The International Community for Hearing Voices

[violet]

http://www.intervoiceonline.org/

Found this site which I think is interesting, it's The International Community for Hearing Voices. It gives me hope that maybe someday, people who hear things that are not there will not be automatically branded crazy.

INTERVOICE aims to:

- show that hearing voices is a normal though unusual variation in human behaviour
[...]
- educate society about the meaning of voices so as to reduce ignorance & anxiety and to ensure this innovatory approach on voice hearing is better known by voice hearers, families, professionals and the general public
[...]

They have a section on the site that talks about famous people who heard voices, like Anthony Hopkins, Charles Dickens, Gandhi, Schumann, Joan of Arc, Socrates... I can relate to Schumann, because his voices were between the waking and sleep state :

The night of Friday, the 17th, we had not been long in bed when Robert got up and wrote out a theme that, he said, the angels had sung to him; after doing that, he went back to bed and hallucinated all night long, his eyes open and looking to heaven; he was firmly convinced that angels were hovering over him and disclosing the most wondrous revelations, all expressed in glorious music [...]

Anyways, lots of material there, I've only begun to explore the site.

[Jhanananda]

Thank-you Violet, this is very interesting.  I have heard the charismatic sounds all of the time for the last 13 years, and I heard them intermittently for the preceding 30 years.  When I hear these sounds I am sure they are the heavenly host singing, and in fact at times when I go to sleep listening to these sounds I am brought into the presence of the heavenly host and bathed in the sweetness of their music, which vibrates on strings of love. There are times when whole symphonies come to me via the heavenly host, and at those times I wish I was a musician so that I could write down the score of such beautiful music.

[violet]

It would be nice to hear music, it would certainly be more enjoyable than gross sounds like loud knocking, doorbells ringing or a man's voice that keeps mumbling... 

[Jhanananda]

Regular, daily, deep meditation, which goes beyond the stilling of the mind seems to produce charismatic sounds with most subjects.