Schiarchimandrite Abraham, confessor of the Novo-Tikhvin women's monastery and the Holy Kosminskaya Hermitage, answers questions about the dark forces, what influence they have on our life, whom they disguise themselves as and how to treat them correctly.
Father, it seems to me that we greatly exaggerate the participation of evil spirits in our life: we ourselves create a situation for ourselves, and then we say that this is "a temptation from demons."
- Sometimes it really can be such that only we ourselves are to blame, and we blame the demons.
Everyone remembers the story from the Fatherland about how a certain monk on Good Friday fried an egg on a candle in his cell. And when the abbot caught him doing this and the monk began to make excuses: the devil had tempted me, the demon shouted from the corner: "Don't believe him, father, I myself marvel at his cunning!"
On the other hand, we cannot underestimate the influence of demons on our thoughts and actions. This influence is much greater than many people think.
Any person simultaneously dwells in two worlds: with his body - in the material world, with his soul - in the spiritual world. Even an atheist, who denies the very existence of spirit, leads a spiritual life in the broad sense of the word. He does not believe in dark forces, but, without realizing it, communicates with them, accepts their suggestions, sometimes becomes their blind instrument. It seems to him that he is free from "religious prejudices" and lives by himself, but this is an illusion.
A person may not think about whether he breathes fresh air or carbon monoxide, but this does not mean that this will not affect his health in any way. He may not know anything about physical laws, but if he touches a bare wire, he will feel an electric shock, perhaps without even understanding what happened. The same is in spiritual life: it has its own laws, which inevitably affect each of us. Since we have little faith in the existence of demons, we often take even explicit demonic suggestions for our own desires.
The main Christian feat - sobriety - is aimed precisely at carefully monitoring the life of your spirit, protecting yourself from evil thoughts, inspired by demons, and purifying your mind. When we look inside ourselves with a mental eye, plunge into the mysterious spiritual world, we see that our soul contains desires and feelings that are completely alien to us, and we clearly feel some kind of extraneous influence on us. A person who is just embarking on the feat of purifying his soul is like a blind man: he sees demons only when, so to speak, they have come close. People who are experienced in spiritual life see the approach of demons to the soul from afar, and can protect their minds with prayer in time.
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Do demons read a person's thoughts?
- The Monk John Cassian the Roman writes about this. Demons do not know the thoughts of a person, but they certainly know those thoughts that they themselves inspired this person. Again, they cannot know whether we have accepted these thoughts or not, but they guess about it from our actions.
Let's say they instilled in a person a prodigal thought, and he began to look at the person of the opposite sex: aha, that means he accepted. They instilled a thought of anger, the man flushed, began waving his fists (I, of course, exaggerate) - so he again accepted. After all, if we, looking at the interlocutor, can guess whether he agrees with us or not, then the more demons can guess about it.
As for thoughts from God or some natural ones, they can guess about them from our behavior, but they cannot know them exactly.
Can a demon enter a person?
- If we talk about it quite literally, then a demon cannot enter the human soul, only the Lord can penetrate there by a supernatural Divine action.
The demon can live only in the body of a person, taking possession to one degree or another of his mental or bodily manifestations, i.e. either the possessed person occasionally undergoes seizures, or completely loses control over himself.
A demon can enter a person's body under the influence of witchcraft - unless, of course, a person resorts to God's help, confesses, takes communion, or prays. And maybe some kind of permission from God, for admonition.
Such an incident happened to Motovilov, a close student and spiritual child of the Monk Seraphim of Sarov. After the death of the monk, he collected information about his life and miracles. And by the way, I found a story about how the Monk Seraphim healed a demoniac girl. He thought: "Well, the demon will never enter me, because I often receive communion." And as soon as he said this to himself, a dark cloud enveloped him and began to penetrate inside him, despite his resistance. For a week he experienced terrible hellish torment. Then, through the prayers of his confessor, Archbishop Anthony of Voronezh, through the prayers that were performed in all monasteries and churches of Voronezh, the torment stopped, but he was finally healed only thirty years later, with the discovery of the relics of St. Tikhon of Voronezh. By the way, I will say that Saint Tikhon is very terrible for demons. I had one familiar demoniac woman who could not even hear his name. When the name of St. Tikhon was even casually mentioned in her presence, she immediately began to writhe.
Where do people with supernatural abilities get their strength - psychics, soothsayers, seers? Are their gifts from God or from the devil?
- Psychics are people who are in delight. They themselves, most often, think that they communicate with God, cosmic energies, or know how to extract some kind of power from themselves and thus help other people. But in fact, in order to perform miracles from God, it is necessary to lead a special spiritual life, holy. From the point of view of Orthodoxy, psychics are in communion with unclean spirits. If they seem to heal, then these "healings", firstly, bring terrible harm to themselves, and secondly, they can harm those they are treating, both mentally and even physically. Of course, you can't resort to the help of psychics, it's like asking for help from the demons themselves, who are only looking for our death.
As for the gifts of prophecy and clairvoyance, they, of course, also come from God - but in our time they are extremely rare. Another phenomenon is more common - false sagacity, false divinations. Demons are called deceivers because they know how to deceive. They counterfeit their actions under the actions of Divine grace, they try to counterfeit gracious consolation, consolation from the Holy Spirit. They can show visions too; they can, as beings are very perceptive, guess the future. They can create a false clairvoyance: to instill some thought in one person, and to open it to another, to whom they want to create the glory of a seer. Often they reveal to such a "seer" the sins of other people - and who knows sins if not the demon who himself incited them? Therefore, when meeting with some person who has the glory of a prophet,you have to be very careful.
One of my acquaintances told me how she went to a certain "perspicacious" priest, who in fact turned out to be simply deceived. So, when he talked with people, their temperature rose, up to 37, even 38 degrees, they began to kind of glow. At the same time, they did not have any heartfelt consolation, repentance, determination to correct their lives, there was just such a feeling. And they, out of inexperience, decided that this man was gracious. And what, in fact, was blessed in this? Well, you got hot - so what? In the presence of the same person, there was such a typical case. Several people were sitting, waiting for him. He told them their sins, and when he approached a lay woman, he asked: "Why don't you think about anything?" And she sat, praying to herself the Jesus Prayer. What does it mean? This means that with the help of prayer she drove away the thoughts that the demons instilled in her,and this "seer", naturally, could not say anything.
How do you explain the abilities of people like David Copperfield? After all, he flew in front of the public, passed through the Chinese Wall, all this was confirmed by modern equipment
- Maybe he is a sorcerer, we will not be surprised. Well, he goes through the wall - just think, we don't know about that. Suppose the sorcerer Kynops, with whom John the Theologian spiritually fought, could spend many hours under water. But when the Apostle John prayed, the demons left this sorcerer, and he, having plunged into the water, never left there. Simon Magus, as we know from the book of Acts, took off and flew. And when the demons stopped helping him, he fell from a great height and crashed.
All this is done by evil forces, and for an Orthodox Christian there is nothing surprising here. When the Antichrist comes, he will perform much greater and more terrible miracles, not like this magician.
Or maybe such people are just ordinary fakirs. You never know what is confirmed there by modern equipment. They can do it just for the money. People in our time believe in science, so they are told about the equipment - just as in commercials "scientifically" prove that one toothpaste is better than another.
How to treat aliens and parallel worlds?
- How to treat? Watch less movies, that's all. And then there is anything you like: parallel worlds, and perpendicular worlds, and cone-shaped worlds. You will see enough, then you will look for contacts with an extraterrestrial civilization. Someone with horns will come to you and say: “I am from the cone-shaped world. Alien.
I advise you to read the book "Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future" by Father Seraphim Rose on this issue. It says it beautifully. Of course, aliens are devilry. In ancient times, demons seduced people through idols, through false miracles, and in our time they appear under the guise of aliens. I will not go into detail about this. I repeat, Father Seraphim Rose speaks about this very well, he convincingly proves that this phenomenon is of a demonic nature.
What kind of burgundy creatures? Can they do any real harm?
- Barabashki are just demons who confuse people by arranging all sorts of tricks: knocking with spoons or something else. This phenomenon is quite understandable and, unfortunately, quite frequent. Therefore, when I consecrated the apartments, I added to the consecration ceremony the prayer "For a house that suffers obsession from evil spirits." Of course, if a person does not pray, does not resort to the help of church rituals and sacraments, then he does not have grace-filled protection from these obsessions. However, it also happens the other way around: a person lives an attentive life, prays fervently, and demons scare him: knocking, whistling, can shout or rustle with something. This is such petty hooliganism. But, nevertheless, this petty hooliganism leads many to a terrible fear, people have a cold blood in their veins.
I think if in such cases you behave reasonably, do not pay attention to these antics and pray as if nothing had happened, then everything will gradually pass. My confessor told the following story about himself: “I woke up, and I had a snake on my shoulder - I turned over on the other side and began to sleep further.” That's all, and if you are afraid, you will have a snake on you, and many snakes, and whatever. Well, someone knocks - and let him knock. Just think, what's the difference: a neighbor, Uncle Vasya, knocked on the wall or some demon, - the result is the same.
When I am alone at prayer and in the dark, I am very scared: it seems that someone is standing behind my back or that with peripheral vision I see some movement near me. How to deal with this obsession?
- This comes from cowardice and lack of faith. When a person is in solitude, prays or reads spiritual literature, the demons naturally hate it and try to confuse and distract from prayer. And he should try to behave completely freely, boldly, and despise any suggestions. When it seems that you see something with peripheral vision, do not attach any importance to it. If you give in to these suggestions of the enemy, then he will press more and more. And do not look with peripheral vision: oh, it seems, someone is standing behind my left shoulder! And just take a turn there and see that in fact there is no one there.
The ascetics despised demons, even when they appeared to them with their own eyes, in some form. For example, the Monk Philaret Glinsky was talking about himself: once, when he was standing on a cell rule, a cat suddenly appeared and climbed onto his shoulder over his mantle. He paid no attention to her, continued to pray, and she disappeared.
And to us, as the weak, no one will appear, only we will spend our strength on empty experiences. Scary - cross yourself, and that's it, nothing else. If you are afraid, to avoid all dark corners, then the fear will increase, increase and take possession of you to such an extent that you sneeze and shudder yourself with horror.
In addition, we must always remember that without God's permission, nothing can happen to us, and the Lord will never allow temptation beyond our strength. It is necessary to be afraid of demons, but in what sense? To be afraid so as not to succumb to their suggestions, not to fulfill their will and not to be with them opponents of God. And if we try to live according to the Gospel, if we are devoted to the Lord with all our souls, then we are not afraid of anyone. As the apostle Paul says, "if God is for us, who is against us?"
