Intriguing as all the chimerical stories of flying saucer visitations, extraterrestrial messages from Hoova, and military intelligence coups might be, I was anxious to get on with the cheif purpose of my mission to Puharich's magic castle that day - to witness Uri Geller's vaunted psychic prowess. About an hour had been consumed by Geller's ingenuous courting, a conversation filled with charming patter and imaginative anecdotes. Whatever his other powers might be, Uri does have the talent to establish rapid rapport and a mood of believability. Quite simply, it's damned hard not to like the guy, and he knows it, an invaluable trait.
Puharic excused himself from the room. Until now he had been an active overseer of the converstaion, guiding and promting his protégé - generally with just a phrase or two - throughout the psychic's magical mystery tour of origins. Obviously, the doctor had seen enough of Geller's stunts, as had Shipi and Hannah, who had both long since retired from the scene. It was just Geller and me, mano a mano.
Twelve hours later, I was certain that I had seen something happen during my presence - but just what remains a puzzle even now.
Uri first tried several attempts at telepathic communication by using numbers, colors, capital cities, and geometrical drawings as targets. Most of the time he would try "viewing" the target I chose, though he occasionally me to guess a number "passed" to me by him. None of these telepathic efforts were overwhelmingly successful.
But the celebrated "Geller effect" apparently was. During that day's long personal audience, Geller succeeded in either breaking or bending three items: an ice cream spoon; my nail clippers, and a fork. It was the bent fork - which continued to bend while out of Geller's reach - that impresssed me the most and still does.
Beginning with telepathy - "to see if I can get with you" - Uri turns his back to me, hunches over on the couch, and covers his eyes with his right hand, reminding me of the see-no-evil monkey. I write down "9" in response to his request to pick a number from one to ten. There is a notable change in his voice, a shift from the youthful hyperkinetic exuberance to dramatically lower tones, lulling, persuading, full of assurance and certainty. Yet nothing happens. An hour passes in growing frustration, without his "seeing" any of the numbers or other targets that I have written down. Crumpled bits of note paper lie scattered across the hardwood floor like giant spitballs gone awry.
Again I write down a series of numbers: this time "3," "8," and "2."
"You have it? Cover them," commands Geller. "John, by the way, I'm not guessing; I'm trying ways to reach you, and I'll reach you somewhere. Now, start passing me the last one you wrote." Several seconds lapse. "Repeat it."
Forty seconds go by, each of us staring intensely at the other. The silence is broken only by sounds of lunch preparation. Uri mumbles a Hebrew curse, then quickly follows with an apology. "You don't mind doing it until I get it, do you? You're very strong. That means you're passing me the number, but I'm getting a couple of numbers." But Uri's request for my forbearance is to no avail. After several more unsuccessful tries, he jumps up and stretches. Attempting to conceal his embarrassment he explains that "when things like this happen in Israel, I just switch to talking, speech, no demonstrations, and people would understand. I would tell people, 'It's just no good, it (just) happens' "
Does a bad night's sleep or ilness inhibit his ability to psychic successfully?
"No, I don't think that to be good I should go to sleep early and wake up late ... well, if you have a headache, that's different, you hurt," responds Uri, denying that special preparations or physical training stimulates his psychic talents. "If I have it, I have it; if I don't, I don't."
But on those days he does not perform well, does he feel any difference in his physical or mental well-being? Uri has no answer for that; instead, he reverses the line of questioning, saying that the person he is working with sometimes blocks his ability, either by outright skepticism or "because they are very strong in something themselves."
"Strong in what?"
"In something, you know. They know something, they have a lot in their heads." In other words, they, too, have psychic powers.
The failure to produce any telepathic play with me leaves Uri despondent, and he draws inward like a petulant child. As the pleasant, ingratiating showman, he exuded a contagious warmth. The abrupt change is embarrassing for both of us. Pleading fatigue, he vanishes up the stairs to his room.
About a half hour later, as we were setting the table for lunch, Melanie confided in me in a hushed voice that Uri was extremely upset. "He is so disturbed that he cannot do things for you," she said, "that he is actually crying." After what Geller had said about my "blocking" him, I was left with the feeling that it was all my fault, that I was about as welcome as an atheist at a church picnic.
The simple hamburger lunch was subdued. At the head of the tabel sat Puharich with nothing in front of him except a glass of water, which he sipped with deliberate slowness. He explained that he was fasting, taking only liquids. "I'll do this once in a while, for four or five days. It cleans me out." he smiled one of his frequent raconteur grins. The coversation settled on the attitudes of various people and organizations towards psychic phenomena, with Geller seeking repeatedly to find out how he was regarded. He could not comprehend why he was not immediately accepted by everyone for what he claimed to be. Hannah and Shipi remained quiet, except for an occasional word of Hebrew with Geller. Although Hannah traveled with Geller - ostensibly as his girl friend - the two of them displayed no outward affection or emotion toward one another. Friends though they were, the relationship between the three young Israeli's seemed strictly professional, brining to mind the image of a classic European trapeze act, each member dependent upon the other, but grudgingly so, carefully hoarding their secrets for mutual survival.
Puharich launched into a discussion of some of the exceptional people he had studied, including the Brazillian healer named Arigo. By this time, dessert had been served, - dishes of vanilla ice cream. Geller, seated directly to my left, was quietly downing his as the rest of us listened intently to Puharich's account of an Indian holy man, Sai Baba. I had never heard of him, though it seems he is comon table talk for anyone with occult interets. The middle-aged Indian sage is a famous faith healer and psychic surgeon, councelor, and worker of miracles, according to Puharich, and he is know for materializing objects out of the air - rings, bracelets, photographs, and peculiar holy ashes called vibhuti, which smell distinctively of incense and taste pungently sweet - a remarkable tale.
Suddenly, Geller interjected: "I can do anything sai Baba can do."
Simultaneously with these words, Uri raised his spoon as if to take another bite. "Look, look!" he cried. His left hand held only the spoon handle - the decapitated bowl remained buried in the ice cream, cut of at the narrowest part of the throat. We had just witnessed one of the frequent, randomly occuring "Geller effect" events.
"I knew I shouldn't have said that!" shouted Geller, referring to his challenging remark about Sai Baba. " 'They' heard me."
Immediately there ensued a runic discussion among Geller, Puharich, and Melanie over how to interpret the broken spoon. Was it meant as a rebuke by Geller's "big controllers in the sky" for his spirited egoism? Or was it an affirmative signal, indicating that "They" were still with him, that Uri was indeed as powerful as Sai Baba? The group tended to assume the latter, but either way was a plus in the eye of an onlooker, since very few are suspected of receiving extraterrestrial scoldings. Laconically, Puharich noted that events of this nature were always occuring when Geller was present. A big restaurant dinner party might leave five or six pieces of severed cutlery in its wake.
"Things just happen," he explained.
"Did you see that? Did you see that!" bubbled the once and future champ of psi, now back in form. Charged up because of his lunchtime success, Geller had too much energy to go directly back to a sit down interview, so he suggested agame of Ping-Pong on atable in the basement. With Hannah and Shipi as the mummer's gallery, Uri and I warmed up, then lit into a game of full-blown Ping-Pong scramble. To his frustration, Uri found himself losing. But the broken ice cream spoon continued to tide over his confidence, and after several games he suggested that we move back upstairs. "I've just got to convince you, John," he kept insisting.
The large den where we had spent the morning had been filled with sunlight and had given of a feeling of bright polished yellow oak. It was an open, warm, receptive room off the main entrance hall. In direct contrast, the living room to which we now walked was cool, shadowy, filled with purplish-brown hues, and seemed to hum with a quality of quiet reflection, like burnished ebony. The den had been an active, shamanistic setting; the living room was passive and yoga-like. If minds were to meet, here was the appropriate setting. Geller flopped into a large easy chair against one wall, and I relaxed into the corner of a sofa about eight feet away.
Geller wanted to start off with a change in procedure. Instead of trying to read a number in my head as before, he suggested that I try to discern something he was thinking. He was going to project to me the image of one geometrical figure inside another. I was to draw what my minds eye "saw." Staring directly into my eyes, Geller ordered me to sketch what he was passing to me. I tried. he tried. For several minutes. I could think onl of a few combinations, so I ended up sketching a square with an "X" inside, connecting each of the corners... Certainly no flash of telepathic inspiration stimulated the image, at least none that I could tell.
"Let me see what you have," he said, reaching out to examine what I had drawn, positive that we were in communication this time. Upon seeing the pad Uri frowned, mused a few seconds, then handed it back to me without comment. "Here, again, once more we'll try it. A geometrical figure, right under here, within a geometrical figure, and I'm going to try to project to you a geometrical figure." I had not seen what he supposedly had drawn on the first try, but I did not mention it. The square and lines were obviously not what he had tried to "send."
This time I closed my eyes and concentrated hard. "All I see is a figure I thought of earlier," I told Geller in exasperation after several seconds of silent contemplation.
"What you see, put down."
I drew a circle with an equilateral triangle lodged inside it and skeptically handed it over for Geller's perusal:
"Fantastic"! he whispered. "Look what I did." He had drawn a triangle with a circle inside: "You got it the opposite way - very interesting." His words were uttered in the hushed sacredotal manner in which a priest gives communion. Even though the figures were reversed, he took my drawing as a hit - a correct transference of telepathic imagery.
Back to number guessing, again without success, and Geller seemed genuinely mystified over his failures. Curiously, I was beginning to feel responsible, like the classic Goofy character too insensitive to be hypnotized.
Shifting stratergy, Geller handed me some large notebook paper to replace my pad and drew a large rectangular "screen" on the top sheet. "When you write another number, please make a screen around it afterward, and see it with a screen," he instructed. Several tries later and we still had no telepathic hits. With the exception of the broken ice cream spoon, the day had been a total psychic bust. Increasingly worried about his failures, Geller suggested we try some metal bending.
We moved back to the den, where I had left my briefcase with some samples for him to try. I pulled out my hotel room key and handed it to Uri. After a quick look, he decided, "No, I don't feel for it," and handed it back. Not quite sure what he meant, I hunted for something else and dug out a small, collapsible nail clipper with a foldout nail file attached to it. Geller gave it a cursory examination in his hands, then laid it to one side on the glass coffee table in front of us and asked for something else. I offered up a key ring with several assorted keys attached to it, but he said that they might be too valuable to bust up. Perplexed, I wondered if I should have stopped off at Tiffany's and collected a few silver trousseau items to use as experimental fodder. I had been told that Uri - at his best - breaks silver faster than an ouzoed Greek smashes bouzouki dishes.
While I rummaged deep within the folds of my briefcase, Geller called out, "Look, the nail file is broken," and he triumphantly handed me the clipper. It had been set aside and forgotten - by me, at least - for several minutes. true enough, the tiny nail file was severed from its circular swivel. Curiously, Geller was not jumping for joy. He seemed to offer up the broken pieces to see if I would accept the feat.
"Uri, how the hell do you expect me to swallow that? I didn't see you do it; in fact, you said that you weren't going to try. What gives?"
he did not argue. "Let's try the numbers again. I think I have my powers."
Just like that. No excuse. No regret. No wounded feelings. He leaped off the couch like a watermelon seed shot from between the fingers and settled again in the distant living room. I was left with the broken nail clipper and a growing suspicion. Still, I held back. There is an intense psychological pressure on an openminded person - more on a dedicated believer in psychic phenomena - not to burst the bubble of belief while in the presence of a sensitive. People in civilized society seldom choose to dress down a person face to face with the epithet "liar". We are too polite, preferring euphemisms or tactful skepticism. So, biting my tounge, I followed Geller back into the living room, where we both took up our former positions. After several more attempts at number guessing, Geller appeared to be getting more receptive - or perhaps I was getting sloppier in how I drew the numbers. The procedure was becoming almost code-like in its brevity, so practiced were we. And on we went, throughout the afternoon, attempting to guess numbers, countries, drawings, but with one lone success.
Then Geller suggested that we again reverse the procedure. He would try to pass me numbers. Using the same verbal routine as before, we started hitting. Time and time again he would say a number had been chosen and drawn on his paper. I had my back turned and my eyes closed. Then I would turn and he would "pass" the number to me. I wrote down the first number that popped into my head. Geller would turn over his paper and the numbers would match. We had a few misses, but the vast majority - about ninety percent - were accurate. There was an eeriness to the scene. Roles had been reversed. Geller, the psychic, was sending thoughts to me, a non-sensitive. Whatever he was doing it was impressive. He was delighted, letting out tiny whoops of joy whenever we scored. At the time, all thoughts of devious trickery had been wiped away by the fact that I was the one involved in the active side of the telepathy. I did not question my own veracity. That made the experience all the more powerful. Something was working - something strange and stirring to the elemental psyche. Geller had me right where he wanted me. I was beginning to believe.
Could I have been partially hypnotized? This is not out of the question. I was certainly highly suggestible after the reverse telepathy began to work. After all, here was Geller with his ingenuous pitch, backed up by Puharich, Mitchell, and other scientists - the mental set was one strictly biased in his favor. Forget what had gone before - the fizzled-out number passing to him, the non-bending, even the highly suspicious broken nail clipper. The mind filters out experience contrary to its expectation. I unconsciously tossed out all the demonstrations gone awry, retained all the verbal hucksterism, then latched on to a single set of demonstrations to confirm my expectations. Whatever his is or is not, Geller certainly commands my respect as a supreme manipulator of human psyches.
Sensing his growing control over me, Geller urged that we stop playing around with the number guessing and return to his metal mind-bending. I eagerly agreed. so, back to the living room and the glass coffee table. On the way he picked up a few forks from the dining room table. From all appearances, these were from the same set of Japanese stainless steel utensils as the spoon that had been broken at lunch. Shipi joined us. Geller explained that " he gives me energy." Again seated on the couch, he clenched his left fist and placed it directly over the neck of the fork so that the bottom of his hand was held about half an inch above the fork. In a vivid show of concentration, Geller scrunched up his brow, clenched his fist, and stared transfixed at the portion of the fork he was trying to affect.
" 'Bend, bend, bend' are the words I repeat over and over to myself," Geller explains. I hold the fork as still as possible, eyes only about eight inches away. "Do you feel anything? Any heat?" questions Geller.
"Nothing." I reply.
He continues to direct his clenched fist at the middle of the fork, squeezing and unsqueezing as if milking water out of a stone. Shipi sits idly to one side, a dreamy expression on his face. If Geller is plugging in to him for energy, I'd like to know where it is coming from, because from all appearances Shipi is undergoing a personal energy crisis. Geller continues his fist routine, but nothing happens. Puzzled, he stops, calls Shipi to take hold of one end of the fork, then continues. Still nothing.
Suggesting that he needs all of Shipi's energies, he takes my hand off and replaces it with Shipi's. The silent "energy man" now holds both ends of the fork. My eyes zoom in even closer, watching for the slightest hint of muscular pressure by Geller's helper. I can see none. Geller's fist has now opened and he is rubbing his index finger along the neck of the fork. He is clearly becoming agitated at the fork's lack of cooperation. He rubs harder and harder. Nothing. taking the fork out of Shipi's hands, Geller examines it for the slightest bend.
"Yes, I think I see a little," he suggests.
"I see nothing, Uri." Back it goes into Shipi's hands. This time Geller uses his index finger and his thumb to rub both sides of the neck. Almost frantically, like a shipwrecked sailor calling up a bottled genie, Geller strokes the fork, waiting for the miraculous to happen. Imperceptibly at first, then becoming barely detectable, Geller begins to press down on the fork with his index finger. Shipi holds it in his vice grip. Geler is clearly - though with great sublety - trying to bend the fork with his fingers.
"Uri, you're using your hand to bend the fork; What gives?" I challenge.
Without missing a beat, Geller takes the fork and examines it, again suggesting that "There is a slight bend to it." He does not even acknowledge my accusation. "I just don't have the power tonight, I guess," is his only reply.
He moves right on, lest I quiz him more about the possibility of attempted fakery. Picking up two other forks, he nests them together, showing that they both have the same shape. Setting one on the coffee table directly in front of me, he has me hold the second fork. This time he passes the open, flat palm of his left hand over the fork, skimming the metal without touching it. Again the look of fierce concentration envelops Geller's face. If it is an act it's a good one. As before, the technique is sufficient to rivet my attention on the feat he is atempting now, rather than to dwell on the shoddiness of the one that has just passed.
"I think it's beginning to bend!" Geller says excitedly. The fork does indeed appear to have a slight upward tilt to its handle. By God, he had done it! I had no ready explanation for it. Laughing with excitement, I congratulated him as he sprang off the couch literally jumping with joy.
"I did it, I did it! I knew I could See! See! Now do you believe?"
We are all high with the excitement of his accomplishment. Even Shipi smiles. "It will continue to bend," predicts Geller, back to his full self confidence.
Ripping a piece of paper from my notepad, I nested the two forks again and, using the unbent one as a referrence, traced the outline of the curved fork, noting the time, ten-twenty-five P.M. Then I immediately placed the bent fork and piece of notepaper on a window ledge about twenty feet to my right where no one could get to them. If the fork was going to continue its bending - as Uri predicted - I'd be damned if Geller or Shipi was going to get near it.
Flushed with success, Geller anxiously counted down the minutes until I again could check for further bending. The experiment fork was left undisturbed for ten minutes, after which time I again sketched its curvature, using the referrence fork as a guide. Geller was right. The tip of the fork apparently had bent upward another three-quaters of an inch. I was dumbfounded and Geller was ecstatic. Seven minutes later its apparent movement measured another five-eighths of an inch. Nine minutes later, the distance had increased only one-eighth of an inch. The it stopped. The measurements I made later from the succession of penciled outlines showed that the total bend measured one and three-quater inches.
No one but me touched that fork after the initial bending began - of that I would swear. Both the bending fork and the paper I measured it on were left clearly within my sight at all times, away on the ledge. Neither Geller nor Shipi ever left his seat while the measurements were being taken. However, the referrence fork was left on the coffee table in front of Geller and me. Only in retrospect do I realize that he might have been able to misdirect my attention long enough to grab the referrence fork and put a slight manual bend in it while I was not looking. If he had bent the handle of the referrence fork downward, it would make it seem like the other fork handle was bending upward. Long postmortem puzzlings do not resolve the dilemma. At the time I surely did not notice any tampering with the referrence fork. But, because it was within Geller's reach - though close to me - I cannot definitely rule out the possibility that he manually bent it when I was not looking. Since we were talking face to face most of the time the experiment fork was "bending," the time allowed for such a manipulation was minimal. But that is all a good magician requires.
At the time, none of these considerations crossed my mind. Cool logic does not usually prevail when Geller is around. He forces the situation, forces the mental set, forces the excitement. At the time, I believed without a doubt that I had seen a fork bent by mental powers. I believed, too, that numbers from Geller's mind had been passed to me telepathically. But he had not "received" me. No teleportations had whizzed in. No dematerializations had caused any objects to vanish. My tape recorder still worked, and all the cassettes were accounted for. My watch ran normally. My hotel key was not curved liek a banana. Still, what I had seen and heard certainly seemed sufficient evidence to persue Geller's case further.
Before I rushed off to catch a late-night train back to New York, Geller waxed philosophical. "I know that I'm increasing in powers every year. For instance, bending an object - for two years I couldn't do it in half an hour, one hour. Today I can do it in ten minutes. Do you understand me? It comes closer and closer each time.
In confidential tones, Geller concedes that maybe he is mortal, after all. "Look, maybe one day I'll wake up and I won't have any powers; I don't know. Maybe one day I'll lose my influence; maybe one day it wil just not be."
This article contains copyrighted material that has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner.
It is being made available for the general purpose of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching and/or research.
I believe that use of this material is covered under the terms of "fair use".
If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes other than that provided by law, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
