Uri Geller

Despite attempts to debunk the mind tricks, Uri Geller achieved an international reputation and captivated many fans.

In November 2017, “The Vanilla Ice of Magic” Criss Angel tried putting a curse on Uri Geller. And Geller did suffer a stroke as a result. A stroke of genius, that is. To Angel’s dismay the result was not apoplexy. Geller had anticipated this malicious psychic blitz and was ready.

Uri Geller turned it into a stroke of good luck. Rather than leaving Geller impaired, Uri’s mind power doubled in the subsequent month.

Uri Geller’s Life

Geller's family moved to Nicosia, Cyprus, at the age of 11, where he attended Terra Santa College, a high school, and studied English. At the age of 18, he joined the Paratroopers Brigade of the Israeli Army, in whom he participated in the 1967 Six-Day War and was wounded in action. In 1968 and 1969, he worked as a photographic model; during that period, he started performing as a nightclub entertainer for small audiences, becoming well-known in Israel.

Geller began playing in theatres, public buildings, auditoriums, military bases and universities in Israel for the first time. By the 1970s, in the United States and Europe, Geller had become known. The scientific community, whose members were interested in studying his recorded psychic abilities, also received attention. He worked full-time at the height of his career in the 1970s, performing for television audiences internationally.

Still, at 75 years old, Geller remains active as a painter and author of self-help books. Uri Geller was born on December 20, 1946 in Tel Aviv, Israel to Itzhaak Geller (a chemical engineer) and Manzy Freud (a psychologist). He is married to Hanna Geller since 1979, and has two children, Natalie and Daniel.

As a child, Geller showed an interest in mathematics. He was educated in a Bnei Akiva Yeshiva, and spent six months at the Pinnacle International Hotel Management School in Israel. Geller worked as a waiter at the Playboy Club in London to learn English; he then enrolled at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France, but dropped out after four months. At the age of 20, Geller moved to London and worked as a waiter at the Marrakech Restaurant in Jermyn Street.

In 1967, Geller was drafted into the Israeli army. After leaving, he participated in amateur science experiments. It was this time when others his abilities. and started performing small levitation feats in public for his friends and family. His first major performance was on Channel 1 with Kovner from Israel Television (now known as Channel 2). Next, Geller performed at the Cowdray Park Hotel before several hundred guests.

Geller performed his well-known charm by placing one hand over his heart with fingers outstretched while describing an imaginary geometric design. Rumors of Geller levitating objects with his mind circulated. But critics have attacked Uri for being a quack cold reader.

Geller has consistently denied claims of fraud, stating that he is able to bend spoons with only the power of his gaze. Geller performed many feats under controlled conditions before the London skeptical community and British media. His first book The Geller Agenda, published in 1975, was an attempt to reconstruct some of these events; it also highlighted the scientific skepticism of his performance methods.

In 1984, Geller began a successful career as a writer and teacher. In 1998, Geller wrote a second book I Can Feel You Thinking. In the "Can I Feel It?" session he left a sandwich on the table and was able to tell when it was touched by a blindfolded subject through his telepathy. Geller's third book, Presence, published in 2004, is an exploration of the human mind. His fourth book, The Face of Miracles, published in 2007, recounts his experiences with psychics and mediums and includes documented examples of his paranormal feats.

In 2004, Geller began an eight-month performance tour to promote awareness on mental health issues. He performed in England, and also visited the U.S. and Mexico to help mentally ill patients receive better treatment. In December 2009, Geller visited Turkey to participate in an event promoting Israel-Turkey reconciliation and friendship; he performed alongside other Israeli performers at the DOME International Shopping Mall in Antalya. From 2010 to 2012, Geller toured Australia and New Zealand with his mentalist performance entitled "Uri Geller LIVE!"

Geller hosted an Israeli paranormal reality series called "The Successor" (2010). Contestants took part in challenges where they tried to demonstrate their paranormal abilities by attempting to duplicate feats that they had seen before on a previous show. Geller also hosted the Israeli version of the TV show "Minute to Win It" (2012), where contestants had to perform a series of difficult challenges.

In 2013, Geller partnered with Channel 10 in Israel to create a 12-part documentary series entitled "Uri Geller: The Russian Files", which was broadcast on Israeli television in 2014. Geller investigates the origins of his psychic abilities and manages to replicate famous incidents from his youth where he bent spoons and sawed through metal with his mind.

On November 19, 2017, Geller suffered a severe stroke that left him paralyzed on the left side of his body and affected his ability to speak.

During the 1970s, Geller introduced his "Mysterious Psychic" television show to French television and also began performing in the U.S. and Japan. Geller allegedly passed lie detector tests during these performances; however, critics claim that his results were achieved by altering his nervous system with hypnotism techniques.

In a laboratory setting, Stuart Karten and his colleagues at UCLA tested Geller's claims of psychokinesis through experiments involving Karten holding a piece of paper over a candle flame with one hand while he had a force placed on it by one of Geller's telekinesis demonstrations with his hand from another room. As Geller was not present to keep his hand on the paper, the experiment failed to duplicate his results.

In 1995, Uri Geller sued James Randi for libel. The trial lasted two weeks over a period of three days. On October 19, 1996, a jury found that Geller had not deceived Randi into believing that he controlled objects or had psychic powers. Geller won £95,000 in damages after Randi was found guilty of libel.

Geller has continued to perform at U.S. and British theatres, including the King’s Theater in London, where he performed at the Royal Albert Hall during Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

In a 2007 interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today", Geller was asked if he believed that aliens had visited Earth. Geller replied, "Not that I have seen. There is a large mass of people who think they are seeing them, but I don't know anything about them."

Geller also stated in an interview:

I don't believe in UFOs because I don't believe in aliens. I believe in people who do things that are not normal.

Uri Geller has established UriGeller.com, a website featuring a variety of paranormal products. Geller is the author of several books, including "I Can Feel It" (1975), "Presence" (2004), "The Face of Miracles" (2007), and "The Russian Files: A Journey To The Heart Of The Mind" with Uri Gellar, published in 2013 by Random House.

In the 1970s, an issue arose over what he claimed to be psychic powers and how he was using them in his performances. In 1975, Geller played with spoon-bending on the British television program Blind Date (episode 9).

Uri Geller’s Career

Geller won notice for exhibiting what he believed to be psychokinesis, dowsing, and telepathy on television. His success included spoon bending, explaining secret sketches, and stopping or running watches faster. By determination and the strength of his will, Geller said he performs these feats. Magicians and critics say that Geller has been caught cheating and his performances can be duplicated by stage magic tricks.

Geller published his first autobiography, My Life, in 1975, and admitted that his manager talked him into incorporating a magic trick in his early career to make his performances last longer. This trick involved Geller appearing to guess the car registration numbers of audience members, when his manager had given them to him in advance. The sceptic James Randi, who accused Geller regularly of attempting to pass off magic tricks as paranormal shows, was one of Geller's most influential critics. Randi wrote the book The Truth about Uri Geller, denying Geller's arguments, and also using stage magic methods to replicate Geller's performances.

Geller was described as "a millionaire several times over" by the mid-1980s and reported to be providing mineral dowsing services at a regular fee of £ 1 million for mining groups. The Australian Skeptic announced in June 1986 that Geller had been paid AU$349,000 and, until 5 June 1987, given an option of 1,245,000 Zanec shares at AU$0.21 each.

Directed by Johannes Roberts and James Eaves, Geller starred in the horror film Sanitarium (2001). In May 2002, he appeared as a contestant on the first series of the I'm a Celebrity reality TV show... Get Me Out of Here! In 2005, Geller appeared in Uri's Haunted Cities: Venice, an XI Pictures/Lion TV production for Sky One, which led to a behind-the-scenes release called Cursed in early 2008; both productions were directed by Jason Figgis. He was the first to be removed and finished in last place. Geller hosted a reality show in Israel in early 2007 called The Successor, where the contestants allegedly showed supernatural powers; the program was criticized by Israeli magicians, saying it was just magic tricks. To look for the next great mentalist, NBC signed Geller and Criss Angel for Phenomenon in July 2007; contestant Mike Super won the role. Geller started hosting the TV show, The Next Uri Geller, in January 2008.

Paranormal assertions

In 1971, parapsychologist Andrija Puharich met and supported Geller as a true psychic. Under hypnosis, Geller believed that extraterrestrials had brought him to Earth from a spacecraft 53,000 light-years away. Geller later dismissed the allegations of space imagination, but believed there "is a slight possibility that some of my energies do have an extraterrestrial connection."

Puharich also said that Geller teleported a dog through his house's walls. Science author Martin Gardner wrote that because "no expert on fraud was there as an observer," the argument could not be taken seriously by anyone.

Geller has suggested that his exploits are the product of extraterrestrial paranormal powers given to him. Critics such as James Randi have shown that with stage magic techniques, Geller's tricks can be replicated with just half Geller’s charisma.

In the early 1970s, an article in The Jerusalem Post claimed that after discovering that he had committed fraud by stating that his feats were telepathic, a court ordered Geller to refund the ticket price of a customer and pay court costs. A 1974 article also suggests that Geller's abilities were trickery. The article stated that his manager Shipi Shtrang and the sister of Shipi, Hannah Shtrang, were secretly hidden.

Puharich stated in his biography of Geller, Uri: A Journal of the Mystery of Uri Geller (1974), that Geller had interacted with superintelligent outer space computers. "According to Puharich, the computers sent messages to warn humanity that if humans do not change their ways, a catastrophe is likely to occur. The psychologist Christopher Evans, who reviewed the book in the New Scientist, wrote that although Puharich believed every word he had written, the book was credulous and "those Geller fans who might have hoped to use the book as ammunition.”

In The Geller Papers (1976), edited by Charles Panati, the spoon bending feats of Geller are presented. When it was released, there was controversy. Several famous magicians came forward to prove that stage magic could replicate the psychic feats of Geller. Martin Gardner wrote that Geller's trickery had fooled Panati and The Geller Papers were an "embarrassing anthology."

Many scientists, magicians, and skeptics have proposed potential ways in which Geller may have fooled his audience by using techniques of misdirection. These opponents, including Richard Feynman, James Randi, and Martin Gardner, accused him of fraudulently using his demonstrations outside the entertainment business.

Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist said that for him and his son, Geller was unable to bend a key. Watchmakers have described some of his arguments as simply restarting a stopped mechanical clock by moving it around.

Geller was asked to investigate the abduction of Hungarian model Helga Farkas in 1992. He expected that she would be in good health, but she was never discovered and is generally believed to have been killed. Geller was Bruce Bursford's friend and helped him "train his mind" in the 1990s during some cycling speed record-breaking offers.

Geller has stated that his riches resulted from being commissioned as a mineral-dowser since the release of his first novel, My Story in 1975. Sceptics reported in 2007 that Geller seemed to have dropped his arguments that he was not doing magical tricks. Randi highlighted a quote from the Magische Welt (Magic World) magazine in November 2007 in which Geller said, "I'll no longer say that I have supernatural powers. I am an entertainer. I want to do a good show. My entire character has changed."

Geller told Telepolis in a later interview, "I said to this German publication, so what I said was that I changed my character to the best of my recollection, and I don't mean I do supernatural things anymore. It doesn't mean I don't have powers. It means I don't say, 'it's supernatural,' I say, 'I'm a mystifier!' That's what I said. And the skeptics turned it around and said, 'Uri Geller's skeptics said, “Uri Geller's supernatural.’”

In the TV show “The Next Uri Geller” (a German version of “The Successor”) in February 2008, Geller claimed that before winking to the camera, he had no supernatural powers.

The Guardian revealed in March 2019 that Geller wrote an open letter to British Prime Minister Theresa May saying that he would telepathically prevent her from leading Britain out of the European Union. In the words of Geller, "As much as I admire you, I will stop you telepathically from doing this – and believe me I am capable of executing it."