LIVING WITH INNER VOICES AND PHYSICAL PRESENCE

LIVING

WITH

INNER VOICES

AND

PHYSICAL

PRESENCES

BY

ROY VINCENT

For more than thirty years, I have experienced voices and physical intrusions or presences in my body and mind.  Continuously - and still continuing.  And even though it means that I continue to experience all of the ‘symptoms’ that would have me classified as ‘schizophrenic’, I am not, nor ever have been ill from any of these causes.

I have tried – Oh Lord!  How I have tried!  – I have tried to tell anyone who would listen or read that what I experience is of spiritual origin.  Of that, I am certain.  How could I be otherwise?  It is not arrogance that makes me say so.  How could I not be certain?  How could anyone not be certain if they had shared my experiences of the last thirty-plus years?  And if anyone wants to know the basis for this certainty; if they want to share my experiences, they can know and share by reading the book that I have written.  Called Listening to the Silences, in a world of hearing voices  it contains a full account of what led up to the moment when “A presence that I could not see moved from the space in front of me… In my mind began conversation as between two separate people… I began to hear voices.”

Even more so have I tried to describe, to explain what it is like to hear voices; to experience the feeling of ‘an other’ inside my body and brain, sharing my inner space to such a degree that I feel revolted as if I had some great parasite within; a parasite that is trying to control my emotions such that I might feel laughter or tears when I have no need to laugh or cry; trying to propel me in this direction or that or to this action or that.  I search constantly for analogies; I stretch existing analogies to ridiculous limits in a perpetual campaign to try to achieve understanding, because it is only the individuals who hear voices, who experience physical presence and who experience the dominating influences – it is only they who know what it is like to hear voices, to experience physical presence and the dominating influences.

       I repeat – it is only the individuals who hear voices, who experience physical presence and who experience the dominating influences – it is only they who know what it is like to hear voices, experience physical presence and the dominating influences.

        Left to themselves, such individuals would not use such words as ‘illusion’, ‘delusion’, and ‘auditory hallucination’.  These are words that have been imposed on them from the moment they may have said tentatively to a G.P., something such as, “I hear voices.”  I remember an occasion when I began to try to tell a particular G.P. about my experiences, to be met with a response that came back faster than one of Pavlov’s dogs salivating – “Delusions.”

I use the comparison with Pavlov’s dogs and their conditioned responses deliberately, for somewhere within the teaching of many Medical Schools there must be a degree of Pavlovian indoctrination.  Take my late friend ‘Harry’ – a G.P. who sometimes came to stay.  I had to say to Harry only one word, and he was off!  The word?  Acupuncture.  Immediately I said it, I would be assailed with a diatribe about the dangers that could come from the needles, in which ‘hepatitis’ figured largely – along with much invective about the complete ineffectiveness of this ‘quack’ so-called ‘treatment.  ‘Quack’ appeared frequently when he expressed his opinion about various complementary or alternative therapies.  The fact that he had come to stay with me to get help from me in my rôle as a natural healer restrained him not.  Even as he received benefit from me, I was nevertheless lumped in with the rest!

Now Harry had never explored ‘acupuncture’ in its reality.  I had, and had obtained considerable benefit in my efforts to maintain my health at a high level.  So I knew that the needles used came out individually from sealed packets and were discarded, or, in the case of one practitioner, the needles had been sterilised in an autoclave at the nearby hospital.  If, alternatively, I had mentioned to Harry something such as ‘homeopathy’, I have no doubt my ear would have been bent with much derisive language, well peppered with ‘double-blind trials with placebos’.  And so on, with any ‘complementary’ or ‘alternative’ therapy that I might mention – instant derision that was not open to reason or fact.

If you are reading this, never having had contact with individuals who are troubled by internal voices, there is a strong possibility that words such as ‘psychosis’, ‘psychotic’, ‘paranoid psychotic’ – even ‘violent paranoid schizophrenic’ will have come to the forefront of your mind.  Why?  Because you also, like my friend Harry, have been programmed into this ‘instant opinion mode’ – in your case, by the Media of course.  Or, if you listen to such as Jasper Carrott, ‘nutter’ might easily appear with the rest of the derisive, pejorative words, and be accepted with loud guffaws.

More than half a lifetime ago, when I was thirty-seven (I am now eighty-six) I was made very ill following a medical misdiagnosis and most inappropriate medication.  I developed a severe clinical depression.  I have all of my clinical notes covering this time, and, with difficulty, studied them in order to write the first part of my book.  Apart from the personal anguish of recalling those desperate times, what came back to my memory was the difficulty – almost impossibility – of describing to a psychiatrist exactly what was going on ‘inside’ me – in my mind - in my thoughts – or physically within me, even.

Much greater was the seeming impossibility of reasonable communication with someone from another culture.  Twice I was in the partial care of registrars from India, and apart from the fact that colloquial conversation and understanding were virtual non-starters, one of them seemed to be working within a vastly different doctor/patient relationship from that to which I had become used.  (Some years later, I had a brief correspondence with a mother in Mumbai who was desperately concerned about the fate of her son and his deterioration from the drugs that he was prescribed.  In response to what I wrote about the spiritual intervention, she wrote, “Undoubtedly many have gone to ashrams and got better, but here in Mumbai – what can we do?  And anyway, the doctors terrify you!”)

On another occasion, I was sent for a second opinion to a University Department where it seemed that Freud ruled O.K..  All of the interviewing could have been fitted in a text-book by Freud, and he might have written the subsequent opinion that was received by my Consultant.  Looking back it feels as if I had fallen into the clutches of some  great Freudian Psychiatric Procrastus – he of the iron bed that you were made to fit by stretching or chopping – and where, willy-nilly, my head would be made to fit the Freudian mould – or else!

If one has a ‘normal’ illness, there are many everyday words that even the most inarticulate persons have at their disposal – hot, cold, pain, sleep, bowel movements, vomit and so on.  If one is making tentative attempts to get help in understanding and then describing the seemingly indescribable, where is the vocabulary?  Where are the most basic words that may be used to describe the situations such as I shall illustrate?  Where are the words that one can find to describe the seemingly indescribable – the invisible, inaudible and intangible?

Why not join me in a little rôle playing?  Throughout the time that I have been experiencing these phenomena, I have recorded what I call ‘ploys’ – stratagems that may be used by intruding ‘entities’ to influence one’s thoughts, senses and behaviour: and I have described many of the ways in which an individual may first ‘acquire’ these intruders.  But first – there is always a ‘but’ – you must understand that I have written and recorded knowing with an unshakeable certainty that I was dealing with intrusive ‘spirits’, ‘entities’, beings’.  Not only that, but while I concentrate on the ‘malign’ intrusions, because these are the ones that may enter and attempt to undermine and dominate the sensitive mind and person, I have to emphasise – again with unshakeable certainty – that there exist the infinitely opposite: infinitely opposite ‘entities’ whose sole purpose in their interaction is to give support and create harmony.

Why not become ‘Ruth’ for a short while?  ‘Ruth’, mid-thirties, has heard voices and experienced physical presence within herself for a number of years.  About two years ago, she was invaded by a strong dominating presence that declared itself to be ‘God’.  So here you are, emotionally alone and unable to shut out this persistent, analytical, dominating presence that goes on and on; scrutinising your every thought and action; deriding your futile attempts to escape from this ‘Divine’ analysis; telling you that you are the lowest of the low, no better than shit; unfit to live and continue polluting the Earth with your vile presence; an Earth that would be so much cleaner without you.

“SO GO!”  “There’s that bus, that lorry.  Go on – JUMP!”  But you quail at the sight of the thundering wheels and step back.  But ‘GOD’ is still there.  “RIGHT – there’s the river – you are on the bridge – NOW JUMP!”

Would you jump?  

Could you, standing alone and, subject to such threats, resist? 

Ruth jumped.

Fortunately, you survive the jump and swim to the steep tidal muddy bank.  You struggle and crawl up it, losing your shoes and all of your lower clothes.  And almost out of your mind, covered in mud from head to toe and naked from the waist down, you struggle to reach the door of someone living nearby whom you know, to be taken in and cared for.

Would you agree with your – i.e. Ruth’s – psychiatrist that you have a chemical imbalance in your brain?

There is an opinion that hearing voices is similar to having a ruminative, reflective ‘conversation’ in one’s mind.  Having reached your friend’s house, been taken in, bathed and looked after, would you be eager to talk about the interesting ruminative conversation that you had just had?

But how is it possible that your mind could have been taken over and you become dominated by this ‘thing’ that calls itself ‘God’?  After all, you are not ill – mentally or otherwise.  
Here you are – you are no longer Ruth, but yourself.  You are in prime health and eager to join your friends as you all go to hear the great evangelical preacher – the one and only Billy Graham, or another and similarly well known spiritual orator.  Maybe you are seeking the ‘God’ experience?  Many people did at the time of the so-called ‘charismatic movements’.  Groups got together – some individuals ‘speaking in tongues’; others full of deep fervour - and much more.  So, the much-vaunted ‘evangelist’ has come to town, together with the whole of his entourage.

The atmosphere, the build-up, the electrically charged environment.  The early ‘warm-up’ speakers are full of zeal; the choir sings ecstatically, while all around arms are raised Heaven-ward in adoration.

  And then, the ‘charismatic one’.  

What can I say?  You will have seen on TV much that is similar.  And then he begins to call individuals by name, and you begin to tremble in hope or fear that your name will be called.  And it is – and eager hands usher you down to join the others at the front, where you stand as the ‘evangelist’ moves along the line – speaking to this one, touching that one – and he touches you lightly on the chest.  But a light touch is not what you experience.  A firm and completely irresistible pressure is there, forcing you back into the receptive arms of the stewards, who lay you carefully on the ground.  You have been ‘Slain by the Spirit’!

And you feel ‘chosen’.  And it does not seem at all surprising that you feel all around or within you, some sort of ‘presence’; nor that you appear to be spoken to in your mind?  And the voice and presence continue – become part of your life – yet it seems so natural, to have such warm companions who appear to generate around you an ambience of spirituality.

“Companions”?  Yes.  Plural?  Yes.  It has been hinted, gradually, that you may be invited to be part of a spiritual fraternity – obviously at a very junior level; a neophyte, no less.  You will be assessed in the friendliest sort of way, but the ‘higher’ spirits will have to be assured that you are at a satisfactory level of spiritual ‘cleanliness’ to be able to work with them now, and then join them as a team when the time has come for you to ‘pass on’.

And so begins a process that I can only show in the most brief summary, during which you might find yourself engaged in a rigorous prayer life – even getting up in the middle of the night to ‘join’ in prayer.  You will be encouraged to ‘assess’ your friends one by one, and faults will be found, and you will be urged to discard the friends.  You might be urged to adopt an abstemious life-style and diet.  You will be encouraged to delve into your past life and expose past defects, peccadilloes, events that even now bring a feeling of shame.  It may be suggested that someone, already dead, may want to come to you and apologise for past wrongs – which then has you trawling your memory and ‘accepting’ the apology, or conversely re-igniting the anger and hurt

…

Your mind is being ‘trawled’ skilfully in such a way that everything is revealed – or, surprisingly, appears to be known already.  Gradually the ‘catechism’ becomes critical, almost condemnatory; some of your ‘hidden’ shameful acts are played back to you…

No matter what you do, you are always being watched, analysed, commented upon.

It is extremely difficult to find analogies that would enable someone to imagine themselves in such a situation.  The nearest that I can find that will give some inkling derives from the time shortly after I had moved into my present house in 1971.  It was the first dwelling that was actually ‘mine’ and not rented.  It has four acres of land and the potential use as a small-holding.  It is beautifully situated and living here can bring on a state of deep relaxation.  

In this relaxed state, I met and married a widow who had two teenage children, all with a common interest in horses and smallholding life.  It seemed ideal and I saw no problems.  However, K. was ahead of me.  She and her late husband, an architect, had already developed some run-down property.  Mine was not in any way run down, but K. soon had ideas for ‘development’.  I had been about to begin to develop my DIY skills; K’s were already ahead of mine.  I began to experience the ‘critical watching’ – “I wouldn’t have done it that way.”  “The person who taught me…”

The Mother and children were already a unit with established instant inter-communication.  I would be observed, reported on and discussed during their journeys together to and from school.  Thing were decided by this ‘committee’ during the drive.  Even casual remarks were seized on a reported back by the children… 

Have you had enough?  I soon did, and although it took me a total of three years, the day actually arrived when I could go around, savouring the space, my space; touching things; reclaiming my domain…

Surprisingly, this is exactly how I felt and behaved at the time when I realised that, almost completely, I had regained control of my own mind, in spite of the ploys and stratagems of the intruding entities.

And you?  How will you hold on to your mind, your ‘space’ while under this constant surveillance, dominance and ‘running commentary’ from your unseen and erstwhile spiritual ‘friends’?  How will you react to the presence that even though it is not there, is still there?  You will find that you are listening, constantly listening – listening to the voices when they are there, and listening to the silence when they are not – waiting for them to return at any moment.

Listening.  Constantly listening.  You are not hearing voices; you are listening to them.  And the constant listening is the greatest undermining influence in the whole of this sorry process.  And remember, within the midst of all that is going on there is one factor, a most important factor, which is never considered in all of the commentaries and analyses.  You are still a mammal.  Yes, the body that you inhabit is that of a mammal, and it retains all of the self-protection systems that have brought it through aeons of evolution.  And it retains them absolutely intact and functioning.

Hearing is part of our early warning system – probably one of the prime elements, for it is the one that would be most important after dark.  If, in our wild state, we heard an unusual or threatening sound, normally we would shift into ‘listening’ mode.  And our breathing would become shallow – might almost cease as we concentrated.  But more than that, for additionally we suspend a number of vital body functions.  Usually described simply as ‘flight/fight’ responses, there is a complex interaction that we do well to study if we are to understand the ways in which the constant listener is undermined – physically as well as mentally.

        In my book, I try to be specific about the variety of inner responses that may take place.  For example, there is a complex tensing of the genitals, and the bladder and anal sphincters.  These together have a close response into the base of the throat; while the sacrum and coccyx – our residual tail – react in such a way that would depress and clamp down the tail – if we still had one.  At the same time, arms, shoulders, buttocks and legs are preparing for the action for which the ‘listening’ is preparing us.  Except that there is no flight/fight situation.  The listening goes on and on, and the various tensions and resultant inner reactions also go on and on.

        One of the prime objectives of the complex inner readjustments is the diversion of blood away from unnecessary functions into those that will be fully committed to the life-saving responses implied by ‘flight/fight’.  Thus the ‘locking’ of the throat will result in diminution of the blood supply to the brain, with what consequences to the permanent ‘listener’ one can only guess.  The tensions within the genitals may cause functional problems such as impotence, lack of sensitivity and frigidity; those in the sphincters may be the cause of such unwelcome by-products as haemorrhoids, or a dysfunctional prostate.  Permanent stresses within muscles and joints may be the source of constant pain, of no known cause.

If you, the permanent listener, develop any of these physical problems, you may be absolutely sure that the constant malign presences will claim that they have created them.  If you are in pain, they will claim to be the source of the pain, and that is punishment for your moral back-sliding.  If you are a man, and impotence becomes your lot – they will deride you for it and add further anxiety to that already resulting from the condition…         

I could go on, and on – but in doing so, I would be re-writing my book.  Yes, I have actually been there.  Not in the manner that I have just described, which shows a route on which anyone might find themselves.  My ‘journey’ into this sort of hell also began ‘innocently’ as I followed up an interest in dowsing or divining using a pendulum, and if this is the only part of my story that you want to read, you will find it told in Chapter 6. 

 But if that is all that you read, you will be robbing yourself.  

The remainder of the book from Chapter 6 onward shows how my life developed in the light of this knowledge; these experiences.  And it is written – as is the whole book – to try to bring greater understanding of the whole ‘voice hearing’ experience.  And not only will you be robbing yourself, but also those for whom the knowledge is intended – the inarticulate ones whose life really can be come a hell as they cope with all that the ‘intrusions’ can inflict upon them, and the hell that their journey into ‘psychiatry’ may make of their lives as they become suppressed, zombified by modern anti-psychotic drugs.

I have already described how I have identified a number of ‘ploys’ used by intruding entities, whom I always refer to as they – there being no certainty as to whether there is one or more of them.  As well as appearing in context in my narrative, they are grouped together in Chapter 16 of the book on the Internet.  As an example, here are two that are relevant to what I have just written.

19    Sometimes very vivid dreams are followed on waking by a deliberately fragmented ‘conversation’, often with the suggestion that one’s mind is being taken over at a deeper level.  If one is gullible, one can be convinced that one is losing one’s mind, or that it is part of a process by which one will become integrated into the ‘spirit mind’.

20    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 ‘cosy’ 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.

 Moving on - you may have been invited out by some new-found friends – clubbing or whatever – and you find that almost everyone is looking for some sort of ‘high’, and never before having used any sort of drug, you find yourself smoking a ‘joint’.  Only you know the extent of your strange experiences.  You don’t know if they are good or bad.  You don’t know if it is normal to feel as if ‘someone’ has moved into your body and mind – is this part of the ‘trip’?  You feel withdrawn – alienated almost.  Your ‘friends’ ignore you and move on, and you are left to wander off home alone – or not alone?

It is very unlikely that you will ever have had cause to read about the shamans of other cultures – many ethnic groups world-wide have had shamans or similar ‘medicine’ men and women in their midst.  Almost all, it seems, used cannabis, peyote, ‘mushrooms’ or other hypnotics in the process that prepared them for the entry of their ‘familiar spirit’, and many also used incessant drumming for the same purpose.  Undoubtedly, all would have been trained from their early years in the use of the ‘substance’ and the ways of coping with the ‘other’ within themselves.

And you?  You have had no training or preparation; no foreknowledge of the possibility of being ‘entered’ – and only you will know how the story unfolds from now on…

I have found yet another rôle for you!  You are now Sara-Jane; you are in your early forties and are in a plane high above the Med.  You are returning from an absolutely blissful holiday in the Greek Islands, and to where you will return in a year’s time to marry Tom, your partner, who is beside you, lightly dozing.  Your mind is so full – the holiday just ended – already planning what you will wear next year.  Not a negative thought in your mind; nothing but happiness.

Then suddenly, all of the other people on the plane are talking about you, criticising you, condemning you, pulling you to pieces – your clothes; your morals – on and on.  As you cower in your seat, Tom wakes and you pour out the reasons for your distress – “They’re all talking about me!  They’re all talking about me!”  Tom stands up and looks around, and persuades you to do the same.  Not a single person shows any interest in you.

Somehow, you manage to keep things together while you land and travel home, where the dam bursts and the malign voices continue their castigation.  You have time off work, ostensibly with stress, and you struggle to cope.  Only with the strong support and care from Tom and your twin sister do you manage to avoid being ‘sectioned’.  Yet you have determination that this ‘thing’ is not going to beat you, and you struggle with the minimum of drug intake and try to find the real explanation of what has happened to you.

You scour the Internet, looking for articles, books – anything that might help.  You find one, a book, that seems to draw you, and you read it avidly, non-stop.  And at last, you have an explanation that seems to fit your own incredible experiences.  “I must write to this man and tell him”, you say to Tom.  And you do…

And here alongside me as I write is the letter from Sara-Jane, and she begins: “I want to say thanks for writing on the Internet about your experiences.  I found it to be the only true version of what I feel happened to myself last year.  I had been looking for books to read on the subject but I found nothing useful until I came across your account…”

She and Tom came to stay with me, and we were able to reach an even greater understanding of her experiences.  The year elapsed – and produced on my computer two wedding photographs of very happy people – Sara-Jane, looking absolutely exquisite, alongside a beaming Tom; and the second, with twin sister, equally looking radiant.

Sara-Jane can count herself fortunate, in that her experiences appear to have had a beginning and an end – or if not an actual ‘end’, but a finite analysis that shows that control is made possible by ‘awareness’ and knowledge.

Not so the ‘closet’ voice hearer such as Joyce, for whom the agony went on and on throughout almost the whole of her adult life.      

  

I first came to be acquainted with Joyce in her rôle as local Librarian, and this is how I saw her for a number of years until, following her retirement, our paths crossed in a different setting, and we began to learn more about each other.  In time, she learned of the account of my experiences that I was writing, and which eventually became my book.  It was then that her own remarkable story began to unfold, and while retaining her anonymity, she wrote it in its entirety for me to use in any manner that would inform and help anyone who suffers from the plague of inner voices and presences similar that which had been her lot for many years.  I reproduce it in its entirety as ‘J’s Story’ in Chapter 16 of my book on the Internet, and in my Blog in the post headed “SANE: HEARING VOICES”.

It would be difficult for me to fit you into Joyce’s life history – it covers a period too long for rôle playing.  She grew up in a quiet and caring family in rural Gloucestershire – an imaginative child having experiences of a spiritual nature that suffused her life with happiness.  Successful at school, she entered University to work towards her ultimate goal of Librarianship.  She writes:

  

        “At age nineteen, while studying at University, under great pressure trying to get accustomed to living alone in ‘digs’ – although I had a very kind landlady; never free of persistent catarrh causing dull headaches; anxious about keeping ahead of work commitments; having very little leisure time and depressed by the failure of two developing, but platonic friendships, I said to myself one day in utter despair “There is no meaning in anything.  It’s all just words, words, words”.

  At that moment something in my head just snapped, causing complete chaos inside.  I could hear voices uttering unspeakable blasphemies.  Whenever I lay down to sleep at night, shapes, colours, people’s faces churned round and round endlessly.  For the first three nights after my breakdown, I cannot remember sleeping at all.  This went on ceaselessly; day and night; utter torment; complete hell.  At this point I must state categorically that the ‘still small voice’ heard in that garden in Oxford, was totally different from these demonic ones.

        Outwardly, although it may seem hard to believe, I seemed normal, if somewhat withdrawn.  I could still talk to people; do my work, although with considerable difficulty in concentration.  I could shop, eat, do chores, cycle to lectures.  My mother, whom I only saw occasionally in those days, since I was living away from home, remarked during one visit that I seemed “hag ridden”.  How apt that phrase was!  I did not tell her or anyone, except by letter to the University psychiatrist describing what had happened, but never received an answer.  However, I think the psychiatrist must have asked one of my Tutors to keep an eye on me, because she started inviting me to her home and taking me to the cinema.

        I was like a zombie, my mind that had one time been so clear, now darkened.  I remember staring at myself in the mirror, my body feeling dead, but yet something in me still aware of all that was happening.  At no time did I contemplate suicide, but I desperately searched my memory for something that would alleviate the horror of my inner turmoil.  I remembered having been given a palm cross one Palm Sunday, when I was only seven or eight.  The recollection of that lovely day, the joy of that time, surrounded by loving people, the sun shining brilliantly outside the church, was calming and consoling.  For years, during every waking moment, I tried to keep the thought and picture of that cross in my inner vision.  I read the bible voraciously, copied whole chapters into a notebook, kept a crucifix under my pillow.  I also tried to visualise in the inner darkness, the colour and shape of the ‘inner’ sun, moon, and stars that were once so natural to see.

        After leaving University, doing a year’s practical library work and obtaining my Diploma in Librarianship, I started full time work.  I met and married a very considerate and loving husband.  We had no family.  The ‘voices’ did not abate even during the period of our marriage, but although he knew that I was suffering from some mental struggle, he did not know the details.  He was vegetarian, just not liking meat from boyhood.  He never tried to convert me, but gradually I became vegetarian myself, for several reasons, and have never wanted to revert to meat eating.  He died in 1982.

        I have had several good, satisfying jobs in libraries; made very many friends; have all sorts of hobbies – walking, reading, listening to music, embroidery, knitting, attending evening classes and study tours abroad.  I do voluntary committee and community work since taking early retirement; do gardening and have a pet cat.

       

        Through being a vegetarian, I was led to a guesthouse in Glastonbury, which turned out also to be a spiritual centre.  I had remained through all the years a staunch Christian, attending church, if not really regularly, at least at all the main festivals, but this was something, at Ramala as it is called, which began at long last to draw me out of the darkness.  The Christ light is worshipped there as living reality.  Their teaching and associated art work reawakened my visions.  I don’t mean by that that I experienced them as I had done in childhood, but I knew that they were being expressed through the work of Ramala.  It led me on to an even more wonderful realisation, connected with the former glory, which has restored life, light hope, joy.”

        At the outset, I wrote of my unshakeable and absolute certainty – certainty that there exist the infinitely opposite of the malign, destroying ‘presences’.

Infinitely opposite - the benign ‘entities’

whose sole purpose in their presence and interaction is to give support and create harmony   In doing so, I am entering another area where the choice of language and metaphor is as difficult as finding the language and analogies required to describe the malign intruders.  Almost every word or simile has already become embedded in the language of religion.

  Deliberately, at every stage and in every piece of my writing, I have been at great pains to dissociate myself with any and all religions, for I have tried to reach individuals of all religions or none.  I have described my own spiritual progress as it has impacted on my narrative, but in every other respect, I retain an inner privacy.  Throughout my book, and in context you will find many concrete examples of how I have experienced support and practical help – and yes, love, from the world of the ‘benign.

If ‘religion’ and all that the word implies – if religion is to have any impact on the lives of the individuals such as those that I write about, it is most likely to have its influence through the lives and beliefs of those who, professionally or privately, seek to understand and care for those who are in need of support and caring.  As I found when in the depths of a seemingly intractable depression, one can be spiritually ‘dead’.  Help, if it is to come at all, has to come from others, although compassion and understanding are not the sole prerogative of the ‘religions’.  But an understanding of the existence and rôle of the spiritual in the care of the mentally disturbed is at the disposal of all.

        How does the ‘spiritual’ reach the lives of the many whose minds have been invaded as the result, for example, of having been ‘abused’, possibly from childhood?  A Psychiatrist, the late Dr. Kenneth McAll, believed that he had found an answer in an understanding that ‘abuse’ in its various forms came down through successive generations.  Based on experiences gained when working in China, and during internment by the Japanese during World War 2, he became convinced that many mental problems resulted from the attachment of disturbed or malign spirits, and that in many instances these were ‘family’ attachments.  

        Through the Family Tree Ministry, which has been closed since his death, he showed how, by analysing the family tree, it might be possible to decide at which level of ancestry the original disturbance began.  Dr McAll’s book Healing the Family Tree describes how those who practised this Ministry, used prayer to attempt to persuade the sources of the disturbances and attachments to allow themselves to be led onward in a  spiritual sense.

        Even though my Librarian friend, Joyce, had had her own inner religious convictions, it seems that on her own, in her lonely furrow, she may not have sought help actively or specifically, whereas her support and eventual release came through the intervention and support of others who were firm in their religious practice and in its practical application in the care of others.

Many individuals instantly are put off by the very word, ‘spiritual’, because, immediately, it suggests ‘religion’ – and many are put of by religion.  From the outset, I have tried to separate the two, and yet to show that knowledge and understanding of the existence of the spiritual world that is ‘parallel’ to ours, will reveal the pathways that will lead to the wiser treatment of voice-hearers, and hopefully to the realisation that prescribed drugs will never actually cure ‘schizophrenia’.  

At best, drugs will suppress an individual’s mind to such an extent that intrusive entities can no longer exert influence.  And hopefully will come the further realisation that when the drug intake ceases, the mind will gradually clear, and the opening may yet exist for the intrusions to return – i.e. ‘the patient has a relapse’, and may be treated with even stronger anti-psychotic drugs – which can have side-effects that may be far worse than many a ‘conventional’ illness.

  

In the final pages of my book, I tried to summarise what I saw as the great need for simple understanding of the world of the voice hearer, and the realisation that comprehending the meaning of ‘spiritual’ in its widest sense would shed light into the darkness surrounding many other intractable mental health problems.  This is what I wrote:

“Satellite television has brought to me a fascinating window on a wider world and the opportunities to observe and try to understand, people from a vast range of cultures - people whom one saw previously, if one saw them at all, as ‘performers’ in documentaries or devised programmes, and subject to the presentation and interpretation of the programmes’ compilers.  Now I can watch them completely untainted by the intervening ‘editor interpreter’.  I watch them in their own dramas, chat shows, news bulletins and a variety of presentations and versions of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’  

I look at faces and expressions, moods and reactions, but ‘look’ and ‘watch’ are the two operative words, for apart from sensing the general mood of the piece I have not the slightest idea of what is being said.  When I watch Chinese television there are subtitles – but they also are in Chinese.  I would dearly like to know what Dunia and the people whom she interviews on Abu Dhabi television are discussing, because it appears to be serious and intelligent, but apart from words that sound vaguely like ‘Iraq’ and ‘Arabia’, there is nothing to guide me.  Worse still is a news bulletin when the person being interviewed is speaking English, but is then being talked over and the screen has rolling subtitles all in Arabic.

                The world and outlook of those who are locked into their inner voices is something like this.

  They have their own transmission received inside their head that no one else can hear or comprehend, while, viewed on the screen of life that is going on outside them, they see people, faces expressions, actions, moods and reactions, and try to interpret something that is far off.  Something that is almost unreachable from within a mind and body that are often numbed by the drugs that are meant to make life more bearable (but which often are there solely to ‘contain’ them).  A world with which they find it increasingly difficult to communicate, to such an extent that attempts to do so may be abandoned altogether, especially when the inner world can appear warm and friendly.

                Is it easiest simply to abandon them to their inner world and the companions that frequent it?  An inner world that can be welcoming, friendly, comforting – an inner world that suddenly can spawn terror and threat; create immeasurable anxiety; propose devilish and obscene compacts – compacts that if accepted can bring down an even heavier rain of threat and castigation from the unseen tormentors.  One can go on and on in seemingly endless speculation, and offer insights and advice that may or may not have relevance to an individual – if indeed one knew that the torment was actually there behind the closed door that a life and the face fronting it have become.

                It would be difficult to forget the time when my stable was being re-roofed.  Right to the fore of the action were the two Geordies – Big Derek and Brian.  They came and worked - and worked hard - for ‘readies’, and stayed until about one o’clock when they went off to the King’s Head for a liquid lunch, and then possibly an afternoon fishing off the beach.  

        One morning they came and they were immensely subdued, in fact, for such a big man, it was odd that Derek seemed close to tears.  “Clarry’s topped his self,” said Brian eventually.  Work was pointless, and they went off to the King’s Head for more appropriate solace.  Clarry – or Clarence to give him his Sunday name – had farmed with brother Ronnie, until they had given up the farm.  But farmers never retire, and one met them here and there, as they helped out on other farms - hedging, dykeing, dry-stone walling, hay-timing - or working in people’s gardens.

                Clarry had retired to a cottage beside the main road and I saw him frequently as he worked around a friend’s premises.  This particular morning his daughter had come downstairs, to a fire newly laid in the grate, a cup of tea part drunk and still warm, a sandwich half eaten, and, puzzled, had gone outside to find Clarry hanging.  And no one knew why!  It was over ten years ago, and I don’t think anyone knows to this day.  There in his inner world something had thrown a switch – but he had not been ill that anyone knew about – certainly not mentally.  What was it that Clarry couldn’t talk to anyone about – confide - consult?

                I thought of him in happier times, as for instance, when the local Shepherds’ Meet and a meet of the Black Combe hunt had coincided, and the Brown Cow had been open all day – and Clarry hadn’t wasted a minute.  There he was, well into the evening, a huge turkey drumstick in his hand, beating time to the choruses of the hunting songs, and swaying perilously to and fro, and the picture of him swaying gently at the end of a rope is one that even now I find unbearable.

                I have difficulty revisiting the time when I desperately wanted to die and escape from all that plagued my mind and from the situation that I couldn’t understand but from which I frantically wanted to flee.

                          I wasn’t then hearing voices, but had seemingly insurmountable problems.  Why didn’t I just do it?  As I wrote earlier in my book, it had to appear to be an accident, and I couldn’t devise one that I thought would be convincing.  Relevant to my thoughts about Clarry – I couldn’t talk to anyone, because I couldn’t put my inner agony into words.  I vaguely remember once saying to the Consultant as I attempted to broach the subject, something such as “I wish I had a terminal illness” – thinking that that would be a way out that would not create problems for anyone.  “I suppose you want cancer” he said – and said it with a sneer; nothing else will describe his tone.  I never tried to speak to anyone about it ever again, and I have only recalled the painful times for the purpose of writing to you to help you to understand the torment in the unseen world behind the façade of a face, and a life that is seemingly being ‘lived’ successfully.

‘Writing to you’ – I began to write, it seems, such a long time ago.  Some has come easy; some with the pain of unhappiness and disaster revisited.  I hope that it has been worthwhile in that it may help someone.  I began with the words of the diminutive Brazilian bishop, Dom Helder Camera, from which I get the title of my book, and cannot think of any that are more appropriate with which to end.

Don’t get annoyed

If the people coming to see you,

If the people wanting to talk to you

Can’t manage to express

The uproar raging inside them.

Much more important

Than listening to the words

Is imagining the agonies,

Fathoming the mystery,

Listening to the silences.

*“Listening to the silences” – www.royvincent.org

Paperback -  ISBN 9781847477590

Blog -  www.roycvincent.blogspot.com

       

SCHIZOPHRENIA IS / SCHIZOPHRENIA ARE....

SCHIZOPHRENIA IS –

NO!  ALTHOUGH COMPLETELY

UNGRAMMATICAL

IT IS FAR MORE ACCURATE

TO WRITE

“SCHIZOPHRENIA ARE – “

WHY?  WELL JUST ASK DR. JOHN W. PERRY, HARVARD MEDICAL GRADUATE AND FORMER PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA –

HE WROTE: “Let me specify at the outset exactly which condition I am speaking of here: this is only one of the many syndromes that pass under the name ‘schizophrenia’…”

In the preface to his scholarly, but very readable, and certainly beautifully written book, Schizophrenia Genesis, Dr. Irving I. Gottesman writes that  “A heritage of distortions, stagnant certainty, and self-serving territoriality characterises the fields of knowledge about this dreaded disorder - aptly called ‘the cancer of the mind’ ”, and offers his book  “...to help fill the information gap between the ‘ivory towers of academia’, with its research ‘factories’ and private language, and the idiosyncratic narratives glorifying or obfuscating disorders of the mind”.

Is it any wonder that there could be such uncertainty, when there is such a choice as in the following list – which is very far from complete:

Some schizophrenics have a thicker than normal corpus callosum…

       

        Some schizophrenics have high levels of ‘sulphite’ in the urine…

Some schizophrenics exhibit high levels of copper in serum and hair analysis…

Some schizophrenics have nutrient deficiencies, especially of B vitamins, zinc, magnesium, chromium, manganese and vitamin C, while food intolerances are common in many…

         Some schizophrenics have a greater than normal susceptibility to arthritis…

Babies born in cities during the winter are at greater risk of developing schizophrenia in later life than those born in country

areas, or in summer, (possibly because of damage in the womb caused by influenza in the expectant mother)…

Some schizophrenics have a larger than normal left lateral

 ventricle…

And so on, and so on….

In his book, Dr. Gottesman continued –

 “Schizophrenia is a complex disorder of human functioning.  The absence so far of a solution to its origins compels me to be skeptical about received wisdom from all participants, however noble and well-intended.  I am, however, optimistic about finding solutions via the energies of scientists and the canons of science within a decade.”

Well.  In fact, two decades have passed since those words were published, and the ‘received wisdom’ appears to be no wiser.

One wonders whether anyone still bothers to consider or use the elements in this list of ‘first rank’ symptoms of schizophrenia?  They certainly add yet further choice to the seeker after truth.

1    Voices speak one’s thoughts aloud.

                2    Two or more voices (in the mind) discuss one in the

                      third person.

                3    Voices describe one’s actions as they happen.

                4    Bodily sensations are imposed by an external force.

                5    Thoughts stop, and one feels that they are extracted

                      by an external force.

                6    Thoughts, not “really” one’s own, are inserted among

                      one’s own thoughts.

                7    Thoughts are broadcast onto the outside world and

                      heard by all.

                8    Alien feelings are imposed by an external force.

                9    Alien impulses are imposed by an external force.

                10   “Volitional” actions are imposed by an external force.

                11   Perceptions are “delusional” and un-understandable

I first began to ‘hear voices’ and experience a whole range of other phenomena in 1980 – without in fact become ill, although I was subjected to considerable intrusion and disturbance within my mind and within my body, experiences that continue to this very day.  For a number of years, I contented myself with keeping notes of all that happened as it happened.  Then, finally, I settled down and began to write the book which I have subsequently published.

I had analysed my notes and written quite a lot of my book before I came across the above list, and when I did so, I realised that I had written in detail of my experience of each one of these ‘symptoms’, albeit in my own words, yet never (I repeat) had I become ill.  And still I continue to hear voices and frequently have experiences that might even add to the list.  And still I know without the remotest shadow of doubt that what I experience results from spiritual intrusion into my mind, body and senses.

Undoubtedly, as my quotes above indicate, there are many sincere researchers trying to identify the causes of the ‘cancers of the mind’, but unfortunately they are not themselves voice hearers.  Consequently, they experience no problem and accept without question such diagnoses as – “Schizophrenia is caused by – a chemical imbalance in the brain – one side of the brain talking to the other – the ‘bicameral mind’ – and so on…”

So why not ask ‘Ruth’ who was ‘invaded’ by a very strong presence in both her mind and her body.  The presence declared itself to be ‘God’, and step by step, ‘God’ took over Ruth and dominated her in every possible way.  In time, ‘He’ convinced her that she was utterly despicable, no better than a turd, and the sooner she removed herself from the planet, so much the better – SO!  You are on the bridge – there’s the river – JUMP.   And Ruth jumped….

Fortunately, she survived, struggled to the shore, and completely covered in mud, naked from the waist down, she found refuge in the home nearby of someone she knew.  And still people try to tell her that she has a ‘chemical imbalance in the brain’…

I write more fully about Ruth and others in “Living with Inner Voices and Physical Presences”, which is posted on my Blog (www.roycvincent.blogspot.com) , together with other relevant articles.  Additionally, within my book (www.royvincent.net) , there is a compilation of well over thirty different ‘ploys’ that have been used by intruding ‘entities’ (intelligent entities) in their attempts to undermine me and make me ill.

Every voice-hearer who reads this will have his or her own experiences that are probably vastly different from mine or from Ruth’s.  They are experiences that many others will want to read.  So why not write about them and send them in?  A couple of paragraphs – anything …

After all, you are the ones who know what it is like…

So why not tell it as it is?

TAILPIECE

“UNLUCKY FOR SOME – 13”

Psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Mackarness, opens his book Not All in the Mind with a case study – in fact, a ‘presentation’ at Park Prewett Hospital.  The ‘case’ was ‘Joanna’, and her psychiatric history that he relates is frankly frightening – especially if you had been Joanna!

        She had been admitted thirteen times, often compulsorily, because the psychiatrists called by the general practitioner to see her at home had considered her to be a danger to her children and herself.  In her most disturbed phases, she would slash her forearms with any nearby sharp object; had done some bizarre things to her children, including throwing one through a closed window (fortunately on the ground floor)… and so on for several paragraphs.  Most of the psychiatrists at the Hospital had had Joanna under their care, and almost every diagnostic label in the book had been attached to her illness: schizophrenia, schizo-affective psychosis, pre-senile dementia, temporal lobe epilepsy, neurotic depression and anxiety hysteria.

        As the presentation proceeded, the majority opinion was that the only solution was leucotomy, as in her thirteen admissions Joanna had failed to respond to every known combination of psychotropic drugs as well as several courses of E.C.T.  Mackarness used all of his persuasive powers to be allowed to try his experimental methods as a last shot before the drastic action of leucotomy, and his colleagues agreed – more or less on the lines that ‘well at least it will do no harm!’  He had been influenced by work in other countries that had found that in many instances, mental health problems originated in food intolerance or allergy.

        The procedure was simple, and began with a five-day spring water fast followed by test doses of suspected foods.  In the event, Joanna was found to have strong reactions to chocolate, bacon, coffee, egg, and one or two other lesser items.  Three months after discharge Joanna was ‘happy, euphoric, sometimes almost hypo manic in her hearty enjoyment of life.  She goes out to work, cares for her children without harming them and seems almost back to her old self…’

Another book that opens with a case study, thirteen referrals and multiple diagnoses, is Understanding Dissociative Disorders.  Author Dr. Marlene Hunter ‘is world renowned for her work with medical hypnosis and Dissociative Disorders.’  She is also a determined advocate of ‘Dissociation’ as opposed to the earlier ‘Multiple Personality Disorder’, principally, it seems, because she wants to distance herself from any possible association with the presumed ‘spiritual’ connotation of ‘multiple-personality’. 

In the opening pages, Dr Hunter introduces a patient whom she names ‘Jayere’, and begins, “As our doctor-patient relationship became established and grew, I became more and more confused.  She had had, from previous family doctors, twelve psychiatric referrals.  These resulted in twelve diagnoses.  I made the thirteenth referral, and thus she received the thirteenth diagnosis – that she had a neurological disorder, not a psychiatric problem.  The neurologist, however, said in no uncertain terms that she had a psychiatric problem, not a neurological disorder, although he could not account for the fact that on two separate occasions she had two distinctly different EEGs.”

Jayere sat with Dr. Hunter and prepared to be hypnotised.  Dr. Hunter, much against her own instinct and entrenched beliefs, had decided to explore a suggestion made by an older colleague who had said, “Have you ever thought of multiple personality disorder?”  Thus, she writes, “So, with gritted teeth and feeling scared stiff, I gathered all my courage together at one of my next meetings with Jayere and asked while she was under hypnosis (we were working on relieving the headaches), ‘Is there any other part of you who would like to come and speak with me’?”

        And this entirely different gruff voice said, “Of course!  What took you so long?”

        With my own more than thirty years of direct experience of voice hearing and physical presence, I have no problem in understanding the existence of this ‘other’ within Jayere, nor have I any problem with the fact that she had had two distinctly different EEGs.  What else would you expect?

         

ROY VINCENT  JAN 2012

ELECTRICITY ON MY MIND

ELECTRICITY ON MY MIND

For a considerable number of years, I have realised that I am acutely sensitive to a variety of electrical and magnetic phenomena. As with many other human reactions, it is not easy to describe these internal responses, nor to quantify them or give them any scale of measurement that others may use in comparison. That others are sensitive, and are responding, albeit unknowingly, can be judged from their unconscious behaviour, and also from the consequences to them, which are usually harmful.

This may seem a long way from mental health issues, but in fact may have everything to do with them. My whole adult life and working career have been involved with electricity in one form or another. From the intricacies of Naval radar in WW2, through a Degree in Electrical Engineering, to my role as a measurement specialist in the UK Nuclear Power Programme – electrical phenomena and equipment were at the heart of my life.

My interest and involvement did not cease with my early retirement, but gathered force and in a different direction. It was a direction that was governed by the fact that I discovered that I am very sensitive to a wide range of electrical influences, both natural and man-made. Realisation came initially through reading a small but very vital paperback – The Ion Effect by Richard Soyka. He describes the onset of serious mental health problems caused by naturally occurring changes in the electricity of the surrounding air. To me, it is a seminal book - there are still second hand copies available on line.

The reason that I mention it now, is that Soyka asserts that at least a quarter of individuals are acutely sensitive to their electrical environment, while many of the remainder are affected without realising it. I give very detailed descriptions of the sources of electrical stress and their consequences for mental health right through the book that I have written. Written primarily for voice hearers, it has descriptions that apply to all the common mental health ailments.

I am not writing this now in order to keep plugging the book, (which is free on line www.royvincent.org  ) but to tell you what my background is, as I go on to describe some recent experiences that are relevant.

I live in rural surroundings with virtually no external sources of electrical and electro-magnetic interference. Thus, almost all that I encounter comes from devices that I control, being then aware of any change in my environment resulting from anything being switched on or off. Recently, I was reminded of this state of affairs through my reaction to two newly acquired and vastly differing devices.

The first is so ‘every day’ and simple – an electro-magnetic deterrent against rodents. Installed in my loft, its aim was to stop rats and anything else that wished to make it their home. A friend plugged it in for me while I was downstairs doing other things. Very soon, I realised that all was not well in my head – I developed a headache that experience told me resulted from electromagnetic transmission. Experiment with random switching on and off left me in no doubt that the device was the culprit.

Now, this was from a distance of more than 30 feet, and through a total of 3 feet of stone wall – and from a very insignificant device. If it had been left running night and day, and I had not been aware of its presence, soon I would have been suffering from unquantifiable effects in my head which could then have created or exaggerated mental health problems, if I had been suffering from any.

Far more powerful and instantaneous were the effects of a newly arrived Internet wireless ‘hub’ or ‘router’ for my computer. As soon as it was switched on, it had to be switched off. The effect was diabolical. It is so difficult to describe the effects in my scalp and inside my head. All I can say is that they were absolutely intolerable, and the only way in which I can understand how they are tolerated in most homes, is that they are just another ‘add-on’ to the general electro-magnetic smog in which most individuals live.

The micro-waves in an oven are contained by the in-built screening. The micro-waves from a wireless router or hub are specifically designed to flood the whole house or building. If they can pass through walls and floors and into the street, they will experience no problem in passing through the human body and skull, where they can overwhelm the minute and subtle currents and voltages that control the senses and actions. Picture the growing child – from the moment of conception; at home; at school - possibly for 24 hours a day – and you might get some idea why there are so many children with problems

Someone who wrote eloquently about the electro-magnetic smog is the orthopaedic surgeon Robert O. Becker. Researching the very small electrical currents that flow through bones at the site of fractures, he realised the full extent to which the body relies on minute internal electrical functions: functions that are so easily disrupted by external electrical fields. From his 1985 book The Body Electric, this is what he wrote:

“It may be hard to convince ourselves that something that we cannot see, breath, touch, taste or smell can still hurt us so dreadfully. Yet the fact must be faced, just as we have learned a healthy fear of nuclear radiation. Certain scientists, some perhaps acting in a programme of deliberate misinformation, keep telling the public that we still do not know whether electro pollution is a threat to human health. That is simply not true. Certainly, we need to know more, but a multitude of risks has been well documented…”

Another acclaimed researcher and writer is Dr Cyril Smith. His book Electromagnetic Man is yet another publication that defines the reaction of living things to their electrical environment. Find him on the Internet and you will discover such a mass of research into these effects, and then, perhaps, you will, like me, stop and wonder just why…

When so much is already known and published, just why is this knowledge not translated into a wider understanding and application in the regular analysis and treatment of individuals with mental health problems? It is already well known that to live under an overhead power line is a sure way to invite mental depression… it is already well known that electric over and under blankets can produce unwelcome or harmful effects… it is already well known… I could go on at great length…

Governments appear to be waking up to the fact that cases of depression are increasing almost exponentially: that individuals are showing signs of dementia earlier in their lives than hitherto. To me, the causes are so obvious. To me, the remedy will not be found in newer and more powerful drugs, but first, in acknowledging the truth of what I, and so many renowned researchers are saying, and second, in educating people so that they themselves can take responsibility for their own and their children’s lives.

But do not wait for Governments to act. Much of the remedy will lie in your own hands. Simply do an audit of your own living space and discover how much you can eliminate or reduce by limited use. Remember, if you are a parent, the mental health, the behaviour problems of your children are your responsibility, and remember that their lives are being grossly affected by all of the electronic gizmos and gadgets that flood their lives and which are used without restraint – even such apparently harmless gear as hairdryers and hair straighteners will be taking their toll...

Remember, I began writing because of the actual effect upon me of merely two very simple and common devices – just don’t get me started on some of the many, many others… long-life light bulbs, mobile phone masts… I said, “Don’t get me started!”

But be aware of this also – when someone feels unease in their head to the extent that logical thinking becomes difficult, or when they feel disoriented for no apparent cause, it is then that they may be at their most vulnerable, and be easy targets for the intrusion by voices and physical presences.

ROY VINCENT. JUNE 2013.

THE KINGDOM OF MY MIND

THE KINGDOM OF MY MIND

My mind to me a kingdom is,

Such present joys therein I find,

That it excels all other bliss

That Earth affords or grows by kind.

Sir Edward Dyer (c 1540-1607)

My mind. My kingdom. Would that it was always so! Would that it had always been so! I had cause today to reflect upon what had been, to me, a gross violation of the ‘sanctity’ of my inner life. By a Consultant Psychiatrist, no less, and even though more than forty years have passed, I still seethe with an inner rage that it should have happened. And it happened thus:

In the early nineteen-sixties, and as the result of a medical misdiagnosis and very inappropriate subsequent treatment, I ended up with a very severe clinical depression, and as an in-patient in the local hospital psychiatric ward. (Described in the first three chapters of my recently published book.*)

My wife used to collect me at weekends, and return me on Sunday evening. On one occasion, it seems, we must have returned following a personal row, the circumstances of which we flatly refused to discuss with the Ward staff. Again, on the following day, I refused to enlighten the Consultant. Shortly afterwards, possibly the same day, he said that he believed that I would get some relief from my general condition with the help of an injection of Pentathol. And so he proceeded, and dribbled it in. But as I lost the last vestige of consciousness, I heard him say “Tell me about N…”, naming my then wife.

Not until thirty years later did I find out what it was he wanted to know, and, generally, what it was that I told him. 
At that time, i.e., in the early ‘nineties, I took part in a Class Action against the makers of Librium, et al, and in the process obtained all of my medical notes. I found it difficult, if not impossible to read them more than briefly, until the time when I needed detail for my book. It was then that I found a letter, written to my then G.P., in which the row was described (it had become a ‘blazing’ row, by then) and ostensibly the cause, although having mentioned our refusal to discuss the matter, he didn’t enlighten the G.P. about the method by which he had obtained the knowledge.

 Whether or not his statements were correct, I have no way of knowing for he also took away part of my memory with that wonderful therapy, E.C.T. – another violation of my mind. But there this letter remains in my Hospital and G.P. files in its unpleasant exposure of my personal life, obtained without my permission, and in gross violation of the privacy of my mind.

But why bring it back into the light after such a long time? Surely the passage of time…? 

Yes, but circumstances have a habit of stirring up old thoughts, and today being Veterans Day I had some old thoughts stirring. Yes, I am a Veteran, and although I did not see fierce action, nevertheless I served in a destroyer that was mined. Thirty-five friends and shipmates were fragmented or incinerated within a short distance of me, and I count myself so very fortunate not to have joined them. I don’t need special occasions to make me remember them, for the burn scars on my hands are a still visible reminder as I type, but there are times when I want to think of them – to mourn them. And I want to do it deep within the privacy and solitude of my mind.

There are other profound and personal memories and experiences that I would dearly love to revisit, and while I would not try to relive them in my mind, I need to explore them in all of their nuances – recollections of goals achieved, hopes realised or dashed. Memories there are of individuals in all of the huge range of circumstances that life throws up. Memories that are so deep and intimate that one would hold them close, and never share except with a close and trusted friend.

But I cannot do any of this. Yes, my memory is sound now, and recall is very clear and lucid, but the privacy is non-existent. The privacy and solitude of my mind were violated once more nearly thirty years ago. Again, I must refer you to my book, and the description in Chapter 6 of the circumstances that brought me to the point where I wrote:

My 11 am sitting place was in an upstairs room looking north east to the nearby mountain tops - Scafell, Great Gable, Yewbarrow and others. I settled into my chair, easing my neck onto the high wingback, and rolled my head gently from side to side to smooth out any tensions. And then something happened that was so dramatic and far-reaching, and yet, paradoxically, was totally devoid of drama. A ‘presence’ that I could not see, moved from the space in front of me, into me, and immediately my mind was charged with another ‘voice’ or provoker of thoughts, thoughts over which, then, I had no control, and which were not initiated by me. In my head began conversation as between two separate people, one of whom was me.

                  I began to ‘hear voices’.

Just consider: it was broad daylight; mid-morning; I was wide-awake; I was not under any form of stress; I did not drink or use drugs. My sole purpose in being in that place at that time was to be still and at peace, and contemplative. Yet here, suddenly, there was within me that which was ‘me’, and that which was ‘not me’.

These events occurred in the autumn of 1979. Because of what I had been doing earlier, from the spring of that year, and virtually until that moment, I have no doubt - not the remotest shadow of doubt - that this intrusion into me, both physically and into my mind, was of spiritual origin.

It is now year 2015, and nothing that has happened throughout these intervening years has done anything to induce me to change my mind. On the contrary, constantly, and even as I write this, I am reminded of these spiritual presences, and their intention to influence me in what I think and do.

Let me try to illustrate this in context with an example from my morning listening today – the Sunday programme, on BBC Radio 4. In order to try to educate young people in the reality of the Holocaust, the programme followed a group that was being taken to Auschwitz, and to the sites of other Nazi concentration camps. Some of the children were asked for their reactions, and it was while they were responding to the sight of mounds of shoes, and tonnes of human hair, that there welled up within me a deep emotional response. But it was not my response…

I have my own thoughts and emotions about the atrocities that were committed against the six million Jews and others in those places. Images conveyed by all of the film and personal accounts of survivors throughout the last sixty years. Descriptions of a visit made to Ravensbruck by my late father, or to Belsen by a young neighbour. I cannot imagine the suffering of six million individuals, and so, when I want to try to envisage, and personally mourn, I have in my mind certain people who have struck images in my memory as I have seen them transported to their fate. I bring these images to my mind, when I choose, not when prompted by an inner ‘whoever’.

If I want to dwell upon, and empathise with those committed to the Russian gulags, I conjure up the fictional Ivan Denisovitch to represent them. If it is the victims of arbitrary imprisonment and torture in a South American dictatorship, I am provided with a focus by the book ‘Prisoner without a name; cell without a number’, or by the words of Doctor Sheila Cassidy who was held and tortured in Chile, and whom I once met. And one single image provides me with a focal point for all of the starving and lost children of the Third World.

These are my chosen images, for the thoughts and prayers that I want to initiate and that I want to control myself. I do not want intrusive ‘others’ giving vent to their emotions within me and using my senses. Throughout the past years, I have kept notes describing what was happening within my mind and body since the intrusion of the voices and presences; notes that resolved themselves into an identifiable series of what I have called ‘ploys’. Here is one that exemplifies what I am trying to describe:

“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 result of this barrage is that one resents any intrusion or contact, thus rendering suspect those that 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.”

'They' and 'them' identify the intruding spiritual ‘entities’. I do not know who or what they are. They do not have to ‘speak’ in my mind as in the typical situation of ‘hearing voices’. It is exceedingly difficult to describe the sensation within myself that comes from an awareness of ‘someone else’ sharing the same physical space as me. I have tried to do so in another of the ploys that I identified.

“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.”

Or again:

“Physical intrusions can and do occur at any time; the differing intensities and variety are so great that is difficult to be specific. One example can occur when I am woodcarving. At these times there can appear a ‘heavy’ intruding presence with a ‘working’ mouth of concentration and with laboured breathing - the conclusion being that someone `in spirit` is trying to experience what they did not achieve in life. There is also the implication at other times that someone formerly skilled in life is wanting to impart that skill. This can present one with a difficult choice. There are or have been many musicians, composers, artists, writers and others who have freely acknowledged that they cannot produce their finest work unless their ‘Muse’ is present within them, and many and great are the works that have been produced. (See The Unknown Guest by Brian Inglis). By contrast, I do not want to be ‘taken over’ - I want to work out my own problems; I want the sheer pleasure of first of all visualising, and then creating, my own art or craft; I do not want to be the vehicle for ‘someone’ to operate vicariously and to remove the pleasure of my own originality.

I once had a very good sculpture/carving teacher; he gave advice on concepts and techniques, but did not attempt to influence one’s individual expression, nor did he touch the work unless asked to demonstrate, but was always there with advice if asked. Above all, he inspired immense confidence, and could rescue one from the most depressing ‘artistic disasters’.
This, by extension, is what one would hope for from desirable spiritual helpers.

There can be a very great danger in accepting a ‘Muse’ into one’s person. It can often be represented or inferred that this is the spirit of someone who formerly was a well-known artist, musician etc. The belief that one has been chosen by this famous person can be very flattering, but, if continued, gradually one could lose one’s own identity and capacity for originality.”

But a pendulum swings between two extremes, and so does the ‘pendulum’ of the Voices. Throughout the thirty years that I have had these experiences, I have come to know with absolute certainty that the good, the benign, the benevolent also exist. But they do not come as the others do, with the intention to destroy; the do not come blackguarding and befouling the mind that they would control and ultimately destroy. They come almost ‘silently’, subliminally, with courtesy and with good intent.

I have been taught by dreams and fantasies,

Learned from the friendly and darker phantoms,

And got great knowledge and courtesy 

From the dead kinsmen and kinswomen,

Ancestors and friends.

Edwin Muir’s words contain the essence of the benign – and though it sounds old fashioned, courtesy is at the heart of the exchanges within the mind, and which are aimed at providing support and encouragement. 

Within my book are many examples of the good that has resulted from these exchanges with the ‘benign’ intruders. 

But do not take the poet’s words too literally.

Do not look for, or expect to ‘hear’ the voices of deceased friends or loved ones. 

The voice of anyone, the ‘ambience’ of anyone, can be created in an attempt to persuade you that such a person is nearby.

Any voice, any presence can be imitated!

Knowledge from the ‘benign’ sources comes virtually subliminally, by instant transfer. 

Whereas the unwanted voices and presences produce effects and emotions within oneself that are destructive, but which one is able subsequently to describe and discuss, there are many occasions when the welcome presences induce emotions that are so deep, warm and private that it is not possible to describe them or share them with others.

I have tried to include examples of the positive help and encouragement that I received at appropriate places within the narrative of my book, and it is virtually impossible to take them out of context and incorporate them here.

There are, however, two that will always have a special meaning for me, and which might be revealing for others:

I had two very good friends whose house fronted a road that I used frequently, and where it was so convenient to stop on my way. There was always a good welcome, although Edna became convinced that it was her coffee that was the prime objective. Moving into their lounge, I passed a photograph that always touched me with its poignancy. It was of Judith their daughter, who had died of leukaemia not long before. She was in profile looking into the cot of her latest child – and the loss to Judith and to Jack and Edna was something that I found most touching. In time, it was as if Judith was actually there, and was conveying to me the fact that she was now happy, and that I must tell her Mother that it was so.

I have never sought ‘messages from beyond’, and take my time trying to assure myself of their genuineness. However, my delaying did not suit Judith, for shortly afterwards, when I was following Edna out to my car, and just as I passed the photograph, I received a resounding thump between my shoulder blades, and an insistent voice in my head saying “Tell her now! Tell her now!!” Edna, when I told her, was over the moon, for she had fretted about Judith and the loss to Judith of her children, and to learn that she in fact was now happy was all that Edna needed to know.

My second was personal to me and to my brother, but many others to whom I have related it have welcomed it wholeheartedly:

I am now 89, and am at the stage of life when one speculates about the next ‘phase’. One day recently, I was quietly trying to imagine the moment of actual transition between this life and the next – not in any maudlin sense, but with my natural curiosity. Then gently, a most warm and friendly voice in my mind said distinctly “Don’t worry, Roy, you will be met. And tell your brother the same.”

That was all – but who needs more? In my memory, I was carried back to when I sat beside my Mother’s bed as she lay dying. She was still there physically, but her ‘spirit’ was already moving on, for she was obviously with her sister Ethel who had died some years before, and I distinctly heard my Mother speak to Ethel, saying, “When will I meet my Mother?”

There is much speculation about ‘life after death’, and many are the researches and experiments that are conducted to try to prove or disprove it. For myself, there is no conceivable experiment that could be conclusive. But now, fortunately, I have no need of speculation or experiments, for with all that I have been shown and have experienced during the last thirty years, I have been left without a shadow of doubt that there is.

Roy Vincent, Summer 2013

Revised Spring 2015

* “Listening to the Silences, in a world of hearing voices “

Available free at www.royvincent.org 

and in paperback.

(See chipmunkapublishing.com ISBN 9781847477590) )

СЛЫШАНИЕ ГОЛОСОВ: ШИЗОФРЕНИЯ

СЛЫШАНИЕ ТИШИНЫ - В МИРЕ СЛЫШАНИЯ ГОЛОСОВ

АВТОР: РОЙ ВИНСЕНТ

Осенью 1979, я начал слышать голоса и испытывать другие явления, и это продолжается с тех пор. Таким образом, в течение более чем тридцати лет, я никогда не был свободен от этих вторжений, которые вторгаются, очевидно, или подсознательно в мой ум и умственные способности, и довольно сильно или тонко в мое тело и чувства.

Я использую слово 'вторжение' преднамеренно, потому что они не продукт отклоняющегося ума, ни больного мозга; ни галлюцинаций, ни даже заблуждений. C 1979 года, я не сомневаюсь то, что я испытываю, имеет духовное происхождение. Использование слова 'духовный' для некоторых предполагает 'религию', 'спиритизм', 'богословие' и т.п. - слова, которые во многом являются пугающими, и вероятно могут привести к отказу от даже открытия моей книги. Забудьте такие предвзятые мнения. Я - инженер и мой подход, и язык - это подход инженера - столь же точный и реалистический, какой может быть в пределах мира опыта, который является самым неточным и нереалистичным.
С начала я делал заметки, которые с 1998 начали превращаться в последовательный материал, поскольку я научился пользоваться компьютером. В ходе моего чтении в области психического здоровья я нашел то, что называют ‘Первыми Признаками шизофрении, и я понял, что я испытал их все, и записал их, хотя бы своими собственными словами. Все же - и это - самый важный пункт, что я отчаянно пытаюсь сделать - я никогда не был болен этой болезнью, и при этом не обращался за помощью или получил консультацию из мира психиатрии или религии. Напротив, я пишу, чтобы предостеречь от обоих направлений, которые пытаются помочь психически больным и людям с потревоженной психикой.

По мере того, как я писал, мои слова были прочитаны друзьями, которые работают в области психиатрии. Поскольку они читали мои материалы, они хотели знать о том, что было 'до' - то есть о моей жизни перед началом вторжений. Я понял, что я должен действительно написать о жизни 'до', чтобы отделить это от событий 1979 года и что последовало потом, поскольку кроме факта того, что оба события случились со мной, они полностью несвязанны.

Что случилось со мной 'до' можно считать историей самой по себе, и это является первой частью моей книги. В 1961, у меня была успешная карьера в ядерной промышленности, карьера, которую я потерял после постановки неправильного диагноза и последующего ненужного лечения. То, что, как теперь известно, было инфекцией Cryptosporidia, врачи рассматривали как 'нервозность', и я начал жизнь с препаратом Librium. После двух лет непрерывного использования я подсел на медицинские препараты и стал иждивенцем, и показывающим многие из побочных эффектов препарата. Я начал 'психиатрический' год, который открылся двумя эпизодами "холодной индейки",госпитализацией в течение в общей сложности двадцати недель, 23 процедур Электро Судорожной Терапии, 'экспериментов' со множеством препаратов, таких как Tryptizol, Melleril, Valium, Pertofran и некоторые бензодиазепины и барбитураты, плюс терапия инсулиновым шоком- и это закончилось фарсом, вторым мнением от того, кто продолжал становиться старейшиной в мире психиатрии.

Я рано закончил свою карьеру и в моем доме было много проблем. И в реальной исчислении, я потерял более чем полмиллиона фунтов. Но в это трудно поверить, эффективно начал новую жизнь. Эта жизнь, которая была и очаровательна и полезна - даже при том, что после четырех лет включала события, которые тогда привели к духовным вторжениям. Поскольку я узнал, мало того, что есть злорадные мнения, что 'шизофреник' это плохо, но есть также доброжелательные мнения.

Целая история можно найти в книге известного целителя, покойного Брюса Макманавея, у которого был талант лечить. Этот талант дал хороший эффект, и который принес мне много положительного при общении с замечательными людьми.
Мой подход инженера привел меня к исследованию нашего взаимодействия с электрической окружающей средой, и пониманию аспектов электричества и здоровья. Узнавая электрическую природу иглоукалывания, например, я расширил свое знание и опыт в этой области.

Я идентифицировал более чем тридцать разных уловок, которые используют 'эти сущности' и описал их подробно. Я также понял, что доступ в ум уязвимого человека могут быть открыты через такие действия как гипноз и гипнотерапия, регрессия прошлых жизней, Рейки, использования каналов и различные формы 'предсказания'. Есть предостережения, также при выпуске духов, и многих других тайных методов, которые вовлекают ‘открытие ума’: и ссылки также на возможность таких 'воссозданных' наркотиков как гашиш/марихуана и мескалин, имеющий тот же самый эффект, что и эффект фигурируемый у шаманов. Я думаю, что аналогичное воздействие этих практик может привести к маниакальной депрессии.

Среди моих героев такие разнообразные люди как Галилей, Парацельсус и Никола Тесла, и я указываю и делаю выводы исходя из их учения, а также материалов и коммуникаций с психиатрами, психологами и другими специалистами в области умственного здоровья. Я также изучал сведения о известной слышавшей голоса и видевшей видения, Святой Терезы Авильской.

Я удивил себя, когда я нашел, что мои предварительные записки стали книгой. Когда я читаю то, что я написал, есть времена, когда я чувствую, как будто я очищен физически, и что сырой 'я' таким образом выставлен для всех, чтобы видеть его в пульсирующей боли и муке. Все же я открыл себя, мою жизнь и мои события охотно в надежде, что знание, что я приобрел, будет использоваться, перенося людей, или будет использоваться для их выгоды родственниками больных и профессионалами в мире психиатрии и заботе о психических нарушений. Поскольку я рассматриваю появление моей книги как напечатанной рукописи, то я могу надеяться, что это будет так. Хотя, реалистично, все, что я могу сделать для вас и мою веру в Вас как читателя, и присоединиться к поэту В.Б.Йитсу, когда он размышляет -
Куда Идут Мои Книги

Все слова, которые я произношу,
И все слова, которые я пишу
Должны распространить свои неутомимые крылья
И никогда отдых в их полете,
Пока они не прибывают туда, где ваше грустное, грустное сердце.

ДОСТУП К БЕСПЛАТНОЙ КНИГЕ В ИНТЕРНЕТЕ: www.royvincent.org
ТАКЖЕ КАК КНИГА В МЯГКОЙ ОБЛОЖКЕ ОТ: ISBN 

Chipmunkapublishing.com 9781847477590
и как электронная книга для KINDLE.