[medved]

In our age of the world, hearing ANY kind of a voice which is not actually there is a serious problem. In particular, a voice which is inside somebody's head, which cannot be gotten away from or escaped, would be almost entirely impossible to disobey, and that is seriously dangerous.

A number of linguistic formulations, such as "to hear and obey" in English or the very words 'hear' and 'obey' being the same word or nearly the same word in many languages (e.g. slushats and slushatsya in Russian where the one is simply a reflexive form of the other) are primordial and hark back to what Julian Jaynes called the bicameral system.

[AndrewC]

hearing ANY kind of a voice which is not actually there is a serious problem.

"Pop Goes the Weasel"

[BikerNYC]

In our age of the world, hearing ANY kind of a voice which is not actually there is a serious problem.

I guess the question is whether or not the voice "is not actually there." We presume that the voices that tell people to kill are "not actually there" and that the people "hearing" those voices are delusional. I would think the same presumption should attach to those folks who "hear" voices telling them that their sister will be okay, that they should make a pilgramage to the holy land, that they should go into this or that profession, or other seemingly innocuous or even positive action.