CHAPTER FIVE When Time Stood Still

Now that Uri and I had come to accept the reality of this mysterious being as well as its power, we were naturally intensely curious as to whom we were dealing with. We felt very much like people in prison who hear tapping on the other side of the wall and who must try to guess who the tappers are and the meaning of their message.
Every session that we had had to date was a one-way affair, in which we were subject to seeing or hearing a brief message and then it was cut! We tried to figure out some way of opening up a dialogue that was meaningful to us within our human framework. We came to the conclusion that we must try once again the proven technique of trance induction, and try to make the contact, and then ask our questions. Uri had the evening of December 9 free, and we attempted to make our contact then.
At 10:59 P.M. Uri was in hypnotic trance.
AP: “Please ask if I can use the tape recorder.”
Uri: “I am alone here. There is no one to ask the question of.” Then I heard a voice, not from Uri, for he was asleep. The voice had no source.
Andrija, I have told Uri to come to me now.
AP: “May I use the tape recorder?”
If you do not want to lose the fourth cassette, you will not record. (The tape recorder was placed aside.) Take this, Uri; hand it over to Andrija. (I opened Uri’s clenched left hand. There was my missing earphone from my Sony ICR-100 radio in its leather case. It had been translocated from wherever I had lost it weeks ago – most probably New York City.)
The voice in the room went on: You have done everything. Do as Uri says. How are you feeling? How is your energy?
AP: “My energy is tops. I feel as though I am in my twenties again. May I ask some questions purely for my own needs?”
Yes, proceed.
AP: “Are you of the Nine Principles that once spoke through Dr. Vinod?”
Yes.
AP: “Are you behind the UFO sightings that started in the United States when Kenneth Arnold saw nine flying saucers on June 24, 1947?”
Yes.
AP: “When did you first notice me?”
In 1946.
AP: “Why was I noticed?”
Our computers studied everyone on earth. You were noticed for your abilities as the ideal and perfect man for this mission.
AP: “What is this mission?”
Do not ask. It will be revealed.
Uri, be prepared. Be wise. Be calm. Calm down. There is a very, very heavy task on your shoulders for the next coming fifty years. There is a lot to be done to help the universe. The cosmic brain will be sent to you. Andrija, I am sending Uri back to you now. Do whatever he wants. Take care of him.
AP: “May I ask one more question?”
Yes.
AP: “Do you have a name?”
Yes, but it is not to be revealed to you yet.(This answer made me realize that “Spectra” was not the name of the being with whom I was speaking.)
AP: “How can we communicate with you?”
You cannot. We will reach you. We can command any communication system man has devised to reach you. Be alert. We will use your tape, phone, radio, television, telegram, letters, computors, and so on. Farewell.
The communication ended at 11:09 P.M.
When Uri awoke, I repeated to him from my notes what was said. He did not seem interested. He said, “Andrija, I do not like to think all these heavy things. I am here to do things for people. You are here to think and speak. I would rather not hear about these things. I have to remain simple like a child. I really get depressed if I have to think hard about anything, for any length of time.”
“I understand,” I replied. “Uri, it is a heavy burden we have taken on. But we must do it joyfully, like servants who sing at their work. We must not take ourselves too seriously.”
“You’re right, Andrija,” Uri replied. “God can do anything he wishes. We have seen enough already to know this. Then why does he need us? You know, in the battle for the Golan Heights, we had fighter aircraft, helicopters, tanks, and all kinds of complex machines. But do you know the only creature or thing that could go up the steep mountains was the donkey? You and I are donkeys. If we keep that in mind, we will carry our burden lightly.”
The idea of Uri and I being donkeys seemed to describe our role perfectly. Uri went home just after midnight.
Before going to bed I checked my tape recorder, because I wanted to rewind it to the beginning. I tried but found that it would not rewind. I tried to eject the cassette, but the ejector mechanism would not work. Since I could neither rewind nor eject, I got curious and decided to see if anything had been done to the tape. So I pressed the forward key and it worked. To my utter surprise I found that the entire session with Uri had been recorded. This was amazing in that I had set aside the recorder. Furthermore, after the audible communication had ended at 11:09 P.M., there was a further message which said, Andrija, on the twentieth hypnotize Uri. We will place any messages to you on this machine. Present war is the important thing. Pray. Peace.
The last message was in a voice totally new to me. It was in English but had the mechanical quality of synthesized speech. There was no signature. This was to be the first of many messages that appeared to me or to Uri in this totally impersonal medium. When I had finished playing and transcribing this tape, a hall light that had been inoperative for four days suddenly switched on and off by some invisible hand. Somehow I knew that this meant “Wipe out the tape, or it will vanish.” Reluctantly I wiped the tape clean of the recorded material.
The events of this day, December 9, 1971, finally brought my lifetime quest into sharp focus. What had made it all fall into place was that last message that had appeared on the tape independently of Uri’s presence. There was no use trying to go to sleep that night. I sat down to write out my thoughts about the greater mysteries.
I had always been puzzled by man’s use of the word “God.” When the Bible says that “God spoke to” or “He spoke to God,” I had always assumed it was a figure of speech. It never occurred to me that humans could speak to God, and even now I could not accept the idea. But if humans were reached by beings from space who were so superior that man in his ignorance identified them with gods (the Elohim of the Bible), or God, then the literary allusions became clear. If I had had my experiences with Uri in the time of Moses, I would have leaped to the conclusion that I was dealing with God.
In addition to the confused record with respect to God and gods, I now felt that the role of prophets and sages in human affairs became more understandable. In biblical times an Uri Geller would eventually be honored as a prophet in local religious lore. Today he was a show freak and a guinea pig for science.
The elements of this prophetic strain in human affairs now seemed to be quite simple. First there must exist a local cosmic being of superior intelligence who has been assigned by an even more superior being to a task on earth. Somehow the cosmic being has control of intelligent energy (or “inergy,” for brevity) by means of which it can create any form of matter-energy it desires. Thus the local cosmic being can assume any form it wishes to suit its purpose. For example, if it wishes to appear to some earth person, it chooses a form suitable to the local taste. In ancient Egypt the sun god, Ra, for example, was said to appear in the form of a hawk called Hor, or as corrupted by the Greeks, Horus.
Another aspect of inergy as used by the cosmic brain is to imitate any local language that is appropriate for getting a message across. Still another is the power to de-create thoughts or matter forms, as I have already reported. This aspect of inergy would account for all the sudden appearances and vanishings of mythological lore, as well as modern UFO reports. It could also take the form of matter-energy being transported, stored invisibly, or recalled to and from different places on earth (or in the universe).
I had the very strong feeling that the cosmic being does not normally exist in our space-time framework, except when it is necessary for it to interact with humans. Through these principles I have just cited, I believe that a prophet, an Uri Geller, if you wish, is specifically created to serve as an intermediary between a “divine” intelligence and man. The same idea would hold for living beings existing anywhere on any planet in the universe. I now fully believe that life exists anywhere and everywhere in the universe as divine intelligence dictates. I was prepared to believe that life exists in forms and states beyond the imagination of man to conceive.
Now I was totally convinced that Uri and I had been contacted by such a local cosmic being; by this I mean some representative or extension of the Nine Principles. In this sense I believe that a cosmic being is superior to any life that exists on any planet in a material form. But for this I did not have any proof. I am well aware that any clever race of beings from another planet who were reconnoitering earth could easily fool me to think that I was dealing with Elohim, gods, or even God. I could only know the answer to this possibility if open communication were to be established someday. Whatever the final verdict would be, I was now convinced that a contact had been made with a superior form of intelligence. But being realistic as to the atavistic nature of man, I knew that to disclose what I now knew would be to ask for martyrdom. Besides, it had been requested that Uri and I keep their secret.
One of the mysteries of the cosmic being was its use of the biconvex disk shape (the flying saucer) to manifest on earth to man and his instruments. I have no idea why this shape is used. This is a matter for future scientific study.
I further believed now that if small and insignificant people like Uri and me were contacted and used as ambassadors to other people, there must be a large number of men and women on earth serving as we were. I was determined to find others like Uri and me in the future.
Uri and I both felt the personal solicitude of the cosmic being’s interest in our welfare, feelings, health, thoughts, and actions. Also, why was there such concern about mankind’s future as the result of a potential war conflagration between Egypt and Israel, which might escalate into world war? I wondered where else in human history there had been this kind of covert intervention in the interests of man’s long-term welfare.
I also chose to believe now that the cosmic being was essentially omniscient and omnipotent. If this were so, I wondered why it had to work through Uri and me. Was this because, as stated by the Nine, they never interfere with an individual’s will? Were we therefore being “persuaded” to exert our own human will to help mankind within a purely human framework of action? Then there was the more basic question as to how many degrees of freedom we really could exercise in what we were now doing. I wanted to find out eventually when and why the cosmic being chose to intervene in earth affairs.
And how many cosmic beings existed with respect to earth? Was there just one, with multiple manifestations, or were there many?
As far as humankind was concerned, much of the mystery of the inergy of the cosmic being could be resolved by knowing the laws of “creation” and “de-creation” of living forms, matter forms, and energy forms. Such laws are not known to contemporary science. In fact, man cannot even begin to guess at the nature of inergy and its many manifestations. But the solution of this mystery could form the agenda of science for generations to come if it would take this problem seriously.
My thoughts on this long night were more in the nature of wonderment and questions than convictions. They were more in the nature of an agenda for my future work as it existed in reference to Uri, the cosmic being, and myself. My night of thought ended as the sun broke over the Judean Hills in the direction of Jerusalem.
The next few days passed without any notable events. On December 12 I decided to give up my apartment in the Herzliyyah Heights. I wanted to be right on the seashore, where I could enjoy a greater sweep of sky and sea. It was with great sadness that I closed the door on apartment 61, where the most momentous experiences of my life had occurred. I moved to the Sharon Hotel Towers right on the beach in Herzliyyah-by-the-Sea. I had a room that was high above the sea on the eleventh floor.
Since this was the Hannukah festival season in Israel, Uri had many shows scheduled, sometimes as many as four in one day. We spent a great deal of time on the road, going to Haifa and to small towns in Galilee, as well as Safad, Jerusalem, etc.
On December 13 I picked up a copy of Time magazine, which had a bold cover-story caption that caught my eye: “Looking for Life Out There.” The cover showed a man standing on planet earth looking out into the deep space of planets and stars. The story was written by Los Angeles correspondent John Wilhelm.
As I finished reading the last line of Wilhelm’s article, I realized that its timing was truly prophetic: “Perhaps it would teach that secret of survival to man.” Perhaps this was my immediate task. And I felt incredibly helpless – how could I, a donkey, do anything to stop the huge juggernauts of war of many nations at this last hour? What I heard on the radio and read in the papers was chilling. The war between India and Pakistan over Bangladesh was polarizing the great powers of the world into dangerous positions. Russia had lined up her support behind India. The United States was supporting Pakistan. China, already in a border war with India, put her support behind Pakistan.
And over and through all this tension the Arab radio stations repeated day and night the threat of President Anwar Sadat that by January 1, 1972, the Egyptians would conclude the “final solution” to the Israel problem. That is, that the State of Israel and the Israelis would be liquidated.
My concern for world peace was profound. I could not forget the voice and the words of December 1, 1971. But they made no further contact with us, although I repeatedly tried to invite a communication by hypnotic induction of Uri and the use of the tape recorder. It seemed that we were not only left alone but abandoned. We simply had to wait for the promised contact on the twentieth.
On December 19 Uri and Iris came over to the Hotel Sharon to have lunch with me. As long as Uri was with me, I set up the TC 120 tape recorder and routinely asked the same questions: “What can Uri and I do toward preventing war?”
As I asked this question, Uri and Iris simply sat with me and looked out over the sea. A few minutes after I asked my question, I noticed that the tape was running on “record” and the VU meter was oscillating with the familiar pattern of speech recording I said nothing to Uri and Iris but pulled the microphone out of the microphone jack to see what would happen. The VU meter kept on with its oscillations. I knew then that I was getting some kind of a recording. This went on for some three minutes. Then it stopped. I didn’t want to play the tape in front of Iris, so I stopped the recording process and waited to hear what had last “recorded” after they left. Uri and Iris left around 2:45 P.M.
As soon as they had left, I started to rewind the tape back to the starting point. As I was getting ready to play the tape, I happened to glance at my wristwatch, which had been lying on a table. It had stopped at 2:45 and 45 seconds. (I have already pointed out that my watch was a Universal Geneve Chronometer, with three extra dial faces as well as a large sweep-second hand.) The hour hand had stopped at 2; the minute hand had stopped at 9; and one of the small dial’s second hand had stopped at 45 seconds, making 2:45:45, or 1445:45 hours. I wound the stem; it would not start. I listened to the watch; it was silent. I shook it; it would not start. It had really stopped, and I could not tell why. Then I played the tape. There was a message on the tape, recorded in English by a mechanical sounding voice:
Stay away from Israel Army. Do not interfere. Pray for peace. Pray when your watch is stopped.
Then the tape message ended. Five minutes later the cassette vanished. I now knew at last, what the stopped watch meant. I put the watch on and went out on the balcony over the sea facing Egypt. I prayed for peace. At 3:21 P.M., by local time, my watch began to run by itself. It had been stopped by an invisible hand for thirty-six minutes. The nature of my prayer seemed so sacred to me that I did not tell anyone about it.
The next day, Monday, December 20, 1971, we had planned an outing for Uri’s twenty-fifth birthday. Uri wanted only Shipi and Hannah and myself to go. For reason’s that I did not fully understand Uri wanted to spend this day in the Judean Hills with his three closest friends. We left Tel Aviv at 7:30 A.M. and arrived in Jerusalem by 9 A.M. We had no particular plan as to where we were going; we just decided as we went along. In Jerusalem Uri wanted to go to the area where he had been wounded in the Six Day War. We went to the area north of Jerusalem,, and Uri remembered spot after spot where this or that action occurred. Shipi, Hannah, and I could only faintly imagine what was going through Uri’s mind. But thoughts of the evils of war were heavy on all of us.
Uri decided that we must go on to the Dead Sea. On the way there we cheered our somber hearts with loud singing. As we neared the Dead Sea, I told my friends the story of how I had come here almost two years ago and first felt the magic of Israel. To reinforce the story we went to the area of Qumran. I then told them the story of the Teacher of Righteousness who was also Jewish, but more in the tradition of one of the orthodox sects that they knew. The idea of the war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness touched Uri. He said, “Doesn’t ‘Spectra’ mean light, like my name means light?”
I said, “Yes, it does. Maybe this is what the Essenes were doing here in the desert – watching for signs from a Spectra.”
This thought with its depth in antiquity chilled our spines. Were we just the latest in a long line of recipients of light and knowledge? I then told them of my great sleepiness here in 1970, and that I now felt it was caused by one of the spacecraft that we were seeing. ( See page 62. )
We drove on down the western shore of the Dead Sea beneath the stark cliffs to our right and the deceptive blue sparkle of the sea on our left. We stopped frequently to take pictures and to run around like wild goats. It was like springtime for me to be out in the wilds with these three carefree children. At one time as I took movies, I lightly grumbled because I did not have my leather case for my NIZO Super 8 movie camera. I was afraid of dust from the desert wind getting into my camera and ruining the shutter mechanism. Uri took notice of what I said. “Where is your camera case?” he asked.
“I was trying to save on weight, so I left all excess-weight items in my home in Ossining,” I replied.
We drove on down the seacoast to Ein Bokek, to Sedom, and then turned inland. As we went through Arad, Uri suddenly announced that he had always wanted to see Abraham’s Oak in Hebron. Would we like to go? We all said “great idea” and headed north. Only Shipi, in addition to myself, had studied the Bible, so between us we reconstructed the story of Abraham and the Angels for Uri’s benefit.
This is how we remembered it at the time: Abraham was living near Hebron at Mamre. He was lying in his tent in the heat of the day when three men appeared before him. They seemed to be real men. Abraham treated them hospitably with food and drink as though they were real men. Then one of them predicted that Sarah, who was around ninety years old, would have a child. She, of course, laughed this off as blarney. The three men indicated that they were on a serious mission for the Lord. Then the Lord stood out from the men and told Abraham that he was going to pass judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. Of course, we had just been to the area now called Sedom, which was now only a wasteland, but believed to be the biblical site of Sodom.
The Lord revealed to Abraham his plan to destroy these two cities because of their wickedness. Abraham found himself pleading with the Lord to spare the cities for the sake of the righteous people who were there. The Lord finally acceded to Abraham, saying he would spare Sodom and Gomorrah if there were only ten righteous men there. Of course, we know the end of the story – Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, and only Lot escaped.
Uri was very moved by our poor rendering of this great story. He said, “You know, this is just like today. We are told by some invisible power that mankind is close to destroying itself. Somehow we get involved and are trying to help, but we are not really doing much. I really want to know if the Lord talked to Abraham. Were those men that Abraham saw actually from a spacecraft? Are the ones we talk to, the same ones that Abraham talked to?”
“Uri, why don’t we ask for a sign when we get there? Maybe we can get an answer to these questions,” Shipi interjected.
When we got to the Oak of Mamre, we found it guarded by Arabs, and near it there was an Arab mosque and school. We walked up to the iron fence surrounding this mighty stump of an oak with only a few green branches on it and stood there in silence. Uri tried to feel the vibes from the oak, but nothing happened. Then he said to me, “I know what we must do! We will ask if Spectra visited Abraham here four thousand years ago, just yes or no. Let’s go up on that hill away from these people.”
We went up the hill and we got out of our car. Uri asked me for my Universal Geneve watch, and I handed it to him. He then said, “Believe me, this is very sacred. I have never done this before. I am going to turn your watch face up to the sky. We will all look at the face of the watch. Andrija, you ask the question like I told you, then we will see what happens to the watch. If nothing happens, the answer is no; if something happens, the answer is yes.”
The four of us stared at the watch. I asked the question, “Did you, Spectra, appear to Abraham here?”
At one moment as we stared at the watch it read 4:06 P.M. In the next moment it read 4:35 P.M. The hands had “moved” forward twenty-nine minutes.
Uri was very solemn. “I finally believe that what we are doing today has been going on for thousands of years. It is an old story.” We all breathed a quiet amen.
As we got in the car and drove on, we all agreed on one point. The hands of my watch had not moved in the usual sense. We had the impression that they had vanished from the first position and reappeared in the second position. Uri was now sure that this was the process.
I recount this incident in some detail because it was the prelude to my own experience with the war problem for the coming six days. But I must confess that I did not know it as it happened; I see the pattern only now in hindsight.
We drove north past Bethlehem, past Jerusalem, and then west toward Tel Aviv. As we approached the town of Ramla, with the setting sun ahead, we saw the clear outline of a disk-shaped craft in the sky with a red light on the top. It was too far away to see any detail. It did not move. It just winked out about five minutes later. As the light of the craft winked out, the headlights on our car also went out. I pulled over to the shoulder just to watch if the craft would reappear. In a minute the car headlights went on by themselves.
We drove on for five minutes, and then the engine was mysteriously cut off. No one panicked. We all knew it was “they” making us aware of their presence. Now, this was the first time that Shipi had been with Uri and me when unusual physical things were happening. I was quite impressed with how naturally Hannah and Shipi accepted these signs. Uri calmly explained to them in Hebrew what was going on and said we would always be together to do this kind of work. The engine started in five minutes.
I dropped Hannah and Shipi off at their home in Givataim about 7 P.M. and Uri at his apartment shortly thereafter. I drove at a hundred-kilometer-per-hour speed to the Sharon Hotel; my car now worked perfectly.
I had just finished taking a bath at 7:45 P.M. when my phone rang; it was Uri. He sounded awestruck as though he had just seen the angel of Abraham.
“Andrija, listen to what happened. At about 7:40 P.M. I went into my small bedroom to turn on the electric heater. My bed was empty of anything. I went out and closed the door so that the room would heat up. Then I went to the bathroom to take a shower. I entered my bedroom at 7:45 P.M., and there upon my bed was a black leather camera case labeled with printed letters “Braun NIZO.” I have never seen such a case before. I asked my mother what she knew, and she said she was in a chair in the living room all the time. Andrija, could this be the camera case you talked about today while we were at the Dead Sea?”
I asked him to identify certain marks in the interior of the case, which I had once made. He verified that they were there.
I said, “Uri, that fits the description of the camera case I put in a locked closet in Ossining, New York, on November 17, 1971, which is over six thousand miles away! How did it get here?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Are you playing a joke on me?”
“I wouldn’t play such a joke. Bring it over tonight when you come here after your show,” I said.
After this call I began to get ready for the evening session with Uri. I synchronized my wristwatch and an electric digital clock to the radio at 8 P.M. Then I tested my tape recorder for the evening’s work. At 8:57 P.M. (by the electric clock) I happened to glance at my wristwatch: it had stopped at precisely 8 45 45.
Remembering my instructions, I prayed for peace to enter Sadat’s heart. I glanced at the watch from time to time. At 10:07 P.M. (by the electric clock) exactly, I happened to be looking at my wristwatch and saw the small second hand starting to move. The watch had stopped for eighty-two minutes. I realized that I was abnormally drained of energy from the effort of praying.
That evening when he came to see me, Uri handed me the black leather camera bag. I inspected it carefully. There was no question about it; it was my own bag which I had left some six thousand miles away. The only possible conventional explanation was that somebody was playing a trick on us; for example, the Israeli Army might conceivably have obtained the camera bag by normal means from Ossining and then planted it on Uri. Uri told me there were no windows in his bedroom, and there was only one door from the bedroom into the living room; his mother was sitting near this door all the time Uri was in the bedroom. Uri assured me that his mother was not in collusion with anyone. We felt certain then that this camera bag was translocated by means and agencies unknown.
We went ahead with preparations to keep our rendezvous at 11:20 P.M. This time Uri went into hypnotic trance easily and began to speak:
“Andrija, I am in a flat place. Noises!”
Then a powerful resonant voice sounded in the room:
Listen, listen, Andrija. Present war important thing. We have shown you personally, without Uri, how we contact you through your watch. When it stops, pray. Put your movie camera in its original case. We sent it over. Pray peace.
There were many other things said during this session which I am not yet permitted to reveal. The session ended at 11:30 P.M., December 20, 1971. Now, my watch had been stopped at 10:45:45 P.M. and had remained stopped until 12:11 A.M. (December 21), when Uri had placed his hand over it, and it started running again. The watch was now ninety minutes behind the electric clock. As I was writing up the notes of the session (before the tape vanished), I noticed at 1:32 A.M. (electric clock time) that my watch had stopped again at 11:45:45 P.M. This time it remained stopped for exactly twelve hours. It self-started at 11:45 A.M. on December 21. During those twelve hours I sat on my balcony praying for peace as I faced Egypt. This was an ordeal I was not prepared for. I am sure that I must have dozed off at times during this vigil.
I realize that it may be tedious for the reader to follow all the details of the various times when the watch stopped. However, to my knowledge, this phenomenon has never before been reported on earth, and however boring it may be, a full historical account is warranted, which will be found in Appendix Three.
After the watch started up at 11:45 A.M. on December 21, I had to go to see Reuven on business. I told him what was happening with my watch, and since 12:45 P.M. was approaching, we both looked at my watch while the hands reached this critical angle. I saw the watch stop, of its own accord, at exactly 12:45 P.M., and pointed it out to Reuven as it happened.
I then called Uri from Reuven’s apartment, and he told me the following story. A few minutes earlier, at 12:20 P.M. to be exact, Uri had walked into his bedroom and there, at the foot of his bed, was a large (three feet by two feet) brown suitcase. He inspected it, read the brand label, “Taperlite,” opened it, and found it to be empty. Then it vanished in front of his eyes. The entire episode lasted about three minutes. I left Reuven to go to see Uri.
As Christmas Eve approached, my thoughts turned more and more to the Prince of Peace, and as the zero hour for possible war approached, I knew that I would have to pray longer and harder. What better place, I thought, than to go to Bethlehem where Jesus was born. As I prayed during the night and on the morning of December 24, I must have nodded off to sleep at one point because I was awakened at 8:18 A.M. I showered, shaved, ate breakfast, and got in my car to go to Bethlehem.
This was one day when I really wished to be alone, just to be able to continue my prayer for peace. It was a beautiful sunny day, this December 24, in the Holy Land. One could never guess by looking at the countryside that within a few days this could be the site of the start of a global holocaust. As I drove through Ramla, a largely Arab town, it was obvious that it was the Muslim Holy Day. Tonight at sundown it would be the Jewish Holy Day, Shabbat. And Saturday, December 25, was the Christian Holy Day of Jesus’ birth. For me, brought up in the slums of Chicago in the Catholic faith, it was a profound experience to be here on the road to life, and perhaps mankind’s life.
I chose the back roads to Bethlehem which wound through the ancient hills of Judah. When I left Beit Shemesh, I got on winding gravel back roads of the Ha’ela Valley, feeling as if I had slipped back several thousands of years into time.
As I passed through the Arab villages of El Khada and Beit Jala, I could see that there were more and more Israeli soldiers and military police. At the edge of Bethlehem I was stopped and told that no cars were allowed beyond this point. So I parked my car where I could and walked over to where the soldiers stood. They said that no one was permitted to enter the inner area of Bethlehem without a pass. The pass had to be applied for a week in advance in order that a security check could be done. There were no exceptions, because the authorities feared an incident by one of the extremist organizations. I was determined to get to the Grotto of the Nativity – I had to complete my prayers. Yet I knew how tough Israeli security was. So I prayed as I walked toward the inspection barrier.
A young lady sabre lieutenant sternly asked me, in perfect English, for my pass. I said, “Lieutenant, I come in peace from a far-off land. I did not have time to apply for a pass. Look at me. I am honest, open, and have only love for man. Please, Lieutenant, let me pass that I may pray for the peace of the world.”
I don’t know what this officer thought of my plea. But she inspected my passport, gave me a searching look, and stamped a pass, which she handed to me. I thanked her openly, blessed her in my heart, and made my way into Manger Square. I also thanked my friends on high.
Although the crowds were large, I was able to enter into the depths of the Grotto of the Nativity and pray on my knees at the very spot where legend has it that Jesus was born. Somehow in the presence of the vast throngs my prayers seemed to gain in meaning and in power. By 3:30 P.M. I felt I had completed my mission to Bethlehem.
I moved on to the old city of Jerusalem. As sundown approached, and Shabbat neared, the shops started closing and the streets emptied. By sundown the old city was quite deserted, and I walked its quiet streets alone. It was hard to believe that the very pavements I walked on had once been known by David, his paramour Bathsheba, and their son, the glorious Solomon. This was the city holy to the Muslims, the Jews, and the Christians. I walked over to the Mosque of Omar, built over the Dome of the Rock where Mohammed had ascended directly to heaven on his white horse. Under this platform surrounding the mosque was the ruin of the Temple of Solomon.
I looked at the watch on my left wrist; the Geneve was still stopped at 11:45:45. As a reference standard I had another watch, the Certina on my right wrist that told me that the local time was 5 P.M. The time on the Geneve portended the approach of the crisis as it had now been stopped for over eighteen hours. I walked back to my car, which was near the Joppa Gate.
I don’t know how it happened, but I missed the road to Tel Aviv, and instead made the circumferential drive going north around the old city. I came back to my starting point up the Valley of Kidron along the Jericho Road. Passing through the small Arab villages along this valley, I was once again transported to biblical times. The sun had already gone down; Shabbat had begun. The roads were empty as I headed for Tel Aviv, my heart was full of prayer for the knowledge of the richness of life.
As I crossed the Israel Road (Sardi Yisrael), I saw ahead on the deserted road a small figure dressed in white, hitchhiking. I stopped and saw that it was a girl. I asked her where she was going after sundown. She smiled and said, Tel Aviv, and that sundown was not important to her. Her English was excellent, and she spoke freely. Her name was Miriam El, which translates into English as “Miriam of God.”
I asked her what the name Miriam meant in Hebrew. She said, “Miriam means ‘strong.’ Your English name for this is Mary. But did you know that Miriam was the elder sister of Moses and Aaron?”
I was truly startled by this reply. “Why did you tell me about Moses and Aaron now?”
She shyly replied, “Are you Jewish?”
I said, “No, I was brought up as a Catholic, but I do not practice in that faith now.”
“Well, it would help my explanation if you were. But I shall try. You see, in the back streets of Jerusalem there are many quiet discussions going on about the fate of Israel and of the Jewish people. There is an uneasy feeling about the threat of war now. And when this feeling arises, people talk about Moses, who saved us from slavery in Egypt. But more than that, you can hear it being whispered in Jerusalem among the old and the young about a coming war that has another meaning. These people believe that the Bible says to them today that Israel must suffer three major wars: the first was the ’56 war; the second was the ’67 war; and the third is yet to come. Now, it is not a fear of the third war that they talk about. Can you understand that they dream about a third war with expectations? They feel that Israel must suffer once more and that the conscience of the world must be burned once more in order to remind us all of the promise of God. And do you know what they say this promise is? They say that the Messiah will appear here in Israel. These people believe these things. And I must say, I do, too.”
As a young sabre she breathed all the hopes and ideals of her people. As she talked on, in spite of her talk of war, I somehow felt strengthened in my prayers for peace. But the irony of our situation was not lost on me. Here I was, praying for a war not to occur, because of a potential worldwide spread of a new Middle-eastern war. And this sweet young woman was praying for a Messiah to deliver her people, and mankind, and willing to pay the price of war.
I met Uri at the Sharon Hotel at midnight. I told him that my watch had been stopped for over twenty-four hours now and that I was getting tired. This time, he was unable to start the watch again. We both felt that this was an ominous sign. More effort was needed. Perhaps the prayers were not working. Perhaps Sadat was not being reached. Or maybe others in power had a more decisive role than Sadat.
In any case, it was not a good omen. Uri and I parted at 1 A.M. It was now December 25, 1971. I went to my old station at the balcony over the sea facing Egypt. Pray for peace.
As dawn came, I had some food. At 11 A.M. my watch was still stopped. I went to the bathroom to take a shower. I reached up with my hands to take from around my neck a Star of David on a gold chain given to me by Uri five days earlier. I was amazed to find that the star was missing! I searched the room and finally found the Star of David under my pillow. I had not been to bed that night. I also saw that the connecting gold link between the chain and the star was intact. There was no way that the Star of David could have come off the chain – except by the now familiar vanishing process. I felt that it was a good omen, but I wished that the language were clearer.
Uri and Iris visited me at my hotel in the afternoon. I had placed the Geneve and the Certina watches on the table side by side. Uri looked at my Geneve and said, “It is still stopped.” Rather wearily, I said, “Yes, for well over thirty-six hours now.” He placed his left hand, fist clenched, over it and said, “I am going to try it once more.” As he said this, the Geneve started immediately. The local time by the Certina was 2:34 P.M. My watch had been stopped for a total of forty hours and four minutes. Uri and Iris left shortly thereafter. I went to bed and fell into a very deep sleep.
I woke up and looked at the clock. It was 1 A.M., the fateful day of December 26. I turned on the radio, listened to the BBC, the Voice of America, etc. There was no news of any significance. I stepped out on my balcony to get a breath of fresh air. The sky was leaden with low clouds. It had rained while I was asleep. Suddenly, at 1:45 A.M., I saw just one flash of the same blue light that Uri, Iris, and I had seen. It was right in front of me, beneath the clouds to the south. I thought that it could not have been more than a few hundred meters away. As I watched, there was a second blue flash. Then a third blue flash – and that was all. It seemed to say to me, “Good show, old chum. Go back to sleep. All is well.”
I did go to sleep, and awoke at 8:55 A.M. I saw that the Geneve watch had changed to 1:45:45, but I did not know when this had happened. In any case it was stopped. So I went back to my prayer for peace on the balcony. All the rest of this December 26, I continued to pray. Uri called me once at 6:30 P.M. to report that he had lost a gold medallion from his neck chain. He said he would come to see me about 8 P.M.
Uri came in at 7:45 P.M. and sat down on the sofa. We both happened to look at the desk at the same time, and there was his gold medallion – it had just appeared on the carpet beneath the desk.
We decided to go down to the first-floor dining room to have dinner. The maitre d’hotel chose a table for us. As we sat down, Uri picked up his napkin. There under the napkin was a Mexican five-peso piece – which I often carried around with me – that had been left in the desk in my eleventh-floor room.
The fact that we had witnessed the vanishing and the appearance of gold and silver that day made a deep impression on me. Then another “first” occurred. While we were staring at the five-peso piece, the silver fork in front of Uri bent up ninety degrees. He had not touched it. When Uri tried to put food in his mouth (at 8:35 P.M.), it vanished from inside his mouth. After several unsuccessful tries, we finally gave up trying to have dinner and went upstairs to my room.
At 9:03 P.M. (Certina time) my Geneve watch again stopped at 2:45:45. At 9:34 P.M. (Certina time) my Geneve watch did a strange thing. It jumped from 2:45:45 to 3:35 instantly, and then it started to tick normally and kept running. This was the last time in 1971 that my Geneve watch was to stop in this extraordinarily precise way.
As Uri was leaving that night, he was like a man who has just realized that he is suddenly no longer a boy. One of his comments was “Now I really know that it is not me. They are doing all the work. Imagine, they come to all of my crummy shows to do the work. I wonder why they bother with all these little people?”
As midnight approached, I anxiously listened to all the news. The Arab threats continued that “Sadat has promised to liquidate the State of Israel before the week is up.” There was no sign in all of Israel that an attack on Egypt was at hand. It was a strange night for me. Outside, there was the giant roar of the surf as a Mediterranean storm battered the coast. There was all the drama of thunder, lightning, wind, and rain dashing against the senses. But it was the roar of nature, not the roar of man at war.
Sitting in the dark, I was listening to the Voice of America and watching the lightning flashes over the sea. Just as the announcer said it was 2215 hours Greenwich mean time (12:15 A.M. local), I saw a bright “star” due south. I jumped up and saw that it was under the clouds; it was not a plane. Twinkling brightly with an array of colors, it hovered over Tel Aviv. The “star” shone for a minute – then went off.
I got my NIZO Super 8 camera out and ready should it reappear. Suddenly, there it was again! Then I had an astounding experience. When I pointed the camera with a 56-millimeter lens toward the light, the camera trigger locked. To test this locking effect, I turned the camera away from the light, and the trigger switch worked nominally. I pointed the camera again at the twinkling colored light, and again the camera froze. I did this repeatedly and concluded that my camera was being controlled from that light – which did not want its picture taken! The light repeated this cycle, staying on for a minute and off for a minute, seven times. I noted in my diary at the time: “I strongly feel that this light appeared (seven times) to assure me that all is well. Now I feel assured that peace will begin. 12:45 A.M. December 27, 1971. Sharon, Herzliyyah-by-the-Sea.”
On December 29, 1971, I read in the Jerusalem Post, “The public announcement of the results of President Sadat’s conference this past week: There will be no war.” To this day I do not know why President Anwar Sadat reversed his publicly avowed policy. I do not know what restrained the Israeli Government from a pre-emptive attack in the face of Arab war threats. Someday, I am sure, each side will release its own secret documents with respect to what actually happened in December 1971. As for me, the relief was enormous. As for Uri, it was his second great battle test, much more severe than in the battle for Jerusalem. I was sure that a possible world war threat was over on December 27, 1971, and subsequent history will have to confirm this judgment.( I was reviewing the final manuscript on October 18, 1973, and as the reader is surely aware, a war broke out between Israel and Egypt and Syria, October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur. Uri Geller and I were preparing to leave the United States for Frankfort, Germany, when the war broke out. We went ahead to Frankfort, in order to be closer to Israel should we be needed there. Naturally, Uri and I contacted the extraterrestrial intelligence to find out at the source how this new war was viewed. The judgment was succinct: “Concerning Israel: The fight and the war will be fought just like an ordinary war. This war had to come, and they shall fight it out alone. You are not needed this time. This war will be marked in earth as an important war for the human race.”
I queried the intelligence as to whether this was the war that was being whispered about in the old streets of Jerusalem. The answer was in the affirmative.) Without waiting to hear the words of Sadat, I now set about to find out all I could about the intelligence in the sky about whom we still knew so little.
Since I have no other name for the intelligence in the sky, I decided at this time to call it IS for short.
In the chapter that follows I will relate some of the lessons that come from IS, most of which came through or around Uri. But to avoid repetition and an unmanageable amount of material, I shall cite only those instances where a new lesson was to be learned.