My Mexican Passport

Vol 2 Issue 4

July/August 1999

My Mexican passport is registered to Uri Geller-Freud. It is the national practice to add to a man’s surname his mother’s maiden name, and my Berlin-born mother was related to Dr Sigmund Freud. I calculate that passport cost me £600 million.

I was detained in Mexico, by edict of the president-elect’s wife, after a book tour in the late Seventies. Señora Carmen Romano de López Portillo, soon to be First Lady, had seen my show on Televisa and arrived with 20 bodyguards at the Camino Real hotel in Mexico City, to demand a private demonstration of my powers. She had me escorted to her villa by presidential motorcade, and summoned her cook to bring a canteen of solid silver cutlery.

Muncy, as she asked me to call her, travelled by her twin-engined Sabreliner, a jet built like a fighter plane, and in that Sabreliner I explored Mexico. The high altitudes of many cities, the limitless veins of metals beneath the soil and the religious sites which have shaped Mexico’s landscape have a powerful psi effect, pumping high-octane psychic fuel into the atmosphere. In Mexico my dreams were crowded with premonitions and ghosts. And all around me, in restaurants and shops and palaces, metal bent. I had only to sit down to eat and all the forks, all around the table, were doubled up.

At Palenque, in the forests of Chiapas, Muncy led me up the Great Pyramid to the Temple of the Inscriptions. Their dark and claustrophobic corridors were opened up in unquestioning obedience to the wife of the president-to-be. Behind a triangular door lay a crypt, the 1300-year-old tomb of King Pacal. But the intricate inscriptions on his sarcophagus did not depict Pacal.

A man in a skin-tight suit, trailing air-hoses, was crouched over a control panel, operating levers with his fingertips. Antennae streamed from his cockpit. An engine was engraved in the nose of his vehicle, and at the rear flames and billowing gases poured out. This was a rocket-ship, and its rider an astronaut. Walking into this tomb gave me a strangely calm feeling, as if I was seeing the proof of something I had known all my life.

At Guanajuato Muncy showed me something even weirder – the Museum of the Mummies. Burial plots are hard to find in this hillside city, and the dead do not rest in peace for long. Since the 1860s, undertakers have been disinterring old corpses to make room for fresh ones – and because of the ground’s unique nutrients and the rarefied atmosphere, human flesh does not rot. Clothes dissolve, except for man-made fibres, and fat melts away, but the skin and bone remain. The best of the mummies go on show, a ghastly collection of rictus leers and clawing fingers. Forget Hollywood romances like Ghost – death doesn’t look good on anyone.

The director-general of Petroleos Mexicanos, Jorge Dias Serrano, was present when I dowsed for a tiny phial of oil hidden in the presidential offices. I found it, buried in a flowerpot, and Serrano invited me to inspect several possible drilling sites, first by dowsing over maps, then on helicopter fly-overs. I told him which sites felt rich, and his engineers asked dozens of questions. Later, I got paid.

I sometimes wonder if I should have insisted on a contract giving me 10 per cent of the profits yielded by my strikes. Serrano later told me my work had been ‘very precise’. Later still, when my Mexican adventure was long over, he went to prison for fraud. The total embezzled during the countries oil boom was put, 15 years ago, at £6 billion. If I had charged for just 10 per cent of that ludicrous sum, I might have pocketed £600 million.

I did not take a single cent. My payment was my passport.

The Quest Interview

As ever the Quest interview endeavours to bring you the latest information direct from the leading researchers, authors and writers in their respective fields. This interview is no exception. Uri Geller provides us with some intriguing insights into the world of the paranormal.

Uri Geller is the world’s most investigated and celebrated paranormalist. Famous around the globe for his mind-bending psychic powers, he has led a unique life shrouded in debate and mystery. He is also related to Sigmund Freud. He was studied by scientists who worked with Albert Einstein and the world’s most prestigious scientific magazine, Nature, published a paper on Uri’s work at the Stanford Research Institute – a unique endorsement, and an irrefutable proof that his powers are genuine. His work with the FBI and the CIA has ranged from using his Mindpower to wipe KGB computer files and tracking serial killers, to attending nuclear disarmament negotiations to bombard and influence delegates with positive thought waves. For decades this aspect of his career was too confidential and controversial to discuss. A vegetarian and fervent promoter of peace, he has used his psychic gifts to detect oil and precious metals, which provided him the freedom to help others. He is the Mindpower coach to Premier League footballers, industrialists, Formula One drivers and racing cyclists, and cycles 40 miles daily on his exercise bike. As a columnist, he writes for The Times, Computer Active and GQ, as well as being syndicated in newspapers and magazines around the globe. The Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Hospital for Children in Bristol and the Royal Berkshire Hospital, close to his Thames-side mansion, he is the father of two teenagers, the owner of five dogs and the author of ten best-sellers, including the novels Ella and Dead Cold.

Q: When did you first become aware of your abilities?

A: I first became aware, I would say I was four years old, I was eating soup in my mother’s kitchen and suddenly as I lifted the spoon towards my mouth it started bending. So that was the first time. Then as I grew older I demonstrated this power in school and I astonished children and teachers, and basically I was sharpening it, I was just exercising my mind. This is why I believe it grew and I can do it almost on command today.

Q: Do you think such abilities are unique to a select few people or are they latent in all of us?

A: I would like to believe that they are latent in all of us. But having said that, many times I do feel that it is a gift rather than a stored energy. Einstein used to say that we only use 10% of our brain. I’m also astonished when things happen in other people’s homes, meaning that maybe they were triggered by me. So it is still a mystery but obviously I would love this power or energy or ability to be universal and I hope that in 50 or 100 years from now everyone will have these powers.

Q: From where do you believe your abilities originate?

A: Well, my three theories are either: Yes we all have these powers because thousands of years ago our ancestors received some type of knowledge from some type of extraterrestrial source, and it taught us or it triggered certain powers in our mind, and as years went by we lost it, but it is a cycle and it’s coming back now. My second theory is that it’s from God and that’s it. I’m a religious man, I do pray to God every day, and I often ask God if this is a direct gift from him. The third theory is that maybe these powers or energies, or what some people call vibrations or frequencies come from some higher source out in the Universe, and what I’m doing is channelling it through me or I’m tapping into that power source of energy and maybe the source is an intelligence that is from beyond our galaxy.

Q: You have written several best-selling books, which did you find the most rewarding?

A: Ella, my second novel, no doubt. It is very difficult for me to top Ella now, I’m talking about fiction, and it almost gave me a licence to open up and talk about my fears, my traumas in life and so forth. A very, very powerful story and it’s just been bought by a British movie production company to be turned into a major motion picture.

Q: Are you working on any new books at the moment?

A: Yes I’m all the time working on books. My third novel Dead Cold is out in bookshops right now in England, and it’s going to be sold around the world. My books are usually translated into over 30 languages . In October I’m coming out with Mind Medicine, a non-fiction book. It talks about things that I will reveal; certain secrets that I use to heal people, mainly children. I will then be working on a pop-up book called Uri Geller’s Parascience Pack, and also writing a book with a Rabbi, and I’m already planning my fourth novel in my mind.

Q: Many books have been written about you. Which do you believe is the most accurate?

A: By far Jonathan Margolis’s book called Uri Geller – Magician or Mystic? He really researched it for two years. It’s an unauthorised biography but it’s just a fascinating book.

Q: What would you say to those who remain skeptical of your abilities?

A: You know what, I really don’t say anything to them, I don’t care about them. So long as they don’t libel me or defame me, it’s up to them whether to believe or not. I just simply don’t have time to occupy thinking about them because they are a tiny minority. The majority of the population of our planet remain open minded and are believers, but if someone attacks me, whether it’s in print or verbally, and what they say or write is libellous, then they will end up in court.

Q: Apart from writing books and being on stage and TV, you have also worked on various scientific and commercial projects. Could you tell us a little about these?

A: Well throughout my life I diversified my abilities. I worked for big mining companies locating oil and gold for them. I worked for the CIA and the FBI, in certain interesting secret projects. The one that I can talk about consisted of erasing floppy discs that belonged to the KGB, bombarding the Russians to sign a nuclear treaty, to finds serial killers for the FBI. I constantly engage myself in many different projects. I’m now working on a little booklet that will teach people how to protect their computers from the millennium bug. Many of my royalties I divert into charities like children’s hospitals and children’s charities.

Q: Are there any research projects that you would like to work on that as yet you have not done so?

A: I’m planning a very major research project with a British scientist, who actually won the Nobel Prize, and those projects I would rather keep confidential until there is interesting and valid scientific data.

Q: Do you think your abilities will ever be accepted by mainstream science?

A: No doubt in my mind. In a hundred years from now everything will be validated scientifically. Most paranormal aspects of interesting phenomena will bear the seal of approval from science. But then there is always something new, something different, that will fall into the realm of the unexplained, but it’s like the cellular telephone, if I had told people 100 years ago (if I could go back in time) that there would be a device that I could hold in my hand that would enable me to talk to people in Australia, they would have laughed at me. Today, when I tell people that I can read their minds they sort of smile, but in time people will be able to communicate telepathically.

Q: Have you a statement that you would like to make on any aspect of your abilities for our readers?

A: Well really the statement that I would like to make is something that I always tell the people who buy my books and watch my television shows, is to basically be open minded, to believe in yourself, to be positive, and to be optimistic, to smile a lot, to care about yourself, about your family and your friends, and give something to the community. Because if you give something it will come back to you ten fold. You will start attracting positive things towards you.