| Essay
1
You
Must Listen to the People Who Hear Voices
By
Roy Vincent
I
sat at my keyboard and groaned. (I was preparing to write my first ever
contribution to a newsletter or magazine). “Please write a piece
for the newsletter”, she had said. No problem with that, in fact
I enjoy writing with a purpose. Then she added - “No more than two-thousand
words, please”. That produced the groan! I have a Welshman’s
love of language, of communication, and to be so constrained amounts to
a form of torture. The torture is even greater when I want so passionately
to say what I want to say, and when I want to say it about communication
itself. But it is of no ordinary communication that I want to tell you.
It is not written, not spoken, not signed with anyone’s hands. Yet
it can get to the very core of a person’s mind and body. It is intrusive,
irresistible; at times dominating; at times obscene; sometimes persuasive;
sometimes commanding; sometimes terrorizing; on occasions condemnatory;
on others, overweening. It is a communication that need not be verbal;
it can be effected pictorially, by the creation of a bodily ambience,
or by concepts of smells and tastes.
The communication of which I write is that experienced by so-called ‘voice
hearers’. I, myself, have been experiencing ‘voices’
and other intrusions for twenty-five years. I know the exact moment and
exactly what I was doing when everything began. Yes, twenty-five years,
which, I would say, enables me to speak from experience. I deliberately
choose the word ‘intrusions’, for that is undoubtedly what
they are. Not products of a sick or diseased mind, for I am not, nor ever
have been ill from this cause; not the product of an aberrant brain nor
a chemical imbalance therein. Because I knew the moment and method of
origin of these experiences, I have no doubt that they originate from
an intelligence other than mine and ‘being’ other than me.
I have no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that they derive from what I would
call a spiritual source.
But, and this is what is not often experienced or acknowledged, by the
same route, and in the same manner and using the same methods, the converse
effects of these same intrusions can be engineered. Yes, spiritual goodness
can and does enter by these same channels. Throughout the whole of recorded
history to this very day, there are or have been priests, prelates, popes,
ayatollahs and archimandrites, rabbis, mullahs, muftis and mahatmas, lamas,
shamans, medicine men and women and a whole assortment of religious or
spiritual functionaries. Without exception, they have proclaimed the existence
of a spiritual state of being and the existence and potential intrusion
of spiritual good and evil. And again without exception, they have declared
the effectiveness of the religion or philosophy which each espouses, in
promoting good, avoiding evil and determining the ultimate destination
after death of practitioners and adherents. Yet, how often, in reality,
do these truths, this knowledge, translate into real life and find their
way into the treatment accorded to those who experience voice and other
intrusions? If the voices encourage you to be, do, good, why then, they
must be divine, angelic. But if the voices are threatening, obscene, encourage
you towards evil acts, why, “I’m sorry old chap, but you are
deluded, hallucinating”, and we all know what follows that conclusion.
From the beginning, I have experienced both ends of this spectrum of intrusive
good and evil. Initially I went through very traumatic events, and I have
never been free from undermining presences, yet, withal, I have been helped,
supported, and encouraged to participate in a life which has been so different
from what I had known before, and aimed totally for the benefit of other
people, both in what I do and the way in which I use my house. But I am
not anonymous. My name you know; yes, I originate in Wales but have lived
here in Cumbria for over fifty years. I am seventy-nine, a retired professional
engineer and spent all my working life at Sellafield and Calder Hall nuclear
plants, the greater part in the field of measurement. It might therefore
be said that I am familiar with the esoteric, for that was the nature
of the science that we used, and with the occult, for the chemical plants
and reactors which my instruments monitored were hidden and sealed. Now,
in my new life, I could not be more open in what I do and in expressing
my beliefs and knowledge and experiences - indeed, I have written of them
so fully that they have succeeded in becoming a book.
In particular, I have recorded a number of the various ‘ploys’
used by intrusive spirits as they aim at domination. Let me quote three
of them:
(1) They can intrude physically and mentally into one’s every moment,
delighting in creating emotions or exploiting potentially emotional situations,
until one realises that attempts are made to create laughter or tears
where one is not in the least stirred up in either direction sufficiently
to laugh or cry. Similarly, if the situation arose, they could create
anger and supply the words to go with it in a ready flow. They intrude
into one’s every thought and action, including the most intimate.
One just longs for an empty space in one’s mind where one can think
one’s own thoughts, enjoy one’s own emotions and reminiscences
without these intrusions. One develops the most intense hatred of them.
One of the results of this barrage is that one resents any intrusion or
contact, thus rendering suspect those which might originate from a desirable
spiritual source - they simulate these as well, so as to create animosity
in one’s mind to potential or existing spiritual helpers.
(2) The moment of waking, or the time of gradually emerging awareness
after sleep is most crucial, for one is then at one’s most vulnerable.
One’s first thoughts at these times are ‘answered’;
indeed, it might seem that one is already in a conversation. It is exceedingly
difficult to avoid responding, and a dialogue can ensue from which it
is hard to break free. There can be a feeling created on waking, a sense
of being with very gentle spiritual people, warm, welcoming and caring.
It is so easy to slip into this ambience, particularly if the rest of
one’s life is bleak or fraught.
But, as one is starting to feel ‘cozy’ and cared for, they
start to imply that there are one or two, oh-so-teeny, defects that need
correcting before one can be truly accepted and enjoy this ambience and
ultimately be accepted into it after death. Gradually the emphasis shifts
becoming more needling and ultimately threatening. One’s defects
become grossly magnified, one’s sense of unworthiness exaggerated,
and all the earlier warmth totally disappears.
Sometimes an intrusion can be of such a cold, inhuman presence that one
can feel oneself to be totally devoid of humanity, of love, of caring.
One could become either very ill or very evil.
It is virtually impossible for anyone in this state to convey to another
the sense of threat or terror that can be experienced at these times.
This inability to communicate can so increase a person’s sense of
loneliness, of total isolation, that they can easily try to seek oblivion
in drink or drugs or suicide - indeed, it is quite possible that in their
mind they will be actively encouraged down some desperate or diabolical
route.
(3) It is all too easy to dwell upon the presence of the voice intrusions.
Far more insidious, and possibly ever present, is the mute physical ‘overlap’.
Try to imagine a not quite exact ‘fit’, so that in every movement
or reaction there is just the little bit of anticipation or lag; of speeding
up when it is inappropriate; of not being quite in phase on a turn; of
causing forward movement when there are obstacles to be negotiated, whether
by deliberate intent or lack of ‘skill’ it is impossible to
say. When the presence is continuous or frequently in and out it can become
positively loathsome and one longs to be rid of it. If you have a copy,
read in the Thousand and one Nights the story of the Old Man of the Sea.
Sinbad, shipwrecked and alone as usual, stumbles across an old man who
asks for help to cross a stream. Sinbad, in his kindness, takes the old
man on his back, and then when the stream is crossed finds himself in
a stranglehold, beaten about the head, made to go this way and that, by
day and night, at the old man’s whim, be-skittered and be-pissed
all down his back and generally befouled. It is only ultimately by making
some wine from wild grapes and getting the man drunk that Sinbad is finally
freed, and one can sense the ultimate release as he crushes the man’s
skull with a boulder. Many times have I wished for that boulder! It is
possible from one’s own reactions to these presences to understand
how it is that individuals will harm themselves in an effort to get at
or get rid of this gross intrusion that is only reachable within their
own body.
I have recorded at least thirty more ploys, some with subdivisions or
sub-plots, but alas, I am well past my two-thousand word limit, and still
with so much more to say! Hence the book, and it amazes me still that
I have strung together over 160,000 words in telling the full story and
giving what advice that I can. Good reading!
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