"If Uri Geller bends spoons with divine powers, then he's doing it the hard way."
--James Randi"Because a good magician can do something shouldn't make you right away jump to the conclusion that it's a real phenomenon."
--Richard Feynman
Uri Geller is a Hungarian/Austrian who was born in Israel and lives in England. He is most famous for his claims to be able to bend spoons and keys with his mind. Geller claims he's had visions and may get his powers from extraterrestrials. He calls himself a psychic and has sued several people for millions of dollars for saying otherwise. He has lost the lawsuits and a bit of money in his aggressive attacks on his critics. His archcritic has been magician James ("The Amazing") Randi, who has written a book and numerous articles aimed at demonstrating that Geller is a fraud, that he has no psychic powers and that what Geller does amounts to no more than the parlor tricks of a magician.
Geller has been performing for many years. The first time I saw him was in the late 60's or early 70's when he appeared on the Johnny Carson show. He was supposed to demonstrate his ability to bend spoons and stop watches with his thoughts, but he failed to even try. He squirmed around and said something about how his power can't be turned on and off, and that he didn't feel right. Others speculate that Randi conspired with Carson to change the spoons Geller would use, as there was suspicion that Geller likes to work (i.e., soften) his spoons before his demonstrations.
I have always been fascinated and puzzled by the attraction to Uri Geller. I suppose this is because nearly every one of our household spoons is bent and what I would like to see is someone who can straighten them out, with his mind or with anything for that matter. Likewise, with stopped watches. I have had several of those along the way and what I would have been amazed by would have been someone who could use his powers, psychic or otherwise, to make them start running again for good.(Even I can get my stopped watches to run again for a short while. A little movement is all that is necessary many times.) Thus, I must say that there is something magical about a person who has built a career out of breaking things.
Geller may have suffered defeat in the law courts but he says he is doing quite well in the world as a consultant for psychic detection. He even claims he is being paid vast sums of money to use his special gift as a psychic geologist in search of things precious buried in the earth. He has even been testd by the great Puthoff and Targ, who deemed his remarkable gift as the "Geller effect." [For a detailed account of how easy it is to demonstrate incompetence and to commit fraud in this area, read James Randi's account of the Uri Geller experiments designed and executed by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff of the Stanford Research Institute. See either chapter 7 of Flim-Flam! or The Magic of Uri Geller.] If you doubt his great powers or my account of them, you can read about them on the WWW by tuning in to the site he calls Uri Geller Interactive Psychic City. The interactive part of his site is where you and I get to try to bend a spoon Geller has placed somewhere with a video camera on it, transmitting to his home page. Now this is what interactive computing should be about. People helping people. If you bend the spoon, you get a million dollars. I warn you, though, that if you are successful in bending Uri's spoon, you may have a difficult time proving your claim. You may even have to go to court to collect, but don't expect too much sympathy from judge or jury. Geller has been there and he knows what courts can do to people who claim they have psychic powers capable of bending tea spoons. He may publicly cast doubt upon your psychic powers, causing you great humiliation. You may sue him. But, remember; he's been there, done that, and he knows who will win. And he doesn't even have to use up any psychic energy to make that prediction.
Geller has also recently ventured into the lucrative New Age self-help/personal growth industry. For sale is his Mind-Power Kit for about $30. The kit includes an audio tape, a crystal and a book with topics such as how to develop your ESP, dowsing, crystals, color therapy, and, of course, telekinesis.
Many magicians do what Geller does, but they call themselves magicians or mentalists. Good magicians are good tricksters and good tricksters can fool the wisest of men. They can amaze people with their ability to seemingly move objects with an act of will, suspend objects in space, view objects which are remote, read your mind, predict the future, identify the content of hidden messages or drawings, etc. What is amazing is that they don't amaze people by winning the lottery or finding a cure for cancer. Why don't they bypass airports and paranormally transport themselves to their next gig? Why do they take their cars to a mechanic when it breaks down? Why do they waste their time moving a wire in a glass bottle instead of moving a waterfall over a forest fire? The answer is obvious. Such useful feats would require more than distraction and legerdemain. Why do the parlor tricks convince even very intelligent people that they have witnessed a paranormal event rather than a bit of magic? Because most really intelligent people are too foolish to realize that they are not so intelligent as to be beyond being fooled. One really intelligent person who would not be fooled was Richard Feynman, who met Uri Geller. Feynman said "I'm smart enough to know that I'm dumb," by which he meant that he was intelligent enough to realize that a good magician could make it seem that the laws of nature had been violated in such a way that even a great physicist couldn't figure out the trick.
further reading
"Psychic Must Pay Skeptics Up To $120,000"
A VISIT WITH URI GELLER BY RICHARD FEYNMAN
Fortean Times: Uri Geller - A Sceptical Perspective
Randi, James. Flim-Flam! (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books,1982), ch. 7.
Randi, James. The Truth about Uri Geller , (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1982).
reader comments
15 Aug 1996
Here in GB we have a weekly Radio programme where a Psychiatrist, Dr
Anthony Clare, interviews a national celebrity. This week it was Uri
Geller. Amongst the facts I did not know about Uri were that he was
injured during the 6 day war, was sent to Catholic school despite the
Judaism of his family and he has suffered all his adult life from
bulimia. (Just like Di!). Also live on radio he used his mental powers
to bend the car keys of the producer of the programme who had been
rudely sceptical of his powers.
He is also a supporter of Reading United (a soccer club) and used his powers to such an extent that Reading had the worst record of any top flight English soccer club. He blamed the failure of his power during one televised three-nil defeat on "the weather". Perhaps Britain is not the best place for him.
I would add that I have much personal affection for Geller having met him three times and enjoy his skills much more than those of David Copperfield et al.
Tom Peach