|
NHNE News List
Current Members: 789
Subscribe/unsubscribe/archive info at the bottom of this
message.
------------
EDITOR'S COMMENT:
The following article comes from D. Patrick Miller's new book,
"News Of A
New Human Nature". The book is a collection of Patrick's best
features and
interviews written over the past 20 years on alternative
spirituality for
such magazines as YOGA JOURNAL, THE SUN, NATURAL HEALTH, and
many others.
This particular article deals with the topic of inner voices and
other forms
of inner communication.
Among other things, Patrick sites studies that indicate "at
least fifteen
percent of the general population sooner or later 'hears' an
inner voice
offering information or guidance". I've heard an inner voice on
a couple
occasions. I wonder how many of you have? And if so, was it
accurate and
helpful, or misguided and hurtful, or a mixture of both?
Patrick also discusses a few prominent historical figures (both
good and
bad) who have experienced these kind of inner experiences and
discusses how
the phenomena continues to inspire some of today's most
well-known spiritual
movements.
What follows is an abridged version of "Taking Divine
Dictation". The
complete article appears in Patrick's new book:
http://www.fearlessbooks.com/NHNPreview.htm
--- David Sunfellow
------------
TAKING DIVINE DICTATION...
OR, HOW CAN YOU TELL IF IT'S REALLY GOD ON THE LINE?
By D. Patrick Miller
http://www.fearlessbooks.com/NewHumanNature2.html
From the voluminous legacy of Edgar Cayce to the Pathwork, A
Course in
Miracles, and the best-selling Conversations with God, the
age-old
phenomenon of people hearing and forwarding special messages
from
disembodied spirits -- including the Supreme Being -- just won't
go away.
According to psychologist Arthur Hastings, author of a study of
channeling
entitled With the Tongues of Men and Angels, at least fifteen
percent of the
general population sooner or later "hears" an inner voice
offering
information or guidance. "Regardless of the validity of the
claims of
supernatural agency, the fact remains that mentally healthy
individuals
experience these phenomena," he writes. "Moreover, a large
number of these
messages contain meaningful information and exhibit knowledge
and talents of
which the channeler is completely unaware."
The whole notion of channeling has an irreducible arguability to
it: either
you find it credible or you don't. The lack of empirical
validation for the
phenomenon is neatly counterbalanced by an impressive anecdotal
record
throughout history. Writing in The Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology,
psychiatrist Mitchell Liester of Colorado Springs reports that
people who
have reported inner voices include Socrates, Joan of Arc, George
Washington
Carver, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Gen. George S. Patton, among
many others.
While the realm of channeling clearly has a more diverse
population than
credulous New Agers, it also has few if any tests or standards
by which to
measure the validity of messages received from disembodied
sources.
For instance, how can one distinguish between mystic messages
from a
transcendent realm and the deep musings of one's own
subconscious? What's
the qualitative difference between otherworldly insight and
hallucinatory
delusion? If you begin to hear a mysterious inner voice, are
there any
questions or challenges you can use to call out its source? And
if you are
about to listen to -- or pay for -- the counsel of an alleged
channeler, are
there any guidelines to keep in mind besides "let the buyer
beware"?
The investigation of such inquiries turns up no hard and fast
rules -- or at
least none without ready exceptions. But it does appear that the
best
interpretation of extra-worldly messages follows the direction
of spiritual
growth itself -- toward self-confrontation and humility, and
away from
self-importance.
Helen Schucman, the Reluctant Scribe In 1965 a 56-year-old
Columbia
University psychology professor named Helen Schucman experienced
great
anxiety when she heard a "soundless Voice" in her head
announcing, "This is
a course in miracles. Please take notes." For a check on her
sanity she
turned to her boss William N. Thetford, then director of the
Psychology
Department of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. Thetford,
who had
been listening avidly to Schucman's reports of mystical dreams
and visions
in the months before the voice issued its simple directive,
calmly replied,
"Why don't you take down the notes? We'll look them over and see
if they
make any sense, and throw them out otherwise. No one has to
know."
Thus began seven years of difficult extracurricular labor for
Schucman as
she scribed the material that became A Course in Miracles (ACIM),
now a
million-plus best-seller and a popular reference in
transpersonal therapy.
Written in Christian terminology with many passages of striking
literary
quality -- large portions of the prose adhere to the
Shakespearean meter of
iambic pentameter -- the Course proposes a largely Eastern
metaphysics laced
with contemporary psychological references to such concepts as
"ego" and
"projection."
Bill Thetford, who typed up the shorthand notes recorded by
Schucman, came
to refer to the Course as the "Christian Vedanta" and it has
often been
cited as a modern summary of the so-called "perennial
philosophy" common to
all religious traditions. ACIM students appear to be remarkably
diverse,
including agnostics, scientists, and psychotherapists as well as
veterans of
traditional religious paths. Two well-known popularizers of the
teaching are
spiritual lecturer Marianne Williamson and psychiatrist Jerry
Jampolsky,
both authors of best-selling books based on Course ideas.
As a channeling phenomenon, the inside story of Course scribe
Helen Schucman
and her inner voice is particularly significant. While virtually
every
prominent channel has claimed to be surprised by the initiation
of his or
her exotic talent, Schucman appears to be unique in her
unwillingness to
become a spokesperson for the voluminous message she recorded.
She
participated in only one speaking tour about the Course, and
generally
refused to provide interviews or other publicity before her
death in 1981.
Part of Schucman's reluctance to be publicly identified with the
Course no
doubt had to do with the professional identities that she and
Thetford had
to protect throughout the secret transcription of the Course,
which took
place during their last years at Columbia. As Bill Thetford
related to me
about a year before his death in 1988, "Professors at Columbia
didn't do
this kind of thing, particularly in the Department of
Psychiatry. Can you
imagine? -- hearing voices, taking down material of this
kind..."
But the religiously ambivalent Schucman (who described herself
as a
hard-headed scientist while surreptitiously attending Catholic
masses) was
also unnerved by what she called the "certainty, wisdom,
gentleness, clarity
and patience that characterized the Voice" -- not to mention the
fact that
the voice clearly identified itself as the historical Jesus
Christ. In her
own writing about the Course, Schucman could never bring herself
to affirm
the source's claimed identity, preferring to call it only "the
Voice" -- or
the "Top Sergeant," as she once referred to it in personal
correspondence.
Schucman may have further resisted identifying with the material
she
channeled because she was unwilling to apply its central lessons
of
forgiveness and ego-surrender. As she told a friend near the end
of her
life, "I know the Course is true, but I don't believe it." Bill
Thetford
often remarked on Schucman's pronounced tendency toward
dissociation,
enabling her to receive the Course material without interference
from her
own ego -- "very much as if she were tuning into an FM channel,"
Thetford
recalled -- and then revert to an everyday personality noted for
its
insecurity and tendency toward sharp criticism.
Thus Schucman might be said to have inadvertently provided a
model of
propriety for those who would be channels, exhibiting a
near-total
detachment from the message she gave to the world. While
everyone who knew
her agrees that she could have benefited from applying Course
principles to
her own life, Schucman's detachment nonetheless kept ACIM
uncontaminated by
any promotional agenda of its channel.. . .
Higher Wisdom or Hallucination?
If you happen to hear an inner voice, how can you determine
whether it's
worth listening to? After all, the notorious "Son of Sam" killer
David
Berkowitz heard voices that told him to kill people. And many
diagnosed
schizophrenics hear seemingly disembodied voices that offer them
anything
but higher wisdom.
"There's quite a difference between the contents of pathological
hallucinations and transcendent voices," explains Dr. Liester.
"Delusory
voices tend to be very demanding, critical, or judgmental
whereas
transcendent voices are uplifting, supportive, and encouraging."
Liester
adds that the states of mind in which the two kinds of voices
are heard are
also quite different. The sustained reception of a transcendent
voice tends
to occur in "an altered state of consciousness that is
profoundly
transpersonal. The channeler's sense of identity changes from
that of an
individual to someone connected with something beyond
themselves. There's an
altered perception of space and time that differs from
hallucinations, in
which people lose track of time or are disoriented within time.
Hearing
transpersonal voices, people transcend time; that is, they still
know it's
there but they aren't trapped within it." Finally, delusory
voices will tend
to have a divisive or negative message, issuing warnings or
portents of doom
instead of instruction or insight. "Transcendent voices have a
unitive
nature," comments Liester. "They come from a perspective that
sees both
sides of paradoxes and integrates them into a larger whole. From
the
perspective of the divine there is no doom and gloom; a divine
voice will
guide us past the dualities of life and lift us into a
transcendent
outlook."
That doesn't mean that tuning into a divine inner voice will
necessarily
bring about positive changes in one's life, particularly in the
short term.
Helen Schucman found her inner voice quite disturbing at times,
and tried to
stall the recording of the Course on several occasions only to
find herself
becoming physically ill or anxious until she resumed the work.
"Some of
these transcendent voices can jolt people out of their everyday
lives and
cause tremendous disruption," reports Liester. "In the long run
the voice
may have a positive effect, but it can be pretty distressing at
the time."
Helen Schucman did not settle for her voice's mere
self-identification,
additionally putting it to tests of literary correctness. She
once told her
colleague Bill Thetford that she had no concern about the
message of the
Course, but that if the Voice began making errors of grammar and
syntax she
would cut it off for good. In his history of the Course origins
entitled
Absence from Felicity , Schucman's confidant Kenneth Wapnick
relates a
telling excerpt of the scribe's recorded inner dialogue that did
not appear
in the Course itself:
[Jesus] : Everyone experiences fear, and nobody enjoys it. Yet,
it would
take very little right-thinking to know why it occurs. Neither
you nor Bill
have [sic] thought about it very much, either.
[Helen]: I object to the use of a plural verb with a properly
singular
subject, and remember that last time in a very similar sentence,
He said it
correctly and I noted it with real pleasure. This real
grammatical error
makes me suspicious of the genuineness of these notes.
[Jesus]: What it really shows is that you are not very
receptive.... You
made the error, because you are not feeling loving, so you want
me to sound
silly, so you won't have to pay attention.... You and Bill have
been afraid
of God, of Me, of yourselves, and of practically everyone you
know at one
time or another....
Channeling Through History
The role of channeling in religion, philosophy, the arts,
science, and even
politics has been greater than many people may suspect. Roger
Walsh, a
professor of philosophy of psychiatry and philosophy at the
University of
California in Irvine, says that "it seems pretty clear that some
of the
Bible was produced through channeling, as well as part of the
Koran. In
Judaism there have been scores of mystics who produced works by
the process
of inner dictation, and in Buddhism, many Indian and Tibetan
texts were
produced this way. The Greek oracle of Delphi -- actually a
series of
priestesses who supposedly spoke on behalf of the god Apollo --
stayed in
business for 900 years."
In With the Tongues of Men and Angels, channeling researcher
Arthur Hastings
cites such examples as Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), a major
contributor
to modern number theory who claimed that he received many of his
mathematical concepts from the Indian goddess Namagiri; William
Blake, the
acclaimed 18th century British visionary poet and artist who
said that his
long poem Jerusalem came to him "from immediate Dictation,
twelve or
sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time, without
Premeditation & even
against my Will"; and Edgar Cayce (1877-1943), the noted modern
psychic who
became famous for giving thousands of readings, mostly on health
matters,
while speaking in a trance state. Hastings also notes that the
modern
spiritual community of Findhorn in northern Scotland was
originally inspired
by the messages that its founders claimed to hear from "devas,"
or angels of
the forces of nature.
Even Sigmund Freud, the scientifically-minded founder of modern
psychology,
related experiences of an inner voice: "During the days when I
was living
alone in a foreign city -- I was a young man at the time -- I
quite often
heard my name suddenly called by an unmistakable and beloved
voice." The
contemporary Christian psychotherapist M. Scott Peck likewise
reported a
youthful encounter with an unexpected advisor. During a struggle
to choose
which school to attend during his adolescent years, Peck
reported that "At
the moment of my greatest despair, from my unconscious there
came a sequence
of words, like a strange disembodied oracle from a voice that
was not mine:
'The only real security lies in relishing life's insecurity."
Civil rights
leader Martin Luther King reported that an inner voice helped
him stay the
course through protests, arrests and death threats: "In the
midst of lonely
days and dreary nights I have heard an inner voice saying, 'Lo,
I will be
with you.'"
Inner voices have apparently changed the course of history as
well. During
World War II the British prime minister Winston Churchill was
about to get
into a car in London during a German air raid. As he approached
the side of
the car where he usually sat, he heard a disembodied voice
clearly say
"Stop!" As Churchill would later recount, "It then appeared to
me that I was
told I was meant to open the door on the other side and get in
and sit there
-- and that's what I did." Moments later a bomb exploded near
the car,
nearly causing it to turn over. Had Churchill been sitting in
his accustomed
place, it certainly would have caused him serious or mortal
injury.
But it cannot be concluded from such stories that inner voices
always have
humanity's best interests at stake. During World War I a young
soldier was
eating dinner with his comrades in a trench when a disembodied
voice
commanded him to "Get up and go over there." Without thinking
the soldier
picked up his tin-can dinner and moved twenty yards away.
"Hardly had I done
so," the soldier later wrote, "when a flash and deafening report
came from
the part of the trench I had just left. A stray shell had burst
over the
group in which I had been sitting, and every member of it was
killed." The
soldier -- who would rely heavily on the inner voice he called
"Providence"
throughout his military career -- survived to become a major
force in 20th
century history, and the arch-nemesis of Winston Churchill. His
name was
Adolf Hitler.
.............
NEWS OF A NEW HUMAN NATURE
D. Patrick Miller
Fearless Press
http://www.fearlessbooks.com/NHNPreview.htm
INTRODUCTION
Part I: CHANGING THE SELF
1: Letting Go of Bad Habits
2. How to Do What You Love for a Living
3. Love Can Save Your Life: Talking with Dean Ornish
4. The Clear Path to Creativity: Talking with Dan Wakefield
5. The Yoga of Recovery
6. Nine Ways of Being: Introduction to the Enneagram
7. Who¹s Really Psychic? (Are You?)
8. The Truth About Psychics: Talking with Helen Palmer
9. Understanding Shamanism: Talking with Leslie Gray
10. Making Sense of Mysticism: Talking with Jacob Needleman
11. Altered States: Talking with Charles T.Tart
12. Ten Steps to Transformation: Talking with Ralph Metzner
Part II: CHANGING THE WORLD
13. Taking Divine Dictation: An Investigation of Channeling
14. Freedom vs. Devotion: An In-Depth Look at Cult Experience
15. Meeting the Shadow: Talking with John Sanford
16. Three Encounters with Malidoma Somé
17. The Hero with an African Face: Talking with Dr. Clyde W.
Ford
18. Ending the War Within: Holistic Therapy for Victims of
Torture
19. When Soldiers Meditate: Talking with Richard Strozzi Heckler
20. Can Prisons Become Houses of Healing? Talking with Robin
Casarjian
21. Where Therapy Meets Ecology: Talking with Theodore Roszak
22. On the Way to Partnership: Talking with Riane Eisler
23. Get Ready for the Spiritual Machine: Talking with Ray
Kurzweil
Part III: CHANGING JOURNALISM
24. News of the New Age
25. Notes Toward a Journalism of Consciousness
-----------
RELATED NHNE LINKS:
THE PATHWORK LECTURES OF EVA PIERRAKOS:
http://www.nhne.com/specialreports/srpathwork.html
EDGAR CAYCE: AN AMERICAN PROPHET:
http://www.nhne.com/misc/edgarcayce.html
EARTH CHANGES & MILLENNIUM FEVER:
http://www.nhne.com/specialreports/srmillenniumfever.html
A COURSE IN CONTROVERSY:
http://www.nhne.com/specialreports/srcoursehlcversion.html
D. PATRICK MILLER'S COURSE CONTROVERSY OVERVIEW:
http://www.nhne.com/specialreports/srcoursemiller.html
HUGH PRATHER ON "A COURSE IN MIRACLES":
http://www.nhne.com/misc/food0001.html
A COURSE IN MIRACLES:
http://www.nhne.com/specialreports/srcoursereport.html
GORDON-MICHAEL SCALLION:
http://www.nhne.com/specialreports/srscallion95review.html
EMISSARY OF LIGHT:
http://www.nhne.com/specialreports/sremissary.html
------------
NHNE News List:
To subscribe, send a message to:
nhnenews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send a message to:
nhnenews-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
To review current posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/messages
Published by NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
eMail: nhne@nhne.com
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492
Copied and Pasted and Sent to You by:
Loving Circles,
Sybil
|
