One hears a lot of “iffy stuff” just by listening, wherever one tunes in–outside & inside alike, & not just on radio & tv. “Iffy stuff” is the technical term that includes both the genuinely “iffy,” i.e., uncertain, as well as things not uncertain at all, but much worse–destructive, hurtful, dishonest, even predatory. Of course there are beautiful, wise & wonderful things to hear also–also inside & outside.
Whatever can or might be heard outside can or might be heard inside as well. In fact, that’s an important & fundamental truth to understand from the start–all hearing happens inside. Even when we think we’re quite sure about the source (my radio, for example, across the room), the hearing itself takes place “in here,” where the listener is. I most cases, the mind does a further process, “thinking” the sound out to its source. The hearing still happens in the observer, who experiences the more or less meaningful sound variations, whether the emotional richness of beautiful music, a thought sequence in words, or an emotional attitude (e.g., a political rant or rabble-rousing harangue, on the one hand, seductive or serene on the other).
Some aspects of emotion, thought & attitude “go with the territory,” whether we receive these aspects through visual, audio or other channels. If I make a sudden loud noise right now [insert one in the imagination], you would not just jump, but feel a rush of adrenalin, chemicals associated with alertness, possible fear, flight or fight response, as well as less expressed stresses. If strum my lap dulcimer sweetly, on the other hand, and share a soothing cowboy lullaby as if out on the prairie under the magical stars, the effect is quite different. In either case, however, perception transfers experience from outside to inside, including sound vibrations that directly affect our inner state.
The connection between outside & inside is more complex & profound than we sometimes realize. According to neurologists, for example, there are some cells in our brain called “mirror neurons” which seem to produce the same experienced response whether in reaction to our own actual experience or someone else’s experience which we have observed. To some degree, to observe is to experience, as to read someone else’s thought is to re-think its key elements & progression, even if we simultaneously disagree with its content, implications, claims & premise.
We don’t agree with everything we hear–or even everything we think. Nor should we. Some thoughts might just get you killed, particularly without the “true knowledge” to base them on. For example, the thought we might jump off the high cliff & soar like eagles, or supergirls., fine enough for a film sequence, dream or imagination, but out of synch with the real world without some serious training, technical expertise, & maybe a hang-glider. You have to suit the action to the realm of the experience it belongs in–a “real world action” does not belong in a “fantasy realm,” for example. A real-world action requires a real-world knowledge–the fantasy world does not.
We can go bang bang bang with our fingers in play without knowing anything about ballistics or real-world effects, and, up to a point, the same for popular entertainments, TV, games, films, etc. I say “up to a point” because any & all of these can leave a psychic remnant, like an echo in the brain, which can be confused for ourselves. The reaction may be primarily felt, an attitude, or a thought-sequence with associated actions, as if the voice in charge were either our own or some higher, deeper, more compelling entity of potentially irresistible power.
Such “voices” have been known for as long as humans have used language, with all kinds of explanations. Some metaphors give them status as entities, others as ephemeral projections of a divided self (like a super-ego). No doubt there are also neurological explanations involving things like neuro-chemical transmitters, electrical discharge-delays, brain-mind barrier leaks & feedback-loop echo-overloads. Sometimes, it might be just a matter of fine tuning, a few microseconds in a wiring coordination, letting imagination run away with the show by getting slightly our of right relation with it, losing sight of the film, or letting a self-hurtful attitude turn our own mind into a bully, rather than a key ally.
Writers & writing teachers have some other perspective on the inner voice, and capacity for voices. The singular voice is the one that emerges from each writer, or within each writing. Sometimes the voice of the writing is not the voice of the writer. The poem, story or novel may each have its own speaker–who may be quite far from &/or quite close to the writer even at the same time, as well as quite far from &/or close to the reader. Characters emerge not only with their voices, but also with points of view, ways of seeing & feeling the world (or not).
For writer & reader alike, these voices & points of view are experienced in the intimacy of the mind & its imagination, momentarily as if our own. One may lose the reality temporarily in the as if without problem, but not so much the reverse, losing the “as if” to believe it the reality, like believing the power of an imagined voice over us. In the story, that’s okay, but only in the make-believe world. One needs to know the difference, as in a movie about super-powers. One also has some choice over what “stations” are tuned to, particularly if one’s best interests are put in charge.
In the case of what we might call the writer’s own voice, not just the voice of roles observed, made up &/or played, but what emerges just being most ourselves, no one can say where it comes from, or where it goes, least of all the writer. It seems the deeper one looks, or the well drawn from, the more this is so. Thus, concepts like the Muse &/or muses, founts & sources of inspiration, sacred embodiments of spirit &/or place. To enter the spirit of a sacred place is not necessarily different in kind from entering the spirit of a theater or film, for example, prepared to be receptive.
No one really knows a firm dividing line between what is received from direct perception of reality & from other sources of imagination–yet all but the fully delusional recognize the general difference, or can quickly learn to do so. At the minimum, anyone capable of reading this with even imperfect understanding can set some trustworthy guide-posts, starting with there are some things I will not do, which by their nature are off limits, inherently not only delusional but destructive. Such voices may be all over the place, whether in the media, in the rocks or rattling about in our temporarily discombobulated brains. It doesn’t matter where they’re from or who they claim to be, they have no real power, which resides entirely in the real person, the witness self who hears, thinks he hears, imagines, understands he imagines, so remembers & respects the basics.
I went once to various sacred sites in highland Mayan rainforests, intending to “listen to the earth,” as my daughter had suggested. I took my pen & notebook of the trail, rested & listened as well as I could, trying at once to fine tune & open to as wide a range as possible–to & beyond the bird & insect sounds, to & beyond the air & water, wings in leaves & the spider web, to & beyond the water-veined limestone mountain. I imagined a voice asking, “Why are you here?” as if it were from the place itself.
I imagined a voice within myself (that had aspects of the same voice that had asked the question) answering, “I come for healing; I come for wholeness; I come for mission,” where each of these, examined closely, meant the same thing, at least to a poet who has come to listen to the earth. Following the local iconography of stone temples, I came to call the voice Chaac, sometimes represented as an open water-flowing mouth in the stone, and which I came to think of as the spirit of flowing water in air, river & web of life, powered by the sun. I heard Chaac’s voice in the currents of the Usumacinta, in the falls of Agua Azul, in the flocks of parrots, in the howlers at Yazchilan, as I would later far north, in storms from Rociada, as in the sound of the tortoise shell.
Did I really hear anything besides my own imagination? Oh, yes. No question about it. The parrots were real. The howlers were real. The currents were real. The breath was real. Inside & outside were real. And beautiful. And so welcome. Had some warped trickster appeared, on the other hand, known as such by presuming what the witness self knows is destructive, demanding the sacrifice of virgins, for example, that would have been a different story, and I’d’ve said, “No, thanks. Wrong movie.”
II. Inner Voice(s) II.
No one knows where a voice comes from, or where it goes when (& after) we hear it. Plenty is known about the mechanics, and the physics of sound, but not much about “the speaker” or “hearer.” We do know that the voice is one of the most singularly distinctive things about any individual. Everything else may have changed over a half century or more, but we immediately recognize the voice (even if we can’t always place a name to it), suggesting that somewhere in there is the more or less same person. We can have a related experience with an actor or actress who has disappeared into the costume & make-up of a role, but whose voice is still known. Something occurs that is an audio equivalent to the face-recognition software most brains come with or develop.
It used to be in the early days of the cheap tape recorder that the people often recognized least was their own. This was sometimes explained by the fact that we don’t usually hear our own coming from the outer direction. Some studies may more recently have indicated that people who have difficulty with “inner voices” may be particularly prone to mistaking their own, so missing the source of imagined or remembered voices.
In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes sheds light on many mental voice-related phenomena, including many related to the bicameral nature of the dual-hemisphere brain–in prophecy, possession, poetry & music, for example, as well as in conditions like schizophrenia. It’s been long enough since I’ve read the material, I’ll have to do a little boning up before summarizing, recommending or qualifying. My recollection is that there were many mind-blowing insights, using the mind to understand the mind.
Or as the poet Attar (as in essence of attar) put it:
“To go beyond all knowledge is to find
That comprehension which eludes the mind….”
