THE AMAZING Uri Geller

Extracts from
THE AMAZING Uri Geller

Uri Geller talks about his powers.

Contents

Uri Geller talks about his power

AN EVENING ON CENTRAL PARK WEST / Martin Ebon. The editor’s Introduction begins with his first encounter with Uri Geller, the incredible Israeli psychic. He describes the Geller phenomenon and the enthusiasm, doubt, and bewilderment it has created among supporters and critics throughout the world.

URI GELLER ON URI GELLER / The colorful psychic is his own favorite subject, as this candid interview with the editors of Psychic reveals. Uri says that at the age of six he could make the hands on watches change by sheer will power; and from then on, as he puts it, “I’m just following the pattern of my life.”

DID URI’S MIND “TELEPORT” A METEORITE? / Ray Stanford. Teleportation is the movement of matter from one spot to another. But to do it to a heavy piece of meteor, which then actually loses weight, would be teleportation on an unprecedented scale. Yet, Stanford experienced Geller’s teleportation of a meteor in Austin, Texas.

THE PSYCHIC YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE / Jon Lipsky. The author, together with his friend, the photographer David Doubilet, saw Uri Geller photograph himself right through the capped lens of a camera. Doubilet called it “a frightening experience,” and Lipsky has this final judgment on Geller: “He is not someone you would like to follow, and not someone you would want to debunk. He is someone to observe with glee and, if possible, be-friend.”

URI THROUGH THE CAMERA’S LENS CAP / Yale Joel, the former Life magazine photographer, analyzes the results of Uri Geller’s photographs of himself. He concludes that Geller tried a trick that did not work out, and stands revealed in the pictures reproduced in this volume.

THE STANFORD EXPERIMENTS / Michael Ballantine. In this cool, factual report, the author describes the experiments undertaken with Uri Geller at the prestigious Stanford Research Institute. The report contains biographical sketches on the scientists involved, a summary of their findings, and the complete text of the narration accompanying a film made of the Geller experiments.

INFORMATION TRANSMISSION UNDER CONDITIONS OF SENSORY SHIELDING / Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff. This is the text of the paper prepared by two staff members of the Stanford Research Institute at Menlo Park, California, that appeared in the British scientific weekly, Nature, providing an appraisal of tests undertaken with Geller under controlled laboratory conditions.

“WE MUST NOW WORK WITH THOSE WHO ARE SPIRITUALLY MOTIVATED . . . ” An interview with Captain Edgar D. Mitchell, the former Apollo 14 astronaut who established the Institute of Noetic Sciences at Palo Alto, California and who persuaded U. S. scientists to organize laboratory experiments with Uri Geller. Captain Mitchell is candid in his appraisal of the successes, as well as the errors, that emerged from his sponsorship of Geller, and he describes how future research in psychokinesis (mind-over-matter) should be organized.

ROARING SUCCESS IN ZURICH, FAILURE IN VIENNA / Paul Uccusic. The reporter of an Austrian newspaper accompanied Geller before and during his appearances on German, Swiss, and Austrian television shows. This is an intimate view of Geller in perpetual motion: elated, while others surround him with awe and praise; worried when experiments seem to fail; basking in an atmosphere of euphoria all around him.

GELLER TWISTS BRITAIN / Tony Miller. Nowhere has Geller’s impact been greater than in England, where the general public as well as the scientific community have been startled by Uri’s performances on television, his public appearances, and results of laboratory tests.

GELLER’S EAGER IMITATORS / Eric Lombard. Where ever Uri Geller appeared on television screens all over Europe, bending spoons and forks by apparent psychic powers, other cutlery was twisting all over Europe. A Swiss investigative team examined the claims of men and women who suddenly showed psychokinetic powers identical to those of Geller.

BUT IS IT ESP? / Robert Brier. The author, who teaches a course in “Experimental Parapsychology,” describes in a lively, informal manner how Geller’s phenomena fit, or fail to fit, into the pattern of scientific experiments in extrasensory perception (ESP), particularly into psychokinesis and telepathy.

URI’S PSYCHIC ANCESTORS / Thomas R. Tietze. Uri Geller has had many predecessors in the history of psychical research, but none of these psychic ancestors had the advantage of jet air travel or television transmissions. But the basic pattern of the phenomena he displays are, as historian Tietze notes, virtually identical with those of such psychic greats as the mediums Daniel Dunglas Home, Eusapia Palladino, and Rudi Schneider.

THE VIEW FROM JERUSALEM / Heinz C. Berendt. The director of the Israeli Parapsychology Society deals with Geller from his privileged position of ‘the psychic’s “home grounds.” He examines the young man’s back-ground and psychological make-up, traces his career as a stage magician in Israel, but concludes that doubtful elements in Uri Geller’s history or performances should not detract from the scientific need to examine psychic powers in future laboratory experiments.

“JUST A MAGICIAN WITH A GOOD GlMMICK!” / Paul Langdon. The author, who is not a stage magician himself, analyzes the criticism of Geller’s claims that has come from professional conjurers who object to his assertion that he does not use magic tricks. The views of such veteran magicians as Milbourne Christoper and James (“The Amazing”) Randi are quoted; but the writer still sees a gap between Geller’s performances and the conditions under which stage magicians are able to duplicate his phenomena.

THE SHOW-BIZ TOUCH / Mary Bringle. No appraisal of an international phenomenon of the magnitude of Uri Geller would be complete without an attempt to mold a psychological profile of the young, egocentric psychic. Mrs Bringle brings a mixture of spoofing good humor and, at times refreshingly flippant, psychological insight to bear on her subject. The “extraterrestrial vaudeville act” of Puharich and Geller, as she calls it, is still playing to fascinating audiences.

EVERYBODY HAS HIS OWN GELLER! / A Summation by Martin Ebon. Geller acts on people as if they were asked to view a Rorschach Test, so everyone seems to project his own hopes, fears, and preconceived ideas on Uri’s performances and personality.