Scientists shed light on how and why some people report “hearing the dead”

Spiritual media may be more prone to immersive mental activities and unusual auditory experiences early in life, according to a new study.

Perhaps this explains why some people and not others embrace spiritual beliefs and engage in the practice of ‘hearing the dead’, the study led by Durham University found.

Media that “hears” is said to experience clairaudient communication, rather than clairvoyant (“seeing”) or clairsentient (“feeling” or “conscious”) communication.

The researchers studied 65 clairaudient spiritual media from the National Spiritual Union and 143 members of the population in the largest scientific study of clairaudient media experiences.

They found that these spiritualists have a calling for inclusion – a trait associated with immersion in mental or imaginative activities or knowledge of altered states of consciousness.

Media are also more likely to report unusual study experiences, such as hearing voices, often appearing early in life.

Many who experience the voices of absence or hearing come across spiritual beliefs when searching for the meaning behind, or the supernatural meaning of, their strange experiences, the researchers said.

The results are published in the journal Mental Health, Religion and Culture. The research is part of Hearing the Voice – an interdisciplinary study of voice listening based at Durham University and funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Spirituality is a religious movement based on the idea that human souls persist after death and communicate with those who live through a medium or mind.

Interest in Spirituality is growing in Britain with a number of organizations providing support, training and offering consumer media services. One of the largest, the SNU, says it serves at least 11,000 members through its training college, churches and centers.

Through their study, the researchers collected detailed descriptions of how media experience the ‘voices’ of spirit, and compared levels of saturation, hallucination-proneness, aspects of identity, and belief in a ‘paranormal.

They found that 44.6 percent of spiritual participants reported hearing the deceased’s voices every day, with 33.8 percent reporting having a clairaudience experience within the last day.

A large majority (79 percent) said that audio spiritual communication experiences were part of their daily lives, occurring both when they were alone and when working as a medium or attending a spiritual church .

While spirits were mostly heard inside the head (65.1 percent), 31.7 percent of spiritual participants reported experiencing spirit voices coming from inside and outside. outside the head.

When evaluated for inclusion blades, as well as their strong belief in the paranormal, spiritualists received much higher than members of the general population.

Spiritualists were less likely to care about what other people thought of them than people in general, and they also scored higher for pronouncing non-verbal study experiences such as hallucination.

Both high levels of absenteeism and pronunciation to these study onions were associated with reports of more frequent clairaudient communication, according to the findings.

For the general population, absenteeism was associated with levels of belief in the paranormal, but there was no significant correlation between faith and hallucination-proneness.

There was also no difference in superstitious belief rates or phonics to visual cues between spiritual and non-spiritual partners.

Spiritualists reported first experiencing clairaudience at an average age of 21.7 years. However, 18 per cent of spiritualists reported having clairaudient experiences ‘as far as they could remember’ and 71 per cent had not encountered Spirituality as a religious movement before their first experiences.

The researchers say their findings show that it does not involve social pressure, learn to have certain expectations, or a level of belief in the paranormal that leads to experiences. spirit communication.

Instead, some people seem to be in a unique way to be included and are more likely to report unusual study experiences that occur early in life. For many of these people, spiritual beliefs are accepted because they align meaningfully to these particular personal experiences.

Lead researcher Dr Adam Powell, in the Voice Hearing project at Durham University and the Department of Theology and Religion, said: “Our findings say a lot about ‘learning and devotion’. To us, the principles of Spirituality seem to make sense of both of these amazing experiences: childhood experiences as well as the frequent study migrants they use as means of use.

“But all of these experiences could be the result of more early movements or abilities than just believing in the ability to call the dead if one tries hard enough.”

Dr Peter Moseley, co-author of the study at Northumbria University, said: “Spiritualists tend to report unusual study experiences that are positive, start early in life and are often then capable An understanding of how these develop is important because it can also help us to understand more about anxious or uncontrollable experiences of hearing voices. “

Durham researchers are now engaged in further study of clairaudience and mediumship, working with practitioners to get a more complete picture of what it is like to be at the end of such bizarre and meaningful experiences.

###