Sometimes, when I have uninterrupted time to myself, I'll try to hear "the voices." I try to get rid of all distractions and lie down somewhere comfortable. I block out everything external and focus on the internal. Actually, it's more like shutting off the known external surroundings and using an internal path to find an alternate "external surrounding." That's where the voices usually are.

I first heard them when I was very young. This is different than the experience with the old man, when it seemed we held a conversation with our minds. These were just voices. I heard them mostly when I was ordered to go take a nap when I wasn't sleepy. I never gave it much thought. I simply accepted it as something that happened when you were still and quiet.

I've heard men and women, young and old, but rarely children. They never "speak" in whole sentences. Sometimes there is an image associated with a voice. Some voices and images are clearer than others. I never know what or whom I'll see or hear. I often get the impression that I'm receiving a thought they happened to be thinking at the time, like the thought briefly passed through me.

I know I've mentioned much of this before in an early entry, but I read something today that sort of "confirmed" some things for me. Here are a couple excerpts from passages written by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772):

Human speech or discourse is conveyed through the ear, by an external way, by the medium of the air; whereas the speech or discourse of spirits does not enter through the ear, nor by the medium of the air, but by an internal way, yet into the same organs of the head or brain. Hence the hearing in both cases is alike.

The speech of words, as just intimated, is the speech proper to man; and indeed, to his corporeal memory: but a speech consisting of ideas of thought is the speech proper to spirits; and, indeed, to the interior memory, which is the memory of spirits. It is not known to men that they possess this interior memory, because the memory of particular or material things, which is corporeal, is accounted every thing, and darkens that which is interior: when, nevertheless, without interior memory, which is proper to the spirit, man would not be able to think at all.

This makes sense to me in such a way that it makes me tingle all over. The same area of the brain would translate what you heard in the same way (as a voice), whether you heard it with your ear or with other means. I think this is only because we are primarily used to vocal communication, but I really don't know. If we were a race of telepaths that communicated with thoughts, perhaps the spoken word would be hard to grasp.

I'm glad he mentioned the part about men not knowing they possess "interior memory" because material things darken it. What you sense around you can really get in the way of experiencing deeper things. That's why concentration and meditation are so often recommended for these kinds of "journeys." You have to train your mind to be able to block out what you perceive as reality, basically. Most of us are just too preoccupied with school, work, sports, kids, etc., to make time to explore such things.

When I'm dead, I wonder if any floating memories of mine will cross into someone else's mind who happens to be listening.

---

A voice is calling in the wind
yon the horizons, and from within
I deem the thought, shall I abide
these ghastly whispers inside?
-- Sirenia "Voices Within"