British GQ Matthew Manning Interview

Matthew Manning is a facilitator of spiritual healing.

 

   

This is the pathetic introduction of the May 8, 2014 British GQ article about Matthew Manning:

 

For 50 years, Matthew Manning has been Britain's most haunted.  Harassed by spirits since the age of eleven and apparently gifted with the power to heal cancer the 'Poltergeist Boy' is not your common-or-garden kook.  Having withstood the scrutiny of doctors, academics and every rigour of the scientific method, Manning claims his abilities are from beyond — and beyond dispute.  Believe him or not, he claims he's the real deal.  And what's more . . .  He can prove it

 

Sadly, this paragraph may reflect the mentality of many of the magazine's readers regarding 'unexplained phenomena.'  The article begins with an offering of a coterie of celebrity names "of some of those who have consulted him."  The events of strange phenomena in Matthew Manning's early life are described in The Link (1974).  In 1999 another autobiography chronicled how Manning became a healer: One Foot in the Stars written with Tessa Rose.  Manning also is the author of The Healing Journey (2001) and Your Mind Can Heal Your Body (2007).

 

The title of the article by Robert Chalmers is "An Interview with Matthew Manning: Poltergeist Boy" with Chalmers referring to himself as being among those "who approach apparently supernatural phenomena with scepticism."  In this case, the reference to the British equivalent of the word 'skeptic' seems adequate as Chalmers expresses himself as willing to contemplate what may be perceived as 'unexplained phenomena' and mentions the many witnesses; otherwise, a perhaps more appropriate word to describe a skeptic unwilling to consider the evidence is 'denialist.'

 

Manning's uncanny experiences as a teenager include witnessing objects moved by an unseen force, automatic writing and automatic artistic renderings.  Chalmers described one memorable incident:

The signatures of dead people — several hundred of them, all in different hands — began to appear, roughly scrawled, on Manning's bedroom wall.  The first was signed by one Robert Webbe, a 17th-century figure who left a message that indicated, as Manning puts it, that he "seemed to have no idea that he was dead."  On one occasion, witnessed by Dr. Owen and others, Derek Manning ushered the whole family into the garden, with his son's bedroom roped off, leaving a pencil on the bed.  When they returned after ten minutes, another inscription had been added.  Some of the names, which were systematically photographed, appear in historic parish registers; others were of unknown provenance.

From One Foot in the Stars: "The 'spirit graffiti' of Queen's House: 503 signatures, with dates, appeared on the walls in my bedroom between 31 July and 6 August 1971.  Many of the names were those of local families and in some cases the accompanying dates were those on which the named persons died."  (Vernon Harrison photographs) 

 

 

The conception of 'dead people' may convey to some people an idea of unconsciousness upon a human being's physical demise at the end of an Earth life; however, a spiritually aware person understands that consciousness continues in another realm of existence.

 

Matthew recalled that one night at the age of 15 "my bed started to vibrate and the feet rose into the air.  Then the head end rose and I was suspended six inches off the ground."  The 'poltergeist'-type phenomena occurred in two family residences and in the dormitory of Matthew's boarding school, Oakham in Rutland.  He commented about the commencement of interims of automatic writing:

"I had always imagined that the automatic writing, whatever it was, was probably flotsam that was coming out of my unconscious.  I didn't care, though, because it seemed to stop the poltergeists.  But when I began writing in Chinese and Arabic, as I did, well that did freak me out a bit.  Because those languages were not, so far as I was aware, present in my subconscious."

When one considers the variety of extensively documented cases of transcendental communication among other cases of psychic phenomena and 'remote viewing,' the perception of a shared Superconsciousness and subconscious mind among humanity becomes apparent.  Words expressing this Force include 'Christ Consciousness' and 'Oneness.'

 

Chalmers recounted some of the memorable events from the youth of Matthew Manning.

 

Schoolmate Jon Wills observed Manning produce a number of pictures, including a drawing in the unmistakable style of Albrecht Dürer.  "I can think of no conceivable explanation for that in terms of orthodox physics," Wills told me.  "Matthew did not have the artistic ability to produce anything of that kind.  And he never knew who was doing the drawing until the end, when it was signed."

 

Manning was approached by the publisher Colin Smythe, who is now agent to Sir Terry Pratchett.  After leaving school he started work on a book about his experiences called The Link.

 

"This was around the time 'The Exorcist' was released," Manning says, "and Uri Geller was becoming very famous.  A friend of my publisher knew David Frost, and I was taken to tea with him at Claridge's in 1974.  I was just 19.  We didn't have a television at home.  I didn't know who David Frost was, but he decided that afternoon to give an entire show over to me."

 

 

In the course of the half-hour broadcast, Manning appeared to channel diagnoses from a dead physician called Dr. Penn who, working from the birth date of a member of the audience, accurately identified a young woman in the audience as suffering from kidney problems and heart disease.  He had brought professional-looking drawings that he said he'd psychically received from artists including Picasso and Aubrey Beardsley, even though all friends and family confirm Jon Wills' assertion that Manning is no artist.

 

 

Manning was sent out on tour, and proved to be something of a psychic all-rounder.  He appeared to be able to project and receive numbers telepathically.  He could bend spoons like Uri Geller.

 

"The whole thing became a ludicrous circus that centred around Geller and myself," Manning says.  "The two of us were constantly being compared.  But Uri Geller is streetwise in a way that I have never been.  You have no idea how it feels  to be 19 in the middle of a room full of cameras and aggressively skeptical journalists, who sit you down and ask you to make something inexplicable happen on demand."

 

I have a tabloid clipping from this period which describes a laboratory experiment in which Manning was presented with a row of light bulbs wired in series, and asked to switch them on using only mental energy.  The headline reads: "Psychic Can Only Light Two Lamps."

 

"That's right," says Manning (who, on one occasion, was reported to have blown every fuse in a Madrid department store).  "The amazing thing about that experiment, to them, was that out of nine light bulbs I failed to light seven."

By 1976, he says, "I began to ask myself whether I really wanted to spend the rest of my life on that circuit.  I was sick of the whole thing.  I decided to quit.  I went out to India at the beginning of 1997.  I hired a taxi driver to take me to the Himalayas, through Simla, and ended up in the small mountain village of Narkanda, where I stayed the night.  I set my camera up to photograph the sunrise and . . .  I know this will sound mad to you, but I had this sudden, extraordinary sense of being at one with everything that was around me: the rocks, the mountains, the trees and the sky.  I got this overwhelming sense of something that I can only describe as God.  I didn't even take a picture."

 

In the article, no awareness is indicated that incidents such as 'poltergeist phenomena' may occur in proximity to specific individuals with the purpose of presenting a pattern or microcosm that can expand people's spiritual awareness about life if they are able to develop an understanding of the context of the events.  Considering the events chronicled in Matthew's life, similar patterns may be observed manifesting in relation to other contemporary experiencers or 'channels' of occurrences sometimes referred to categorically as 'paranormal' or 'psychic phenomena.'  Last week's blog article identified news articles about others who have recently been the subject of mainstream media reporters, including trance channel healer Ray Brown and clairvoyant/clairaudient mediums Sally Morgan, Tony Stockwell, June Field, and John Edward, among others.

 

Readers of this blog are knowledgeable about documented cases of so-called 'poltergeist phenomena,' 'channeling' and spiritual healing that are the topics of such articles as "The Poltergeist In Retrospect (with audio and video clip links)", "Some Recordings of Channeling" and "Spiritual Healing".  My selection of subjects has focused on detailed firsthand accounts, such as Matthew Manning's.  What all the 'poltergeist' cases have in common is that the manifestations were impressive enough that the witnesses were compelled to chronicle their experiences.  It is through the analysis of this vast web of intriguing phenomena that people can comprehend the Mind and nature of the all-knowing transcendental source Consciousness for life throughout the cosmos.

 

The British GQ article presents Matthew's commentary about the sensation of heat sometimes noticed during healing sessions: "The only way I can describe the feeling is that I am channeling some kind of conditional love."  He explained: "Whether you call it God, cosmic consciousness, universal love . . . I think we're all talking about the same thing."

 

When treating cancer sufferers, as he often does, says Manning, "I always tell people: I am not a miracle worker.  Let me work with you two or three times.  If there's no improvement I am not going to carry on endlessly.  We have five possibilities.  One: I can't do anything and I cannot say, even after 35 years, why what I'm doing hits the bull's eye with one person and fails to hit the board with someone else.  Two: whatever I do may slow the progression of a disease; remember, people often come to me when all other possibilities have been exhausted.  Three: you might find that healing stablises the condition for a year, or five, or longer.  Four: you might find the problem remains but is greatly improved.  And the fifth: I always aim to knock the disease right out."

 

 

When he began working as a healer Manning says, "I was a complete atheist.  It's the experiences I have had that have persuaded me there is something out there." 

  
 

"I have this idea," he says, "that there is no such thing as time; that time is a man-made concept.  If all time was simultaneous, as I believe it to be, it would mean that there is no such thing as past, present or future.  I think that would explain certain phenomena.  I think scientists may one day come up with an explanation that has little to do with spirituality and everything to do with quantum physics."

 

Robert Chalmers reported: "Prominent surgeons and consultants send patients to Manning and vice versa."