14

AUGUST 17, 1971, was an important day in my life. Dr. Andrija Puharich arrived from the United States. He had written some time before to say that he learned of me through the colonel’s friend, Mr. Bentov. Bentov and Andrija Puharich were friends, I learned. They had decided to come to Israel to check me out and determine if the powers were genuine or not. I had known that Andrija was going to arrive that night, but I hadn’t known that they were going to come to the nightclub where I was performing.
I had learned that Andrija was an American physician who had spent a lot of time checking out psychic phenomena. He had lectured some time before at the medical school at Tel Aviv University on his specialty, diseases of the ear. The colonel was with him when he came into the club.
The moment I saw Andrija, I knew by instinct that I could work with him. He didn’t look like my picture of a scientist, but more like a hippie Einstein. He turned out to be very pleasant and easy to get along with. I felt confident that the forces would work under controlled conditions with him.
I sat down at their table. The first words I said to Andrija were: “I think we can work together. Don’t be put off or disappointed about my stage appearance.” I knew that my being a stage performer might not sit well with a scientist looking seriously into these matters. This, of course, has been a constant problem.
I told Andrija that I appeared on stage because I enjoyed it and needed to make a living. That night I started in my usual way: “With the cooperation of the audience, I am going to try to demonstrate simple telepathy and psychokinesis. I hope I will succeed.”
The demonstrations that night did succeed about 80 per cent of the time. I didn’t feel any hostility from Andrija or the colonel.
Months later, I asked Andrija: “Did you really believe it the first time?” He told me: “No, I thought you were doing tricks like any clever magician. Because any magician can do most of those things on the stage.”
In November 1971 Andrija found an apartment in HerzIiyyah Heights for himself and his several cases of scientific equipment – magnetometers, cameras, tape recorders, compasses, many kinds of minerals, and pieces of aluminum, tin, steel, and iron. He had electronic gadgets that I wasn’t familiar with and mirrors so that he and Mr. Bentov could observe from every angle. As we got ready to start the tests, I found that I liked him very much and felt at home with him. So did Hannah, and so did Shipi. He was a jolly man, very open, young-spirited, and extremely intelligent. Andrija wasn’t a conventional scientist: He told me he had been exploring parapsychological phenomena for a good many years. This apparently puts a scientist in the doghouse automatically, just because he’s willing to explore in this area.
His scientific background was impressive. He had a medical degree from Northwestern and a tremendous technical background in medical electronics with leading American institutions. He was very precise in every experiment he did with me, keeping the most meticulous records and watching out for every kind of trick I could play, even though I couldn’t do tricks if I wanted to.
He would be sticking his neck far out in reporting what was happening, and I could see a big conflict in store for him. Should he ignore or hide the incredible things, so that his credibility would not be damaged? Or should he report everything and risk a lot of ridicule? It is hard to function normally when science fiction is turning real in front of your eyes.
I’m sure this worry is one of the big reasons why he later pushed hard to set up scientific tests in America. Without such verification of what was happening, the chances for any of his observations to be believed were slight. What was about to follow was new to me. My impulse was just to go ahead, let things happen, make a decent living, and enjoy life while I was doing it. I reaised that the scientific tests were important but had no idea at that time how important they would turn out to be. I just had a feeling I was going to learn a lot. The biggest thing was going to come very, very soon.
When we began the tests, I didn’t feel nervous and tense, as I had expected. Both Andrija and Mr. Bentov were very sympathetic and didn’t try to push me hard. We first tried some telepathy. I concentrated on planting three-digit numbers in Andrija’s mind. This, as I have said, is the reverse of what magicians do. Then I moved his watch ahead without touching it. He was particularly impressed when the hands of a laboratory stopwatch advanced more than thirty minutes, which is impossible if the watch hasn’t run that length of time. Moving the hands had taken only a few seconds. He filmed the whole process for the record.
I succeeded in doing nearly everything Andrija asked me to do: telepathy, the watches, the bending of metals under laboratory bell jars, moving a compass needle by concentration, and many other things. He became more excited as the tests went on. Then he sat down and explained to me what this could mean to science. He said it is impossible to bend or move metals in ways that defy the laws of physics. He explained the importance of controlled conditions, which could prove to science that such events are real. He explained why he wanted me to repeat the same things so many times. The bigger a phenomenon was, the more proof it would need. If all the tests did check out, he said, there would have to be a complete revision of both philosophy and science. I began to understand more fully how important it was for me to work with science.
Andrija told me he planned to take the results of these preliminary tests back to America, and also to England, to see what support and interest he could find for deeper research. He had already written about the tests to a former Astronaut, Captain Edgar Mitchell, who must have thought at first that Andrija was smoking some new kind of pot.
However, Captain Mitchell later wrote a nice letter to me in care of Andrija. In it he said that he would very much like to work with me on experiments when I came to America, and he was sure that some top scientific laboratories there would be willing to make serious studies of the energy forces. I was impressed to hear directly from him – and flattered. When he had done some ESP experiments on his Apollo 14 mission to the moon, an Israeli newspaper had referred to him as “the Uri Geller of the Astronauts.”
The first series of tests with Andrija in August 1971 lasted more than a week. Andrija kept a careful log of everything. He left Israel to work on his plans for the future research and was gone for many weeks. He didn’t return until the middle of November 1971, this time with more equipment to set up a small laboratory in another apartment he had rented. He said he would need several hours each day for several weeks for the new tests, which I would fit in between my regular appearances in Israel during that time.
The second round of tests was more of the same. They worked well, over and over again. They were also getting very tiresome. I missed my usual contact with people. Andrija again kept very careful records and wrote about them in his book about me, Uri: A Journal of the Mystery of Uri Geller, published in America by Anchor Press/Doubleday. What he wrote in the book was more detailed than what I have in my own memory.
With the tests going so well, the researchers were interested in learning more about my background. I told them in detail. Andrija suggested that if he hypnotized me I might recall things that I could no longer remember consciously. I had known some hypnotists in the past and had let them try it with me, but it never worked. Andrija had experience in hypnosis and said he would be glad to try if I would let him.
At first I was afraid of the idea. But after I had thought it over something told me to go ahead with it. Maybe I could learn from it myself. We decided to do it the night of December 1, 1971. I had just finished a public appearance, and Iris was with me. With Andrija at his apartment were Bentov and two other Israelis, friends of Andrija’s, who were interested in the experiments. Andrija began the process of hypnosis.
When I woke up, they told me I had been under for more than an hour. They had taped what I had said. When they played it back I was startled to hear my voice speaking in a distant and mechanical way. Under hypnosis, I apparently had put myself back in Cyprus: On the tape I was with my dog Joker. My voice said, as Andrija reports in his book: “I come here for learning. I just sit here in the dark with Joker. I learn and learn, but I don’t know who is doing the teaching.”
Andrija’s voice came on the tape to say: “What are you learning?”
“It is about people who come from space. But I am not to talk about these things yet.”
“Is it secret?” Andrija’s voice said on the tape.
“Yes,” my voice answered. “But someday you too will know.”
I know that hypnosis can produce strange results, that among other things it can exaggerate fantasies. Still, people say what they fully believe to be the truth. I didn’t know what to make of what I heard, because my mind was still very fuzzy, and this was very confusing stuff. On the tape I was getting farther and farther back in my childhood. I heard myself speaking Hebrew, and Mr. Bentov’s voice took up the questions in that language. I was now apparently back to the age of three, to that incident in the Arabic garden when the brilliant light struck me and made me lose consciousness. A shudder went through me at this point.
Then, very suddenly, the tone of my voice on the tape changed to a weird, eerie sound. The moment I heard the change of voice I was seized with fear, even terror. I can’t remember clearly what happened after that. They told me I grabbed the tape recorder, stopped it, and ejected the tape. They told me the tape disappeared as if it had dematerialised. I apparently left the apartment quickly, and they later found me in an elevator. I have no idea why. Iris took me home. We never found the tape.
Later, the others in the room reconstructed what this voice, this flat, mechanical, almost computer-like voice coming through me in the trance, had said. It said that this was the power that had found me in the Arabic garden, and that I had been sent to help man. It said that I had been programed by these forces – whatever they were – to forget exactly what happened in that garden.
Then it went on to talk about the Israeli-Egyptian crisis. The next few weeks, it said, were going to be very critical. The voice said that these energies were revealing themselves because mankind might be on the verge of a new world war.
Iris confirmed to me that this strange scene had taken place, but there was no tape to prove it. Who knows what someone will say under hypnosis anyway, even though an entirely different kind of voice takes over? What can it prove? However, that was not going to be the only time that the electronic, computerized-sounding voice suddenly spoke on a tape, and it was not going to be the only time that things materialised or dematerialised in front of our eyes. Who in the world would believe it? It was not controlled experimentation. It wasn’t even like the telepathy or the metal-bending or the watches. Incredible as those things were – and they still remain incredible to me – they could be done time after time, carefully controlled, and within time and space limits that could be set up in advance. Even so, people have a hard time believing they could happen, especially if they only read about it.
Now a whole series of mind-blowing events started happening, one after the other, like a huge waterfall going far beyond anything in the past. For some reason, Andrija’s testing seemed to set them off. When the routine tests seemed to work better after that incident, I was gaining confidence. A compass needle would move 30 degrees when I just put my hand near it, without even concentrating on it. One time Andrija was putting a coded metal ring inside a wooden microscope box to see if I could bend it inside the box without touching it. For some reason, I said: “Look, I have a feeling I can make the thing disappear.” I had him take a film of himself putting the ring in, and then I concentrated. After a few seconds, feeling sure that the metal ring was no longer in the box, I told Bentov and Andrija to check it. They opened the box. It was gone.
I volunteered to let Andrija hypnotize me again, and he and Bentov recorded the session. I guess I was under about an hour. I had to rush to an appearance before the troops that night, so I didn’t listen to the tape. Andrija drove me, and for some reason I told him he should try to remember what I’d said under hypnosis, because I was convinced that the cassette had vanished from the tape recorder.
Andrija stopped the car and checked the recorder. The cassette was still in it. He pushed some buttons to check the tape, but the play button wouldn’t work. He opened the recorder to check inside again. The tape was gone from the cassette. I have no idea what prompted me to say I thought the tape would be gone. Can you imagine how you feel when something like this happens? You doubt your own senses completely. In fact you don’t want to talk about it except to someone who was there, who shared the experience with you. You know that people flatly will not believe you. But a point comes where you can’t go on worrying about not being believed. You have to have confidence in your own observations. However, I knew that the increased strangeness of these events made it all the more important to have the energies verified by science.
As I was getting ready to go out to the Sinai desert to give more demonstrations to Israeli troops, Andrija and Bentov tried to reconstruct what had come out on that second tape. I had said under hypnosis that I was “flying out of my body” to a wide, flat place with mountains in the background. Then my voice apparently changed to the flat, mechanical voice and warned about new conflicts between Israel and the Arab countries. The voice said I had to use the energies to help the world in this crisis. Andrija and Bentov told me that the voice on the tape seemed not to be coming from me; it seemed to come directly onto the tape.
Now this is, of course, absurd: a disembodied voice speaking on a Sony cassette tape recorder, making all kinds of ponderous statements. Later, when I myself heard this voice again on some tapes, it sounded fantastic, like a computer talking. I said to myself, what is going on? Then I remembered a thought I had had in other times: Maybe there’s a cosmic clown up there making a big, cosmic joke. Even though I was hearing this strange voice on the tapes, I didn’t know whether to believe or disbelieve.
But things were continuing to happen. An ashtray might disappear from a table in front of our eyes and suddenly reappear in a far corner of the room, rolling over and over. I did nothing to cause this kind of occurrence. I wouldn’t be concentrating to try to make it happen. It would just happen.
Looking back, I know I flatly did not believe it the first time I heard that voice on the tape. I thought Andrija and Bentov were tricking me. The second time, when the tape was not played, my suspicion was so strong I opened the tape recorder up with a screwdriver and looked inside for some kind of trick effects, for a second cassette or something like that. I couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary.
The third time I just shook my head. Now the voice was saying that the energies were coming from a spacecraft, which it even gave a name: “Spectra.” The voice said it was from a planet thousands of light years away and that it would help us work for world peace. This to me really was a joke. Why would it have such a common Hollywood-type name? Just what was going on? Sure, I knew I could bend metal, I knew I could read minds, I knew I could do telepathy, I knew I could fix watches and stop them. But never before did things fly around, never before did objects materialise and dematerialise. Previously, in fact, metal objects did not break as they were doing now. And previously, I had heard no disembodied voices speaking on tape.
I began to have strong urges I couldn’t explain at all. Out on the Sinai, the night after the tape disappeared, when I’d been entertaining the troops, I asked the commander to let Andrija and me go out on the desert in a jeep. I had never thought much about UFOs, but my interest in them was rising after hearing the tapes. For no reason at all, I felt we might be able to see something of this strange spacecraft. Andrija and I did see a red, disc-shaped light that we thought was following us; oddly, the soldiers with us didn’t see it. I was confident that it was a spacecraft and felt sure we could get a picture of one if we kept trying. But cameras were not allowed in that military area, so we would have to wait until another day to try.
The strange incidents with the tape recorder continued. We would put a clean cassette, just unwrapped from the cellophane, into the machine for an interview or for recording an experiment. Sometimes. before anyone had a chance to push the playback button, it would seem as if an invisible hand had pushed it, and we would hear the voice from the Spectra spacecraft. Sometimes we would push the button just to test the clean tape, and the same thing would happen. All I can say is that I witnessed this phenomenon, I could not explain it, and I was wishing it wouldn’t happen. Maybe my psychic power could work the button, but what about that voice? Where did it come from?
It was one thing to believe in bending objects, telepathy and the starting up of broken watches – but contact from outer space was another thing altogether. There’s a limit to what we can accept. Just for me to recount this here is enough to make anyone think that I’m lying or have flipped my lid. I certainly can understand that. But after all the things that have happened and continue to happen, I think it would be wrong not to report it.
Andrija wrote about these events in great detail in his book. As a scientist, he was sticking his neck out much more than I was, since I don’t have a scientific reputation to maintain. His book was a little too technical and complicated for me, but he did report what happened without exaggerating it, as many people think he must have.
Many incidents he reports sound like science fiction. But Iris and I experienced them right along with him; we know they happened. During this period the testers wanted to see if the apparent materialization and dematerialization could happen under controlled conditions. Andrija wrote down the identifying numbers of a ball-point pen and a brass refill cartridge inside it. He put the pen in a wooden box and closed the lid. I held my hand above the box for several minutes. I did not touch it.
Finally, when I felt that something had happened, I told Bentov and Andrija to open the box to see if the pen had dematerialised. The pen was still there. They picked it up to examine it and discovered that the brass cartridge had disappeared from inside the pen. There was no rational explanation, of course. It was somehow stranger that only the cartridge had disappeared rather than the whole pen.
A few days earlier, I had picked up the phone to hear the computer-like voice from the tapes instruct me to take a camera to a specific location in Tel Aviv. There, it said, I would be able to photograph this alleged spacecraft Spectra. I rushed with Shipi to the spot, which was on Petah Tikvah Road, and there, after we had waited awhile, an oval object appeared in the sky over the Israeli Army headquarters. There, in the presence of several witnesses, I took a picture that shows an object resembling what Shipi and I saw.
Right on the heels of the disappearance of the ball-point pen cartridge, another mysterious thing happened. By then I was getting what seemed to be impulses or signals one after the other. I suppose you could call them hunches, but they were more than that. Often my watch would jump ahead to a certain time, and I’d have an urge to go to a certain place at the time indicated. This happened on December 7, 1971. I told Andrija that I felt we had to drive to a suburb east of Tel Aviv, where there might be another encounter with the spacecraft, or whatever it was. Andrija, Iris, and I drove that night to an ordinary suburban area with lots of houses; it was not countryside by any means. Near an open area that looked like some kind of excavation, we saw a bluish-white pulsating light, something like a strobe light. Some kind of inner presence was urging me to approach it. The three of us got out of the car, and we all heard an electronic sound, almost like the sound of crickets. I was immediately drawn to the light. I think I told the others to stay back. There seemed to be some massive object under the light, which was still pulsating.
As I got nearer, I felt myself go into a trance-like state. Everything was vague, hazy. I felt I was inside something. It was hard to tell why, but the atmosphere felt different. I think I saw some panels, but I was too dazed to remember. Then a shape that was dark and impossible to distinguish put something into my hands. Suddenly I found myself outside again. I got scared. I started running back to Andrija and Iris. It wasn’t until I reached them that I was aware of what was in my hands. It was the ball-point refill cartridge that had disappeared from the wooden box.
Andrija checked the serial number. It was the one he had written down on the day of the experiment: #347299. He had not let me see the number before, as part of the control for the test.
I was in a state of shock for several days after that. It was another impossible thing on top of several earlier ones that I still couldn’t take in, and yet it had happened. And it made me reaise for the first time that, whatever the energy powers were, they were not from me. They came from some kind of intelligence that to me reconfirmed the reality of God.
It is very difficult for me to unravel my basic feelings about the UFO incidents, the metallic voices on tape, the materializations and dematerializations. It is hard for me to believe that the energies behind the powers are really beings, or that they are really extraterrestrial. I think they are intelligent energies. I don’t want to put a form to them. I’ve never gone to synagogues or to church. But since I believe in God and in higher civilizations outside this planetary system and this galaxy, I can accept what has been happening.
I am convinced that there is no such thing as science fiction, that what is imagined in the mind a science fiction writer will eventually take place, or it would never have appeared in his mind. Maybe it was real in the past. More likely, it will be real in the future. I believe there is no such thing as time. I don’t think we can ever really reach the core of full understanding, because we are human beings, and our minds are limited. My mind is not big enough to reach higher levels, but I do believe that anything is possible. It is very complex and difficult for me to explain. Maybe God is the fuel of our souls, the fuel for our going on to higher levels, and this is what keeps us going.
While all these unbelievable events were going on – there were so many it would be repetitive to describe them all – I was of course seeing Iris, but the memory of Yaffa was still with me. I saw Yaffa only at rare times, but my deepest love was still for her. The sad day finally came when she said that she could not go on, it was too much of a strain on her marriage, and it would be better if we stopped seeing each other. It really broke my heart to know I would never see her again. I hardly wanted to go on living. For weeks I saw her in my mind before going to sleep. I saw her in my dreams, and I saw her when I woke up in the morning. I could think of nothing else but that she was gone, that I had to take it and rebuild myself through a full love with Iris. I did love Iris, but my love for Yaffa was special. No two loves are the same.
After the long series of tests and experiences with Andrija, we decided that I should go to America to be tested in some of the big institutions and universities there. I was still afraid that I wouldn’t be able to repeat the things I could do in Israel. The idea of a big laboratory still scared me. I thought it might be better to go somewhere in Europe first to see if I could perform outside of Israel, and maybe to meet some scientists in Europe before I went to America.
A friend of mine, the Israeli singer Zmira Henn, called me to say that a friend of hers in Germany, who had heard all about me, would like to manage my appearances in that country. She told me that her friend, whose name was Yasha Katz, would give me a very good contract and that I would like him and could trust him.
I finally decided to go to Germany in the spring of 1972, and to America later. Meanwhile, Andrija returned to the United States to join with Edgar Mitchell and other scientists in lining up the formal research that he hoped would scientifically confirm what had been going on. He was forming what he called a Theory Group, which was to be headed by Ted Bastin of Cambridge. Andrija was positive that nothing I was doing would be taken seriously until I had gone through a long series of rigorous tests by established scientists in the best possible institutions.
Shipi went with me to Germany. We had grown more like brothers all the time. His parents agreed that it would be a good learning experience while he was waiting for induction into the Israeli Army. He could help out with the tour that Yasha Katz was lining up. I wanted badly to take Iris, too, but it was not possible. She cried in my arms the night before we left, but we knew we would see each other again after I got more experience in the world outside of Israel. Shipi and I took an El Al plane to Germany, and everybody came to see us off – my parents, Shipi’s parents, Hannah, Iris. We said a sad goodbye just before we boarded the plane and took off.
Yasha met us at the airport. He was a warm and friendly man, with a crinkly face, sensitive eyes, and a lot of enthusiasm about our prospects in Germany. I liked him right away. He was planning to demonstrate to reporters how these energy forces worked. After it became clear that the powers were a real and valid phenomenon, he would arrange for lecture-demonstrations of the kind we had been doing in Israel. The controversy over whether or not I might be a magician started right away in the German press. But we got a lot of coverage, especially when the Munich newspaper Bild-Zeitung decided to do a six-part series on me. It was a pure publicity buildup, but Yasha said that it was important in laying the groundwork for the lecture appearances.
Yasha urged me to try new experiments to get the attention of the press. I told him I’d be glad to try but could never be positive that things would work 100 per cent of the time. I informed Yasha that I often failed altogether.
One reporter on the series asked me: “Uri, what can you do that will be very big, astounding, and that sort of thing? For instance, could you do something like stop a cable car in midair?” There was a large funicular line not far from Munich that was advertised as one of the strongest in the world. He had that one in mind. I laughed when he suggested it. Then I said to myself: “Now, wait a minute. Maybe I can do it. If I can bend metal, maybe something in the mechanism would bend enough to stop the cable cars harmlessly.”
I was aware that such a thing would be good publicity and a real challenge. Before we decided to try it, we checked with a lawyer, because even if it wasn’t dangerous there might be a lot of complaints. The lawyer found no objection. Yasha, Shipi, and I got into one of the cars, along with the reporters.
It was a crazy idea. As we went up and down several times, I kept concentrating on the cars to stop them. It didn’t work. I gave up and announced that we might as well quit. The reporters were really disappointed. On the way down I was talking to a reporter about the scenery, when suddenly the cable car stopped right in midair. There was terrific confusion; the control people didn’t know what had happened. A mechanic with us in our car gave me a funny look and jumped to the telephone to call the control center. They knew I was trying to stop the cars, but they were completely bewildered about what made them stop and how. Finally the control center announced that the main switch had flipped off for no explainable reason. Someone flipped it on, and the thing started up again. Nothing else seemed to be out of the ordinary. The cars had just stopped when the switch flipped.
By the time we got down to the base a lot of excited people were milling around. The operators invited us to dinner afterward, and people couldn’t stop talking about it.
The reporters were hungry for more. They asked me if I would try to stop an escalator in a big department store in Munich. I couldn’t resist this challenge either, ridiculous as the idea seemed. I wanted to see if the cable car was just a fluke. The story of the cable car was making headlines all over Germany, especially Munich, and Yasha was confident that an encore would help the appearances to follow.
We went to a huge department store in Munich and went up and down so many times between the first and second floors that people must have thought we were crazy. Still surprised about the cable car, I didn’t have any idea whether this stunt was going to work. After something like twenty round trips the escalator suddenly stopped, to my surprise as much as everybody else’s. And again the headlines trumpeted the story across Germany. There was a serious side to the trip to Germany, too. Quite naturally, the German press wanted to know if there was a scientific basis for these events. It was arranged for me to meet in an informal session with Dr. Freidbert Karger of the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics.
In the presence of the reporter who was following me for four days and a Bild staff photographer, Dr. Karger volunteered a ring of his, which he held in his hand the entire time. He was so cautious that he never took his eyes off the ring and never let me handle it. I touched it gently and concentrated on it. The ring not only bent out of shape but cracked in two places.
The interview that appeared in the paper tells a little more about what happened:
Bild: “What happened in the cable car – which was allegedly braked by Geller’s unknown power and brought to a standstill?”
Dr. Karger: “Obviously it was not an electrical effect, but a mechanical change, which for the time being is inexplicable. In Uri’s presence, without being touched by anyone – the switch dropped. How? We don’t know.”
Bild: “Does science seriously regard as credible these and other similar incidents?”
Dr. Karger: “In universities all over the world, you will find an ever growing number of departments of research in this type of Phenomena.”
In Munich Uri Geller had altered a decorative ring that belonged to Dr. Karger. The ring was not only bent, but it was also cracked in two places. Immediately after the demonstration, Bild asked Dr. Karger, “Couldn’t the ring be split just by applying a strong pressure?”
Dr. Karger: “No.”
Bild: “A laser beam?”
Dr. Karger: “Nonsense.”
Bild: “Did Geller have any chance at all to play a ‘trick’ on you?”
Dr. Karger: “Actually he could only have tried to hypnotize me. This I consider not very likely. A disassociation through hypnosis would have been the ‘trick’ possibility.”
In the Max Planck Institute, Dr. Karger’s colleague, the physics engineer Manfred Lipa, 27, closely examined the cracked ring.
Lipa: “If Dr. Karger had not told me anything, I would state: The ring has been mechanically altered by a tool, with a pair of pliers, for example, or with a small chisel or a hammer. Then near the crack site, one can ascertain clear signs of reworking.”
But Dr. Karger assured us, “During the demonstration I never took my eyes off the ring or let it out of my hand. Geller only touched it lightly with his fingers.” Also the Bild photographer, Joachim Voigt, who was present during the demonstration confirmed: “If Uri had been able to conjure up a pair of pliers, or any other tool, I would have noticed it – I was fully aware.” Uri Geller – a phenomenon? A charlatan? Or a great artist, who with elegant tricks keeps everybody including science holding its breath? Heretofore it has not been possible to unlock the secret of this uncanny man.
Dr. Karger summed up the incident for reporters:
“The powers of this man are a phenomenon that in theoretical physics cannot be explained. Science already knows of similar cases. It is like atomic science. At the turn of the century, it was already known as a reality. It was just that at that time one could not yet explain it in terms of physics.”
Dr. Karger wanted to start a research program of his own as soon as possible. He put in an overseas call to Andrija in New York. Because the plans with Captain Mitchell and other American scientists were moving along at the time, Dr. Karger agreed instead to join Andrija’s Theory Group and postpone his own investigations until later.
I could see how hard it would be to control all that was happening for a concentrated research program. I faced the scientific studies in America with mixed feelings. The material I was using in my lecture demonstrations was pretty much under control and could probably serve well for a start in the experiments. But how would it be possible to tame the amazing and startling uncontrolled events that lately had seemed to be taking me over? Only time could tell. I would just have to go along and play it by ear.