Episode 3
This third full episode of Wise Talkers features an interview with psychotherapist Dr. Ron Mann that I conducted in 1981. Dr. Mann’s life and career was greatly influenced by a workshop he took in Hawaii in 1976 with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. The immediately preceding episode of Wise Talkers featured my 1981 interview with Kübler-Ross – and this 1981 interview with Ron Mann is a natural sequel.
In our interview, Ron relates some extraordinary mystical experiences he had during his 1976 workshop with Elisabeth, and a number of others as well, including during his therapy sessions with clients. He explains how these phenomena integrate with his spiritual worldview, and he also examines them from a scientific viewpoint.
Dr. Mann describes how he incorporates psychotherapy into his spiritual practice – and vice versa – both with his patients and in his personal life.
Finally, I share some thoughts on the view of life put forth by both Ron Mann and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, provide a quick review of Ron’s activities since our interview, and talk about my evolving vision for this podcast.
Dr. Mann makes a good argument for becoming aware of the existence of phenomena beyond our normal sensing. A current interview would be enlightening. Will his beliefs from the 1981 interview have changed?
Yes, it will be most interesting to see if and how Ron’s beliefs have changed. I’m also looking forward to hearing his take on today’s world with all its interrelated crises and accelerating pace of change. And lots more! He’s had many life experiences and interesting ventures since our first meeting. Stay tuned….
Would be interesting to see how his thoughts have developed. I do grow weary of “spiritual” speculation though, can be interesting I suppose but for me spirituality is about ethics first. Neither Jesus, my tradition, nor the Buddha, as far as I know, put much emphasis on that, perhaps because their traditions had already “contained” that knowledge, as much as it could be, it was already “common”, and what really mattered was the working out of lives so as to conform with the absolute as they understood it. The one, the mystical, was always in service of the other, the practical. The “pure” mystics have traditionally been supported by a community of believers doing the practical, ethical, stuff. It wasn’t first about ideas but about a “way” of life, which was necessarily communal. The ideas came later, from experience, the Marxist notion of “praxis” (later developed into a coherent theology by some troublesome Latin American priests). For Jesus that meant I believe the delicate integration of love and justice. These are communal activities, when the Roman army is bearing down on you and you don’t have a pot to piss in nobody gets “saved” on their own and politics and spirituality become inseparable. In our individualistic, capitalist, society we have different challenges but the same tools we have always had.
Quite an erudite exposition, Paul! Thank you for giving this so much thought. While I may need to study and contemplate it a bit more to make a fitting response, I certainly agree with the thrust of what you say here. I’m not quite clear if you are also saying that what Ron Mann talks about, and reports his experience with, is in some way in conflict with your view here…? He uses his mystical awareness directly in dealing with his therapy patients, which takes it out of the private experience realm into his work and relationships with other people. What do you think? Am I misunderstanding something here, either with what Ron related or with your comment? :)
Thanks Ron, no conflict that I’m aware if, just caution when dealing with individual spiritual experience or the afterlife. I have had myself one notable “out of body” experience which was the result of trauma (staring at myself dispassionately from the ceiling…similar to Dr. Mann’s I suppose), but I’m hesitant to call it mystical, in the sense of giving insight into another realm, rather than a door into the power and significance of the trauma itself. But on the other hand, I believe that any traumatic, painful, experience is grist for the psychological/spiritual mill if we allow it. And in the West for the past century or so, ever since the much hyped “death of god”, for good or ill psychology has largely replaced the religious or spiritual language of previous generations and so I think we need to take care when trying to talk about what for most of humanity has always been the ineffable.
Perhaps it’s all semantics or just where we place our attention, but in terms of the afterlife I think, in the words of Iris Dement, I’ll just “let the mystery be”.
Great song!
I just re-read your original comment, and this second one too. I certainly agree that we can be so enthralled with speculation about an afterlife or other ‘mystical’ realms – out-of-body experiences, telepathy, near-death experiences, reincarnation, and/or a host of others – that it becomes something akin to escaping the hard practice of applying spiritual wisdom in everyday life. Compassion, empathy, love, service.
Yet I also think that sensing/exploring mystical realities and striving to be a better fellow human being can appropriately and productively be pursued not only side-by-side, but intertwined with each other. And as you say, the former in service to the latter.
Well said! And it’s a communal endeavor, lots of room for exploration. I do sometimes think of such things as the “shiny objects” of the spiritual endeavor, useful to draw us further in perhaps, and I think it’s important to emphasize the core relationship, one in service to the other, and not stop at the just interesting, which is easy to do because, as you indicate, the work of applying any insight is difficult (worthy of another dialogue!), and the challenges facing us will require strong medicine indeed.