'God spoke to you by so many voices...'

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By Andrew Low

‘God spoke to you by so many voices but you would not hear’ is a line that has really helped me. It’s in the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. I read it in the spring of 1992 when I was a student at the polytechnic in Brighton, as it was then before that institution became a university. It was during the holidays, my mental reserves were running low and I was lonely and finding things tough.

God-spoke-to-you-by-so-many-voices...-pin - 'God spoke to you by so many voices.' Was a breakthrough for me, and I like to share this with others if they are interested.

That line was a boost and I felt a huge relief that a writer, especially a really famous one like James Joyce, should mention voices. I was really struggling and I am grateful, but am I grateful enough I wonder? The line helped me tremendously. But then I just returned to my studies of drugs on the pharmacy course, which could not be further from a spiritual subject in many ways.

Shahaja meditation

For many years I had struggled with the idea of inner telepathic voices and the state of mind that Sahaja Yoga meditation involves.

The line went out on BBC Radio 4 on 23 February 2018 in the adaptation of the novel for Book at Bedtime. The date is easy for me to remember because it is the anniversary of the passing from this mortal world of Shree Mataji Nirmala Devi, the guru of Sahaja Yoga.

The line helps with ‘Collective Consciousness’ as it is called in Sahaja Yoga. We believe in ‘vibrations’ and in chakras and an internal life. Do watch the video The Vision on YouTube, which is about 33 minutes long. It is a great introductory documentary. You will probably know a lot more about Sahaja Yoga than many Sahaja Yogis who have not seen this video.

Higher level of mental awareness

There are other things that can help with this higher level of mental awareness. For example, there is the novel The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, in which the characters send ‘morph shapes’. These are telepathic thoughts that are outside of the rules in their conforming harshly regulated world. This book has also been on BBC Radio 4.

Occasional, Critical and Political Writing by James Joyce is a two-part essay on Daniel Defoe and William Blake. In it Joyce refers to telepathy. He also paints a picture of domestic life in the Blake household, with the smell of bacon and eggs after the night session in the spiritual realm.

The notes in the back of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man lead you to the sources for the hell-fire sermon of chapter three. ‘Hell Opened to Christians’ by Father Giovanni Pietro Pinamonti SJ has a longer sentence. ‘There was a time, when God called me by so many inspirations, begged of me by so many voices, allured me by so many promises, deterred me by so many threats, and I was deaf to all: now I beg, now I rage and despair…’ James Joyce has slightly changed the words but the sense of inner voices, and Divine voices and forces, remains.

It is what one might call an epiphany in Joyce studies. Could anyone make it into a song or a hymn I wonder, promote and spread the enlightenment by some means?

Inner voices

A Benedictine sister, Joan Chittister, is another one who writes about inner voices. You can see this on her website.

‘Your Voice’, the magazine of the charity Rethink Mental Illness, at one time did light bulb moments. The line was used there, and subsequently referred to in a letter and in a blog.

‘Courage! I must confess all!’ is another powerful line, this from the letter scene in the opera Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky. It is based on the verse novel by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. This was put in the magazine ‘Your Voice’ too. A friend, a local GP, took me to this opera at Glyndebourne, on the first occasion in 1994. The evening we attended was actually recorded for film.

Guru Shree Mataji

‘A smile adds a thread to the fabric of life’ is the epigraph to the novel Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. That text that is baffling and complex and puzzling. This was another light bulb moment. If you want smiles, then come to Sahaja Yoga, where there are many, many pictures taken of the guru Shree Mataji. And in many of these photographs and videos Shree Mataji smiles.

William Blake was an artist and prophet and what he saw was the advent of Shree Mataji. This is what we believe in Sahaja Yoga. Many poets have dreamed of their country but none like William Blake, is what Shree Mataji said in one lecture. This vision we would dearly like to see fulfilled. And the way I see it, the arrival of Sahaja Yoga on a national level could not happen too quickly. The spiritual sessions of Blake going into the Divine realm are a model. There used to be night raids over enemy cities and their industry in the war. And now we could take this to an elevated plane and confront wrong doing and evil forces just like in the hymn ‘Jerusalem’.

Consider this yoga

Even with a lot of reading and diligently doing Sahaja Yoga it is a struggle being balanced and steady, or at least I find this to be the case.

‘God spoke to you by so many voices…’ was a breakthrough for me, and I like to share this with others if they are interested. Stick to the central path and behave well. Do not become isolated, and do consider Sahaja Yoga. It’s odd that Sahaja Yoga and James Joyce are not common knowledge. Sahaja Yoga still is obscure.They both should be better known.