When I share my experience with Vajrayāna Buddhism, I encounter two distinct reactions.
Some people, those who don’t practice Tibetan Buddhism but have helped individuals suffering spiritual harassment from the occult, immediately recognize the patterns I describe.
Others, particularly Western Vajrayāna practitioners and scholars, dismiss my testimony outright.
They assume that my experience must be:
- A misunderstanding of Vajrayāna teachings.
- A psychological disturbance.
- The result of improper practice.
- A projection of my fears of retribution.
But my experience is not only real but also completely plausible when examined through the lens of history, psychology, and Vajrayāna’s own teachings.
The Problem with Dismissal: A Lack of Critical Engagement
Many Western Vajrayāna practitioners approach the tradition with a romanticized view. They believe they have found an unbroken lineage of wisdom, distinct from Western religion and free from the power dynamics that have corrupted other faiths. They assume they can pick and choose what they accept while ignoring the rest.
But if we apply some intellectual honesty it is clear that:
- If someone left a charismatic cult claiming they had been spiritually manipulated and attacked, we wouldn’t immediately dismiss them.
- If someone escaped from a Satanic cult and said demons pursued them, we wouldn’t automatically assume they were delusional.
- If someone left a New Age movement after a kundalini awakening that triggered possession-like symptoms, we wouldn’t rush to call them crazy. Many Western Buddhists acknowledge that kundalini can cause spiritual emergencies.
- If an anthropologist studied indigenous shamanic traditions and found initiates reporting spirit attacks, scholars wouldn’t dismiss their experiences. They’d document how these encounters function in that culture.
Yet when someone shares a disturbing experience from Vajrayāna Buddhism, the immediate response is:
- “You misunderstood the teachings.”
- “The deities or gurus would never harm anyone.”
- “The deities aren’t real; they’re just projections of your own mind.”
- “You must have mental health issues.”
This double standard serves as a defense mechanism, not an intellectually rigorous position.
Vajrayāna’s Own Teachings Make My Experience Plausible
Vajrayāna, more than any other Buddhist tradition, teaches that initiation and meditation create real, external effects in the spirit world. If you don’t believe that, then you’re not truly practicing Vajrayāna; you’re engaging with a secularized, sanitized Western reinterpretation.
Consider the following:
- Empowerments (abhisheka) explicitly link practitioners to tantric deities, dakinis, and protectors. If you believe these forces are real, why assume they are always benevolent?
- Vajrayāna warns against breaking samaya (tantric vows), claiming it angers deities and protectors. Why would angering supernatural beings have consequences if they were just psychological symbols?
- Many initiates, particularly in traditional Tibetan settings, report strange and distressing experiences such as dream visitations, intrusive thoughts, even physical ailments. Teachers will say, “This is your karma ripening from breaking samaya,” but isn’t this just another way of saying that ambiguous spiritual forces attached to me through the empowerments and practices?
Vajrayāna itself affirms the reality of what I describe, it just frames it differently, often in ways that maintain control over practitioners while allowing plausible deniability.
The Historical Context of Tantra and Its Parallels to Occultism
Vajrayāna did not develop in a vacuum.
Tantric Buddhism emerged in India in the late first millennium, heavily influenced by esoteric Hindu traditions, Shaiva Tantra, and the Kapalikas, wandering renunciants who engaged in spirit summoning, sex rituals, and corpse meditation.
Chinese Buddhist monks like Hsuan Chao were deeply critical of Vajrayāna because they saw parallels between tantric rituals and the black magic they had encountered in India. Despite these warnings, Tibetan Buddhist traditions absorbed these practices wholesale.
Western scholars readily acknowledge that tantric Hinduism and Shaivism engage with external spiritual forces. Why, then, would Buddhist Tantra, which emerged in the same time and place, not also be interacting with something real?
Psychological Manipulation and Cognitive Entrapment
Even if you reject the idea of spirit harm from gurus and tantric deities, consider the psychological and emotional conditioning at play in Vajrayāna.
- Mantra repetition rewires the brain. Studies show that repetitive prayer, chanting, and visualization alter consciousness, reduce critical thinking, and induce dissociation.
- Guru devotion fosters dependency. Many ex-practitioners struggle with guilt, fear, and paranoia, symptoms identical to those of cult survivors.
- The fear of breaking samaya becomes a mental prison. Some Vajrayāna students dismiss samaya punishments as psychological control, while others live in terror of divine retribution. Either way, the belief system exerts total influence over the mind.
If Vajrayāna were just an innocuous Buddhist tradition, why does the thought of leaving it leave so many people in existential terror?
The “Magical” Elements in Buddhist Sutras: Later Additions?
One common argument is that Vajrayāna is just a natural extension of Mahāyāna Buddhism, thus the spells, deities, and rituals have always been part of Buddhist practice.
That’s only partially true.
While some Mahāyāna sutras contain dhāraṇīs (magical incantations), serious scholars debate whether these were later interpolations, added to appeal to popular religious sensibilities.
The Pali Canon, the earliest Buddhist texts, explicitly warns against summoning spirits and using supernatural powers for personal gain. The Buddha rejected such practices. Vajrayāna, by contrast, embraces them.
If you’re a Western scholar, you might want to ask: How did this shift happen?
If you’re a Vajrayāna practitioner, you might ask: Why does this look more like occultism than Buddhism?
Conclusion
If you are a Vajrayāna practitioner or scholar, you might still be skeptical. That’s fine. I only ask that you apply the same intellectual standard to my experience that you would to any other spiritual testimony.
- If you believe Vajrayāna empowerments connect practitioners to supernatural forces, consider the possibility that these forces may not always be benevolent.
- If you acknowledge the historical connection between Vajrayāna and Hindu Tantra, ask whether something deeper is at play.
- If you recognize the psychological power of guru devotion and mantra repetition, be open to the idea that Vajrayāna entraps people in ways they don’t initially see.
I’m not here to tell anyone what to believe. But I am here to challenge you to question what you think you know about Vajrayāna, power, and the unseen realms.
If you think what happened to me could never happen to you, think again.
Tantric Deception 