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Ben Johnson knows exactly when his troubles started. Not, as one might expect, on that day in Seoul in September 1988, when his “A” sample tested positive, setting off a chain reaction that saw him stripped of his 100-m Olympic gold, and transformed from World’s Fastest Man to global poster boy for cheating. Nor was it the time, seven years earlier, when his coach Charlie Francis first took his bone-rack 19-year-old protege aside to explain the concept of making a better living through chemistry. No, Johnson confides as he sits in the suburban Toronto office of his new spiritual adviser, his downfall began far earlier than that—7,000 years ago in Ancient Egypt, to be precise.
“I know I’ve always really, really loved the Egyptian monuments and drawings. I’m fascinated by them,” says the 48-year-old, but still buff, former sprinter. “So when he told me certain things, I said that makes sense.”
Sprawled on a leather couch, enormous, bare feet poking out from his dress pants, Bryan Farnum takes up the story. “My gift allows me to go within the matrix to other galaxies, other universes. We’re just part of this huge pathway of experiences. And the actual shape of the matrix, believe it or not, is the shape of the pyramids, and this is Ben’s connection.”
“Don’t say too much,” Johnson warns, and then laughs. “When you read the book, you’ll understand the link, and everything.”
Seoul to Soul, Johnson’s self-published memoir, written in collaboration with Farnum, will be released on Nov. 2. No one outside of their select circle has yet been allowed to see a copy, but the passage that Farnum has earlier commanded his secretary to read aloud suggests it will be more like The Secret than a conventional athlete biography. In God’s eyes, in God’s truth there is no such thing as one being a loser. For the human experience has been set up for all my children to learn about love and forgiveness.
The initial print run for the book, available only via www.benjohnsonenterprises.com, is 2,000 copies, but Farnum confidently predicts they will sell more than 100,000. The hook is the truth. Not only spiritually, but the straight goods about what really happened 22 years ago in Seoul. How a “mystery man,” working on behalf of Carl Lewis’s sponsors, spiked Ben’s beer with a different steroid than the ones he regularly took under Francis’s guidance. How the win-at-all-cost American psyche affected not only the Olympics, but U.S.-Canada relations. And how everything that has happened was predestined; set in motion by a tragic event involving two men on the banks of the Nile circa 5000 B.C.
Johnson and Farnum are reluctant to speak of the details, hoping to build anticipation for the book. “It’s just like how nobody knows who shot John F. Kennedy,” says the sprinter. “The whole world was shocked when I tested positive in Seoul. Everybody wants the answer. Now is the time.”
Pressed for at least a teaser of the revelations to come, Johnson turns his intense gaze on his confidant. Farnum, as he will do frequently throughout the interview, closes his eyes and tilts his chin up to the heavens. The eyelids flutter. He grunts, and stretches out a bear-like paw to scratch his salt and pepper mane. “Jonathon is not going to hurt you,” he says finally. The guru has travelled through space and time to look at my aura and has determined I am trustworthy. Better yet, God has weighed in on the mystery man. “The Father says we can mention his name.”
Bryan Farnum used to tell people what to do with their money. Now, the 51-year-old tells them what to do with their lives. The transformation began in 1998, when Michael, the youngest of his and his wife Cathy’s five children, was diagnosed with brain cancer. Even after surgery and chemotherapy, the then five-year-old was given just a 20 per cent chance of survival. The Farnums decided to try to improve the odds by seeking alternative assistance, booking a meeting in Toronto with Almine Barton, an American “intuitive healer.” Barton, a bosomy blond who is also a British countess via her marriage to the ninth earl of Shannon, not only offered advice on treating the cancer, she informed Bryan that he himself possessed the gift of healing.
So, that fall, Farnum shut his financial consulting business and travelled to Oregon to study with the mystic. (Barton’s website notes that she has since become an immortal, receiving eternal life in February 2005.) Meditating in a cave, he experienced his own epiphany, a light that went into his head and left him with the power to communicate directly with God. He returned home and began treating his son through herbs, diet and prayer. Today, he reports Michael is a healthy 16-year-old who plays select baseball in the summer.
Johnson came into Farnum’s life two years ago, referred by a mutual friend. In their very first session, the healer determined the former athlete was suffering from depression, and cured him on the spot. The darkness, undiagnosed by conventional physicians, had existed since Johnson was 17, but had its roots thousands of years before. “They would say, Ben got depressed because he lost his gold medal, but that had nothing to do with it. It had to do with other incarnations he had, where his parents had passed away,” says Farnum. “Basically he had not forgiven them, and that energy got attached to him in his next lives.”
Whatever the reason, Johnson says the effects of the revelation were immediate and profound. “When I met Bryan, everything lifted,” he says. “I feel more relaxed, more calm, not so intense; my anxiety and depression are gone.” And certainly, the sprinter seems a man transformed; his famed truculence replaced with a shy smile and surprisingly frequent laugh.
At subsequent sessions, Farnum tackled Johnson’s physical woes, healing nagging injuries with his mind, and “taking care” of the adverse consequences of years of steroid abuse that had yet to manifest themselves. Through it all, the men grew closer. “We had very tight bonds in other incarnations,” says Farnum. “There was a natural trust.”
Gradually, a plan was hatched to turn Johnson’s long-delayed autobiography into a joint collaboration. Large portions were trashed and replaced with insights Farnum had discerned directly from God. When the publisher who had originally contracted for the book objected to the change in editorial direction, the pair decided to put it out themselves.
Johnson sees it as the fulfillment of his late mother’s belief that track and field was just a sideshow, a diversion from God’s purpose for him. “Many people who will read it don’t believe there is a God and different past lives,” he says. “But this book won’t only speak the truth, it will teach the young generation.”
For his part, Farnum is quick to point out that he has never taken any payment from Ben. He calls the book a labour of love that he hopes will bring mainstream recognition of his unique talents. Academics and scientists refuse to take his gifts seriously, he complains. “They are not prepared to sit down and consider truly why people get sick.” He cites his experiences with a U.S. researcher who conducted a phone interview in which he asked Farnum to discern the colour of his underwear. “They ask me these ridiculous questions to make me look like a fortune teller. My gift is not for that purpose. It’s not trivial.”
For a guru, Farnum does seem to keep a rather low profile. Apart from a generous National Post story in 2003, his name has only appeared twice in the mainstream media—once in 2007 when a follower buttonholed the Dalai Lama about Armageddon, and in 2001, when Farnum divined that Eddie the Jack Russell terrier from Frasier, was suffering from depression and anxiety. The healer says he has treated a number of other high-profile individuals in the past, but doesn’t go into detail. However, in his office alongside the painting of Jesus hugging a man in the clouds, and the TV screen displaying live feeds from 14 surveillance cameras around the property, there is a photo of Farnum and Sam Mitchell, the former coach of the Toronto Raptors. When asked, Farnum allows that he did work with the 2007 NBA coach of the year and helped “lift the curse” off the team. (Basketball fans may disagree.) Mitchell, now an assistant with the New Jersey Nets, said via a spokesman that he and Farnum are friends, but that the healer didn’t officially work with the Raptors.
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