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The Experience of Hallucinations

in Religious Practice

R.S. Pearson
The Experience of Hallucinations
in Religious Practice

R.S. Pearson

Telical Books
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pearson, Robert Scott.
The experience of hallucinations in religious practice / R.S. Pearson.
1st ed.
LC Control Number: 2005930058
Type of Material: Text (Book, Microform, Electronic, etc.)

ISBN: 0-9748139-5-8
Copyright 2005,2006 All Rights Reserved
First edition

Telical Books
P.O. Box 27401
Seattle, WA 98165-2401
U.S.A.
Table of Contents

Introduction
Main Text
Conclusion
Bibliography
 I must state first of all that I am not a psychiatrist or
psychologist. This book is for educational purposes only. This
book does not pretend to be a cure for mental illness. Therefore,
if one does not feel mentally healthy, one should seek
professional help instead of using this book for serious therapy.
This book sometimes uses psychological terminology because I
believe it is helpful for lay people to understand psychological
concepts.
Introduction

I must state first of all that I am not a psychiatrist and this

work falls under the realm of "anecdotal evidence." Anecdotal
evidence is nonetheless known to be very important in medical
science. In no way should a person who experiences
hallucinations look at this work as being a substitute for
adequate psychiatric help. I want to call to attention right at the
start that the hearing of voices is often very dangerous and can
have very damaging consequences. Hearing voices can lead
people to do stupid and even criminal things. It has been proven
scientifically that among a group of hallucinators, IQ's decreased
after the onset of hallucinations (Johnson, 69).

It should be noted that I am making a distinction between

people who hear voices and do not show other symptoms of
schizophrenia, and those that are diagnosed and treated as
schizophrenics. Even though many psychologists and even
psychiatrists have rejected the classification of "schizophrenia,"
it's not the purpose of this book to engage in such topics and I
am staying free from that controversy. I am not describing in
this book anything more than the experiences that are often
reported today by functional religious people. Such experiences
make up the volume of many religious books. Hallucinations
are only one of many symptoms in schizophrenia. I am merely
pointing out that this book does not pretend to be a cure for
mental illness. A point of this book is that many mentally
healthy and functional people hallucinate as an unnecessary
byproduct of their religious experience, and this book
occasionally looks at ways that might help them avoid putting
too much belief in such experiences. Therefore, if one does not
feel mentally healthy, one should seek professional help instead
of using this book for serious therapy.

I have to say that I am by nature a religious person. I

respect traditional religious values as well as secular and
scientific ones. I have a great prohibition in me of trying to
explain away possible spiritual experiences as being mere
hallucinations. I see what I am doing as trying to help liberate
those who are religious and are bound by negative experiences.
Just because one sees lights and visions, does not mean that these
experiences have a spiritual nature. The fact that many seriously
mentally ill people also have such visions and voices proves that
such experiences are as much of a warning sign as a sign that
one is being visited by heaven. These experiences can take place
in the brain, in the same part of the brain that can be called for
the lay person, the "dream hemisphere." The position of the
historical Judeo-Christian churches and other world religions has
been to avoid "spirits" perhaps for this very good reason: that in
fact one is avoiding the causation of the brain to hallucinate. I do
also believe that a holy power does guide people, and perhaps
by understanding hallucinations, one may better see the power
of the holy when it does manifest.

It is well known the major world religions believe that

visions and voices can come from the dark side, forces that
actually are mischievous and want to do mankind harm. If one
merely looks at the illogical and "evil" behavior of some human
beings, one could see the possibility that beings from other
realms may act in similar ways to the worst in our world. The
lack of logic in people acting poorly in our world at least
suggests the possibility of the lack of logic operating in other
worlds. The idea of evil spirits is present in virtually all world
cultures and religions. There are religious books that deal with
ways of handling such spirits by spiritual methods. This book is
a way of dealing with similar symptomology but taking another
approach.

Many who have visions, voices and the other types of

experiences do not easily seek psychiatric help. For many of
these people, this phenomenon falls under the heading of being
spiritual. People who have religious-based hallucinations can
spend many years under them. Some never try to get help for
them, for they do not believe in the model of psychiatry. They
may read this book because often visions and voices can become
confusing. Once they find out there is a modern scientific
explanation for some of these experiences, written by someone
who even shares their belief that sometimes such experiences are
in fact of a divine origin, they may see that many of the voices
were really not divine at all. This change of thinking can have
dramatic, even life saving consequences. They may possibly see
they are finding a dead end in life by trusting in these
hallucinations and decide to identify them as a problem and get
help for them.

Some people fall under the delusion that just because they
are having an extra-sensory experience, that makes it
supernatural and hence divine. This problem happens to many
people. The person does not see their condition as a mental
illness, so it is a diagnosis in which it is hard to do therapy
because the person doesn't admit that they are sick. In these
cases, the hallucinations are often solacing to the person. They
may give the person esteem or be an extension of the type of
experience of having imaginary companions in childhood.
When a person realizes such experiences are probably subjective,
and the experiences may even affect one's better judgment or
thinking processes, they may then begin to realize that the
experiences are problematic.
 I believe more people hear voices, or hallucinate in some
way, than most would imagine. It could very easily be that 30
percent of people at some time or another experience, or if you
will, "hallucinate," some type of voice or guidance. It is believed
heavily in modern fundamentalist or evangelical Christianity
that feeling God's presence or experiencing demonic persecution
is something one can experience, as it is believed in New Age
circles that spirit guides can lead them and that it is possible to
talk to the deceased. I do believe that ultimately a sincere and
educated religious seeker will understand what has a divine
source and what has a personal source, but surely some
guidance is needed.

If this book is successful, a fight may be won in

generalized mental health care that is represented on the level of
such groups as Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step
programs. I believe that the problem of hallucinations is very
high, but it is not something that one can readily admit to
because of the stigmatization associated with it. Right now the
hearing of voices is considered a stigma, except of course when it
is confessed as a virtue of many religions. That is, people often
do not stigmatize the religious as mentally ill who hear God's
voice or who sense the oppressive presence of demons or
"Satan." Many people often consider hearing or experiencing
some kind of guidance part and parcel of the mentally healthy
who happen to hold a certain religious belief. This belief can
range from a type of biblical fundamentalism to an Eastern
philosophical or New Age belief in the so-called "astral planes."
For this very reason, that it is both accepted by some and
stigmatized by others, the problem is not often approached by
people in a logical way because there is no guide for people to
understand the situation outside of a personal religious context
or a wholly scientific psychiatric one. Experiencing
hallucinations in an unprepared way may underlie some
problems in the mental health of the elderly. It would be good if
more were known about the "non-psychotic" or "non-
schizophrenic" experience of hallucinations.

The religious should be able to take on both aspects of

fighting this problem: seeing it as a medical condition that exists
only in the brain and seeing it as a situation that can develop
from the spiritual path that can sometimes be overcome by
spiritual means. Many people are trying to fight this problem
in themselves and often do it in one of the two ways, not
knowing the benefits of the other methodology. The medical
way of fighting it does not have to be the use of medication, as
psychologists recently authored a book on cognitive therapy for
overcoming voices ("Cognitive Therapy for Delusions, Voices
and Paranoia" by Paul Chadwick, Max J. Birchwood, and Peter
Trower. John Wiley & Sons Inc, 1996). It is written however at
the doctoral level.

The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a readily

identifiable and popular psychoanalytic therapy for the
treatment of the hearing of voices, only the psychiatric
prescription of taking medication seems to be the well-known
cure for this. So, while still stating medications can be helpful,
this work tries to identify non-drug therapies against the hearing
of voices for those who are not diagnosed as schizophrenic.
These therapies can be used in unison with medication.
Medication is simply not a welcome option for many people.
The type of medications used to fight hallucinations are thought
to not be tolerable by those who must earn their own living, or at
least by those who don't want others to think they have a mental
problem. Those medications can create physical side effects like
the slowing down of movement, the stopping of thoughts, the
slurring of speech, and other problems. When one is on such a
medication, sometimes others know it, and one then one may
receive the cruel stigmatization that the mentally ill often
receive. There is the possibility that medications may be
developed that do not have such side effects.

For simplification, I will call the "hemisphere" of the brain,

in which the unconscious attains visual imagery and auditory
sensation, the "dream hemisphere," and avoid scientific
terminology that refers to parts of the brain.

Some who hallucinate are more capable of living a normal

life than others who hallucinate. There are many people in the
world who hold normal jobs and responsibilities and subscribe
to various worldviews that actually support having what are
most likely hallucinations. While I have great hopes for
everyone with mental illness, it's apparent that some people are
not able to be helped as much as others. There is the probability
that the more that some people view their hallucinations as
being from divine sources, the more likely they are to get worse
in time. One interesting thing to note here is how often one
person's hallucinatory material can contradict another person's
hallucinatory material. Hallucinations can also be contradictory
in the same person. Logically, this would tend to point that
much of the material is not of any higher source. Such people
who hallucinate must be able to follow logical conclusions in
regards to whether or not there is any truth to what they are
hallucinating.

Some of the greatest healings of mental illness that are

taking place today are not because of professional psychiatry.
Every good psychologist or psychiatrist knows this is true.
Some people are more responsive to Alcoholics Anonymous, 12
Step groups, and other manifestations of religious faith. These
groups are often able to do what professional psychiatry fails to
do. Such, I believe, can be the case with some people who
hallucinate. The type of people that I hope to reach by this book
may be those who are not educated about modern psychology,
who may in fact mistrust it, and are not probably able to take the
usual doses of anti-psychotic medication because they must stay
alert at their job. There are those who are otherwise
psychologically healthy but were led to experience
hallucinations because of certain worldviews which encouraged
hallucinations. One might recall the popularity of Carlos
Castanada in the 1970's to remember how many people were
affected by such beliefs, and expect to have extraordinary
hallucinations as part of their religious experience.

This book can be seen as a warning against taking

hallucinations seriously as religious experiences. When findings
in modern brain science has begun to be better disseminated, I
believe more people who hallucinate will understand more
about what is a spiritual experience and what is not. Because of
this knowledge, many people's lives may be drastically changed
for the better. People will finally know where the dysfunction
and confusion is coming from in their lives. There may even be a
rebirth in a true spirituality based on altruism, instead of some of
the rather delusive forms now present. Presently however, such
knowledge of brain science is buried in difficult to understand
psychology and medical books.

I see no reason why psychiatry and religious faith can not

coexist. In people who seek to become hallucinators because
visions and voices are part of their religious path, merely
beginning to understand that not everything they see and hear is
really "out there" but in fact can be a brain function is a key
cognitive change.

There is a wonderful booked called "The Anatomy of

Hallucinations" by Dr. Fred H. Johnson (Nelson-Hall Chicago,
IL. 1978) from which I have taken much of my understanding of
hallucinations. Quoting the book on page 29: "...of the 113
geniuses that have most helped civilization, 37 percent to 40
percent were psychotic, 83 percent to 90 percent were
psychopathic or sociopathic, and 30 percent of the most
important were committed (Lange-Eichbaum 1932, Stein and
Heinze, 1960)." This does not necessarily mean that they were or
were not in contact with angels, the deceased, or an invisible
brotherhood of telepathic men, or any of the other subject matter
of hallucinations. It could mean instead they were so conscious
of their interior life that they saw into the dream hemisphere in
their waking state of consciousness. Some of these figures
described their "hallucinations" as voices from God. Others may
have believed in ideas of communicating with angels and the
souls of deceased men.

This work is not, although it may seem to be in parts, an

entire denouncement of the idea that man can have miraculous
powers. My model is that we indeed live in a world that has
miracles -- however, what some people call miracles are in fact
often a form of wish fulfillment. The distinction between
cultures that have a high predominance of so-called miracles as
opposed to ones that balance those views with logic and science
is important. This distinction has some bearing on a culture's
relationship to education and the incorporating of important
scientific achievements, such as medicine, advanced surgery and
even psychology, into their culture. What is known as
necromancy in the bible is a good example of this. Whether or
not a culture allows necromancy to go unchecked in some ways
determines aspects of the mental health of the populace.

In case one thinks it's too strange to hear voices, one has
to just realize that the great psychologist Carl Jung himself went
through this. One problem in this area is that many educated
and academically respected people may seem to value various
aspects of hallucinating, and it may not cause much of a problem
in them, but which opens some up to this internal force that can
have disastrous effects in people who have the misfortune to
have psychological imbalances. The huge topic of "esotericism"
is fascinating to intellectuals like Jung, yet it seems that, like the
way various subjects are broken down into more exact sub-
studies, these esoteric studies must be broken down into sub-
categories if they are really going to be studied. Now that
science has proven the origination of much hallucination to be in
the brain, previous ideas about esotericism and "astral planes"
may be seen to be radically changed.

Freud's idea of wish fulfillment is important for the

hallucinator to understand. It states that often the mind will take
the image in the imagination of something as the actual
achievement of something. Esotericism that induces people to
live in another world, develop special invisible bodies and so on,
is often a dangerous road because such practices can replace
normal relationships with people and such a person can begin to
live in a closed-off system of personalized logic.

One can basically divide religious practice along these

lines: ones that have an overt acceptance of the cultivation of
voices and visions, relying on modern teachers who claim such
contacts, and ones that do not. This realm of believing in the
self-induced mental voices as being external to oneself is
probably not often isolated as something in religion that can
cause harm. There is often a consensual understanding in
religion that it is a part of the public's knowledge. That is, we
can see that society's major religious leaders usually do not state
that it is good to hear disembodied voices, other than the voice
of the direction that we call God. The practitioners of society's
major religious do not seem plagued by hearing voices in the
way that the New Age communities now host thousands of
various channellers and seers who write books about voices and
visions they've had.

Traditional Yogis and Buddhists always mentioned along

with mystical Christians to not pay attention to the phenomena
of visions and voices but to merely let such experiences pass by.
In modern times, it is schools that make a huge show about
hidden "masters of wisdom" who supposedly have a telepathic
communication who are the most problematic and dangerous to
those prone to become hallucinators. Before I became more
centered in my Judeo-Christian tradition (which still accepts
some ideas from other religions), I had two teachers, one of a old
Theosophical background and one of a Yoga background that
both said not to pay attention to phenomena and never talk to
spirits or think too highly of those that did. This was before the
"channeling" schools became popular which changed the face of
alternative spiritual practices.

The idea will often come up when one has a religious

outlook on life that one can't ignore the fact that traditionally
religions have often believed that these voices were from
demons. If these voices are from evil spirits, if there is a way
that one can handle them, it most likely will be the way people
handle undesirable people in real life: they ignore them. So, this
book takes an approach of shutting oneself off from voices.
There are already hundreds of books about fighting demons
using religious methods. This book may be looked at as a totally
different method of spiritual warfare.

The recent Christian books on fighting demons state that

demons bother those who have used things like pornography,
occult books, drugs or alcohol. This is a different approach than
some therapists who tend to see persecutory voices coming from
the "shadow self." They believe that when one is trying to be
good, perhaps in a scrupulous way, and one projects or imagines
a world out there that is very bad, the projection becomes so
strong that it splits off a part of one's energy and becomes
animated as a persecutor. My view is that it is best for the
religious to always act spiritual in that I do not believe that
religious people will be freed from their voices by becoming less
truly spiritual. I don't see any historical precedence for this.
However, the use of drugs and alcohol should be stopped by
hallucinators. Marijuana is known to be a hallucinogen itself,
and it was noted a few years ago in a British psychological study
that marijuana can be a precipitator of some types of
schizophrenic-type illnesses. (Perry,et al.).

If a belief in persecutory demons is an integral part of our

belief structure, we can at least believe that our God wants us to
be free from them. So, if we believe something is real, we
experience what it is like if these voices are real. If we believe
something in our own psychology can mimic something that we
believe has an objective reality outside us, we do not have to
believe that what we experience is really that objective reality.
We can believe in the traditional religious view that demons or
evil spirits are real, but we can also believe in the scientific view
that hallucinations also occur in people. Hallucinations are like
waking dreams that come from the same part of the brain that
dreams at night do. We further separate ourselves from these
dreams by not allowing them the part of our consciousness that
they used to hold. It is as if our fear of them being really demons
kept them in us.

In psychological literature, voices are said to come from

one's own "inner speech." One exercise recommend is this one
that deals with the mind's ability to focus on things other than
the part that is speaking the voices. One focuses on other forms
of sensation than the "inner speech" that is causing the voice.
This avoids in some way the presence of the voice. There is the
sensation of how one feels to be in one's body, the sensation of
muscles, of the skin, of the bones. Perhaps one can release some
muscle tension by focusing attention there and calmly asking the
muscles to relax. There are also the sensations of hearing, sight,
smell and taste. There is also the sensation of consciousness.
That is, we can put awareness on that interior part of ourselves
that experiences the other sensations. We can call that part of us
the "I," the kernel of who we are. If we focus on it more, we may
be able to control the inner speech of the parts of ourselves that
may be causing the hallucination.

The freeing experience is understood by understanding

that we are causing the voices. People essentially act the parts of
the voices that they hear. They don't notice it, but they are
actually playing the roles of the voices. They cause these roles to
exist. People who don't have serious mental illness may get
themselves to stop this acting by working on building up in
themselves the faculty of holding their attention on the process
in them that is capable of doing the acting. One might call it
"finding the inner voice."

At some times, the inner speech seems to cause the voice

to make a type of cycle, a type of "breathing" cycle of the voice,
and cause the person's attention on that aspect of this inner
speech which causes voices. When one is stressed by a certain
thing one may find one's mind is drawn to do this kind of
"breathing" of the attention toward the dysfunctional inner
speech. But one can then realize that one is being metaphorically
"lulled to sleep" to listen to the voice, to exist in this combination
of the dream hemisphere and waking state. One might try to get
the voice to say what one wants it to say, such as something
pleasant. It might be that in the initial stages of establishing
control with that voice, that the voice will stop. It stops in a
sense because a person "wakes up" -- the person activates that
part of their inner speech that was rumbling on, so to speak.

When people describe their fight against the devil, they

don't imagine a hoofed and horned goateed Casanova is
bothering them, but they do mean that there is a relationship
with an entity or a force that they experience as negative.
Hallucinations can be said to form the basis of this experience,
but it should be remembered that many very functional and
competent religious people report this experience. Many New
Age believers experience hallucinations also on a daily basis and
are even encouraged to do so. These are the so-called "normal"
people who hear voices.

Perhaps understanding the origin and manifestations of

hallucinations could instill in one the possibility of avoiding
some types of mental illness, such as those that may be more
common in old age. If one is prepared to understand this
process, old age in some may pose fewer difficulties. Some types
of mental disorders of old age may have an organic origin but
it's often believed that attitudes often change organic processes
over time.

I have had experiences that took the form of visions and

guidance that I believe were guidance from a higher source, and
I have also had similar experiences that I believe were from my
own mind. It is based on this personal experience that I write
this book. I do not know of any book that has been written from
a spiritual perspective that is informed by psychology of how to
distinguish the two sources of these experiences. I believe that
by understanding this book a person may begin to see a pattern
emerge about the two possible sources of all these experiences.
Main Text

There is a type of person who experiences hallucinations

yet still maintains, to a greater or lesser extent, a normal level of
functioning in modern society. Many people who have these
experiences consider themselves to be normal or even
exceptional people. Some, through various world religious
literature, and even more so the modern literature of the so-
called New Age movement, have acquired the belief system that
what medical science calls hallucinations are actually the abilities
of a higher state of human growth. However, there are a large
percentage of these people who no longer desire to have these
experiences.

I am not going to say that I personally believe voices come

solely from within or solely from without. Science states it is
able to prove that voices can come from within but of course it
can not disprove that some voices do not come from spirits. So,
therefore I believe it is best to take both approaches in healing
the problem, since many people who are affected by voices will
have no problem believing both worldviews could play a part.
In any sense, this work takes a "kill two birds with one stone"
approach. This problem is an ongoing issue because much of the
general educated populace has grown away from 20th century
materialist explanations. That is, one no longer has to hide
behind science to be seen as intelligent in the world.

3
 When people hear voices they are often humbled by this
process. This is one reason why it is destructive. It is often a
humiliating subordinance to the voice. For this experience
essentially is like another being living in the mind of the person.
One can think of the infestation of a parasite as an analogy. The
great privacy of consciousness that the average person relies
upon is forsaken; all the private thoughts are at once exposed to
another being. One of the worse aspects of this is that the very
process of thought is interrupted, interrogated and accused.
Some of these "thoughts" are actually normal bodily sensations,
which when exposed to other people, make the normal seem like
a perversion.

The functionality of the human being is contained within

the split off projection. This is why, when someone believes that
it's not good to communicate with the dead because the bible
says necromancy is forbidden, time after time they still continue
to project what they believe are voices of the deceased. This is
why such beings are called demons, because the person no
longer has any desire to communicate with the dead, or perhaps
the person does not believe that a famous deceased person is
interested in them. It seems like a persecutor is bothering one,
taking up the functionality of the person such as memory and
will.

Modern Christians will write a book about being freed

from demon persecution by acting godly yet Paul the apostle
says he was bothered by "a thorn in the flesh, a messenger from
Satan," which many people interpret as being a demon. God
told Paul directly that He would not deliver him from this but
that God's grace would be sufficient for Paul. If one looks at this
passage, one might say that God was telling Paul that the reason
why he had this demon persecutor is because of the kinds of real
life persecution that Paul experienced from human beings.
Perhaps to God's wisdom, this real-life human persecution,
combined with Paul's ideas of righteousness, had created in Paul
a condition in which, like the mentally ill who hear voices, Paul's
brain was acting overtime. According to some psychological
theorists, such persecutory voices can go away when we do have
more "grace" with ourselves, when we don't cut off from our
nature all the different sides of it, some of which tend to split us
into "good" and "bad" parts. Hence God said, "My grace is
sufficient for thee." The bible does seem to have a system of
thought of allowing this kind of grace with oneself, which is
found even in such statements as, "to the pure, all things are
pure."

Hearing voices is a way some people act out a part. One

can take the idea that these voices are a way we are "acting."
They are not external but they are internal parts that we
ourselves play. Can we find out what causes our brain to play
these roles?

Since it is often a drug that precipitates the hearing of

voices, and so-called psychotic episodes, some people may be
cautious about taking another drug to get rid of the experiences.

8
 One of the most telling scientific studies comes from
"Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity: Studies of Verbal
Hallucinations" by Ivan Leudar and Philip Thomas (Brunner-
Routledge 2000). They quote two studies done in 1993 by
"Cleghorn et al, and McGuire, et al." They state: "Recent
positron emission tomography studies indicate that during
verbal hallucinations the areas of brain usually involved in
processing speech are active." Leudar and Thomas also quote
other scientific studies showing that it is well known what areas
of the brain are active during auditory hallucinations. Julian
Jaynes in his famous work, "The Origin of Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (Houghton Mifflin, 1976)
references on pages 108-109 studies by the scientist Wilder
Penfield published in the medical journal, "Brain." In these
experiments, that were done on epilectics undergoing surgery,
the right temporal lobe was artificially stimulated by the doctors
and each time the patients heard voices. Such scientific studies
clearly show the religiously minded person that not all voices
have divine origin.

Even if there are "sainted dead" watching us, we are told

by traditional religious scriptures not to communicate with the
dead, and it is a great thing to ignore the chimerical advances of
the demons as if they were just figments of our own imagination.
So, while the personal viewpoint of the author is that the soul
does go on living after death, and that demons probably do exist,
a system has developed here that avoids these viewpoints and
views the experiences humans have in these regards as
something entirely different.

10
 The trick for one who has irrational intrusive thoughts is
to not tolerate them. In those without the more serious form of
OCD, it is a feeling of fear or insecurity that begins to produce
the obsessional defense of intrusive thinking. One can consider
hallucination to be similar to the intrusive thinking of the
obsessional. The repetition compulsion of the intrusive thought
is the self-defeating statement that seems to say: "please don't
bother me, I'll condemn myself for you." That is, one avoids the
real threat from real world experience by poisoning oneself with
an intrusive thought that contaminates oneself, hence making
one unfit for acting in the world.

11

Like an animal playing dead, the intrusive thought is a

decoy mechanism to not be hurt in the success level, the arena of
life that can be both joyful and painful. To fear the jostling of the
game of life, the intrusive self-condemning thought seeks to
avoid a real attack from a real human being, or perhaps, another
attack from a human being, because of the repetition
compulsion.

12

To overcome these impulses is the most important thing

spirituality can do for one. An animal playing dead receives the
things a dead animal would receive. What are the normal
defense mechanisms for enduring humanely the jostling of life?
These questions are perhaps best left as meditations. To codify
the answers here may prove to elude the answers -- not because
the answers don't exist, but because they will be given when the
time comes, in their own form.

13
 Hearing voices is often a dangerous experience. The
police can give many reports of people being arrested who are
having obvious psychotic episodes. We hear the sad results on
the news almost every night of situations that involve such
people. It's impossible to know the entire spectrum that this
behavior causes people. How many people who act odd yet still
function in society are actually voice hearers? Does the hearing
of voices force people to stay in destructive cults?

14

Through this work, I hope to show how such experiences

are self-induced and the property of a person's own inner speech
or cognitive difficulties, and how in several situations they cause
the lessening of the functioning of the individual.

15

Through a long history of believing themselves in the

"inner circle of humanity," a person often experiences guidance
from what he experiences as advanced soul entities. They give
him advice on various subjects. One might say they befriend
him in a way like a child experiences imaginary helpers.
Different types of people will of course create and imagine
different relationships. A stern disciplinarian of an esoteric
school of an ascetic inclination may experience a more strict and
limited communication pattern, and the beings they imagine
might be given grandiose characteristics. A jovial artist when he
has these experiences might experience painting with the great
masters in a friendly and jovial style.

16
 Through projecting these characteristics onto these
imagined entities, the hallucinator divorces these qualities from
themselves and therefore lessens their own abilities. Other
terrible things can happen. Because they are creating a
hallucinogenic illusion by the process of an inner speech, they
project common sense direction, help and companionship in
daily life onto others. Instead of seeing that they are dividing or
splitting their abilities, their sense of self is diminished because
they are acting out a role of being submissive to advice. Giving
over-simplistic advice to mature adults, such as the advice we
would give a child or to the developmentally disabled, is known
as covert rejection. Covert rejection is different than overt
rejection. Overt rejection is a type of rejection where a person is
insulted or ignored. Covert rejection is a way of being present
with the person yet rejecting their existence, integrity or
autonomy as a self.

17

While it is not the focus of this work to criticize religion or

esotericism, it must be noted that the same type of experience
possibly can happen to the functional religious person as
happens when people with obvious mental illness hallucinate.
Likewise, something sometimes dangerous can happen when
some people hear the "voice of God." Instead of having a
prepared and disciplined stillness awaiting a "still small voice,"
some persons obviously use their own inner speech to "hear
from God" any whim that they desire, fear or otherwise project.

18

Another way that this desultory state gets a foothold into

a person's life is through belief that their deceased loved ones are
talking to them. This kind of belief process, which can be
especially crippling in persons from dysfunctional families, can
be eliminated by the person examining the nature of other of
these conversations that they might have. They might say: "If
dad is truly listening to me in the Spirit and communicating to
me from the Spirit world, then Beethoven and Brahms must be
too, since I heard them once, and even the President of the
United States, which I know now that they aren't." Most people
would agree that when one can believe historical celebrities are
interested in them from beyond the grave that is when a person
loses the sense of sanity and identity that we all share. This little
logical exercise is what makes one realize such simple ideas of
necromancy probably aren't reality.

19

I believe most of hallucinating people would, upon

carefully witnessing what their mind is doing, seek some type of
help. The type of person who most often gets help for
hallucinations may be people who have the more disturbing
ones. But there are many more people who innocently court the
phenomena of projected inner speech daily and don't recognize
what they are doing. Perhaps, they are caught between two
worldviews. One is of total atheistic materialism, where nothing
resembling spirituality or faith is admissible. The other is the all-
accepting and improvisational nature of a worldview that allows
all manner of mystical ideas. Some probably become more
mystical because it is the opposite of the being nihilistic and
secular and have not found the safety of a middle path.

20

Regarding a person taking either extreme, I believe there

is another option present to them, one not yet before fully
explored. Modern psychology and sociology have proved
statistically the value of religious beliefs in an average person.
After many years of dysfunctional religion or hyperreligiosity,
fueled by cloaked delusions of grandeur and other personality
disorders, there are many people who try to get some kind of
help but are not believers in taking psychiatric medications.
There are methods of proving the nature of the hallucinations as
self-originating and much like the "Four Step" OCD therapy
described in the book "Brain Lock," fighting the tendency of the
self to continue to have them.

21

There is no way to get around the fact that psychiatric

medications, especially the anti-psychotics, have a stigma for
many people. To be mentally ill has a stigma not associated with
other illnesses. To overlook this fact is to not be realistic about a
very large segment of society. There is still very much to be said
for psychoanalysis, and the ideas and techniques here may be
introduced to a monitored program of professional
psychoanalysis in such cases.

22

Changing a worldview can be a very great cure in healing

oneself of voices. If one believes one is surrounded by beings
who belong to an occult brotherhood or esoteric hierarchy of
some manner, most likely a concentration by oneself on
mainstream religious ideas would put to end the scenario one
imagines. In mainstream Christianity, for instance, one is
dissuaded from believing in such concepts as astral vision or
astral sight. Satan is said to come as an "angel of light," and be
the "prince of the power of the air." The only hierarchy most
branches of Christianity allow contact with is that of the living
believers in the church. In many of these hallucinatory
scenarios, there is also communication with the souls of the
departed great, and that is forbidden as necromancy in the bible.
It says in Deuteronomy, Chapter 18, verses 10 and 11, "Let there
not be found among you anyone who immolates his son or
daughter in the fire, nor a fortune-teller, soothsayer, charmer,
diviner, or caster of spells, nor one who consults ghosts and
spirits or seeks oracles from the dead." If the person is secure in
ideas of love, peace, and the virtues as being the most important
things, then the views that people can and should talk to the
dead and spirits can take secondary importance and even
eventually be given up when one learns more about
hallucinations.

23

There is no difference between what a hallucinated inner

world looks like compared to what it would really look like if
those "astral sight" powers were real. A dream world seems real
to us, as does a visual hallucination that one experiences with the
eyes closed. In "lucid dreaming" people are aware that they are
dreaming and experience a type of waking consciousness in their
dreaming state. The person's hallucinated contacts, whether
sights or sounds, has every aspect of what an actual telepathic
world would have. So, in overcoming this problem, one has to
quickly get over the analysis stage of the phenomena. One must
simply state that all the phenomena looks real, but isn't real, it is
merely a type of lucid dreaming. Just as there are stars out in the
daytime but we do not see them because of the light of the sun,
so is our dreaming brain present with us in our waking state.
We can call this dreaming brain our unconscious. When people
hallucinate it is like seeing through to the dreaming brain, or a
part of their unconscious, in their waking consciousness.
24

The fact that phenomena is accompanied by lights, or that

the person sees figures in his inner sight is not proof that these
are heavenly or "astral" bodies. When many people, if not all,
press their fingers against their eyelids, much inner light
phenomena is seen. It is said that when people get hit on the
head they "see stars." Likewise, many types of auditory
hallucinations seem to operate from a background of tinnitus.
This tinnitus could be seen in some ways as a similar type of
event as an auditory hallucination. The presence of tinnitus does
not mean that someone is playing a high pitched flute next to
our head, just like a hallucination does not mean a presence is
really there.

25

One could see the hearing of voices as being a type of

"splitting." One simultaneously hears oneself talking, or better,
"acting" in a different persona. When one thinks about it this
way, people can see a reason to no longer split. They may then
see why not to split mentally, but to deny the previous
worldview, which they may still have an emotional tie to, is
more difficult. When they no longer split, they internalize all the
parts of themselves that they were splitting with. This is very
similar to the way multiple personality disorder people
disassociate and create multiple selves.

26

In internalizing and rejoining splits, people might try

acting like the person they're hallucinating momentarily. They
should realize that this is a quality that they're projecting -- a
quality they have but they are not owning. They are merely
types of people they're identifying with and acting out. Most of
all, they have to utterly not believe in the reality of the
hallucinated split-off part.
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