What other beings exist among us? The Judeo-Christian tradition tells of many kinds of supernatural beings. Angels are God’s messengers and the demons are the fallen angels trying to lead humans to destruction. A literal reading of the Bible and other ancient texts identify many types of entities all in a massive power struggle. All traditions I am aware of also have similar stories of struggle, deception, corruption and redemption. Even our modern forms of entertainment paint the monsters’ portraits and tap our deepest fears. Somewhere inside us is a core that knows without seeing that something dark is out there. We try to reduce that fear with rationality, science and a materialist paradigm that tells us we are alone. But we are not alone.

When one sense is lost, the others become stronger. We have come to rely on sight, sound, touch, taste and smell as if they were the only senses. So we comfort our fears by turning on the lights and closing the doors, as if that would ever be enough to stop the monsters. Our ancestors left us warnings and tried to prepare us to face the unknown. Somehow, through the generations, we suppressed the abilities to sense and communicate with the other side and with each other. By denying the reality of unseen and powerful forces, we cut ourselves off from our own strengths as well.

Long ago, all members of a community believed in good and evil with powerful forces at work in our lives. That common belief gave the group unity and strength, but may have opened the door for both good and evil. Now that few believe and try to deny the other senses, we declare the world of our five senses to be all that exists. This new form of faith has closed many doors. But the darkness has not vanished. The struggles we face are inside. That is where the others still wait for us.

Do they have tooth and claw, with hideous faces and terrifying howls? Do they plot evil with twisted games and crimes of greed? Do they sneak up on us in the night and suck our blood? No, because those simple actions are all comprehensible to us and are only how we have tried to metaphorically understand elemental forces. Those forces are already here, inside us and everyone around us. By unleashing our own inner venom, greed, rage and hate, we continue to feed uncontrolled manifestations that can reach into our reality. I don’t know if there are other races of evil intent trying to break into our reality or if the essence of corrupted human souls continue to seek our destruction, even after death.

I suspect that our animating force or consciousness manifests many different ways in many different realities. After all, if we can reincarnate as humans or animals, as I know from experience we can, then why not as aliens or demons or any other entity? Perhaps our own inner creative forces actualize the entities that do reach us. Physics leaves open the possibility of many realities, with the role of observer as the defining force of creation. The others we vaguely sense may be our inadvertent creation as our fears are made stronger by denial and isolation. The doors inside that we lock in fear are also starving our souls of the meaning, connection, magic and mystery that we need to grow together.

The cosmic struggle that we are locked in is really a war of unity vs. discord. We are on a path of collective evolution into ever more integrated living systems. Yet, our material universe is in a state of explosive decay. Perhaps our consciousness is immortal but divided and immature, needing cycles of incarnation to grow and develop. I see us now like bacteria that must bind together to form a colony to survive the changing environment. Living beings have the potential to form webs of cooperation, caring and creativity. We need to fully develop both as individuals and as communities to reach the next level of development and evolution. There is an ultimate conflict ahead when our collective consciousness will either find a way to transcend or transform the material plane, or the cycle of life will finally draw to a close.