The Secret Life of Uri Geller (31 page)

Weissmann has spent decades fathoming the mysteries within mysteries of quantum, but, after explaining that, while he thinks Geller’s abilities are indubitably real and have clearly been tested to the most rigorous of standards, he argues that they are not wholly – or even partly – explicable by quantum entanglement because of the strange role of will and intention manifest in ‘the Geller effect’.

‘I want to put the Uri Geller phenomenon in a larger context,’ Dr Weissmann told the author in 2013. ‘He is a true master of
psi
, but
psi
is a basic human faculty which we all have to some extent; however, our culture and its belief system has suppressed these faculties in most of us to the point where we are no longer in touch with them and sometimes don’t even believe in their existence.’

‘That being said, Uri is still a giant in this field. It is like saying that everyone who has some lessons can play the piano to some extent, which is true; but very few will become pianists, and very, very few will be a Rubinstein or Horowitz. Uri is the champion. But it is more truthful and more appropriate to present him as a master of something that we are all potentially capable of, and can learn to some degree. In other words, Uri is a master rather than a freak. There may be special reasons why Uri is so much more talented than most; he has talked about his contact with ETs and maybe attributed his special gifts to this contact, but the fact remains that he is an outlier genius rather than a unique phenomenon.’

The last word, as many would think apt, comes from a leading sceptic, the Liverpool University psychologist Graham Wagstaff, renowned in recent years for arguing that hypnosis does not exist. The author has long been intrigued by this story Wagstaff told him many years ago, because of the way it explains, for him, how some people are interested in ‘mysteries’, while others just are not.

Wagstaff believes that we all have stories the likes of which Geller and those interested in the paranormal are fascinated by, but that a
proper
sceptic retains his scepticism at pretty much all costs.

‘We all have these experiences,’ Wagstaff said. ‘One of my favourites was when the wing mirror on my car got mended by itself. It was in about 1975, when I lived in Newcastle, and, no, I wasn’t on drugs. I had a Ford Anglia, and the mirror was dangling off. Then one morning, I came along and it wasn’t dangling off. It was mended.

‘That’s how I remember it. I’d looked at it, and I couldn’t see how anyone could fix it. Yet I’m not suggesting that anything weird and wonderful happened – just that, I suppose, I must have seen it wrong, or I’d made some sort of mistake, or my memory was playing tricks on me or something like that. I went through everything. None of the neighbours knew what had happened. I was quite worried about it. It’s quite
possible
that some good Samaritan mended it, but I would have thought it was beyond repair. It was hanging down.’

‘But,’ he concluded, ‘I’m a real sceptic, so there must be some explanation.’

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