Born and living in France, Jean-Marc Mantel is a psychiatrist, laureate of the Medical University of Paris (1981). Having completed his medical studies and specialization in psychiatry, he studied metaphysical and spiritual understanding at a Parisian esoteric school.

He then became interested in the message transmitted by spiritual masters, inspired by East Indian tradition of wisdom and self-knowledge, such as Krishnamurti and Ramana Maharshi. He studied self-inquiry, meditation and yoga under the guidance of a contemporary spiritual teacher, Jean Klein, himself a former Central European medical doctor, who studied many years in India the non-dualistic tradition of Advaita-Vedanta, which aims at reviving a deep inner union with the true Self. He is the founder of the International Association for Spiritual Psychiatry.

He is also the founder and coordinator of the Internet forum "Spiramed", set up in the summer of 1995 at the Saint Johns University, New York, on spiritual approaches to medicine, psychology and psychiatry, and the co-listowner of a recently set up list on spiritual approaches to suicide.

Dr. Mantel keeps up a private practice as a psychiatrist, and continually integrates the spiritual dimension in his therapeutic approach.

He conducts seminars regularly in France, Switzerland, and some other European countries, dealing with self-knowledge, and the spiritual approach to yoga and meditation, and is the author of a number of articles on self-understanding, spiritual psychology and psychopathology.