Contemporary spiritual science considers traumatic experience the basic cause of any human problem – physical, mental or spiritual[1 ]. Besides its direct limiting influence, the traumatic experience also makes indirect impact, causing all kinds of consequences. Toxic bonding and identity loss are the main psychological consequences of trauma[2 ]. Having thoroughly cleansed a traumatic experience and its psychological consequences, several directions can be taken to complete a therapeutic intervention. That will, above all, depend on the person and his or her readiness to face different levels of the cause, i.e. their readiness to change their worldview and lifestyle. When it comes to beginners, a thoroughly cleansed trauma and its psychological consequences will, at some stage, induce a sufficient change in one’s inner configuration and they can proceed with creating a desirable reality. However, sooner or later, be it beginners or advanced practitioners, all persons who work on karmic cleansing face the spiritual consequences of traumatic experience. There is a whole range of such consequences, depending on their depth and energetic configuration. What they have in common are connections established with the so-called “other side of creation” or “lower worlds“, i.e. lower astral levels, which oppose the Creation.

In contrast to psychological consequences produced by traumatic experience, spiritual consequences relate to one's inability to grow spiritually. The person is unable to acquire a spiritual experience, and abilities such as the conscious use of intuition, energetic healing or releasing attachment to the physical body and material reality, will be unattainable for such a person. The person does not believe in them or sees them as interesting ideas – mere metaphors. Higher states of awareness being out of their reach, somewhere deep inside they are unsatisfied. Spiritual needs are man's strong needs; if one is not aware of them and does not realize them directly, they will degenerate in an unnatural form of spiritual life. Atheists project them in an almost religious loyalty to worldly tasks or pleasures, or to a strong attachment to their loved ones. It is therefore good to know that there is a spiritual dimension of our being, that it is possible to know it and that it needs to be given a certain space in our daily lives. However, one should at the same time be conscious of what is blocking and polluting their spirit and how to cleanse themselves from these inner impurities.

There is a specific inner conflict in every person, usually called a conflict between the positive and negative aspects of personality - the conflict between good and evil. This conflict is present in the majority of people and is even more prominent in those who are positively orientated than in those who consciously undertake evil acts. Only those who have surrendered to their destructive inner impulses and have built up a negative worldview and behavioural system do not have this inner conflict, since they identify with the negative aspect of their being and relegate positive ones to the background. Most people are aware of some of their negative characteristics, however if these characteristics fit within the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviour, they will allow themselves to manifest them, i.e. to act from them. Such people have neither the will nor the strength to fight their negativity, and they justify it with a range of positive characteristics that they have, which prevail in the end. This is why they occasionally go to church to confess, just to be able to peacefully continue with their large or small-scale malice and vices, because the negative inner states and behaviour have long since become a source of pleasure for them and they simply cannot, or often do not wish to, resist them.

Persons who are positively oriented and those who actively practice some form of personal development also occasionally face extremely dark and destructive fragments of their personality, whether they want to or not. Many stick their heads into the sand thinking that this could be the way to free themselves, while others try to keep themselves on a tight leash and adopt a way of ascetic life, attempting to “purify” themselves from negativity. Still some try to “think positive” and act very “enlightened”, thinking that evil will bypass them in that way. Some spiritual people completely neglect themselves and their personal needs (even when it is obvious that they are not ready for such freedom) and they completely devote themselves to giving and voluntary work in trying to root out evil from themselves. Typical for all these models is the resistance to evil – meaning the fear of evil. As soon as there is resistance or fear in us, it means that something evil can attach itself to us from within. The system of cleansing I will present later on enables one to detach this “something” in a manner far more elegant than the numerous forms of self-torture.

Contrary to the widespread belief that only villains are connected to evil, subtle connections with so-called lower worlds, lower astral spheres or negative aspects of the collective unconscious are present in the majority of people. Even those who are spiritually oriented are full of lower astral connections, yet the majority of spiritual practitioners nowadays simply do not know that this subtle level of inner impurity exists at all. Some of them might be familiar with this concept but often create a belief system according to which they are something special, under a special form of God's protection and mercy. They think that their spiritual orientation itself proves their purity from lower astral connections. In most cases the truth is exactly the opposite – with their over-emphasized and very often snobbish aspiration to “spirituality“ as something specially elevated, they mask the existence of negative aspects of their being that they have suppressed to the darkest corners of their subconsciousness, hidden both from themselves and the world. As long as the person is not completely enlightened and freed, it is definitely vulnerable to lower astral influences. At the end of the day, purifying inherent evil is one of the main reasons that the majority of people incarnate.

Examples of saints from various traditions show how deep and subtle the connections with evil can be. Trying to test his inner strength immediately prior to his mission, Jesus has spent forty days in the desert fighting satanic influences. Buddha met Mara, the “creator of illusion“, just before his enlightenment. More contemporary saints also frequently encountered evil in themselves, sometimes in unexpected and dramatic ways. The famous Italian saint Gemma Galgani (1878-1903)[3 ] began having Christ's stigmas on her palms as a young nun at the age of nineteen. Immediately prior to these experiences she would allegedly show signs of “demonic possession“ and said she felt extremely sinful. What is the origin of such extreme sinfulness in a person who lived a chaste life in a Christian family and entered a monastery at the age of eighteen, completely devoting her life to God? This is only one of the many examples of saints who lived a very ascetic and “pure” life and still found almost inexplicable negative drives in themselves. It seems that the sources of “sin” are very deep and subtle and should therefore not be underestimated. Unfortunately, many of contemporary spiritual seekers, especially those of “New Age“ orientation, often think that just because they practice some currently modern method, wear recycled clothes and eat grains that they don't have to work on cleansing lower astral connections. By thinking this way, they easily fall prey to their inner weaknesses, which - sooner or later - divert them from the path of personal development.

The influence of lower worlds is also present in the majority of people who live a “regular” life. With some people these connections are very active, while in others they are dormant. Apparently “good” and “nice” people, who strictly control their behaviour, will manifest them under appropriate circumstances. This primarily regards our reactions to crises or unusual situations. For example, in a moment of failure, shall we resort to negative means or behaviour to accomplish our goal? If we find ourselves in a position of power, shall we use it for general well-being or turn into a person who uses it exclusively for gaining personal wealth, manipulating others and acquiring as much bodily pleasures as possible? There is an old belief in people based on experience that “power makes man bad“; fame and popularity allegedly spoil people and war draws out “the worst” from some people. Chances are that a person who was abused will become a tyrant one day. Most people, at least once in their lifetime, ask themselves why there is evil in man and where does it come from?

Apart from traumatic experiences and their psychological consequences there are huge sources of negativity that reach quite far and quite deep. The conflict between good and evil is a universal one, manifesting in man on both the psychological and physical levels, but its source is always spiritual. This conflict does not exist on Earth only - in a certain way it comprises cosmic dimension of the manifested universe (extraterrestrial civilizations), together with the spirit world. All religions mention negative aspects of the spirit world and the existence of negative energetic (astral) spheres. Each has its concept, its name and interpretation but they regularly describe only one territory. Myths and folk wisdom are just as full of stories about the worlds of “darkness” as religions are. The conflict between good and evil is in almost every fairytale. However, in contrast to fairytales and myths, which mainly use metaphors, many mystics described the worlds of heaven and hell in detail, with almost scientific precision. Some of them really were scientists by their education and original profession, like Emanuel Swedenborg and Carl Gustav Jung, and some were artists like Goethe, Dante or Shakespeare, which endows them with additional credibility. A description of negative aspects of the spirit world would therefore be clearer if we approached it from several different angles.

I am aware that this is very “shaky” ground. Many spiritual schools think knowledge of the sources of evil should remain hidden, only available to true devotees so as to protect people from the knowledge of evil and prevent them from committing evil acts. Apart from silence and mystification by religious and spiritual schools, science has opposed superstition and abstract spiritual modules for a long time, claiming that sources of negativity were exclusively personal and psychological, not recognizing the objective existence of evil as a force that can exist independently of human beings. However, the appearance of Carl Gustav Jung in contemporary psychology, with his concept of the collective unconscious, offered a model that could present the basis for a scientific explanation of this idea. Many other authors dealing with sources of evil have appeared lately – among the most interesting are psychiatrist M. Scott Peck with his book “People of Lie“, then Elaine Pagels (author of “The Gnostic Gospels“) with “The Origin of Satan“ or American psychiatrist of Indian background Shakuntala Modi, M.D., who provides a new perspective to contemporary psychiatry and sources of psychiatric disorders in her book “Remarkable Healings“.

In order to describe this elusive idea, I will start with the psychological model. For this purpose, I have adopted Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, the difference being that my interpretation of this concept will be looser, with several new ideas added. Just as the individual unconscious of every person (apart from a range of positive and desirable functions) contains stored negative contents – emotions, conclusions and decisions, identities, thought forms, i.e. various negative models of reality, the collective unconscious of the human race contains all universal negative models that society wants to hide or suppress for one reason or another. Every individual's unconscious contains negative and destructive contents created by traumatic experience. Very often, people project personifications on such contents, i.e. they experience them as separate fragments of their own being that burden and jeopardize them in a certain way. The collective unconscious contains collective negative models, which will, if personified, sound familiar to everyone. Goethe's Faust, for example, does not call on God's help to realize his goals but makes a deal with the most famous negative figure of the collective unconscious – Mephisto or the Devil. Everybody else does the same, provided there are appropriate conditions for it. >From a psychological point of view, connecting to negative archetypes of the collective unconscious will immediately follow a traumatic experience as our ego's reaction to a negative perception of the reality we find ourselves in. Such an experience of reality is a result of negative perception models created during a traumatic experience. This sows the seeds for all future disorders and unhealthy processes in the individual unconscious, be they physical, psychological or spiritual. Negative models arising from the collective unconscious sometimes stick to negative models imprinted in the individual unconscious.

Here are some praxis examples. A woman was raped by her father. This act produces probably one of the worst traumas that can exist. The traumatic model that this person built up through her experience was a frozen conglomerate of fear, rage and hatred, an attitude that love does not exist - there is only sex, that men are chauvinistic pigs, that life on this planet is revolting, and a God who allows such things to happen either does not exist or must be completely mad. Together with the avenger identity, negative attitudes about God become a trigger for creating lower astral connection. After this experience, the person felt unstable, threatened and completely unprotected, but the negative attitude towards God created a resistance to the spiritual world as a possible source of protection and security. The traumatized person searches for protection of any kind, but since they turned their back on God, than someone else stepped up to the stage, ready to provide all the “help” needed. It is a collective negative force, which we usually (for lack of a more adequate and equally simple term) call the Devil. This force offered protection to that girl in the form of certain abilities (powers) and characteristics and enabled her to protect herself from all similar unpleasant situations in the future. A subtle inner transfer took place here – the Devil did not physically materialize himself in front of her, offering earthly powers and pleasures. The whole thing took place within her psyche where the subtle “soul trade“ occurred. For example, a traumatized person rejects faith in positive principles such as universal love, tolerance or understanding. Instead, she accepts the power of sexual manipulation over the opposite sex and develops a magnetic attraction and eroticism that will be used to realize all kinds of goals. These abilities are offered by the Devil and his kingdom, the lower astral world. The person establishes a subtle connection with such an energy source and uses the energy for negative activities.

However, exchange is a two-way process and the Devil always asks for something in return. The person thus denounces those aspects of their soul, which clash with the above-mentioned negative characteristics and abilities. This particular person gave up her sensitivity and became cold and emotionless, entering sexual relationships without an ounce of emotion. She was unable to open up emotionally, even when she wanted to, because she gave up the part of her personality that would enable her to do so. For her, sex became a means of revenge on the opposite sex, and human relationships became an area for manifesting personal power – a battlefield in which domination of one person over another takes place. Later on, such persons become motivated by status and personal ambitions and try to seduce someone successful in order to acquire money and a reputation to feed their trauma-threatened ego. The above-mentioned person was able to sense the existence of such tendencies in her on time and managed to step back from her negative characteristics and seek help. She avoided this course of events and saved herself from immense suffering that would, with a traumatic experience that was not cleansed, arise from the negative deeds she would have done in the meantime.

Another person is a young man with a harmonious family life who began working on his excessive aggressiveness that would occasionally crop up, often during very banal situations. A trigger for the burst of aggression would be trifle, such as other people’s behaviour in traffic, bad service by a waiter, a rude clerk at the post office etc. This person was aware that he overreacted, yet in every subsequent situation he would react in the same way – he simply could not resist his inner urge. Having cleansed the symptoms of the problem, worked on a range of traumatic experiences from his current life and cleansed his relationship with an aggressive father, this person continued to work and encountered a past life. In this past life, an enemy army entered the village where he lived as a boy of seven years old and killed everyone except him because he managed to take shelter behind his house. Once the massacre was over, the boy came out of the shelter and suffered a shock. It is needless to mention negative emotions and conclusions here. The traumatic experience was so strong that it was immediately followed by a connection to a lower astral. The boy connected to an astral source of power that gave him almost super-human strength and an urge for aggressive behaviour with anyone who presented even the slightest threat to his personality. He also acquired the ability to kill a man and not feel a thing. He became a mad avenger who was at war with the rest of the world. This model is subtly felt even now, when this person is far away from the earlier identity and an advanced spiritual practitioner.

The third person had chronic love problems. As soon as she would build up a quality relationship with a person of the opposite sex, the relationship would fall apart. It seemed that it was not her fault and very often it happened for quite strange reasons. Having cleansed several levels of the cause and its psychological consequences, this woman encountered a certain energy form in her aura that was a result of an occult attack, or “spell”, aimed at making her “unlucky in love”. Further examination showed that the occult attack was produced by a jealous neighbour who could not stand that she could start relationships with the opposite sex easily, while no one showed interest for her and her daughter. Some professional “spell removers“ would end their job by dissolving the energetic consequences of such an attack, but this woman’s goal was to discover what made her susceptible of such an attack, i.e. was there something in her being that attracted this influence. She continued working and encountered a past life in which she had a strong love trauma. She fell in love with a young man from a higher class and their relationship bloomed for a while. Once his family discovered that their son intended to marry an “ordinary peasant”, they managed to force him to leave her. This act completely shattered the young girl who had just come out of puberty and fallen in love for the first time. Apart from the break-up, she also experienced the mocking of her fellow peasants who had been telling her that the relationship was doomed to finish this way from the start. Since a traumatized person does not usually behave in a rational and thought-out way, but instead, tortured by suffering, seeks comfort and protection of any kind, this girl went to see the local witch in order to ease her emotional suffering. The witch saw a candidate for a successor in the girl and promised to help if she became her assistant. The witch offered to pass on all her knowledge and abilities to the girl, but since she owed her powers to lower astral connections she initiated the girl in her skill through a range of magic rituals and connected her to the negative energetic sources of power. In this way, the girl acquired, among other things, the ability of negative occult influence on others. In exchange for money, persons with love problems could order a spell that would make the partner who left them come back. Some clients were unsatisfied with their relationships and ordered their partners to leave, regardless of the way or the consequences. It is therefore no small wonder that, pursuant to the law of karma, this person had love problems with often invisible causes in her current life.

These examples show that lower astral connections created after traumatic experiences (either in the current or past life) manifest in praxis as subtle urges for immoral behaviour that one cannot easily control. Even though lower astral connections do not necessarily manifest in criminal or promiscuous behaviour, such behaviour certainly indicates the existence of these connections. Only when active do they directly influence daily activities and behaviour. Such people consciously identify with their negative characteristics and consciously commit negative acts, which they justify in various ways. However, if they are suppressed in the sub- conscious, but still present, lower astral connections can be manifested in a far subtler manner. While in a criminal they manifest through a whole range of destructive activity such as stealing, blackmail or violence, in a spiritually oriented person, the existence of lower astral connections will, for example, be indicated by the inability to quit smoking or gossiping, or overcoming the idea that money is bad or a simple addiction to coffee. In Croatia there is a saying that small children should not drink coffee, because if they do, they will “grow a tail“. It is interesting that the connections with the lower astral realms sometimes look like tails.

Although not always active, lower astral connections are present in the majority of people. They are most often dormant and suppressed in the subconscious, but even there they produce problems that cannot always be easily solved. While active negativity is demonstrated by malice, passive negativity manifests through disease, bad habits, bad relationships, blocked creativity, inner conflicts or identifications with external source of fulfilment, i.e. through blocked spiritual abilities and the inability to have spiritual experiences. Persons surrounded by this kind of negativity can attempt to change, improve himself or herself or progress, but are simply not able to, at least not at the speed they would want to. They often justify their problems with a difficult destiny or “bad karma“, and consider the goals taught by spiritual schools as unattainable. This is why the only way to make a quality breakthrough into spiritual impurities is to confront them with awareness, i.e. to acquire the knowledge that allows us to go through processes of cleansing spiritual impurities in an integral and safe way.

Lower astral connections that haven’t been thoroughly cleansed, not only in the psychological or energetic sense, but in a behavioural and lifestyle one as well, present one of the three possible sources of temptation in the spiritually orientated person – obsession with status, money or sex - which can turn them into what Carl Gustav Jung calls a manna personality. Jung defined the mana personality as a phase of development that follows after one has become whole. Jung defines wholeness as a state of realized individuation, however he claims that not even being whole on the individual level automatically results in complete balance in a man. Wholeness establishes mental health, but once this has been achieved, the next goal is spiritual health. If one wishes to develop further in the direction of creative self-realization, they have to undergo a process of cleansing their identifications with negative aspects of the collective unconscious so that the goal of spiritual wholeness can follow. A whole person is thus a powerful person (manna means power). However, the question is what will this person do with their newly gained power? Having completed individuation they will inevitably face very subtle temptations since, as Jung says, the phase in development where one identifies with the manna personality (with their personal power) is an almost inevitable phase of personal development that has both positive and negative aspects.

At first sight, the abuse of power by a manna personality does not necessarily appear as abuse. The manna personality can simply be fond of money, power or sex within socially acceptable borders. However, socially acceptable borders are one thing, and spiritually acceptable borders are something completely different. For example, the majority of whole persons who become “teachers“, or better put, instructors of personal development techniques and systems, will go through a manna personality phase. They usually enjoy the advantages of their inner state and outer status by embodying certain archetypes, such as the wizard, magician, hero, master or saint. Others, usually their students, see in them their own separate and non-integrated personality aspects but are not aware of this, so their “teacher“ has a certain power over them. Spiritual teachers should use their authority to positively influence students, to transfer knowledge to them, to be able to take them in and guide them through a crisis. However, spiritual teachers sometimes allow themselves more than what their role strictly defines.

Some, for example, enter sexual relationships with students and often justify it with various reasons. Manna personalities are unable to control their sexuality and use their power to satisfy their appetites. On the other hand, some individuals that go through this phase attempt to control their suddenly emerged or strong libido by force and resort to celibacy. However, celibacy is just another extreme, and rare are those who are ready for it, and as such it cannot be an efficient means to control one’s sexuality. Certain individuals who are whole at the soul-level will try and use their personal power to acquire material wealth. Using their influence over people, they will attempt to market themselves higher than their actual worth. This in itself would not be wrong if the manna personality used acquired wealth in a constructive way. Sometimes however, exactly the opposite takes place – some spiritual “masters“ can be seen in casinos. Some spiritual people, who are able to recognize money as their weakness attempt to, just like sexuality, overcome it with deprivation. They renounce material wealth and consider poverty a virtue. Very often they do not charge for their services or charge less than others who do the same job, and then consider themselves as “honest”.

There is a third group of people who like power and status and often wish to show themselves or their life path as best, the only and the superior. Such persons easily enter into conflicts or discussions in an attempt to prove their righteousness to others. They try to fill themselves with their own significance or influence created by a certain status. They accept systems of development that rely on tradition and oppose novelties, as they require the back up of a concrete source. In case they themselves have created new systems of personal development, their boasting is endless – they present them as epochal to say the least. Sometimes grand ideas about themselves and their abilities dawn on them (stadium shows, spectacular healings) or they establish sects, churches, spiritual schools, even though they are not ready for such endeavours. And, there are also those people who consider power as weakness and try to deny it, so they live a quiet and withdrawn life, unnoticed by their environment. These individuals are unable to present themselves in an appropriate way and are ashamed of any advertising or self-praise. They know that their subtle weakness is related to an abuse of power and therefore do not wish to be powerful in any way, whether positive or negative.

In my experience, the root of the manna personality lies in the lack of an adequate spiritual experience, i.e. in connections to negative aspects of the collective unconscious that originated as a reaction to emotional wounds, or traumatic experiences. Lower astral connections are a means of compensation for our wounded ego. Instead of opening up to the omnipresent Spirit as an endless and unconditional source of fulfilment, a manna personality yields to the temptation to heal the remains of their psychological hurts with money, sex or their own personal significance. Being psychologically whole, cleansed of destructive influences of individual consciousness, the manna personality is on the path to spiritual freedom and it is only logical that they will need to cleanse themselves of destructive influences from their collective unconscious. They need to face all traits of the abuse of power they have used in a negative way. Just as the person who wishes to establish a love relationship needs to face all previous disappointments and traumas related to their emotional life, the person who finally becomes whole and ready to take over one of the positive collective identities (as a means of further growth) needs to face all remnants of identification with negative archetypes. One of the ways to harmoniously go through this phase is by cleansing lower astral connections and, according to Jung, building up positive identities based on spiritual experience and spiritual health. Finally, a whole person also needs to become aware that they simply are powerful themselves and that one’s own power does not need to be spectacularly displayed, but placed at the service of something that is of general good. This realization will also enable manna personalities to satisfy their needs in the best way.

The natural course of development that ensues upon the completion of psychological health is aspiration to spiritual health. Because a person who wants to be enlightened, karmically cleansed and creatively realized needs to work on spiritual health, they need to unidentify from all unhealthy forms of attachment in the dual, manifested world. The manna personality appears in one of the last phases of the process of unidentification. Whole persons have already realized themselves, they have integrated the major part of the separate aspects of their soul, however, they will need to work on becoming aware and integrating the part of their being we call the Spirit. The map of the “Spirit’s territory“ includes the whole of existence, i.e. the whole of the manifested and unmanifest universe. All manifestations of the outer world that one does not accept will have to be accepted. All needs for fulfilment with something from the outside world will need to be balanced. Attachment to collective life models such as marriage at all costs, money at all costs, obligatory Sunday lunch, working throughout the week and resting at the weekend will have to be overcome. The Spirit covers an extremely wide territory, as it comprises the whole of existence and our attunement to this wholeness. A manna personality therefore comes into being when a person finally becomes whole on the individual level, but on the inside still strongly resists complete acceptance of the whole of reality as part of themselves and themselves as part of the source of this reality.

A subtle lack of faith (doubt), fear and guilt feeling are at the root of manna personality. A manna personality is unable to accept that they have everything they need within themselves. They are as a child who satisfies all their needs and plays one of the final unconscious games within a dual universe. They do not wish to abolish all processes in their own consciousness or all yearnings for life’s experience. They are strongly attached to the process and the game as the subtle remnants of doubt, fear and guilt prevent them from completely surrendering to inner fulfilment that their primary nature brings. A manna personality therefore needs to continue with inner cleansing and deepening their spiritual experience or risk destroying everything they have created so far. Life no longer shows mercy for a psychologically whole person - they pay dearly for their mistakes. A manna personality has to free itself from attachment to those aspects of manifested universe that they have a soft spot for and must work on connecting with the omnipresent Spirit. The root of “the fall in the illusion of the dual universe“, i.e. the feeling of being abandoned by God and therefore being excessively attached to the material world is precisely the feeling of guilt. At the moment of its creation the soul thinks it is thrown out of the state of original oneness because it did something wrong. Guilt prevents the manna personality from being completely happy, satisfied and successful in a positive and constructive way. Due to the subtle guilt feeling, a manna personality becomes destructive (even though they do not see themselves as such) and destroys their own lives in a very subtle way, together with the lives of those close to them. This is why cleansing the spiritual consequences of a traumatic experience is one of the most useful tools for a successful passage through such a phase of development.

Connections with negative energetic spheres are most often experienced as an energetic channel located in a certain chakra, connecting the person to a source of negative energy and power. Apart from adopting negative characteristics, i.e. soul trade, one is also energetically connected to the lower astral. Such connections enable one to perform supernatural acts, such as occult influence. In order to accomplish such acts, a person needs to be initiated into this skill, connected to the source of power that will provide them with energy for such an action. Therefore, once they realize that such skills actually burden them and, in the long run, hinder them from accomplishing their goals, the person will have to know how to sever their subtle energetic connection with a particular source of identity. This connection is a form of trade, which never fulfils one completely. A person who has created a lower astral connection has an irresistible, compulsory and obsessive need to exercise the skills they were given. They hardly have any choice since they are addicted to their negative characteristics and powers. These destructive energies put strong pressure on the psyche of the person, trying to manifest in their daily lives. If a person gave up a negative lifestyle produced by energetic channels connecting them to the lower astral, without severing the energetic connection, they will have to invest an enormous amount of energy to resist its influence. They feel some subtle “evil” in them but do not know how to get rid of it. Unless consciously broken, lower astral connections stay and continue to burden the person with their negative influence. They even pass on from one incarnation to another so that a person can be mentally healthy in the present life and of positive orientation (at least on the conscious level), but subtle remains of lower astral connection continue to cause significant problems.

One of the indications that someone is under the influence of negative models of the collective unconscious is the need to live and act in a negative way as much as possible. If someone likes perverse sex but only practices it with their partner, it is probably a negative influence of the individual unconscious – a psychological consequence of a traumatic experience, usually unrealized creativity that is being compensated for in this way. However, if such a disorder develops into promiscuous behaviour, visiting brothels or setting up orgies, it is probably an influence of the negative aspects of the collective unconscious, as it tends to spread and become a mass phenomenon. It is the same with money obsessions or any other “power trip“ – they very often take unimagined proportions and are difficult to control later on.

The foregoing examples confirm this. All three persons had an irresistible urge to react in negative ways in various situations, or were themselves victims of spiritual, mental, emotional or physical violence for a long time. Consequently, one should not overemphasise the karmic consequences of connections with negative spheres of the collective unconscious – they are vast and not only limited to individuals. Sometimes they stretch to whole strata of people and social and ethnic groups. Due to collective karmic debts people are born in a certain area, state, city or village and take over certain duties that attach them to people, and social and political systems, thus restricting their freedom. In the karmic sense, lower astral connections are dearly paid for because we very often use them for massive manifestations of negative powers and influencing a number of people in a certain way. One should bear in mind how annoyingly meticulous the law of karma is and that every such influence needs to be “paid off through karma“ later on, i.e. brought into balance with an opposite positive activity.

Suppressed lower astral connections in people of a positive orientation sometimes manifest in negative life circumstances. Seemingly innocent individuals happen to be the targets of someone’s aggression, or find themselves in an emotional relationship with a manipulative person, or happen to be under a negative occult influence. Such circumstances are simply an outer reflection of the subconscious contents they haven’t yet liberated themselves of. If the person we love is constantly manipulating us, it might be a sign that we once did the same thing (sometimes in the present life and very often in the past ones) and that we did not cleanse the causes of such negative acts. The present incarnation is therefore an opportunity to cleanse ourselves completely, instead of endlessly blaming outer circumstances for our problems. Negative occult influences will provide a good example for such a karmic model. Systems of removing a psychic attack influence, “black magic“ or a curse are not completely efficient if they only contain energetic protection.

Curses, just like implants, belong to a group of mental consequences of traumatic experience - orders and bans. However, in contrast to implants, which once had a material form, curses are negative energetic forms imprinted in the energy body with the intention to execute a negative influence on a person. They are consequences of a devised, programmed influence of one person over another. Being energetic forms, thoughts and emotions are able to travel through space and be directed onto someone to produce certain consequences. In terms of communication, every energetic form finds its target, as it travels through the energy field and almost immediately establishes contact with the object it was intended for. Since the nature of energy is neutral, wishing evil on someone also presents an energetic force that travels to its target. To fulfil a negative intention through a relevant type of occult ritual that will endow it with additional power is to be an occult criminal. Acting negatively vis-à-vis one’s environment is insane, just as killing someone is. Still, some people do it, disregarding the consequences of such acts. Karmic consequences of negative occult influence fall in the group of the heaviest. They are usually compensated for through a range of lives in which the person is neither physically nor mentally healthy, and after that as a relatively healthy person who is unable to realize happiness, peace and fulfilment for a long time to come.

Energetic forms of curses are equal to those of an implant and the cleansing method is identical. However, the reason why someone becomes a victim of the negative occult act should always be checked. It is usually easy to cleanse the consequences of an occult attack if we work on the causes. Without treating the cause it is impossible to provide permanent protection. As long as an inner magnet for outer negativity exists the person will attract such influence. Zen teacher Hui Neng wrote long ago - “since all is empty from the beginning, where can the dust alight“, but the person who is subject to an attack is not purified and negative energy has something to attach itself to. One usually becomes a target for an attack due to karmic reasons – sometimes, usually in past lives, the person has done the same to others. Today, that person is no longer an occult persecutor, but if outer karma has not been compensated for and the inner aspect cleansed, the person will (seemingly accidentally) find herself under the attack of a curse. To undo the negative influence one first has to dissolve the energetic form of the curse and its substance. Immediately after that the causes of this situation need to be dissolved. The person has to dissolve the traumatic experiences and lower astral connections that were created as consequences of a trauma. With this kind of work one can achieve a state of purity, and if it is followed by the opposite positive activity, the person can finally be free and finish the whole karmic cycle.

After psychological and energetic models, which I find crucial for precise interpretation of the dynamics of spiritual consequences of a trauma, we will also examine the abstract aspect of this territory. It may complete the picture of origin, creation and role of the lower astral world within Creation. In the preceding chapters there was mention of the two main aspects of the whole of reality – the manifested and unmanifest universe. God mystics speak of the present unmanifest universe, the aspect of Creation that exists behind the curtain of the material world, and independent of it. Terms used to describe this level of God are often vague since here God exists independently of the laws of the manifested universe, of linear time, three-dimensional space, Aristotle’s logics, reason and intellect - principles of dual world. Here God is experienced in many different ways, and I made a list of the typical impressions that can convey its main characteristics verbally – to an extent. God in the unmanifest state is:

Many will find these impressions strange, but it is almost impossible to speak of this aspect of God – there is no clearer way, and there is no explanation or justification for these statements – they are the most concisely expressed realizations of mystical experience and there is nothing to add to it. In any case, a profound understanding of such impressions comes with a personal experience. These qualities are by no means all of God’s qualities, but here they will suffice for the interpretation that is to follow.

Why God created manifested world is a mystery on which there still is no consensus – some mystics say one thing, others another. However, the majority agree that God is the creator of the universe, that he she, it) created it and that it was created out of love, i.e. to fully realize his creative potentials. The manifested world, varying in density, was created for this purpose, from very thin to very dense – the material world. The material world is just the densest part of the manifested universe, which includes all energetic forms of various densities. The Soul is a manifestation of God, just like all “spiritual“ or bodiless beings that exist as individual forms (angels, for example). There is a whole hierarchy of beings dwelling in the worlds of various densities. The material world, with all the beings that live in it, is the densest of all worlds. Considering the manifested universe in the order it was created, the process goes “from thin to dense“ (alchemical solve to coagula). Highly conscious bodiless beings are created first and then bodily beings whose level of consciousness mainly depends on the development of their brains and nerve systems. This could lead to conclusion that bodiless beings are at a higher level of development than humans, but that is not necessarily the case.

The angels and archangels are beings in God’s service, made of light and aware of their place in the whole of Creation, but it seems that they are not aware of a very important fact regarding their original nature – that they are also God. It is not my intention to devalue angelic beings and their sacred role. Even though angels are beings that serve God and the whole of Creation, it is a fact that they simply have no awareness of the essence of their being as divine. It is one thing to be aware of God and serve the principle of good, and completely another to be aware of oneself as God. This kind of awareness is not a consequence of a grand superiority complex, nor does it have anything to do with the ego – it is about the level of responsibility for one’s existence, and that kind of responsibility is very difficult to take. This type of awareness reflects the final truth of the very essence of all forms of manifested universe, but still, very few beings are able to recognize this truth and live according to it. God needs us to have this awareness, because it brings about awakening of the creative impulse and enables God to realize his/her creative potential through his/her own creations. It seems that only existing in a physical body, on this or some other similar planet enables souls to discover who they really are. Only being in a human body will entice a soul to take the path of return to the original spiritual reality. The human kingdom is made in God’s image. As shown in God’s characteristics listed above, God also has a “human face“ and has created man after his example. God’s kingdom and human kingdom are two similar worlds, different in density levels. Human kingdom is a lower octave of heavenly kingdom. This means that all rules of spiritual world apply in earthly world - with one huge difference. Human kingdom is not free from the influence of what we call “the other side of creation“, or lower astral world. Heavenly kingdom knows no resistance or obstacles, but in human kingdom beings have to make an effort to realize their creative impulse.

What is the origin of the astral world? Originally, it was not created by God. God exists unrelated to manifested universe, out of all duality, conflict and discord. Lower astral world was created by beings originally created by God, but since God does not interfere with one’s free will and has created every being free to live or not to live in accordance with their original nature, some bodiless beings decided to deny their original nature and resist God’s will, unaware that by doing so they deny their own original nature. Sufi interpretation of what is usually called “the fall” is probably the clearest one and I will use it to further expand on this extremely delicate subject. Sufis say that God, having created man, invited all archangels to bow and serve his creation. Story has it that an archangel called Satan loved God most and that he could not stand his jealousy at man as a new object of God’s love and attention. He refused to bow to man and said he would always bow to God, but never to any of his material creations. Blinded with his fanatic loyalty to God, Satan was the first archangel to demonstrate a lack of knowing his real nature. Satan expelled himself from heaven, became the leader of the rebellion and subsequently created his own version of Creation as a means for mocking the God’s one. Satan created the lower astral world and attracted other creatures into it - rebels who were unaware of their own essence.

The question is – why is it so important to be aware of oneself as God? One possible answer is – because this awareness renders one complete. If one is not aware that they have, in a certain sense, never left the state of original unity with God, that everything they undergo is just an experience they need to go through, that the path to happiness lies in creative realization of their original nature - they will be influenced by lower aspects of their being which we call the “ego“. Instead of being aware of complete and utter unity, such a being perceives all of creation as a threat to their survival, as an obstacle to realisation of their goals, as an extremely incomplete place in which all beings are destined to suffering. Feeling the lack of love and fear ensuing from such a feeling will be the main drive for their actions. Eternal yearning for fulfilment with something outside of the borders of their being and the constant feeling of failure will be the cause of unsuccessful relationships resulting in deep inner unhappiness. Unrest and dissatisfaction colour this person’s existence far more than positive states, which seem unreal and unattainable. Deep selfishness lures behind their goals, together with alienation from their and other people’s emotions and emotional trade as the only form of relationship they know. This makes every person ruled by such states an easy prey for the lower worlds. Fallen angels always offer help, whatever kind we want. God does not offer Himself – He is the very essence of our being that needs to be recognized. God is love, the source of unconditional peace and satisfaction. This is why we need no outer protection for which we will pay by giving up the good, by selling the soul or closing any sort of negative deal. Such protection is equal to that offered by mafia – one pays a tenth (or more) of our revenue for the possibility of undisturbed business. This money fuels the mafia’s casinos, drugs, brothels and bribing the police, thus slowly creating a lower astral world on Earth.

People have always wondered why God, being almighty, does not destroy evil in its root, and what is the real purpose of evil? Since God lets beings fight for the good themselves, it seems that existence of evil has its function within the creation, which is not exclusively negative. Even though Satan is a fallen archangel at war with Creation, he does withdraw before God in His unmanifest, original state, after all. Satan is thus testing Creation, checking its credibility and confronting it with its own imperfection. As he facilitates the process of self-realization by enticing people to destructive activities, it seems that Satan does God a favour, without being aware of it. It is impossible to be completely fulfilled by continuously doing evil. Persons who are completely confronted with the mistruth, sooner turn towards the truth - not only through its manifestation in others but also through their own destructive activity. Goethe’s Mephisto says:

The appearance of the Devil on the scene usually speeds up the awakening of consciousness and the development of good. Every drama, novel and movie is based on the same model – presentation of characters, plot, catharsis and resolution. The plot is followed by catharsis and resolution. Looking symbolically, introducing evil on the scene is what constitutes the plot. The plot is usually a conflict - characters, driven by an outside action, undergo introspection, purification from negativity, put their own values at trial, overcome their present capacity and acquire a new state of mind they hadn’t have before. This, of course, is an initiation, but an initiation hardly ever comes without a challenge or a test. That is what makes it difficult - and genuine. Ideally, everything in our lives needs to be completely right and natural. Central technique of Hawaiian Hunas is called “Ho o pono pono“, freely translated as “to make something right and right again “. Things are either right or they’re not. If there is no other way to check if things are right, negative forces appear in our life and test us. Thus, if we pass the test created for us by Devil himself, who can dare to challenge our righteousness?

I am aware that this model resembles a fairytale or a myth and that it contains inconsistencies. However, the knowledge presented here stems from direct experience – mine and other people’s – and the nature of direct experience makes a logical explanation superfluous. Direct or mystical experience cannot be reached by thinking, but through experiencing it directly, which is more about receiving an impression and knowledge, than speculating. Mystics are able to have such experiences due to their psychological purification and balance, as well as their openness and sensitivity. Instead of logical mental processes, direct experiences of the spiritual world are far more characterized by strong feelings, followed with thoughts that are usually irregular and fragmented. However, even though irrational by nature, we know that feelings are superior to intellect. They are a medium or a means facilitating a direct experience. Thoughts appear later, as a medium of the linear mind, which is trying to interpret the experience using its own means. Such thoughts are usually irregular and difficult to connect logically. But just because something is illogical it is not necessarily untrue. It is therefore sometimes almost impossible to check what is going on in a spiritual experience, or pose sub-questions that would clear the spiritual message up to satisfy our intellect’s need for logic. Myth, fairytale and poetry are far better means of expressing a spiritual experience than thoughts and logic. I must repeat that as long as someone does not have their own spiritual experiences, they will not be able to understand this subject fully. Such an experience is not a privilege of the few – it is available to anyone who wants to pursue it – but it cannot always be verbally conveyed. However, what backs up the idea of presenting such knowledge is the possibility of its practical implementation in therapy. This quantity of information is sufficient for successful work on dissolving lower astral connections. The foregoing therapeutic model provided an efficient technology for a quality work on transforming lower astral connections into deep spiritual experiences.

Dissolving lower astral connections is quite simple in case a connection was accurately diagnosed and a person is ready to change. If a symptom of someone’s problem indicates the existence of lower astral connections, one should still start by cleansing the traumatic experience that had caused them - which regularly precede their creation. We should then check whether such a connection was created as a result of the trauma. If so, we should focus on discovering negative characteristics and abilities such a connection brings. We need to locate the area of the body in which we feel the presence of a lower astral connection and identify with it in order to discover which characteristics and abilities it gives us. Each trait and ability needs to be dissolved, i.e. consciously released. It is then necessary to return the part of our soul we had lost when connecting in this way. We have to reintegrate the lost identity and discover the meaning of such a connection – what did the experience want to teach us. The lesson is usually spiritual. It is about the spiritual experience, which we did not have and therefore connected with negative sources of fulfillment and protection. Now we have to connect to spiritual consciousness, i.e. our supraconsciousness or higher self. It is from this state that we release the connection – by renouncing it and bringing it to an end. In the introductory part of this part I have said that the lower astral world withdraws before the purity of the spiritual world. Satan will always bow before God in his original state. Thus, when we enter this state, any lower astral connection will automatically be shut down. We have prepared the ground for this process by facing our attachment and renouncing negative characteristics and the ability it gave us. We then entered a heightened state of awareness, connected to the spiritual world and gained a new spiritual experience. If we were able to do this at the moment of a trauma, then we would have successfully passed the initiation that was behind trauma, which has produced the connection to lower astral worlds. In that way, we would avoid being connected to the lower astral and automatically avoid creating a certain amount of negative karma. However, everything can be fixed and we can now do what we didn’t do then.

Cleansing lower astral connections creates significant and positive changes. First and foremost, our perception has undergone a thorough change. Cleansing a chakra can be directly reflected in the purity of our perception, as chakras are the centers of energy communication. Purified perception is one of the basic conditions for a quality life – both secular and spiritual. It enables us to willingly and consciously communicate with various levels of our being. Characteristics such as self-sufficiency and independence of external influences are direct consequences of such communicational openness. On the other hand, working at the level of intention, one gains a deeper insight into their true life’s goals. Cleansing the centers at the hara level brings awareness of the original intention behind our existence as a physical person. Awareness of the meaning of our lives is a direct positive consequence of such purification. It is also accompanied with a higher energy in the centers of energy accumulation on the hara level. If we proceed to the core star level, we can say that purified star centers bring awareness of one’s original nature and an additional amount of freedom. Having cleaned them, the person is set free from the very subtle negative influences that caused various limitations in life so far. By discovering various aspects of our original identity, we are able to develop our creativity and free our creative potentials, instead of using external role models or blindly following teachers and gurus.

Spiritual development is directly related to our readiness to face deep dimensions of our personal impurities and blockages. Such development is not at all related to external systems of information – to the intellectual knowledge various schools or teachings can give us. Initiations by a guru or possessing a lot of intellectual knowledge isn’t of much use if not accompanied with quality cleansing at the soul level. In my experience, work on cleansing energy centers from lower astral connections simply has no alternative, especially for advanced practitioners. This work will have to be done sooner or later, using this or some other method. This kind of work frees inner creative potentials and enables complete self-realization – everything else equates to sticking one’s head in the sand and avoiding responsibility, to romantic idealizing produced by personal immaturity and coupled with reading quasi-spiritual literature that describes only the face but not the back of the process we call spiritual development. Even though the path of taking responsibility for one’s own personal development is a harder way, it is also much faster and cleaner - and the goal realized with one’s own effort brings far greater fulfillment.