Note: The Structure of Heaven is a 325-page book that can be downloaded from Amazon.com in kindle format by clicking here. It is also available in paperback format by clicking here.
There are a number of accounts about demons who are accompanied by smaller beings that present as ugly, imp-like creatures, more or less humanoid but very violent. These beings, like the demons they serve, are all extremely irreligious, to the point where even the name of God or Jesus sent them into frantic fits of violence. When the demon itself is banished through exorcism, these creatures also vanish.
It is likely that these imp-like creatures were not spirits created by God, but by the demons themselves as thought forms. As you may recall from chapter 6, the Summerlands and the Winterlands are parts of the planes of illusion. In these, as in all spiritual realms, the environments are created by the thoughts of the residents. Objects such as dwellings, flowers and trees are created first as thought forms in the minds of the spirits and then “solidify” into spiritual matter. However, thought forms are not limited to inanimate objects. While only God can create immortal souls, spirits have the power to project some of their energy of consciousness into temporarily sentient beings.
While the souls of humans can occupy material bodies, thought forms can exist only in the form of spiritual matter. Furthermore, they are always incomplete. They carry only the properties that the spirit who created them conceptualized at the time of the thought form’s creation.
Think of how you visualize, say, a waterfall. At first, you only visualize the water falling into white mist, but you don’t think about the rock face underneath it unless you concentrate on it. You may see greenery around it, but you don’t visualize the trees or grass as specific objects. That’s the case with thought forms. They only exist in spiritual form, and they have only the superficial qualities that the creating spirit visualizes at the time of creation. Only God can create forms that have microscopic depth.
The laws that govern the spiritual realm are universal. Even the evil minded spirits in the Hellish regions can create spiritual thought forms. However, their thought forms mirror their evil thoughts, and the spiritual creatures that they create are really nothing more than subservient, greedy, narcissistic slaves. They are slaves because they grovel to their creators, who can annihilate them on a whim. They are ugly and destructive because those are the traits of their masters.
Religious folklore teems with human created thought forms. In Jewish mythology, the “golem” is most widely known as an artificial creature created by magic, usually to serve its creator. In Buddhist lore, a “tulpa” is a materialized thought form, also created to do the bidding of its creator. Golems and tulpas both have very bad reputations. It is said that once formed, they strive to become independent of their masters and begin to create havoc, ultimately forcing their creators to destroy them. The ancient legends of leprechauns, gnomes, undines, sylphs, salamanders and other elementals from animistic and Celtic lore probably have the same mythical origins.
Note: The Structure of Heaven is a 325-page book that can be downloaded from Amazon.com in kindle format by clicking here. It is also available in paperback format by clicking here.