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There seems often a fine line between 'spiritual experiences' and delusion the difference often lying in the subjects ability to assimilate such experiences.
“Voices Within”, Cosmos Magazine Australia, Issue 13, feb/mar 2007, pp 72-74.
"…Perhaps no other symptom is associated with insanity. But while some 70 per cent of schizophrenics hear voices that regularly interrupt their thoughts, as do 15 per cent of those who have mood disorders, auditory hallucinations are not necessarily a sign of mental illness. They can arise as symptoms in any number of conditions, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and temporal lobe epilepsy. And episodes can occur in the absence of any physical or psychological problem.
Although such experiences are heavily stigmatized today, many famous thinkers, poets, artists and scholars of earlier times described hearing voices: a wise demon spoke to Socrates, the saints emboldened Joan of Arc, and an angel addressed the great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, inspiring his Duino Elegies. The list goes on: Carl Gustav Jung, Andy Warhol, Galileo, Pythagoras, William Blake, Winston Churchill, Robert Schumann and Gandhi, among others, have all reportedly heard voices.
In fact, auditory hallucinations may not be an uncommon phenomenon. Because it is difficult to define the experience with true precision, date on its prevalence differ from study to study… roughly 70 percent of the 375 college students they questioned admitted to having heard voices at least once. Subject attributed the voices that they had heard to deceased relatives, divine beings or their own thoughts. Some had heard their name spoken, often before falling asleep. Acoustic perceptions during waking or pre-sleep phases – reported by 40 per cent of subjects - are generally viewed as psuedohallucinations, or hallucinations that a person knows to be unreal. By including them in their tallies, these researchers may therefore have produced a high estimate.
Nevertheless, in 1991 a U.S National Institute of Mental Health survey found that nearly five per cent of the 15,000 American adults who responded has experienced hallucinations – most of them auditory – during a one-year period; but only one-third of this group also met criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis… at lead three to five per cent of the population of western Europe and the United States hear voices. Schizophrenia, in comparison, affects only about one per cent.
…Acoustic hallucinations may arise from “too much inside” or “too little outside”. On one side of this theoretical coin, Bock suggests that, psychologically, some affected people maybe hold too much on the inside. Sufferers have often experienced some kind of trauma in their lives, such as neglect, physical, emotional or sexual abuse, or a sever accident. Many then suffer from unresolved conflicts or find themselves in situations that overwhelm them. In these cases, verbal hallucinations may serve as signals that they need to pay attention to their own inner voices.
…They found that during the hallucinations, the greatest increase in brain activity took place in Broca’s area, a region involved not in hearing speech but in producing it. Other speech-processing areas of the brain, including the superior temporal gyrus in the left temporal lobe, are under close scrutiny. This gyrus, or bump, is responsible for speech perception and plays a crucial role in the integration of acoustic and speech information… In addition they found activity in the primary auditory cortex, which normally processes sounds from the outside world. No wonder these patients believed their hallucinations were real: their brains responded to them in much the same way as they did to actual speech.
…On the flip side of Bocks theoretical coin, hearing voices is not always a consequence of neurobiological change. Sometimes the brain simply receives too few stimuli from the outside world. People who hear voices often live extremely withdrawn livers – and the hallucinations, in turn, fuel social rejection. Some sailors and hikers, for example, who have endured stimulus-poor conditions for prolonged periods, have reported auditory hallucinations. Indeed, the poet Rilke’s ‘angel’ spoke only after he had lived for two months in isolation at Duino Castle… the brain stores auditory information that it has captured over an extended period. If the external output is cut off, the deposited signals may take on a life of their own.
Whether hearing voices presents a medical problem depends largely on how much a person suffers… The mentally ill, however, far more frequently described negative voices… the other study participants usually heard benign voices that encouraged them… Most people who experience acoustic hallucinations attribute a purpose to their voices. How they view their voices – well meaning or out to destroy them – is almost always a function of what they hear.
…Frequently it is enough to reframe the voices. Even if they are overwhelmingly negative, other intentions may be attributed to them through therapy… the main goal is to make sufferers “masters in their own house” again. Patients can sometimes regain this control not only by listening to the voices but by answering them, concentrating on positive messages and agreeing to specific, limited talking times. Another mainstay of treatment involves changing a patient’s social interactions. Often a person’s interaction with his or her voices mirrors their relationships with real people…. People [who] usually subordination themselves to someone else, they will tend to hear dominant voices. The net effect is that the hallucinations become increasingly real..."
I find it of interest that some schools of magic, such as Franz Bardons take on Hermetics, actively encourage students to learn how to hallucinate at will as part of their magical education. It makes me wonder how much of invocation and evocation is a matter of becoming aware of ones own mind 'speaking', as opposed to being visited by a third party entity. It also makes me wonder if such visitors are only able to communicate to us through such indirect means, and whether or not the voices in the night are genuinely attached to these visitors. |
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