QVC UCLA Hamleys auras

I didn’t know that a quadruple heart bypass was even possible. I thought the maximum number of grafts was three. But when a friend of ours was told his angina had become life-threatening and that he must undergo one of the most serious operations possible, I realised there’s only one person more important than a brilliant surgeon — and that’s a responsible heart owner.

This week I presented my latest collection on QVC, the television shopping channel — and my host Claudia Sylvester revealed that designing jewellery is her secret passion too.

“My father is a gunsmith,” she explained during a commercial break, “and when I was little I learned by watching him work with gold and silver. I was always doing sketches for broaches and buckles. Now my daughter Isabella joins me with the pencil and pad: she’s eight, and she wants to be a fashion designer.”

Like my own shows, QVC broadcasts live, which always gives me a buzz. I learned long ago, though, that videotapes and recorded TV can create just as much weirdness — and that the phenomena which journalists had labelled the “Geller Effect” was really an innate human ability that hundreds of millions of people didn’t know they possessed.

I was working with a brilliant parapsychologist named Thelma Moss at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) in the early Seventies. As part of her experiments, she used a hidden camera to film me with an audience of students, as I urged them to focus on their broken watches.

At that time, I was convinced that I could beam out an energy, like a power station firing electricity into millions of homes. As long as I was generating power, the bulbs would be blazing from coast to coast — but when I switched off, it would be lights out for everyone.

The truth, I was shocked to learned from Thelma’s tests, was much less flattering. She played back the video to groups of students who had never met me, and the effect was just as strong. Watches ticked, clocks chimed and I was just an image on a videotape. I hadn’t even been aware that Thelma planned to carry on testing — in fact, during some of the experiments, I had been 6,000 miles away and fast asleep.

Thelma proved that her students simply needed an inspiration, a catalyst — and they responded just as well to a recording of the real thing. My face and voice provided the impetus, but all the power was in every individual with an open mind. In other words, we are all generators.

I took advantage of this discovery when the brilliant director Ken Russell made a movie of my life story: we added a mindpower experiment to the end of the video, and the results were as impressive as any live test.

But recorded TV could never replace my love for live broadcasting. There’s no thrill quite like it.

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The playful power of synchronicity never ceases to amaze me. Regular readers will know that I don’t believe in coincidence, but I am also certain that the richest synchronicities, those moments when a handful of pieces in life’s jigsaw fall magically together, only occur when we trust our instincts.

I acted on impulse, or instinct, this week when an Israeli camera crew came to my home to shoot a 15-minute documentary about me for Channel Ten. We staged some shots under the weeping willow beside my Japanese waterfall, and I suddenly felt an urge to whisk everybody to London.

I’d been thinking about my old friend David Berglas, the doyen of the Magic Circle, and it occured to me that his son Marvin, also an accomplished conjuror, would be at the giant toy store on Regent Street, Hamley’s.

Marvin has developed a range of marvellous props for budding tricksters, and he’s often to be found in the world’s greatest toy shop, amazing youngsters (and grandparents) with his prestidigitation.

Magic tricks are no use to me — I can’t even shuffle a pack of cards, much less make the queen of diamonds levitate from a top hat, as Marvin can. But I thought it would be fun to film part of the documentary while rabbits disappeared and bouquets materialised.

As we entered the store, I was surrounded by excited children — I’d walked straight into a tourist party from Israel. For the next half an hour I was signing autographs and bending spoons, while the cameras rolled.

The crew went away convinced that, wherever I go, throngs of my countrymen mob me. In fact, that must be the first time outside Israel that I have ever been at the centre of a crowd where everyone was shouting in Hebrew. You can’t argue with synchronicity, though… and it will make good television.

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Auras are very real to many people with the gift for seeing them. My own eyes are not usually sensitive to the shimmering haze of colour which everybody emanates. But when I saw this magnificent golden sunburst in the window of a London gallery, I couldn’t resist posing for a snapshot with my halo.

Auras come in all the colours of the rainbow, and many more shades which have no name. Gold is especially significant, because it indicates the inner wealth that comes with success, contentment and peace of mind.

It’s not only parapsychologists who believe in auras: many biologists also feel there is a solid scientific explanation. When we pray or meditate, phosphorescent chemicals rise to the surface of our skin, according to one theory. It is this chemical shine which produces the aura.

If you are still sceptical, remember how a happy mother-to-be looks — the only word to describe it is “glowing”. Her skin really does seem to radiate health and joy. That’s an aura — and a rare example of a phenomenon that everyone has seen.