did, the nonphysical entity thwarted my attempts.
The walls were closing in—this alleged evil spirit wanted either to kill or excruciate me and the limitations of humanness rendered me at a significant disadvantage.
Guided by surges of adrenaline, I manufactured a lever to crack open the garage door, pushing with every strand of muscle within me to offset the immense weight of a sadistic darkness, just to foster a few gulps of fresh air.
Eventually, I had painstakingly gathered my most meaningful possessions—including a then-sacred backpack of psychoactive substances—and was ready to flee my home, hoping that the dynamic malignance would remain within the structural container.
Warped and deluded, I believed that I had to forcibly prevent anyone from entering in my absence, planning, in essence, to never return.
After frantically configuring furniture to block the front door from opening, I shimmied down the second-floor balcony—this time using a singular climbing shoe since one of my ankles had developed an unnatural swollenness.2
Staggering through the streets in sweltering Alberta summer heat, the elements were conspicuously and monumentally against me—gale-force winds battered my body upon every step while dirt and debris were seemingly forced down my throat, affecting my ability to breathe.
Every subtle movement was met with an overwhelming resistance—while my domineered mind waged war with a vile intangibility, my physical form burned and ached as I asserted every ounce of available strength to propel myself forward.
Ultimately, I managed to hail a taxi and arrived at the Fairmont Palliser Hotel—a once-spiritual fortress in which I had taken solace during several moments of historic crisis.
Presenting in the glamorous lobby drenched in sweat and visibly tormented, I begged the concierge in fragmented murmurs to set me up with a standard room.
Reluctantly, they obliged; soon after, I stood in a marble bathtub with shower-water raining over me, expelling macroscopic globules of black-tar from my lungs—accumulations from the assaults of nature incurred along my travel journey.
This was only the beginning of an extremely harrowing time in my life—I fought this unseen force of evil for weeks, while the states of my health and situation descended progressively into chaos and traumatic perverseness.
After a series of calamities, I fortuitously landed in a hospital such that my then-spiraling drug-consumptive proclivities could stabilize—after which I would head to an inpatient treatment center.
On perhaps the 3rd day of my detoxification stay, something jarringly strange happened—in the dead of night, immersed in the solitude of blinking machines and muted colors, my room came alive.
A storm of bizarre, fear-inducing sounds and spatial-disturbances erupted amidst my local environment—akin to a depiction of spiritual haunting in a classic horror movie.
The shapeless beast of burden had become agitated, as if the source of energy it had feasted upon for weeks—a product of degenerative, tumultuous occurrence—had been abruptly obstructed as my circumstances equalized.
After roughly half an hour, the unrest reached its eerie pinnacle as the disconcerting barrage of noise and perturbative mutations became entirely, terrifyingly deafening; then, in an instant, it all stopped.
Miraculously, my mind and flesh were liberated from a grating agony which had plagued my essence and driven me unto utter insanity for what felt like a lifetime—the interdimensional beast had moved on to seek out another unsuspecting victim.
Analysis and implications
Whatever it was that afflicted me was powerful, transpersonal—as in, originating beyond traditional physicality—and immorally-inclined, in that it sought to harm me concurrently from within and without.3
By intercepting and twisting the contents of my perception, it weaponized deep-seated fears and life-complications of the past to confuse, humiliate and otherwise torture me.
The story above outlines a mere fraction of the overall madness that ensued over that multiweek period—the depths of exploitation were exaggerated and intricate, leading to myriad dire psychological and circumstantial states.
Indicated by its origin, functional maintenance and cessation, as described, this entity was somehow fueled by the energetic residues of pain, desperation and debauchery.
This notion aligns with certain esoteric traditions which assert that addiction is supported and accelerated by chronic, low-level, non-physical “feeding” of astral beings which congregate diffusively in regions of incessant consumption.4
It is difficult to ascertain a mechanistic basis for such phenomena, especially given the infantile developmental state of formalized research into spiritualism and paranormality.
Under the metaphysical umbrella of analytic idealism, these entities could be conceived as alternative representations of the universal mind-field’s tendency to create localized, dissociative domains.5
Wielding metacognition, humans are self-reflective; whether non-physical creatures hold an analogous capacity is yet another unknown.
Speculatively, I contend that there exists a wide variety of conscious complexes which comprise a continuum of potentiality for spiritual beings—akin to the massive range of structural and functional configurations encountered in worldly organic entities.
Low-complexity astral entities may be 1) hardwired for a specific, singularized purpose, 2) driven purely by instinct and environmental stimuli, and 3) impelled to act without volition or consideration, similar to a simple insect or fish.
Large-scale, highly-complex entities, however, may serve a far more elaborate existential schema, in that they are motivated by an intrinsic core of agency derived from a multilayered architecture of mental processes.
Intuitively, the methodological form of their cognition is likely foreign in contrast with the workings of a human ego.6
Consider the Darwinian theory of evolution: the maturation of homo sapiens revolved around actionable agents who can interact with and visually-locate members of their own species and others.
For “living” entities which transcend yet interact with physicality and are inherently unviewable, how would “evolution” unfold?7
Lacking the biological substrate which constitutes physical beings, these spirit-creatures would plausibly develop in constraint with energetic, informational and/or consciousness-based imperatives.8
Owing to their structural nature, they would have emerged as seekers and consumers of an intangible source of food, such as energy, emotion or thoughtforms.9
Assuming that spiritual entities are composed exclusively of cognition—that is, coherent clusters of mentation which exist and operate without overt material representation—it seems logical that they can infiltrate the recesses of a person’s psyche.
Their foundational objectives are to survive, to proliferate and to advance in orientation with an obscure, incorporeal agenda.
Taking the aforementioned addictive energy-consumption hypothesis to be valid, we can conclude that astral beings depend upon human tragedy and suffering in order to thrive.
If a portion of said entities are cerebrally superior to the bulk of human intelligences, one can imagine a dystopic worldview wherein spiritual magnates strive to construct a cultural landscape conducive to the catalysis of pain.10
In effectuating plentiful ripe bounty for harvest, a spiritual being is permitted to grow and develop such that it may continue along whatever conscious-trajectory it naturally abides by—in other words, they would be entirely uncompassionate toward the plight of humanity.
I cannot, at present, prove with certainty the validity of my claims—that, for example, a potent non-physical entity attached itself to my body and infiltrated my psyche; however, I can state in complete honesty that my experiences were perceived as such.
In my earnest opinion, society will benefit vehemently from dedicated research not only into the underlying nature and behavioral dynamics of non-physical organisms, but into a broad array of spiritual or atypical conceptions.
A prime motivator is the necessity to understand and treat addiction in humans.
If substance or procedural abuse is sustained—at least in part—by leech-like creatures which sense, locate and feed upon energetic expulsions generated during acts of depravity, hedonism and self-destruction, it would be in everyone’s best interest to concretize and disseminate such a conclusion and, in doing so, cultivate modalities which protect our energy and dissuade fabricated hardships from being concocted.
For this to be realized, a critical mandate must be pursued: evidence—repeatable, digestible and plainly indicative data which solidify a factual account of the ever-elusive spiritual entity.11
This is not a straightforward task—I myself need no proof, for what I have witnessed begs not for corroboration; however, for those who have not encountered such life-altering strangeness, or for those who are skeptical or even mockingly disposed, a framework of empirical support is of paramount significance.
Thankfully, I was unsuccessful in this particular endeavor.
That is, there was no evident source of injury that would sustain a swollen ankle. This strange affliction followed me for the subsequent weeks, often alternating between grotesquely infected and apparently normal within a matter of minutes. It was as if this entity was able to manufacture dysfunction not only in my psyche, but in my physical flesh.
That these invisible entities “transcend physicality” does not mean that do not interact with it, as has been demonstrated using the story outlined here. It is also possible that they are, in fact, “physical” in a strict sense yet simply correspond to an electromagnetic range not observable to humans. Although much of the non-visible range has been explored using either optical technology or mapping techniques, a significant portion has not (e.g., extremely-high or -low frequencies). One cultural example of interest is that of dicyanin dye painted on screens or lenses which has been claimed to allow visualization of the human energy body or spiritual entities; however, I cannot speak to the validity of such claims. If there exists a “spiritual” or “astral” realm that literally transcends spacetime, it is rather difficult to imagine owing to our 3-dimensional constraints.
The term “astral” is used here rather loosely, in that it evades a formal definition. Typically, the astral realm is thought to be a spiritual or non-physical dimension of reality which contains non-physical beings. As mentioned in the prior footnote, assuming that the astral realm does exist, there must be an interconnective mechanism that links it with the physical domain. I can only speculate as to its nature, but I imagine a superposition of sorts. Perhaps the astral operates in 4+ dimensions of geometry such that the interjected physical realm is analogous to a flattened screen of projection that astral entities may access at will.
That is, an individuated, human consciousness is, under analytic idealism, envisioned as a dissociative alter of a broader field of mind—a split-off region of mentation which perceives itself to be separate from nature. In this light, non-physical entities could plausibly arise from a similar yet distinct phenomenon.
An interesting parallel in this regard is the concept of a non-biological intelligence posited by neuroscientist and pharmacologist Andrew Gallimore, as discussed in, for example, this podcast. Simply put, these are complex, seemingly sentient entities classically encountered whilst using DMT, a short-acting, tryptamine-based psychedelic drug which Gallimore refers to as a “reality switch technology”.
Conjecturally, I suspect that some non-human animals, such as dogs, may be able to see or at least sense certain spiritual entities that are invisible to us. I base this off of experience with a now-deceased pet who appeared to be attuned to dimensions beyond my own perception.
Stripped of animalistic fight-or-flight tendencies, some spiritual entities may evolve or arise with a stringent focus upon intelligent design. Consider, for example, the concept of deities in Eastern religions: non-physical entities with advanced metaphysical insights and abilities.
Furthermore, their means of conception, growth and reproduction would be fundamentally different than those exercised by humans. Growth could involve coalescence—a merging of two lesser beings into a unitary whole—while reproduction could involve division or fragmentation. As to how they are originally conceived, I can only speculate as to a process analogous to the enactment of a dissociative alter in the universal field of mind. Since they are non-physical, there would likely not be a corresponding perceptual representation as in the case of a human (namely, a body representing the broader mental process of dissociation, at least from the standpoint of analytic idealism).
A recent worldly event which resonates with this ideation is the global COVID pandemic, which inspired intense fear, hatred and suffering on a mass-scale. If there is indeed an underlying network of unseen spiritual entities which feast upon human agony, a widespread catalyst of individuated and communal destruction and degradation would certainly benefit it. Without aspiring to sound conspiratorial, I could envision the background workings of non-physical intelligences colluding such that sources of fuel—which had perhaps become overly-depleted or scarce—could become accessible. If this concept were to gain consensus validity, it would change the zeitgeist with respect to interpersonal relations; for example, imagine a couple who fights incessantly—if they realized that parasitic forces were suborning hatred and division in order to garner energy, their dynamic would inevitably morph and shift toward a more harmonious way of functioning.
Obtaining evidence is undoubtedly tricky. If I were of non-physical stature, I would do everything I could to prevent my very existence from being uncovered on a mass-scale. That is not to say that people haven’t tried. Also, the mainstream metaphysics at present (i.e., physicalism) is not exactly facilitative of spiritual concepts in general. I can, however, imagine seeing a shift as quantum implications become better integrated within the sphere of culture. For reference, there is an established name for at least a certain conception of non-physical lifeforms—egregores—although I am not sure that what I witnessed would fall within a typical description, namely seeing that it was able to manipulate physicality in profound ways. To be fair, I need to do additional research on historic depictions of the so-called egregores.
It takes balls to write an essay like this, Sean.
Props.