Sometime during his 30s, Ron Mangravite attended a party where the conversation centered around a topic called bioenergetics. As he listened, he felt a familiarity with the concept, though he’d not heard it before, and found himself saying “1 can do that.” So they all formed a circle, holding hands. To everyone’s surprise, some people began to fall over when he did “that.”
Though he’d had an unusual childhood, marked with serious illness, Ron had, up to that point, lived a fairly conventional life. After completing collegiate studies in chemistry, he held positions in industry as a chemist, and has operated his own chemical consulting firm since 1973. But it was his “taste for the infinite” which began to play a larger role for him after that pivotal party. He became active in parapsychology, investigating phenomena of all types, and was the consulting parapsychic for The Amityville Horror, as well as many other hauntings.
He has been featured on TV shows, magazine articles (New York Magazine, Fate, Psychology Today), and in the book, In Joy of Touch, by Dr. Russ Rueger (Simon and Schuster, 1981). In that book, in a chapter on psychic healing, Dr. Russ Rueger discusses his own experience with Ron in an energy circle, again with one participant vomiting, another shuddering and weeping uncontrollably.
As his understanding evolved and deepened, he widened his circle as teacher/mystic/healer to include workshops and meditation groups all over the country, and week-long intensives with Foundation, his group for consciousness and spiritual growth. Among his many gifts, however, the ability to concentrate, generate, and transmit energy for transformational and healing purposes remains a standout.
Recently, at the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship International retreat at Carleton College in Northfield, he conducted two retreat-long workshops, as well as evening sessions. During one evening, he demonstrated an energy circle, and for many it was an astonishing new experience. The next day the campus was buzzing about that energy flow. One participant asked Ron to explain what had happened to her, and why she had felt pain, heat, and emotional instability during the circle.
In part, his explanation to her was that during the exercise the flow of energy can open barriers between levels of knowing, and with this opening there are often specific, dramatic effects, depending on what area gets opened. He continued that during and after an energy circle, the many parts of the self communicate more fully than ever before, and awareness becomes tuned to an unfamiliar level of perception, beyond the typical five senses. “One genuine experience and knowing of this energy can set you on a transformative journey,” he said.
Jan Thatcher Adams: Ron, can you explain more about why you use this energy in your group and individual work?
Ron Mangravite: I like to start all groups with an experience of the physical flow of energy, so they can understand they’re open to it, have the ability to experience it, and can very quickly learn to create the same flow themselves. It’s a gateway to the unfolding of the mystical experience, making the participant more porous to the universe.
When you use the term “energy,” what is it you’re talking about?
Mangravite: Modern physics is in the process of codifying the behavior of the life blood of the universe, and to put such terms into a single universal identity which unites phenomena and matter and clarifies the behavior of this pulsing stuff. All energy, whether in the form of electricity, light, gravity, heat, etc., is all the same phenomenon from a mystic’s point of view. For the mystic, the experience of all energy is just lived and is not separated into different classifications. The result of fusing with this energy is earth-universal patterns of understanding.
Do you experience this energy as a constant in yourself?
Mangravite: I have learned I can amplify and manipulate it in myself, and then in others, change the nature of it, and expand the frequency spectrum. For instance, if I move it down, it becomes shamanistic. If I move it up, it becomes more spiritual. It’s like radio frequencies. If you tune to different energy spectrums, you become aware of ranges of universal information.
What do you mean by “up” or “down”?
Mangravite: “Up,” or spiritual, means a higher vibrational rate, and “down,” or more shamanistic, means a lower vibrational rate, but you could just as well use left and right or any other of a range of emotional or physical situations and descriptions. For instance, there are many different systems and names for the range of energy manifestations in humans, but they’re all the same thing, just different pieces of the same circle.
For example, the term “chi” is often used to describe this energy as it manifests in purely a physical way in the body, but it is still connected to the spiritual force, like sliding up a seamless musical scale. So if you tune awareness to chi, the body is enhanced. In the same way, at the next level, the energy would be seen as charisma, or elan vital, and at the next level, psychic energy. If you tune awareness to the spiritual level, the energy is of the universal God force.
What are some of the other systems that use the idea of energy as part of their cosmology?
Mangravite: Well, the Theosophists describe functional energy layers about the body (ethereal, astral, etc.), in which each layer has a specific set of functions. And the Yogics focus on flow of energy to the 6th and 7th chakras. Sufism speaks of tasting the flow from the universal heart. Kundalini energy arises from the psycho-sexual center, then develops a circular flow. A similar sort of circular flow can be described for tantric exchange. Each of these systems superficially looks different, but with study, whether the flow is clockwise, counter clockwise, upward, downward, male, female-all are the same. It’s just that any particular tradition of teachers picks the part of the system that works best for them. But each of these systems just cuts into a segment of a circle, and they all end up in the same place. In fact, though we often think of energy flow as a straight line, like electricity in a wire, all energy flow is ultimately circular.
What kind of process did you go through to learn to use this energy in working with people?
Mangravite: When I first made an aware connection to the psychic-physical structure of the energies that permeate the universe, all sorts of physical phenomena started happening. My hands were outlined in light in photos, I could change the temperature of electronic thermocouples in controlled experiments, move ping-pong balls on tables, light up light bulbs, expose film, etc. So I became involved in parapsychology, working on as many as 20 haunted houses over four years, because I could feel the energies present, and, if asked, dehaunt or dispel the energy. Also, in this work I used a lot of psychometry (the ability to get information from inanimate objects). So I got good at investigating and dehaunting houses, because the body and energy sense told me what the perceived patterns meant.
Also, I discovered the important fact that when in a porous state to these energies, I had to learn not to interject my own imagination into what was coming. And with that piece in place, I gradually moved on to working with people, and discovered I could affect all the same parameters as with inanimate objects.
Can you talk a bit about how you use these energies in healing?
Mangravite: First off, any healer must be familiar with the nature of their own linkage to universal energy. Specifically, if their opening to this flow is small, they need to conserve their own energy somewhat. If the opening is large, conservation isn’t necessary, just the ability to modify the flow. Also, a healer can get drained if they enter into the pattern o( others. The best way to heal is to perceive the other’s issue without having to be it, though this isn’t always possible.
If I am asked to heal a specific problem, I select a frequency from the white noise of energy to utilize for that particular situation, and then let it flow. If I’m asked the more general request-“Heal me”-I can run into difficulties, as it’s a problem to sort out the frequencies. And there is a difference in the mechanism used, depending on the problem. If it’s only an issue of a weakened body, a simple infusion of chi can take care of it. However, if it’s a chronic problem, in which a body cannot heal itself, then I find I have to integrate myself into their energy system, then attempt to modify and re-balance “our” body.
Often, it’s useful to view this work as removing blockages, or dropping the boundaries against opening to the universe and eliminating fear. Fear blocks out the universe, and when this energy flow removes the illusion that has kept one from true knowing, there is catharsis and healing.
Do you have any thoughts on what happens to this vital energy in a person after death?
Mangravite: Life and death are parts of the same song (pattern of awareness), which in the physical transformation is just transferred to different magnetic mediums, as in committing a voice to tape, then to CD, then to video, etc. The The energy, which was always there, is never lost. It remains a part of the eternal circle of the universe.
