CHICAGO — Whether you believe him or you don't, controversial Uri Geller can turn an hour into a fascinating experience. Is he a f r a u d or a phenomenon, as he bends metal by what he contends is the power of his mind alone and performs telepalhic feat with a considerable degree of accuracy?
The fact thai even respected scientists, who have tested the 28-year-old Israeli under controlled, supposedly cheat-proof laboratory conditions, are asking that question opens up a whole new bag of possibilities for an adventurous mind.
Chicago Daily News photographer John H. White and I spent an hour with Geller, in Chicago to promote his book, "Uri Geller: My Story." During the interview, Geller bent two keys by stroking them gently, and nearly duplicated a drawing I did.
Neither White nor I could figure out how Geller could have seen even the movement of my arm as I did the drawing. But if he could have, and we simply didn't catch him at it, he went one'step farther. That was an even greater puzzle to me.
He drew a picture, which we then "transmitted" by mental means to me. I drew a relatively close copy. I know I didn't cheat. Neither did"Geller do a fast drawing after he saw mine. We had taken the pen away from him, and White kept his eyes on him just in case.
Geller tells in his book about first experiencing a strange "silvery mass of light" that knocked him unconscious in the garden of his home when he was about 3 or 4. He says about age 6 or 7, metal started bending or breaking in his hands and clocks and watches started adding strange things around him.
HE CONTENDS he has stopped an escalator and a cable car by simply wishing them, to stop, among many other feats, and that things sometimes levitate around him without any mental effort on his part.
Among Ihose who have tested him under controlled laboratory conditions are Prof. J. G. Taylor of King's College, London University, and Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ of Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Taylor said what Geller did in metal-bending experiments "is so exceptional that it presents a crucial challenge to modern science, and could even destroy the latter if no explanation becomes avaliable." Puthoff and Targ said, "We have observed certain phenomena wilh the subjects (including Geller) for which we have no scientific explanation."
Taylor also conducted laboratory tests on 15 children who, Geller's book states, performed "phenomenal" metalbending feats with about the same degree of success as Geller's. At the same time, critics insist that magicians can do what Geller does.
However, last fall the traditionally conservative and prestigious British journal Nature published a paper on tests, including those with Geller, conducted at SRI. Nature editor David Davies wrote, "Publishing in a scientific journal is not a process of receiving a seal of approval from the establishment; rather it is the serving notice on the community that there is something worthy of attention and scrutiny."
HANDSOME GELLER, who says he isn't ashamed of using his "powers" to make money from personal appearances, his book, a record album and an upcoming movie of his life, says these so-called powers "baffle me."
He says he believes:
- Absolutely in God.
- In a huge cosmic connection.
- In extraterrestrial intelligences and UFOs.
- That his "power" or "forces" come from "somewhere under God."
- That the "power" or "forces" cannot be used for negative or harmful demonstrations.
- That what some might consider silly demonstrations for such "powers" or "intelligences" are simply coming as proof to open up man's mind.
- That if he continues to work with scientists, "One day in the future there will be enough scientific evidence that the human race will have to change its mind."
Geller will be pretty busy most of the next year doing personal appearances in the United States, the Orient, Europe and South America, and making the movie, to be produced by the Robert Stigwood organization.
He says his "base" now is New York, where he has an office on 57th Street, but, "I don't live anywhere." "I really travel all Ihe time. I don't plan to settle down" he said. He also said he likes to travel comfortably — first class — and carries his belongings around with him in seven pieces of Gucci luggage.
"PEOPLE SAY to me, 'Why are you making money with your powers?' I say to them, 'Are you sitting here free?' Why should a guy with powers go off in the mountains and eat herbs?" Asked how he bends a key or other metal object, he answered: "I wish it to bend so much. I say 'Bend, bend, bend.' Sometimes I can do it, sometimes I can't."
In his so-called mind-to-mind experiments, he says a picture comes onto a screen in his head when he is duplicating another person's drawing. He often asks the person to repeat the drawing in his or her mind so he can get it. He said he repeated his drawing in his mind when "transmitting" to me.
The levitation that Geller says happens around him, along with a string of other things he says baffle him, might be the work of "cosmic clowns," — harmless ones, of course, perhaps readying man's mind for discovery, he suggested. I don't know how or why. I'm more interested in why, he said.
If he is a Trickster, he must be a masterful one to have gotten this far without having been caught red-handed by scientists who have tested him. If he isn't, who knows where it all could lead into the far reaches of expanding consciousness?
Geller said he thinks what he would most like to do in the future is "to explore. I believe there are things hidden on this planet left by other civilizations. I would like to find ihem just to prove to his world that they existed." In this so-called "huge cosmic connection" he believes in, he said there may be infinite galaxies, one inside the other. He suggested that a whole galaxy of less than microscopic proportions might be inside the tip of my pen.
At that point I suggested that on the theory, there should he a few inside my typewriter keys, and that if he has any influence in that direction, I'd appreciate it if lie would tell them all to get together.
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