Listening to the Silences

In the autumn of 1979 I began to hear voices and experience other phenomena, and have done so ever since. Thus in over 30 years, I have never been free from intrusions that enter blatantly or subliminally into my mind and mental faculties, and forcefully or subtly into my body and senses.

I use the word 'intrusion' deliberately, for that is what they are - not the product of an aberrant mind nor of a diseased brain. Because of what I was doing at the outset in 1979, I have no doubt, not the slightest shadow, that what I experience is of spiritual origin. Use of the word 'spiritual' to some immediately suggests 'religion', 'spiritualism', 'theology' and the like - words that to many are off-putting, and likely to prevent them from even opening my book. Forget such preconceptions. I am an engineer and my approach and language are those of an engineer - as precise and realistic as I can be within a realm of experience that is most imprecise and unrealistic.

From the beginning I have kept notes, which from 1998 began to turn into coherent writing as I became computer literate. In my parallel reading from the field of mental health, I found what are called 'The First Rank Symptoms' of schizophrenia, and I realised that I had experienced them all, and recorded and written of them, albeit in my own words. Yet - and this is the most important point that I am desperately trying to make - I have never been ill from this cause, and neither have I, nor would I seek help or intervention from the world of psychiatry or that of religion. On the contrary, I write to inform those in both such worlds who endeavour to help the mentally ill and disturbed.

As fast as I wrote, my words were read avidly by friends who work in the field of psychiatry. As they read, they wanted to know about 'before' - i.e. about my life before the onset of the intrusions. I realised that I should indeed write about 'before', in order to separate it from the events of 1979 and what has followed, for apart from the fact that both sequences happened to me, they are totally unconnected.

What happened 'before' is a story in itself, and it forms the first part of my book. In 1961 I had a successful career in the nuclear industry - a career of which I was robbed through the consequences of a medical misdiagnosis, and inappropriate and unnecessary medication. What is now known to have been a Cryptosporidia infection was treated as if 'nervous', and I began a life with Librium. After two years continuous use, an addict, dependent, and showing many of the side-effects of the drug, I began a 'psychiatric' year that opened with two episodes of cold turkey, hospitalisation for a total of twenty weeks, 23 E.C.T.s, 'experiments' with a variety of drugs such as Tryptizol, Melleril, Valium Pertofran and assorted benzodiazepines and barbiturates plus insulin shock 'therapy' - and that ended with a farcical second opinion from someone who went on to become a doyen in the world of psychiatry.

I retired early with my career and home wrecked, and in total, in real terms, I have lost over a half million pounds. But hard though it may be to believe, effectively I began a new life. It is a life that has been and is both fascinating and rewarding - even though after four years it included the events that then led to the spiritual intrusions. For, as I found out, not only are there the malevolent - the ones that plague the 'schizophrenic' - but there are also the benevolent.

The whole story is there in the book - of how under the tuition of renowned healer, the late Bruce Macmanaway, I found that I also had a talent to heal. It is a talent that I have used hopefully to good effect, and which has brought me many rewards in encounters with wonderful people.

My 'engineering' approach has led to a study of our interaction with the electrical environment, and an understanding of aspects of electricity and health. Becoming aware of the electrical nature of acupuncture I expanded my knowledge and experience in this field also.

I identified over thirty different ploys that are used by intruding 'entities', and describe these in detail. I also realised that channels into the minds of the vulnerable can be opened via such activities as hypnotism and hypnotherapy, past life regression, Reiki, channelling and various forms of 'divination'. There are cautions, too, for those involved in spirit release, and many of the esoteric practices that involve 'opening the mind'.

Among my heroes are such diverse individuals as Galileo, Paracelsus and Nikola Tesla, and I quote and draw conclusions from them as I do from the writing and communications of a wide variety of psychiatrists, psychologists and others in the field of mental health, such as Irving Gottesman, Julian Jaynes, Martin Roth, Kenneth McAll, A.W.Drummond, Wilson Van Dusen, Richard Mackarness - to name a few. I have also drawn from that well-known hearer of voices and seer of visions, Teresa of Avila.

I am making my book freely available, for it is important that it is read. The only price that I ask is that you should use it or put it to use for others who are struggling within the morass that their mind has become, and that you should tell others of its Web address. I am now well over 80, and still have many other things to achieve, so I cannot undertake to respond to any or all communications, but will try. In the meantime I can join poet W.B.Yeats, and speculate -

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