Andrija Puharich's First Tests of Uri Geller

 

In last week's article I mentioned that Andrija Puharich related in his case study Uri that after first learning about reported "amazing psychic feats" of a young man named Uri Geller, Puharich went on to investigate and test Uri.
 
Considering these circumstances, the reader gains an understanding of the scope of the phenomena chronicled by Puharich while noticing his initial lack of understanding about what the occurrences signified.
 
This week, I am presenting an excerpt from the book featuring Puharich's description of his first meeting and testing Uri during the early 1970s as this data may be illuminating for those who haven't read Uri.
 
When Puharich was chairman of the international conference "Exploring the Energy Fields of Man," he listened to an Israeli researcher from Boston named Itzhaak Bentov read a letter from a friend in Israel.
 

The letter said in summary: "His son saw Uri Geller, a 23 year old stage performer, do some amazing things for a group of students and their professors.  He made it clear that his son does not believe in these things as being paranormal.  His son thinks some kind of a trick is involved, but nobody knows the trick, not even the magicians."

His son's friend had held a gold ring clenched in his hand while Geller held his left hand over this hand for about thirty seconds.  When his son's friend opened his hand, the ring was split.  Geller also held his hand over the face of a wristwatch belonging to a student, and when he moved his hand away, the watch hands were displaced two hours forward.  The third thing Geller did was to drive through Haifa traffic while blindfolded, with the windshield of the car on the driver's side masked with cardboard.  It seems that someone was required to be in the car with Geller so that Geller could "see" through this person's eyes.

 
After Puharich made contact with Uri in Israel by letter, Uri agreed to give him an opportunity to test his talents.  Puharich went to Israel on August 17, 1971 despite being ill and dealing with family problems.  He recalled that he felt healthy by the time his flight landed in Israel.
 

I was met at Lod Airport by the father of the boy who had witnessed Uri Geller's feats (I shall call him Jacov, since he does not wish to be identified).  Jacov was a balding, sandy-haired, freckle-faced man of deep calm and quiet dignity.  He explained at some length that he had arranged for the use of a friend's apartment for me in Tel Aviv.  He brought me up to date on his further investigations of Uri Geller.  He was frankly skeptical of Geller's powers because there had not been a decent opportunity for satisfactory private demonstrations.  He welcomed my presence, just to resolve the nagging question as to whether or not these were genuine powers.

Jacov told me that Geller was performing at 11 p.m. that night at a discotheque called the Zorba in Jaffa.  Would I like to go and see Geller or get some rest?  In spite of my recent illness, I could not think of conserving myself; I had to go and meet Geller.  After dinner, we arrived at the Zorba.  It was a huge barn of a place, put together out of crepe and tinsel for the tourist trade.  While waiting in the foyer for the show to start, a young man who recognized Jacov came up to us.  It was Uri Geller.  He introduced himself in perfect English, welcomed me to Israel, and apologized for our having to meet under the squalid roof of the Zorba.

I greeted him in return by saying I had waited for a year to meet him.  I was surprised at his healthy appearance.  I had expected to find some kind of a strange nebbish somehow not related to this world.  Instead he was tall and very handsome, with a quick, sharp, here-and-now sense of presence.  His manner was easy, even gentle.  He didn't look like a man who broke metal rings by sheer willpower.

Uri soon excused himself to get ready to go on stage.  Jacov and I got ringside seats and suffered through a series of rock numbers, jugglers, clowns, and comedians.  Uri was the last to appear, since he was the star of this show.

He was simply introduced as Uri Geller as he appeared on stage.  The crowd of youngsters went wild with applause.  He was evidently very popular.  He announced, "With the cooperation of the audience, I am going to try to demonstrate simple telepathy and psychokinesis.  I hope I will succeed."

He then did a series of telepathic demonstrations wherein members of the audience wrote numbers, the names of cities, and the names of colors on a blackboard.  Blindfolded, he would try to guess what they had written.  He was correct on every attempt.  I was not impressed, because any magician could do the same thing in a number of different ways by trickery, mostly by having collaborators in the audience.  However, I reserved judgment on this subject because I could easily test this talent when we met privately.

Finally he came to the big event of his demonstration.  He said that if anyone would volunteer a ring, he would attempt to break it.  A lady sitting near us volunteered her costume jewelry ring for the test.  She went up on stage, took the ring off her hand, and held it up for all to see; it appeared intact.  Uri then told her to clutch the ring in her hand and to make sure that he could not touch it.  This she did.  Uri then placed his left palm over the lady's clenched fist for about thirty seconds.  He asked her to open her hand and to examine the ring.  She gasped, "The ring is broken."  She held it up for all to see.  There was wild applause as Uri ended his demonstration.  The lady returned to her seat, and Jacov asked her in Hebrew if we could inspect the ring.  She handed it over to us.  It was split in two pieces, with no signs of any tool marks.  The lady assured Jacov that she was not in collusion with Geller.  All this was intriguing, but not convincing, since a magician with the assistance of a confederate could do the same thing.

We met Geller after the show.  He was very boyish in his eagerness to find out if I liked his show.  I assured him that I enjoyed his part of the show, but would have to work with him privately to assess what he was doing.  He readily agreed to meet me at my apartment the next day at 1 p.m. to discuss my research interests and find out what I wanted to do.

I did not realize then how lucky I was.  Later I found out that Uri had steadfastly resisted all offers by research people to do experiments.  He, too, was surprised at how readily he had consented, especially since I was a total stranger.

By the time Uri arrived at the apartment the next afternoon, all of my equipment was operative and in place.  Two of my Israeli friends were present, Jacov and Ms. Shifra Mor.  I began by asking Uri to show me those talents of his that he felt the most sure of and to do them in his own way.  Uri said he would like to do some simple telepathy for me.  He said, "Think of one number from one to nine.  Don't tell anyone.  Just keep it in mind.  Got it?"

"Yes," I said.  I had thought of the number four.

"Now think of another number."

"I have it," said I, having thought of the number three.

"Now the last number," Uri said.

I had selected two for this number.

Uri looked at me intently as though he were checking his own impressions.  Then he said very abruptly to me, "Pick up the pad on the table before you, the one I wrote on before you selected your first number.  Did you notice that I had written on it then and haven't touched it since?"

"Yes, Uri, I noticed what you had done and that you haven't touched it since or tried to switch it.  After all, that is part of my business as an investigator."

I picked up the pad, which was face down, turned it over, and read what Uri had written down before I had thought of my first number.  It read, "4 3 2."

Uri laughed, obviously pleased with his coup.

I responded with some admiration, "That's pretty clever; you told me this would be telepathy, and I, of course, thought you were going to be the receiver.  But you pulled a switch on me."

"Ah, you got it quick!" interrupted Uri.  "I wanted to send you the numbers, but I knew that if I told you to try to receive the numbers, you would fight me.  In this way you participated in the experiment without prejudice, and proved that you have telepathy, when I send or pass to you."

I realized now that Uri had an unusual power of influencing others' thoughts.  At this point I asked Uri's permission to use my tape recorder and movie camera.

"Of course, if it is easier for you," he replied quickly.  "But you probably think that since I sent those numbers to you so easily, I might also hypnotize you to see and do things that are not really there!"

"You are so right, Uri," I laughingly replied.  "I can see that we're going to get along just fine."

Now that we had tested each other's mettle, we were able to settle down to some serious work.  I then asked Uri to do some more telepathy with my Israeli friends.  I might say that these two people were highly trained observers.

After an hour of doing Uri's telepathy with simple units of information such as numbers, letters, colors, and single words, we stopped for a break.  We openly discussed our opinion of Uri's demonstration.  I led off by stating without equivocation that this was genuine telepathy and I would state so anywhere.

Shifra and Jacov concurred in this opinion.  They asked if Uri could get or give more complex information by telepathic means.  He replied, "I can't do things like that.  I stick to the simplest bits of things, so that it is like two times two equals four.  Then people have to say I am right or I am wrong.  If I do whole stories, it's hard to score what I do.  This way it is either zero, or a hundred, and no in-between."

"Now what would you like to do?" I asked Uri.

"Does anyone happen to have a watch that does not work?  I will try to fix it," said Uri.

Shifra replied first.  "I have a watch that is not broken; it is not working because I haven't wound it in a few days.  Can you start it without touching it?"

"Well, I'll try," said Uri.  I interrupted, "Shifra, first let me inspect the watch before anything is done."  She handed me the watch.  It was a well-known Swiss-brand watch.  I listened to it.  I shook it.  This made it tick a few cycles and then it stopped.  I then took a motion picture of the face.

Uri said, "I don't want to touch it.  Let Shifra hold it in her clenched fist."

I placed the watch in Shifra's open palm.  She closed it, and then Uri placed his left hand palm down over her hand without touching it.  After thirty seconds Uri said, "Okay, check it.  I think it's running."

I took the watch from Shifra and inspected it.  The watch ticked now and continued to do so.  The hands moved for several minutes normally.  Shifra agreed to let me keep the watch to see how long it would run.  The watch ran for thirty minutes before it stopped.

Uri then asked if I would take my watch off and just hold it in my hand.  I noted the time.  It was 2:32 p.m.  I placed the watch in my right hand.  Uri placed his hand over mine without touching it.  He concentrated for about ten seconds, then said, "Check it."

I looked at the watch.  The hands now stood at 3:04 p.m., an advance of thirty-two minutes.  My watch is a Universal Geneve Chronometer, with additional dials to add up stopwatch time.  I noticed that two of these dials had also shown an advance of thirty-two minutes.  But the stopwatch sweep-second hand should have been running for thirty-two minutes, but the stopwatch sweep-second hand was motionless.  There is no known way to advance these two dials thirty-two minutes except to run the stopwatch for thirty-two minutes.  This complex feat of psychokinesis was unparalleled in my experience, or in the literature, for that matter.

This ended our research session for the first day.  I had only one reservation: I must wait until my motion pictures were developed to make sure that my companions and I were not hallucinating.  One month later when the film was developed I had my confirmation; the film had seen the same thing as had my eyes.

The next day I repeated the telepathy tests and found the same positive results.  Then I asked Uri to concentrate on a pair of identical thermometers of the bimetal type.  He was able to raise selectively the temperature of one thermometer six to eight degrees Fahrenheit, while the other one remained at the room temperature.  I found that he could do this equally well from across the room as when near the thermometer.

There was no question in my mind that Uri Geller's powers of telepathy and psychokinesis were extraordinary.  I now wanted to know more about him as a person: What were his interests and his motivation?

Reading the entire book Uri is revealing in a way that Uri Geller himself has seldom attempted to be, although Puharich's book is easily available to read at www.urigeller.com.