Hello, and welcome to Wise Talkers. I'm your host, Ronald Fel Jones. This is the fourth full episode of the Wise Talkers podcast. And like two of the first three episodes, it features an interview that I conducted more than 40 years ago, when I was hosting a bi-weekly live interview show called World Views on KVMR Radio in Nevada City, California. The first such episode was the inaugural edition of this podcast, a repackaging of my 1979 interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder. The other repurposed interview was the focus of my most recent Wise Talkers episode, a 1981 conversation with death-and-dying trailblazer Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. If you listened to that edition and to my comments in the epilogue to the interview, you might remember that I said in preparing this episode I found myself quite moved by getting reacquainted with Kübler-Ross and her work, and I stated that it seemed to me to be a valuable exercise to view the many interconnected crises and predicaments we are facing today, individually and collectively, through the lens of what I termed “the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross radically enlightened understanding of death and dying.” And in closing I said that I will likely be exploring this idea in future editions of Wise Talkers. So I restate all that now to introduce this new episode, which I've titled Integrating Spirituality and Psychotherapy with Dr Ron Mann.

Integrating Spirituality with Psychotherapy. In our interview Ron talks in depth about the life-changing mystical experiences he had during that 1976 Hawaii workshop, and he also relates a number of other mystical experiences that he’s had since then, even in his counseling sessions with people in his psychotherapy practice. He also relates an out-of-body experience he had before his transformative Kübler-Ross encounter, when he thought he was drowning, in a scuba-diving outing. On a personal note, I just want to say that, despite the often other-worldly experiences Ron recounts, relating incidents that many people would no doubt find hard to accept, I found Ron to be not only authentic in presenting these experiences, but gentle, and humble. In addition to explaining how these experiences helped form his spiritual view of life, he also reviews such phenomena from a scientific perspective. All of which I found fascinating. So make of them what you will, but – just as with the ‘radically enlightened’ views and extraordinary experiences of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross – I think we do ourselves a disservice if we simply dismiss them out of hand. They deserve to be taken seriously, and, I believe, to the degree we are willing to consider them with an open mind, they hold great potential to positively affect our lives, and even our world. So that's the spirit in which I invite you to listen to what's ahead.

My interview with Dr. Ron Mann conducted on KVMR radio in 1981…(music) That's exactly what I saw. Ron Jones I'm sitting here with Dr Ron Mann, who is nearing the end of a weekend stay in Nevada City, and maybe you could tell us, Ron, what it was that brought you up here to Nevada City in the first place. Ron Mann For this particular weekend, I came up to do a one-day class on how to work with children, families and adults who are in the dying process. The experience was called Dying in the Process of Awakening. Ron Jones That's an intriguing title. Is a lot of your work in that exact area, working with children who are dying? Ron Mann Well, some of it. My practice down in Beverly Hills is pretty varied. I work with people from all aspects of life children, families and adults, and some of them happen to be dying, and some of them happen to be living. I say “happen to be dying” because I believe that a person in my position is really available to work with the whole spectrum of life, and dying is just part of that. So it doesn't seem like a special thing to do necessarily, but it is part of what we go through and it's interesting and, I think, helpful to be with people during that aspect of their life. Ron Jones So it's clear, I guess, from the title of your talk and what you're saying here that you are among those who believe that life is a continual process beyond death. Ron Mann Yeah, very much so. It's been my experience that our consciousness continues on and on and on, and that to become totally identified with the physical body and the material plane as the only reality is very limiting, and it ends up creating a lot of unnecessary fears, too. Ron Jones How has this been your experience? That's an interesting phrase to say that it continues after death. Clearly you haven't died, at least not in this current existence. Ron Mann No, I'm still alive and well, although I did have an experience a number of years ago where I was scuba diving and I ran into a series of misfortunes in which I found myself in about 50 feet of water without any air, and I thought my buddy was actually about 30 feet below me with some other people, so I didn't expect anyone to show up and help me out. Turned out, he was about 10 feet above me and he attempted to give me some air by exchanging regulators, which really wasn't working too well, and I wasn't about to breathe because the only thing I had as far as air was that which was in my lungs, and he was hitting this little valve called a purge valve, which pretty much sent out oxygen. So there were bubbles everywhere and I found myself having a strange and interesting experience where I was moving out of my body and I was right next to myself watching this whole thing and I was fascinated with the fact that I was going to drown. And I had the thought, you know, of all the ways to die, it looks like I've ended up this one going to drown. And I became fascinated with the process of drowning and I was going through probably what was going to happen, in which the water was going to come in, and because it was salt water, it would probably make me pretty sick and I'd probably throw up and then I'd probably black out. And there was not an ounce of fear during all this time. I was just watching the whole thing go on as if it was happening to somebody else. It was clearly happening to me, and yet there was more of me watching it than being in the experience. I didn't have any sense of panic at all. Ron Jones So it wasn't really a function of splitting your consciousness. You totally were outside yourself and none of you was experiencing the panic or the pain. Ron Mann Well, there wasn't any panic, because that wasn't what was happening. There was me watching this happen to my body. Ron Jones What was your body doing? What was the physical movement of your body like? Can you remember? Ron Mann Well, my body was actually okay because I hadn't taken in any water. He was actually in the process of getting me up and eventually popped out of the water. We got up at the top and as soon as I got on the surface I came back into my body and into my personality and went depressed because I was feeling so stupid for having made whatever errors I'd made to get myself in that situation. That was one experience that was helpful and useful to let me know that there may be something else going on. Ron Jones How long ago was that? Ron Mann That must have been probably around 1974. We're talking about seven years ago. Ron Jones Now let me just ask was your belief structure before that that death was death? Or did you already have inclinations towards believing in continuous life? Ron Mann I had inclinations but I didn't know. I was open to possibilities. I've read a lot of mystical literature. Things like Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan have always touched me and it seemed to make sense to me. And yet I didn't have those type of experiences where I would know. I just would read it and say it sounds right. The bulk of what went on to help me change my point of view was the time that I spent in Hawaii with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and I had an array of experiences over a four-day period that totally convinced me that our consciousness is something that continues. Ron Jones Can you describe any of those experiences? Ron Mann Sure, yeah, I'd be happy to. I was in this workshop that she does, I believe she calls them Life in Transition, and there's kind of a sense of holistic health in those workshops that you have some control over your destiny and over your physical health and stuff. And I found myself becoming increasingly sicker as I was there. For the first two or three days I was developing strep throat. You know, on one level is kind of embarrassing to go to a holistic health center and get sick and kind of be dwindling on the vine there. And one morning I was in my room trying to heal myself doing different types of meditations and visualizations, the kind of thing that Carl Siminton talks about. Ron Jones He's the famous cancer researcher, right? Ron Mann Mm-hmm. I was visualizing my throat being healed and stuff, and I found myself having an array of experiences that were more than a fantasy. They weren't a dream because I was clearly awake. They were more like being in a vision, and the quality of the images and the quality of the actual experience was so vivid, it was being out of time and out of space and being in a different time-space continuum. And it started with finding myself in a shower that was filled with tiles, and it was a long row of showers, and I found myself walking down these showers, looking up and realizing that I was small in relationship to the showers, and then it kind of struck me that I was a child walking in these showers. And then the awareness just came to me and it kind of bowled me over that I was in the gas chambers in Nazi Germany, and I started to cry and feel rather overwhelmed with the recognition that I felt like I had been in that place and had died. Now, whether that indeed is a past life experience or not, I don't know, but I know the impact of that experience on me was tremendous, because I felt that the point of being negative or being angry had no value. Along with that experience was a sense of being so completely unified with all of creation, with all of the universe, all of the business about that we're really one. I had a peek at that, a moment of being in a cosmic conscious space where everything was all in one and the same. So I saw so clearly that by my thinking that the other guy is the enemy, that the other guy somehow is taking something away from me, and that if I could do something to stop them, you know I could kill them, or if I could be angry with them, that in fact all it does is directly affect me, because we're all one. And it wasn't an intellectual kind of knowing in that moment I feel and be in that state. And then in the afternoon, when somebody was coming to do some what's known as energy balancing, working on the chakra system and doing that type of thing, I still had my sore throat. My sore throat actually came and went and I asked if they could help me out and they said they would try. And in the course of doing that balancing I found myself repelled back into a state where I was in laboratories in Germany and I was getting tortured and I was terrified going through this experience. Ron Jones Had you had other in your life, other vivid illuminations or whatever you want to call them like that. Ron Mann Nothing like that. No, this was the first, and it was rather terrifying to be in it. Matter of fact, somewhere along the line I thought, my God, this must be what psychosis is, this must be what schizophrenia is all about. And a part of me was kind of intrigued, being a psychologist, to be in that state, because I worked with many people who had been in that kind of state. And then another part of me was saying wait a minute, wait a minute. If I'm thinking that I'm that crazy, there's no way that I can be that crazy, because if I was really crazy, I would be so much in the experience there would be awareness of it, right? So I thought this must be a mystical awakening. Ron Jones Did this coincide at all… I know Elisabeth talks about the gas chambers and so on in some of her talks. Was there any triggering going on from her having lectured about that? Ron Mann Possibly. Because I think somewhere along the line she had spoken about it, so it's highly possible. The part that relates to the business about not being the body was during this whole time there was a purging of my personality. That's often talked about as the dark night of the soul, and all the negative aspect all what Jung talks about is the shadow and the personality was coming out, all the fears and angers. Ron Jones During this four-day thing? Not during just this experience, right? This had to do with the sickness and all I take it. Ron Mann Well, this was part of it. Yeah, this was the first two days of the four. The last two were the more beautiful, but the first two were parts where, if I closed my eyes, these kind of negative images would come. I'd see arrows coming and I was afraid to close my eyes. It felt like in the movie Jaws. You know the soundtrack and they'd always play this kind of deep sound when you know Jaws was approaching. Well, my heart was like that. I'd close my eyes and it'd be this boom inside and I figured something's about to happen, but I didn't know what it was. Well, that stuff would keep coming. And one night I had to get up rather early because the next day we were going to Haleakalā for Good Friday sunrise, and we had to get up at four o'clock in the morning and I've always been kind of practical about getting up. I need my sleep. And I couldn't go to sleep because I was so terrified. And finally I got annoyed and because every time I closed my eyes, all this stuff would start to come. And I got annoyed and, I don't know who I was talking to, but I found myself saying, listen, I don't care, do what you want to my body, but I’m leaving. And this ball of white light came in. It was like from outer space, in my consciousness. Everything was dark, this ball of white light was coming directly towards me. I merged with the light. The light moved away and I looked back upon my body lying down there and I knew without, any shadow of a doubt, that it was not my body and that people could come and they could mutilate my body, they could rip it to shreds, they could do anything they wanted to and they wouldn't touch me, that there is no way that I could be harmed by that. Ron Jones Sounds powerful. Ron Mann It was, it was. Ron Jones Have you ever had any experiences of that intensity before or since? Ron Mann Well, since then I've had a whole array of experiences. They continue to come in my life again. I live to some degree in a mystical reality. I've been meditating for eight years and if you meditate long enough, that often opens up rather deep, profound mystical states that now don't even seem all that mystical. They're part of my normal, ordinary waking state of reality. The line between this reality, or the veil between this reality, and the other reality for me isn't so much other anymore. It's just part of the whole, and there's times when we're more connected to spirit, there's times when we're more connected to this material, physical plane. Ron Jones How does that relate to sleep for you, is the transition between sleeping and waking also thinning out? Ron Mann Yeah, very much so. I'm intrigued with dreaming. Often I will go to sleep with the intention of trying to be conscious while I'm sleeping, and sometimes that works and sometimes that doesn't. There's times when I'm totally aware of my dream state and I'm aware that I'm in a dream state and then I had some control of it. The most intriguing thing that has given me a sense that there's no veil, that there's no difference between waking and sleeping. I've had three experiences. One was I was asleep and I was dreaming, and I was totally aware that I was dreaming and I was also totally aware that in about a moment I was going to wake up. And it was a very nonchalant kind of impression and feeling because I thought, well, it doesn't really make much difference. You know, not one side is much more important than the other. This one's dreaming, that one's waking, and there was no big deal either way. They're both places to be. And recently and I think this last experience was triggered off by the fact that I'm moving up here and I've had to let go of everything that I've created and am attached to in Los Angeles. I grew up in Santa Monica and I've had a practice for a number of years and I've sold my home, I've sold my practice. I found myself amazingly attached to my BMW. I mean, it was more difficult to give up a car than it was to sell my house. Ron Jones Why? I know this is a bit off the point, but why did you give up your BMW? You can have those here too. Ron Mann Well, it was on a lease and I thought it would be more useful to have a four-wheel drive car during the winter, and I'm trying to lower my overhead too, so I got a Subaru four-wheel drive. Ron Jones I thought maybe it was part of a conscious effort on your part to experience that attachment and letting go. Ron Mann No, when I got it, I knew it was going to be temporary anyway. So I was sleeping, and in this dream I was crying, grieving, I think, for everything that I was letting go. And as I started to wake up, there was never a moment of separation between sleeping and waking. I was totally aware in my dream that I was crying and I just continued to cry and I opened my eyes and just continued to cry and cried for a while and knew I was grieving for what I was giving up and that was alright. And then, when I stopped crying, I went back to sleep. See, that's what I believe the moment of death is, that it never stops, our consciousness just keeps going. And as it keeps going, we are aware that, “there goes the body.” Ron Jones Right at the moment of death. Is that how you think it happens? Ron Mann Well, I think we have the possibility of moving in and out all the time, certainly when the body goes. I think we're aware that the body goes. Now, part of it too, I think, depends upon how much preparation we have. There are reports that oftentimes people die and they're a little confused that they have died because they don't know that something is going on after that. So if they're still aware, then they must still be alive. But I think, if you know that that's what's going on, to me, dying can be probably one of the most phenomenal experiences of our life, because it is such a powerful transformational moment from one state of consciousness to another. Ron Jones Yeah, I've had that thought myself. In fact, I remember once thinking that one could look at life as a preparation for death. How analogous do you see the death state to the sleep state? Ron Mann Well, a couple thoughts come to mind. In some ways, I suspect, it can be very similar to the degree that our state of consciousness, I believe, determines what our state of consciousness will be when we die. All the talk about heaven or hell, I believe, is a projection of people's state of consciousness. I don't believe that there is a fixed hell. You know, that if you do things, you go to hell, or you hang out in purgatory for a while and then go to hell. I think that our attitude about our life, and our belief about how things are, determines what our experience will be when we die and move into that particular spectrum. That's very similar to our dream state, because our dreams are our own creation. We are all writers and artists and we create when we're sleeping, and what we create are these symbolic images and representations of our feelings and they come out in dream states. I think it's possible that when someone is dying, that they might be a little more alert than in a dream state, because oftentimes I think dreams tend to take us in the unconscious as a way to work out stuff. Ron Jones As opposed to… Ron Mann Moving into the superconscious. Ron Jones Uh huh. Do you think that sometimes a dream state takes you into the superconscious? Ron Mann I'm not sure a dream state takes you into the superconscious, but I think it's possible to be in a superconscious state while you're sleeping. Ron Jones And when one is in that state, is that the same state as death? Ron Mann Probably, yeah. I have to speculate on that one. Ron Jones Right. I guess it's all speculation for us currently mortals. I'm interested in going back to the four-day experience in Hawaii. You described the first two hellish days, and I assume that the white light thing was sort of a turning point in that. Ron Mann Um hmm. Yeah, it got very much better after that. On the next day we were going up to Haleakalā and I was still pretty frightened because I didn't know what was going to happen. But I figured there was no way to be on Haleakalā on Good Friday sunrise with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross without something very powerful happening. So I was frightened. Ron Jones She's powerful alright. Ron Mann I didn't know whether I was going to see God or the devil. And as we were going we were all in this little van, about 15 of us. We had to break up into various cars but I was fortunate enough to get in the one where Elisabeth was in. And I sat down next to a woman who I hadn't spoken to yet in the conference. There were about 60 of us, so I didn't have much time to socialize and I was kind of nervous. So in order to deal with my anxiety, I started making kind of social chatter and found myself actually in about the first three minutes spelling out everything that had been going on. And she was quite understanding and sympathetic because she had been involved in a lot of work with spirituality, and we were chatting about different things. And as we were talking I started to hear this singing, and I was listening, and I was wondering is that the whine of the engine and I'm hallucinating off of that, or is it something else. And I turned to this woman. Her name was Pam. I said, Pam, do you hear something? And we're both real quiet and we listen. It turned out there were about 13 people in that van who heard it. There was a choir of spirits singing in high soprano. Ron Jones A choir of spirits… Ron Mann Spirits, yes. Ron Jones How was that determined, that it was a choir of spirits? Ron Mann Well, I guess group consensus. A bunch of people hear something and there's no one singing in the car and I assume that it came from spirits. I had the same experience following that, I was working with a little boy who was three years old, who had a brain tumor and he did die, and when I was at the funeral I heard the same sound, and so I assume that that's where it comes from. On the astral plane, there are incredible orchestrations of music and choirs and if you just tune into the right frequency, you can hear it. Everything has a sound as well as a color. Ron Jones I'm just guessing that there are people who are listening in our radio audience when this is played that are just saying, ah, come on, that's ridiculous. You were hallucinating, or you were all hallucinating, or it was the whine of the engine. What do you say when somebody is brave enough to say that to you after having related such an experience? Ron Mann It's possible. I don't feel like I have to convince them about it. Oftentimes, too, what I'm struck with is a scientific explanation of that. This stuff sounds far out if we talk about it from an esoteric point of view, but if you look at modern physics it's not all that far out. Ron Jones Can you talk about that a little bit? Ron Mann Modern physics has come an interesting step or two. Fritjof Capra, who wrote the Tao of Physics, I had the opportunity to speak with him a while ago. I was at a conference where he was at and I was asking him about all this stuff. I figured he'd be able to help me understand it. And what he's come up with, and modern physics has come up with, is that, as we have refined our instrumentation to look at the smallest particles in the universe, it turns out that there aren't any, that atoms do not exist, that what we have are waves that are in motion and these waves move with certain frequencies. And, depending upon the frequencies, it creates a probability for these waves to be, at a certain point in time, a time-space continuum, that becomes a particle. There are only probabilities that they're going to show up, and that's what makes things seem solid. Like this couch we're sitting on. It's obviously solid because it's holding us up, and yet really it's a wave pattern that has a certain vibration and a certain frequency. Karl Pribram, who's doing some of the most innovative work in neuropsychology, has done tremendous amounts of exploration in how the brain functions, and he's a very well-established, reputable scientist, and what he has determined is that the brain is essentially a frequency analyzer and that as the vibrations come in, it registers in certain parts of the brain and gets decoded and then transmitted into the nervous system and we can understand what the stimuli is really about. So we have a reality that says we live in a domain and an area of frequencies, and frequencies are also light, frequencies are also sound, frequencies are also color. So what looks like it's pretty far out and pretty esoteric turns out to be, from a physical point of view, finer, subtle realms of motion, of waves and frequencies. And that because the human organism, if we can refine our nervous system to the degree where we can tune into these subtle frequencies, we can see things. Ron Jones Okay, so we're talking about the fact, or the theory, or whatever. You're postulating that that personality is also energy. I guess the first thing that hit me when you said that was which one is primary. In other words, is consciousness primary to energy or is consciousness a form of energy? Ron Mann That's a good question. Ron Jones I know it's not exactly one that is easy to answer or well-defined. Ron Mann I never thought about it. It's kind of like the chicken or the egg kind of thing. Give me a second here and I'll come up with something…(pause)… According to my understanding of the various levels – and this is esoteric teachings and stuff – there are three planes. We have the physical plane, the astral plane, and the causal plane. In the physical plane things are of gross matter. In the astral plane energy is the predominant medium, and in the causal plane thought exists. So before in creation there was God and God had the thought to create the universe. So there was the thought, and the thought was certainly consciousness, and out of that thought came the manifestation, the energy, and then the physical. So I would say that consciousness transcends energy. Ron Jones Taking that three-level system, each goes down to the third as well, because obviously there's thought here in the physical plane. We all know that, we all think and there's obviously energy. But I guess as you go up you drop off one of those things each time. Is that an accurate way of saying it? Ron Mann On our journey back to God, we essentially get to the point where we're pure consciousness, and we're not any of the others anymore. Ron Jones Okay. Well, this is definitely esoteric, for sure. Why don't we move back to the physical a little bit. And at the time of this four-day experience, if I am getting my dates right, it was just about the time, either just before or just after, you got your PhD. Ron Mann No, he's more a little far out of the spectrum, but I also had some rather straight traditional teachers too. Ron Jones I was out of school for about a year. Fortunately. Ron Jones When you were going through your process of getting your PhD, what did you think you'd be doing with it? What was your career goal before all these experiences? Ron Mann I can guarantee you I didn't have any idea that I was doing what I'm doing now, or certainly moving to Nevada City… Ron Jones But it was in some psychological area, right? Your PhD. Ron Mann Oh for sure, my training has been as traditional as one can get. I was trained down in Los Angeles and I had the good fortune to have clinical experiences in the top psychotherapy centers in Los Angeles. I trained out of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, out of the Kennedy Child Study Center, which is part of St John's Hospital, and I was trained by some of the best psychoanalytic psychologists and psychiatrists in Los Angeles. People who trained in England with Laing and people like Michael Balint, Melanie Klein. Ron Jones Laing, is that R.D. Laing? He's not exactly a traditional… Ron Mann What was your motivation to go through that, to do school and so on? You're not where you thought you were going to be. Was it just a career sort of choice? Ron Mann Oh no, I was always very dedicated to being a psychologist. When I was in high school, I knew I'd be a psychologist, and I have always been propelled to help people. I have been intrigued with the understanding of how things work. I think we basically pick a profession that serves us. There's no question in my mind that I quite consciously chose psychology because I knew that it would force me to stay alive and growing, because if I was going to stagnate I wouldn't be able to help the people that I was seeing. And because of the nature of the process, where it's very intimate, and truth facilitates growth, and if I didn't stay honest I would lose my effectiveness and I would be forced to leave it, and I didn't want to become obsolete or not survive. You know, survival helped motivate me. Ron Jones Sure. Okay. Well then back to the original question. When you got your PhD, a year before the Kübler-Ross experience and perhaps even before your underwater near-death experience, what areas did you see yourself getting into? Ron Mann I figured that I'd probably end up having a private practice. My father's a physician and works for himself, so that was kind of embedded as a model, and I knew that it works and I believed that one can survive working for oneself. It wasn't a concern that I couldn't do it. So I just naturally gravitated to setting up my own practice and I found myself in Beverly Hills and I thought well, this is an alright place. Maybe I'd move to Brentwood, it's a little quieter there. But basically I figured I'd have a private practice. I continued to work with children and families. At one point I seriously considered becoming a psychoanalyst. I was intrigued and respected the belief system and the conceptual understanding of human behavior and psychodynamics, didn't realize how limited it was. But I didn't feel at all personally moved to be with the people who were doing that type of work. I found an incredible lack of love, a deeper sense of compassion, and what I now know to be a lack of soul connection. So it left me dry a little bit, although I thought about doing that. So I figured I'd be pretty straight-laced and do traditional work, which I was doing, working before I became totally in private practice in a mental health center that was very traditional and did much of the training in Los Angeles. Ron Jones How soon after the experience we talked about the four day experience in Hawaii did that reflect itself in your practice and what you actually did with the clients? Ron Mann The next day. I was amazed because I was going through this experience and say, on Wednesday I was thinking, my God, on Monday I have to be back in my office, functionally, and I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do. Ron Jones I can imagine that must have been a… Ron Mann It changed my whole reality because I was in a different space and I couldn't be something that I wasn't. So the first day, I'll tell you what happened the first time in my office, and my first client is a woman who is about 22 years old. She had anorexic nervosa, which is a rather serious disease in which there's a delusion about the body. People think they're very fat when in fact they're not, and they will not eat, they will throw up anything that they take in and people literally starve themselves to death. And so she comes in and she sits down on my couch and she starts to convey to me the the problems of the day. You know, what's going on… and I'm looking at her and all I see is a luminescent ball of light shining on my couch, and there's this voice, and I'm sitting there amazed. Intrigued and amazed. And every now and then I come out of that state and I see her sitting there in her physical body, and she's looking at me rather strangely, probably wondering what's going on with him? Because I'm sure my eyes looked a little strange or something. Ron Jones Just a point of curiosity, when you saw her as a luminescent ball of light, were you also hearing her? Ron Mann Oh yeah, I heard he, but there was no body. All I saw was her light body. Ron Jones And that's actually what your eyes saw. Ron Mann Goodness, okay. Ron Mann So then, we had our session. Nothing particularly helpful, I think happened with her. In fact she went on to see somebody else, which I think was helpful, because I was not in the state that she needed someone to be in to help her. My next client comes in. It's a man who had been rather actively psychotic. He had been hospitalized because he tried to blow up a local supermarket. He was on a fair amount of antipsychotic medication. I'd been seeing him for a fair amount of time. I came in and he sat down. He came in and he sat down and his basic wish in life was to be taken care of by his mother. He had little motivation to do anything. If he could stay home and be fed by his mother, that would have been his greatest wish. So we're talking and as we're talking I find myself feeling forced into sleep, and it was a strange experience. It was the first time I had that one, and I was thinking, I wonder if I'm digesting, like I ate too much or something, and that didn't seem to make any sense. And then I saw visually a stream of energy coming through the space between him and me, at me, if was… if you look at concrete on a hot day and see the waves coming up, just like that, except it looked like a river. It was just coming directly from him to me and I realized that there was something from him forcing me kind of into myself. And so I thought, well, I'll play around with this, I'll do a little power move or something that. First I thought, oh, I'll have a little shield. So I imagined I had this little shield and I was going to direct the energy to the shield and deflect it from me, and for a moment I felt a relief and my head cleared and I woke up, so to speak, and I felt very much present. And then it got stronger and I started to go deeper in myself again. My eyes were being forced closed. I was having much difficulty keeping my eyes open. So then I thought, well, I'll just do a power move and I'll shove it back in him. So I sat up and I took a deep breath and got myself together and tried to push this force back into him. And then I cleared again. And then I saw bricks flying through the air coming at me, and then I had these imaginary arms. Actually, it was my astral arms knocking them away and I thought I better do something with all this. I just can't sit here like this. So I took all those images – and this was really a key in shifting, using my intuition to understand what people were telling me, trying to hear the words. And I said to him you know, it seems to me that you have a lot of blocks against my seeing what goes on inside of you. Are you aware of how much energy you put out to keeping people away? And he said, “I know, I've been doing it all my life.” And it stopped just like that and we began to talk. In that moment the nature of the therapy shifted and he began to acknowledge that he really would like to have relationships. So that reality change, for me, helped me see more clearly through my intuition what really is going on with people and the images are just a form that they come in sometimes and the images become symbolic representations. Ron Jones Do you still have that strong a visualization? Ron Mann Sometimes, yeah, sometimes it's a… I regard it as a gift. Sometimes it comes in a visual form. Ron Jones That's really fascinating. Ron Mann Yeah, it's helpful because I think the biggest job of being a therapist is to be able to have such a sense of compassion and understanding that you can be in that person's experience. So that has helped me to know what's happening with people. Ron Jones How do you be in that person's experience without, for instance, if it's a dying child or something, without getting incredibly morose about it and taking it home with you, so to speak? Ron Mann Well, if I didn't have the state of consciousness that I have, I probably would, but I don't believe it's the end. And since I don't believe it's the end, I can be with a tremendous amount of suffering and not be totally caught up in suffering. Ron Jones But, I take it you're not saying that you're not caught up in it to some degree. I mean, it must be highly difficult. Ron Mann I'd have to be very cold and insensitive not to be a part of that. Ron Jones So you just try to put it into a bigger picture and realize that it's the person going through their process and death isn't death and things like that. Ron Mann What I do is to try and be fluid enough with my own consciousness is that I will move into somebody's experience and perhaps feel it with them so I can understand it, and then I'll move out of it. It's like merging with someone by choice and then stepping back and getting out of their experience, right? Ron Jones That sounds a lot like what psychics will say if I ask the same question, merging and then disengaging. Ron Mann Mm hmm. We all have the capacity to do that. Ron Jones Well, let's continue with your professional life. The term that you, before we started here, said that you use for what you do is conscious psychotherapy. What I'm wondering is, before we talk about that specifically, what is the opposite, or what is non or unconscious psychotherapy? Is that everything else? Ron Mann That's probably normal, ordinary, linear, consensual reality. Consciousness for me means a certain awareness about who we really are and the capacity to use that awareness of who we really are to be with one another so we can commune with each other. We can touch each other and relate with each other on a spiritual plane as well as a physical, material plane. And basically that's the difference between what we might do when we're in a conscious state and what happens when we're not. Because I'm aware that I have a certain kind of presence that can create an atmosphere and environment. I take total responsibility for how I am in any given moment, knowing that that is creating the ambience for the work that's going on. So if I want to try and help somebody learn about love, the only way I can really do that without just talking about it but really do it is I have to be in a loving state. So I have to do whatever I need to do in my own life, on my own human development, to get through whatever keeps me from being more loving. And if in a moment I can be with somebody and really be in my heart, then I can create that experience with them so they can know what it is not by talking about it, but by being in it with me and hopefully there'll be some transference of energy that will touch that person and help draw them into that space at the same time. Ron Jones So conscious psychotherapy… what I'm getting is, you're referring to you being conscious. Ron Mann Which helps the other person. Like the old saying, it takes one to know one. Ron Jones Or practice what you preach, is also an old phrase that came to mind as you were talking. Well, that's interesting, so okay. So then, one thing that is real strong to me about that is that yourself as a very active participant, as opposed to sort of the traditional model of the psychiatrist who sits there and says ‘mm hmm’ a lot and scratches something on a pad. Ron Mann I'm amazed that oftentimes I will get people who've come to me and they will say that they have been with a person who functions in that mode for two years, and the person literally never said a thing. And I'm amazed that people would… Ron Jones What a way to make a living. Ron Mann Well, I would think it's more difficult than what I do, because there's such a lack of presence. I find what I do pretty exciting and invigorating. I think that the other would be fairly draining. Ron Jones Yeah, for sure, but it just seems well, I guess there is a whole belief structure behind it and I'm sure there's also value to doing a lot of listening with it. Ron Mann Oh, there is yeah, and I could give you the whole rationale behind that one too… Ron Jones Letting that work out their own process… Ron Mann Right. Okay, well, to go further into what you actually do, you said that your interest is in sort of uniting spirit and psychology. Why don't you just talk about that a little bit and relate it to conscious psychotherapy again. Ron Mann Well, what I've found as I've become more and more involved in my own spiritual understanding and exploration is that our soul is not a hypothetical construct that people have made up in order to make themselves feel better, that the soul really does exist. You know, the soul is indeed that personal aspect that reflects the divine. So really, God is inside. Ron Jones Is the soul the same as the spirit? Ron Mann Mm-hmm. Sometimes the spirit refers to more than just the individual spark. Like the ocean and we're the drop in the ocean. The spirit is the ocean and the drop is the soul, but every drop contains all the same aspects of the ocean. So we're a reflection of the divine and that we have the capacity to refine ourselves, to get to know who we really are, and in that state we are the most exquisite beings that we can possibly imagine. I'll look at people and well see who they really are, and I'm amazed. I'll look at people who, physically, are not attractive. They may be overweight or one thing or another and I look right past the body and what starts to appear out of the body is the most incredible, exquisite form that I've ever seen. There's times when I'm with people I feel like I am in a museum with Michelangelo sculptures, because the beauty that gets expressed, the soul is perfection. And we have the capacity to touch that perfection within ourselves. It is the truest, deepest, authentic self that we have and if we learn to be honest and learn to trust our most inner nature, we can begin to express that. And psychology, I think, in many ways is terribly misunderstood. People are frightened by the notion of being in therapy, because it has taken on the belief that you're supposed to be sick if you need that. I think it's such a shame, because I'd rather work with people who feel well, because we can do so much more at the creative end of the spectrum. Psychotherapy is the most refined tool or technique, if you want – it’s basically a technique – that I know of to work with the personality, and the personality is like a vehicle for the soul, just like the body is a vehicle for the soul. We need to have ways of expressing ourselves. We need to have a vehicle for walking around and dealing with physical objects. Most of us have tremendous overlays of conditioned personality. We are brought up to be socialized and we're taught that we shouldn't say certain things and all of that. So psychotherapy can help people to refine who they are at the level of their personality and as you begin to understand your expression at a personality level and at a physical level, you can come from a place that I call essential personality. Ron Jones Sensual? Ron Mann Essential. Ron Jones Oh, essential, okay. Ron Mann Yeah, big difference. Essential personality, which means that you are expressing your truest aspect of yourself, and you can feel it. It will resonate in your body. It'll be in a certain kind of flow, sometimes called the Tao, and as the energy starts streaming through your body, you're connecting with yourself in the most authentic kind of way. Well, this allows for the natural unfoldment of the soul. Basically, I've used psychology and psychotherapy for myself as a way to connect with my soul. I've meditated a lot too, which has been invaluable. But I know all the work that I've done on myself through therapy has cleared away all the fears, all the ego stuff, the jealousies, the envy, the insecurities, the feelings of omnipotence, overinflation. All that stuff just gets in the way, and as we just keep clearing that stuff out of the way, what gets left is the soul. Ron Jones Do you feel that you have cleared all that stuff away? Ron Mann Not all of it, but I think… well, I know from where I started. I've cleared a lot. There's still more work to be done. Ron Jones Doesn't the process of living often put in more stuff too? In other words, can't you be pretty clear for a while and then go through a set of experiences that throws a lot of junk in there again? Ron Mann Yeah, I think that's the challenge of life and why we're here, is that the junk that comes are the opportunities to find out more parts of ourself that aren't clear and to strengthen our soul connection. There's an interesting analogy that was given to me about the earth plane and the value of the earth plane, because I often wondered what's the point of even being here. Why do we come? There’s gotta be better ways to doing it than this, and what I found out was how precious life is, especially on this plane, because of the density and the difficulties here. Of all the various planes, the earth is one of the grossest ones in my understanding, and that it also provides the opportunity to strengthen our spiritual connection to such a degree because it's so difficult. For example, if we were Olympic swimmers training and we wanted to swim 100 yards, if we could swim in molasses and do a world record when we got in clear water, we'd be so fast you wouldn't believe it. Ron Jones Yeah, that's a good analogy. I guess it's like a baseball player in the on-deck circle putting rings on the bat to make it heavier. Okay, so then you see psychotherapy as a way of clearing up the channel, so to speak, to make, as you put it, the soul connection. Ron Mann It can be. It depends upon the consciousness of the person who's using that. If you believe in spirit and you believe in the soul, you can facilitate that. If you don't, a lot of times what happens – and as a side, note, this is why I'm interested in sharing this information because many experiences are misunderstood. So people will come sharing spiritual experiences and they will be told that they're crazy. Perfect example a little boy, 11 years old, came to me. I know his father and this little boy was having mystical experiences. He was finding himself spontaneously being pulled into a state of consciousness that was transcendent of time and space. He was in a place where he heard a voice. It was often laughing. He felt like he didn't have control over his physical body and his breathing was somewhat irregular and it scared him. He wanted to know if he was going crazy. He came to me and says listen, am I like Sybil? I have like multiple personalities and stuff? And he started to tell me what his experiences were and he shared with me a dream that he had when he was three years old. That has been a reoccurring experience. Do we have enough time to tell the whole dream? Ron Jones Well, yeah, I don't know how long that dream is… Ron Mann About five minutes. The dream was he was in the ocean and there was a voice laughing at him saying I have something in store for you. And he couldn't get out of the ocean and it scared him. And I was struck by the incredible wisdom and truth of this little boy who didn't know what that symbolically meant. But in all the ancient scriptures the ocean is often regarded as spirit. And he was in the ocean and he couldn't get out of the ocean. So I helped him, through a guided meditation, come to terms with what it was, and so he would know that he wasn't really crazy. I told him straight out that he wasn't crazy and he was so connected to his spiritual nature. So we did this visualization in which I said okay, you're in the ocean, find some way to get out. So he saw a dock. I said I want you to get onto that dock and you can do it any way you want. If you want to use magic, that's fine, because you can do it. I'm really telling him that his consciousness is transcendent of any physical reality. So he got himself on the dock and there he was, on the dock in the middle of this giant ocean, no place to go. So I said okay, what are you going to do now? He says, well, there's a plane that's going to come and pick me up. So a plane came in, swooped down, picked him up and he was flying and my eyes were closed and what I tried to do was to merge with him and open myself up and allow my own intuition to guide the experience. So I saw an island and I said okay, okay, you're going to fly to an island. He said yeah, I know, I already see it. So we were so tuned in, we were in the same place. So he goes to the island and he stops, he lands, he's on the beach and I said there's a path and the path goes into a forest, and there will be a meadow inside the forest, and in the forest there'll be a house, and there's a wizard that lives in that house, and this wizard is your teacher and he's going to tell you something very important. So he goes into the house and the wizard tells him that he has to learn how to, essentially, be in the world. You have to learn how to work, you have to learn how to take care of the earth and grow plants and all those things.What he was being told is you have to become grounded on this plane in order to make it. And so he had his time with the wizard. And he started to come out, he spontaneously said this – and I was so touched by, again, the wisdom and the truth in this little boy – he said, you know, as I'm walking out, I see that there's all kinds of dangerous things all over the place, you know. But I know that if I stay on the path, I'm safe. And so, as we were, he was saying I don't think I really want to leave. And I knew he had to leave because that was like staying so into his soul connection that he had to really incarnate, he had to come and be of the earth. So I said, why don't you go back and ask the wizard if you can stay? And he did, and the wizard said no. And so he ended up going to another island that had a house and everything. Essentially, that was the earth, that was life. And it turned out that he started speaking with his sister and his sister had many of the same experiences. I saw this boy three times. We painted one picture that symbolized the whole thing – and I haven't had to see him since. This little kid could have been told he was nuts. He could have spent years in therapy, totally misunderstood. Ron Jones It's kind of scary to think how many people did exactly that. Ron Mann Yeah. Ron Jones Well, I'm afraid we're out of time. In fact, we're going to have to sort of hurry to get over with before the tape ends, which is unfortunate. This has been a real enjoyable experience for me and I wish we could go on. Since you're moving up here, maybe we can get together when you are. You're moving up in June, right? Ron Mann Yes, I'll be here in June. Ron Jones Just out of curiosity – and maybe we can end with this – how did you pick this area to move to? Ron Mann Well, initially I think I was drawn here because of the Ananda community. I have a very deep connection with Yogananda, and they do as well, and the area is beautiful and it also seems to be a center. Many people are being drawn here, and I have been too, and time will reveal why I'm here and what my life is about, but I certainly am very eager and feel the tremendous amount of love that is in this community. I look forward to being a part of it. Ron Jones Great. Well, we're glad to have you, and thanks for sharing this time with me, and let's do get together again. Ron Mann I'd love to.(music)

I do not expect, nor do I desire, that all my guests on Wise Talkers embrace such spiritually based views. I look forward to engaging with well-informed people holding all kinds of perspectives on life and the world. Talking and listening to people who subscribe to different views, even strongly conflicting views, is a great way to learn, not to mention a critically needed yet, sadly, increasingly rare practice in today’s highly polarized world. We need genuine dialogue now more than ever. And I will be doing my best to engage people is such dialogues here on Wise Talkers. And I look forward to listener participation in these ongoing discussions, eventually through live-streamed episodes taking listener call-ins. And for now, via the comment sections for each episode on wisetalkers.com. Okay, so I mentioned in the introduction that I have some potentially exciting news to share about my recent re-connection with Dr. Ron Mann, and that is… we are talking about doing a new interview! If we can make that happen, which I’m pretty sure we can, I am excited about talking to Ron about how his views may have changed in the 43 years since our original interview. I would love to know more about his relationship and experiences with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Ron is also a devotee of Paramahansa Yogananda, so perhaps we’ll discuss how his practice of Kriya Yoga affects his healing work. We might also talk about how his spirituality impacts his work as an executive coach and organizational development consultant. Ron has also coached sports stars and teams, and he’s written a book tiled The Yoga of Golf. So the spiritual aspect in sports would be an interesting topic. And I am quite interested in hearing about his citizen diplomacy work with the Soviet Union in the mid-‘90s, and how he views Russia today, and especially its war against Ukraine. As you can see, Ron has an amazingly diverse background. And if we can arrange this new interview, exploring Ron’s thoughts about the rapidly changing, volatile times we’re living in should prove most interesting. So stay tuned for this and other upcoming editions of Wise Talkers. You can hear all episodes on our website, wisetalkers.com, under the Episodes link in the top menu. You’ll also find transcripts for each show, and a Comments section where listener feedback and participation is welcome and encouraged. And to stay fully informed about all episodes and other Wise Talkers developments, click the top-right link on any webpage to subscribe to the podcast. Thank you for listening, and I hope to see you here again soon.