Matthew Manning and Reincarnation

Diagram of a Coin of King Olav Tryggvason's time

The Prologue of the autobiography One Foot in the Stars (1999) presents Matthew Manning's reflections about reincarnation.  He recounted intuitive and synchronistic occurrences that suggest his current life is influenced by previous incarnations during earlier centuries.  He wrote: "One of the periods of history which has always had a strong fascination for me is the Restoration, when the monarchy in England was established with the ascension of Charles II."  Matthew did not realize that his attraction to the 17th Century could be significant in relation to a previous incarnation until he was conducting a workshop in the United States in 1977 and noticed a woman staring at him intently.

Afterwards she came up to me and explained that she was a clairvoyant and that she also did past-life readings.  She said to me, "While you were doing the workshop I was picking things up from you.  I sense very strongly that you have always, through many lives, chosen to be in a position where you have gained power over other people.  I pick up one where I suspect you were very high up in the Church.  I can see another one where you appear to have been a general or very high up in the military in England, probably in the mid-17th century.  Every time you've chosen a life with a position of power, you've abused it and you've turned it to your advantage.  This time, in this life, you've done exactly the same thing.  You've chosen a path where you've got power.  In this lifetime you are going to have to learn which route you take: whether you use it positively to help others, or whether you use it in a negative way, to overpower them."

Although at this point in his life he didn't believe in reincarnation, Matthew remembered his response to what the woman told him.  "Her words sent a tingle up my spine and lodged in my head, because they tied in with aspects of myself that I felt and knew to be true."  Matthew recalled an evening a few months previously when he dined with Mervyn Stockwood, who was then Bishop of Southpark, and Prince Charles.  Talking with the Prince after dinner, Matthew thought: "'I have been in this situation, or one similar to it, before.'  There I was sitting next to him on a wooden bench, following wherever he led the conversation . . . I felt like an advisor to a king."

The "next piece in this jigsaw" was a 1994 incident that took place when he was conducting a workshop in Sydney, Australia.  He told the workshop group about a recurring dream that he first experienced as a child.

In the dream I am standing on a block of what appears to be stone, about the size of a seat.  I am surrounded by very dark, almost black, deep water, and in it I can see fish.  I know that I have to get off this rock and reach what appears to be a harbor or quay some distance away, but I am frightened of the fish and the water has a very strong current.  As I look out to the horizon I see an enormous wave coming towards me.  I know that if I do not leave the rock I will be swept into the water.  At this point I always wake up.

Matthew regarded the dream as a warning signal.  After the morning session with the workshop group, a participant spoke to him.  Explaining that he was a hypnotherapist involved with past-life readings, the man said that information would come through to him without the use of hypnosis.

He said, "When you told the story of being stuck on the rock, I got an immediate flash for you.  I sensed that in a previous life you had been very high up in Viking society.  I'm going back probably 900 years or so.  You were responsible for a great many people, but something you did led to many of them dying, and you could've prevented it.  You were then sentenced to death by the Vikings.  They rowed you in a boat to an outcrop of rocks and left you there to drown.  What you think you're seeing as fish are not fish but seals."

Matthew had visited Norway as a child and worked regularly in the country.  He commented, "I was struck by the fact that he should describe a setting that was so alien and so distant from his own environment." 

In 1998 he was in Oslo to present a healing demonstration when someone brought him something in a large box to show him.

I opened the box and there inside was a Viking sword, which had been dredged up from a Norwegian fjord.  Strangely, the man who had brought the sword had no idea why he had to show it to me.  He just knew he had to bring it.  Once again I felt a shiver shoot up my spine.

Matthew's manager in Norway on this occasion was Walter Kraus, who flew with him to Bergen on the coast of Norway after this incident.  Matthew found himself in an irritable mood: "I do not often get into a black mood but something was getting to me."  There was an unexpected development as they were having dinner in a restaurant.

I started getting vivid flashbacks which suggested that Walter and I had been connected in a previous life.  Out of the blue, I said to him, "I am Olav.  You are Ethelred."  Then, "I used to drink a great deal."  I was not thinking about what I was saying. The words came out by themselves."

Matthew found a letter from Oslo among his mail when he returned home to England with his wife.

The correspondent explained that she had attended one of my healing circles eighteen months previously and was pleased that I was coming to Oslo because she would be enabled to take further the healing process started on that earlier occasion.  She recalled my telling her group about a dream in which I was on a rock in the sea and drowned as the tide came in.  She thought I would be interested in the illustration she had photocopied onto the reverse of the letter.

Entitled 'Seidmennene på Skratteskjaer' — "The Medicine Man on the Rock of Trolls" — the image comes from Olav Tryggvason Saga by the Icelandic historian Snorre Sturluson.  The story tells how these men came to be executed by drowning on a rock in the sea off Karmøy, an island near Stavanger.  One of the medicine men, Øyvind Kelda, had incurred the displeasure of his king, Olav, who had spent years as a Viking marauder before becoming ruler of Norway at the end of the tenth century.  Olav had recently been converted to Christianity by his erstwhile enemy, the English king Ethelred, and was putting the brutal methods he had employed to build his empire into the service of his new god.  Øyvind was one of the many who were resisting Olav's demand that they give up their old beliefs and accept Christianity.  In Snorre's version of events, Øyvind had made a "a great darkness come over the king and his men," and for this Olav had first tried to murder him by setting fire to his cottage while the medicine man was drunk in bed.  Øyvind had escaped this attempt only to be caught and sentenced to death on the rocks, where he drowned.  Before his capture, Øyvind was said to have arranged matters so that he and his fellow medicine men were rendered invisible to Olav, but somehow the spell was reversed and in the end it was the medicine men who could not see their pursuers.

It would make sense for me to believe that I was Øyvind Kelda in a previous life.  He was a healer, a medicine man and the way he met his death fits my dream.  But in the grotty restaurant in Norway I knew I was Olav.  There was no hint of Øyvind, although I feel that his memory may have haunted Olav for the rest of his violent life and after death become part of his soul's journey.

I see Olav as the first of several past lives I have connected to over the year.  The themes of power abused and hedonism are constants in those brief flashes of recognition which have echoed through my present life.  Through these flashes I have gradually come to understand the purpose of the journey I am embarked upon in this life, and hope that maybe this time I will get it right.

  

As with Matthew Manning's case, my witnessing occurrences categorically associated with ‘poltergeist’ phenomena expanded my awareness about life and necessitated making sense of what was signified by the variety of events.  This is chronicled in the case study Testament (1997).  I also became aware of apparently having lived a previous life when I was in a position of authority.

In my case, the lore of ancient Sumer and Egypt has always interested me.  In the 1980s I read books by Zecharia Sitchin, who presented his analysis of what could be learned from artifacts of ancient civilizations.  In 1995 when my 'Mark Russell Bell' pseudonym was channeled to me through a surprised friend, soon thereafter I again considered some of Sitchen's information about the individual who is today known as 'Bel-Marduk.'  Clay tablets about Bel-Marduk found in the ruins of Ashur and Ninevah had been transcribed and translated by Heinrich Zimmern.  Sitchin wrote in The Wars of Gods and Men (1985) about "Marduk or Bel . . . being confined in The Mountain . . ."  I noticed parallels with events in my own life as I had been employed by Paramount Pictures—the corporate entertainment company with the Mountain logo—prior to realizing the necessity of becoming a metaphysical author.  The possibility of having lived a previous life as Bel-Marduk seemed to be confirmed when I found an Egyptian-style pendant presenting a profile view of someone who looked just like me.  Sitchin reported about Marduk: "Mesopotamian texts relate that he went into exile; in Egypt Ra acquired the epithet Amen, 'The Hidden One.'"  Similar to this epithet, the publication of Testament was not reported throughout the mainstream news media.