Observations placeholder
Manning, Matthew - An account by Colin Wilson
Identifier
010843
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
This extract covers both Matthew and Uri Geller, but it makes no sense to try to extract just the sentences related to Matthew, the whole passage loses its meaning
A description of the experience
Colin Wilson - Mysteries
In 1976, I had the opportunity to spend some time with Matthew Manning and Uri Geller; .... I was interested to note that both Manning and Geller seem to possess only a limited control over their 'powers'. Both seem to exercise a maleficent influence on electronic equipment. I spent a morning trying to record Matthew, but my cassette recorder - which had worked perfectly up till then, and has worked perfectly ever since - developed a whole series of baffling faults; tapes that should have contained conversations were blank.
With Geller, the tape recorder worked, but objects like electric light bulbs and broken spoons fell out of the air, apparently as much to his surprise as mine. When Uri was invited to dinner by some friends of mine - the screen writer Jesse Lasky and his wife Pat - a silver button suddenly flew into the kitchen like an angry wasp. Uri was standing at the sink with a bottle of milk in one hand and a tin of cocoa in the other. Pat identified the button as one that had been on a card in her bedroom drawer (which proved to be closed); to reach the kitchen it would have had to penetrate three walls. Later, it was discovered that a large metal dragon on the front door had become twisted while Geller was in the flat; he apologised, but explained that such things happened without his volition.
In studying Matthew Manning's EEG chart (i.e., his brain waves) Dr George Owen discovered that, when attempting to bend a key, Manning's brain showed an unusual amount of theta activity. Theta rhythms are associated with certain deep stages of sleep and meditation.