People who undertake spiritual exercises with a sense of acquisitiveness, even with regard to "spiritual states," are really doing the work of demons, even if they feel they are being spiritual. Those who seek knowledge and extraordinary powers for the sake of personal gain and fame are also doing the work of demons.
When people are possessed by such inner demons, they may become receptors of external forces that artificially boost their intellectual or psychic powers for a time. Not realizing that it is a false and deceptive condition, such people attribute this to themselves and become all the more conceited and possessed by their demons.
A simple method of quelling demons is to refrain from clinging to anything mentally. This is illustrated by an ancient story, in which a strange person used to roam around the grounds of a hermitage of a certain meditation master. Sometimes he would appear as a Buddhist saint, sometimes as a celestial king, sometimes radiating extraordinary light, sometimes uttering strange sayings. This continued for ten years, and then it stopped.
The meditation master told his disciples, "A celestial demon had been coming here to bother me, but no matter what appearance it created, I dealt with it by not looking or listening. The demon's manifestations had an end, but my not looking and not listening have no end."
~Dream Conversations, Thomas Cleary
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