Right now, we’re working on our new book, The Synchronicity Highway. I was doing some research on telekinesis – also known as psychokinesis or PK – which is mind-matter interaction, the movement of or effect upon matter through nothing more than the power of mind. Hollywood loves this stuff. Think Carrie, The Fury, the X-Men, Matilda, Firestarter…
One of the most famous telekinetics in the 1970s and 1980s was Uri Geller, the Israeli spoon bender. He claims his telekinetic powers came from ETs. Maybe they did. Enhanced paranormal abilities are often reported in the wake of UFO encounters and abductions. But Geller’s problem wasn’t ETs: it’s that his credibility was seriously undermined by professional skeptics like James Randi, who insisted Geller’s alleged telekinetic feats were sleights of hand, just stage magic. Even noted scientists attacked him. Richard Feynman and Martin Gardner claimed Geller was fraudulent in his claims.
At some point during 1974, I happened to see Geller on TV one night, at the height of his popularity. He was bending spoons. It fascinated me, watching this guy’s fingers moving up and down the spoon until the curved end started to droop like a wilted flower. I thought how I would love to see him do this in person, close up. About ten years later, I had an opportunity.
Rob and I had been married about a year and happened to be in a South Florida mall, where Geller was demonstrating his telekinetic abilities. We wandered over to the small group that watched -– maybe two dozen people – and were able to move in close to the platform that elevated him somewhat above the crowd. It was hardly Madison Square Gardens!
First he demonstrated the spoon-bending thing and talked about what was happening as he ran his fingers repeatedly over the spoon. We were close enough to Geller to reach out and touch him, so we had an excellent view of the spoon. As we watched, the upper part of the handle started to bend, so that the spoon curved downward, like something out of a Dali painting. Then Geller asked for keys from the audience. People gladly turned over their keys – but we didn’t. We had just seen what he’d done to the spoon and we didn’t intend to get stuck at a mall ten to fifteen miles from home!
As sets of keys were handed over to Geller, as he ran his fingers over them, a tight hush settled over the small crowd. Keys were bent at weird and impossible angles and handed back to their owners, who held them up for everyone to see.
Sleight of hand? We aren’t professional debunkers or magicians, but were close enough to see the metal bend, to see what the keys looked like when the owners dangled them from their raised hands for minutes after Geller returned them. The metal was curved, bent, abnormal.
Some years later, in the early 1990s, we were at a writers’ symposium on censorship in Gainesville, Florida. Science fiction writers Jay and Joe Haldeman – brothers – were also there, along with Martin Caidan, an aviation and aeronautical expert and author of more than 50 books. His 1972 novel, Cyborg, became the basis of the TV series The Six Million Dollar Man and its spinoff, The Bionic Woman.
We got to talking to him because of Indiana Jones. Rob had recently finished writing the sixth of his original Indiana Jones novels for Lucas Films, was burned out on the character, and now Caidan was going to continue the series.
After the symposium, Marty invited us back to his place. He was eager to show us the experiment he’d devised to prove that telekinesis is not only real and possible, but that he himself was telekinetic. The room was on the second floor of his house. At one time, it probably had been a bedroom, but Caidan had redesigned it with a large picture window that looked into an elaborate array of psi wheels. A psi wheel is a pyramid-shaped device that consists of a piece of paper or foil that’s balanced on the tip of a toothpick or needle. The room resembled a field of miniature weather vanes.
He explained that the room was specially sealed against currents of air so that nothing but the power of the mind could cause those psi wheels to turn. As the three of us stood at the window, Caidan went into a trancelike state and focused intently on the psi wheels. For several minutes, nothing happened. Then a couple of the psi wheels began to turn. They weren’t spinning, weren’t going nuts, but were definitely moving without an apparent source or trigger. It looked strangely beautiful and weird, as though we were in the midst of an ongoing psychic opera.
Parapsychologist Loyd Auerbach was a friend of Caidan’s and sometimes accompanied him to demonstrations and workshops. In his June 2004 Fate magazine column, Auerbach wrote, “Martin Caidan was capable of moving things with this mind.”
James Randi offered his rebuttal three months later, saying that in 1994, he had offered to test Caidan’s ability, but that “he frantically avoided my challenge by refusing even the simplest proposed controls.”
What’s interesting about Randi’s comment is his apparent assumption that he is the final authority on whether someone’s psychic abilities are genuine. And since he is a professional skeptic, who makes his living by debunking others, he won’t ever be able to pronounce that anyone is actually psychic because it would make him look bad. Also, he would have to pay the million bucks he has offered to anyone who can prove they are psychic.
Being a skeptic is easy. It’s far more difficult to approach an apparent impossibility with an open mind and investigate what might actually be going on.
Here’s an interview between James Randi and the head of an Australian psychic assassination on Australian TV in 1993.
Uri is brought up in the conversation as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BQ3T-r562dI#at=93
Thanks, Daz! Will take a look – although Randi is not one of my favorite people to listen to!
P.S. to Jim: the heading of the interview with the MacGregors and Whitley and myself is “Powerful Close Encounter Two Weeks Ago”.
Hey Jim. What’s your location these days? Did you listen to the interview on July 12th that I had with Rob, Trish, and Whitley Strieber on Dreamland about a close encounter middle son had in Tennessee? If not, it will interest you. If so, look above theis post at the “home” window in blue, click onto “News, Press, Radio, TV”, it will bring up dates and interviews. Scroll down to July 12th and click onto their name with mine. The radio interview will pop up in the upper left hand corner of your screen and you can listen. Again….if you are interested. It was quite an experience.
Lots of questions. Not many answers.
Folks, check out the book called “the PK Man”, written by a phd from south florida. very compelling stuff. I enjoy your blog.
Hey mathaddict, since you are pyschic you know who this is. I trust you are well …..
Loved the book….
I don’t doubt that Geller was probably given tremendous “gifts” by Space Beings. But that was written when? 1974? If he’s the only person who can save the world, he’s had since he was three years old to get to work doing just that. And such a statement seems to me to be setting himself up as the “Savior”, so I have a real problem with it, considering he’s done nothing positive in all this time to make a dent in the global problems. IMHO.
Maybe he did save it,even though it is far from perfect right now,and we just didn’t realize he had.
It could have turned out a lot worse,but we have nothing to gauge the results by.
Maybe he opened the way to other psychics in a ripple in the consciousness pond type way ?-)
You guys should try and get an interview with Dean Radin for this section of the book if you can,as I saw him talk about how he too can bend spoons with his mind.
He even has them hanging around him in his office.
https://www.deanradin.com/spoon.htm
What a great idea, Daz! We’ll give it a try. Off to see this link. Thanks!
I’ve heard of Geller superficially, but I didn’t know he was a spoon-bender. Neat trick! Also, not nitpicking or anything, but you misspelled the surname of Rob’s successor on the Indy series: Martin Caidin. His Indy novels were of a different tone; not quite as spot-on in characterization as Rob’s, but still enjoyable in their own way.
Oops Thanks for the correction, Dale!
With Geller, I don’t think it was a trick.
Interesting subject. I think I mentioned in a post that I’m reading Uri’s authorised biography from 1974 by Andrija Puharich. I’ve only read about a third but it mentions how Space beings “programmed him for many years” from age of 3. They even supposedly said to him, “You are the only one to save mankind … you have been given enormous powers, you can do anything and everything.”
I vaguely remember that from Puharich’s book. It sounds as strange now as it did then, but hey, why not? Suppose it’s true?
i remember watching uri on tv many moons ago – always sitting spellbound by his ability – the thing about ouija boards – you may remember my post several years ago [https://thegypsytraveljournal.blogspot.com/search?q=ouija] about my last experience using one – with red candles – and asking about my brother’s mysterious/untimely death – the [new] pillar candles exploded spewing red wax all over the furniture and carpeting – i’ve seen blurps of the conjuring and can’t wait to see the whole thing –
I vividly remember your story about the ouija board!
That “smell” is the most unholy odor I have ever had the displeasure to experience, much worse than those from the Alien hybrid children, and THAT is simply indescribable. But the odor during the Ouija….was of rotten flesh or something like that. I’ve rotated on burn floors in a huge Atlanta hospital, and THAT is similar to the smell in the room, only the psychic smell was much worse. I won’t see The Conjuring. Have watched the trailers. That’s enough for me to avoid the movie. As a medium and an empath, I’ve learned, the hard way, to keep myself away from such material. We don’t know all the methods that are available for our protection. Sometimes invoking The Light just isn’t sufficient. So I stay away from those
situations. Right now, in this moment, my immediate next door neighbor whose townhouse is the other home in our structure, is terminal from cirrhosis caused by alcohol. I’m “absorbing” Peg’s feelings and am ahving to stay constantly on guard from picking up her stuff. I don’t dare go visit her. She isn’t going into a Hospice, but plan to die at home. She’s only 48. Too close for comfort for me. She needs the palliative care available in a Hospice, but refuses to go because when awake, she still drinks…..on top of morphine. They are wonderful people. She’s addicted to alcohol, though, the most I’ve ever seen. They’ve been our neighbors for twelve years. But she’s pulled in some bad energies, and I must stay away.
Smart to stay away, math.
I remember a few years back someone had a “spoon bending” workshop at Lilydale, and although I did not attend, I saw a pile of bent spoons in the museum there left over by participants. Sometimes people who are “debunkers” are just as questionable as those people they are trying to discredit. There is a drift in our culture that works hard to discredit things that are “outside of the reigning paradigm”.
Now THAT’s a workshop I would love to attend! So are you home, Lauren, or still on the road?
What is most weird about the ashtray and the clock dome is that both of those items had belonged to my deceased parents. (My sons bought a new dome for the clock.) I tend toward the idea that at least SOME poltergeist phenomena may be the activities of invisible entities. This certainly was the situation when I was stupidly (and much younger!!) playing on a Ouija Board with the oldest son, who was 13 at that time. As we sat with our fingers on the planchette, no one else was in the house and we were at a small table in the master bedroom. The planchette moved to three letters when we asked for a name (and I’ve NEVER repeated those letters because the attached energy is so negative). There was suddenly a noxious, dreadful odor in the room, then there was a distinct sound of tinkling bells above my son’s head; then we both heard the faint bark of a dog coming from the air in the room, and a small wet stain appeared in the middle of the bedspread that was on the bed and spread outwards. It had the odor of urine. This was a horrific experience. Needless to say, I built a huge bonfire in our backyard and burned both the Ouija Board and the bedspread, and proceeded to cleanse the entire house with powerful Wiccan traditions. We moved not long afterwards. I have no doubt we had connected to an entity on an extremely low astral plane, and I have subsequently advised folks to avoid using the Ouija. I understand some great mediums have used them with wonderful success, but in my experience over a long period, most of the stories I’ve heard from folks who have “played” with them have been truly negative. I had done all the right things: lit candles, invoked the Guardians of the Four Gates, etc etc etc. Didn’t matter. the entity still manifested. I think we have much to learn about all these phenomena:
things that move without being touched by physical hands, whether telekinesis,
psychokinesis, or poltergeist events.
We recently saw a truly scary movie – the conjuring. That “dreadful smell” you describe was mentioned in the movie. The film is as scary as the exorcist and was supposedly based on a true story.
I think that some make a difference between telekinesis (bending a spoon just by looking at it) and psychokinesis (holding in one’s hands the spoon that is about to be bent). I’ve experienced both: a woman on TV telling to the audience when to try to bend their spoons and some kind of ritual combining prayer and spoons rolled in pieces of paper (something like the Schrodinger’s cat). I’m weird, don’t you think so? 🙂
Interesting, Aleksandar. I didn’t realize there might be a distinction between telekinesis and psychokinesis.
I’ve always wondered if there might be a connection of some kind between telekinesis and poltergeist activity. Telekinesis being intentional, and poltergeist activity being unintentional. Our oldest son, now in his forties, has always had poltergeist activity happening in his presence. Two such incidents happened when he and his then-girlfriend of fourteen years were temportarily living with us in a large home. On one occasion, we were sitting in our living room; there was no AC on and no fans and no breezes coming thru windows, etc. All of a sudden a big, heavy, cut-glass ashtray ‘that was on a table across the room from any of us, flew off the table and landed with a crash onto the floor. It didn’t break or crack, as there was carpet. Another incident there happened under similar circumstances. The entire family was in the den, which was adjacent to an office space. In the office, a domed anniversary clock that had belonged to my parents ws sitting on the top of a chest. The dome suddenly lifeted up and off the base of the clock and flew onto the floor. In this instance, the glass dome shattered, as the floor was tiled. These types of incidents have happened all our son’s life. Some of the events have been pretty terrifying in their magnitude. I understand the explanations for poltergeist activity is quite different from the explanations for telekinesis, yet still I wonder if they may be connected. I think using a Ouija Board and a Pendulum may be similar…..the subconscious mind affects the movements of the planchette and the pendulum, and potentially affects poltergeist activity without the awareness of an individual. I’ve watched a Ouija planchette move on a board with NO ONE touching it at all, just two people sitting with their hands in their laps and watching the board while the planchette moved and spelled out words. Very disconcerting and eerie, almost frightening. Who knows the full power of the Mind? It’s phenomenal.
I figure that must be a connection of some sort between psychokinesis and poltergeist activity. Strange story about the ashtray!