Click! Uri Geller had hung up. I was very disappointed because I had looked forward to a little mental skirmish with the famed Israeli “paranormalist,” as he now bills himself. Much to my surprise Geller had agreed to an interview with me and Tommy Schnurmacher on our “Right Chemistry” radio program on Montreal’s CJAD. Why my surprise? Simply because Geller normally crops up on national TV shows like Oprah Winfrey and The View. But now he was willing to spend an hour with us. I guess these things happen when there’s a book to promote and there’s money to be made. There was a book, a rather interesting one, called “Uri Geller’s Mind Power.” Unfortunately, we never got around to talking about it.
I have had a long fascination with Uri Geller. The connection goes back to the early 1970s when I was a chemistry student at McGill. I received a letter from an uncle in Israel describing a performance he had seen at a nightclub. An entertainer had wowed the crowd with a number of mind-reading effects and then called a young lady up on the stage. He placed a piece of aluminum foil in her hand and suggested that he would heat it up with mental power. Sure enough, within seconds the volunteer let out a scream and dropped the aluminum like a hot potato. My uncle was impressed but he did have a few thoughts on the matter. You see, he was a chemist. And chemists of course study matter and the changes it undergoes. He was wondering if there was some chemical reaction by means of which this feat could be accomplished and asked me if I had come across anything like it in my studies. As it happened, I had. Although not exactly through my chemical studies.
As a youngster, I had become interested in magic as a hobby. We’re not talking about casting spells here, we’re talking about pulling rabbits out of hats, vanishing coins and yes, heating up aluminum foil. There’s an old magic trick that relies on secretly introducing a bit of mercuric chloride into a piece of folded aluminum and placing it in a spectator’s hand. As if by magic, the aluminum soon becomes too hot to handle. Of course, it isn’t due to magic, it’s due to an exothermic chemical reaction. I used to do this until I began to study chemistry. Then I quickly put a stop to it. Mercuric chloride is potentially toxic and it isn’t wise to handle it. In any case, I communicated this bit of chemical trivia to my uncle who agreed that this may have been the way the stage stunt was performed. Still, he said, it had been very well done and he remained impressed with the performer. If you ever get a chance to see him, he said, go! His name is Uri Geller. And that was the first time I ever heard the name that would eventually become world famous.
You can imagine then, that when Uri Geller came to Montreal in the early 1970s, I was there in the ballroom of the old Mount Royal Hotel, ready to witness what I thought would be some sort of magical entertainment. I was in for a surprise. There was no “show,” not in the traditional sense, anyway. Geller, a charming and good looking young man, told us he would demonstrate an ability he had first noticed when he was a child. He would deform metal objects just by concentrating on them. He didn’t understand why he had this power, but he had it.
As I recall, the evening consisted mostly of Geller telling us what he had done and what he would do, but there wasn’t very much doing. He did display a selection of spoons and keys, some of which came from members of the audience. There was a lot of talk, a lot of metal stroking, and suddenly a cry of surprise from Uri. He seemed more shocked than anyone as he triumphantly held a bent spoon aloft. The audience oohed and aahed. I wasn’t all that impressed, because although Geller had kept telling us “it’s bending, it’s bending” as he was handling the spoon, I really hadn’t detected the cutlery’s gymnastics. I did see a spoon that was not bent at the beginning of the manipulation and was bent at the end. But there was much commotion and much “misdirection,” a practice I had become familiar with through my own attempts at prestidigitation. Misdirection is basically the ability to get the audience to look at the wrong place at the right time. By the time it came to twisting keys and starting stopped watches, I was paying pretty close attention and started to get a handle on what was happening. I had come to see Geller, expecting to see some clever deceptions. But not of this variety. I had not expected to be told that the effects we were witnessing were done by purely psychic means without any trickery.
I began to follow Uri’s career closely. I watched his TV appearances, I read his books. And I read about him. James Randi’s outstanding work “The Truth About Uri Geller,” filled in the blanks I had missed and provided explanations for how the now famous psychic could have accomplished all the miracles he performed, had he chosen to do them through tried and tested conjuring tricks instead of through paranormal means. As I became more and more involved with science, Uri’s suggestions of special powers began to bother me more and more. Energy can of course be converted from one form to the other, but it cannot be created or destroyed. It takes a lot of energy to bend a key or a spoon. Where was this energy coming from? Uri attempts to address this in “Mind Power” by telling us that coal has hidden energy which is only released when it is lit. Similarly, he says, thoughts and feelings can also generate energy. Yes, there is some truth to that. But here we are not talking about a combustion process. Brain waves can only be measured with sophisticated instruments and the electrical energy associated with these is minute in comparison to the energy required to bend a spoon! We can’t even bend a spoon by putting it next to high voltage power lines!
You can see why I was eager to speak with Uri Geller, especially now that he seems to have reinvented himself as a “healing facilitator.” I wanted to give his some credit for getting away from mangling spoons and concentrating instead on the potential of mind power in healing. I also wanted to commend him for some of the charitable work he has done on behalf of hospitals. But I did want to ask him why he has never claimed the James Randi Educational Foundation’s million dollars, offered to anyone who can perform a psychic feat under controlled conditions. Just bend a spoon and take home a million dollars to give to sick kids. Isn’t it irresponsible not to take advantage of this? Wouldn’t it be better than giving out “Uri bears” which have crystals (energized by Uri himself) hanging around their neck? And there was so much more I wanted to ask. About stories that he had seen a UFO in the Israeli desert, about stories how women at his performances sometimes experienced spontaneous erogenous satisfaction and about how he had now become an expert on electric fields, cosmic radiation, hormones, drugs and pollution.
But it was not to be. After I introduced myself and recounted the aluminum story, he plainly said he had never done that. O.K., maybe my uncle had seen a Uri Geller impersonator. I doubt it though, because I have managed to find an Israeli newspaper article from 1974 describing Geller’s use of the aluminum trick. Anyway, when I then tried to talk about his book and began to pose a question about Iscador, a mistletoe extract described in the book as having an anti-cancer effect, the great Uri Geller, the man who reads minds, the man who terrorizes cutlery with a glance, the man from whom I was expecting an erudite answer, cranked up his mind power and…hung up! Just like Randi told me he would if there were any hint of confrontation. It seems the Amazing Randi is the one with the real psychic powers.