Incidents in the Life of Matthew Manning

 This is how Matthew Manning described this series of Polaroid photos taken during his stay with Professor George Owen and his wife in autumn 1977: "The first image . . . is a perfectly normal shot of me looking into the camera lens.  In the second shot mistiness is forming around me as I begin to meditate and feel tingling in my hands.  By frame four white concentric rings of light have virtually obscured everything in the room, including me."

 

 

One Foot in the Stars (1999) is the autobiography of Matthew Manning, who wrote the book with Tessa Rose.  Matthew's account of incidents encompassing 'unexplained phenomena' reflect occurrences in the life of an individual person that form patterns of experience making perceptible a Force interacting with living creatures.  This Force encompasses a shared subconscious and Superconscious Mind.

 

In Matthew's life, the sequence of unexplained phenomena that began with 'poltergeist events' encompassed automatic writing.  Matthew commented about the occasions of automatic writing: ". . . I was not consciously aware of what was being written.  I had to read it through afterwards to find out . . . I received messages with more substance once I began addressing questions to specific deceased individuals.  I would put the name of the person I wished to communicate with at the top of my sheet of paper, and then write the question."

 

He also received messages in foreign languages and images in the various styles of many deceased artists.  Matthew recalled:

 

Some of the drawings contained signatures, others did not.  Among the signatures were the names of Paul Klee, Thomas Rowlandson, and W. Keble Martin.  Later, drawings purportedly from Picasso, Beardsley, Goya and Dürer would come through my hand.

At the end of 1973 Matthew learned about the unexplained phenomena manifesting through and in proximity to Uri Geller.  After Matthew and his parents watched a TV documentary about Uri, Matthew's mother asked him if he would try to bend a metal object.  Matthew found that spoons and other metal objects would bend in proximity to himself. 

In 1974 Matthew participated in a series of experiments at Toronto for the New Horizons Research Foundation.  As it seems no association with mediumship cases was considered, Matthew supposed the power being manifested was something idiosyncratic to his own mentality: "During the ten days . . . I bent or split between 20 and 30 objects."  Electro-encephalograph (EEG) testing and 'Kirlian photography' of Matthew's fingertips were among the experiments.

Among the 21 scientists invited to the first Canadian conference on psychokinesis in Toronto was physicist Professor Brian Josephson of the Cavendish Laboratory and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.  A Daily Mail article by Peter Lewis quoted Josephson as commenting about 'psychic phenomena': "They are mysterious but they are no more mysterious than a lot of things in physics already."

In October 1974 Matthew was the evening's guest on the British television show "The Frost Interview."  Matthew was seen automatic writing health diagnoses from Thomas Penn.  What Matthew describes as "enormous media interest" was generated by the TV broadcast.  His next appearance on BBC radio's "Start the Week" brought him a "tirade of invective" from one of the participants and this made him aware that there would be people who would react with antagonism toward him.  Matthew wrote:

I would come to learn that people who fear the unknown do react in this extreme way, and the last thing they want is honest, reasoned discussion.  It is always easier, and safer, to reject something that cannot be understood than to keep an open mind about it.  Thinking afresh can produce a domino effect, and once a long-held belief system is questioned, other notions held to be dear or true also have to be re-examined.  I feel sorry for anyone who feels threatened by what another person represents

Matthew's autobiographical book The Link was published simultaneously in Britain, Germany and Holland in 1974.  The British edition was subtitled "The Extraordinary Gifts of a Teenage Psychic."  Matthew wrote about this period in his life: "My immediate future was mapped out among a promotional trail of book signings, interviews and radio and television appearances." 

It was arranged for Matthew to take part in experiments with German psychical researcher Professor Hans Bender.  There were tests with electrical and electronic gadgets yet one incident in particular shows the complexity of the phenomena being explored.

He gave me a name, which I did not recognize, and told me that the artist in question was a woman.  After 20 minutes I had drawn a face of inexpressible sadness with a black heart set in its forehead, drooping eyes and down-turned mouth.  Tears ran down its left cheek.  On its otherwise bald head were two single hairs.  Above these I had written the words "Harliquin out of love"; incidentally, this spelling of 'harlequin' is incorrect in both English and German and I have no explanation for it.

 

When Bender saw the drawing he demanded that the filming stop.  He told us that the pseudonym he had given me was that of his daughter, who had been under a severe emotional strain since the breakdown of her marriage.  That morning she had described her feelings to him and had used the word 'harlequin' to characterize them.  According to Bender, in her psyche love and hatred had collided.  He asked me to go with him to his house.  A bigger shock was awaiting us there.  We went into the sitting room to find his daughter dressed in the costume of a harlequin, her face painted in a precise imitation of the drawing, her head shaved.  She fixed me with an indescribable look, a mixture of sheer terror and intense hatred, before fleeing from the room.

 

Contemplating this happening, Matthew mentioned Bender's theory "that all my automatic writings and drawings came from my own sub-conscious . . ."

 

During the summer of 1975, Matthew toured the United States upon the publication of the American edition of The Link.  He commented: "In the States I found the finger of suspicion to be much longer and more pointed than elsewhere, and the promotional ride much bumpier . . . Some people suspected me of being part of the so-called 'psychic circus' that had grown up since the appearance of Geller . . . the same assumptions that had been made about Geller in terms of what he did were dusted down and applied to me.  I too must be a trickster or magician of some kind whose particular brand of trickery would be uncovered in time."

 

The American 'suspicions' are obviously due to overt news media programming as what is promulgated is influenced by commercial considerations involved with concerns that information conflicting with a 'status quo' mentality might alienate the public and advertisers.  (This topic is considered in previous blog articles, including: 1, 2, 3.)   However, as each reporter and editor or producer has a mind of one's own, varying responses to incidents categorized as 'paranormal' will always occur among the news media. 

 

Manning observed: "Every time I turned up for a live performance on radio or television the American publishers had their fingers firmly crossed in the hope that I  would cause some problem to excite further publicity . . . on a programme called 'To Tell The Truth,' a spotlight above my head exploded.  The four celebrity panellists on 'To Tell The Truth' had to decide which of three people presented to them was the real Matthew Manning . . . Just as I was  being introduced to the panel as 'Matthew Manning Number Two' the spotlight exploded, sending glass everywhere and shattering the game of pretence."

 

In 1976 The Link was being published in 19 countries and there was a new paperback edition in the UK.  Headlines included summations such as "The weird world of Matthew Manning."  Matthew wrote:

Such headlines encapsulate a depressing inevitability.  I could not be presented by the media in other terms because they did not possess the necessary vocabulary or understanding.

After participating in laboratory experiments in Sweden, he appraised about the scientists' approach: "The laws of physics could not be used as a yardstick to measure non-physical energy, and yet here they were applying them."  Matthew told The Link co-publisher Peter Bander who'd become his manager that he didn't want to do further experiments relating to physical phenomena: "We agreed that in future the scientists would have to convince me that what they had in mind was worthwhile . . ."

Following a book promotional tour in Spain, Matthew visited Japan upon agreeing to appear on a Japanese television show with a title translated as "Wednesday Special." 

While I was in Kyoto I did some automatic drawing and writing which was filmed for the forthcoming programme.  The most interesting of these was a message which was later identified by the Priest of the Daikaku Ji temple as an example of Bonji, an ancient Japanese script once used by the monks of that temple.

The show's producers were hoping for something more spectacular to keep the audience's interest for 90 minutes.  They were banking on me producing the same effect as Uri Geller when he had appeared on Japanese television.

During the telecast with Matthew, a woman calling on one of the 25 telephone lines said that she had been watching the show when a large glass ashtray on a table in front of the television set had inexplicably split in half with a loud bang.  Then: ". . . the 25 lines in the other studio were jammed with calls from hysterical viewers.  Several hundred individual tales were noted down of the 1200 or so calls received that evening."

Matthew reported about this "wave of poltergeist activity": ". . . the vast majority of the incidents involved the splitting or shattering of glass in people's homes."  He wrote that of the many countries he visited, Japan was the only one in which this 'poltergeist activity' occurred.  He considered the occurrences as "reflecting perhaps a common unconscious response.  To what I am not sure." 

 

At this time in his life, Matthew decided, "I had to find something practical to which my gift could be applied."  As he was tiring of the "promotional tread-mill," there was a "decision to stop and take some time out to think about my future . . ."  While honoring promotional commitments, he "worked half-heartedly" on another book, In the Minds of Millions (1977), that "turned out to be . . . a triumph of style over substance, the exact reverse of The Link."

 

A turning point in his life was reached in 1977 during a trip to India.  The car he was traveling in broke down suddenly upon reaching Narkanda."  Staying in an inhospitable room for the night, he decided to take a photograph of the mountains at dawn.  This was when he experienced an epiphany.

 

I did not take that photograph.  As I watched the sun rise something happened which to this day I have difficulty describing.  Suddenly, and I do not know whether it was for one minute, one second or ten minutes, because I lost all sense of time, I felt completely at one with and connected to everything around me.  I became a part of the mountains and the rocks.  They were part of me.  I was the air, the air was me.  I was part of the tree and the tree was part of me.  In those timeless moments of transcendence I came as close to God as I am likely to get on this earth.  I was aware of a presence urging me to do only what I felt was right and what I wanted to do and not what others  wanted me to do for their own reasons.  I must also follow only those paths that would lead to healing.  This last prompting struck me as very strange.  I knew a little about the sort of healing given by people such as Harry Edwards but had taken only a passing interest in it.  I interpreted 'healing' in its broadest sense and took it to mean more than putting my hands on people.

 

Matthew left India a few days later.  He continued to take part in experiments with scientists and participate in public conferences.  Experiments in extra-sensory perception were conducted in San Francisco at the Washington Research Center, including sessions with James Hickman and other sessions with Jeffrey Mishlove.  The most successful of this series involved Matthew identifying which of ten sealed canisters contained water.  The statistical results of some experiments were open to interpretation, such as a 'coin spinner experiment' conducted with Charles Tart and John Palmer at Davis. 

 

Stanley Krippner brought Matthew in contact with musicians Mickey Hart and Jerry Garcia of the rock group The Grateful Dead and with native American medicine man 'Rolling Thunder.'  When Matthew attempted to perform 'automatic music,' there was an unsuccessful attempt to play the piano and the results with a guitar were "equally dire."  Matthew recalled about meeting Rolling Thunder: "What he called the Great Spirit, I had called oneness or inter-connectedness since my experience in India."

 

In August 1977 he returned to the UK for the launch of In the Minds of Millions.  One incident during this period as he turned 22 years old on August 17 occurred when Matthew was having lunch with Psychic News editor Maurice Barbanell.

 

Our conversation was interrupted when a heavy silver plate on an adjoining table rose up, turned over and crashed to the floor, causing consternation all around.  Barbanell asked our waiter what had happened because so far as he could see nothing in the vicinity could have made it behave that unusually.  The waiter shrugged and said, "I don't think we've got a poltergeist here."  I was used to such happenings, and Barbanell had spent years reporting them.  We both laughed.

Later that year, Matthew visited George Owen and his wife in Toronto.  Owen had been involved with the Toronto experiments and had become acquainted with Matthew upon investigating the initial 'poltergeist'-type occurrences experienced by Matthew and his family in 1967.  One evening when they were joined by Detroit doctor William Wolfson and his wife, quick-developing Polaroid photographs were taken of Matthew as an experiment.  After discussing the 'Thoughtographs' of Ted Serios and similar phenomena achieved by a Japanese boy whom Matthew had met, Tracy Wolfson snapped the photos shown above.  Other photos in this sequence show a ball of light first at Matthew's head and then at the head of Iris Owen, suggesting an energy transfer process.

 

A total of about 70 photographs must have been taken during that session in Toronto, and the vast majority of them reveal nothing exceptional.  However, the images displaying the concentric rings of light and the energy ball came out in sequence and clearly show a development.  I am still amazed by them, because they are so unlike other images I have seen.

 

In 1978 Matthew completed a series of experiments with William Braud in Texas.  "Most of the experiments were designed to test what effect, if any, my thoughts would have on a range of biological systems."  Braud then arranged for Matthew to do trials with Dr. John Kmetz of the Science Unlimited Research Foundation, also based in San Antonio.

The purpose of these experiments was to see if I could disrupt the charge on Hela cervical cancer cells to render them inactive.  Named after Henrieta Lafayette, the black American woman from whom they were taken before her death in the 1950s, these cells are used extensively in cancer research laboratories around the world.  These cells are grown in culture flasks (plastic containers which look similar to the cases of audio cassette tapes) in a liquid protein feed.

Trial results involving the amount of cell death were interpreted as indicating that Matthew's thoughts could influence cancer cells due to what Braud called "parapsychological factors." 

 

Matthew Manning concluded about the youthful incidents described in the first three chapters of One Foot in the Stars:

 

After India I had wondered how it would be possible for me to heal.  Piece by piece the answers had been given to me, first in California, most recently in Texas.  My future had been quietly taking shape . . . .