The Amazing Randi's hands mover faster than his mouth – an impressive feat, considering his long experience as a quick gabbing, all night talk show veteran. Flash, a bent ten penny nail in place of the straight one. Poof, a wilted house key. Scrunch, a busted spoon from New York's Brass Rail. James Randi (real name, Randall Zwinge) usually can be found decapitating rock star Alice Cooper, breaking out of the Manila jail, or being frozen in a block of ice in Times Square. More recently he has gained fame (some say infamy) as a rabid debunker of psychics — particularly Uri Geller. Non stop, this Canadian born self declared child prodigy turned illusionist strives to erase the notion that the Israeli might be anything other than "just a clever magician."
"I know that men of science are easier to fool than ordinary people," declares the professional magus, " because they think logically. They use logic to come to the wrong conclusion." One of Randi's stage tricks is to float a beautiful girl inside a welded aluminium frame. " to have a scientist give you a description of my levitation trick wouldn't be worth a piece of shit!" he exclaims, because logically thinking people are used to perceiving in the world in always straightforward, mechanistic, cause and effect fashion. All conjuring is based on the simple, yet powerful, principal of misdirection. The magician subtly manipulates the logical mind by guiding it to perceive the events it expects, thereby camouflaging the conjuring — the secret move, the sleight of hand, the substitution, the reversal. This is the basis for all magic. According to Randi, and a tight knit clique of other magic orientated psi sceptics, that is all there is to the stunts of Uri Geller and other psychics.
Randi maintains that he has never seen any convincing evidence of paranormal occurrence, that such claims always can be explained — to his satisfaction — by trickery or misperception: " I can't deny it (psi phenomena) because I can't prove the non existence of something, even if I felt I should. There is every possibility that there is some phenomenon that exists today that we cannot presently explain; not unexplainable — unexplained." Geller's arch enemy pleads for a magician to be present each time a psychic is studied to help avoid falling into the trap of logical misdirection. " when I'm sick, I go to a doctor," argues Randi. " when I want to find out if there is chicanery being used, I get to a charlatan. Here I am; I'm available." (Randi fails to mention that the extensive publicity garnered from his debunking of Geller has not hurt his career – far from it.)
A few weeks after my session with him in Ossining, Geller was invited to perform before a group of Time editors in New York. The psychic was still basking in the first flush of his United States publicity, scoring big on TV talk shows, in executive suites, and at socialite dinners. He arrived with the ever present Puharich and settled himself on an office couch amidst a crowd of skeptical witnesses. James Randi was up front, posing as an Time reporter, along with fellow debunker Charles Reynolds, picture editor of "Popular Photography" and a member of the American Society of Magician's Psychic Investigation Committee. Geller started off with a few mental routines, scoring moderate successes, all of which Randi insists depended upon " the law of averages and a little bit of skullduggery." For example, when guessing a city, Geller wrote both Paris and London on his pad, but he crossed out London. One member of the Time audience was thinking of London, which Geller then claimed he "got first," but decided against. " I knew when I heard him do this," says Randi, "that the guy wasn't just some klutz who had gotten lucky on good looks. The guy is extremely clever, very cunning."
Geller betrays his professionalism in a magic in several ways, argues Randi. For example, he points in the general direction of the group of people volunteering to project a mental target instead of citing a specific person, thus increasing the odds that at least one person in the group has thought of the target that Geller guesses. Unavailing more professional secrets, Randi says that magician's are well aware that people are most likely to name the numbers "3" and "7", the cities London or Paris, the colour red, a rose, a chair, and a triangle with a circle inside, all as first responses for various categories a mentalist calls for with his statement, "Quick now, the first thing that comes into your mind." Randi also accuses Geller of "pencil reading" (watching the top of a pencil as it is used to trace out a target) and of listening to the sound chalk makes on a blackboard (a "4" sounds different from a " 2," for example) — all standard techniques in a magician's bag of tricks. Potential audience embarrassment is also used to its best advantage. Randi recalls one clutched moment in a performance when he made the wrong choice of target, but his on stage volunteer went right ahead and solemnly declared Randi's selection correct. A good magician also is a slick con artist with a charming, beguiling air of innocence." At Time Uri did a cute thing where he said, 'I'm going to cover my eyes,'continues Randi. 'the woman sitting right in front of him was the only one who was really in a position to see whether he had his eyes covered, and he turned to her as he did this and he said, 'would you help me concentrate by closing your eyes?' Which is great – she was the only one who could catch him. She said, 'oh, yes.'She was being very serious about the thing. Then he thanked her afterward when he was successful because she helped him concentrate." In reality, maintains Randi, Geller simply peeked. Randi was chosen to write down a figure Geller was to send him. Making sure Geller could not see the top end of his pencil, the magician moved his hand in several different directions as if he were drawing. Occasionally he would make a mark, eventually producing a complete sketch of a spoked wheel with an eyebrow over it. " Uri bombed out entirely with me," brags Randi, " because he simply hadn't seen any arm movement — at least that's my theory." But, adds the magician, the fact that Geller missed with him gets dismissed in the audience's mind. " you don't remember the number of times your wife was faithful," laughs Randi. " you remember the time she's unfaithful."
As with most audiences, Geller's metal bending is what the editors had come to see. Forks were quickly fetched from the Time cafeteria. Some twenty minutes passed as Geller unsuccessfully tried to bend one. "Then, at that point," continues Randi, " I looked at Charles (Reynolds) and gave him a hard stare, and Charles just sort of nodded, because we could see Geller tensing up. We know what the performer looks like at the moment he is going to for'grab the cheesecloth'— the moment he is going to do the trick. There's a moment when the audience isn't going to suspect it. The magician could very casually reach into his pocket and take from it are handkerchief to mop his brow; but in doing so, he may have picked up a billiard ball in the same move. That's his move. The most magicians betray themselves very slightly at this crucial moment with just a flicker of tenseness." According to Randi, and later Reynolds, Geller's grab the cheesecloth move was accompanied by a shifting forward in his seat and a quick bobbing motion. "At that moment, Geller handed me (Randi) the fork and pressed my hands tightly on it with both his hands. He said, ' Now just hold on to that and tell me if it gets warm.'That he immediately turned around, reached down to the table, picked up one of the other forks, made a sharp upward move with it, and put it aside and covered it with paper." Randi says that he definitely spotted Geller's physically bending the fork on his " sharp, upward move."
Then Geller stated, " I can fix watches and clocks. Do you have a clock that's broken?" While someone scurried off to track down a broken clock, Geller shuffled the papers that hid the fork beneath, inconspicuously moving them off to his left along the low table in front of him, getting as much distance between himself and a fork as possible. " we saw him bend it, so we knew very well what was going to happen," confides Randi. " meanwhile, I'm standing there like a dummy with a fork in my hand."
Geller played with the non running clock for a while, actually taking out the battery cell and licking it to get a better contact, then bending the wire contacts forward to make them tighter, according to Randi. Still, it would not work. Moving on quickly, he tried to make some wrist watches move their hands. Randi demonstrates with quick sleight of hand how he thinks Geller pulls out the stem one handedly and merely moves the watch hands forward, unnoticed by his audience. He then places the watch face down, leaving it for several minutes before coming back to it, careful not to go near the stem the second time, makes a few passes with his hands, and voila, the time has changed. Geller heightens the illusion by walking away from the watch, saying that he does not think it is going to work. The advance in the hands is then noticed by the watch owner, who has to convince Geller that, yes, the hands have indeed moved. "This is the born actor," declares Randi. " This is what makes a good magician. It's just a beautiful routine, a beautiful approach." Whatever else his detractors say about him, all praise the psychic superman for his consummate skill and psychological manipulation, the essence of magic.
Unsuccessful at finding a broken watch to work with, Geller then turned back to Randi, who was still holding onto the fork, and asked if it was getting warm yet. Randi answered that it was, but only from his body temperature. Just then, somebody looked for the other fork on the table, picked it up, and exclaimed how it was was bent. Continues Randi, " Geller turned to me and exclaimed, 'Did you see that?' And I said, 'Mr. Geller, I certainly did.' I looked him straight in the eye and I had a big smile on my face. The big smile just robbed of his face and he turned back and went, 'ahem.' From then on, he didn't trust me with a thing."
Geller next asked for a key to bend. Charlie Reynolds offered up the brass key to the "Popular Photography" picture room. Again, Geller shuffled the items on the table in front of him, creating distraction, rubbed the key on the table to show that it was flat, had several people hold it while he passed his hands over it, then placed it back on the table, saying that he did not think he could bend it. He asked for another object to bend and someone Suggested a beer can opener — usually a readily available item in the offices of Time.
Randi and Reynolds, each from different vantage points, had agreed to to keep their eyes fixed on Geller, no matter what the distraction. They saw Uri rise from his seat, motioning for people in the back of the room to move forward. Randi explains the move, eyes aglow at his discovery: " in standing up, he put the point of the key against the table — I was making wild hand gestures to Charlie, who was making a note at that time and just looked up in time as he started to move – and we both caught Geller bending the tip." Acknowledging their mutual discovery, Randi and Reynolds exchanged broad smiles. Geller chose a woman from the audience, asked her to hold the key tightly in her hand, pressed his hand over hers, then quickly took the key from her, saying it still was not bent. Holding it by the tip, concealing the bent portion, Geller rubbed the large end along the table, demonstrating how the key was still flat, adding, however, that he was beginning to feel his powers surge. (according to Randi, the key already was bent.) Rubbing gently, Geller gradually uncovered the mid part of the key, revealing a thirty degree bend. Promising that a metal desk would help it bend more, the psychic dashed out of the room into the hall. Randi and Reynolds were up instantly like hounds to the hunt, trailing Geller into the next room. "He was rubbing the key on the corners of the metal desk," remembers Randi. The key was now bent up to a full ninety degrees. " at that point, Puharich came walking around the corner and he said, 'Oh, I hope you enjoyed all that, Mr. Magician. I suppose you think it's all a trick, don't you, Mr. Magician?" A chagrined Puharich and Geller left soon after.
The ensuing March 12, 1973, Time story on Geller, entitled "The Magician and the Think Tank," ridiculed SRI's attempts to research "a questionable nightclub magician."
But Charlie Reynolds was not through with Geller. Screwing his puckish, bearded face into a grin, Reynolds recalls great pleasure some years back at personally debunking psychic Ted Serios' attempts to project a mental images on to film. Reynolds was anxious to do the same with Geller, whose London Press clippings heralded "Uri's miracle pictures" — alleged psychic projections onto film.
At Reynolds instigation, the former "Life" photographer Yale Joel shot a session with Geller in New York. Geller volunteered to try to project a picture through a sealed lens cap. As described in Joel's resulting "Popular Photography" article, Geller said he would try to produce the image of an eagle onto the film inside the camera. "Uri raised the Pentax with cap swathed in black tape, the lens practically touching his forehead," reports Joel. "Along about the fifth or sixth exposure, Uri intimated contact with the eagle. 'I can feel it getting through!' He cried as he urged the image through the lens cap." Proceeding with their experiments, Joel and his son, Seth, then attempted to send a drawing telepathically to Geller. That the photographer and his son went into an adjoining room, closed the door, and proceeded to make a drawing, which they enclosed in two envelopes. Despite precautions taken to prevent Geller's knowing the drawing, the father and son team forgotten that they had left Geller alone in the close room for three to five minutes with the camera and taped lens cap.
Later that same night Seth Joel developed the role of film. Incredulously, he saw that one of the frames did indeed have an image on it. There was a round dark blob in the centre of the picture and a partial image of Geller on the right hand side, showing him from nose level down to his waist. Seth's father was stunned. But after showing a print of the miraculous shot to several other photographers, a reasonable explanation emerged the tone for. Telltale dark bumps on either side of the central dark circle revealed Geller's right hand, apparently holding the lens cap a few inches away from the lens, while he casually snapped a self portrait. The key to the exposure was the lens itself, an extreme wide angle, 17 mm " fisheye," which caught an in focus Geller as well as his fingers holding the lens cap. Had the camera been fitted with a normal 50 mm lens, most of the frame would have been blacked out, with merely a highly suggestive, out of focus impingement of light filtering in from the edges. Joel easily duplicated what Geller had done.
While the eager"popular photography" debunkers rushed to announce that Geller probably faked his through the lens cap image, they completely ignored Uri's telepathic try. Returning from their three to five minute room exit, the Joels asked the psychic to guess the double sealed drawing they had made. Reports Joel: "Uri had no trouble in duplicating the chair that Seth had drawn." This is one understated sentence, acknowledging that Geller had indeed pulled a successful stunt, apparently by means of his psychic abilities. But not a word from either Joel or Reynolds in their debunking expressing even mild puzzlement.
This episode illustrates an important point: advocates on both sides of this highly charged issue are willing to marshal emotional half truths in defence of their staunchly held preconceptions. One reason why magician's like Randi and Reynolds react so strongly to Geller is that professional conjurers abide by an unwritten code of ethics the demands exposure of any conjurer who tries to pass himself off as a legitimate psychic. They are convinced the Israeli is a fake in everything that he does, and his performances strongly breach their moral code; thus, the outrage — and the exaggerated sadness — that he does not play the game according to their rules.
Randi's home in New Jersey reflects his magus personality. Ring the bell and military music booms out of a Peruvian mask on the door. Twin macaws squawk their raucous greetings. The front door opens opposite from the side the knob is on, warning the visitor that he is entering a world of illusion and misdirection. Mummy cases and other strange tools of his trade lie scattered about. Comedienne Lily Tomlin answers Randi's prerecorded telephone message in her snuffling Burbank telephone operators voice. Backwards run his clocks until reels the mind. This parody of reality is a fitting abode for a conjurer. On his video tape recorder, Randi collects all of Geller's television appearances, running them over and over like a football buff replays Super Bowl touchdowns, scouting of the suspected " cheesecloth moves" in Geller's act.
Reviewing Barbara Walters' "Not for Women Only" program, Randi claims that the spoon Geller broke there had been tampered with prior to the show. The prop man told Randi that Geller had " all the opportunity in the world to play around with it" before going on. So, Randi's all purpose explanation for all spoon bending and breaking fits: Geller's simply bent the spoon back and forth several times until it was ready to break on camera with just a slight additional force.
Randi also thinks that Geller uses his larger mod belt buckle as a vice to help him bend Keys and other objects. A deft, practiced a move to his waist is all it takes to accomplish this trick, believes Randi. The hole in the head of one house key can be used as a quick vice, also. Just insert the pointed end of another key into the hole, pressed hard, and the inserted he has a bend in it. Another standard stunt, claims Randi, is to work with five or six large nails that have been wrapped with a rubber band or piece of adhesive tape. In almost every case, Geller exclaims over the fact that they are bound, feigning surprise and asking, "Who put this tape around them?" According to Randi, this simply sets up the audience's psychological misdirection. " what has happened backstage, in my humble estimation," says Randi, " is that he is merely switched one stack of nails for another stack of nails, one of which is already bent. But in a stack of nails tied together with tape, you can't tell."
Geller worked a variation of the bent nail trick on a "The Mike Douglas Show," according to Randi's account. If Geller handed a straight nail to Douglas (on his right) and a second nail to actor Tony Curtis (on his left). He picked up a third nail without showing it, which he kept his left hand. That one, charges Randi, was already bent. Douglas showed the audience his straight nail, then handed it to Geller, who took it in his right hand. He turned to Curtis, who laid down his nail. Geller then asks the actor to hold on to the top end of each of the remaining two nails while he, Geller, stroked the middle portions, still concealing the bottom portions. There after a while, Curtis was asked to put aside the " good" nail in his left hand, followed by more rubbing on the remaining nail, the one Geller never showed. Eventually he asked Curtis if he saw the nail beginning to bend. Yes, he did. Then Geller slowly lowered his fingers along the Shank of the nail, revealing a slightly bent a nail — which appeared to continue to bend — the much to the amazement of Curtis, Douglas, and the audience. Geller said that it was still bending and placed it against a tray so that the audience could see the hump in it. Applause. Randi then duplicates the performance for me. Even knowing how it is done and watching for it, I cannot catch the sleight of hand that produces the bent nail. The effect of continuous bending comes from slowly moving a finger down the bent Shank. Geller's psychic image, like a Polaroid snapshot in reverse, begins to disappear slowly before my eyes.
A week before Geller's appearance on the"the Johnny Carson Show," the host, and ex schoolboy magician, called Randi, seeking advice to prevent Geller from pulling tricks during his performance. Don't let him near the props, warned Randi. So the sealed envelope containing a picture for Geller to guess was locked inside the producers briefcase. He kept it with him at all times, locked, never taking it near the set until showtime, according to Randi. On the show, Carson asked Geller several times whether he wanted to try to guess what was inside the envelope. " know, I don't feel for that," was the psychics pallid reply. Geller did try ten can roulette, a feat successfully accomplished at SRI. The psychic chose one can — empty. He chose another — full. An embarrassing bust.
One method of doing this trick is to jar the table on which the cans are sitting. The filled can, because of inertia, will not jiggle as much as the others. Carson told Randi that during an off camera commercial break, Geller Jarred the table with his knee and Carson asked him to stop. Carson also reported that he stopped Geller from blowing on the cans, again to prevent him from jiggling them. The verdict: Geller bombed on Carson's show. "The Amazing Randi" maintains that it was because of the strict controls placed on the psychic.
Randi adds that jiggling the table is just one way of doing the can trick. Minute temperature differences reveal cans filled with cold (or hot) water. Cans packed tight with nails and screws give themselves away by a tiny bumps that poke out of their sides. Randi maintains that there are other ways as well to pick out a full can. Adhering to the traditions of magic, he requests that those tricks be kept secret.
The magician's says he truly believes that Geller is one of the cleverest men around and only wishes he had gone legitimate. " I tell you one thing, if he had come to the United States of America as a mentalist or some such, and had done the theatre circuit and the college circuit, all of us guys (magicians), me at the head of the line, would have been down there to see him. He'd be like a shot in the arm for the business. There is nothing I like better than good, strong, healthy competition. If Geller had come and had done well and was a bright new face on the scene and everything like that, I would be out at the airport to put a wreath around his neck." Instead, Randi would like to ring him with a vaudeville hook.
Another in the group of avid Geller debunkers is the respected Scientific American columnist, Martin Gardner, a student of philosophy in the strictest sense of the rationalist tradition, by nature a devout zetetic. He is also a magician, a specialist with cards that he continuously shuffles and cuts while revealing the arcane subtleties of magic. The circuit between Gardner, Randi, Reynolds, Time's senior editor Leon Jaroff, and other debunkers — mostly magicians here and abroad – rings continuously with the latest Geller goings on, trading news clippings on Geller as kids trade baseball cards. Gardner's book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, which knocks cults that range from Wilhelm Reich's orgone energy to Atlantis, flying saucers, Velikovsky, Scientology, Bridey Murphy, and dowsing, is the group's standard reference tool. The silver haired gentleman is committed to the belief that all these fringe areas — including psychical research — are nothing but hokum, a means of duping an uninformed public with pseudo mystical incantations. He, like the others, feels duty bound to set public perceptions straight, so they have tried to establish a vigilante committee to expose psychics and faith healers, but today to have knob received the foundation funding they have sought. One whimsical suggestion offered up as a name for this self appointed committee is "Sanity in Research Investigations", the initials of which, snickers one debunker, are "SRI."
For Martin Gardner and the others in his magic circle, the issue of Uri Geller is a deeply moral one. Part of their legitimate concern is with fraudulent faith healers. Gardner reasons that acceptance of Geller's abilities tends to verify faith healing and thus creates the danger of duping naive believers in potential life or death situations. But the group has a broader, more passionate concern with the general "rise of occultism" in this country. In particular, they cite the historical precedent of Weimar Germany, the period during which the occult did indeed form a fashionable and widespread segment of the zeitgeist. Gardener: " it happened before. Belief in occultism provides a climate for the rise of a demagogue. I think this is precisely what happened in Nazi Germany before the rise of Hitler." He fervently believes it can happen again.
But such legitimate concerns are turned into blindly prejudiced condemnations by others in the debunker clique. The author of Times' widely read cover story on the current psychic rage declared in private: " SRI should be destroyed," not just because of its experiments with Uri Geller, but because of its willingness to undertake any investigations into the paranormal. " you know, that's the way fascism began," he confided.
Separating legitimate criticisms of Geller's conjuring techniques from amongst the barrage of debunkers moral outrage is just as difficult as defining the truth of the unending believers' anecdotes of Geller's psychic prowess. Regrettably, both sides argue on the basis of strong personal bias. For example, one of the most influential of the debunkers proclaimed vehemently: " Uri Geller can't be true. If anything he does is real, it destroys everything I believe in; therefore, he can't be true." The irrationalism of this point of view matches the irrationalism of the unquestioning believer, who accepts at face value every Geller-bent fork as testimony to his paranormal powers. For both viewpoints are based on emotion, totally outside the bounds of logic, but terribly human.
The eventual conclusion reached by many Geller aficionados — SRI scientists included — is that the young performer will resort to trickery in a public demonstration or whenever else he can. "we have a feeling," says Russell Targ, "that people with a psychic ability will cheat if you're given the chance, just the way anybody else will cheat if you give them a chance." Targ's favourite example is tournament bridge players. If they can sneak a peek to increase the odds on a delicate finesse, they will, he asserts. Even Edgar Mitchell suspects that Geller might "augment" every now and then; but he steadfastly defends his and SRI's conclusion that Geller does indeed work wonders.
If one were to accept as valid had the magicians' arguments that Geller may cheat on some or all of his public displays, what about his results obtained under so called controlled conditions at SRI? " I don't believe there were strict scientific conditions at all," grumbles Randi, " because I just don't believe this kind of thing can happen if there are strict conditions." There's the problem. The debunkers, deep down, hesitate to admit the paranormal abilities even are possible. Yet, each, when pushed, hedges his position to ensure that he is not taken for a person of blinding prejudice. Their positions range from solid, parapsychological agnosticism to outright atheism. Their marshalling of countless historical hoaxes, of and mediums defrocked, and of supposed psychics uncovered is persuasive, particularly in light of the numerous magical exposes of Geller's techniques. But by the debunkers' standards of belief — and hence, "logic" — circumstances will never be sufficiently controlled to prevent Geller or any other psychic from cheating, or to keep the experimenters themselves free from tainted self delusion.
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