Voices...

[Morr]

I was wondering about this for a long while... So I decdied to ask you guys the following -
Usually when I try to fall asleep.. when I'm sort of in that state where I'm really inbetween sleeping and being awake - I hear voices..

Sometimes they are clear, sometimes they are not.. Sometimes I only understand a word or two, sometimes I I understand whole sentences... And it doesnt feel as if these voices speak to me... its as if I accidently picked up the phone and heard people talking on the line..
get what I mean?

Does this happen to anyone? Is it normal brain activity? Do you think theres a state where you can somehow "hook up" onto spirit voices, etc, in this world or in a different realm?

Am I sounding totally crazy....?

[Scarlettvixen]

i cant answer yr questions Morr
but i hear them sometimes too

[asamananara]

The threshold between sleeping and waking is known as the
hypnogogic state... many people experience visual and auditory
phenomena which seem entirely disassociated from personal
experience. Some consider this a junction between the universal
and the individual awareness, a nexus. I have worked with
hypnogogic magic, and can confirm that this threshold is
not locally bound, that the voices you hear have an external
origin. It's possible that you are "hearing" snippets of
actual converstations, or picking up random thoughts from
others, as well as catching fragments of other people's
dreams. With practice, one can gain a hypnogogic lucidity,
and navigate this portal with greater dexterity.

[mucgwyrt]

Care to post a link on hypnogogic magic, asamananara? Sounds interesting :)

[Morr]

i second macha's request :)

[asamananara]

I don't know of any websites which deal with it directly,
but one can garner hints from the works of Mavromatis, Moskvitin,
and Van Dusen... Silberer's "Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and
the Occult Arts" addresses it, as does Ouspensky... Try researching
the methods of Emmanuel Swedenborg, as his divine visions were
encountered in the hypnagogic. Most often the state is taken
as a means of "Astral Projection", such as outlined here:
www.necronomi.com/magic/new-age/astral.projection
and most web resources seem to relate it similarly... I don't
do much web-surfing, unfortunately, but I'm sure googling
variations on the theme will return useful info. :)

[Lucius]

OMG~! I, too, have this...i was always wondering. Thanks for the info Asa. You are always of help.

[dr_zeus440]

or, conversely, you could be exhibiting symptoms of preliminary schizophrenia. if i were you, id check it out with a doctor just to be safe. no point in messing around where health is concerned. and no point in jumping to a supernatural conclusion when a viable natural one exists.

[asamananara]

Yes, a paradigm jump from the witch-doctor to the which-doctor
may help you redefine the terminology... but they both deal with
the same daemons, only ascribing them different names.
As far as jumping to a pathological supposition, the hypnagogic state
is VERY commonly experienced, and has been well researched by the
"scientific" community. It is as "natural" and normal as dreaming,
and certainly not indicative of any underlying psychosis.
As far as supernatural goes... as someone wiser than myself once
pointed out, "It's natural, only super!" lol

[dr_zeus440]

hmmm, be that as it may, my initial advice stands. for starters, whether or not they deal with the same demons merely with different names has yet to be proved. secondly, as commonly experienced as the hypnogogic state may be, im sure that schizophrenia is at least just as commonly experienced. bah, either way, its up to you morr. and by supernatural and natural, well, we have differing definitions, asamananara, thats all.

[Cobalt Cobra]

That used to happen to me all the time when I was a kid.. I don't know if it is exactly the same as yours - mine always sounded like whispers that I couldn't quite make out. Sometimes they'd be really loud and sometimes they'd be infuriatingly quiet to where I wasn't sure if there were any voices or it was my imagination.

I'd scream my fricking head off when I heard them though, which was almost nightly. That was when my mom taught me the Lord's Prayer. Chanting calmed me down, but the voices were still there. They went away after a few years.

[Faery-Wings]

I don't hear voices, but I hear music

....interesting thoughts on this...

[docdoo]

I occasionally hear voices too, just on that threshold of sleep and waking. Personally I wouldnt worry too much about it, I know the feeling you speak of, and equating it to picking up a phone in the middle of someone elses conversation is the most accurate way I can think of to describe it.

Those snippets of conversation dont worry me at all...however many times I *hear* electrical 'zaps' as Im in that half-sleeping state...its almost akin to a transformer casting off electricity...generally speaking right after the pop I feel it run through my body...kind of like that feeling when you stick your tongue on a 9Volt battery..only it buzzes through me. I've always done it and have spoken to Dr's on it in the past apparantly there is nothing wrong with me so Im content to just accept it.

Unfortunatly though, they do tend to pull me from that 'almost asleep' state which kind of sucks. Anyway, maybe it'll help to know that others hear odd voices as they drift off to sleep and...for the record...I give you official permission to say 'Well I must not be nuts because, look at her!"


:lol:

[Mithrea]

I occasionally hear voices too, just on that threshold of sleep and waking. Personally I wouldnt worry too much about it, I know the feeling you speak of, and equating it to picking up a phone in the middle of someone elses conversation is the most accurate way I can think of to describe it.

Those snippets of conversation dont worry me at all...however many times I *hear* electrical 'zaps' as Im in that half-sleeping state...its almost akin to a transformer casting off electricity...generally speaking right after the pop I feel it run through my body...kind of like that feeling when you stick your tongue on a 9Volt battery..only it buzzes through me. I've always done it and have spoken to Dr's on it in the past apparantly there is nothing wrong with me so Im content to just accept it.

Unfortunatly though, they do tend to pull me from that 'almost asleep' state which kind of sucks. Anyway, maybe it'll help to know that others hear odd voices as they drift off to sleep and...for the record...I give you official permission to say 'Well I must not be nuts because, look at her!"


:lol:

Docdoo, those zaps are your spirit guide trying to get your attention. I would suggest meditating to try and contact her.

As for everyone else. You guys are just experiencing what I go through quite often. The time when you are falling asleep is when you are most able to pay attention to things that you're probably hearing all of the time, just not realizing it. I'm clairaudient and I hear those "voices" all of the time. Some of them are actual conversations here, others are going on in other planes. When you are falling asleep, you automatically let that filter down that usually filters out those sounds. If you can hear them when you are falling asleep, you can train yourself to hear them all of the time and focus it if you want to. . .

I've seen many psychiatrists and psychologists for other things and none of them have ever suggests I might be schizophrenic for it. I also have an aunt who is schizophrenic and believe me, it's not the same thing.

[mucgwyrt]

Docdoo, those zaps are your spirit guide trying to get your attention. I would suggest meditating to try and contact her.

As for everyone else. You guys are just experiencing what I go through quite often. The time when you are falling asleep is when you are most able to pay attention to things that you're probably hearing all of the time, just not realizing it. I'm clairaudient and I hear those "voices" all of the time. Some of them are actual conversations here, others are going on in other planes. When you are falling asleep, you automatically let that filter down that usually filters out those sounds. If you can hear them when you are falling asleep, you can train yourself to hear them all of the time and focus it if you want to. . .

I've seen many psychiatrists and psychologists for other things and none of them have ever suggests I might be schizophrenic for it. I also have an aunt who is schizophrenic and believe me, it's not the same thing.
How did you train yourself to do it?

[Mithrea]

How did you train yourself to do it?

I didn't. It's something I've always done/been able to do.

[mucgwyrt]

Any ideas on how the not-naturally-gifted one's (i.e. me :lol: ) could learn to hear them?

[Mithrea]

You develop clairaudience the way you develop any other psychic gift. First off, just recognize that you can hear and start paying attention to the messages you get that you think are just internal dialogue. Sometimes I hear things in my ears and other times I seem to hear them in my chest area. I know it sounds dumb, but it's true.

Meditation helps. I just sit and try and put my brain on hold for a minute and when I can reach that point (sometimes it take forever and it takes alot of practice) that's when I can start to focus the hearing. Basically, the best start is to just start paying attention to it.

http://www.nztravel.co.nz/hosts/Wingmakers/Wingmakers%20Abilities.html
http://www.llanellispiritualists.org.uk/1psysp.htm

[Felidae]

I have this happen sometimes, but my "voices" are more likely to be heard when the house is quiet (ie, my daughter is out) and I am reading, and then it's like a TV is on and set to a lower volumn in another room. In fact, I've actually checked my daughters room to see if she's left her TV or stereo on - And of course she hasn't...

From childhood until my mid-twenties I would lay back and drift, not fully awake but not asleep either, and get dreamlike visual flashes of people I'd never met. The scenes were usually very emotional or violent. I put that down to growing up in a fairly dysfunctional home. During this time I would also "hear" my father or someone else calling me: I think this is something like what you are describing. This stopped a few years ago. Now I just get the "white-noise" voices.

It used to really bother me, but since it never progressed into anything serious I've tossed the phenomena into the little mental dumpster I keep for things that I can't explain and don't want to worry too much about.

Thanks for the info, Asamanara! Even though I never let it bother me much it is helpful!

[Morr]

thank you all for your advice!

im glad to know I'm not alone..
I was pretty sure these were ghosts that I was hearing, because - you know how you can leave a tape recorder running, in an empty quiet room, and then when you play it - you can hear voices?
it sounds like that, but not like "woooooooohooooooo" type ghosts sounds in the movies... actualy words or convos..
I figured this was because once you fall asleep, your physical body sort of lets its guard down, and your brain is more aware & open to astral & spiritual things.

[SylverStar]

I don't have time to read this thread, but that so tottally happens to me. Every night. Yeah and it makes me wonder if I'm crazy.

[Laurelei]

Don't worry, it happens to me too, and when I'm not making cocktail-party style conversation with Dragons and making absent-minded comments about people's auras, I can say that I'm completely sane :).

The trick is to remember not to pull back into fully conscious thought when it happens, but to stay conscious enough to concerntrate on what you are hearing and to remember it. I'm planning on trying to learn to do that consciously in the near future. I mean, I'm always hearing Ollie (my other half; yes I am crackers), but there's always a vague noise like a crowd of people talking in another room. I'm hoping to get to the state where I can hear the words clearly all the time.

[Calzaer]

I do the same thing.. I liken it to walking through a crowded party. I'll hear a general chaotic sort of babbling, and then catch a few words clearly as if I just walked closely by someone, then another couple words from the other side of me, then more indesipherable chatter.

[asamananara]

A useful technique for developing a hypnagogic lucidity is
by mentally counting into the state... recline comfortably
with your legs crossed at the ankles and your arms folded-
this helps anchor your awareness in the body, thus slowing
your ascent into the dream realm. As you begin drifting towards
sleep, become aware of your heartbeat; inhale slowly for three
beats, hold your breath for three, exhale for three, and rest
for three. With practice, you will find yourself able to
discern the flow of images and sounds, and to isolate and direct
your attention as you will. It's important to pull yourself
back into waking, rather than falling asleep, or else you will
have little memory of the experiences.

[mucgwyrt]

My, you are full of useful information, asamananara :)

[asamananara]

Nah, I'm just an ignorant peasant who spends too much time
alone. lmao