Uri Geller’s Column in the Mirror1a
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Uri Geller for Jonathan Cainer page, Monday May 31, 2004.
Playing cards
What would you do if you discovered that your six-year-old son was telepathic? My mother put my talent to good use: she taught me to cheat at cards! We were very poor, living in a couple of rooms in a Tel Aviv apartment and surviving on what my mother could earn with a needle and thread. She supplemented her income with a few shekels won at gin rummy, and when she guessed that I could read her mind, she set me some tests. With a hand of cards held close to her chest, she demanded: “What have I got?” And though I didn’t know the names of the funny red and black symbols, and I had only just learned to count to ten, I could envisage the cards as clearly as if they were spread before me. That afternoon she took me to my first game.
I was to read the minds of the other women, and signal to my mother with my fingers what cards they were picking up. It was all too complex. The other players didn’t transmit clear mind pictures like my mother, and I got my fingers in a twist, and the game was long and boring. So we simplified the system: whenever I sensed a player was holding a joker, I had to kick my mum under the table. Jokers were easy to spot, and my mother soon had a row of bruises. She also had a pot of money. I was very proud, and when I got my first dog I called him Joker. I have owned a Joker ever since. Sometimes the games were played late in the evening, and I couldn’t sit with my mum then.
I had to go to bed on my own, which I didn’t like. As soon as I heard her key in the door, at one or two in the morning, I’d be awake, and I could always tell how much she’d won or, occasionally, lost. It became a ritual:
“How much tonight, Uri?” “Two shekels, Ima!” When I began to study parapsychology at prestigious universities such as Stanford in California, I discovered intense telepathic links are common between mother and son, especially when the boy is an only child and the woman is divorced. They both know they have no one else in the world, and they have to look out for each other in every way possible.
Uri Geller for Monday May 24, 2004
My history teacher loved to drum dates into us. We learned about the past by chanting: Russian Revolution, 1917… Lindbergh flies the Atlantic, 1927…
Wall Street crash, 1929. I knew nothing of the details, but that didn’t seem to matter – who crashed on Wall Street anyhow? What cars were they driving?
The important thing was that I passed my history tests, because I learned the dates. When my children started school, dates were out of fashion. They learned stories instead – the intrigues, the plots, the heroics, the scandals. And I realised I’d missed out on so much. Cinema and TV have woken up too, with ancient spectacles like Troy, passionate love stories like Girl With A Pearl Earring, and sumptuous costume dramas filling our screens. The one thing we don’t need to know about history is dates. Which is a good thing, because it seems all those dates could be wrong. All the textbooks insist the Roman Empire flourished 2,000 years ago, for instance. But what if those figures were inventions? What if we’ve been miscounting for centuries, and Julius Caesar in fact lived 800 years later than we always thought? What if Jesus had been born only 1,000 years ago, instead of 2,000?
Anyone who proposed such a radical theory would have to produce unstoppable evidence, on every aspect of history from language and religious customs to clothes and architecture. And even then, most historians would dismiss the claims instantly. The theory was launched by Sir Isaac Newton in his paper, The Chronology Of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, but even he was ignored. Now a brilliant Moscow professor, Anatoly Fomenko, is fighting the tide with a new method of scientific date-setting, based on calculations of the changes in the night sky and some fiendishly complex mathematics. He believes the stars cannot lie, and almost all human history has been crammed into the past ten centuries. One of his most high-profile disciples is Garry Kasparov, the most brilliant champion chess has ever seen, and a formidable mathematician himself. Garry has published several essays, backing Fomenko’s findings and urging historians to open their minds. “It’s an exciting opportunity to create completely new areas of scientific research,” he says.
Uri Geller for Jonathan Cainer page Monday, May 17, 2004.
Psychic evidence
Scientists frequently challenge me to prove my powers under laboratory conditions, and I tell them it can’t be done.
The professors and the sceptics think this means that paranormal forces are a figment of the imagination – but they couldn’t be more wrong. I believe deeply that so-called ‘scientific proofs’ are a trick of the mind. Yes, I could walk into a lab and bend a spoon: I have done it many times. But who would be convinced? A few scientists… who would probably convince themselves I had fooled them. Even if I bent 50 spoons, in 50 labs, the rest of the world wouldn’t accept the truth. Instead, 5,000 more scientists would be challenging me to bend spoons in their labs.
The sad fact is that most human beings are reluctant to believe anything that the rest of the world doesn’t believe.
That’s what makes the job of Amnesty International and the Red Cross so
difficult: for months their investigators have been trying to warn the world that allied soldiers were committing atrocities against Iraqi suspects in prisons. No one listened… until suddenly everyone started listening.
Most people are reluctant to admit they believe in UFOs… even though many have seen the evidence with their own eyes. The Mexican air force, for instance, is desperately downplaying the idea that spacecraft from other worlds or other dimensions are patrolling our skies – even though their own pilots filmed 11 UFOs surrounding a military jet earlier this year. The pictures show, in crystal detail, almost a dozen luminous spots moving at impossible speeds. At first the pilots thought the spacecraft were private jets flown by drug smugglers. The black box recorder reveals one of the crew started yelling, ‘We’re not alone! This is so weird!’ The radar operator who first spotted the UFOs, Lieutenant German Marin, later told reporters: “I think they’re completely real. Was I afraid? Yes.” Anyone who flies to holiday destinations abroad puts their faith in men and women like Lieutenant Marin. We trust them with our lives. Yet most people find it impossible to believe what the air crew all say they saw – even though they have videotape to back up the claims.
I have learned you can never hope to make everyone believe you. That’s why I believe it is so important always to tell the truth.
Uri Geller Monday May 10, 2004.
The next time a skeptic accuses me of peddling a load of bull, I’m going to drag him to the field beside my house and point across the fence and say:
‘Look! There’s a real load of bull.’ The meadows round my home are owned by Reading University, who have placed traditional ‘Beware Of The Bull’ signs on every gate to warn walkers about their bovine behemoth. He’s a magnificent creature who appears to have walked straight out of a cave painting from 20,000 years ago. I tried to send him a telepathic message, but he’s much too placid to respond. I’ve been a vegetarian most of my adult life, so it’s hard for me to understand how anyone can eat any animal, but it seems utterly barbaric that this magnificent creature could be slaughtered for meat. Luckily for him, he’s probably much too valuable as a stud beast to be turned into Sunday roasts. Even more distasteful is the idea of bullfights. I was taken to one as part of some publicity tour. The horror of what was involved did not strike me until the spectacle began. A harmless, brave and beautiful animal was goaded into a frothing, terrified rage, before being tortured and ritually killed. And the people around me were applauding. I walked out. It went down badly with my Spanish hosts but I didn’t care. I demanded to know if the same people who cheered the matador would like to see a dog or a cat being stabbed to death. The British are often called a nation of animal lovers, but I think the truth is even better than that: Britons respect animals. A bullfight in this country would be unthinkable. It’s that same respect which prevents British supermarkets from selling horsemeat, which is considered a delicacy on the continent. That respect for life is one of the chief reasons I feel so much at home in this country. And I certainly respect the University bull. I won’t be walking my dogs across his field!
Uri Geller for Jonathan Cainer page, Monday April 19, 2004.
That sleek mane, the glittering eyes, the long wet nose… dog-lovers really do start to look like their pets! I just wish I was half as fit as my beloved greyhound, Jon-Jon.
The incredible news from a US university is that my pet actually helps me stay healthy. Researchers believe that stroking a dog triggers hormone release in the human brain to fight depression and stress-related sickness.
Feel-good chemicals such as serotonin, prolactin and oxytocin start to flow more freely within seconds of contact with a furry friend – and the stress-out hormone cortisol fades away.
Dogs have been man’s companion since the Stone Age, and I have always felt instinctively that I need a pet to keep a smile on my face and help me stay positive. I’ve owned a dog ever since my father presented me with a puppy in Tel Aviv, when I was not yet ten. I made sure my own kids had pets too. Dr Rebecca Johnson, the professor leading the study at the Missouri University College of Veterinary Medicine, said: “Could a dog help mediate serotonin levels in order to help depressed patients? By showing how interacting with pets actually works in the body to help people, we can help animal-assisted therapy become a mainsteam medically-accepted intervention that would be prescribed to patients and, in the long run, be reimbursed by insurance companies.”
American academic language resembles English only faintly, but I think what she’s saying is that if people feel better when they cuddle their pet, then doctors ought to take this therapy seriously – and insurance companies should foot the bill.
Don’t laugh – insurers could soon be offering a discount to pet-owners, just as they now do to non-smokers. My own belief is that hormones are only part of the medical story. The real benefit to owning any pet, from a budgie to a boa constrictor, is the unconditional love that flows between you and your animal friend. Dogs have never let me down and they always forgive me.
That’s the most valuable lesson in loyalty any human could learn.
URI GELLER, Monday April 12, 2004.
My powers are magnified greatly when there are children around me. My theory is that their energy flows freely because they are open-minded? their thoughts aren’t hampered by subconscious messages of doubt and scepticism.
To a child, the real world is what is happening right in front of their eyes
– and if that means a spoon is bending or a seed is sprouting, then that is what’s real. To most adults, the opposite is true: the real world is what the headlines report, what the rumours say, what TV shows us. The one thing we fail to take at face value is what happens under our noses. Ever since my own kids were born, I’ve made a conscious effort to keep a childlike outlook. When my two were toddlers, they had far more to teach me than any college professor. One of the greatest lessons was observing their spontaneous joy – both Daniel and Natalie had happy natures and they were always a split-second away from laughter. No matter what was going on – meal-time, bed-time, bath-time, any time – they were able to fix their attention instantly on fun and share their enjoyment. That’s so different to the adult approach. To have fun, we must plan it for weeks, lavish a fortune on the preparations, lie awake worrying about what we’ve forgotten… and then, as often as not, grit our teeth when the whole enterprise goes down in flames. I believe the best times happen when we stop trying to shape our fate and simply go with the flow. Most of all, I believe in living for the moment – I don’t dwell on what happened five minutes ago, and I don’t fret about what’s coming up in five minutes time. The adult world regularly tries to shock me out of those beliefs, of course, and it’s always great to spend time with young kids, to rediscover their carefree sense of immediacy. I was especially delighted to be presented with five little ‘granddaughters’, while filming a commercial at my home last week. I had to bend spoons for each of them, and with their excitement setting the house abuzz, curling the metal was as easy as folding paper.
Uri Geller April 5, 2004.
One of America’s most popular radio shows is called Coast-to-Coast, a late night broadcast heard by millions.
The show, hosted by George Noory, fearlessly explores every aspect of the psychic, the paranormal and the plain weird. I believe America has become a far more open-minded country.
People question everything. Maybe that’s a result of the War on Terror: the US is fed up of being lied to. So, when George called me to request an interview last week, I was excited. An audience of open minds can produce electrifying results. What followed took my breath away. The phonelines rang red hot all night – and for days afterwards. My e-mail inbox was hit by a tidal wave of messages from listeners who had dared to trust intuition, joined in the psychic experiments, and witnessed impossible phenomena.
Harassed mother Gloria Letang of Ohio shouted, “Work! Work!” at a computer which her teenage son had wrecked in an outburst of anger. The screen hummed to life and the programs ran smoothly. “I still can’t believe this,” admits Gloria. Richard Lonewolf, a Cherokee healer from Tehachapi in California, put a teaspoon on top of his radio and watched in amazement as it curled itself into a full circle. He showed it to a scientist friend, David Crockett Williams, who told me that Lonewolf explained the human mind was capable of anything when we ‘surrender our will to the Creator’. That’s exactly what I have believed all my life! Holistic healer Wayne Myers of Lincoln, Nebraska, focused his energy on the broken electric window of his car. Within seconds, it was purring smoothly up and down. “I’m already a believer in the power of the mind and spirit to heal and cause changes at a distance,” he wrote to me, “but it is thrilling to receive such a powerful affirmation.” It’s thrilling too when I hear such extraordinary stories.
Sceptics and nay-sayers better get used to being ignored: there’s a new open-mindedness at work in the world.
Mirror: Reincarnation
You only live once, we tell each other.
And it simply isn’t true: many people have lived in previous existences, and some can remember their past lives in glimpses, usually under hypnosis or in dreams. I believe firmly in reincarnation, the doctrine that our spirits can pass into new bodies.
In the West, most of us are reluctant to talk about it. We have accepted alternative therapies, meditation and even the search for alien intelligence, but the past is still a forbidden country.
Not so in Russia, where newspapers are reporting detailed accounts of previous eras by people who claim they witnessed history at first hand.
Inna Makarova is a St Petersburg secretary with a degree in literature, who has had the same nightmare since she was two years old:
?I was a man in a military uniform. I was running through the woods hiding myself from some enemies. No success: the enemies captured and killed me by cutting my throat with a knife.?
She became convinced her former name was Serdov, a Bulgarian resistance fighter who had been killed by Nazis in 1943. Her quest took her to Bulgaria… where she met her husband, Vadim.
At this turning-point, her nightmares ceased, as if the memories of a past life had been to draw her to the time and place where she would find her soul-mate. And a new costume drama began in her dreams: she sees herself as the beautiful daughter of a noble family at the brink of the Russian Revolution in 1917.
In this dream, Inna knows she must flee her homeland, never to see her friends again. She gazes at the man she secretly loves, who wears a diamond brooch in the shape of a musical G clef.
When Inna told her husband Vadim of this dream, he shook with
disbelief: ?That broach is an heirloom!? he said. ?My mother keeps it safe now ? but once it belonged to my great-grandfather!?
If Mirror readers have memories of past lives, I?d love to hear them.
Write to [email protected]
Uri Geller for Jonathan Cainer page, Monday March 15, 2004.
We are at our most psychic when we sleep.
That’s when our conscious minds switch off and our subconscious has free rein. So here’s the easiest MindPower experiment ever… all you have to do is go to sleep. Actually, there’s a twist – because before you lay your head on the pillow I want you to slip something old into the pillowcase. It could be a piece of jewellery that has been in your family for generations, or a trinket from an antiques shop which took your fancy. Just make sure it’s small enough to fit comfortable under your pillow. Place a notebook and a pencil by the bed, to record any interesting mental impressions you pick up from the object. You might sense, as you sleep, an overall impression of its history, or you might tune in to vivid and emotional images from its past. Perhaps you’ll wake with a powerful awareness of how the object found its way to you down the decades – or you might dream of yourself wearing the clothes of a bygone era. If you do find yourself in the past, ask if you are reliving a former life, or acting as an observer from the present. Be open to your mind’s creative excesses.
last week, I was living one of my dreams after buying a century-old easel in an auction sale. I have formed the conviction, after sitting at it for hours with my brushes, that this simple wooden stand has held the canvases of some of the world’s greatest painters. I can feel inspiration flowing out of it in waves, which impels me to work furiously. The last time I felt such inspiration was when I studied under Salvador Dali. This proves what I have long believed: it is not only our fellow humans who can set our minds on fire. Objects have a life of their own too.
Uri Geller for Jonathan Cainer page Monday March 8, 2004.
One of the questions I hear most often is, ‘Where do you get your energy from’. Sometimes I tell people it is zapped from a spaceship circling Earth, which will one day take me back to my own planet, orbiting the star Electra in the Pleiades cluster.
If I say this with a straight face, and I open my eyes very wide, people believe me… or, at least, they don’t ask any more questions.
The truth is much more mundane. I get my energy from doing lots of things. I pack my day with activity – even if I have to rise at 4am to get to a TV studio, I make time for a brief work-out in my gym, and I grab all the morning newspapers to read in the car (it’s OK, I don’t do the driving).
I learned long ago that the most exhausting thing is to do nothing, when there are things to be done. It’s much harder to avoid a task than to simply plunge in and get it done. A job that’s hanging over you is leaching your energy every second of the day.
Even something as dull as washing the dishes is a drain on your resources if you put it off. The actual business of filling a bowl with hot, soapy water, dunking the crockery and applying the dishcloth is child’s play – what wears us out, when we try to be lazy, is the weight of a job that’s waiting for us.
A pile of dirty plates is like a constant nagging refrain in the sub-conscious mind: ‘You haven’t done me yet,’ it whispers. ‘You’re going to have to face me sometime. I’m still here. You can’t ignore me forever.’
Do a job and it’s over. It’s in the past. But put a job off and it lasts forever. If you want your energy levels to soar, I have one simple piece of advice: find a job that needs doing, and Do It Now!
Uri Geller for Jonathan Cainer page, Monday March 1, 2004.
Here’s a great exercise to sharpen your mind. All you need is the power of imagination. So relax your mind, and join me in a daydream: You are walking across the plush carpet of an elegant hotel lobby.
Outside, the chaotic city is swarming, but here you are in a oasis of calm. The staff smile and bow as you pass. Wealthy guests glance up respectfully at you. You walk to the lift. An attendant in spotless livery holds the door for you. That attendant is me! I gaze straight into your eyes, and say: “This elevator will carry your mind to a high pinnacle of focus and clarity. We will be riding up a towering spire, soaring above the clouds, to where the sky is always clear and the air is like a draught of icy, fresh water. Will you step inside’’
You walk into the lift and, as I close the doors, you note the rich wood panelling, the deep carpet, the shining crystal panes in the doors. Then I press the button. An orange counter lights up above the door. You hear me say softly and with complete authority: “At each floor, you will become twice as focused as you were before.” You trust my voice: “Going up! 1…
2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8… 9… 10!” The door slides open. Bright light pours on you and all around. Crisp air fills your lungs as you inhale deeply. You hear me say: “Your mind is perfectly alert… Your thoughts are clear and focused… You are suffused with lightness and energy… When you step out of the door you will be back in your own world, and all through the day you will feel alert, clear, focused, light, energetic. You are at your peak!” This daydream really is hypnotic. You’re using the power of your own mind to hypnotise yourself.
Psychologists call that count-up from 1 to 10 a ‘deepener’. It puts the subject into a deeper state of trance. Think of a psychiatrist in a black-and-white B-movie. In an Austrian accent, he intones: “You are feeling sleepy… much sleepier… in a deep sleep … deep, deep sleep.” Each phrase is a deepener, leading to a more profound level of relaxation.
URI GELLER for Jonathan Cainer page Monday February 23, 2004.
I walked out of the show! Whaddya mean, what show? Ok, I can’t blame you if you weren’t glued to Channel 5’s Back To Reality.
I went into their million-pound mansion, built inside a TV studio, expecting to spend three weeks on camera with 11 other contestants. I thought it would be a psychological challenge. Instead it degenerated into a humiliating series of drunken farragos. There was a lot of heavy alcohol use, and it sickened me.
When the presenters produced ice statues of a naked man and woman, and invited us to lick gin or vodka from their frozen private parts, I walked out. That’s not entertainment.
Uri Geller for Jonathan Cainer page February 16, 2004.
Mirror: Back to Reality
What am I letting myself in for? Last time I signed up for a reality TV show, I got snakes under my bed, larvae on my plate and Christine Hamilton in my earhole.
This time it looks like being a lot worse. As I write, my wife Hanna is packing my suitcase. I might not see her again for three weeks. By the time you read this, I will be locked in a house with one kitchen, one bathroom and twelve beds, with a bunch of people I don’t know.
If you watched Back To Reality last night you’ll already know more than I do right now. Channel Five have surrounded the show with a blanket of secrecy.
When I signed up for it, an executive warned me to tell nothing to anyone.
She didn’t exactly threaten that if I broke the code of silence I would wind up sleeping with the little fishes, but I got the idea. Billboard ads have alerted me to the identities of some of my housemates. Jade Goody will be there – I reckon she’s a likeable girl, and shrewder than she lets on. I’ve met Rik Waller, and we all know about James Hewitt… but I’m not standing for any nonsense from Nasty Nick Bateman. We know it’s a gameshow, and that one of us will be voted off daily till a winner emerges. But how will we earn our food?
I’m nervous. But I’m filled with positive energy, and ready for anything.
After I was voted off I’m A Celebrity, the producers told me the phone system had gone awry – most callers who voted to evict me had actually rung to support me. This is my chance to set the score straight. The prize is a £75,000 cheque for charities of my choice. I’m going to bend all my MindPower to win… so watch out! And don’t forget the golden rule: vote early, vote often, vote Uri!
Uri February 9
Mirror: IAC3
As the jungle antics of I’m A Celebrity hit their climax, the producers are desperate to find new ways to shock us. The trouble is, they’ve already reached the limits for Torture TV.
There are only so many ways to cover a human body in rats, only so many excuses to fill nauseous faces with live insects. I faced the first-ever truly horrific challenge on the show, when I had to bolt down a live witchetty grub… and there are not many worse trials that Ant and Dec could inflict. How do they make that more exciting? Serve up two witchetty grubs?
Or ten? It’s clear that the show’s lawyers won’t tolerate the kind of language John Lydon used, or allow Jordan’s dubious sexual boasts to be aired. And it turns out that even the most exhibitionist celebs are reluctant to commit sex acts on camera. So how can television find new ways to shock us? The answer is to make the human dramas ever more intense, to ramp up the tension and the ratings by stripping contestants down to their emotional cores. Since my own jungle ordeal I have been working on a novel about Reality TV. The central concept is plausible and shocking. My nightmare is this: bored with offering million dollar prizes and recording contracts, one day soon the makers of Reality TV will offer the ultimate prize…. a human baby. My story imagines five childless couples, each of them desperate to adopt, and makes them fight out their obsession on live TV for three weeks while the public votes to decide which couple will take the baby home. there’s one fantasy that I pray wl nvr bcm a reality.
Uri Geller for Jonathan Cainer page Monday February 2, 2004.
By URI GELLER
Anyone who believes in God these days is at risk of attack from sceptics. We are accused of ignoring scientific facts when we put our faith in miracles?
so I am always delighted when open-minded scientists prove that miracles can happen.
One of the greatest stories in the Bible tells how Moses rescued the Israelites from their miserable existence as slaves in Egypt, and led them on an epic trek to a new country where they could be free.
It’s a tale made for Hollywood, and film critics frequently name their favourite scene as the moment in The Ten Commandments where Charlton Heston, as Moses, parts the Red Sea.
But could the miracle be rooted in historical fact? Russian oceanographers Naum Voltsinger and Alexei Androsov have discovered the remains of a reef at the northern end of the Suez straits. They report that when the wind blows at the right speed and from the right direction across the reef, the water level drops along a narrow strip. Incredibly, the waves remain banked up on either side of the reef, creating a corridor through the waters, wide enough for three men to walk abreast.
Earthquakes have damaged the reef over thousands of years, so the effect is no longer as dramatic as Hollywood would wish. The water level now drops 25 centimentres. But in ancient times, the appearance of a deep, dry trench between two walls of water would have seemed an awesome miracle.
Voltsinger and Androsov say the corridor could have lasted for up to four hours – long enough for the fleeing Israelites to cross to safety – before the seas plunged back, sweeping away the pursuing Egyptian soldiers.
It’s a strange world we live in, I feel, when scripture is dismissed as fairy-tale… until science backs it up!
Uri Geller for Monday January 26, 2004.
Mirror: Bush and the moon
Millions of us in Britain believe George Bush invaded Iraq not to depose a dictator but to steal the oil. Earlier this month the US President announced his latest target for invasion – the Moon. Bush painted his 12 billion dollar plan to establish a space station on the Moon by 2020 as a step towards Mars, a launchpad for exploration to take mankind all over the solar system. With the population of our crowded planet predicted to top ten billion people within half a century, the revived Race Into Space might seem a smart idea. But as with everything else George W does, there’s a hidden agenda – fuel. Propulsion scientists have known for decades about a pure energy source called Helium 3. It produces almost unlimited power with no pollution or radiation. The problem is, it barely exists on Earth. But there is a million tonnes of the stuff on our Moon, enough Helium 3 to power the planet for centuries. One tonne would be worth 4 billion dollars. A couple of barrowloads would pay for the entire Moon mission. Gerald Kulcinski, of Wisconsin University’s Fusion Technology Institute, says:
“Helium 3 may be the key to future space exploration and settlement. And it’s safe – you could build a Helium 3 plant in the middle of a city.”
Astronauts discovered it soon after the first Moon landing in 1969. It is created when particles streaming from the Sun hit the barren lunar surface.
The constant bombardment by meteorites pounds the dust deep into the powdery soil, making it ideal for strip-mining. President Bush’s family wealth came out of the ground in oil barrels. He understands that energy mines make money. But will he understand a far simpler fact – that the Moon belongs, not to America, but to the world
Uri Geller for Monday January 19, 2004.
X-Ray Girl
Russian teenager Natasha Demkina has just taken a course in medical terminology, learning the names of the bones, muscles and organs in a human body.
Already patients are queueing to consult ‘Dr’ Natasha. Natasha charges nothing for her diagnosis, and turns no one away. At nightfall the queues disperse. As the daylight fades, so do Natasha’s medical powers. She becomes an ordinary girl again, until the sunrise restores her miraculous gift – the power to see through flesh. The remarkable tale of Natasha’s X-ray vision was soberly reported in Pravda, the Moscow newspaper, last week. Natasha
says: “It’s like double vision. I can switch from one to the other in no time. I see an entire human organism. There are certain impulses I feel from damaged organs.” Unlike other psychic healers, Natasha can pinpoint illness but can’t help with the cure. Now she wants to study for medical qualifications so she can work in mainstream hospitals. It costs about £1,350 a year to train as a doctor in Russia – far more than Natasha’s family could dream of. I hope one of the West’s stupendously rich drug companies will spot Natasha’s potential and sponsor her education. For a tiny investment, medicine could gain a vast talent.
Get your own way
2004
We all like to get our own way. Lots of people never learn how, or they go about it the wrong way. If your resolution for 2004 is to have your voice heard, you need to know about the wrong ways as well as the right one. We all know people who can bulldoze straight through other people’s objections and feelings. “Get out of my way,” they shout, “or you’ll get hurt!” Very often, they do get exactly what they want – but they also make an enemy of the whole world. And enemies have a habit of taking revenge. Bullies don’t prosper for long. Sooner or later they meet people who are even more aggressive than they are. Sadly, there are also many people who look in horror at the bullies and think, “I’d hate to be like that. If that’s what it takes to get your own way in life, then I’ll settle for being a nice person who has to miss out.” This passive attitude attracts bullies like jam attracts wasps. If you act as if it’s your lot to be forever trampled and cheated, there will always be a queue of aggressive people ready to walk all over you. Bullies don’t respect what anyone else wants. Passive people don’t respect their own needs. To be happy, you must avoid both those mistakes. Be assertive. Respect your own needs, and be mindful of what other people want too. Being assertive means you state your feelings clearly. You say, “I am going to get what I want – tell me what you want too, and let’s co-operate so we can both get our own way.” It’s all about self-respect and respect for others. When you learn that, you’re on track for a happy life. That’s such a simple lesson, but it took me half my life to learn it. I can’t think why schools don’t teach children how to be assertive. Self-respect, plus respect for others: it should be everyone’s first lesson!
Bush and the moon
Millions of us in Britain believe George Bush invaded Iraq not to depose a dictator but to steal the oil. Earlier this month the US President announced his latest target for invasion – the Moon. Bush painted his 12 billion dollar plan to establish a space station on the Moon by 2020 as a step towards Mars, a launchpad for exploration to take mankind all over the solar system. With the population of our crowded planet predicted to top ten billion people within half a century, the revived Race Into Space might seem a smart idea. But as with everything else George W does, there’s a hidden agenda – fuel. Propulsion scientists have known for decades about a pure energy source called Helium 3. It produces almost unlimited power with no pollution or radiation. The problem is, it barely exists on Earth. But there is a million tonnes of the stuff on our Moon, enough Helium 3 to power the planet for centuries. One tonne would be worth 4 billion dollars. A couple of barrowloads would pay for the entire Moon mission. Gerald Kulcinski, of Wisconsin University’s Fusion Technology Institute, says:
“Helium 3 may be the key to future space exploration and settlement. And it’s safe – you could build a Helium 3 plant in the middle of a city.”
Astronauts discovered it soon after the first Moon landing in 1969. It is created when particles streaming from the Sun hit the barren lunar surface.
The constant bombardment by meteorites pounds the dust deep into the powdery soil, making it ideal for strip-mining. President Bush’s family wealth came out of the ground in oil barrels. He understands that energy mines make money. But will he understand a far simpler fact – that the Moon belongs, not to America, but to the world?
Unwanted presents
I hope you found all the presents you wanted around your tree – and not too many of the ones you didn’t want!
Here’s my festive gift to you, a little something to take with you into the New Year – advice about what to do with unwanted presents. I’m not talking about the bath salts and the Simpsons socks. I mean the emotions and stress that other people dump in your lap.
It happens all the year round, of course, but at this time of year, when the shops are crammed with bargain-hunters, and the roads are jammed with harassed families, you are most likely to receive just the kind of gifts you don’t want: anger, guilt and anxiety.
Take the driver who tailgates you for two miles on a winding road, before he revs past on a dangerous corner and accelerates away, poking one finger up at you.
Half a minute later he’s out of sight, but he’s left a big parcel for you, full of your own seething rage. Or what about the relative who makes disparaging comments about the way you bring up your children? She never confronts you with her comments directly, of course – she just drops them into the conversation in front of the family. That’s a great present: embarrassment, anger and resentment, all wrapped up in one. I’m sure you can list your own examples, though you probably hadn’t thought of them as gifts before. But that’s exactly what they are. You didn’t asked for these feelings to be thrust on to you. If someone you didn’t know in the street tried to give you their useless gifts, you wouldn’t think twice about brushing them aside.
And tacky presents from an unloved relative swiftly end up in the charity shop or the dustbin. You can reject material gifts, and you can reject the emotional ones too. You don’t have to carry round those rotten feelings.
You can choose to throw them away. Clear out your emotional closet of all the unwanted feelings bestowed on you by others, and go into 2004 with a smile on your face!
Of all the blessings in my life, my marriage with Hanna has been the greatest.
We met in the Sixties, and we’ve grown together ever since, sharing our joys and supporting each other through our heartaches.
Hanna has lifted me up through all my toughest times, and when we are not together I feel as though I am only half a human being. We are always conscious of the importance of pouring energy into our relationship – love needs to be nurtured with love if it is to flourish.
Here are a few of our marriage secrets. Some might seem trivial but, believe me, it’s often the smallest threads which combine to weave the strongest bonds.
Touch each other! A touch doesn’t have to be sexual to be sensual. A caress, a hug, a squeeze of the hand can say more about how much you value your partner than a bookful of romantic poems.
Hanna places her hands on my shoulders when I am tense, and I feel the stress melt away from my body like snow in the sunshine.
Make your bedroom a sanctuary! Decorate it in pastel colours and soft cloths, and choose an ornament, such as a pair of crystal swans, which represent animals that mate for life.
Make the bed the focus of your bedroom! Banish TVs, telephones and exercise machines to other parts of the house. The bedroom is for sleep and for love.
Place objects in pairs around your home! Why have a single, lonely plant on the sill when two side by side will constantly remind you of the support you give each other?
Tell your partner what you’re thinking! Even if you are highly telepathic, spoken words emphasise the trust between you.
If you see me, come and say, ‘Hi’. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to bend a spoon – it takes a lot of psychic energy and sometimes, when I get carried away, I end up asleep on my feet with my psychic reserves drained to zero.
But I’m always happy to join you for a photo or to sign something: it’s a pleasure. And, let’s be frank about this, it’s also my job.
When I left Israel in the early Seventies with my manager, Shipi (he’s my brother-in-law too, these days), we promised each other that every day would be a holiday. And we’ve lived up to that promise, but we couldn’t do it on our own. Millions of people helped – you’ve joined in psychic experiments, you’ve flooded TV stations with your calls, you’ve phoned your votes in on TV shows and, of course, you read this column!
I’m an entertainer at heart, and I need an audience. That’s why, if you meet me at a book signing or after a show, I’ll want to know more about you than simply your name: I’ll ask about your family, and your ambitions, and your beliefs, and I’ll try to write an inscription which sums up our unique encounter. Often I’ll add a drawing on the flyleaf too.
I draw my energy from my audiences. Every time people tell me they remember a TV appearance that opened their minds, or remind me of an autograph I signed decades ago, I get a buzz of sheer positive energy.
So don’t be a stranger. Come and say hello!
Jonathan has asked me to write about how it feels to live my unusual life. So, for the next few weeks I will be trying to put into words what I’m thinking and feeling as I use my powers – and what it’s like to experience the affection, and sometimes the fear, that people display when they meet me.
I thought the best place to start would be at the beginning.
When I was four, I used to play in the deserted garden of a Arabic house opposite our home on Betzalel Yaffe in Tel Aviv. One day I heard kittens mewing so I ventured deep into the undergrowth in search of them. I felt something above me, and heard an intense, high-pitched sound, and then I was knocked off my feet by a ray of light from a burning globe over my head.
When I came too, I ran to my mother but she didn’t really believe me. But a few days later, I bent my first spoon. I was eating soup, and my mother was at the stove, and the spoon just curled. The soup went in my lap. My mother said, “It must be a loose spoon or something,” but even at four, I knew the truth was far stranger.
It’s been a carnival down there under Tower Bridge. By the climax, you were lucky if you could push through the crowds in under 40 minutes.
Yet when you did reach the edge of David Blaine’s enclosure and looked up at the transparent box, you felt as if you were the only human being on the riverbank. An extraordinary aura of calm descended on Potters Fields in the final days of David’s ordeal, an atmosphere I have never sensed in my life. It was as though a blanket of meditation had been spread across the scene. Even the security guards were affected – they stood impassively like marble figureheads, surveying the onlookers. The pranksters vanished long ago with their golf balls and bags of chips. David has calmed them – for I am certain that the relaxed vibrations which all of us sensed were emanating from the man in the box himself. Before he began his ordeal, David told me that his prime objective was to journey within himself and explore regions of his mind which could only be reached by long fasting and contemplation. In the full sight of one of the world’s biggest cities, on continuous live television, David Blaine achieved his aim of becoming a recluse, a hermit. The box became his cave, the crane his mountaintop. Now it is over, and the victory is his. David Blaine has done what everyone said was impossible. Despite the blackouts, the weight loss, the headaches and the muscle pains, despite the abuse and above all despite the loneliness, he endured 44 days without food or the most basic human comforts. A battle just as tough lies ahead of him – re-entry into the real world. David will stay in my prayers for many weeks to come.
Two visitors were bickering under David Blaine’s box beside the Thames last weekend, and I bit my tongue until I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“It’s a disgrace,” one woman kept saying. “What sort of example is he setting to people with anorexia and bulimia? Young girls will take one look at him and say, ‘If he can stop eating so can I’. He’s just encouraging teenagers to starve themselves to death.”
That twisted viewpoint is so far removed from the message David is trying to convey, that I simply cannot understand how anyone could get it so badly wrong. And it baffles me that people will take the trouble to journey to Tower Bridge, push through the crowds, and then stand there complaining!
And then it occured to me that I had the perfect argument to silence the whingers. “Excuse me,” I said, “but I have suffered from a very serious eating disorder myself. I had bulimia, so badly that I could barely stand unaided at one stage. You don’t need to teach me anything about starving the body, because I know how hard it is to eat when every nerve and every muscle is fighting to reject food.”
The visitors looked disbelieving. You’ve never had bulimia, they said. But I was fired up now, and I told them the whole story – how I would rush to the bathroom after every course, gorging myself on platefuls of rich, creamy food and then voiding my stomach. The act of sheer willpower, I told them, was to force myself to keep food down – to overcome the compulsion to vomit, to accept that I was far too thin to be healthy. And that’s the core of the message that David is transmitting from his lonely box above the river: we are all in control. We dictate what our bodies need and do. We can master any compulsion, any craving. Every eating disorder can be beaten by the mind. When we wield the full force of our human willpower, nothing can stand in our way.
Right now David Blaine is desperate for his ordeal to end. Racked with hunger, tortured by broken sleep, he is focused on enduring to an end which just can’t come fast enough for him. And there are still more than two weeks to go.
Yet one of his toughest challenges will be to readjust to living in the real world. When he emerges from his plastic prison after 44 days – if he can survive this marathon fast – David will not have spoken with, or even touched, another human being for more than six weeks. Suddenly he will be surrounded by the full blaze of media attention. Every celebrity in Europe will want to be photographed with him.
And of course there will be the reunion with his girlfriend Manon von Gerkan, who has been sending him silent messages of love.
I predict he will take many months to recover, for the worst days of his fast lie ahead of him still. But somewhere in the future, he will be aiming to pull off an even more spectacular performance.
And I suspect that, as he reclines in his box and watches the people and boats flitting about below, he has already begun to make plans.
Every morning my first thought is… “My God! He’s still up there.” David Blaine is now halfway through his ordeal, and the agony is beginning to tell…
on his supporters on the ground. I am sometimes terrified to awake and think of my friend, alone, nearly naked and racked with hunger.
I switch on the TV immediately, and every morning I am relieved and calmed to see how serenely he is enduring his fast. As he predicted, David is spending long stretches of time in meditation, allowing his mind to travel along the Thames and into the teeming city, or out to sea.
His view takes in the most historic stretch of water in the world, with the Tower of London before him and Traitor’s Gate at its base, where the king’s most dangerous enemies once were brought by river.
His team in America appear confident to me, with a growing sense of certainty that David will confound his critics and achieve his goal. There is a feeling around the camp that positive thinking has won through. The sneers and jibes of early days have been stifled by a burgeoning sense of awe and respect among onlookers.
The person who has risen foremost in my prayers is David’s girlfriend, Manon von Gerkan. I feel she was assailed by a sense of powerlessness in the early days of the trial. It is a terrible thing to see someone you love suffer and to know there is nothing you can do to help. But I believe she and David have found a mental wavelength which allows them to communicate telepathically, and they are both comforted by these mind messages. When he emerges, their re lationship will be stronger than ever.
Uri Geller writes: The atmosphere around David Blaine’s box has been pretty scary, especially after dark. I’ve been down to the river bank by Tower Bridge almost daily, to give my friend support, and there are plenty of well-wishers, but a small minority of yobs and racists are out to make trouble.
Two louts were flicking Nazi salutes at David one night. Like me he’s Jewish. Security chased the thugs off, but I was sickened that this could happen in London, of all places.
David’s still smiling. He’s taken the abuse and has emerged unscathed.
These incidents actually make him stronger. But I didn’t expect it to be like this, I confess. I’m shaken.
I still though, feel positive that he can see it through.
Staying happy helps you to keep healthy, according to scientists who infected 300 volunteers with the common cold.
American psychologist Sheldon Cohen found cheerful types were three times more likely to fight off the bug.
He also discovered that positive thinkers moaned a lot less about their colds.
Scientists are catching up with something that psychics have always known:
the mind rules the body. A sunny outlook boosts the body’s immune system, gets the feel-good hormones flowing and focuses the thoughts on physical activity.
I always tell people who ask me to help with healing: “The power is already within you. Think positive, and release your full potential!” The best place to start is with a smile. With a happy face, the rest of your body will follow.
Come on you Grecians! The football season gets underway this weekend, and I can hardly wait.
When my beloved Exeter City crashed down to relegation in the final game last year, I thought I’d never want to watch another match. But it’s an addiction! University of Utah researchers have measured testosterone levels in fans.
Psychologist Paul Bernhardt discovered levels of the sex hormone soar by up to 20 per cent among fans of the winning team. “I think this confirms a lot of people’s notions that serious sports fans really do seem to be affected by their teams,” Bernhardt said. “This is not just happening in the mind, it’s happening in the whole person.”
I predict this spells bad news for Chelsea fans. Their new owner, billionaire Roman Abramovich, may be about to learn why it’s dumb to pay players a lifetime’s salary for a single season.
Australian astronomers have calculated that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches in all the world.
So if you’re lucky enough to be lazing on a sweltering shoreline this summer, take a moment to dig out a handful of soft, powdery sand and let the thousands of grains trickle through your fingers.
Now think – that’s just one handful of sand, from just one beach, at just one holiday hotspot. You can’t begin to imagine how
much sand there is … but there are more stars than even that! 70 sextillion stars, to be precise: that’s a seven with 22 zeroes after it.
Can you believe there are scientists who still think this is the only place in the universe where intelligent life exists? Come on, all you sceptics – what planet are you guys on?
I believe fervently in the power of prayer. Have you any idea how powerful one person’s prayers can be? Even I was shocked to learn from Scottish scientist Dr David Hamilton how rapidly psychic energy multiplies when more people get involved.
The maths is fascinating. According to major studies, plants grow faster when
people pray for them. A group of ten volunteers who visualise sprouting seeds
can make a big difference. But add another ten volunteers, and the effect
doesn’t double … it gets an incredible ten times stronger. Or, as Dr Hamilton
explains, “Group energy intensifies the intent by the square of the number
visualising.
So if a thousand people visualise then the power of intent is a
thousand squared, i.e. one million. Got that? It sounds complicated but the truth is simple – your prayers can make more difference than you know.
When I flew to America in search of fame and success 30 years ago, I told my manager, Shipi, that our lives would be one long holiday. And we’ve done our best to live up to that pledge. Like lots of people in showbiz, I’m happiest
when I’m hard at work, but I always keep the holiday spirit bubbling – you won’t see me in a suit and tie! I’m more likely to be wearing wacky shorts and a Bermuda shirt.
So get your sunglasses on, crack open a cold drink and promise yourself you
will inject a busload of fun into everything you do.
By the way, Shipi is still my manager, and I made our holiday a package
deal… by marrying his sister! You can see us soon in On Holiday With The Gellers on Channel Four
The weirdest paranormal experiment was conducted by an ex-CIA interrogator named Cleve Backster, who pioneered polygraphs, the lie detectors which detect human stress levels by measuring the flow of electricity through skin.
Backster wired up his potted rubber plant to a lie detector to see if the needle flickered when the plant was harmed. There was no reaction when he dipped a leaf in hot coffee – maybe rubber plants like a good, frothy cappuccino – but when he thought to himself, “I’m going to light a match and burn a stem,” the polygraph went into overdrive.
Plants, it seems, can read our minds. Backster went on to prove that his plant shared in the suffering of even the tiniest creatures, by watching the needle jump every time he dropped a live shrimp into boiling water.
Told you it was weird.
Some of the most successful and dramatic psychic experiments we have conducted on this page had nothing to do with the Third Eye – they’re all about the Third Ear!
I’m joking of course … the Third Eye is the psychic sense centre in the middle of your brow, and there’s no such thing as the Third Ear.
But isn’t it strange how so much of our intuition comes through sounds, not sights?
Take the Australian woman who suddenly got off a London tube train. She said: “It wasn’t my stop, and I had to walk miles. I just heard a voice warning me to get off right away.” She’s thanking her instincts now, because within minutes the train had crashed.
Thankfully no one was killed, though many were injured. Her premonition was invisible – she simply heard a voice. Trust your Third Ear!
John Fashanu amazed me when we met last week – I bent a spoon for him and he immediately said, “I think I could learn to do that with Reiki energy.”
I loved his jungle performance in I’m A Celebrity, and I knew he would want to focus on the paranormal.
But I had no idea Fash was a student of the ancient Japanese system of spiritual healing called Reiki.
I am Jewish, but I deeply believe that all religions put us in touch with our higher selves, whether we follow Islam, Christianity, Rasta or another path. Just like yoga and Buddhism, Reiki is real because it works.
X-factor
YOU CAN FIND THE GREEK LETTERS HERE
I love the new X-Men movie, about talented teens whose lives are turned inside out when they discover their supernatural powers. The great comic book artist Stan Lee once featured me as a Marvel superhero, so I feel I’m an X-Man too!
Everybody possesses phenomenal psychic gifts.
In the English alphabet, X is the character of mystery. An unknown man is Mr X, X marks the spot for treasure, a secret ingredient is the X-factor. The Greeks knew that mysteries came in two kinds: mysteries of the mind, and mysteries of the world. They are represented by the last two letters of the Ancient Greek alphabet – Psi and Omega. Say them as ‘Sigh’ and ‘Oh-MAY-guh’.) ‘Psi’ gives us words like psychic, psyche and psychology. ‘Omega’ conjures up images of hidden codes and secret societies. The truth is these concepts are two sides of the same coin, symbolising knowledge we don’t possess yet. I can never decide which is more exciting – probing the mysteries of the world around me, or exploring the secrets of my own mind
Have you ever experienced deja-vu, that feeling you have been here before?
Scientists say this means the two halves of my brain aren’t matching up – but how would they know?
They haven’t seen inside my brain!
If you know the deja-vu feeling, I believe you must be psychic.
The most mystical number is a double-11.
All my life I have looked at 11-11 as a hint from a higher intelligence.
It keeps cropping up everywhere – when I look at clocks, when I buy raffle tickets, when I switch on the TV, I always
seem to see 11-11.
What does the hint mean? I think it’s a reminder: stay tuned to your psychic energy, keep your spiritual mind alive, because there’s much more to this universe than you can ever dream.
Why do we hate one of our hands? We get LEFT behind, LEFT on the shelf, LEFT out … while it’s always the RIGHT answer, the RIGHT stuff, RIGHT on.
Even the Romans did it – their word for left was “sinister”. I’m a left-hander, and I happen to believe we tend to be more creative, more original and more talented.
But then I would, wouldn’t I? To find out which hand is really best, hold one behind your back and try clapping with the other.
Can’t be done, of course … like everything in life, one alone will not succeed. It takes two!
Inspired by the ‘binary’ maths which computers use. In this there are just two digits.
The answer is always 1 or 0, right or wrong.
But people are more complicated than computers, We can see manyoptions and possiblities.
If we are stranded between two choices, we have to learn to listen to our intuition.
The ancient male and female signs make such bold statements about our natures.
Men are symbolised by a jutting arrow, an age-old instrument of war.
Women are signified by a cross, a design used on battlefields around the globe to identify non-combatants who bravely work to tend the wounded.
Our similarities are more important than our differences. The circle symbolises both men and women. That shows we all have the potential to be whole, rounded human beings.
Don’t get too worked up about the current notion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus – the truth is, we’re all from Mother Earth!
When we care for our cats and dogs they care for us too.
Even people in very high-stress jobs, such as stockbrokers, can see dramatic reductions in tension and anxiety when they stroke a pet.
Dr Karen Allen, of the American Heart Association, says: “The results are dramatic and significant. For over a decade I’ve been studying the effects of pets on people’s reactivity to stress – measured by heart rate and blood pressure responses to mental and physical stress. We’ve shown over and over that it’s beneficial to be with a pet when you’re under stress.”
Do you have 3D imagination?
Limber up with a workout inspired by the brilliant inventor Nikola Tesla. Everyone owes a huge debt to Tesla, who died in poverty. He developed alternating current, the AC electricity which nables us to transmit power for long distances.
Victorian physicists said it couldn’t be done. Edison, who invented the light bulb, thought we would always be limited to short-range direct current. Tesla believed it was possible, and he ‘built’ the machine to prove it – right inside his head.
The Serbian genius honed every moving part in his 3D imagination, examining the device from all angles, constantly visualising the images. When he built the real machine, it was already perfect.
I love to visualise in three dimensions. Sometimes I picture machines, but most often I imagine strange animals – a dog with feathers, a six-legged horse, a neon deer. I study them from every angle, imagining how they move, run and sleep. Try it yourself – let the workshop of your mind run overtime and see what you invent.
Cynics will tell you there’s no such thing as right and wrong, just a grey area in between. But I am certain that we really are faced with choosing between right and wrong in our personal lives.
Sometimes I do the wrong thing … and I always know about it, and regret it, because that has an effect on my psychic energy.
The most powerful example of this hit me after I used my psi ability to cheat at roulette. At first the casino management liked to see me winning, but when they started losing big money on every turn of the wheel I was escorted from the premises.
At first I thought I’d hit on the perfect get-rich-quick scheme – but I soon knew better. I felt physically awful. I couldn’t breathe, and I ended up literally throwing the money away, at the side of a motorway. I never gambled again.
When people tell me that something is impossible because the chances of ‘a million to one,’ I reply that all chances are 50-50. Either something happens or it doesn’t.
Is the world going to avert war in Iraq? It’s 50-50 – we’ll either achieve peace or we won’t. I pray we do. And will mankind learn to harness our innate telepathic powers? That’s a 50-50 chance too – believe, and it could happen.
We’ve had some extraordinary results with my psychic challenge with callers consistently picking the image that I am telepathically beaming out. Now let’s make it simpler – by going 50-50!
Here are two simple symbols, an arrow pointing upwards and another pointing down. I have fixed one of these in my mind – but which is it?
Logic suggests that 50 per cent of you will guess one arrow, and 50 per cent the other. But, by tuning in to your sixth sense, you can beat the odds. If we can achieve a huge swing for one arrow or the other, that’s positive proof of your telepathic power.
“Mean Vultures Enjoy Making Jaguars Scared, Usually Near Parks.”
That’s my way of remembering the planets in our solar system. Look at the first letter of each word – they match the initials of each planet: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.
This is an example of a magic mnemonic. That word, pronounced ‘ner-mon-ik’, means a memory aid, and it comes from the Greek word for ‘mindful’. You can keep your mind full with mnemonics, because they are a sure way of remembering anything.
Whether you’re trying to memorise facts for exams or details for an office report, always look at the initial letters. Have fun making up a silly sentence and you’ll never forget what it means.
We communicate with words – but sometimes the letters of those words are trying to contact our psychic sub-conscious in their own secret language.
The mystical Jewish wisdom of the Kaballah regards the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet as ‘the building blocks of creation’. By interpreting the meaning of the letters, rabbis could unlock the secrets of the universe– centuries before scientists tried to do the same. I believe that science has become a religion today.
Many ‘atheists’ really believe in science.
They have faith, but it is faith in a power greater than humanity. Letters rule in
science too. Scientists say genes are ‘the building blocks of creation’, and they unravel genetic DNA into four strands … represented by the letters A, C, T and G.
A dear friend of mine made the big leap to the next life a few days ago.
But I know for certain that Eldon Byrd hasn’t gone away at all – his spirit is very much alive in the hearts of his many friends. Of course, I’m grieving – we’ve been close friends for 30 years.
I’m grieving for his family too, because they will naturally miss him desperately. But I’m not sad for Eldon himself, because he had a brilliant life and a notable career as a physcist, and I know he’ll embrace the hereafter with the same open-minded gusto he
applied to everything in this life. In an odd way, a death is a kind of birthday: it marks the moment we enter the next world. I believe the challenges of the hereafter are no less daunting than the ones we face here.
But it’s still a birthday, and a cause for celebration as well as sadness.
When sceptics scoff at astrology, I like to hand them some hard facts to chew on.
How about a recent study in The Lancet, the leading medical journal, for instance?
It shows babies born in April are, on average, 2.2 millimetres taller than December children. And if birthdate affects the bones, why shouldn’t it shape the brain too? The study involved more than a million babies over 20 years, which looks like solid scientific proof to me. Not that most sceptics are troubled by anything as trivial as proof, of course!
Here’s another weird synchronicity: what is it about January 20 which points new babies towards space?
All four of today’s birthday boys pictured have strong links to the Final Frontier.
DeForest Kelly was Bones in the original Star Trek.
Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin was the second man on the moon.
Tom Baker was the greatest Dr Who of all; and Paul Stanley, whose character in the rock band Kiss is The StarChild
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