When Will We Hear the Voices of Those Who Hear Voices?

Imagine an unknown 17-year-old woman claiming she heard voices from God and suddenly being launched into the national spotlight, helping our political leaders navigate our deeply troubled times.

Even during a year as “WTF is happening?” as 2020, it sounds highly implausible. Such a person would more likely be whisked away to a psychiatric institution, diagnosed with “schizophrenia,” and injected with a slew of mind-altering chemicals.

But this is precisely the story of Joan of Arc, the visionary, French, teenage peasant who in 1429 was granted control of the French army and led the country to victory in a critical phase of the Hundred Years’ War with England.

In Saint Joan, a play by George Bernard Shaw, the unbelievable process of this young woman winning over the court of Charles VII is depicted. One by one, she impresses the military and church leaders, convincing them she has been sent by God to drive the English out of France. The forthcoming king admits his jealousy of her ability to receive such divine guidance, asking her, “Why don't the voices come to me? I am king, not you!”

Joan responds, “They do come to you, but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the evening listening for them. When the Angelus rings, you cross yourself and have done with it. But if you prayed from your heart and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stopped ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do.”

It’s an extraordinary literary—and historical—moment. A young, poor, rural, seemingly “schizophrenic” woman speaks truth to power, exposing the spiritual laziness and political ineptitude of the ruling class and gaining their respect in the process. Though she eventually helps Charles VII become king of France, no one can deny that she is the country’s rightful savior. It’s hard to imagine a greater reversal of one’s circumstances, a remarkable accomplishment in itself.

Maybe it’s the sacredphrenic in me, but I can’t help but wonder if a similar event—or series of events—might occur in our lifetime, if not in the political domain where church and state are separate, then perhaps in another domain. We have never been so starved for the spiritual, and who better to satiate our hunger than the very people who hear voices belonging to spirits?

I’m under no illusions that the average “schizophrenic” is receiving pure transmissions from a higher power, or that all voices are spiritual in origin. It’s clear to me that most “schizophrenics” are transmitting more noise than signal, but I also recognize that each person has the potential to recalibrate their vibrational antenna so it is pointed in a more divine direction.

I wonder when we will recognize the ontological reality of many of the voices people hear. I wonder when we will quit drugging them into oblivion, instead exploring what they have to teach the individual and in select cases, what they have to teach all of us.

I wonder when the wider world will be ready for the wisdom emitted from the “clear channels” among us, those sacredphrenics and shamans and mediums who are clearly in communication with a higher power, and when such wisdom will become a real part of the global conversation.

We humans can’t do everything by ourselves. One of our fatal flaws has been in thinking we are the only consciousness game in town, ignoring the wellspring of spirit messengers beneath and above us. We need our briefings from the beyond, and often they are broadcast from the “least” among us.

When will we hear the voices of those who hear voices?