The Secret Life of Uri Geller (28 page)

Remarkably for a man who was a visiting professor at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and the author of a string of papers and books on highly pragmatic matters, such as the problems of noise and vibration in electric machines, Professor Ellison (DSc Eng., CEng, FIMechE, FIEE, Sen Mem IEEE, to give him his full canonicals) went beyond even quantum theory to explain Uri Geller. ‘I don’t actually think it is Geller who bends the metal,’ he said. ‘You will no doubt be what I call a naïve realist. You think there is no doubt that all these objects are around us, and you have in your mind a model of the physical world, which usually works all right, and so do I much of the time. But I actually think there are not real objects around us, and that is the result of my own experience of the paranormal.

‘I have been to every kind of séance you can imagine, I have had every kind of experience that there is within the paranormal. My boggle threshold is at infinity I think. I have seen an apport [the production of objects by apparently supernatural means at a spiritualist’s séance] arrive in the middle of a séance in a good light, an object that wasn’t there before, a rose, a living rose, slowly materializing. I have seen objects floating in the air in a good light. I was once in a séance when the control personality, through the medium in trance, while the light was still on, said, “Hold my hand.” So I linked fingers and there was a luminous trumpet kind of painted on the carpet in the middle of a big circle of spiritualists. And I held my hands out, and this trumpet floated up in the air, went round and round our linked hands half a dozen times, before it floated back down to the carpet again. I have seen and made notes on some 30 full-scale materializations, so you’ll understand that I didn’t turn a hair at seeing a key bent.’

Ellison gave some weight to Uri’s insistence that since the age of four or five he has had no real idea of how he does what he does. The professor believed psychicism occurs at an unconscious level, where people have no control over it, and also cannot be switched on like a tap. He also considered it sometimes occurs in people who do not expect it, when they experience what some psychiatrists term a ‘temporary suspension of disbelief’.

One of many intriguing things about Ellison when he discussed Uri was that he was far from an acolyte, yet still supported him. Ellison had wanted to study Geller back in 1973, but was beaten to it by Hasted and Taylor. ‘Geller did invite me out to his house, once, when, I think, he really wanted this legal document to help him, an affidavit about the Arthur C. Clarke business. He promised to invite the family to see a bit of metal bending, but he never did. He is most unreliable. I slightly suspect he sometimes tells stories that aren’t quite accurate, and occasionally makes promises that he can’t keep. I also can’t swear that he doesn’t at some times use stage magicianship. If anyone is paid as much as he is and it doesn’t work one evening, I imagine it’s a terrible temptation to fake it a bit, if not for the self-respect, then at least for your money – and to give them what they paid for. That showmanship thing has done quite a lot to damage the subject. But the great thing with Uri is that he can get members of the audience, with no extra grind, to bend their own keys. Now that’s fantastic, and I applaud Uri for it, because it’s not Uri doing it; they are doing it themselves. It’s that temporary suspension of disbelief.’

Another still supportive scientist with a view on Uri that is nonetheless not wholly approving is Zvi Bentwich, an internationally eminent immunologist, director of Israel’s Center for Emerging Tropical Diseases and AIDS and a member of the Department of Virology and Developmental Genetics at Ben Gurion University. Professor Bentwich did an informal experiment with Uri in 1987, which is on record as the last known time Uri submitted to any kind of work in a laboratory. However, it did not go well.

Bentwich had been introduced to Uri as early as 1969 by his secretary, who happened to be Geller’s old pilot friend Gideon Peleg’s wife, Leah. ‘What I saw Uri Geller do in the laboratory,’ he attests, ‘was a truly mind-blowing experience which cannot be overlooked, and should be made common knowledge once we have established it. I have no doubt that he manifests an extreme case of some unusual power, capacity or energy, which I believe is genuine and not magician- or performer-based – and which probably represents what all human beings have in much lower intensity.

‘To start with, when we were younger,’ Bentwich told me, ‘I was impressed with the regular things he can do, the telepathy he showed me, the bending of spoons and the seed sprouting. What was most impressive in my mind was that the spoon continued to bend when it was clearly out of his touch. The seed sprouting, I found intriguing, rather than disturbing. I approached him at that time and asked him to give himself to further testing within our medical school, and I was amused by his almost paranoid reaction. He was extremely anxious at my suggestion. I felt there was something problematic in his coping with his powers not being under his control, in his attraction to show business, which I thought did him a big disservice.

‘However, to my delight, in 1987, Uri agreed to come and be tested in my then laboratory, and at the Weizmann Institute, which is nearby.’ [The postgraduate-only Weizmann Institute of Science is one of the world’s top universities, rated by
The Scientist
magazine as the best place in the world to work in academia outside US institutions.]

‘My colleagues and I designed three experiments to test if he has any special effects when he concentrates and puts his hands over a culture of cancer cells,’ says Bentwich. ‘The bottom line of these experiments was they were all negative, so there was another guy, an endocrinologist, who came in and said, “I have some ox sperm cells. Maybe this would affect the sperm.”’

The sperm, Bentwich explains, were in frozen vials. ‘They were put into a plate and were swimming around energetically, and then we had two similar culture plates that contained sperm in more or less the same amount as a control. Uri put his hand over one and, without touching it, concentrated. It was hot, in summer, so he wasn’t wearing long sleeves or anything, and we checked out his hands for anything hidden. And, lo and behold, most of the sperm cells became either very slow in movement or died. We repeated this three times. It was very impressive, so we did it again and again. However, when he asked what it was we were doing and told him, he was extremely upset. He really thought he had a destructive power. This was a dramatic result, but he wasn’t happy with it, and at that point, he said he didn’t want to do anything more.

‘After seeing such results, I told him: “Look we should continue testing. It is so interesting and amazing.” But he didn’t like the idea at all. At a later stage, I suggested that if he was concerned about negative forces, maybe we could try out some healing effects. He said that he liked that much more, but I didn’t insist beyond a certain point, and we did nothing more, which I think is very regretful.

‘I think Uri is a very fine person, Bentwich concluded. ‘I like him personally, but in a way, I always considered him as an immature personality with an exceptional power that somehow he doesn’t know how to cope with. He is attracted too much to showbiz and to performance, and not to more important things. Years have now gone by, and nobody has been studying him on any similar things, which is ridiculous. There was too little to go on, but what we had already seen was probably the most significant piece of evidence ever in terms of biological effect of what he is capable of, yet he refrained and said forget about me, try it with somebody else. He is far from being systematic. He is chaotic, so he didn’t make the connection with AIDS and cancer, or even think about it. It was like missing the main point while looking round for nonsense.’

Uri in his last-ever laboratory test, in 1987, with Professor Zvi Bentwich in Israel.

A
key Uri Geller characteristic, first seen back in Israel when he was a young man, has continued unabated into his 60s and the very different world of the early 21st century. This is his ability – surely unique – to mix his spooky paranormal life with his crazy show business life with his mysterious espionage life – and then to mix all three with the serious, but non-clandestine, world of politics and international relations.

In 2005, Uri played a key role – one publicly acknowledged by the other participants – in cementing in Geneva a working agreement between the Israeli and Palestinian versions of the International Red Cross, the
Magen David Adom
(Red Star of David) and the Palestine Red Crescent Society (founded in 1968 by Yasser Arafat’s brother, Fathi) respectively. Under the agreement, the Israeli and the Palestinian organizations officially recognized each other and would allow free passage of medics and ambulances through each other’s areas. The Israeli ambulances would henceforth display a newly created, politically and culturally neutral symbol known as the Red Crystal, with a small Star of David inside it. The Arab countries had previously objected to the Red Star of David’s name and symbol because they argued the Jewish star was, since the foundation of Israel, a political emblem. The Red Crystal was also, as Uri told all concerned, of great resonance to him because he believes quartz crystals have special qualities. He always carries a couple in his pocket and has two giant crystals at the entrance to his house. Additionally, with the new arrangement in place, the
Magen David Adom
was accepted into the International Red Cross as a full member after 58 years of exclusion, rather than as observers, as had previously been the case. The Palestine Red Crescent likewise became fully affiliated to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

‘Dr Noam Yifrach, head of Magen David Adom had for years been trying to get Israel into the International Red Cross,’ Uri recalls of the extraordinary period leading up to the deal in November 2005. ‘Yifrach had one day watched a
Reputations
documentary about me on BBC television. And when he saw that during the 1987 arms talks between the USA and the Soviet Union in Geneva, I had been brought in by the Americans to try to bombard the mind of Yuli Vorontsov, the head of the Soviet negotiating team, he said, “Wow! If Uri could do that, maybe we could use his talent to get us into the Red Cross.”

‘So Yifrach called me up and said he wanted to talk to me. I assumed he was looking for a donation, but he said, “No we don’t want any money from you. We want something quite different and quite difficult to achieve.” So I was intrigued and invited him to my house in Berkshire. He came with his deputy and said, “Look, Uri, we are negotiating with the Palestinians to get us and them accepted for the first time into the International Red Cross, but we are at a point where I think we need your help.” So I said, “Yes, I’m sure I can help.” I liked the idea of helping. I have lots of Muslim friends and I respect all religions, so this appealed a lot. But I said that first of all, he would have to make me legally something in his organization. So they activated their lawyers and officially made me the President of the Friends of
Magen David Adom
. With that done, we flew to the State Department in Washington, we went to Korea, and gradually I started to be introduced to the Palestinians in Ramallah, especially to the head of the Palestine Red Crescent, Younis Al-Khatib.

‘So, soon the next round in the negotiations was beginning, all orchestrated by Jakob Kellenberger, who was head of the International Committee of the Red Cross and his team, and the head of the American Red Cross, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter. It was proving very difficult, however, to speak with the Palestinians. They were continually raising questions that were difficult for our team to answer, especially about Israeli checkpoints and about injured and pregnant people being stopped at the checkpoints when they are going to hospital and so on. But anyway, I said, “Yes, we will stop that. We will remove the checkpoints if we come to an agreement.” But then they also wanted Red Crescent ambulances to operate in Jerusalem, and that gets even more political. To have an ambulance with a Red Crescent logo in Jerusalem would be tricky. Then they said, “Well your doctors are also carrying weapons in the ambulances.” So there were a lot of negotiating problems to get through and a lot of ups and downs, and it was all pretty much stalled.

‘But then after all the flying round the world we had done, at one meeting in the dining room of the Swiss Foreign Ministry in Bern with the Palestinian officials and dignitaries, I could see that things really weren’t going anywhere and I said quietly to Shipi, “Hey, tell the
maître d
’ to bring me a spoon.” Micheline Calmy-Rey, the Swiss Foreign Minister, who was later President of Switzerland, was there and was smiling. I figured that the Palestinians don’t know who I am or what I do, so maybe this was something worth trying to change the atmosphere for the better. And the headwaiter comes in with a spoon on a silver tray. I pick up the spoon and I bend it. And I hand it to Younis Al-Khatib and he freaks out because it continues bending in his hand. And they go into a huddle, I can hear they’re talking about the supernatural and powers and someone is saying, “You see, that’s why we have to talk”, and suddenly, it all took off. They were all laughing and smiling, and it was like the whole Berlin Wall was dismantled at once. The negotiations were working.