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April 18, 2011 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
56:57
Edition 57 - Uri Geller

This show features a man who calls himself The Mystifier. Uri Gellers travelling the planetwith his hit television series... but we caught up with him in a break from the latest live series – forSwedens Kanal 5.

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Thank you for returning to the show and thank you to the legions of people who are now emailing the show with ideas, thoughts about the show, suggestions, telling me where I've got something wrong, suggesting where I can get something right.
It's all part of the mix.
Go to the website www.theunexplained.tv and you can reach me that way.
Just simply send me an email and I do get to see every email.
I don't always get time to reply to them all immediately, but you will get a reply.
It may take a little bit of time.
Life has been a little busy.
Here in London at my day job, we're preparing for the royal wedding here on the 29th of April between Prince William and Catherine, as we're encouraged to call her now, Middleton.
It's a big deal, and the whole world will be watching.
And something, I guess, if the weather is right and if the organization goes right, we can be very, very proud of.
Britain does these things really well, and I think that is just an established fact.
Now, before we get to the special guest on the show this time, I just want to tackle a couple of things, and the most important one is this.
I've been hearing from a few people who like to repost parts of these shows, and in one or two cases, whole shows, in other places.
Now, a lot of these people, in fact, almost all of them, have not been contacting me first.
And I don't think that that is right.
What I'd like to do, because it's important to me how these shows are presented, is if that's what you do and you want to take five minutes of this show and put it somewhere else, that's okay as long as, number one, you contact me first and ask me.
I think that's only fair because if it was you, I would do it with you.
And we agree which bit of the show you're going to use, where you're going to put it, and then agree that you will put a link to this website so that whoever's hearing that can hear the rest of the show.
That said, I don't have a problem with people doing that.
If people do that without asking me first or try to take whole shows, I don't think that's fair.
You know, I'm not here as some great money-making, profit-making corporation.
That's not me.
I'm just me by myself.
One person suggested that I was making money out of these shows.
I'm not making big profits out of these shows.
In fact, these shows don't even cover their costs.
I do it because I love it and because a lot of you like it too and tell me that you do.
And I'd like to one day develop this into something far bigger, maybe even a whole radio station.
It can be done.
And the only thing that holds it back is money.
One day, somehow, I might be able to raise the funds to do what I know I can do.
I've got the skills and the contacts and everything else going.
The only thing that I don't have is the bank balance because for years I worked in radio.
And unless you're one of a select band of people, you do not get rich in this medium.
So that's where I am.
And that's why I ask for donations for this show, not because I'm trying to make a fat profit or any profit, just simply because I'm trying to keep it rolling forward.
So I hope that that's dealt with that.
And I do understand that some of you think that you can just take and reprocess this material.
I don't think that's fair.
And I hope you understand my point of view, that it's not because I'm precious about this work or anything else.
It's just that I'm trying to achieve something here.
And if you are doing this with the shows, I need you to ask me.
We need to agree which parts of the shows you would like to repost.
And we have to do it by agreement.
And we have to get it right.
That's all I ask.
You know, the broadcaster in me who's trained for all these years just wants to get it right, really.
So that's that.
Special guest this time is an old friend of the show and an old friend of mine, Uri Geller.
He's been taking his show around the world, the successor, called in some markets, Phenomenon.
He's doing it in Sweden at the moment.
And I actually saw it last night live from Sweden.
And wow, great show.
Not the kind of thing that I normally watch, but I thought it was really good, well executed, and I thought Uri came across really well.
But you can make your own decision about it.
We're going to talk with him about that and his life and times.
It's about 40 years now since he first burst onto the scene in the UK and the newspapers called him the spoon-bending psychic, Uri Geller.
Well, I think things have changed a little bit, and many of the things that Uri talks about and writes about are now very much in the public domain and are now very much commonly discussed and commonly debated and not laughed at anymore.
Have you noticed how in the last decade or so, 20 years even, things have changed, that we are now talking about life after death?
What are we here for?
Are we all connected?
And what are the powers of our minds that we might be able to unlock if we have the will?
I find all of this fascinating and I have for all of my life on this planet.
So we'll talk to Urigella in just a moment.
As I say, please keep the email coming.
Please keep the donations coming.
Two ways to do those things.
Go to the website, www.theunexplained.tv.
Actually, one way to do those things and two things to do.
It's been a very long day at work.theunexplained.tv.
And you can either make a donation or send me an email or even do both if you would like.
Thank you very much if you have emailed recently.
A lot of email from many people in different parts of the world.
North America, many, many more listeners, but also places like New Zealand, all the European countries.
We are making an impact.
It is word of mouth.
Please tell your friends.
And I'm glad that you're enjoying what I'm doing.
And whatever you say about this show, I do take it on board.
There was one guy who suggested that because the shows do not appear every week or every couple of days, that I'm not 100% behind this.
Believe me, I am, but life is not easy right now.
I have to get up at half past three in the morning, which I know I've said before, go to work, work some long hours just to pay my bills.
And whatever time is left is for the things that I enjoy.
And top of that list is this show.
All right, that's enough of that.
My great pleasure now to present to you from his home in the UK, my old friend and a man who is known throughout the world simply by name, Uri Geller.
Uri, thank you for coming on The Unexplained again.
Thank you, Howard, for inviting me.
Now, last night I sat here where I'm recording this show and via internet, which is kind of a measure of how the world works these days, I watched your live show from Sweden here in my home in London and was amazed.
It's not the kind of thing that I normally watch, I have to say, but I was enthralled by this.
And, you know, I can only say from my point of view, well done.
It was very good, enthralling.
Thank you very much.
And I'm back now.
You know, I landed a couple of hours ago, so I'm back home in England in my home in the tiny village of Soning.
And I've been living here for almost 30 years.
You are.
You are a fixture there, because I worked for the local BBC there in Berkshire many years ago.
And it's amazing how much you're a part of the community there.
People just kind of point to your home and say, oh, yeah, Uri Geller lives there.
Well, you know, Michael Jackson lived down there or whoever lived down there.
Uri Geller, he's there.
Well, you know, when you're in one place for such a long time, you get to know a lot of people.
But I love this area.
Very few people know this, but Sonning on Thames, the name of the village, used to be a healing center a thousand years ago.
And when I bought Sonning Court, the house, an older lady came up to me in the village and she said, oh, Mr. Geller, do you know Sonning was a healing center a thousand years ago?
And I said, oh, come on, how do you know?
She said, because it's in the doomsday book.
And indeed, a thousand years ago, there was an interesting fellow living in the village called Sarik, and he was indeed a healer.
And he used to heal people who were insane.
He would lay hands on them.
So I know that I'm in the right place.
Do you think you were guided there?
Do you think something guided you to that place?
Yes, yes.
I'm a great believer in synchronicity.
You know, Jung's famous coined word, synchronicity.
And I do believe that things are meant to happen.
There are no coincidences.
Everything in the universe is timed and synchronized.
And you meet people for a reason.
You go to places for a reason.
Everything happens for a reason, the bigger picture out there.
And it's very difficult to decipher sometimes why these things happen.
But I do believe that, yes, we are guided to certain areas and arenas and fields in our lives.
I used to work with a guy who used to say to me, everybody I meet has a purpose somewhere down the track.
If they don't reveal that purpose right now, if it's not clear to me, it will at some point in the future become clear.
And usually this guy who is now quite a big radio executive, usually he was right about that.
He would come across these people and five years ago they're not much use to him.
And now they've suddenly got a role in this organization.
So I guess you're right.
All the way down the track we connect with people and at some stage they have a part to play in this thing that we call life.
Absolutely.
And I do believe also, Howard, that we are all humanity, we are all connected to each other with some type or kind of an invisible spiritual thread.
And you know, this synchronicity theory ties in directly into what Albert Einstein wrote.
He became quite well known for his amazing scientific equations.
And one of them, which he discovered in 1924, and we will all remember it if you went to elementary school or high school, the famous equation E equals MC squared, where he scientifically, Albert Einstein, proved that everything in the universe is made from energy.
And he also proved, scientifically, that energy cannot be killed off.
You cannot destroy energy.
And that's why I'm such a huge believer in life after death.
It's no big deal for me to believe that because, hey, if Albert Einstein says and proved scientifically that energy cannot be destroyed, one must ask the question, hey, well, when we die, what happens to our energy?
What happens to our soul, to our spirit?
So yes, I do believe that life goes on into infinity.
We've talked about that before because I know that we both had very close deaths to us.
My mother died.
I think your mother died too around the same sort of time, some years back.
And do you believe that the spirit of your mother is somewhere around you as I believe that in my case, my mother, although she doesn't talk to me and I never see her, I just kind of believe that she's there somehow?
Oh, of course.
No doubt in my mind.
Look, I'm not a medium and I cannot contact the other side.
But I've seen things.
I've asked for signs from quite a lot of people.
You know that my wife Hannah and I, we open our house all year round to terminally ill children.
And they come here, again, I'm not a healer, but when I, for instance, bend a spoon for them, the spoon becomes almost like a placebo effect.
They're so amazed that I can then slide into talking about positive thinking and believing in themselves and getting the right therapy and the medicine and working with their doctors and so on.
And unfortunately, tragically, some children die because, you know, it is a terminal disease, a brain tumor or leukemia and so on.
Many of them obviously survive and are still alive and I get letters and emails from kids who were in my house 10 years ago and they're well into their 20s now.
But there are times when I actually talk about the possibility of death and life after death.
And I tell you this, Howard, I have received or we have received so many signs from kids from the beyond that is just so mind-blowing and unbelievable and emotional.
Again, the things that I have seen cannot be coincidence.
They're pure signs from beyond wherever they are.
I want to believe that there is a heaven or there is a paradise.
I'm a believer.
I'm a positive thinker.
There are always people in this world, though, and you hear from them more than I do who say, I want proof.
You say you've seen signs.
Can you think of one now?
Oh, of course.
Well, there was a boy, I think he was about 11 called Jonathan when he died.
He had a brain tumor.
He visited our house a few times.
I walked on the tall path on the river banks with him talking about, you know, life after death.
Anyhow, he left his tennis racket in my house, and on the anniversary of his death, a bird flew into the house and landed on his tennis racket and just stood on the tennis racket for at least 20 minutes.
Amazing.
And I really, again, you know, when I get a sign for my mother, it's always a bird.
A bird flies into the house.
But I have dozens and dozens of these types of, again, signs that correlate and are exactly happening on the day, the anniversary, the times.
Incredible.
So yes, you have to ask for these signs.
Again, I was not intending to talk about life after death with you, Howard, today.
But if, and most of us do have, you know, family members that departed passed over to the other side, ask for signs.
You will get them.
Some of you might even freak out and say, oh my God, this is incredible.
But if you ask, they will come.
It's a strange thing, you know.
I do believe that.
I have to say, I do.
And I always, it is strange, again, that we talk about this because you and I have talked about it on radio and also in recorded interviews that we've done before.
But I always connect you with that period in my life where my mom died because I came to see you at your home in Stoning and I was too early.
And there's a lovely theater there that I've known for many years called The Mill.
I hope it's still there.
But I parked in the car park there and on my mobile phone, I phoned my mother.
And to cut a long story short, she died two weeks after that.
She wasn't very well at the time, but the death was nevertheless a shock.
But I always kind of connect you and the conversations that we had around that time with that.
It's a strange, as you say, everything is synchronicity and everything has a purpose and there's a peg to hang everything on.
You know, that, in all these years that I've been here, I do believe.
What you don't know, Howard, probably, is that wherever you were with that telephone around the mill, that small theater in our village, my mother is buried, I would say, what, maybe 200 yards from there.
I've no idea.
None.
Yeah.
Wow.
So there you go.
And, you know, one more thing about Albert Einstein.
He said so many amazing and beautiful things, but one of the most touching one is Albert said, the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and all science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead.
His eyes are closed.
That's a beautiful quotation.
I've got to write that down.
When we've recorded this, I'm definitely going to write that down because I'm going to carry it with me in my wallet, I think, because I need to be reminded of it.
You know, the reason some of these quotes kind of reflect in my mind over and over is that throughout my career, as you know, I've been now around for, gosh, 40 years.
You know, I've been hugely controversial.
There are those who did not believe in what I demonstrated and I was attacked left, right, and center and so on.
Well, I have to say, Uri, before you go further with that, you know, I did a search.
I always do this with people who come on this show.
I always search them on the internet.
And of course, there are tens and tens and tens of thousands of pages about you on the internet.
You'd expect that.
But the top one that came up was how to fake psychic powers and debunk Uri Geller.
I love that because, you see, I'm going to boast a little here, but I'm a master of publicity.
I think that I'm one of the best PR people around.
Trust me, you are.
Absolutely, you are.
I knew, you know Howard, I knew how to take that controversy, the attacks, the skeptics who tried, some skeptics tried to debunk me and so on throughout my career.
I mean, from the day I came out on the scene in Israel in 1969, when I was young, obviously and naive, I thought that controversy will destroy me once and for all.
But then I realized that the more I was talked about, the more articles, whether they were positive or negative, brought more people to see me in the theaters.
And I still could not believe that I will last.
But when I arrived to America, you know, the CIA actually took me out of Israel and they studied me for quite a long time at Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto, California.
And by the way, they made a very interesting film and they kept it a secret in their vaults for decades and they just released it for publication.
That I would love to see.
I'd love to see that.
It's an amazing piece of film.
But I'll never forget the day that an agent booked me to do the Johnny Carson show.
And obviously, you know, Johnny Carson was the king of night talk.
You know, he was the most famous presenter or host in the United States.
And anyone going to do the Johnny Carson made it.
So I thought, wow, this is it.
I'm going to make it in the United States.
And I walked into a trap because Johnny Carson was a kind of an amateur magician.
And everything that he asked me to do was all set up by the amazing Randy, who is kind of my chief publicist in a way.
We have to say, though, James Randy is this man who is a magician, but also the biggest debunker in the world.
And I think he's the man who did offer, may still be offering, a million dollars to anybody who can prove that any phenomenon really exists.
Isn't that right?
Yeah, I guess I don't know if the challenge is still there, but you know, he was one of The kind of the leaders of debunking Uri Geller or exposing me and so on.
And everything failed.
The spoon didn't bend enough, and Johnny Carson made fun out of it.
And I was sitting there for 22 minutes, sweating.
And the only thought that went through my mind, Uri Geller, you're finished.
You better go home, back to your hotel, pack up, and get a ticket, one-way ticket to Tel Aviv, back to Israel.
And you can imagine I was totally devastated after this show, drained and tired.
I got to my hotel, which was in Los Angeles, and I fell on the bed and fell asleep.
The next morning, the phone rings, and the operator tells me, Mr. Geller, I have a Merv Griffin on the line for you.
Now, for those who don't know who Merv Griffin was, he was almost as big as Johnny Carson.
In his day, absolutely, yeah, yeah.
And he said to me, well, I couldn't believe it was Merv Griffin, but he said to me, Mr. Geller, I saw you last night on Johnny Carson.
I want you on my show today.
And that's when it dawned on me, Howard, that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
As long as they write about you.
And Oscar Wilde was so right when he said 100 years ago that there is only one worse thing than being talked about.
And that's not being talked about.
And how right that is.
I know that from my own life.
Let me tell you, Guri.
But the fact of the matter is, as I've found in this little journalistic broadcasting life that I've had, there are going to be people who don't believe you, don't like you, and are not going to help you.
But for every one person like that, it's balance in this world.
There's somebody else who takes a different view.
So, you know, we have to trust, I think, as people who are trying to achieve something in our lives to the fact that you may think that everybody hates you, but there's always going to be somebody who likes you.
There's a balance in all things.
Absolutely, Howard.
And also, you must understand you can't be loved or liked by everyone.
And, you know, this goes into any kind of well-known or famous individual, whether they're in sports or in the arts or they're singers or actors.
You know, you'll always find controversy around the successful person.
And, you know, that's how it goes.
It goes with the territory.
And I, after that show, I learned to accept it and then I used it.
And I knew how to reinvent myself.
I just went with the flow.
And I was just me, Uri Geller.
And I learned that the secret of success is originality.
As long as you're original and you have a little chutzpah and you have your charisma or your personality and character and you know how to activate them in harmony, you will always be successful in no matter what you do or try to do.
Now, you said to me, I want to come to the power of mind, which is so much a cornerstone of everything you've done in your life, but I don't want to lose this point.
You said to me that you've had to deal with people who've tried to debunk you.
Now, that's a fact.
We just know, you've only got to look at the internet.
We know that.
Read a magazine.
40 years you've had to deal with that.
What are they trying to debunk?
What are you?
There was somebody at work today, the radio station that I'm at at the moment who said, oh, don't ask Uri, is he a psychic?
He doesn't like that question.
Well, I think I've asked you that question before anyway, and I don't think you would mind that question.
But if debunkers have tried to debunk you over the years, which they have, what is it that they've been trying to debunk?
Are you a mentalist?
Are you a psychic?
Are you connected to some power beyond us?
Are you channeling something?
Or do you just have an incredibly powerful mind?
Or, of course, there's the other option, which, again, is reflected in some of those websites and postings.
This man could be a fake.
Well, look, first of all, the answer to your question is a very simple one.
Everyone is psychic.
All of us have some kind of intuitive power in us, whether it's extra sensory perception, ESP, or, you know, your dreams coming true.
I mean, you ask anyone, you're a radio presenter, and you pose a question, for instance, did you ever go to a place that you've never been before?
And suddenly you stopped and said, hey, this looks familiar.
I've been here before, but you've never.
So you kind of brush it off and you say it's deja vu.
But you have to ask yourself, what is deja vu?
How did you know how this place would look?
Or you think of someone that hasn't called you for a year and that day that you think about him or her, they call you that day.
I mean, there are dozens and dozens of these little examples that happen throughout our lives all the time.
All the time, and a lot of them we forget.
And I've got to give you one now because I think you will know the person I'm about to talk about.
But here in the UK, there is a television presenter who I worked with on radio for 10 years called Chris Tarrant.
Now, Chris devised a show called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and wherever you are on this planet, I think it got into 47 or 50 odd markets.
Became a great big show in different forms.
Well, I was in South Africa recently and staying at a game lodge out there for a night, just one night in this place, and it had satellite television.
And, you know, after a long day driving around looking at the animals, which I love, I love to connect with them.
I turned on the TV, having been talking about Chris Tarrant earlier.
And the first face as the television kicked into life on the channel that it had been left on, the first face I saw was Tarrant, 6,000 miles away from home.
And I just laughed.
And I looked up and I said, what are you trying to tell me up there?
That happens in my life all the time.
And I think if most people are honest with themselves, they've been through those things too.
And Howard, it happens to thousands of your listeners.
You know, we experience this phenomenon, whatever you want to call it.
And so that's the answer.
We all have psychic powers.
Now, I presented a few of my abilities or skills in a very controversial way that could be easily copied by magic.
And there are thousands of magicians today.
And by the way, there is this notion that magicians don't like me.
Rubbish.
I would say that most magicians actually respect what I do because if I wasn't around, mentalism probably would still be in its, you know, infancy.
I pushed mentalism into the world, and thousands of youngsters who saw me on television later on became successful mentalists and magicians and illusionists and so on.
Today, when I'm asked directly the question, are you real or not?
I say, look, I mystified so many millions of people in the last 40 years.
I think that the best name to call me, the best title is a mystifier.
And that is really my answer.
And I let people at home, you know, make up their mind whether they believe in me or they don't.
Right now, I have a very successful television series.
I've been on the road for five and a half years.
I created a show in Israel that was created out of a joke.
I was in Israel on a totally different mission.
I was negotiating with the Palestinians, with the Palestine Red Crescent and the Israeli Red Cross, to achieve an amicable deal.
And that's why I was in Israel.
And I got a phone call from a producer who said, we want to interview you.
And I said, okay, come to my hotel.
And when they entered the business lounge, I kind of looked at them and I said, you know what?
You should really find a new Uri Geller.
And both of them looked at each other.
And I realized that I just said the name of the show.
And it took us four months to brainstorm.
We rolled it out and it came out live and it broke all historical rating records in Israel.
And then immediately NBC in America bought it and then it went worldwide.
So I'm looking for the new me.
And when I go on the stage, the first thing I say, look, we're not claiming any supernatural powers.
I don't know how these mentalists do what they do.
And I don't want to know.
I care about one thing and one thing only.
I want to see the most mind-blowing performance in front of me.
This is not a science show.
This is entertainment.
It's a family show.
I want people at home to go, wow.
And this is really what Phenomenon is about.
In some countries, it's called Phenomenon, some the next Urigeller, the new Urigeller, the successor.
But it's just simply a great series.
I've never seen it before.
We talked about it five years ago when you were launching it, but I've never got around to actually seeing a full edition.
I did see the show from Sweden last night as we record this.
And there were some fascinating people on there.
And I love their style of presenting this.
But the guy who made an impact on me, and you know what I'm going to say, is a guy called Klass, I think you pronounce it.
And he had, I think, half a dozen nail guns, which are used, of course, by builders and people like that.
They're serious bits of kit, and I think they're driven by compressed air.
And you do not point one of these things at your body.
Well, this guy had one of those nail guns.
I think the way the mechanic of the thing worked had the nails in it and the others didn't.
Well, he went through putting each of these nail guns to a different part of his body.
And the last one, I think, was his head.
And he was about to pull the trigger and you shouted, no, stop this.
It was a moment of high tension, I have to say.
I'll tell you what, Howard, this act I have seen in other countries with my show, and every time it happens, I try to stop it because the idea is to shoot the nail gun into your arm or chest and not into your head.
Remember, this is a family show, and lots of kids are watching it.
You know, in many countries, like in Holland, my show, the new Rury Gallery, broke historical records of youth watching the show.
And I don't like this, and I try to stop it.
But, you know, these mentalists, they want to prove a point and they do, you know, I'm never successful in stopping them.
And there is drama, and I'll tell you this.
You know, people ask me, is this real?
I mean, because the celebrities, every week there are three celebrities, and the mentalist asks the celebrities to shuffle those nail guns.
And those nail guns are huge.
I mean, if a nail goes out into your head, you're dead.
Well, you are dead.
And the thing not only fires one, it fires about six, doesn't it, at a time?
And no matter, you know, what people think, whether it's real or a trick or an illusion or it's mirrors or whatever, mistakes can happen.
You know, because mentalists are humans, we as humans make mistakes, we're confused, we're stressed out sometimes, we're nervous, and we do mistakes.
Last week there was a girl who did the knife act where she slammed her hand onto cartons that had knives in them, and she had to guess which ones didn't have the knives.
And I've seen an Israeli mentalist hit the wrong carton and the knife pierced his hand, went through his hand.
So these things do happen.
In Germany, a girl almost drowned.
So you see, there's a lot of drama in this series, the new Uri Geller.
But it is always so fascinating and intriguing.
People love it.
And I think this is why in most countries the rating is very high.
I thought it was beautifully put together.
And if you do get a chance, wherever in the world you are to see one of these shows, I think they might be archived on the website of Channel 5 in Sweden.
Yeah, it's called Canal5.
It's KKANAL5.se.
But if you get on my website, urigeler.com, you'll find a lot of these videos on my website, including that secret film that the CIA released not long ago.
And I think you'll find it fascinating.
The man with the nail gun, though, Uri, can you swear to me that neither you nor him knew which of the nail guns had the nails in it?
Can you promise me that that is genuine?
Look, Howard, I don't know anything.
First of all, I don't choose the acts.
It's a production company that chooses acts.
I don't even know these mentalists when they come to be auditioned.
I don't know them.
And I sit in my chair and I view their performance exactly the way people view it at home.
And I have Absolutely no idea what is going on.
When I did this series in America for NBC, Chris Angel was my co-host.
And sometimes he would lean to me and tell me, Do you know how I did it?
And I said, No, I don't want to know.
I don't want to know.
I want to be surprised exactly the way the audiences see it at home.
And I think this is why this series is so successful.
And I've met now hundreds and hundreds of mentalists and illusionists and magicians.
And it is quite amazing.
All of them are just great individuals who have unbelievable skills and talents.
And to me, it is such an honor.
I'm so flattered.
And I'm so excited and privileged to be able to give them a podium.
And they are on national television every week.
Millions of people see them and they become famous.
So it reminds me when I was struggling, when I was in my early 20s.
Now, these guys who are on there, I say guys because, you know, they're not only guys, there are women involved in this too.
But there was a guy last night, Henrik, a mind reader, and I thought, well, you're really good.
Either you are psychic in some way or you have a skill that I would take 20 years to learn as a magician.
I couldn't decide, as you're telling me, that you don't want to know how these people are doing it.
But I'd had this faint feeling that this guy, Henrik, in particular, had some kind of mental psychic connection outside himself that was doing this.
It was just too good.
Well, you know, I'll tell you this.
If you gather, obviously, this is my opinion.
I don't think I ever said this on radio or on television.
But if you, let's say, collect 100 magicians, sit them in a room, and you go to each one of them and ask them directly, did anything supernatural or psychic or paranormal ever happen in your life?
Something that you cannot explain?
I bet with you that most of them will tell you yes.
All right.
Now, something that you said at the end of this show, I wrote down because I thought it was so good.
It was, what you visualize, you can materialize.
And this is something that you've been talking about for as long as we have known you, and that's 40 years.
It's the power of mind.
But isn't it funny that when you first started talking to us here in the UK about the power of mind, nobody really understood it.
But now we're in a world where people go into W.H. Smith's, the big bookseller here, or Waterstones, whoever, and they want to buy the secret or a book that talks about using the power of your mind to get the things that you need, desire, and want.
Well, you know, Howard, I look at myself.
I came from a very poor family.
My mother was a waitress and a seamstress.
My father wasn't at home most of the time.
We lived in a tiny one-room apartment in Tel Aviv, very poor.
And when I was five or six years old, I told my mother, Mom, I'm going to make it.
I'm going to be rich and famous.
I'm going to stop you from working.
I'm going to buy you a television set.
And you will see, I will make it.
You see, I didn't know, Howard, that already then, at the age of six, I was locked into something that is called the law of attraction.
You see, when we think, we emit an energy.
Remember, we go back to E equals M C squared, Albert Einstein.
Everything is made from energy in the universe.
You, me, the telephone I'm holding, everything.
And when you touch a wall or you bang a wall, it feels solid to you, but it's not solid, Howard.
It's energy.
It's vibrating in a certain frequency that feels to us to be solid.
Even when we think, we emit an energy from our mind.
And I believe that in the universe, as many books right now, there is a law beside the law of gravity, which we all know, that if you jump off a building, it doesn't matter if you're a good person or a bad person, you'll hit the ground.
But there's another law, and it's the law of attraction.
So the universe returns things that you ask for to you.
So if you are a positive thinker, you think, I'm successful, I will be an achiever, I will make it, I will get what I want.
I'm a positive thinker, good things will come into my life.
You're sending that message out to the universe.
The universe doesn't know between good and bad.
It returns what you're asking.
But if you think negative, I'm a loser, I'll never make it, I'll never be rich, I'll never have a new car, I'll never be able to buy an apartment, you're asking for that.
And the universe returns that negativity to you.
So I've learned it myself and it does work.
I don't know how to place it in a time frame, but it could be little things to big things.
So if all of you listeners out there who, you know, listen to Howard religiously, let's put it that way, then try it.
Try to wake up tomorrow.
And the first thing, put yourself, the first thing when you open your eyes, put yourself in an attitude of gratitude.
Just be content of what you have around you.
Then start thinking positive.
Okay, today will be a great day for me.
I will achieve everything I want, everything I desire.
So if you start your day in a positive mode, then you will start seeing that, wow, this really works.
Things are happening to me.
And that's how I've learned it.
And, you know, my shows today, that's show business, that's entertainment.
But throughout every series, I insist to do something positive.
Like yesterday, I don't know if you noticed that I asked people to come and touch the palm of my hand.
I tell them I'm not a healer and I'm not a guru, I'm not a prophet.
But I tell them think positive from now on.
If you held out your hand and you asked people to touch your hand on the screen, I have to say I did it.
I'm not sure if it helped, but I did it.
And I guess all the people watching that show, most of them, if they were close to the screen, they did it too.
Exactly.
And there's no doubt in my mind that I managed to touch a few people.
And when they heard my voice and they heard what I was saying, to think about positive things, I'm sure that many of the viewers, and there are tens and tens of thousands, would go back and say, well, wait a minute now.
Okay, maybe Uri is right.
Maybe I should think positive.
So in a way, I motivate people.
I'm a motivator today.
I try to inspire people.
Whenever I have the chance, I stop people from smoking.
I insist on that act too.
In Germany, I believe, I stop about 57,000 people from smoking.
Really?
Same in Russia.
So in my small capacity, Howard, I try to help.
On my website, I don't sell my books.
My books are available for anyone to read free of charge.
They're all loaded on my website and you may download them.
I'm not in the business of making any more money.
Yes, I have enough.
Yes, I became wealthy not from spoon bending, but from finding oil and gold.
But in a strange way, money doesn't inspire me anymore.
There's so much more than money.
You've got to find yourself.
You've got to touch spirituality.
You've got to find happiness.
You've got to help other people.
I believe that, again, in my small capacity, that's what I'm trying to do today.
Do you believe, Uri, that if you put good into this world, I've always tried to believe that, and it was my dear mom in Liverpool who instilled this in me.
If you try to do as much good as you can for people, good will come back to you.
It's almost like a mirror.
You're good to somebody.
Eventually, you're going to get that back.
And ditto, really, if you're bad to people.
Yes, of course.
Of course I believe that.
I think that if you emit goodness, you will receive goodness.
Sometimes it'll come back tenfold.
Have you ever had a negative thought recently, maybe?
At the end of the day, Howard, I'm just a human being.
You've got ups and downs in life.
But I'll never forget the worst thing that ever happened to me.
I mean, first of all, what can I say?
I'm a happy person.
I've got a great wife, Hannah, two great children, fantastic friends, you know, and millions of fans out there.
So how can I complain?
Look at what's happening around the world.
Look what's happening in Japan.
Look what's happening in Libya.
Look what's happening in Syria.
I mean, that's why I tell you all to be in an attitude of gratitude, because there are people who are far in a far worse situation than you are.
But what I was coming to is that if you help someone else, someone in need, it'll come back to you in an amazing way and maybe in a different way, but you will feel a power of achievement.
You will be empowered.
British politicians have this word that they keep using to me when I do news interviews with them.
They keep that lovely buzzword.
They keep talking legacy, the Olympics, the legacy.
Whatever we bring to Britain, there's got to be a legacy.
What is going to be the legacy of our political system?
What will be the legacy of the royal family?
Whatever.
It's all about legacy these days.
What would you like yours to be?
You know, Howard, whenever I'm asked about what I want on my tombstone and legacy, I really don't, don't, really care.
Because life goes on, you know, again, you've got to think of infinity and the universe and beyond.
And I really do not care because I see how things, you know, we as humans, we have a very kind of short span of attention.
You know, what's written about me today will not be remembered three weeks from now.
You know that, Howard.
Come on.
That's how the media works.
We are being bombarded day in, day out by news, being most of it negative.
You know, my best friend is the daughter of Gary Cooper.
Now, if you stop 100 people in the street in Oxford Street and you tell them, do you remember Gary Cooper?
Most of them won't even know who he was.
And yet, to those who do remember, he was a great actor.
We are forgotten very quickly, very quickly.
But that's fine.
That's what life is made out of.
We've got to look ahead.
And I'm almost like the headlamps of a car, a car driving in the middle of the night from, let's say, London to Reading.
And it's pitch dark.
And I see only the 10 meters that the headlamps shine.
And that's all I want to experience.
But then I get to those 10 meters and I see another 10 meters.
So that's how I go with the flow.
That's how I go with the stream of life, destiny.
And that's why I really don't look back.
So I don't really care what legacy I leave.
What you're talking about is living in the now, which a lot of people who write these books that sell at the big bookstores about self-improvement talk about all the time.
Well, you know, many of these books do help people, Howard.
There are tens of thousands of books, maybe even hundreds of thousands worldwide that teach people how to change their lives for the better.
And you can do it.
You must have that, again, to be in a frame of mind of believing in yourself.
When I get, you know, I carry my Blackberries wherever I go.
I get 300 emails a day.
Anyone who wants to email me, you'll find my email address on my website, origaller.com.
And believe it or not, I email you back.
I don't have secretaries who do it for me.
Hang on.
Are you telling me that you answer and reply to 300 emails a day?
Absolutely.
How do you do that?
When do you get time to do that?
Why do you get time?
People who tell you they don't have time, that's Rubbish.
You can find time.
Boy, I've got to talk to you one day about your time management skills because I need to learn them.
I just simply answer emails in airports, in restaurants, when I wait for people, when I go up to my hotel room where I exercise on my bike.
You know, you have a lot of time to burn when you're doing something else, for instance.
For instance, when I cycle an hour a day, I answer emails on my bike.
What's the big deal?
I pedal uphill.
My heart rate is at 140 beats per minute, but I can still answer emails.
But anyhow, when I get an email from a teenager anywhere around the world, and they tell me, oh, Mr. Geller, will you teach us how to bend a spoon?
My answer is this.
Forget spoon bending.
Instead, become a positive thinker.
Believe in yourself.
Focus on school.
Create a target goal to go to university.
Never, ever smoke, never ever touch drugs and think of success.
And that brings it down to the Matrix.
If you all remember The Matrix with Keanu Reeves, when he walks into the oracle and a child teaches him how to bend a spoon.
And the famous line, there is no spoon.
It's your mind that bends.
And there is going to be a legacy of Uri Gella that we will all create for you, we'll make for you.
It will be, I think anyway, and maybe I'm wrong, my listeners will certainly tell me I know that.
You were the first to encourage us to think about the power of mind.
I still see this picture of you pointing to your head.
It's the power of your mind.
I have to say, the power of my mind is not very strong, though, Uri.
While we've been talking, I've been holding a spoon right the way through this.
And I have to tell you, I haven't got your skill because nothing's happened to it.
I'll keep trying.
Well, you know, that throughout my hundreds and hundreds of TV shows worldwide, you know, I have this interactive act.
And I guess, you know, I would dare to claim that I started interactive TV when I first appeared on David Dimbleby in 1972.
And I looked into the camera and I was holding a fork and I said to people at home, everybody, go and get a spoon, go and get a fork, go and get your broken watches.
And, you know, people, I didn't realize I sent millions of people to the kitchen and everyone came back holding a spoon and broken watches.
We did it in Liverpool as a little boy.
I remember we ran to the kitchen, my mom and I, and we got out whatever we had and the old watches and all the rest of it.
And we did it all.
And, you know, when I did the demonstration and I said, one, two, three, bend, one, two, three, work.
The BBC's telephone system blew up.
So many people tried to call in in a panic saying, oh, I can't believe it.
My spoon bent, my spoon jumped off the TV.
My watch started ticking.
It was mass hysteria.
And that show made Uri Geller because the next day, I remember the mirror, I think, had a headline, Uri Geller puts England in a bend.
And that was it.
But it is a phenomenon because, you know, whenever I do fixing broken watches, for instance, I mean, you people at home now, listening to Howard and me on the internet, try it yourselves because it's not really my power that does it, it's you.
Go and get your broken watches, whether they're, you know, pocket watches that are over 100 years old, clocks and so forth.
Hold them in your hands, and I know it sounds ridiculous, weird and bizarre, but you have nothing to lose.
Shout at those broken time pieces three times.
One, two, three, work.
One, two, three, work.
And, you know, wind them up before you do it.
And again, one, two, three, work.
And then open your hands and look at the faces of your watches and clocks.
And if you have a second hand and if it started moving, make sure that Howard knows about it.
If you don't have a second hand, lift the watch of the clock to your ears.
If it's ticking, make sure Howard knows about it.
So this is amazing, and I guarantee you, Howard, you're going to have a lot of emails, a lot of text messages.
I don't know how you get messages from your listeners.
Mostly emails, I have to say.
To conclude this, a lot of people, the skeptics, say, well, of course, if you shake the watch or you wind it up or you warm the oil, it'll start nonsense.
Because let's say that a thousand people called up and claimed that their watches started ticking.
Among those thousands, let's say 50% are lying.
They just still want to get on radio.
Then let's take another 25% off and say, well, they shook the watch and it was, I don't know, there was a piece of dirt that stole and it started.
But then you're left with a 25% of pure phenomenon.
Because I had not hundreds, but thousands of reports in the last 40 years from people who came up to me and told me, Mr. Geller, you see this pocket watch?
It's 102 years old.
It belonged to my great-great-grandfather.
It broke and I took it at least 10 times to a watchmaker.
And each time they would send me back home and tell me, this watch is unrepairable.
There is a part broken or there is a part missing and the factory doesn't exist anymore.
Keep it as a sentimental object.
And the watch, the pocket watch started.
It started ticking.
I find that so extraordinary.
And this is why you asked me before whether I believe in my powers.
I believe in everyone's powers.
I think that I'm only a trigger.
I'm only a catalyst.
I'm an enabler to the power of your minds.
So all these people over the years who've said either Urigele did this through a TV show or Urigele did not do this through a TV show or a radio show, they're wrong.
What you were encouraging people to do is to use that thing we've been talking about, their own power.
We don't quite know what it is and how it works, but it's their own power.
You know, it brings me back to my youth when I was 11 years old living in Cyprus, and my stepfather had a hotel where football managers stayed.
And one of the managers saw me bending a key and he said, oh, Ori, come to meet my football players because we're at the bottom of the league.
Can you do something to help us?
So I would go every Saturday to the stadium in Nicosia, Has CB, and I would shout at them, Go and score goals.
You can do it, you can win.
And they won, and they won the championship that year.
I actually have a newspaper from 1963 with me running with the team holding the cup.
And many, many years later, I realized that I only inspired them.
I motivated them.
I empowered them.
I triggered that adrenaline in them, in their minds, to believe in themselves.
And I discovered this in UCLA when Dr. Selma Moss, a scientist, invited me to bend spoons and fix broken watches.
And I didn't know that she secretly videotaped me.
And indeed, watches started taking in the class, in her class in UCLA in Los Angeles.
Then I went back to New York, and what she did is she invited a new set of students with more broken watches.
This time, I wasn't there, but the video was.
And she stuck the video in the recorder, and she played my secret film that she filmed me.
And lo and behold, Howard watches started kicking in the class.
And when she called me in New York, she said, Or, you just repaired broken watches here in Los Angeles.
I said, no way.
What are you talking about?
I wasn't there.
I didn't even know that you were conducting this experiment.
Well, I'm kind of hoping that principle works with internet radio shows because, you know, I'd be very, very interested to hear.
And as you said, if that's happened for you, if you've given this a try, let me know and let Uri know about it.
Exactly.
Look, I want to sign off by saying this.
It was a pleasure being on your show, Howard.
And I'm grateful for the invitation.
And I want to send all my love to all your listeners.
Probably they're listening to you worldwide.
And if you want to ask me anything, simply email me and I will email you back.
It might take a day or two, but I will email you back.
So lots of love.
God bless.
And Howard, stay in touch with me.
Uri, I certainly will.
Thank you very much for being my friend and a good contact for me in all these years.
And also, I have to thank you now here for the couple of years that you supported me on that national radio show where you would travel to London on a Saturday night with Hannah, with the family, and you come to be on my show.
You wouldn't do it by phone.
You come into London to do it.
So thank you for that.
You know, I'm not going to compliment you because sometimes compliments are not kind of half-truths.
But you are one of the best presenters that I've ever met, and I've met hundreds.
You know, I have my own show every week into the United States, and I've been interviewed by so many great, great presenters.
But there's something about you, your energy, the buzz about you, your voice, your consistency, the topics that you choose, and the way you let people express themselves, your guests.
And that is a gift.
And you're gifted.
Well, that's very, very kind of you, Uri.
I am not worthy of that.
But the fact of the matter is I've always believed, in fact, my first news editor in Liverpool kicked this truth into me, that it's not about me or about the person doing the interview or writing the news story.
Not at all.
It's about the subject.
And a lot of people on radio and television forget that.
It's not about them.
It's never about them.
But that is a whole other debate.
Pleasure to talk to you, Uri.
Thank you, and lots of love to all of you out there.
Uri Geller here on edition 58 of The Unexplained.
And it takes me back to when I was a small schoolboy in Liverpool and he first started to appear in the papers in the UK.
And there were photographs of him in all of them, in now faded black and white.
That was all we had then.
And there he is, this young guy from Israel, holding a spoon that's clearly bent.
And he said it was by the power of his mind.
Of course, a lot of people have had various views on how that happened down the years, and he's still hearing those criticisms and those explanations of what he does.
But all those years on, the only thing I can say is, I can hold a spoon from now until next Christmas, and I can't do that.
It still fascinates me now.
Maybe it fascinates you too.
So the life and times of Uri Geller and thank you to Uri for making time for us.
His website is urigeller.com.
That's urigella.com.
My website is www.theunexplained.tv.
You need that if you want to get in touch with me or if you want to make a donation to this show, which would be gratefully received.
Thank you to Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool for getting this show out to you and for devising that fantastic website.
Thank you to Martin for the theme tune, but, as ever, thank you so much to you for listening to this show and for telling your friends about it.
Please keep the faith with us.
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