Wren-Lewis, Professor John

Category: Scientist

 

John Wren-Lewis (1923 – 25 June 2006) was a British-born scientist and university lecturer, who taught at universities in Great Britain and the United States of America.

He graduated in applied mathematics from the Imperial College of Science, University of London and in the 1950s and 1960s, while working as an industrial research executive with Imperial Chemical Industries, became known for his publications as scholar, author and lecturer on topics of science, psychology, and education.  After some years, John rose via the management of the chemical giant’s research laboratory, to the post of Assistant Research Controller.

 

During this time, he was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and of the Royal Society of Arts, and served as Chairman of the International Committee on Morphological Crystallography and External Examiner in Technological Forecasting to the University of Loughborough.

He was appointed Distinguished Visiting Lecturer to the University of Leeds, Gunning Lecturer at Edinburgh University, and Stephenson Lecturer at the University of Stirling. Wren-Lewis presented memorial lectures for Bishop George Bell and Dean Vaughan, and was first H. G. Wells Memorial Lecturer at Imperial College.

A developing interest in the death of religion

John developed a strong interest in the problems of the relationship between science and religion, which led to frequent broadcasts and to over 300 articles in leading periodicals, as well as contributions to numerous books.

In his initial years, he played a leading part in the so-called "Death of God" movement in Britain, preferring to call himself a ‘humanist’.  From 1970 he was president of the British Association for Humanistic Psychology, which later became the European Association for Humanistic Psychology.  Books written in those days or to which he contributed include:

• Faith, Fact and Fantasy  - C.F.D. Moule, John Wren-Lewis, D.A. Pond, P.R. Baelz [1966]
• Psychoanalysis Observed  - with Charles Rycroft, Geoffrey Gorer, Anthony Storr, John Wren-Lewis, Peter Lomas. Edited with an introduction by Charles Rycroft, [1967]
• What shall we tell the children? [1971] - John Wren-Lewis

 

And we find articles such as these:

• The Passing of Puritanism I, Critical Quarterly, vol. 5 no. 4, December 1963
• Faith in the technological future, Futures, vol. 2 no. 3, September 1970, pp. 258–262
• Resistance to the study of the paranormal, Journal of Humanistic Psychology vol. 14 no. 2, Springer 1974

In the early 1970s he visited the United States, inaugurating the "Technology and Society" lecture/seminars at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970. In 1971 he became a Regents Lecturer in the University of California system at Santa Barbara.

John moved to the United States in 1972 with his life partner, the dream psychologist Dr Ann Faraday. Ann Faraday is a British-born psychologist, who conducted an experimental study of dreams for her PhD thesis at University College, London. 

 

She was a pioneer of the Human Potential Movement and the Association for Humanistic Psychology in Great Britain.  She was at this time the author of books on dream interpretation.

In 1972 John joined New College of Florida in Sarasota as visiting professor of religious studies and member of the faculty until 1974. Faraday and Lewis also worked with the Esalen Institute from 1976.

The event that changed his life

John and Ann left the US in the early 80s to undertake three years of extended travel to India and the Far East.  They spent 1982 together in Malaysia.

Ann was interested in the research of Kilton Stewart, who had visited the tribes of this area and seen great potential in what he had called "Senoi dream theory".  Similarly Patricia Garfield referred to techniques of the Senoi when describing her work on dreams.  The Senoi (also spelled Sengoi and Sng'oi) are a group of Malaysian peoples classified among the Orang Asli, the indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia.  Earlier, in her publications relating to dream theory, Ann Faraday had cited these two researchers and wanted to see for herself what the Senoi did. 

The stay with the Senoi proved extremely interesting, Faraday and Wren-Lewis found no evidence of the so called “dream control education” described in the research papers.  From what one can gather, this rather shook his belief in science as the fount of all truth, as he started to realise that once a myth such as that created by Kilton Stewart is created, it tends to get cited and spread without the original research ever being questioned or further investigated.  And he realised that Science had become a religion, it was certainly a belief system - with people repeating the myths others had created with no evidence of their own to back their conclusions.  A house of cards, castles built on sand.  Thus he was somewhat primed for what followed.

Ann

In 1983, when he was 60 years old and travelling with Ann, [whose quick thinking largely saved him] John was nearly poisoned to death in Thailand by a 'poisoned candy', and underwent a near-death experience which ‘profoundly changed his world view’, and the course of his life.  Having been a convinced sceptic up to that point, he completely changed his mind.

Strictly speaking , John is describing here a rebirth experience, but he was near death too, so why quibble.

The after effects of the near-death experience

 

In 1984 the couple moved to Australia. He later said of himself that at that moment he was "still reeling" from his experience of a year before.  In Australia, he became honorary associate at the Faculty of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney.

From this point on John both wrote and taught about the meaning of mysticism and a broad spectrum of spiritual teachings. John’s entire reading emphasis changed and where, in earlier publications he had cited scientific papers, in his new papers his list of references included:

• Boehme, J. - Six theosophic points and other writings.
• Meister Eckhart: The essential sermons, commentaries, treatises and defence
• Tibetan book of the dead
• Gould, T. (1963) - Platonic love
• Hardy, Sir A. (1981). The spiritual nature of man
• The thirteen principal Upanishads
• James, W. (1958) -  The varieties of religious experience
• Ramana Maharshi
• Minor anthologies of the Pali Canon
• The universal meaning of the Kabbalah
• Sonnella, L - Kundalini: Psychosis or transcendence?

He also completely demolished any suggestions that NDEs were the product of drugs or illusory.

 

Individual descriptions vary enormously, and many experiences are simply indescribable, but there is an almost universal insistence on ‘something rich and strange’ like the opening-up of a new dimension in consciousness, which subsequently gives the experiencer a hitherto undreamed of level of confidence, equilibrium and creative energy in life – all the symptoms in fact, of sanity rather than craziness.  Anxiety in general, and fear of death in particular, have somehow been dramatically reduced or even abolished by the experience, along with such everyday manifestations of anxiety as boredom, restlessness, competitiveness, acquisitiveness and aggression.  No fantasy due to brain aberration has ever been known to produce lasting effects like these, nor has any drug – and NDEs quite often occur when no drug is involved.

But what is especially interesting is his perspective on how NDEs ought to be both treated and studied.  He started to look on them as exceptionally important  from a psychological point of view, that through them a more rounded, happy, creative and contented individual results. 

 

Given that what he experienced was more correctly a rebirth experience occasioned by poisoning, he was rediscovering something ancient and known - rebirth experiences were always used for this purpose in mystical systems.  Once a person had been judged to be capable of handling the trauma of the rebirth experience, then it was often provoked.  Moses underwent rebirth in the pyramids as part of the Egyptian Mysteries, for example, as such one has no need to experience a near death to experience rebirth.

 Australia and death

For the remaining years of his life, John devoted himself to discovering how to help others to ‘awaken’, as he had.

He was – as most people on the true spiritual path are – wary of gurus and set paths and apparently text book described ‘methods’ that are supposed to lead to enlightenment, whether these were established religious or ‘new age’ or any other money making venture.  With no vested interest in any traditions, he was free to honestly evaluate their efficacy. He concluded that there was little or no evidence of any spiritual system offering a sure road to awakening.

One is led along the spiritual path, one doesn’t drive along it as a methodological route.  In fact the moment one says ‘I want’ one has effectively left the spiritual path, as the total reduction of all desire and ego is essential for any form of ‘progression’.  One doesn’t progress oneself, one is progressed according to one’s destiny – you reach a state conducive to the task you have in the Great Work.

This is why this site shows the activities that have indeed provoked various forms of experience, so that it is easier for people to recognise why they had the experience and also what the experience  is.  But the spiritual path we have shown is simply a series of states, with no methods on how one goes from one state to another.

John Wren-Lewis called upon all spiritual teachers to share their findings in the spirit of scientific inquiry to uncover the factors that bring about awakening. To this task, he dedicated his life until his passing in 2006.  As recorded in the Ryerson Index, he died on 25 June 2006 at Shoalhaven, New South Wales, aged 82 years.

Observations

For iPad/iPhone users: tap letter twice to get list of items.

• Wren-Lewis, John - A Terrible Beauty: Reflections on Love and the Near-Death Experience
• Wren-Lewis, John - THE DARKNESS OF GOD: A Personal Report on Consciousness - Transformation Through an Encounter with Death
• Wren-Lewis, John - The Dazzling Dark - A Near Death Experience Opens The Door To A Permanent Transformation
• Wren-Lewis, John and Faraday, Ann – The Selling of the Senoi