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Research Phantom Voices
One of the more common reports received from ATransC website visitors is that they hear distant voices or music but are unable to find their source or record them. In most reports, the sounds are reported as a distant conversation or the sound of a radio program that can "almost" be made out, but no specific words or songs can be identified. We at ATransC are not experts in audio physiology, but we are learning that the mind will naturally try to find order in chaotic stimuli. The order is apparently based on what is in the person's memory, so the almost heard sounds have a familiar feel for the experiencer. As it happens, the phantom voices are often associated with a person who is distracted by mundane routines such as cleaning the house or other activities that permit the person's mind to wander. They are also frequently experienced as the person falls asleep or beginning to awake. There are a number of mental characteristics described in the psychological literature that touch on this experience but hypnagogia seems to be a key concept. It is defined as: Hypnagogic or hypnogogic: Inducing sleep; soporific; drowsiness preceding sleep; relating to the images or hallucinations sometimes experienced in this state. According to Gurstelle and Oliveira, "...daytime parahypnagogia (DPH). DPH is more likely to occur when one is tired, bored, suffering from attention fatigue, and/or engaged in a passive activity...." From: Daytime parahypnagogia: a state of consciousness that occurs when we almost fall asleep. Gurstelle EB, de Oliveira JL., Department of Psychology, S250, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14962619
There are also a number of types of auditory illusions that have been identified. A good article about these is Audio illusions that will fool your ear (and brain) by Rich Pell. One such illusion is described as:
"The phantom words illusion - which is simply the same two words being repeated over and over but time displaced between the left and right channel - demonstrates how easy it is to hear words and phrases that are not there, and even hear them change, as the brain attempts to make sense of the aural ambiguity. Pretty interesting effect! (Go to the website to listen)"
Passive Concentration Perhaps a better term for hypnagogia would be "passive Concentration" because the person has focused attention, but not with concentrated awareness. This distraction from the inner chatter of the brain leaves the mind open for unnoticed inputs. In the ATransC Survival Hypothesis, it is speculated that the physical person is part of the path for etheric-to-physical influences such as paranormally formed voices. The result is that these influences are often seen to be "colored" by the experiencer. In EVP, this means the practitioner or an interested observer (anywhere or any time in the world) may influence what is eventually produced as an EVP. (Relate this to the "familiar" but distant sounds described above.) If this model is correct, then the hypnagogic state of mind would be ideal for our etheric communicators to penetrate our otherwise too busy mind. Passive concentration is a spontaneous version of mindful meditation which is a deliberately cultivated technique for communing with one's inner senses and is an important technique for mental transcommunication.
Pareidolia: and Apophenia These are terms used to describe the mind's natural tendency to identify patters where there are none. While the skeptics love to use these terms to explain away reports of paranormal experiences, the reality is that many such reports are the result of our need to find order in chaos. The result is too often hearing voices in noise or seeing faces in clouds. It is because of this reality that one cannot give a sweeping denial that these effects exist.
Perceptual Order The Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization also provide possible explanation for the natural human tendency to find order in chaos. They include: The Law of Proximity: Stimulus elements that are closed together tend to be perceived as a group The Law of Similarity: Similar stimuli tend to be grouped, this tendency can even dominate grouping due to proximity The Law of Closure: Stimuli tend to be grouped into complete figures The Law of Good Continuation: Stimuli tend to be grouped as to minimize change or discontinuity The Law of Symmetry: Regions bound by symmetrical boarders tend to be perceived as coherent figures The Law Simplicity: Ambiguous stimuli tend to be resolved in favor of the simplest
"Clairvoyance" or "clear seeing" has become a catch-all term for sensing information in subtle energy. Remote viewing is clairvoyance with a purpose and clairaudience is clear hearing of subtle energy information. According to the ATransC Survival Hypothesis, our etheric personality is constantly in communication with other personalities. If we learn to pay attention, and depending on our inclinations, we experience this information as words or pictures or just senses as in clairsentience. It is possible that a person might hear voices in a sound track containing only noise, but it would necessarily be via clairaudience.
In the study of EVP, the voices are either there or they are not. If they are there, then others should be able to experience them pretty much the same way. As such, EVP are objective, meaning they have physical form. By definition then, voices heard in a sound track via clairaudience are not objective and they are not EVP. Understanding this point is central to the study of how we experience transcommunication.
Hearing Test
ATransC members recently had a discussion in the Idea Exchange about hearing words in sound files that were not actually there. In fact, the sound file was just "brown noise" which is a relatively low frequency version of white noise and which contains no words. The experienced listeners all reported hearing only noise, but interestingly, some members reported hearing quite a lot of words. They did not agree amongst themselves as to what was said, however.
How we hear EVP is a very important question that is becoming central to our understanding of both the nature of our existence and the nature of reality. Yes, a grandiose claim, but in a very real sense, we are the detectors of the greater reality. How we detect it tells us a lot about the greater reality much as studying how radar works tells us a lot about the images painted on the radar screen.
Website visitors were asked to help us study this question by participating in a simple online listening experiment. Below are two sound files. One is just brown noise and the other is more like white noise but contains audio pulses that simulate the cadence of speech. Neither example is known to contain EVP, but you may hear EVP formed in the output amplifier or even clairvoyantly.
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