LISTENING TO THE SILENCES

In other fields, notably medicine, and most particularly mental health, there dawns the awful realisation that much harm has been done to 'innocent' healthy minds, sometimes resulting in the premature 'death' of these minds or in long periods of incarceration of their owners. With awakened comprehension and understanding of the involvement of intruding spirits into the minds of vulnerable individuals, comes the strongest desire to disseminate this awareness and to minimise the further harm that inevitably will be visited on the defenceless minds through the continuation of many of the current practices. I have come to a firm conclusion that I am one of the 'receptive individuals' who finds himself in this particular unsought and, at times, completely unacceptable rôle.

There have been numerous times over the last twenty years when I have concluded that I am on an 'assault course with live ammunition'. In all battlefield training, members of the armed forces are subjected to situations where the bullets flying overhead are as lethal as those that will be encountered in genuine conflict. When I joined the Navy and was issued with a service gasmask, we were all given the ultimate demonstration of the efficacy of the mask. In groups we were confined in a small chamber that, we were told, was then filled with tear gas. After some time, during which we were able to breathe freely in our masks, we had to remove them. Anyone who had had any doubts about the actual presence of the gas was soon disillusioned as the disabling tears flooded our eyes.

In a similar manner, I am constantly subjected to the experiences and ploys that I have recorded and am describing. Often, when I have yet again fallen for a ploy that I should have seen coming a mile off, or when, gullibly, I have been taken in by a new strategy, and when, thereby, I have gained more experience and understanding, I receive in my mind a quiet, but unmistakable and imperative request to 'write it down, write it down'. Mostly I have done so, and you are reading the results. There are other times when I have been so pissed off at having had my day disrupted as I have gone through a real time experience, that I let my feelings be known through violent imprecations within my mind, and curse the intruders in the forceful language of the lower deck. Many will have seen on television the gruelling jungle, desert and arctic training endured by service personnel. The heat and cold are real, likewise the leeches and thorns. The sleep deprivation cannot be simulated but has to be experienced to be understood; the forced marches with heavy packs have to be endured, and then kit and weapons have to be cleaned before sleep is allowed. And all of the time, the urging, goading instructors will have been hated and cursed.

No amount of classroom theory, rôle playing or simulation can prepare anyone for the actual environment. No exercises with paint-ball guns can act as a substitute for the close proximity of lethal ammunition. Awareness and instinctive reaction can only be achieved through a recognition of the presence and modes of attack employed by an enemy. Recent conflicts such as the Falklands campaign and the Gulf Wars revealed a plethora of armchair commentators and strategists. Every TV and radio channel, and every newspaper had its interviewers, reporters, analysts and strategic experts. Apart from a few notable exceptions, all were inexperienced in any field of combat. But most seemed to have mastered the jargon, acquired a flak jacket and intrepidly gone to war.

But war is not a game or something that can be interpreted by the onlooker and commentator. It is very real, but the true reality is only experienced by those whom it is affecting directly. Likewise, the 'war' that is going on in the mind and life of someone who is invaded by spiritual intrusion is only capable of being understood fully by those who are in the conflict. Just as some of those who are directly affected and may be victims of the international conflicts are rendered speechless, 'shell-shocked' or incoherent by their experiences, so those directly affected by their own battle in the mind, may similarly have great difficulty in communicating the reality of their own inner conflicts.

Inevitably I return, as I shall always return, to the paradox that is thrown up by the situation of the voice hearer, the person who is dubbed 'schizophrenic'. In expressing it I want to do so without intentionally causing offence to all of the medical professionals who sincerely believe that they understand the actual inner mind of someone whom they are they are putting in this particular category. Expressed simply, the paradox is this, namely that with a few rare exceptions, the professionals have not experienced any aspect of the phenomena that the voice hearers are trying to describe. It should be obvious by now that even though I am drawing upon the experiences of more than twenty years, and though I have all of my communicating skills, nevertheless, the problems that I have in conveying the reality of it all are immense. It is no wonder, then, that when faced with the variety of bizarre experiences described by the hearers, the professionals themselves arrive at such a variety of interpretations. 'It's the two sides of the brain talking to each other'; 'It's the product of the bicameral mind'; 'They are illusions'; 'They are delusions'. Words such as 'schizoid', 'schizophreniform' and the like pepper the dialogue and writings of the commentators.

With a wide variety of definitions and explanations crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; with the legacies of Freud and Jung and their successors holding minds and closing minds over the years, wouldn't it be wonderful if suddenly there came the 'Eureka' answer that all desire? In another field I saw recently a superb example of such an answer to a universally posed question. For as long as it has been recognised that humans evolved from apes that began to walk upright, the mechanism and the reason for the upright stance have been endlessly analysed and debated. 'Savannahs developed and the apes had to leave the trees, and eventually stood upright'; 'Without the shade of the trees, the apes exposed less of their body surface to the sun by standing upright' - ignoring the extension of this 'logic' that would have all equatorial animals standing on two legs; 'Lifting the head higher above the ground would bring it into a breezier, and hence, cooler region, and benefit the brain'; - and many more attempts at explanation, each attracting its core of adherents. The 'Eureka' moment that produced illumination came to those who were filming in Africa for the recent BBC 'Life of Mammals' series. Apes were being filmed in a swampy area, and suddenly there was a female carrying its young and wading upright and waist deep through the water exactly as would a human in similar circumstances. Paleontological and geological analysis of the era when upright walking is judged to have begun, confirmed that extensive swampy areas and lagoons formed in the territory of the apes, and that wading and hence walking, would become the norm. The sight of that female ape wading is one of the most potent that I have ever seen on television.

How I hope that from within the volume of my writing there will be that which will cause some in psychiatry to echo 'Eureka'!

That it is going to take a huge leap of faith I have no doubt, faith that is going to insist that everyone is treated wholly as an individual, and not, as apparently in the Swedish study of cannabis use among conscripts, 50.000 human clones. I have group photographs taken at various stages of my naval career, and I defy anyone to find a much more diverse collection of individuals drawn from the Britain of the time.

Here is a portion of the ships company from a photograph taken in Malta several weeks after our ship had been mined, and shortly before we made our way to Britain, crossing France by train. Just study them as a group and then as individuals. Approximately twenty-five, a mixture of 'regulars' and 'hostilities only' ratings who are equivalent to just one two-thousandth of the Swedish study. What image is conjured up for you at the thought of '50,000 conscripts'? Do you think of 50,000 Swedish look-alikes, all dressed in field grey, all called Sven, or Jan, or Per, or Bjorn? I can look at my group and see Cornish, Welsh, Devonian, Irish, and Scots. Not the full range of 'British', for we were a West Country ship, and such were normally crewed from those regions. There are two who, as orphans of seafarers, had been brought up in the Arethusa tradition of caring for such boys, and who had been enlisted as boy-seamen at an early age; then two others who had been to top public schools. I can see some who didn't 'draw', were 'temperance' - i.e. they didn't draw their daily tot of rum, whereas the majority would be 'grog' and would 'draw'. Until the daily tot was discontinued in about 1970, the 'grog' ratings had an extra currency with which to reward favours. "Come around at tot time" was the invitation to receive payment - 'sippers', 'gulpers', 'half a tot' were the normal level of repayment. For a 'full tot', one could probably get someone murdered! I see some for whom a 'run ashore' meant time spent 'down the Gut', if in Valetta, and in the many bars. For others it could mean time spent at "Aggie's" - the Missions to Seamen founded by Aggie Weston. And then there is one man whom I never saw go ashore, but who spent his free time making pegged rugs from discarded naval uniform clothes.

There are men in the photograph who had soon acquired the naval jargon, or had it ingrained after more than fifteen years at sea, for whom 'avast' and 'belay' still had everyday meaning, and who knew what to do with soojie-moojie, baggywrinkle, and a pusser's dip. Men who were in a sense cloned by their surnames - if you were Walker, you were 'Hookey'; if Williams, 'Bungey'; if Martin, 'Pincher'; if Miller, 'Dusty'. Rhodes was 'Lonesome', and Carpenter became 'Chippy', while Wright was 'Shiner', Green answered to 'Jimmy' and Grey, 'Dolly' and every Wilson became 'Tug'. Like every other Welshman, I was Taff, while every Cornishman was Jan. I can see able-seamen and gunnery ratings, torpedo men, stokers and 'bunting tossers' or signalmen. You can identify yourself the ones who would be 'Lofty', and which, 'Shortarse'.

Multiply such a group by 2,000, and then try to imagine a study that would give meaning to the consequences of one particular activity such as smoking cannabis, a study that was continued over ten or fifteen years, and from which conclusions are being drawn about 'schizophrenia'. And then look back at the accounts of my own personal and actual experiences, and the results of my observations and records covering well over twenty years. I look at myself in the full photograph of the ship's company, and reflect that I, also, was very much an individual. One of a small number of electronic specialists, I lived in a seamen's mess, because in a small ship there wasn't enough room in an artificers' mess. My upbringing had defined and pre-conditioned much of my behaviour and choice of activity. I didn't smoke or drink, and at the time, and from my background, 'teenage sex' was mostly in our imagination, so I didn't frequent the brothels or accept the invitations of the scugnizzi - the children in Naples - who offered the delights of their sisters, each one of whom was invariably a 'virgin - only sixteen'.

Was it peer pressure that influenced the young who had no firm roots? I can see two in the photo and remember their return to our mess from a run ashore, having had their first sexual encounter in a Maltese brothel under the 'tutelage' of some of the older members of the mess. Was it peer pressure that induced some of the Swedish conscripts to smoke cannabis? And did their succumbing reveal an indecisive and easily influenced personality? And are such the targets of the 'intelligent' spiritual intrusion into the mind of the vulnerable? Some individuals get caught up in the excitement of a group enthusiasm and go with the flow, in spite of initial self-cautions. I recollect being told of the experiences of some of the vacation students who used to spend time at my Works. Living in a hostel, a few had light-heartedly begun to have sessions with an ouija board and drew others in. Soon, there was persistent 'contact', apparently from a young woman who 'told' a distressing tale of having been killed in an accident. The contact was so 'real' that the sessions became compulsive and all assembled immediately after their evening meal. There was a wealth of circumstantial detail including the woman's address, or 'an address'. They were never to find out. With the Easter break coming up, it was planned to pay a visit, but - they were told most strongly that if they attempted to do so, one of their number, Dave, would die. Consternation. The sessions stopped forthwith, and Dave acquired a hunted expression and acute nervousness that remained with him for several months. (Refreshing my mind about the incident from someone who lived in the same hostel at the time and was an associate of the other students, I was happy to learn that Dave had survived, had been seen recently, and was married and a parent three times over.)