Hearing Voices, Demonic and Divine

Scientific and Theological Perspectives

Christopher C. H. Cook

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429750946
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología cristiana

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781472453983, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative 4.0 license.

Experiences of hearing the voice of God (or angels, demons, or other spiritual beings) have generally been understood either as religious experiences or else as a feature of mental illness. Some critics of traditional religious faith have dismissed the visions and voices attributed to biblical characters and saints as evidence of mental disorder. However, it is now known that many ordinary people, with no other evidence of mental disorder, also hear voices and that these voices not infrequently include spiritual or religious content. Psychological and interdisciplinary research has shed a revealing light on these experiences in recent years, so that we now know much more about the phenomenon of "hearing voices" than ever before.

The present work considers biblical, historical, and scientific accounts of spiritual and mystical experiences of voice hearing in the Christian tradition in order to explore how some voices may be understood theologically as revelatory. It is proposed that in the incarnation, Christian faith finds both an understanding of what it is to be fully human (a theological anthropology), and God's perfect self-disclosure (revelation). Within such an understanding, revelatory voices represent a key point of interpersonal encounter between human beings and God.

1 Voice hearing in contemporary spiritual and religious context

The hearing of voices in the absence of a human speaker must once have had inevitably supernatural implications. In the contemporary context, in contrast, a variety of alternative scientific explanations are potentially available, including notably those of a technological or medical nature. Voices emanating from electronic sources (phones, computers, public address systems, etc.) no longer surprise us. Those attributable to drugs, illness, or otherwise disturbed physiological states may worry or intrigue us, but they will not necessarily be thought to have any spiritual or religious implications, and, when they do, there will usually be good reasons for this. Such good reasons may include the context of use, as for example in the use of peyote in Native American religion, or the explicitly spiritual/religious content of what is heard. And when such good reasons for inferring spiritual/religious significance do pertain, they may be understood within any of a diverse variety of traditional, new and emerging, cultural or individual frameworks of meaning.

For some people, in particular those who would identify themselves as atheists, the framework of belief within which voices are interpreted will inevitably exclude any spiritual or religious explanation. For others, any voice not emanating from a human or electronic source will inevitably be interpreted in spiritual terms. And, for still others, there will be an element of critical discrimination. Some voices might be perceived as more spiritual than others, or be interpreted differently (and thus more or less religiously) according to context, form, or content. We inhabit a pluralistic environment, insofar as the spiritual and religious interpretation of voice hearing is concerned. This pluralism is contributed to not only by traditional and non-traditional forms of spirituality and religion, but also by popular, professional, and scientific bases for forming possible alternative explanations. Significant amongst these are concepts of mental disorder, but groups such as the Hearing Voices Network have ensured that there are also forums within which a plurality of views is acknowledged, alongside a recognition that the experience can be normalised.

Whilst the primary consideration here is with voices which might be understood as AVHs,¹ it is not necessarily the perceptual quality of the voice, or its location in external space, which invites spiritual or religious reflection. Rather, there is a quality of seeming autonomy about some voices, whether experienced as thoughts or perceptions (or perception-like), which characterises them as being other than aspects of the self (Watkins, 2000), and in some cases even as seeming to be external agents. This quality has been identified and described by writers, artists, children, those who are suffering from mental illness, and by other reflective adults who are not mentally ill, as well as by those who describe religious, mystical, or other spiritual experiences. For example, Carl Jung, reflecting on what he describes as his own “confrontation with the unconscious”, refers to an archetype which he called Philemon:

Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I.

(Jung, 1983, p.207)

It would seem that the voice of Philemon was not hallucinatory – being described here as a figure of fantasy – but, in general terms, voices with this quality of producing themselves, of having their own life, may or may not be hallucinatory. It is their autonomy, their manifesting the character of being another self that is their defining feature. So important is this to many of those who hear such voices that qualities of form, such as location in external space, or of being heard “out loud”, may seem irrelevant and not be mentioned at all, or else be difficult to clarify.

Spirituality and voice hearing

Research suggests that voice hearers interpret their experiences of voice hearing from a variety of perspectives, at least one of which may be the positively spiritual or religious (Jones et al., 2003, 2016). However, spirituality² is a contested and complex term, and the complexity and controversy are only increased when it is brought into relationship with voice hearing and related phenomena.

For some voice hearers, all voices are spiritual:

the voice for some reason in my case went very often to great pains to explain voice hearing as always a case of a spiritual being communicating, though for countless different reasons depending upon the person’s life and by the way also their past and future lives, which I was told were all occurring at the same time in alternate realities constantly growing in number . . . well, I became convinced by the voice itself that all voices were spiritual, that not having occurred to me until it was explained, again by the voice, and I guess though it was at first explained because I suppose I was surprised when the voice suddenly had a male tone and then a second voice a female tone and a third a male tone also shockingly sinister in its feel.³

The idea that all voices (or, perhaps better, “almost all” voices) are spiritual finds expression in a variety of forms, which generally blur the boundaries between experiences of different kinds and, in particular, between mystical or spiritual experience and psychopathology. Thus, for example, Thalbourne and Delin (1994) propose that the term “transliminality” be employed in relation to a permeability of the boundary between subliminal (unconscious or preconscious) and supraliminal (conscious) events. Various groups of people are understood as being high in transliminality, including those who are highly creative, those who have mystical experiences, those who experience psychic phenomena, and those who are psychotic or have psychosis-like experiences. Amongst other things, highly transliminal people report hearing voices.

At the other extreme, an over-medical approach might label all voice hearing as evidence of mental disorder, and thus exclude any spiritual quality or interpretation at all. This is not an approach that is often explicitly argued, but it seems to be implicit in attempts to diagnose religious or mystical figures according to psychiatric categories (Cook, 2012c), and it seems to be the cause of the problems experienced by patients who find that it is difficult to discuss spirituality or religion with mental health professionals for fear that such matters will inevitably be interpreted as evidence of psychopathology.

For others, somewhere in between the extremes of “all are spiritual” and “all are medical”, some voices might be perceived as spiritual and others not. Amanda Waegeli provides a helpful account of this perspective:

As a voice hearer I believe I have experienced both spiritual voices and those of psychosis. They are distinctly different and experienced differently to me. My spiritual voices have been positive and helpful and bought me peace and acceptance, and therefore have aided my recovery. They have given me hope when I have needed it and reminded me that there is a greater meaning to life than what I am experiencing in the here and now, especially when in emotional pain. The difference between spiritual and non-spiritual voices for me has been that the spiritual are heard more gently and peacefully, more softly and harmoniously they are less frequent. I hear my spiritual voices from above and feel drawn to look above to the sky/roof. I hear them coming from a different place to my psychotic voices, which seem to come from around me. I am unable to talk back but just listen to a spiritual voice. It is not a conversation or invitation to talk back to the voice, but a message for me to listen to. Although I do not see a vision, I sense and feel an intense presence that almost paralyses me in the moment and a connection which I don’t experience when hearing my other voices. My spiritual voices come with a strong complete all over body feeling of freeze, trance, and paralysis almost while I am hearing it. It is intense and after hearing it I feel tired.

(McCarthy-Jones et al., 2013)

Whilst it is helpful and important to know that voice hearers such as Waegeli make such distinction, it is less clear that such distinctions are either helpful or possible when made by researchers or clinicians. For example, Myrtle Heery has studied 30 subjects⁴ reporting “inner voice experiences” and has classified their interview transcripts according to three categories:

1 Inner voice experiences as fragmented part of the self

2 Inner voice experiences characterized by dialogue, providing guidance for growth of the individual,

3 Inner voice experiences where channels opened toward and beyond a higher self.

(Heery, 1989)

Whilst this is in many ways a helpful way of studying the data emerging from this study, the danger is that such categories are too easily imposed by researchers and do not necessarily reflect the understanding of the subjects themselves. Nor is it clear that any given experience of hearing an inner voice is necessarily only to be understood within just one of these categories. Why may a voice not at the same time reflect a fragmented part of the self, with which one may engage in dialogue and from which one may gain guidance, and also be a channel through which an openness to some kind of transcendent order is found? In fact, Heery does explore the possibility that her three categories each represent different reactions to a spiritual awakening, and I have not done justice to her analysis here. However, it is still not clear that the assessment of the researcher necessarily reflects the nature and quality of the spiritual experience of the voice hearer.

Menezes and Moreira-Almeida (2010) propose a series of features indicative of non-pathological spiritual experiences, so that such experiences may be distinguished from psychosis or other mental disorder:

• Absence of psychological suffering: the individual does not feel disturbed due to the experience he or she is having.

• Absence of social and occupational impediments: the experience does not compromise the individual’s relationships and activities.

• The experience has a short duration and happens occasionally: it does not have an invasive character in consciousness and in the individual’s daily activities.

• There is a critical attitude about the experience: the capacity to perceive the unusual nature of the experience is preserved.

• Compatibility of the experience with some religious tradition: the individual’s experience may be understood within the concepts and practices of some established religious tradition.

• Absence of psychiatric comorbidities: there are no other mental disorders or other symptoms suggestive of mental disorders besides those related to spiritual experiences.

• Control over the experience: the individual is capable of directing his or her experience in the right time and place for its occurrence.

• Life becomes more meaningful: the individual reaches a more comprehensive understanding of his or her own life.

• The individual is concerned with helping others: the expanded consciousness develops a deep link with other human beings.

Again, whilst the value of considering such features of an experience (voice hearing or otherwise) should not be entirely dismissed, it is not clear that the making of such a “differential diagnosis” is either possible or helpful. Many saints and mystics could be named (e.g. John of the Cross, or Thérèse of Lisieux) whose spiritual experiences were associated with psychological suffering, and for others (e.g. Francis of Assisi) their experiences have been deeply disruptive of relationships and activities. In any case, why may experiences not be both spiritual and psychotic? Recognising this possibility, David Lukoff (1985) has proposed that there is an overlap between the otherwise separate categories of simple mystical experiences and psychotic episodes, and proposes criteria for a category of mystical experiences with psychotic features (MEPF).

McCarthy-Jones et al. (2013), using as examples the experiences of Amanda Waegeli, identify four ways in which spirituality can help people who are distressed by hearing voices. First, it may provide a more helpful, meaningful, and appealing explanation of the experience than do medical explanations. Second, spirituality may offer constructive coping strategies (e.g. meditation, yoga, prayer, etc.). Third, spirituality may enhance social support. Fourth, spirituality may help to facilitate forgiveness. Against these benefits, these authors note also that spirituality may in some circumstances increase distress, reduce a sense of control, increase social isolation, or reduce engagement with medical treatment. In other cases, voice hearers may not feel able to access spiritual beliefs or practices in any personally meaningful way.

Religion and voice hearing

Julian Jaynes proposed that religion has its origins in an evolutionary period when, in the absence of inner mental language as we know it, voices provided the basis for initiation of human action. These voices were – according to Jaynes – “recognised as gods, angels, devils, enemies, or a particular person or relative” (Jaynes, 2000, p.89). In a later period, the experience of voices diminished and human consciousness as we now know it emerged. In the course of this transition, the voices “became” gods (Rowe, 2016). Whilst this radical evolutionary theory has not generally been accepted within psychology as an academic discipline,⁵ the attribution of voices to divine sources in contemporary religious experience is indisputable.

We have little information about how frequently voices heard are understood as being “religious” – whether because they are understood to emanate from a religious source (e.g. God, saints or spiritual beings such as angels and demons), or because they have explicitly religious content.⁶ In one sample of college students 8.7 per cent (Barrett and Etheridge, 1992), and in another 11.5 per cent (Posey and Losch, 1983), reported hearing the voice of God. However, Barrett and Etheridge comment in their study that “several of our subjects seemed to have trouble discriminating between actually hearing a voice they thought to be God’s voice and ‘knowing’ that God was telling them something without actually hearing a voice outside of their head”.

Mary Schwab (1977), who did not ask her southern US sample to distingui...