A major chapter in the Uri Geller saga took place in December 1972, near the conclusion of his first five weeks of official testing at SRI. A three-man team of Department of Defence psychologists under the auspices of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) visited the Menlo Park facility "fully prepared to fund" some of the psychic research. ARPA's deputy director of human resources, Dr. George Lawrence, a mercurial, modishly dressed thirty-nine-year-old, led the truth squad. With a background of research in counterinsurgency, pain, sleep, and aggresive behavior, Lawrence's job is to fund exotic programs in biofeedback, brain driven computers, and other far-out behavioral investigations. In 1972 he flew to Scotland to scout an international psychic convention, and since that time he has continually probed the mainstream of parapsychological research, fishing for possible projects to support. Though the ARPA paychologist dismisses psychokinesis as "ridiculous," he does believe that "there may be some means of information transfer (telepathy, clairvoyance), however I'm not convinced of it."
A few years back, members of Congress, responding to publicity touting Soviet psychic research, quietly prodded the Pentagon to get cracking with projects of its own for fear this country would find itself faced with a "psychic superman gap." Under such pressure, Lawrence's superior, Air Force Colonel Austin Kibler, already had made a special trip out from Washington to see Geller. He was impressed, not so much with the psychic or his experimenters, but by the apparently wide support Geller has among higher-level SRI executives. So Lawrence and the two psychologists accompanying him wre dispatched to survey the scence and come up with a definitive judgement about Geller and the SRI research.
Kibler, wanting an experienced hand on the scene, asked University of Oregon psychology professor Ray Hyman to sit in on the SRI visit. Hyman's credentials for judging such work are excellent. A former professional magician, he now teaches a course in "pseudo psychologies" that debunks astrology and other occult favorites. He also authored an undergraduate textbook on the nature of psychological inquiry. For several years ARPA has funded his work in man-machine interactions and the problems of information overload. He has been involved in several similar "debunking" missions. A small man in his mid-forties, Hyman has the energy and tenacity of a marathon runner, which he is. The professor confesses that in earlier years, as a performing mind reader, "I thought that I had psychic powers. You play a role long enough and you become a believer." Today he remains a sceptic about the reality of paranormal powers, yet, according to him, he is an open-minded doubter. An important aspect of Hyman is that, of all the skeptics bumping around in the Geller story, he has a personal belief structure that seemingly would suffer least if psychic phenomena became accepted as a scientific reality. "Maybe there is something we still don't know that can convince us," says the open-minded psychologist. "I wouldn't be upset if Uri could do those things.
University of Virginia Medical School professor of clinical psychology Robert Van de Castle, who has been a close friend of George Lawrence since their graduate school days at the University of North Carolina, was the third investigator. At the time, he was a director of the Sleep and Dream Laboratory at the university and a twenty-year veteran of psychic research. "I think a substantial case can be made for parapsychology," asserts van de Castle, estimating that there is a ninety-nine percent chance that telepathy and clairvoyance are actual phenomena; perhaps only a fifty-percent possibility for precognition, and slightly more for psychokinesis. he also is "open to the possibility" that out-of-body experiences are indeed true, but he prefers to see more evidence than is presently at hand to support such claims. "We're just scratching at the surface there," he says. van de castle was the "beliver" on the team.
Were it not for the importance the ARPA visit plays in the entire Geller assesment, that day would have been worthy of a Marks brothers scenario. Hyman had been snowed in at Eugene, Oregon. The temperature dropped below zero for the first time in the city's recorded history, forcing Hyman to catch a three A.M. Greyhound bus to Portland to catch a plane, to get a car, to arrive at SRI on time - which he did not. "In many ways, this was the most adveturesome and wonder-filled portion of my long day," he laughs.
Lawrence and van de Casrle flew west the day before and enjoyed a late-night Chinese meal in San Francisco. When the two psychologists arrived at SRI shortly after nine the next morning, Hyman was not there, Geller was not there, and Lawrence was asking for a doctor. "It must have been the seaweed and black mushrooms," he groaned, dashing to the men's room, where he spent much of the day tending a variation of the Chinese dragon dance. Since Lawrence was the man SRI had to impress if any funding was to be forthcoming, runners would shuttle in to him periodically bearing news of the latest Geller accomplishment.
The star finally waltzed in at about ten-thirty in hisusual casual attire - faded lavender T-shirt, corduroy slacks, and square-toed mod shoes - and greeted the experimenters on a first-name basis. Geller displayed, to Hymnan's professional dismay, unusual cameraderie with those who were studying him. The Oregon psychologist sugests that such closeness with a test subject threatens objectivity. SRI experimenters insist such rapport is vital to the production and enhancement of Geller's powers. Both sides are right. It is a question of degree.
The psychic was left alone with wit the three psychologists in the ersatz "waiting room" that serves as a lab, while Puthoff and targ retired to view the proceedings over a closed-circuit TV monitor. Geller followed his customary routine, first guessing numbers, colors, and capitals. He asked Lawrence to write a number from one to ten on his pad, "as large as possible."
Hyman, sitting between Geller and Lawrence, recalls the scene: "As he (Lawrence) wrote, Uri made a show of covering his eyes with his hands. From my side, I could see his eyes through his hands. Also, I could easily see from George's arm motions that he had written the number ten. Uri, deliberately letting me see his pad, first wrote a zero, then the one. He seemed puzzled. Then he turned his pad upside-down and said, "Of course, it is a ten." he then picked up George's face-down pad in such a way that it, too, was upside-down. He made much out of the fact that not only had he gotten the number correctly, but he recieved it upside down because George had placed his pad down in a certain position."
from then on, in Hyman's estimation, Geller's performance was all downhill. Van de Castle was to be the recipient of a number from ten to twenty that Geller would project. The psychic showed Hyman the number he was trying to send: "17." The University of Virginia psychologist did not get a clear message, but he did get a fleeting glimpse of a number. What was it? "17." Uri, in triumph, explained that when he is projecting a number he visulizes it on a screen," continues Hyman. "At the moment it is implanted on the receivers psyche, it disappears from Uri's screen. In this case the number had disappeared fro an instant, but reappeared almost immediately." There is no way to check.
In another test of thought projection, Geller asked all three visitors to write down a capital city. He wrote something on his pad and closed his eyes, head nodding. Then he stopped, crossed out what he had just written, and scribbled something on another pad, then returned to nodding his head, eyes apparently closed. Hyman wrote down Rome or Stockholm. Lawrence and van de Castle each had Paris. "I knew that would happen," said Geller, opening his eyes and checking the responces. "But I changed it because it is too common." He indeed had crossed out Paris and substituted Warsaw on the second pad.
Hyman recalls the scence: "Van de Castle, trying to be helpful, said that he had considered Washington. While Uri and Van de Castle were deciding that Van de Castle had received only the WA - - - - part clearly and then had filled in the rest by guessing, Puthoff, who had been at the other end of the monitor, came dashing into the room announcing triumphantly that he had thought of Warsaw."
Moving on to metal-bending, Lawrence gave Geller his nail clipper and the usual routine ensued - concentrated fist passes, clenches, urgings and eventually direct stroking of the clipper. But nothing. Other items were solicited. Car keys? No, Lawrence would need those to drive back. Screwdriver? No, it was not "personal" enough. Lawrence's watch? No, it is electronic. Finally, Geller settled on Hyman's old-fashioned spring-wound wristwatch. Try as he might, he could not get it to move ahead in time. According to Hyman, Uri's real purpose remained focused on the nail clipper. "Why don't we try the nail clipper again?" suggested Geller at the end of his futile tries. "He produced the nail clipper, which had been in his possession all the time while we were being distracted by the screwdriver and the watch," reports Hyman. Geller placed the cliper in Lawrence's hand and immediately had the psychologist cover it with his other hand. Again the familiar Geller gestures. When Lawrence lifted his covering hand the clipper indeed was bent. Everyone rushed into the Xerox room to get a picture copy of the clipper in case it bent further. The ARPA psychologist kept the nail clipper in his possession, and later in the day, after a comparison, he found no change in the bend. Lawrence did provoke some excitement, however, After Geller managed to move a compass needle five degrees, the ARPA man made it veer forty-five degrees by imitating the psychic's movements (including stomping on the floor). The strtled psychic accused Lawrence of trickery, and the SRI researchers wanted to search him for hidden magnets. "Targ dismissed George's performance on the grounds that he had not been examined with the strict controlled scrutiny that Uri undergoes," says Hyman. "The irony of this remark was that at no time had Uri been examined by anyone. And when I once asked the physicists if they had examined Uri for hidden magnets or something when he had apparently made single frames of a videotape disappear, they said that it was completley unneccessary since it was completely beyond the realm of plausibility that any object Uri might have hidden upon his person could wipe out exactly one frame at a time." Geller scored a minor telepathic success that day - according to some. Van de Castle cut out a magazine illustration of a gingerbread man crying crocodile tears, sealed it inside a brown business envelope, and asked Geller to guess it. The psychic hesitated, saying that he did not think he could receive magazine pictures, only line drawings sketched by the sender. So Van de Castle drew the cartoon from memory, matching as best he could the original illustration. Lawrence, who did not know what either of the pictures looked like, sat down with an envelope in each hand and Geller tried to guess clairvoyantly what the pictures were. No luck. Later in the day, Geller asked Van de Castle, who had kept the drawings in his jacket pockets, to go alone into a room with him while he tried to telepathically view the pictures. Once inside, Van de Castle took out his drawing at Geller's urging and placed it - still inside the envelope - on a desk under his left elbow, leaning on it with pressure. Geller then asked him to close his eyes and cover them with his hands in order to "better visualize" the picture.
"I had to sit with him for half an hour," says Geller, "because I wasn't used to this guy, I was used to Hal and Russ. With Hal I could do it immediately. I could say the envelope has an airplane inside of it and I drew it. But when the new guys come, I have to get accustomed to the vibrations. I told him I couldn't do it; I didn't get anything from him in the beginning. He said, "Listen, I'm trying." Then I saw that the guy is really trying with me, not like the guys from Washington (sic). They were trying to fool me." Geller stood behind Van de Castle, close enough for the psychologist to feel his hair brushing against the back of his head, "trying to get contact." At Geller's suggestion, the psychologist - eyes still closed visualized his drawing part by part, beginning from the top. Geller would then interupt, exclaiming that he got in turn the head, arms, and torso. Van de Castle stresses that he tried hard not to give out any verbal clues or openly confirm whether Geller was seeing the right image.
"I've got it!" cried Geller.
"Well, there's something else Uri," hinted Van de Castle. The psychologist then concentrated on the large tears that streamed out of the eyes of the drawing. But Geller was too agaitated about his apparent success with the sketch and responded that he could not go any further in the demonstration. "I opened my eyes, I looked down, and the envelope was still there under my left elbow," swears Van de Castle. The psychologist opened the envelope and compared the drawing with Geller's, which had a definite resemblance to the original. The second envelope was still unopened inside Van de Castle's jacket pocket, he says.
HYman believes that Geller got to one of the two envelopes, perhaps dabbing one with carbon tetrachloride to make the image inside show through. Van de Castle counters that he would have smelled such a vile-smelling chemical. No one - except Geller - concludes that the drawing proved anything definite. Van de Castle admits that the psychic's success with him is only "encouraging," sufficient to commit more effort toward further investigations.
About four P.M., Geller was "burned out," Lawrence was sick and testy, Hyman had grown extremely skeptical, and the SRI researchers saw their funding flying out of the window. It was time to quit. Geller left, apparently to go home. But he charged back about half an hour later with a warning for Lawrence. Don't fly to or from Washington for the next five days, he cautioned. Van de Castle admits that he took Geller's precognitive warning half seriously after the psychic assured him that his premonitions always came true. Someone called a newspaper to check if there had been any plane crashes. There had. But the flight - the same one that carried Mrs. Howard Hunt to her death - originated in Washington and crashed in Chicago at about noon. That left Geller more than enough time to switch on his car radio after leaving the group, hear the news, then dash back to warn them of his "premonition."
At days end the three psychologists caucused. Van de Castle, though dismayed at what he believed to be terribly loose investigation by Puthoff and Targ, suggested that there were enough "hints and nuances and inklings" to warrant further extended research. He wanted to get Geller into his own laboratory in Virginia where "definitive" tests might be conducted. Both Van de Castle and Hyman noted that Lawrence's post-lunch mood toward Geller grew quite grumpy, if not outright truculent. Later that evening, Van de Castle chastised his old friend: "I don't think you can just breeze in the way we did, be there such a short period of time, then leave, and really get to see anything. Frankly, George, while we're talking, I found your attitude rather irritating today. You just seemed to have your nose out of joint; you were expressing your irritabilty toward Geller. If you're going to work with a sensitive like this, I agree you have to have good control conditions, but you also have to try to treat him a little bit more gently or with a little bit more understanding."
Hyman's conclusions about Geller remain solidly negative. "I must say that there was not a single thing that Geller did that I could definitely say was cheating as such, but there wasn't a single thing that he did that couldn't have been cheating - easily, not just almost, but easily. Everything he did - all the deceptions, all his misdirections - were quite consistent with exactly what I would do," observes the former magician, noting with admiration that "the misdirections are beautiful." Hyman's recommendations about Geller and the two SRI researchers? "The funding agency (should) send them on a tour of the Soviet Union - and pray that they defect.
But Lawrence, conscious of congressional presures to investigate paranormal realms, was not completely satisfied by the post-Geller critique. A few days later he returned to SRI, this time with UCLA psychologist Gerry Shure. Shure is a magician in addition to having academic expertise in social psychology and experimental methodology, excellent background from which to make a judgement. Thoughhe is basically a skeptic, Shure maintains that he is open-minded about paranormal phenomena, "since I've had one or two experiences in recent years that were really rather puzzling." Under the previous ARPA scrutiny Geller was not told that Hyman was also a magician for fear he would be offended and would refuse to perform. Shure was under no such constraints. After each attempted demonstration, the UCLA magician explained in front of Geller how the effect could have been accomplished by conjuring. The young psychic hit the ceiling.
"I saw his negative vibrations immediately," Geller recalls, shouting angrily. "These psychiatrists (sic), they don't believe in these things. So I had a tal with him (Shure). I listened and he was talking about magic and was saying, "Well, you know, some of the magicians can do this."
"You know, you're a Jew and I'm a Jew and this is what I'm going to tell you,'" Geller roared at Shure.
"You are the guys who are spoiling all these tests." And I told this guy from Washington, "You see, just because of these guys, of people like him, who do not believe and don't give a chance to people who have powewrs to express themselves, who immediately talk about magic, cheap card tricks ... these are the psychiatrists you're bringing here ... because this is the reason that Russia is going to beat the shit out of America in psychic research!" At this point Geller is boiling. The scene, even in recollection, still angers him. "I got fed up because the guys came every day with envelopes, and I got fed up with it. What are they trying to do? I'm not working for the goverment. Go to hell with the goverment. I'm working for SRI. So that made it. They left and never came back again."
Shure's opinion? "I think they (SRI) were duped," and the experiments were conducted "with a great deal of sloppiness." Hyman fully agrees about the sloppy SRI protocols. Publicly, Lawrence now considers Geller a fraud. Months later, however, he still admits to doubts. Concerned about historical judgements, the man from ARPA does not want to be known as the bureaucrat who overlooked the potential of psychic research when it was so seductively close.
But this still does not answer the question: Is Uri Geller for real?
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