(Last of two parts)

Easily the most famous and richest psychic in the world is Uri Geller of Israel. A former military paratrooper and club entertainer, Geller catapulted into international fame in the mid ’70s and ’80s for his extraordinary psychic abilities of bending metal spoons, rings and keys with his mind alone. This mental power or ability is technically known as “telekinesis” or “psychokinesis.”

He demonstrated his amazing powers during numerous live performances on television programs and scientific conferences worldwide.

Who said psychics are poor? Uri Geller has houses in several European countries and flies on his own jet plane.

At the height of his popularity, this good-looking and friendly psychic was hounded by women. Wherever he went, women would give him their phone numbers or hotel keys. He complained during a Cosmopolitan magazine interview: “Just because I could bend spoons, these women think I could have an erection for 24 hours.”

Geller’s powers are apparently not limited to bending spoons and other metals. It was reported that he stopped the Big Ben Clock in London for five minutes, went behind enemy lines in a tank during the Six-Day War without being detected by the Arabs and shot a target with a submachine gun without a firing pin while training in the Israeli Army as a paratrooper.

But all these could not go unnoticed by skeptics and debunkers. One American, publicity-seeking magician hounded Uri Geller for several years, saying Geller was a fake and tried unsuccessfully to duplicate his telekinetic feats. Geller could bend spoons and metallic objects without touching them. No magician was able to duplicate this.

International conference

I had read at least two books and several articles about Uri Geller before I met him in Dusseldorf, Germany, in May 1994. The occasion was the International Conference on Alternative Healing where Geller was among the speakers.

I was invited to accompany Filipino spiritual healer Jun Labo who demonstrated his controversial method of psychic surgery. I was excited when I learned that Geller was a guest speaker. Among the other speakers I recognized were my friends, British spiritual healers Tom Johanson and German scientist Dr. Alfred Stelter. British biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who presented his morphogenetic field theory, was also there.

When I learned of Geller’s presence in the German conference, I told his good friend, Joselito Jacinto (brother of Ramon Jacinto) about it, and he asked me to bring a gift to him. That facilitated my meeting and subsequent interview with with Geller.

During the conference, he did not demonstrate spoon bending, for which he had become famous. Instead, he showed something which, to me, was more incredible. He germinated one of the radish seeds in his palm without moving his hand.

Before an audience of about 1,000 people, Geller opened a sachet of radish seeds and poured 10 seeds into his palm. Then he asked everybody in the largely German audience to tell the radish seeds to grow. “Say it mentally in English, ‘Grow, grow!’” he told them. Why in English? Perhaps the radish seeds could not understand German.

When nothing happened after about a minute, Geller said, sometimes this didn’t work. He asked if there were children in the room, and about six children, ages eight to 12, went up the stage and Geller told them to stand in front of him and command the seeds to “grow, grow!” in English.

After about another minute, one of the seeds began to germinate to about an inch! Geller never moved his open palm from beginning to end. No way could he have done this by trickery.

Geller has been tested exhaustively under controlled conditions at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in Menlo Park, California, by highly skeptical scientists. The results were not very impressive, as reported by the Institute, but informal testimonials by scientists who witnessed the demonstration said the spoon continued to bend even after Geller had stopped commanding it mentally.

Negative thoughts

Geller later was reported to have asked, “Why is it that when I try to bend a spoon anywhere, I could do it very easily, but when it is important for me to demonstrate it before skeptical scientists, the results are not so impressive?”

I know the answer to his question. Negative thoughts, skepticism and opposition affect the energy of a psychic. If he works under conditions of strong moral or positive support from the audience, the results are always positive.

When I interviewed Geller in his suite, he did not bend any spoon for me, either. Instead, he successfully duplicated a drawing I made at the back of my card, which I then transmitted to him telepathically.

He did this remarkable demonstration of his telepathic power within 20 seconds after I transmitted the image, which was supposed to be a flower, but it looked like a tree of some sort. In fact, Geller said, ‘I see it in my mind, but I don’t know what it is.” We both had a great laugh.

Other noted scientists who have observed or tested Geller gave statements that they did not believe trickery or fraud was involved, but that they could not explain scientifically how he did it.

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