Fabiana Fondevila - I am particularly interested in some statements of yours I found on the Internet in which you mention how important it is that a psychotherapist embody the qualities he is trying to help his patients achieve, particularly peace and happiness. My question is: do you think all therapists should engage in some sort of exploration of Eastern or other relaxation techniques or spiritual practices (meditation, yoga, etc), or are you just saying they should be mature individuals who have achieved some kind of peace within themselves? Also, is it enough that they embody and radiate these qualities, or do you think they should work on these spiritual qualities with the patient, suggesting some kind of alternative therapy along conventional treament?
Jean-Marc Mantel - A technique or practice is no more than a tool which expresses a quality of being. Without such a background, a technique is an empty shell. Different ways point toward the same dimension of an impersonal presence. Presence gives life to a technique. The technique then appears as a continuity of being, and can help to taste that which does not belong to the technique, the being itself.
In fact, just the qualities of radiance, peace and presence are enough to induce a deep transformation during a talk or a therapeutic session. But in some cases, practical tools might help, for instance to experience the openness and transparency, also at a physical level. The experience of silence and quietness should deeply transform not only the mind, but also the body. The body then becomes an extension of the silent formless presence.
Western therapies help to develop a strong discriminating ability, but Eastern approaches are more contemplative and facilitate the realization that you, as witnessing consciousness, is not the observed body-mind, that the gaze which looks at the body-mind does not belong to it.
In practice, a therapist should avoid being stuck in a stereotyped approach. His/her sensitivity must guide his/her approach. Then the situation will tell him/her how to awaken an understanding, an awareness that suffering is created by their own mind, and that liberation of suffering needs a clear vision and deep listening of the mental, emotional and physical levels. What you are looking for is not faraway, it is the closest, so close that you cannot look at it, but just be it.
FF - Since this quality we are talking about - this presence, this radiance - is not a frequent one, is there any specific training which therapists could or should receive in order to be able to embody and emanate these qualities ? In other words, can people – and therapists in particular – be educated spiritually as well as mentally ?
JMM - Beyond a professional interest, a real motivation should come from a deep desire for truth. It is this desire for truth which brings maturity. Maturity unfolds with the clear understanding that you are what you are looking for, that beauty and truth are the expressions of what you are, and that separation is no more than a mental creation. But, indeed, a training for therapists should teach how to see and listen, more than what to see and listen. The art of seeing and listening is an art of perceiving without interpreting, without concluding. When the perception is free from memory, there is openness. Openness brings the sense of freedom that you are looking for. Freedom cannot be found at the level of the personality, which is fully conditioned, but means the freedom from yourself, the freedom from what you think you are, the freedom from your own mind.
FF - Do you see any contradiction between psychiatry´s great dependence on the use of drugs to treat mental disease and the spiritual dimension which you are trying to instil in the profession? Are both dimensions (drug therapy and spiritual enlightment) equally important or is one truly healing and the other merely instrumental?
JMM - The dominant use of drug therapies in our days is the reflection of a short term perspective. In fact, when taking a drug, there is a temporary reduction of suffering. But a drug does not heal. It helps only at a symptomatic level, like taking some aspirin for a headache does not heal the cause of the headache. People use drugs, because they are not aware that suffering starts in their own mind, and that only a transformation of their inner perspective can improve their way of life and being. Believing that an abnormality in the neuro-transmission is the cause of a mental crisis is believing that the cause of suffering lies in the brain. But it appears to be evident that a deep relaxation will transform the brain neuro-transmission, and that the abnormalities of brain transmission can be transformed by a change in our inner attitude. For instance, when you start to accept yourself, to accept your past as it was, and the present as it is, you can experience a deep quietening down, at a mental, emotional and physical level. So we can say that drugs are the last resort when there is not enough maturity to understand the real causes of suffering and to start a change in our inner attitude in front of ourselves and the world. A real healing should pull out the roots of suffering which are located in the mental representations of ourselves and in the dominant habit of refusing : refusing things as they are, refusing people as they are, refusing ourselves as we are.
FF - What is your biggest criticism against conventional psychotherapy?
JMM - The different kinds of psychotherapies and, more generally, therapies, are the answer to different needs and maturity levels. These therapies answer a specific need which can occur at a specific time of your life. So it would be stupid to reject such psychotherapies, if they are an answer to your present need. One of the main contributions of a conventional psychotherapy is that you can have the feeling, sometimes for the first time of your life, that someone is really listening to you, accepting you as you are. It might be an important experience toward a deeper self-acceptance.
But one day, a conventional approach won't appear useful anymore, because it does not really challenge the ego's perspective which created the suffering in the first place. So I won't speak of a criticism of conventional psychotherapies, but rather a limit. Patients must listen to their feeling and intuition, when a therapeutic approach does not bring them clarity in the understanding, and inner peace. It might be time for a change; maybe it's time for a more meditative approach to their own functioning, which will improve their quality of vision and listening, and bring them to the direct experience of a non-thinking vision, which sees things as they are, and not as they would like them to be. When there is no more judgement, there is freedom, not a freedom of acting, but a freedom from the old patterns of personality, a freedom from themselves.
FF - Do you think psychiatry can only aspire to cure illness, or can it also aspire to help patients achieve happiness?
JMM - The only illness is to take ourselves for what we are not : a concept, a mental representation. Psychiatry should fully consider that happiness and peace are the ultimate goals of each one, including the psychiatrist. It is only a defence to consider that the other is separated from ourselves. You should clearly understand yourself, see the mechanisms which maintain suffering and an immature perspective, in order to see the same mechanisms working in your patients. In fact, the patient and the therapist are one, but ignore this essential oneness. Revealing oneness is revealing the one object of the inner quest, the discovery of who we are and the full achievement of inner peace and joy in our daily life.
FF - There seems to be more and more people taking psychiatric medication nowadays, and not all of is prescribed by a doctor. For example, all those people suffering from the modern disease known as "panic attacks" use tranquilizers quite readily, even in routine fashion. The same can be said for people who have trouble sleeping. Do you think people undergoing such symptoms – anxiety, panic, even depression – but without a clearly identifiable mental illness would be better served by taking a yoga or meditation class instead of using psychiatric drugs?
JMM - In most cases, taking a drug is an escape. Suffering cannot be solved by escaping from it. It is only when suffering is fully faced and accepted, that it can disappear. Usually, we don't accept our feelings, thoughts and acts. Most of the time we are in a state of refusal, without being aware that this habit of refusing maintains and increases suffering. Acceptance is not resignation. It points towards a presence to things as they are, a simplicity of being, free from inner conflicts. Doctors are also accountable since they communicate to their patients the belief that a drug can heal, and keep in place a dependance both on the drug and upon themselves. But this process is not really conscious. They don't know of other tools. They have yet to really explore in themselves the root of suffering, and cannot propose something that they have not experienced. You can see in others only what you have seen in yourself. You can help to free others only from what you are already free from. If you don’t believe in "chance" anymore, you know that people will go to the therapist they need at the right moment. When their sensitivity increases, they will naturally find more sensitive therapists, who know from their experience that the source of suffering is in themselves, and that the awakening of what reality is, and of what reality is not, is a main step in the maturation process. In fact, most of the troubles of anxiety and depression can be transformed and ameliorated by better self-understanding and the practice of a body-mind approach, such as yoga and meditation, without the use of any drugs. A drug should be used, like morphine in the case of terminal cancer, to relieve pain but not to alter the quality of awareness that is required for a conscious death.
FF - Do you see any evidence of modern psychiatry making room for spirituality, or do you see this happening in the future, and why?
JMM - Sooner or later, psychiatry will understand that you cannot consider a being without including a vertical dimension, an awareness of a timeless presence that dwells in ourselves. Healing needs a global vision. How can you treat an organ, for instance a liver, if you don't consider all the elements that are connected to it, including emotions, frustrations and spiritual longing? An organ is not separated from wholeness. Likewise a mind cannot be separated from the inner need for truth and freedom. As soon as psychiatry will consider all parts of the being as one, it will become an extension of the wisdom that we are looking for, a wisdom of living, acting and being.