Considering Our Inner Voice
on Jul 28 in Philosophy, Religion by adminAbout ten years ago I was a very fundamental religious thinker, and at that time I was convinced the voices in my head were either holy or evil spirits trying to get me to do what they wanted me to. If you have never been in this state of mind then you do not appreciate the reality of it, and the degree to which it can alter the course of your life.
Therefore, let us consider the concept: “The voice in my head is the voice – or influence – of a spiritual being outside of me.”
Now, if the voice in my head was indeed a being outside of me talking to me it would be a grand event – especially if such a being was the all-knowing and all-powerful God of the universe. However, what proof do I have that such is the case?
Well, for starters there are thousands – nay millions – of people who tell me it is so. At a glance however it becomes clear that this is no form of proof at all. Millions of people also thought at one time the earth was square and that you could fall of its edge if you got to close; merely because many people believe a thing to be true doesn’t make it so. Thus, ‘people tell me so’ proves nothing.
Next, there are sacred words that tell me the one I hear speaking in my head is the voice of gracious or vengeful spirits. Again however, merely because old words – written or spoken – that are held sacred by one’s culture says X is true doesn’t mean that it is. This is a statement proved true by the fact that many ancient and reverend words attributed the work of bacteria and the elements to demons and goblins and prescribed various offerings to appease the ‘spirits’ so they would leave.
Not only this, but many of the old holy words found in the different cultures are in conflict with each other. If they are in conflict with each other then at least one of them is errant – if not totally at least to some degree, and if one is errant even though it is ancient and held as holy by its culture then it is clear that merely being old and having a sacred status does not necessitate truthfulness. Therefore, it becomes clear that if our assertions about the statements of these books are ever going to be something more than assertions we need to look elsewhere for proof.
Having showed that old writings and the opinions of others are insufficient to prove the truth of our first claim we need to look elsewhere for such proof. However, where else should one look? Personal experience? There were a few times when I was fundamental that the voice in my head guided me to good things, and other times when it guided me to bad things? Does this prove that in the first instance God had something to say and in the second I gave ear to wicked phantoms? Not at all.
If the voice in my head is simply my intuition – the sum of all my learning and experience, then it is markedly unsurprising that it would guide me to good ends for that is the whole purpose of understanding. Likewise, if the voice in my head is simply my limited consciousness communing with itself then it is also unsurprising that it would at times wind me up in incredibly crappy situations. When one’s mind is inexperienced it is prone to take actions that are unwise, and when it is undisciplined it is liable to do things for the sake of pleasure which produce a far greater amount of suffering for one’s self in the end.
Further, it is equally unsurprising that one who believed their intuitions to be the voice of spirits would have a feeling accompanying these sensations that matched their perceptions. Which is to say that if I believe an act is ‘Satanic’ then I will be inclined to feel downtrodden and guilty – for that is what my society has programmed me to do, and if I believe it is ‘Divine’ then I will feel uplifted and refreshed – for again that is what I have been programmed to do. It cannot be denied that belief plays a huge role in one’s physical and emotional sensations; there are oceans of documentation of what scientists call the ‘placebo effect’.
Having exhausted most lines of evidence for the idea that the voice in my head is produced by spirits outside of myself let us now look for evidence that would seem to indicate that it is not a voice outside of my head.
If the voice in my head is something other than me why is it that it knows nothings more than I do? In all of my life there has never been a time when a voice has whispered something to me that I haven’t already learned. If the voice really was a spirit outside of me would it not be able to tell me things that I had never stored in my mind? I find it odd that the omnipotent and all powerful spirit of God has nothing to say to me other than what I have already read or heard others say; especially if such a being is the epitome of justice, wisdom, and compassion and there is eternal loss or gain on the line.
Not only this, but if the voice is the voice of God why does it not say things more useful to the human condition? Why not whisper to the people who died in Jones Town, “Hey guys, uh, you really don’t want to go with Mr. Jones cause he don’t have your all’s best interest in heart.” Or better yet, why not tell all those who died in the World Trade Centers, “I know you all are hard workers, but today is going to be a really bad day at work; you need to call in.” Or another, in light of the horrible events that occurred in Norway, “Listen guys, there is a psychotic maniac on the way from the mainland dressed in Police gear. You all need to hide in X location, wait for him to get off of the transport, and then incapacitate and bind him so he can be given to the authorities for a bombing he did a bit earlier.”
These two examples alone are enough to make me doubt the whisperings in my head are coming from anywhere other than in my own head, however there is a third which seems to me to be even more damaging to the poplar idea that my inner chatter is spirits; it never seems to happen out loud.
Can you imagine a world where audible voices bearing unknown truth or corrupting promises actually came from invisible sources? A world where the voice of God was a real and actual voice rather than merely words honored as divine – a place where a voice spoke that was easy to distinguish from self-talk. Then it could not be doubted that spirits existed, and people could focus on choosing which spirit was the best based on the content and truthfulness of their words.
All the time as a kid I was told how much compassion God has for the human race – how badly God wants us to know his true nature. Now that I have grown up and really experienced reality and all it contains I am unsure if I can believe that there is self-aware and responsive God-king that sits in some invisible place hearing and responding to the cries of mortals.
It is certainly not like I have adopted this attitude for no good reason. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of different conceptions about the nature of God. Indeed, there are times – past and present – when these differing conceptions have resulted in war, genocide, and other crimes against humanity. Obviously these horrors we committed by people against people, however why would a being who is so concerned about being understood sit silently by an allow such events – happenings founded on religious disputes – take place? It seems that if God is a self-aware rational agent that Deos has simply sat by and watched as people imagine whatever they want to about the divine nature.
I can hear someone say, “Oh no, God has given X book so we might understand” and again, “God has appeared in X manifestation so that we might understand.” I am all too aware of the different books which assert knowledge about God, as well as the multitudes of avatars and incarnations worshipped by people as revealers of the Unseen God. However, when one looks from culture to culture these are so varied that it becomes immediately clear that God is dysfunctional, someone is mistaken, or the whole lot of meta-physical cosmologies are simply the conflicting imaginings of finite beings.
This conclusion is not simply a cold calculation that I arrived at from critical review of the different philosophies of the world, it is one that arises from my own personal experience. I awoke this morning several times in a massive state of panic, a panic induced by a keen awareness of my mortality and the confusion that resides in me over the nature of what – if anything – might await me beyond the grave.
This is not the first time such an event has happened, and I am sure it will not be the last. I deeply and sincerely want to understand God, but I have read holy books and gurus until I could vomit. All they do is talk about whatever divinity – or set of divinities – happens to be central to their culture, how good these divinities are, and how wonderful it is to serve said divinities with a pure heart. Not only this but almost all religions built around rational divinities promise rewards for the faithful and suffering for the unbelievers, and if the religion is still living – still being practiced – they all have the mechanisms of group think at work to keep the individual in line with the herd; thus it is punishment, reward, fear, hope, shame, and guilt are wielded against all the honest seekers.
I do not need hope for it is an empty promise of a future which has yet to come. I am unconcerned with reward, punishment, and fear because these are below those who have decided to seek truth only for the truths sake. I have no use for belief because it produces feelings and perceptions in the individual regardless of whether or not the object of faith is real of the statement of belief true. As for shame and guilt, these are simply tools the whole uses to try to make people who dissent with the group shut up and sit back down.
Thus it is that I have no use for the common forms of religion. I am after a pure and total immersion in the divine – a statement of truth about divinity from divinity itself. Just as a stream becomes dirty the further it gets away from its source, so too do concepts and intentions become corrupted the further they get away from the speaker. Therefore all the sacred words, as enlightening and refreshing as they may be, are not good enough for me because it is all third party information; information that has been subjected to thousands of years of the human politics and passions at that. It is as though I want to know the taste of an apple by chewing and I am forced to do nothing but read books others have written about the flavor of an apple; books which are in conflict over many things.
I have explored every possible means available to me and still the only thing that returns from heaven when I call is silence. When I ask God questions I don’t know the answers to nothing comes to mind, and when I ask questions about things I have heard I can make the answer return in whatever cultural form I desire. Not only this, but there were times when I asked God things and got an answer I was certain came from God only to find out later that the answer I got was totally wrong; hardly the thing one would expect if the voice they heard was really that of a all-knowing spirit. Therefore, I am almost a hundred percent certain that the voice in my head that guides me is not God; at least not in the sense that they are the very words of a conscious being who is responding to me.
That which is true for the holy is also true for the profane. Growing up I was told that the little voice in my head that prompted me to do stupid things was the voice of some fallen spirit. However, having gained the courage to search for the root of the voice – as well as having learned how to silence them at will, I have become almost one hundred percent sure that they are merely the creations of my reactive mind. While it sucks to admit that mind is capable of producing such awful conceptions as the ones I sometimes have float through, it is also quite empowering because I realize it is just me and not the echoes of a fallen angel; I can control myself but what could I do with a demon?
Most people don’t want to admit that the voice they hear in their head prompting them to take actions which are either actually or culturally destructive is really just an echo of themselves, so the concept of angry imps promises to stick around as long as humans do not wish to take responsibility for their own thoughts and actions.
I can hear someone near the back say, “Why do you have to publicize such negations – such disagreements with our cultural and collective understanding? Could you not be content to just let people think whatever they want to think?” These are very good questions, and so I shall answer them straight way.
There are three reasons why I find it necessary to speak out about the true nature of the voices in our head. These are slavery, ignorance, and harm and I shall explain them straight way.
Regarding the first, the person that is convinced that their own limited mind is the voice of God will become a slave to the impressions and ideas that it foists upon them. Long ago when I was a very fundamental Christian I felt as though God was telling me everything from, “Turn left now!” to “If you eat that ketchup you will sever our relationship”. Sparing you the stories and reasons pertaining to these statements, suffice it to say that I lived in a constant bondage. I could hardly get up and get dressed with some marauding thought storming into my head and making me do – or refrain – from some trivial activity. Knowing that the sudden and strong impressions that I get are products of my mainframe allows me to step back and weigh them objectively. I can think through them from beginning to end and choose a path of wisdom and truth rather than being driven around by compulsions.
Next is ignorance. As long as someone believes that it is the voice of God assuring them their preexisting ideas are right they will never give them up. When I was a Christian I used to hear other people but I never listened. I was certain their words were wrong before they even began to speak, and I had the ‘witness of the spirit’ to let me know that my prejudices were right. As long as one thinks the concepts and standards of their culture are those of God they can never move beyond them into the deep things of eternity; into the actual ways of heaven. When one realizes the impressions about reality and divinity they have are merely self-produced expressions of the highest level of truth they currently understand, then they become open to new concepts and desire to make sure their impressions are real.
Finally, there is harm. When one has a deep and strong impression that X fact or information is from God when in fact it is not the results can be devastating. Think about the Maya who would sever the heads and remove the hearts of victims so that their God could be appeased, as well as the tragedies that occurred at Waco and Jonestown. There are many more examples but these are enough to show the harm that can be done to one’s self or others when inner self chatter is confused with the will – indeed the very voice – of divinity.
Having said all this one might think that I am antagonistic to the concept of God and divine revelation, but such is not the case. I certainly not convinced that every piece of writing which says it is a divine revelation is speaking the truth, but I would not say that such revelations have never taken place. Due to the very personal nature of such revelations, as well as the manner in which human things transmit knowledge, it becomes impossible to know if the sayings of Messiahs, Buddhas, sages, and prophets are exactly what they said or not – or if they said them at all. It is possible that some part of these sayings is indeed divine, but that it has become buried by human rites and superstitions over the centuries.
Not only this, but merely because the voice in my head isn’t spirits doesn’t mean necessarily that there is not anything ‘spiritual’ going on. It seems to me that if God or some other metaphysical power is the root of the reality wherein we now dwell, then the very fabric of our universe and all it contains is an expression of said God or metaphysical system. As such all aspects thereof are a sort of metaphysical statement, revelations in their own right about that which is not seen. Further, merely because a divinity is not the proximate reason for the voices in my head perhaps it is the ultimate. Perhaps God, or rather something which the term ‘God’ is a hollow echo of, is responsible for human nature being as it is as well as all of our highest conceptions; things like justice, virtue, and truth. Then there is always the possibility that I am totally wrong, and my current conceptions are misconceptions; indeed if one can demonstrate such I would surely appreciate it.
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