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Uri Geller

Do you think Uri Geller is......

  • Absolutely genuine

    Votes: 1 1.4%

  • An entertainer with no special powers

    Votes: 22 31.4%

  • Not sure

    Votes: 15 21.4%

  • Conman

    Votes: 32 45.7%
  • Total voters
    70
never heard of hoova, but i remember reading(i think in cosmic trigger) that gellar believed he was getting messages from an invisible spaceship called spectra that was in earths orbit. at the time, evidently there were several other people having similar experiences; phillip k. dick for one(he called it valis) and, according to robert anton wilson, many other scientists/thinkers who were too worried about the backlash to come out and talk about it.

a few others i suspect on that list; jack sarfatti, terence mckenna, john nash(of beautiful mind fame).
 
Andrija Puharich was more or less written out of that documentary. His
name was mentioned, his photo flashed up on the screen and that was
it. In fact he was Geller's Svengali, impressario and first biographer.

It was under his aegis that Geller came out as a contactee and started
to relay messages from "The Nine", a group of alien entities rather predictably
dedicated to moving humanity on to a new stage of awareness.

I am not clear exactly when Uri told Andrija to fork off. Anyway the whole
colourful episode is well chronicled in contemporary sources, such as The
Unexplained part-work. :rolleyes:
 
It's only fitting I suppose. Space is, after all, a vacuum.

I'll get me coat, don't worry.
 
URI GELLER “Back from the Jungle”

URI GELLER
CONGRESS THEATRE
Carlisle Road
Eastbourne BN21 4BP
Tel: 01323 412000
Credit Card Hotline: 01323 411555
Email: [email protected].
Saturday 15 February 2003


“Back from the Jungle”

Uri Geller is the world’s most investigated and celebrated paranormalist, famous for his mind-bending psychic powers and positive mental energy. This event is not about spoon bending – come and learn how to develop your intuitive powers. The power of healing – the power of prayer – the power of intention. Don’t forget to bring your broken clocks and watches…

Performance Times:
7.30pm


Ticket Prices:
£10.50, £12.50, £14.50
Click to expand...

I can't decide whether to go, just out of curiosity! Anyone else fancy it?

Kitty.
 
At the official Uri Gellar site:

http://www.uri-geller.com/

He seems to like what New Scientist is saying:

This ten-page special report inside New Scientist, by Robert Matthews and John McCrone, compares parascientific research with traditional science and draws some positive conclusions.

Recent studies of ESP, for example, are shown to have produced weightier evidence than tests on the drug streptokinase, which dissolves blood clots and has been hailed as a medical breakthrough.

I believe parascience is finally entering the mainstream, as advances in our understanding of sub-atomic physics begin to give us a framework for evaluating what really happens during telepathy and psychokinesis, for example.

The stance of New Scientist has changed greatly in the 30 years since it ran a cover story scoop ‘exposing' me as a trickster who had radio receivers wired into his wisdom teeth! In 1974, scientists could say anything they liked about psychics: no slur was too extravagant. In 2004, it's the scientists and not the psychics who are setting the agenda on parapsy research.
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I saw Mr Geller live once. He rather cheapened the proceedings by passing off an old parlour trick (in which four volunteers 'levitate' someone) as a paranormal phenomenon. Apparently this is a staple of his shows: I quote the relevant passages from one of James Randi's commentarys (http://www.randi.org/jr/101003.html).

---------------------------------------------------------------

The show opened with footage of Uri Geller performing a very well known levitation trick whereby four people levitate a seated volunteer. Interestingly, nothing ever levitates, but I suppose introducing the trick with "Now I will prove to you that four people can together lift one person!" just doesn't sound as impressive. The four failed to raise the person in the seat at first but then, after using Geller's incredible technique of putting one hand above the other, the volunteer could be easily lifted. Uri suspected that the gravitational field had been altered to make things lighter. And what sane person would disagree�?

Psychic performer Alistair Cook then replicated the effect. His results were as impressive as Uri's, with his participants adamant that the person they were lifting really had seemed lighter on the second attempt. But just as I was contemplating how this technique could make me look damned impressive in the gym, a voiceover spoilt it all — "Uri suspects this is how they built the pyramids...we think it can be explained by simple physics."

Alistair demonstrated the effect again but this time on a large set of scales. And disappointingly, the weight never changed. It seems it really is possible for four people to lift one person. Who would've thought? Not the most sensational of tricks, but it's an important point that Geller's performance was included. They weren't hiding their opinion behind "some people may claim this trick uses special powers, but it uses nothing of the sort," but very much saying "Uri Geller claims this trick uses special powers, but it uses nothing of the sort.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Incidentally, Uri's method of selecting an audience member to be 'levitated' was in itself a neat sleight of hand trick:

Uri: I'd like someone of - how can I put it - larger than average build to volunteer for this - just to show how amazing this is!

A very plump lady stands up

Uri (hurriedly) No, no, not you.... um, any Male volunteers?

Some rather hefty gentlemen, and one chap of average build stand up. Uri points excitedly at Mr Average

Uri: Yes, you sir!
 
Uri Loves Maggie?

I've got to admit, having just checked out the swami's site, if there's anything supernatural about Geller, then it's the immense size of his ego.

I did try to grab the picture of him cuddling the aged crone, Thatcher (for satirical purposes), but his site's got some active copyright protection in case his self aggrandizing piccies get nicked and misused.

The guy must be psychic! :D
 
Re: Uri Loves Maggie?

AndroMan said:
I've got to admit, having just checked out the swami's site, if there's anything supernatural about Geller, then it's the immense size of his ego.

I did try to grab the picture of him cuddling the aged crone, Thatcher (for satirical purposes), but his site's got some active copyright protection in case his self aggrandizing piccies get nicked and misused.

The guy must be psychic! :D
Click to expand...

LOL! What? this picture? I managed to bypass his psychic protection field- just by the power of my mind.

I feel a caption competition coming on.
 
Do I recall correctly that UG was a stage magician once upon a time?
 
He does love his celebrities. At the performance I attended, Uri was constantly dropping the names of people he'd met. Rather irritating - and at one point quite distasteful:

Uri: I was actually in New York myself on September 11th when the planes hit the twin towers. I was making a video with N*Sync and Michael Jackson...

(Some rather ominous murmuring is heard from some of the audience, offended at Uri's compulsive name dropping in the context of such a tragic event. Uri ploughs on regardless..)

Uri:...Not many people know this, but I actually designed N*Sync's logo! I came up with the idea of using the asterisk!

He also had a habit of referring to himself in the third person. For example - eventually he got round to bending a spoon, which he signed with a marker pen then flogged to the audience;

Uri: Okay, who wants this spoon? I'll tell you what, I'm going to auction this spoon - right now, for charity. You can actually buy a spoon thats been bent by Uri Geller. Who'll give me fifty pounds?

(A couple of hands raise half heartedly. Uri looks a trifle dissapointed)

Uri: Come on people, it's for charity! I'll tell you what: if you buy this spoon, you can come and have tea with me at my house. Really, I mean it. You'll actually get to visit Uri Gellers house!

(A picture of a gorgeous white mansion flashes up on the overhead projector. Uri glances fondly at it..)

Uri: It's a nice house. You'll like it!

In the end, the spoon went for £250
 
hedgewizard said:
Do I recall correctly that UG was a stage magician once upon a time?
Click to expand...
As far as I know he was a stage magician in Israel as a young man. I first came across that bit of information in the early Eighties, though I can't remember where.

So, perhaps that might explain a professional jealousy angle re. The Amazing Randi, and the fact that Geller seems to have worked up the ultimate shell game.

;)
 
Wasn't thinking so much professional jealousy as mundane explanations fo his "abilities." Spoon bending is an old illusion, and even a novice can do it. It just seems to me that a professional magician is not a very creditable candidate to discover they have abilities that are all found in the trick catalogs.
 
Wasn't thinking so much professional jealousy as mundane explanations fo his "abilities." Spoon bending is an old illusion, and even a novice can do it. It just seems to me that a professional magician is not a very creditable candidate to discover they have abilities that are all found in the trick catalogs.

Hmmm....I think I see Barnum's Dictum in action here.
 
hedgewizard said:
Wasn't thinking so much professional jealousy as mundane explanations fo his "abilities." Spoon bending is an old illusion, and even a novice can do it. ...
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I was thinking more as regards, one professional magician regarding another, who happens to have a come up with a better, if decidely dodgy, pitch to bamboozle the punters.

A second career as Skeptical Debunker In-Chief must have seemed like a real bonus.

And I'd still like to see anybody do the old spoon bending trick quite as well as Geller. ;)
 
You're right about that, UG has showmanship. Think of how well he could have if he hadn't decided to try the game he's playing today.
 
Well he didn't do it that well when I saw him do it. Although there was a close-up of his hands showing on the overhead projector, he was waving them around so much you really couldn't see what he was up to - also when he finally stood still and assured us "look - it's still bending even after I've finished stroking it" you could only see the bowl of the spoon - the handle was concealed in his palm.

Plenty of astonished gasps coming from the audience, though. I guess they thought they were seeing what Uri told them they were seeing, rather than what was actually in front of their eyes.
 
Coy

Gellar was youthful and had charisma, as well as chutzpah. His illusions weren't original and weren't especiallly good -- as contrasted, say, with a good close-up magician doing coin and card manipulations five inches from your nose and you left none the wiser -- but the way he sold them appealed to a craving for something more. He had the benefit of good timing, in other words -- psychic research was acceptable then and people wanted to think there was more than atheistic materialism. (I still think there is whether we're allowed to or not.)

And Gellar was one other thing: Coy. He flirted, he seduced, and he hinted at larger, more mysterious things. Anyone here read the Andrijah Puharich book about Gellar? In it we're treated to a litany of amazing things that happen in Uri's presence, including a white hawk that appears when he goes traveling. What to make of it all? Where does the symbolism lead?

Were this a work of fiction the book would bring it all to a gratifying conclusion but, since it's ostensibly based on life observations, we're left to piece it together ourselves.

Uri, by being coy, hints that he is a Chosen One and just maybe ET, in whole or in part.
 
It's Uri and the wot won it!
Nov 20 2005
By Sunday Mercury

URI Geller and the Sunday Mercury scored a soccer miracle last night by helping relegation-threatened Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion to sensational victories.

The world-famous psychic last week pledged to transform the fortunes of our struggling Premiership teams through the power of positive thinking.

And last night it appeared his magic had worked as Villa romped to a 3-1 victory at Sunderland and the Baggies scored a 3-0 win over Everton.

Villa, West Brom and Birmingham City FC had all become hot favourites for the drop after an alarming run of defeats.

But then Uri challenged Midland soccer fans to join him in a Sunday Mercury experiment to harness the positive energy of their minds and help results on the pitch.

The celebrity psychic can complete his hat-trick of Midland soccer match miracles when Blues take on Bolton tomorrow night.
Click to expand...

link

umm yeah, riiight :err:
 
So can some footie fan tell us what did happen when Blues took on Bolton?

(Too lazy to search for it myself!)
 
Personally I think UG's a bit of smarmy git.

But the thing that struck me last time I saw him on something, was his sheer dedication at clinging to what is a total sham. If I was him I would have got deeply fed up of lying about everything for so long. So he's probably motivated by money and the fact that he can lie back and think 'heheh all those mugs I'm fooling! All that loverly cash!'. But I'd be bored of it by now.
 
I ultimately don't care if Geller is genuinely paranormal or not as he only seems to use his 'abilities' as a vehicle to impart a generally positive message, unlike magicians who charge audiences to be tricked into believing nonsense like levitating conjurers and disappearing statues...
 
I voted "Not Sure" because I think that UG is a magician and an entertainer, and may be a conduit of sorts even if he isn't aware of that.

For example, in the way back when, UG was doing some sort of remote event via radio. The idea was that while he was speaking, the listener could hold onto a broken watch and the watch would start ticking (whether the listener had the choice of holding onto a different broken object, I don't remember).

So, I held my long-since stopped wrist watch. A few minutes into UG's talk, my watch started ticking. I glared at it (glaring because I wanted UG to be only a conman), let the watch tick away for a minute, then told it to stop -- which it did immediately.

The stopping got to me more than the starting. I began to wonder if something in the way UG was talking got to my brain which, in turn, somehow started the watch.

So, UG might be a conman or just an entertainer, but he seems to have influenced at least one odd event.

Did all that make any kind of sense?
 
I voted "an entertainer with no special powers".

He even lacks the special power of being entertaining these days IMO.

I suppose it is possible that he does have a PK talent that simulates the abilities of a semi-competent conjuror. :twisted:
 
Psychic Geller buys Elvis's home
Psychic spoon-bender Uri Geller has bought a house lived in by Elvis Presley before he moved to Graceland.
He expects the home in Tennessee, which was auctioned on eBay for $905,100 (£481,000), to be restored and opened to the public.

"We are unbelievably pleased. This is a piece of history," said Geller, a former friend of Michael Jackson.

Geller met Presley in Las Vegas in the 1970s when the rock 'n' roll star asked him to perform his spoon-bending trick.

"As the clock closed on the bidding [on] Sunday, I felt intuitively I got the price," Geller said.


"Suddenly the radio started playing an Elvis song. That was Elvis telling me we got the house."
Geller, who bought the house with two others, said he hoped to take children on tours of the restored property and eventually turn it into a museum.

New York lawyer Jim Gleason and Swedish-born jewellery maker Lisbeth Silvandersson, who lives in England, were his partners in the purchase.

Presley bought the four-bedroom home in 1956 with his royalties and lived there with his parents and grandmother.

He stayed for only a year because his career began to take off and police were frequently called to handle the crowds of fans outside.


In the short time that Presley lived there, he had a granite swimming pool installed in the garden, which at 15 metres (50 feet) in length was the largest residential pool in the city at the time.
He also added a den and housed his motorcycles in a separate building. The hall contains original wallpaper adorned with musical notes, which was uncovered during renovations.

A Life magazine article published five months after Presley bought the house contained pictures of teenage girls sitting with their ears pressed to his bedroom wall.

They were also picking through the grass in his garden for souvenirs.

Mr Gleason said the group wanted to turn the house "into a museum-quality piece of Americana".

In March 1957, Presley moved to Graceland, the home with which he would become synonymous.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 985428.stm

Published: 2006/05/16 09:58:33 GMT

© BBC MMVI
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I love the way Geller has wormed his celeb way in with Michael Jackson, and by default, Elvis. Though, MJ was married to Lisa Marie...hmmmm

This post could be on 6 degrees of separation... :lol:

I remember seeing Geller in the 70's. I have watched, with mild, mild interest over the years, and have read bits and pieces. I think he is an entertainer and magician with a good gimmick.
 
i bet he'll find elvis hiding in the attic or at least psychic vibes which show that elvis was hisiding in the attic between 1981 and 1985.[/quote]
 
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