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Next I'd like to demonstrate this perspective pattern in the auditory system, using a troubling voice instead of an image. Again, I don't need to know any content. It can be your own voice, or someone else's voice, or it could even be a sound that has no words with it. (Tim comes up.) Tim, I want you to listen to that voice, and verify that it still makes you uncomfortable...
Tim: (looking up and then down left and frowning) Yes, it sure does.
It looks like you get a picture first before you get the voice. Is that right? (Tim: Yes.) That's fine, we can still use the voice. Is this your voice or someone else's? (Tim: It's my voice.) OK, so you're talking to yourself. Where do you hear the voice?
Tim: Behind my head, to the right a little.
OK. Now just let that voice go to wherever voices go when you're not listening to them, and think of four times in your life when your own voice served as a strong resource to you. (If Tim had someone else's voice troubling him, rather than his own, I would ask for four resource voices that belong to someone else.) Think of them one by one and listen to what each one has to say, and the tonality, until you have four of them... (Tim nods.) Now position those four voices around your head, more or less evenly spaced, wherever seems appropriate to you—perhaps one in front, one in back, and one on either side. Just as with the visual pattern, when you have those four voices talking all at once, it will be harder to hear the details of what they are saying, but you can still hear the tonalities, and know the general nature of what they are saying. Let me know when that is set up, with all four voices talking at once... (Tim nods.) OK. Now bring that troubling voice back in to join the other four, and listen to all five at once... Does that change your response to that voice?
Tim: It's farther away now, and not as loud. I feel better; it's easier to listen to it. I can hear some of what it's saying as useful information, while before I was just noticing my bad feelings.
OK. Great. Does anyone have any questions for Tim?
Tess: Were you able to understand what the five voices were saying when they were all talking at once?
Tim: No. I knew they were there, and I could pick out bits and pieces, and the meaning was there, but I couldn't really hear all five voices at once.
That's typical, and it's important to warn people about this, or they may worry that they are doing the process wrong. A woman who was born blind and only got her sight when she was about 30 could keep track of eight different conversations at once, as if she had an eight-track tape recorder. But very few people can do that, and it's not necessary for this pattern to work.
Tim: When I had the four resource voices talking at once, I felt like I was sitting in a big, comfortable overstuffed easy chair, as if the voices were literally supporting me.
That's a nice spontaneous synesthesia. Here's an outline of this process.
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