by James Randi
Well, the Newsweek article has appeared now, and as expected from Panati—who is an ardent adherent of the Things-That-Go-Bump-in-the- Night School—it was a total whitewash of the SRI matter and made Geller’s team look like persecuted innocents. As an example of the evasiveness of Panati, let me tell you of an interesting pair of episodes involving that gentleman. Early this year, I appeared on a Washington television show with him to discuss his book Supersenses. During that program, I pointed out the fact that his treatment of Geller consisted only of favorable items, with not one detracting comment in the book. His reply was that he was “merely a reporter” and that he just reported what had been said. I said that I doubted he had never seen a negative write-up on Geller, and he had no answer. At that point, the show host asked me to demonstrate the Geller routine. The producer of the show had made a drawing in the privacy of her office, several floors away, sealed it in a series of three envelopes, signed the outer envelope, and sealed it with tape. She had also obtained a box of 10-penny nails for the show, and some were on the table behind us.
I asked the other participants to hold the nails, and, a la Geller, one of them bent over at about 30 degrees. Panati had no explanation. I asked the producer to turn away and not view a television monitor or the set as I made a drawing in full view of the camera. It was, I recall, a person on a blanket lying with a pair of sunglasses nearby and the sun shining down. When I’d finished, she allowed us to open the envelope. The two drawings were identical. Panati said nothing.
Months later, Panati appeared with Geller on a program over Channel 9 in New York City. Unknown to them, I was concealed in the tape room downstairs, since my very presence in the studio would have caused Geller to beat a retreat. I was on the phone to the control room, suggesting questions that might be asked. One question was to Panati. It was: “Isn’t it true that Randi appeared with you on a Washington television show and duplicated a couple of Geller’s tricks?” To which Panati replied: “Yes, but he lied! He said he had a copy of a magazine in his car, and he didn’t.” To this day, I’m thoroughly puzzled by that answer, but it is obvious that he was evading the question that was asked. It seems to be the way of these folks.
Incidentally, the Channel 9 program was called “Straight Talk.” I think it was badly named. Puharich continues:
I activated the Scientific Theory Group that had been in existence since the Life Energies Conference of 1970. They were apprised of the pressure being built up by the editors of ‘Time.” They knew that the scientific stakes were high—just as high as they were when Copernicus startled the medieval Church of Europe with his findings about the earth and the sun.
The influence of this group was enormous in the councils of state; they gave authoritative assurance to the National Science Foundation that Uri’s powers were real and that scientists had best keep open minds. Another member, Dr. Gerald Feinberg, invited Targ and Puthoff to dispassionately present their findings on Geller at a Physics Department Colloquium at Columbia University on March 9, 1973.
In the meantime Time magazine had requested the results of the SRI research. Leon Jaroff of ‘Time” told the president of SRI that if SRI did not give them a report on their findings with Geller, ‘Time” would go ahead with an unfavorable story about both SRI and Geller. The president of SRI said that ‘Time” would have to wait, like everyone else, for the report on their findings, to be given on March 9, 1973, at Columbia University. Neither man would budge from his position. For me the last few days before the final showdown were packed with action.
I cannot print Leon Jaroff’s response to this tirade by Puharich. Time was wanting information on a news story; SRI was trying to get the blessing of a hearing at Columbia with a film that proved nothing except that they had a camera and some film.
I will say little more about Puharich except to include the next two paragraphs that follow in order. They speak volumes.
On Sunday, February 25, at 7 P.M., I handed Uri a Mexican five-peso silver coin that weighed thirty grams. This was the same one reported on in Israel. I asked him to bend it in his left hand. As he clenched it in his fist, it vanished. We talked about what IS might do with the coin, and I suggested that it be made into a “thought transmitter” and returned to us. At 8:30 P.M. a 1925 silver dollar fell by my right foot. I examined this coin and it turned out to be a silver dollar given to me by Henry Jackson in 1948 as a token with which to start a Round Table Foundation. It had been in storage in a jewelry case in my bedroom on the second floor. However, the silver dollar had been bent by means unknown since I had last seen it.
At 9 P.M. the phone rang and Uri got up to answer it, crossing in front of me. As he went past me, a coin fell from the direction of the ceiling, hit his shoulder, and fell at my feet. It was the Mexican five-peso silver coin—but now it too was bent.
One begins to wonder if anything mundane ever happens to Andrija Puharich.
THE WONDERFUL TELEPORTATION TO AND FROM BRAZIL. . . OR HOW NOT KNOWING ENOUGH ABOUT THE SUBJECT CAN BE VERY EMBARRASSING
It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver . . .
— Proverb
In the November 1973 issue of Today’s Health, under the title “Behind Science’s Growing Fascination with Psychic Phenomena,” appears the following extract:
Under Dr. Puharich’s guidance, Geller says, he has learned to leave his body and journey to distant places. Once, he recalls, he lay on Dr. Puharich’s sofa in New York, in the presence of five witnesses, and transported himself to Rio de Janeiro. Walking along Copacabana Beach, he approached a man and asked for money, in Portuguese—a language he previously had never spoken. The man gave him a thousand-cruzeiro note, which materialized in his hand on that couch in Ossining. Dr. Puharich says he has the note. The five persons who saw it materialize, however, do not wish to be identified, according to Geller.
But the trip to Brazil was so frightening, Geller says, that he will never leave his body again. “It was scary,” he declares. “I was lying there on the couch and then there I was, suddenly, in another place. I was there just as really as I’m sitting here talking to you. To prove it, I even had sand on my shoes when 1 came back. But it was all a terrible feeling, because it was a double feeling—there I am and yet I can really feel my body sleeping somewhere else. And I was very scared because the journey back to my body is not sure. I mean, what if I couldn’t get back? Oh, if somebody is up there protecting me I’m sure it can’t happen, but I don’t really know that. That’s why I don’t ever want to do it again.”
Strangely enough, I am unable to find this incident in either Puharich’s book Uri or in Fuller’s book My Story, which is supposed to have been written by Geller himself. Such an important event would seem to be one that should be touted in both books. Especially since there is a positive piece of evidence—the thousand-cruzeiro note—that has not been “dematerialized” by the fiends from the flying saucers, as has happened to all the other artifacts so conjured up. But in that very piece of evidence we find the reason neither Puharich nor Geller chose to perpetuate this particularly silly piece of juvenile fiction.
You will note, among other things, that the following description of this event from the pages of Psychic magazine differs substantially from the account above. In a court of law the case would be thrown out. But just to be sure, let’s peruse the “Letters” column of New Scientist of November 14, 1974:
“One experiment I did with Andrija (Puharich) was when he asked me to go to Brazil out of the body. I got to this city and asked a person where I was and he told me it was Rio de Janeiro. Then someone came up to me and pressed a brand new one-thousand cruzeiro note in my hand and it appeared in my hand on the couch by Andrija—to prove I was there.”
That is an extract from an interview with Geller in the June 1973 issue of Psychic, a magazine published in San Francisco. Perhaps because I know Rio de Janeiro well, this incident stuck in my mind long after I had stopped marvelling at all the other things Gelle
r is supposed to do.
Accordingly, I wrote to Psychic pointing out that Geller’s story was more interesting than it might seem, for two reasons: one, there are no longer any Cr $ 1000 notes in circulation in Brazil, and two, the people of Rio simply do not hand money to strangers, though they often relieve them of it.
My letter was printed in the December 1973 Psychic, along with Dr. Puharich’s reply in which he gave the serial number of the note and said he hoped I could identify the issue, I then proceeded to do this.
In February 1967, Brazil’s new cruzeiro, equivalent to 1000 old ones, came into law. Old 1000 notes printed in the U.S. and Britain were overprinted, and in March 1970 newly-designed Brazilian-made notes went into circulation.
The Geller note was not overprinted and was made in the U.S. I managed to establish, with the cooperation of an official in Brazil’s Central Bank, that the note in question probably went into circulation in 1963—10 years before the alleged teleportation incident. To double check, I wrote the American Bank Note Co., which confirmed that the note had been shipped from New York on 17 April, 1963.
I should point out that, in the humid climate of Rio, banknotes do not remain “new and unhandled” (as Puharich stated this one was) for more than a few months; certainly not 10 years. Moreover, in a highly inflationary economy, people do not keep money for that long.
In March 1974 I wrote Puharich asking if I could have the note finger-printed. A stiff new note should retain a print, and everybody in Brazil has their fingerprints on file. If somebody handed the note to Geller, his prints might be on the note and I might be able to locate the donor. I also asked if Geller gave any other details of his alleged trip to Rio—scenic evidence which I could help locate and photograph.
No reply. Now, as it happens, Dr. Puharich visited Brazil in 1963, by a strange coincidence. One thousand cruzeiros were only worth about 50 U.S. cents in those days, and he might well have kept a note as a souvenir, or just not bothered to change it back when he left. Geller, or somebody else, might have found the note down a crack in the Puharich sofa (money often finds its way down cracks in sofas) and produced it quite normally in March 1973, after the supposed out-of-body flight took place.
In May 1974 I sent an outline of the facts in this letter to Psychic, and have since sent two follow-up letters. As of this writing, no reply.
Having since read Puharich’s book Uri (Anchor Press/Doubleday 1974), I note that this banknote is the only piece of evidence not to have been dematerialised by Geller’s friends from outer space! The banknote incident is not mentioned in the book.
This incident does not explain any of the other reported feats of the man who, as a German magazine says, makes “kaputte Uhren zu ticken.” But it does suggest to me that further examination of Geller’s alleged paranormal abilities can lead to totally normal hypotheses as to how he performs his feats.
Guy Lyon Playfair
Apt. 1106
546 Av. Prof. Alfonso Bovero
Sao Paulo, Brazil
I am also not terribly surprised to find that the five witnesses that Geller claims have not only wished to remain anonymous but, in the second account, have vanished! A teleportation, perhaps?
From this evidence, it seems inescapable that the whole thing was another of Geller’s sleight-of-hand attempts, and a particularly bad one at that. But he obviously felt that, if the opportunity presented itself, he could get away with anything in front of Puharich.
But note: Here we have direct evidence that Puharich really believes in Geller’s powers. Why else would he have cooperated in giving the serial number of the marvelous bill? Surely, if he’d been in on the thing, he would have given a more compatible number. But, then, maybe the other elusive witnesses would have told on him. Geller wouldn’t even trust witnesses who had vanished.
Consider this: Subjected to the same close scrutiny and research, how many of the wonder-worker’s other stunts would fall apart? Thank you, Mr. Playfair, for an excellent piece of work.
But we’re not finished. Let’s examine just one more account of the Brazil matter. In it, the mysterious man whom Geller approached and then who, in the second account, approached Geller, now becomes two persons who Geller approaches. Puharich puts a message in his head, and supplies the appropriate language for the task, and the five vaporous witnesses are once again not there in the room. It is hard to believe these are descriptions of the same event. The following excerpt is from Jon Lipsky’s account, “Uri Geller: The Psychic You Have to Believe,” in the Real Paper, October 17, 1973. Come, come Jon! Do I have to believe? I’m finding it difficult!
He was lying down, eyes closed, in Ossining, New York, the home of his scientist friend, Andrija Puharich, trying to project himself to Brazil. Suddenly he saw colors flash past him, like the kaleidoscope in “2001.” When the colors cleared he was on a plaza with wavy inlaid lines: Rio or Brasilia. Not just in his mind, his whole physical body. Inside his head, though, he could bear Puharich’s voice: “Bring back money!” A couple was walking towards him, just strolling. He asked for money but of course they couldn’t understand his language. Puharich supplied some Portuguese or Spanish words. That did the trick. Uri had no shirt pocket, so he clutched the paper money in his fist. Then he was back in Ossining, New York. Puharich, who had seen nothing out of the ordinary in Uri’s behavior, asked what happened. Uri opened a fist holding the cruzeiro currency.
He couldn’t relate the other teleportation trip. That information was being saved for a book by Puharich. Uri and his entourage are as careful as a rock band about their publicity and make no bones about it. “Bring back money!” was an appropriate phrase. In any case, the experience was too much for Uri, and he won’t try it again soon.
If, by chance, you still do believe, don’t feel bad. You are joined by millions of others who will believe, no matter what evidence is presented. Remember Barnum.
PHOTOGRAPHS THROUGH A LENS CAP
“I don’t believe in astrology.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a Sagittarius, and we’re very hard to convince.”
Yale Joel is one of those very quiet, charming souls and hardly looks like the popular version of a former Life magazine photographer. He has no hat pushed back over his head, no cigarette butt hanging from the lip, and doesn’t talk like James Cagney at all. But he is a veteran of the business, a man who knows what a camera will and won’t do.
Then he ran into Uri Geller. He was taken completely unaware by the bouncing psychic, and he, along with son Seth, were taken for quite a jolting ride when they interviewed him. In all innocence Yale lunched with photographer/magician Charlie Reynolds and myself, and as we had him carefully relive the episode he passed from utter bewilderment to complete understanding of what had happened—with only an occasional nudge from us. Small factors he had forgotten to take into account suddenly popped up, and his picture of the Geller event began to clear. By the time dessert arrived—and / had broken a spoon or two for him as well—both Yale and Seth were a lot smarter than when they had sat down.
Here is the account of Yale’s Adventures in Wonderland. It was entitled “Uri Through the Lens Cap: The Strange Adventures of a Veteran Life Photographer, a 17-mm Lens, and a Roll of Tri-X” and it appeared in Popular Photography, June, 1974.
I might accept Uri’s power to repair watches, bend table utensils, and sketch hidden chairs. After all, these are not my fields. But photography is another matter. Photography is my profession. And as a “Life” magazine staff photographer for some 25 years, I have obviously taken more pictures than Uri ever psyched out. I also teach a photography workshop in my own studio. And I know what a camera can do. I know you can’t take a picture—any kind—with the lens cap sealing the lens. I have tried it several times myself, accidentally. It won’t work.
Yet I must report that Uri attempted to make it work.
Here is what happened:
I was on assignment photographing Geller in New Y
ork in color and black-and-white, assisted by my son, Seth. After several hours of spoon bending other amazing feats, Uri may have become bored with performing the same old routine for my camera. He peered into my shoulder bag. “Do you have a spare camera for me to take pictures through the lens cap?” he matter-of-factly. Did I have a spare camera? That bag was literally spilling over with cameras and equipment of my profession. Two Nikon-Fs, with a fast 35-mm f/4 medium wide-angle; a 24-mm f/8 extreme wide-angle; and an 85-mm f/8 medium tele lens. Also a Pentax equipped with a 17-mm Takumar f/4 extreme wide-angle “fisheye” type lens with a 160-degree field of view.