"How do you feel about the idea of doing a biography of Uri Geller.
The question was put to me by my literary agent in the spring of 1974. I said I thought it was a lousy idea. I had just read Puharich's book, and found it baffling and infuriating. But he seemed to have picked the bones pretty clean. Anyway, how much of a biography can you write of someone in his mid-20's?
Geller, it seemed, was under some kind of contract to the business tycoon Robert Stigwood, who was responsible for such shows as Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. And Stigwood, it seemed, had decided to produce a film based on Uri's autobiography. Since I had written novels, biographies, and a book on the Occult, I was apparently high on the list of possible biographers.
The film bussiness is like a game of tennis, in which the original idea is batted back and forth 100 times or so, and the rules are changed every five minutes. While I was still brooding on the question of whether I could afford to turn down so much money, somebody else was asked to write the biography, and I was asked to turn in my own ideas for the film script. As a preliminary step, I was to meet Uri Geller for lunch.
I had no fixed ideas about Geller. I had seen him on television and thought him a personable young man, although hampered by a kind of exuberant immodesty. I also felt a certain sympathy for his struggles against the antisuccess mechanism, which was already gathering force. I had been through the same kind of thing myself in the mid-1950's, when my first book earned me the misleading label "Angry Young Man", and all the zany publicity that went with it. Within weeks, the same journalists who had launched myself and other "AYM's" (such as playwrights John Osborne and Brendan Behan) were tearing us to pieces. Now, as I heard Geller described as a materialist, a publicity — hound, and a downright fraud, my sympathies naturally tended to be on his side. As to whether he cheated or not, that was a matter on which I kept an open mind. But I had no doubt whatsoever that such powers as he had demonstrated on TV could be genuine; researching a massive book on the ocult had convinced me of that.
That first lunch with Uri was an oddly disappointing and inconclusive affair. Mark Twain has a story about an inventor who asks a millionaire to finance an invention. Within five minutes, the millionaire is convinced, and takes out his chequebook. The inventor goes on to describe the benefits his invention will bring to society, and the millionaire begins to wilt and puts away his chequebook. And when the inventor goes on to detail the blessings his invention will bring to the whole world, the millionaire kicks him out. Uri has the same tendency to oversell himself. His steadily mounting enthusiasm seems an attempt to pressure you into belief, although his feats speak quite eloquently for themselves. On that first occasion he bent a spoon, broke one of my keys, made my watch go back several hours by clenching his fist above it, and read my mind. Only this last feat seemed 100 percent free of any suspicion of cheating. I sat with my back to a blank wall, and Mrs. Rae Knight, one of Stigwood's assistants, sat next to me. Uri, alone, sat opposite us, his back to the room. While I did my drawing — a kind of spook — he turned his chair around and sat with his back to me. I cannot swear that he did not glance back over his shoulder, but Rae Knight, sitting next to me, could watch him all the time. Then I covered the drawing with my hand and Uri turned around. It took him several minutes to get it, and I had to concentrate hard. I may have made involuntary movements of my head as I tried to transmit the drawing, but hardly enough to tell him it was a face. The only possibility of cheating was that Rae Knight was some kind of accomplice; subsequent aquaintance with her has convinced me that nothing is less likely.
Randi could — and did — duplicate the spoon bending and watch altering, but not the mind reading (at least, not over the dinner table with me).
When I left Uri that day, I was puzzled and disturbed. I was more than half inclined to believe in his total genuineness. Yet he had placed a coin over the face of my watch before clenching his his fist over it; Randi could quite easily have changed the hands in the split second before he placed the coin over it. Uri had taken my key across the room to a radiator, explaining that he gains power from metals; he could have bent it somehow as he crossed the room. (I did not go with him.) Added to these purely practical misgivings was my instinctive wariness of someone so prone to overselling his powers. So I was not really disappointed when, after a few months of silence, Rae Knight phoned me to say that the film seemed to be off.
I had reckoned without Uri. The next development in the story came to me via Rae Knight. She told me that Robert Stigwood had invited Uri to dinner at his house, to explain that the film idea was impracticable for the moment. Uri, who likes to get his own way, was incensed. As the butler served drinks from a large pewter tray, the tray suddenly snapped in two. A large poker in the fireplace proceeded to bend. Stigwood went down to the kitchen, to inquire about the delay in serving dinner, and learned that forks and spoons were bending. Stigwood was sufficiently impressed to reverse his decision on the film.
My next encounter with Uri was on "Start the Week," the BBC radio program I have already mentioned. Although the program is run by the gentle and courteous Richard Baker, I again had the feeling that Uri had been handed the wet end of the stick. He was introduced by Esther Rantzen, who read aloud a passage about bending keys and making watches change their time. A long dialogue followed, in which Uri clearly felt on the defensive. He took hold of a key belonging to Flora Rita Schrieber — author of Sybil, a book about multiple personality — and caused it to bend 10 degrees by rubbing it gently, allowing others to rest their hands on it at the same time. Someone suggested that he had borrowed the key before the program and bent it then; Miss Schreiber flatly denied that. At this point, Esther Rantzen explained that the earlier extract she had read was not a description of Uri, but of the Amazing Randi, bending a key by professional expertise; she went on to quote Randi: "I am proud of my profession. In my view Uri Geller brings disgrace to the art I practice. Worse than that, he warps the thinking of the young generation of forming minds — that is unforgivable." "In other words," added Miss Rantzen, hurling the final brick, "the effect we saw acheived on the table this morning could have been sleight of hand."
Of course, there is no law — or even convention — that says an interviwer has to be kind to an interviewee. Still, in my own experience, it always produces a sense of betrayal to find you have been lured into an ambush. Whether you play it cool, fight back, or lose your temper, you can't win. Fortunately, at this point Uri was spared the neccessity of reacting by having to leave to catch a train; I was left with a feeling that he had just about held his own.
For the next few months I wrestled with the movie outline. Screen tests showed that Uri tended to underact rather than overact, which is unusual for a beginner, and good news for his director; it is the over actors who are impossible to coach. My own problems were less easily solved. From the beginning, I had felt that a straight film biography of Uri was a nonstarter; the idea of a film biography of someone who bends spoons is absurd. What is interesting about Uri is the implications of what he is doing. Where do his powers come from? Do we all have them? Are they just an accident, like double-jointedness, or are they connected to some inner development? It was this last question that interested me, and I played with the idea of a kind of "2001 of inner space."
At the same time, I did my best to arrive at some more definite conclusions about Uri. Here, I was slightly more successful. I questioned a number of people who had seen him in action, and whose honesty I could trust. These included a number of publishers of my aquaintance, who had met Uri at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the previous year. In my own experinece, publishers tend to be among the most hard-headed and skeptical members of the population. All were predisposed to regard him as a clever conjurer. One described handing a key to Uri, and then deliberately walking backward as Uri made his way across to a radiator (to "gain power"), refusing to take his eyes off the key. At the radiator, Uri rubbed it and it bent within seconds.
The most interesting story I heard was of the dinner at which Uri caused coffeepots and sugar bowls to crumple inward, merely by pointing his finger at them. One publisher remained unconvinced, or at least defiant. Uri held his hand above the man's gold cuff link, without touching it. The link parted, and fell on the tablecloth. When the publisher picked it up to put it on again, the bar holding the two halves together was missing. A thorough search of the table and floor failed to reveali it.
A similar session has been described in Esquire by a contributing editor, Dotson Rader. Geller touched a gold link bracelet he was wearing, and told Radner that he had receieved it from an older woman, which was correct. He pointed to Rader's watch: "That has an engraving under the watch. But not written to you." He removed the bracelet from Rader's wrist, apparently without touching the clasp; as he continued to retail accurate information about its donor, Radner realized that the saltcellar was moving of its own accord across the top of the table. Rader describes it graphically as looking like "a tiny bishop wearing a silver miter shuffling across a snowy field.
Such incidents, along with other testimony, convinced me that Uri undoubtedly possesses some weird power.
When I began to plan this book, there were anumber of questions that I needed to ask him. Because Uri spends most of his time in Mexico and travelling around the world, and I live in Cornwall, England, it was not easy to arrange a meeting. Finally, in February 1976, I heard that he was due to visit Spain; I arranged to fly to Barcelona to talk with him.
With Uri, things seldom go as expected. The day before I left, he telephoned to explain that he could not come to Barcelona. In Madrid, the police had had to eject a man from the hotel after he tried to attack Uri; then he received death threats from Palestinian guerrillas. A performer on stage is highly vulnerable, and the Spanish police could hardly be expected to keep him permanently surrounded by a bodyguard. So Uri decided to cancel his performances in Barcelona. Instead, he would meet me the following weekend in San Sebastian. I decided not to tell him that two Spanish monarchs have been assasinated in San Sebastian.
I went to Barcelona anyway — by this time I had other appointments. The day after my arrival, Uri phoned again from Valencia. He had decided to leave Spain without further performances, but would come to Barcelona to see me after all. I hastened out to buy a tape recorder — having left my own at home — and went to meet him at the air port.
Legend has it that Uri travels with a vast retinue of people. In fact, he was accompanied only by Shipi, and by his secretary Trina, a quiet American girl.
Meeting Uri again, I was struck once more by his good looks and his athletic condition. He has not allowed the luxurious life to increase his weight. He does not drink, smokes only an occasional cigar, and eats sparingly and simply. Morning and evening, he lies on his back on the floor and raises his legs above his head 80 times. He explained that if he ceases to feel in the peak of health, his powers deteriorate.
As we make our ways towards the taxis, Uri speaks about the death threats. "It is absurd. I have nothing against the Palestinians. All I want to see is peace in the Middle East." And he mentions his ambition to lecture in Egypt. I am again struck by the seriousness and enthusiasm with which he says everything; it may be a habit he has picked up from being interviewed so many times. He makes an impact of great sincerity, as well as charm. When you are talking with him, it is difficult to doubt him. And when he assures me, with great emphasis, "I have never cheated, never once in my life," I decide that he is probably speaking the truth.
As we speed along the road to Barcelona, there is a thud, and Uri looks around, alarmed in case a suitcase has fallen off the roof. The driver pulls over to the side of the road and gets out. The luggage rack has become loose. As he tightens it, Uri asks him in passable Spanish, "Has this ever happened before?" The man says "No." Uri turns to me: "You see, these strange things are always happening around me. Of course, some times it is coincidence ..." Five minutes later, the other side of the rack comes loose and we have to tighten that; Uri shakes his head but doesn't press his point.
Because I am here to ask him straight questions, I start off with the one that bothers me most. He seems to me altogether too preoccupied by the doubters and critics; and this, in turn, seems to be part of his overpreoccupation with material success. He was once reported as syaing that his immediate ambition was to have a million dollrs in the bank.
With his usual emphasis and sincerity, he says; "let me explain. I think of my life as having three stages. In the first stage, I simply wanted to get known — I performed anywhere, all over Israel, sometimes for no fees. But my family needs money. So does Shipi's family. So the second stage is to make enough money to be able to live comfortably. In a short time — perhaps a year, perhaps more — I begin the third stage: to develop myself, to learn about my powers."
I ask him again what he thinks about the nature of these powers, but he shakes his head. "I just don't know. I don't know where they come from or what they mean, or why it should be me and not someone else."
I present my own view: that they come from his own subconcious mind, and are of the same nature as poltergeist manifestations. He is clearly unconvinced. "I find that hard to believe because whatever lies behind thses powers seems to be intelligent. In my book I say that maybe it's a Cosmic Clown."
He has a point. Poltergeists do sometimes behave intelligently — such as the one that wrote: "Esther Cox, you are mine to kill."
And it would be absurd to rule out the possibility that there are intelligent forces, quite apart from man's own mind, that cause many so-called "psychic manifestations". Yet until we have some proof — or at least some definite indication or clue — it is surely better to stick to the more plausible hypothesis.
In Uri's room, we switch on the tape recorder, and I continue down my list of questions. It strikes me that in one way Uri is unique among psychics. Every other one I can think of has had some kind of contact with the "dead" or the "other world." I want to know if Uri has ever felt that he was in contact with the dead. Uri slightly misunderstands my question, and proceeds to tell me an anecdote about when he came out of the army. He brought a small palstic bomb home with him. Unable to resist the temptation, he went up to the roof of his mother's house at midnight, and hurled it into the graveyard opposite. There was a loud crash, and he went back downstairs, and to bed. Some time later he was awakened by a knock at the door. He hurried to the door — and found no one there. Five minutes later, the knocking recurred. Again, there was no one there. When it happened a third time, Ui jumped onto his bed, and stared out the window, which had a view of the door. There was no one. The next morning, he went into the cemetery, searching for signs of the explosion, but could find none. He concluded that the rappings had been made by a spirit, perhaps reproaching him for tossing explosives.
At Puharich's house in New York, Uri heard three loud bangs coming from the ceiling overhead. Puharich's late father, who had been bedridden before his death, used to summon Puharich by banging his cane three times on the floor.
Uri had two other experiences suggesting the presence of a spirit — in both cases, the composer Chopin. While he was visiting the pianist Byron Janis, a death mask of Chopin over the piano had begun to shed tears. And when he and Janis stood by Chopin's grave in Paris, a stone flew past their heads. (Uri has suggested that Janis may be a reincarnation of the composer.) Both of these occurences may be exapmples of the poltergeist phenomena that Uri seems to produce, and so also, I suspect, was the knocking at his door after he threw the bomb into the graveyard. There have been many well-authenticated cases of pictures and statues — usually religious ones — shedding tears; like the stigmata of some saints, these effects seem to be due to some activity of the conscious mind.
The knockings in Puharich's house may have been of a different kind of phenomenon altogether. Many investigators now hold the view that haunting ghosts — as opposed to single-appearance phantoms — are not evidence of some intelligence present but are a kind of "recording" imprinted on a place by strong emotions. The haunting may be purely electrical in nature. When someone who is sensitive to the vibrations enters the electrical field, he will see — or hear — the ghost. An insensitive person would not even notice it. When Uri heard the knockings, Puharich himself was in the room. Could it have been he whose mind was sensitive to the "field," and whose unconscious mind projected the knockings so that Uri could hear them too? It may be that Puharich's subconscious is quite as active, in its way, as Uri's, and was partly responsible for the strange phenomena we have been examining.
People who are able to see ghosts are often — perhaps always — able to dowse for water with a divining rod; the powers seem to be related. This lead me to ask Uri about this own dowsing abilities. He has been employed by a large mineral corporation to try to locate mineral deposits from an airplane. "I can locate metals — tin, zinc, copper, gold, silver," he said, "but not oil or water. I tried it with them and it didn't work." Like Hurkos and Croiset, he has been able to apply his second sight to criminal cases. In one case, he entered the appartment of a kidnapped man, and then looked at a map of the city and indicated the area where he thought the man was being held. When the police flew him over the area in a helicopter, he was able to pinpoint the area even more accurately. "I just get a feeling when I'm close to what I'm looking for," he said. As it happened, the missing man was found, in the area specified by Uri, before the police had time to make use of his information.
When I asked Uri about this case, he seemed surprised, and a little alarmed, that I had heard about it, and asked me not to go into detail about it, or about other similar cases. I got the impression that this was not because he was afraid of criminal reprisal, but because he is not entirely happy about these powers. He seemed to have the same attitude when I asked him about healing — for most dowsers also seem to be able to heal. In his autobiography he says that his few attempts at healing have been only minimally successful. I am inclined to wonder, again, whether he is afraid of being side-tracked into an area that at present holds no appeal for him. He also seems to have decided that his abilities lie in certain directions; these are now well-tried and have brought him success. For the moment, that is enough.
Yet Uri himself — and this is perhaps the most interesting thing about him — is certain that psychic powers can be developed by anyone and are simply an extension of our normal powers. When he was a child, his own powers were restricted to reading his mothers mind, and causing watches to go forward or backward. In the period after he came out of the army he deliberately set out to extend them. "If you lift weights for a day or two, nothing happens. But if you lift weights every day for one or two years, then you will see the change." Most people, in his opinion, reveal no psychic powers because they fail to make any continuous effort to develop them.
He began to describe a simple exercise for developing such powers. "When you walk in the street, look at the next corner and try to see the color of the next car that will appear. Keep practicisng this. We all possess powers of telepathy, he believes. For example, the déjà vu feeling — "I have been here before." — is due, he thinks to a kind of telepathy; your "thought waves" reach the place before you do, so you feel you have been there before.
These observations about effort seem to be confirmed by the experiences of Felicia Parise. Mrs. Parise's experiences raise another significant point, which Uri confirms. Her first experience of psychokinesis occured spontaneously, when she was not making an effort. Uri mentions that this frequently happens to him. He tries hard to make a spoon bend; nothing happens. He relaxes and puts it down, and the spoon proceedes to bend. It may be that our violent efforts of will somehow frustrate themselves. When we relax, some deeper will takes over, and does the work effortlessly.
This applies also to his thought reading. In the three days we were in Barcelona, we made several attempts at thought reading, but none was particularly successful. I could believe him when he said this was because he was tense. There are so many stories of his telepathic feats from unbiased witnesses that there can be no reasonable doubt that he possesses this ability to a remarkable degree. A woman friend told me that on two occasions he had suddenly told her things that had startled her. On the first occasion, he spoke of her husband, who was dead, and described their marriage and relationship with astonishing acccuracy. Skeptics will object that he might have learned about this by questioning her friends. But on the second occasion he surprised her by telling her she was about to go to dinner with a man she liked, and then described the man in some detail. I a spirit of perversity, she deliberately contradicted everything Uri said. "He is several years older than you." "No, he's younger." "He is English." "No, he's African." But she had admitted to me that he had been right on every count — even to giving the correct first letters of the man's two names. Uri had looked increasingly baffled as she continued to contradict him; he was certain that the mental clues he was picking up from her were correct.
This woman's reaction to Uri is worth mentioning because it is not untypical. The Geller charm is potent — particularly when he is talking; but, as with most charismatic people, there is a certain agressiveness in his magnetism. People tend to express their reservations — and irritations — when they are away from him. There is something very child-like and open about Uri, and like many exuberant children he sometimes displays signs of spoiltness, particularly when he gets tired or when life becomes too complicated. To be sure, the pressures he lives under are intense, and it would take a saint to remain permanently patient and calm in this glaring light of nonstop publicity. A strong element of basic "niceness" has seen him through so far.
An incident in Spain illustrated the Geller magnetism in action. While I was being interviewed on the local television in Barcelona, Uri was taken to meet the Spanish publisher Noguer, who publish The New Library of the Supernatural in Spanish. I had certain misgivings about his visit. The only book that has been published in Spanish about Uri is as negative and hostile as Randi's — its author, like Randi, is a professional magician. As a result, many intelligent Spaniards take it for granted that Uri is a fake whose only interest is making money. A few people in the publisher's office had read the book and were inclined to be skeptical about the Geller "phenomenon," if not downright hostile.
Seemingly oblivious of the negative vibrations, Uri talked for five minutes about promotion and advertising. Then, perhaps sensing lack of enthusiasm, he asked for a watch. One of the chief editorial advisors removed one from his wrist and handed it to him. Uri placed it, face down, in the hand of the firm's director, then clenched his fist over it several times, so that his knickles cracked. (He has explained that the cracking noise is essential; when it is absent, nothing happens.) A few seconds later, the watch had gone back an hour. Those I questioned later insisted that Uri had no time to alter the hands manually before placing it in the director's hand. Uri was then offered another watch, but he rejected it because it was gold. He is never quite certain whether the "powers" might overdo it and ruin the watch. Instead he asked for a spoon. Everyone was watching keenly, recalling suggestions that he bends the spoon by hand, then holds it in such a way that the bend cannot be seen as he rubs it. But Uri held the spoon by its end, so that almost all of it was visible. He placed one foot against a metal radiator to "gain power." Then he gently massaged the handle. Within a few seconds, it began to bend as if the metal had turned to rubber. He handed it back to the director and pointed out that it was continuing to bend in his hand. In fact, it went on bending until the handle was almost U-shaped.
Skepticism vanished; and so did much of the latent hostility. Such a demonstration has the effect of clearing the air like a thunderstorm. Uri's supremely confident manner ceased to jar. A few hours later, I met most of those who had been present, over a late-night dinner. The curled spoon was handed around and examined with astonishment; the general feeling now seemed to be that Uri Geller was really an extraordinary young man.
The folowing morning, Uri and I were due for a lengthy photographic session. Before the photographer arrived, I took the oportunity to ask a few questions that had oocured to me in the night. I was still trying to get some clue about the source of his powers. I set the tape recorder going and asked:
"This is an indiscreet question but ... you are a fairly highly sexed person. There's an occult tradition called Tantrism that makes a deliberate use of sexual energy. Do you think thee could be any connection between your powers and your sexual energies?"
Uri was unoffended. "Strangely enough ... I never asked people how they respond sexually ... but I think, according to the women I am with, or the girls I'm with, that I am more sensual than the ordinary person ... yes, so maybe that has something to do with it."
The question was, I think, worth raising, even though Uri holds no definite views on it. Mnay investigators have observed the connection between sex and psychic force. Harry Price once interviewed the husband of an Australian medium, who told him that in the early days of their married life, ornaments would jump off the shelf when his wife had an orgasm. The young German office worker Anne-Marie ceased to cause poltergeist phenomena when she was married. Esther Cox's manifestations were connected with sexual trauma. So, according to Nandor Fodor, were those of "Mrs. Forbes." It is worth bearing in mind at least the possibility that Uri's powers may be, to some extent, sexual in origin.
There was one more question that I wanted to ask. Ever since I discoverd, to my own astonishment, that I appear to be able to dowse, I have been brooding on the strange implications of the force that causes a forked whalebone rod to twist upward or downward in my hands. For me, the rod dips for water, and twists upward in the vicinity of ancient stones — of which we have hundreds in Cornwall, where I live. It seems to me that some electrical force from under the earth somehow affects the rod, through the medium of my brain. There is nothing very strange in this; we know the earth is an enormous magnet. If I hold the rod very tight, keeping the ends rigid, it still bends upwards. Is it not conceivable, therefore, that the power that enables Uri to bend a spoon may be the power that twists the divining rod? And that his powers may come from the earth itself.
The idea excited Uri: "Isn't that strange?" he exclaimed. "I can use my powers much more strongly in Mexico. And in Israel.My body changes when I'm inthese places. For some reason, I feel more fit, my skin gets tighter, my powers are stronger ... America is more difficult. My powers are low on the East Coast, and get stronger as I go west. In Africa my powers were stronger. Most of my failures were in Europe, and my biggest successes were in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Mexico ... I was so powerful in Mexico. I could feel it. I stayed in the pyramids for four days, Just walking around. In one moment, I seemed to see the whole scene that happened thousands of years ago, right there in front of me." The subject of Mexico deflected him from this theme. He went on to describe how when he arrived at the airport, there were five limosines waiting to meet him — one for each of his party, and two for the baggage. Once again, Uri was the delighted small boy, hobnobbing with presidents, loving every minute of his fame.
The photographer and his assistants arrived, and we went up to Uri's suite. I entered first. As I did so, there was a pinging noise, and Uri turned, saying, "What was that?" An electric light bulb lay on the floor behind him. He snatched it up. "What's this?" He looked up at the light overhead; its bulb was still in. "It's an apport!" At that moment, the assistants came in; they included an American girl who was living in Spain. Uri showed them the bulb. "Look, it just fell from the ceiling." The girl volunteered the information that a bulb had fallen out of its socket in her appartment a week before. Uri became very excited and turned to me. "You see, things like this often happen to people just before they meet me. Didn't I tell you that? It happened to the Marquess of Bath ..." He told the girl he believed the bulb he had just found came from her house, and asked her if she could phone her home and find out if there was a bulb missing. She said the place was empty at that time, but that she could phone her husband during the lunch hour. It seemed to me that Uri was making a great deal of fuss over nothing, and I again had the feeling that he was pushing things a little too hard. Yet the sequel seemed to justify his excitement. The girl called her husband, who verified that a bulb was missing — from the same socket that had been involved in the earlier incident.
For the next half-hour or so, we submitted to being photographed. Uri wanted to demonstrate the "lifting experiment" on me. I had seen it done before; sometimes it worked, sometimes not. This time, Under Uri's direction, it worked beautifully. I sat down, and Uri, Shipi, Trina, and another woman tried to lift me by placing their index fingers under my armpits and knees. Naturally, it was impossible. Next, under Uri's instructions, they stacked their hands above my head, in such a way that no person's two hands were next to one another. Then, on a command from Uri, all removed their hands, replaced the index fingers under my arms and knees, and I sailed up easily into the air. It is a not uncommon feat, which can be performed by five people in any place. Yet I have never seen it work quite so well as it did on the occasion when I tried it with Uri.
Next, at my suggestion, we tried an experiment in "thought pressure" — another party trick. One person stands in the center of a group of four, his eyes closed. The four place their fingertips very lightly on his chest and shoulders. Then, having decided tacitly which direction he should move in, they concentrate on making him sway in that direction. This, too, is an experiment that sometimes works and sometimes does not. In this case, we had a 75 percent success rate. Trina instantly swayed in the direction we wanted; so did Uri. Si did I, when I took my place in the middle. Shipi swayed forwards instead of sideways, as we had mentally directed him, although he said he felt a force impelling him in both directions.
There may be natural explanations for both of these feats. After all, it should theoretically be possible for four people to lift one person, even with their index fingers. It is possible that, after placing their hands in a pile (according to Uri, the hands should not be touching), they simply make a sudden concerted effort, which, perhaps for psychological reasons, they may not have made the first time. I find the thought pressure experiment harder to explain, simply because in my own experience there is definitely a sensation of being pulled or pushed in the required direction.
I myself am inclined to take the view, which Uri shares, thyat when several minds act in concert strange things can happen. He believes that this explains the remarkable success of his public experiments in spoon bending and watch reparing. The most recent had taken place only a couple of weeks before I saw him in Spain; a woman's magazine asked its readers to concentrate at a certain time on a certain afternoon, and to get out any watches that needed repeairing. There had been the usual overwhelming response from readers who claimed that long-inactive watches had started and cutlery had bent. (A Swedish woman tried suing Uri because she claimed that one such experiment had bent her internal contraceptive coil and caused her to become pregnant.) The wife of screenwriter Jesse Lasky later told me that she had taken part in the experiment, and that a clock that had been rejected by a local watchmaker as un-repairable started up and ran for forty minutes.
It was nearly time for me to catch my plane back to London. I went up to my room to collect my bags; Uri volunteered to come with me.
On the stairs, there was a loud pinging noise, and we turned to see a broken spoon on the stair carpet. "Another apport!" Uri shouted, in wild excitement, and yelled downstairs for the others to come and see. It was the lower half of a spoon. Yet again, I was puzzled and not entirely happy. If it had fallen out of the air in front of me, that would have been convincing. But its falling behind Uri was another matter. He could quite easily have tossed it there, as he could have tossed the bulb earlier. He was walking behind me on both occasions. Yet why should he? I didn't need convincing. If anything, these ambiguous demonstrations tend to increase one's skepticism.
Half an hour earlier, Uri had said something that struck me as highly relevant to this whole problem. He emphasized how often his powers refuse to work in front of cameras, and how frustrating he finds it that some of his most convincing demonstrations happen when the camera is pointing in another direction. He said gloomily: "The things that always seem to work are the things that any magician can duplicate. Randi's quite right to point that out. But that's not because I'm doing a conjuring trick. You'd think — " He looked up suddenly. "You'd think that whatever causes these things to happen doesn't want them to be proved."
This is an observation that struck me years ago, when I was conducting my first lengthy investigation into the whole field of the occult. I began with a strong bias toward skepticism. Besides, to tell the truth, I still find occult phenomena preposterous and irrelevant. What do they really matter if you place them in the ballance against the truly great human achievements — against the creative genius of a Michelangelo, a Beethoven, an Einstein? In that context they seem almost trivial. Yet unbiased investigation led me to conclude that paranormal phenomena are not pure wishful thinking; some of the evidence for telepathy, psychokinesis, out-of-the-body experiences and reincarnation is highly convincing. So why do we not take it for granted, as we take for granted cosmic rays and neutron starts and subatomic particles, and many other things that we can never test with our own eyes? And the answer seems to be that the paranormal is oddly shy. Like a modest girl, it will show just so much of itself, and no more.
There is certainly enough evidence to convince those who are predisposed to believe, and also those who are genuinely open-minded. There is far from enough to change the mind of a determined skeptic. It tempts one to believe that some intelligent power is determined to keep us uncertain. The Daniel Dunglas Homes and Uri Gellers and Matthew Mannings are enough to make everybody reeximine their preconceptions about the universe and to undermine their complacencies. But no amount of their phenomena seems to provide us with the certainty we crave. The great breakthrough that science has accustomed us to expect never seems to come. And when an unusually gifted psychic such as Uri turns up and demonstrates his powers in the laboratory, he also has to be a born showman, with the personal mannerism of a pop star, so that the skeptics can grimace and say:"What, him...?"
These were the thoughts that occupied my mind as I wandered around a Barcelona park with Uri and observed his temper fraying as the cameraman demanded new poses, and the children trotted up to him with their autograph books. In my pocket, I had the half of the spoon that had fallen on the stairs behind us. Had he thrown it? On the whole, I though not. Then who — or what — had? And why had it done so in such amanner as to leave room for doubt in my mind? As I strared into Uri's eyes — at the request of the cameraman — my instinct told me he was honest. So why were the "powers" — whether from starship Spectra or from his own subconscious — revealling themselves so enigmatically?
I find myself envying the total skeptics. They have such an easy way out.
