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June 26, 2014 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
53:08
Edition 163 - Uri Geller At Home

This time - recorded at his fabulous Thames Valley home - Uri Geller...

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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.
Well, a very special edition of this show.
It isn't very often these days that we get the chance to bring the show out on the road, but some people are worth making the effort and making the trip for.
I'm here with a very good friend, a man I've known for about 20 years or thereabouts, but I've been aware of him for most of my life, as indeed you will have been.
His name is Uri Geller.
Now, Uri and I first connected on radio in London back in the, what, 80s, late 80s, 90s, and just kept on talking here.
And I've always found, as you may have found, this man, fascinating.
Like a lot of people who've tried to encapsulate his life and times, it's difficult to say what Uri is, but the last time we spoke was by telephone from the scene of a TV series that he was doing in Sweden.
We kind of came around to the word unusualist, and we both felt comfortable with that word.
But look, I need to lay my cards on the table before I start all of this.
I believe that Uri has something, but I've never really understood what it is, so we're going to try and get to grips with that.
One of the reasons I'm here is that Uri's been getting some media coverage lately with reports that he is about to leave the United Kingdom.
At this moment, let me describe before I take you to Uri, who's sitting by my side here.
I'm sorry for the delay with this, Uri, by the way.
You know me for talking.
We're in Uri's beautiful home at a place called Sonning in Berkshire.
Now, I first discovered Sonning in the Thames Valley, right by the side of the River Thames, about 25 years ago, and I fell in love with this place and wanted to live here.
It is tranquility personified for me, and I'm guessing that's, we'll find out in a moment, that's one of the reasons that Uri Geller decided to be here, because it is so peaceful, so beautiful, and if you need time to think and concentrate and be yourself and do your work, I cannot think of anywhere better in the UK.
Plus, of course, it's really handy for London, which is another world away from here.
Uri has what I think you can describe probably as a mansion.
If you ever saw the TV series, The Beverly Hill Billies and the place that they lived in Los Angeles in Beverly Hills, it looks a little bit like that, and I mean that in the very nicest possible way.
Uri, thank you for listening to my ramblings there, and lovely to see you again.
Hey, thank you very much.
You're welcome, and again, thanks for having me on your show.
Since you started describing the house, actually Sonning Court, that's the name of the house, is loosely built after the American White House in Washington.
And we've been living here for 34 years.
You are right, this is a magical village.
And as a matter of fact, when I bought the house 33 years ago, an old lady came up to me and she said, oh, Mr. Geller, do you know that this used to be a healing center a thousand years ago?
Really?
So I said to her, well, come on, a thousand years ago, how would you know that?
And she said, it's in the doomsday book.
Now, to those who don't know what is the doomsday book, it's a thousand-year-old book where very unusual and interesting properties were registered 900,000 years ago and Soning on Thames and this property, this area was registered.
There was a healer in the village called Sarik who used to lay hands on ill people and heal them.
So I don't know what drew me here, call it synchronicity, coincidence, but we've been very happy here.
The house is built right on the bend on the River Thames, and I feng shui the whole place, the land, the inside of the house, the interior, the furniture, so the energies flow here.
I am a great believer in that.
And you did that 34 years ago, and let's face it, if you look around Chinatown in London, feng shui is really huge now, but back then, apart from places like Los Angeles and China itself, it wasn't so big, but you did that then.
Very much so, yes.
The house has a natural waterfall and three ponds with koi fish, and I brought in plants from all around the world.
When I traveled to Brazil, to the Amazon jungle, I got a plant for the garden.
I got plants from America, from Sweden, from Greece, from Israel, from Egypt, even from Syria.
So the garden is quite eclectic because I have a Toro gate, which is a gate from Japan that usually is in front of a shrine.
So yeah, it's an incredible place to meditate in and live in, and I do feel the positive energies here.
I mean, you mentioned the plants that you have here and the exotic species.
It is incredibly green.
And the last time I saw a home like this, it was being lived in by somebody who'd clearly done very well in American business.
And it was when I went to visit Maui, Hawaii, where a lot of people live in homes like this.
But this is in place here in Berkshire.
It looks right, but it would also be not out of place in Los Angeles or Hawaii.
That's true.
If you noticed, well, I guess you didn't notice because you rushed in here and I was on another American radio show which interviewed you since talk about synchronicity.
You were here and why not?
I think we should name check him because he name-checked me.
Doug Steffen got a big show in the United States and was kind enough to put me on air for two minutes.
And that's all down to you, Urigella, because you passed the phone to me.
That's right.
I'm on the show every week.
We are great friends.
Doug and I are friends now 14 years.
And you did miss two huge crystals that I positioned on both sides of the house.
And they're enormous.
They're museum-piece crystals, rock crystals.
A lot of people think that crystals are healing elements and so on.
But I think that crystals are a tool for your mind.
If you believe in something and you think that you can derive energy from it and you are a positive thinker and you're motivated for that object to bring something positive into your life, it will, because it's a mind that does it.
And probably not the crystal.
It's your own mind power.
Well, I've done that a few times where I bought crystals.
And if you buy it from somebody who's in the know, they will tell you that you have to kind of think good thoughts at it and program it with the things that you'd like to achieve and do.
And, you know, I think there's probably something in it.
I still have a crystal by my bedside.
I have a small crystal by my recording gear Where I record The Unexplained, and you know, the show that I'm doing now, this very small podcast that grew and grew and grew to the point where a lot of people in America and the UK now listen to it.
But, you know, nothing bad's happened with that.
So, power to the crystals, I think.
Well, before I forget, I will now send all your listeners all around the world all my love and a big hug and a big kiss from me, because sometimes I forget to say this.
And you're listening to us all around the world.
And Howard is an amazing, amazing presenter.
As he said, we've known each other for two decades, but there's something about his voice, his personality, his charisma, the eloquence, the way he speaks, the pool of words that he constantly has at a split of a second is quite extraordinary, and I consider that a gift.
We all have gifts, and yours is that.
Well, that's very embarrassing and very kind.
And it's a very strange thing, because we were talking before we started recording this, and this show is about you, not me.
But, you know, I was kind of born on the wrong side of the tracks in Liverpool, and I'm very, very proud of my heritage because Liverpool is a great cultural melting pot.
All races there, all accents there.
Great place to be brought up.
Not only that, a hugely creative place where we have actors and people like that.
But I didn't come from the social background where you would.
So I'll tell you something.
I've always believed that somehow in the work that I've done, and all right, like a lot of people in this business, I never got rich out of it, but I had fun and did the things I wanted to do.
I've always felt guided.
Oh, I do believe in that.
I believe that there are angels out there.
I do believe that there are guides in different dimensions because I'm simply an open-minded person.
And I very much adhere to Albert Einstein's famous E equals M C square.
When Albert Einstein came with that equation in 1924, he proved scientifically to the world that everything in the universe is made from energy.
You, me, the microphone you're holding now, the walls, if you bang the wall, to you it might feel solid, but it's not.
It is pure energy.
It's vibrating in a certain frequency that makes it feel to us solid.
Furthermore, Albert Einstein proved that energy cannot be destroyed.
So one must ask the question, if we are made from energy, what happens to that energy when we die?
What happens to our soul?
What happens to our spirit?
I do believe in the afterlife.
I believe that our spirits, the energy goes elsewhere, goes to a different dimension.
Now, let me just add that you brought up Liverpool, and I must tell you that one person that changed my life drastically was from Liverpool.
As you know, he was, of course, John Lennon.
And when I was on an ego trip, and all I cared about is fame and fortune in New York, where I lived in Manhattan, I had bulimia, I mean, it was just, I was screwed up, I was a mess because after the war, the six-day war in which I fought and I actually had to shoot a person,
kill a person, which is against, you know, I mean, I've studied the Ten Commandments and I'm Jewish, I was born in Israel and that very powerful, the powerful words, thou shalt not kill.
So that really changed my life, turned my life upside down.
There's no doubt in my mind that the person I had to kill, otherwise I wouldn't be here now.
I would have been shot.
But even so, you know, no matter how that is motivated and why you did it, if you're a thinking person and a feeling person, it's going to affect you.
Yeah, very much so.
But that person is in my soul now.
He's embedded in my mind, in my energy.
He's my brother.
But when John Lennon saw me, look like an, he actually said, Uri, you look like an Auschwitz survivor.
What's going on?
And he said, you should go and find spirituality.
Now, I've heard of the word spirituality, but I didn't know what it meant.
And John directed me to Japan.
So I got on a plane with my family.
My children were toddlers.
Daniel and Natalie were five, four years old.
My mother, my brother-in-law, Hanna, my wife, we landed in Narita Airport in Tokyo.
I rented a van and I drove straight up to Mount Fuji.
And we disappeared into a forest for an entire year.
And I spiritualized myself.
I found myself.
I realized that money, you know, with money you cannot buy health, you cannot buy happiness, you cannot buy love, you cannot buy peace of mind.
And the only reason I tell you now is I left the forest is because my children were growing and I had to send them to school.
So we came to live in England.
And the stage you were at then, presumably you were starting to be well known.
You've done the David Frost shows both sides of the Atlantic.
David Frost, of course, great broadcaster, lost him last year, much missed.
Johnny Carson and all the rest of it.
So you were becoming, just like Lennon himself, you were becoming a bit of a rock star.
Well, I was already, when I went to Japan, extremely well known around the world, like because of these shows.
And since you brought up Johnny Carson, I must tell you the incident on Johnny Carson taught me a huge lesson.
I basically thought that getting on Johnny Carson when he invited me was, that's it, Uri Geller, you made it in America.
But I did walk into a trap because Johnny Carson was an amateur magician and he set the whole thing up with another magician in America and I felt it and I, you know, the spoon that I bent didn't bend enough and I sat there for 22 minutes humiliated.
He was sneering at me and saying, oh, okay, my monologue doesn't work every day.
And the only thought that went through my mind was, Uri Geller, you're finished.
You go back to your hotel, pack up and fly back to Israel because I thought that I was destroyed on that show, that Johnny Carson destroyed me.
So I did go back to the hotel, fell on the bed.
I was devastated.
I was drained.
I was gutted, as they said.
And I was about to, you know, next morning I plan to book myself back to Israel.
And in the morning, the phone in my room rings and I pick it up and it was the operator.
And she says to me, Mr. Geller, I have a Merv Griffin on the line for you.
Oh, really?
And I thought, oh, is it the Merv Griffin?
I said to her, because Merv Griffin, to those in America, of course, you remember him, but he was as big as Johnny Carson.
And he says to me, Uri Geller, I saw you last night on Johnny Carson.
I want you on my show this week.
And that's when it dawned on me, Howard, that there's no such thing as bad publicity.
As long as they spell your name correctly, that is it.
And I've learned that controversy is the key to success.
So all the years that magicians and skeptics and closed-minded people tried to debunk me and sneer at me and demean me and ridicule me and so on, all they were doing is they were giving me free publicity.
I should really be sending to my chief debunkers bouquets of flowers because it was them, it was some of the skeptics wove the priceless mystique around Uri Geller, the mysteriousness, the legend.
Without the controversy, I wouldn't have the longevity.
So thanks to all the skeptics.
But even today, and we're both grown-up people, you know this.
When I mention your name to colleagues who are journalists, then some of them will say, wow, you're going to talk to Uri Geller, that man's a star.
And some of them will say, what are you going to see that fake for?
I mean, that is going to be the hallmark of your life.
I don't think there's any way now that on this earth, at this time, you will ever be able to get around that.
But it seems to me you're very comfortable with that.
Listen, Howard, you very well know, you're a rational grown-up person, that show me a successful man or woman and I will show you controversy.
You can find controversy and negative stuff on the internet almost on everyone, even on Mother Teresa.
Come on, a holy lady.
You will find controversy on every successful or famous individual out there in the world.
Big deal.
So some people don't believe in my spoon bending.
I tell them this.
Look, if you have a problem of me saying that what I do is real, if you have a problem with that, take a walk.
I don't really care.
But do speak about me.
Do mention me.
Do write about me because you're doing me a great favor.
Oscar Wilde said the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
So I think you're probably right about that.
But the difficulty that people have with you, those who are well disposed towards you, which look, I am because we've known each other for so many years, is that they don't know what to say you are.
They don't know how to put you in a box or a pigeonhole because they like to put the world and the media especially, like to put people in pigeonholes and say, Uri Geller does this, Howard Hughes does that, whatever.
Otherwise, it makes them uncomfortable.
With you, that's very difficult.
I've come to the conclusion that what you have, if you have something, is the power of mind.
And you have it to the nth degree.
Now, most of us have some, I think, unless those who have blocked it out completely, and even they have it, have some intuition, ability, power of the mind.
I believe myself, and I shouldn't be talking, that we can influence events.
How do I know that?
Because I know that I've done it.
I've experienced it.
I've experienced it.
I've had situations where, I'll tell you a quick one, and you tell me what you think about this.
I got a job 25 years ago when I really needed one in radio, and I said to the guy, give me one week, and I will prove to you that I can do this job.
In the end, I worked there for two years.
It was Radio Wyvern in Worcester, and the fact that I went to London, did the things that I did, did voiceovers on TV shows was all down to that job.
So I needed that gig.
And I visualized the boss of the radio station saying to a guy who'd already become a friend at that radio station, he was a bit of a mentor to me called Sam.
I visualized the boss of the radio station one day after I joined saying, I'm really glad we hired Howard.
He's good, isn't he?
The next day, Sam came to me in the newsroom at that radio station, and this is an absolutely true story that I will swear on a stack of Bibles.
He said, I've spoken to the boss, Norman.
Norman said, I'm really glad we hired Howard, and all the rest of it.
So I believe in the power of mind, and I think that's what you have.
What I don't know is, if you do have it, how did you get it to that extent?
Okay, what you just described, probably hundreds of people, if not thousands, will identify with their own little mind power experiences and encounters, call it psychic, call it intuition, call it synchronicity, whatever.
I will tell you how it started, but I really would like to urge all your listeners, all our listeners right now, to get on my website, it's urigeller.com, and please view the latest documentary about me by the BBC.
It's been directed by an Oscar-winning director called Vikram Jayanti, and it's called The Secret Life of Uri Geller.
This is to do with all my circuit work for secret intelligence agencies from CIA, Mossad, etc., etc.
But I think that watching that documentary will actually blow your mind because if after seeing that documentary you still don't believe in what I do, then nothing will convince you.
Also, the book is available.
It's not my book.
It's written by Jonathan Margolis, who writes for Time magazine.
He's a journalist, writes for The Guardian in England.
And the book is fascinating and you can get the book from Amazon.
It's also called The Secret Life of Uri Geller.
But do get on my site and view the movie, the film.
And my email address is there.
It's available.
So if you email me, I'll answer you because I answer all my emails.
I wanted to get onto this because I have seen that documentary.
And of course, for years, people talked about Uri Geller working with the secret services.
Not only have you done, I know you've done commercial work because we talked about that before and the dowsing and divining and all the rest of it.
I'm curious to know why you decided now to talk about that when you were pretty tight-lipped about a lot of it for many, many years.
Well, I'll tell you exactly, but if I may, let me just backtrack and tell you this story, how it developed, how it started.
When my parents divorced, we were very, very poor, and this is why I always promised my mother that I'll make it, I'll be successful in life.
And when I discovered that I could bend spoons, I decided to create an act out of it.
And I told my mom that I'll stop her from working, buy her television.
She divorced, obviously, my father when I was 10 years old.
And my mom took me to Cyprus, where she married a Hungarian Jew who owned a little bed and breakfast hotel.
He died a year after my mother married him.
And the Israeli Mossad, the Secret Service, discovered that we were Israelis and they turned our little hotel into an Israeli safe house, Mossad safe house.
So the spies would lodge there and go out and do their spying business in the Middle East.
And one day I bent a spoon for a spy who lived there.
I told him, you're a spy, aren't you, Joaf?
His name was Joaf Shacham.
And he freaked out.
How did I know?
And I said, I can read minds, I can bend spoons.
And I showed him.
And he said, Uri, this is astonishing.
I need you for things.
You know, I need to work with you.
So he told me that I will be receiving letters that will come in from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon.
And my task would be to get on my bicycle and cycle the letters over to the consul in Nicosia.
This is in Cyprus.
Handy.
I was only 12 or 13 years old.
So already then, the idea of me becoming a super spy was just amazing because the spy business, all I knew about it was from movies, from America.
So at 13, you were in a world of intrigue in Cyprus, which, let's face it, is a meeting of cultures.
What a place.
You've got the Middle East not far away, Europe just around the corner.
So that's a place to do that stuff.
I learned English there and Greek and Turkish.
But the spoon bending and the other stuff, we can't lose that behind.
How long had you been doing that for?
Since I was six, I was, you know, I was a show-off in school.
So I, in a way, exercised my powers.
I nurtured them.
I demonstrated them to teachers, to children.
Again, I used to show off.
I boasted about this ability because other kids couldn't do it.
People would be good in piano playing, in basketball, in football, but nobody could bend spoons.
Now, Joav also told me that when I get to the age of 18, to go back to Israel, join the Patroppers, go to officer school, and then find him because he would introduce me to the Mossad.
And sadly, during the officer school, I read, I bought the paper that morning, and there it was, headline news that Joav Shacham got a bullet through his head and he died.
And I thought that that was the end of me because nobody would know.
He was the only one who knew about my talents.
But what I didn't know, that he already have spoken to the head of Mossad, Meir Amit, about me.
And that's how it all started.
Meir Amit, through Mayor Amit, I met Aharon Yariv, head of IDF intelligence at that time.
We're talking about the late 60s.
And he introduced me to Moshe Dayan, the defense minister, prime minister.
Then he introduced me to Arik Sharon.
Ari Sharon introduced me to Golda Meyer.
And how old were you then?
21.
Right.
So very young guy to be moving in those circles.
Absolutely.
Israel, we have to say, I worked in Israel for a very short time.
I worked for a radio station called Kodashalon, the voice of peace, and I got to know quite a few people there.
And they seem to me to be more open-minded, perhaps, than we are about psychic matters, that sort of stuff.
The radio station had a secretary called Chedver Rothstein.
My name is Joy.
She used to say with a big, loud Mediterranean voice, love this person.
And when I left the radio station, she wrote in Hebrew characters a little horoscope for me.
But I've never seen it because she wrapped it in seller tape and she said, you must carry that around in your wallet.
Take it wherever you go.
And she, you know, big lady, you wouldn't disagree with her.
But to cut to the chase, Israeli people very accepting of this stuff that you talk about in such a matter-of-fact way.
Well, I was then becoming famous in Israel, and when I met Golden Meier, to those who don't know, she was a prime minister of Israel.
Then, you know, my secret work kind of rumbled on, and I won't talk about it.
But I became, and I'm boasting now or maybe showing off a little, but I became enormously famous in Israel.
Israel is very small, you know, so I did my shows in huge stages, two, three, four, five thousand people came to see me, and then Israel ended.
And everyone saw me three, four, five times.
But what I didn't know is that the CIA were very concerned in the 1968, 69, 70, 72, 71, 72, they were very concerned that the Americans were, sorry, the Russians were ahead of them in psychical research.
And they managed to get me out of Israel.
And I went straight to Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto.
It was all paid by the American Defense Department with CIA connections.
And then Hal Putoff, Dr. Halputoff and Dr. Russell Targ, they tested me.
And then it's history.
The reports came out.
I went to Nature magazine.
And then I started being invited to do television shows.
And then the whole world wanted to see me.
And that's the story.
But I think the movie, The Secret Life of Uri Geller, again, my website is UriGeller.com and the book will amaze you.
Okay, well, I remember seeing, in fact, I think it's still on YouTube and other places.
And I think it's in the documentary, isn't it?
Black and white film of you doing those tests.
And somebody a long way away from you, was it a thousand kilometers away, was concentrating on a triangle, and you got it.
It was a CIA agent called Kid Green, and he was in Langley, probably in the headquarters, and he pulled out a book.
The scientist told him, it's in the film, because I couldn't believe, well, you started this whole topic by asking me why did I choose to come out now?
And the reason is that when the BBC approached me to do the secret life of Ori Geller, I kind of smiled and I said, you know, go ahead, but nobody's going to talk.
But when they brought Vikram Gayanti in, Oscar winning director, he managed to get to these people.
Kid Green was a CIA kind of operative That time, or one of the important scientifically educated who knew about bacteriological warfare and so on.
So, he was in Virginia, and I was in Palo Alto, and one of the scientists calls him on the phone.
Remember, there was no Skype then, and no iPads, and no mobile phones, they were just old-fashioned telephones.
And he said to him, he said to Kid Green, I have Ori Geller next to me, he can see things that are far away from him.
And Kid Green said, no, he can't.
And the scientist put off says, yes, he can.
So Kid pulls a book off the shelf.
It was a scientific book.
It was an anatomical book.
And he said to me, well, Uri, I have a book in my hand and I'm opening to a page.
What is on the page?
So I took a piece of paper.
I was handed a piece of paper and I drew something that looked like scrambled eggs.
But the word architectural came very strongly into my mind.
So I wrote architectural on my drawing.
And guess what?
Kid Green had the word architectural written on the top side of his page with his own handwriting.
So if he'd been even remotely skeptical, then that will have changed his mind.
And this stuff is, before you say, if you're listening to this now, yeah, right, a lot of this stuff is documented.
There is film, so it's not just something that Uri is embellishing or making up.
But look, I watched this documentary because of my interest in you and your work, and you delivered on that.
But quite a number of times, in fact, a lot of times in that, you said, I cannot tell you any more about this.
And part of me thought, well, is that Uri adding to the Urigele enigma?
Or is that something that he's genuinely concerned about revealing things that he's not allowed to talk about?
Well, let me answer that.
You know that 90% of what I've done, I cannot talk about, but I can tell you a few instances that came out by mistakes.
For instance, a Russian top-secret plane with top-secret codes on board crashed in Zaire, and it crashed into a jungle, and it was covered by the canopy of the jungle.
Now, at those times, the satellites could not penetrate canopies of jungle and thick layers of cloud.
Today we can do that.
We have very amazing, highly advanced technological satellites, means of getting under certain things.
So now, President Carter finished his presidency and he was lecturing in a university.
And suddenly a student got up and asked him, President Carter, did anything unusual happen while you were the president?
And he stood on the stage and he suddenly said, well, yeah, a Russian plane crashed and psychics found the plane for us.
Wow.
There were instances where the American foreign relations, head of the American Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Cleben Pell, asked me to convince the Russians to sign the nuclear treaty.
Now, this is a mega request.
So they took me to Geneva.
Let's just back up there.
They asked you to help convince the Russians to sign a treaty.
And they brought you in to do that.
Absolutely, the Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty.
And I was there with Al Gore, head of the CIA, Ambassador Max Kempelman, and Senator Cleben Pell, who was then the head of the American Foreign Relations Committee.
And they brought in Yuli Vorontsov, the Russian.
And my task was to get really close to his brain, to his mind, to physically.
So I sneaked up from behind him and I got like three inches away from his head.
And I telepathically, I know this sounds ridiculous, it sounds unbelievable, quirky, strange, bizarre, but I started bombarding it telepathically, sign, sign, sign, sign.
And believe it or not, Howard, they signed.
Now, obviously, I can't take full credit that I did it solely because there were other negotiators there.
But I believe that I was a major contributor to this.
So these are examples of things that I was asked to do.
I was also asked by certain FBI sources to convince Russian diplomats to defect.
By implanting the suggestion that they defect.
Yeah, to make them defect.
There were parties made for me in Long Island, for instance.
Very important Russian diplomats were invited there.
And my task was to mingle around and go to one or two of them and to project telepathically into their minds the idea, to convince them, to influence them, to defect.
There are other many, many examples in the book that Jonathan Margolis wrote.
I was instilled into Mexico to spy on the Russian embassy in Mexico City, which was the biggest eavesdropping spying center for the KGB.
I was asked to erase floppy disks with top-secret KGB information that was flown out from Mexico City to Paris.
From there, they would get on two KGB agents.
I'm glad you mentioned that.
I read about that.
But how do you erase something on a media?
I sat behind them on Aero, Mexico, first class.
They were chained to the wrists.
The suitcase with the floppy disks were chained to the wrists.
And I sat behind them and I just focused my mind.
I knew that there were floppy disks in there because I was told that they will be in there.
And all I said is erase, erase, erase, erase.
They landed in Moscow and they were totally empty.
Now, I've done that under laboratory control conditions at Kent State University for American scientists.
So they knew that I could do these things.
And it is indelicate.
It did come up on the show and you don't have to answer it, but I'd like it if you'd have a try.
This work that you were doing at this high level must have been pretty well rewarded.
They must have been paying you quite handsomely for this.
You weren't doing it just for the love of it, were you?
Well, let me tell you this, that never, ever in my entire life have I ever asked for money for these type of works.
Never.
I never got a penny.
But have you been Offered it.
No, no, it was out of ideological purposes and reasons and my way of thinking.
And never.
Because if you read the theorists, and I know you don't mind asking, when you first came into a radio studio with me in London years ago, you said, ask me any question.
And I thought, I like this man.
Yep, I like this man.
People have said that if you weren't getting paid for all of that, then we know you do shows and write books and all the rest of it.
And that is lucrative work.
But is it as lucrative as all of that?
In other words, they say he must have another source of funding.
The money's coming from somewhere else.
But I can tell you what made me kind of independently comfortable in the early 70s.
When I was instilled into Mexico by certain sources, they made me meet the president of Mexico.
His name was Lopez Portillo.
Mainly his wife.
My task was to get close to his wife, because his wife was a great believer in the paranormal.
And they arranged me a big television show on the biggest Mexican channel called Televisa.
And it did freak the wife of the president of Mexico, Muncie, Senor Lopez Portillo.
And I'll never forget after the show, a day after the show, or the next morning, I was staying at the Camino Real Hotel and they were banging, somebody was banging their fists on my door.
So I jumped to the door, opened it, and I thought they came to arrest me.
There were about 16 policemen, high officers standing out there.
And I thought, what did I do wrong?
What's going on here?
And one of the officers, police officers, says he's come to accompany me to the house of the president-elect, Lopez Portillo, and his wife.
I said, why?
He said, because she saw you last night on the television and she's amazed.
She wants to meet you.
And Shippy, my brother-in-law, tells me, you can't go because we have a show in New York.
We've got to get on a plane and fly back to New York.
And I said, well, screw the show.
I'm staying because this is more interesting.
And that's how it all started.
And then, obviously, I met the Minister of Oil and he said, can you find oil for us?
And I said, yeah, get me into a helicopter.
So I had a map and I put an X with a marker.
I don't think I had a Sharpie end, but it was a black marker.
And they found oil in the Gulf of Mexico, exactly under the point where I said it will be there.
So your life, as many people's lives who've been successful, is a series of almost synchronicities.
You went on Johnny Carson's show and you go back to the hotel, you think it's a disaster, and then you get a phone call, and then you go to do various bits and pieces.
You get discovered in Mexico, and you're working out there, and then something else happens, you go on television, and then somebody else finds you.
And that's how you start making the real money, the real bucks for these people.
Because, you know, finding oil, it's still serious business.
Well, I'll tell you what.
Money does not motivate me anymore.
After Japan, after my experience in Japan, where John Lennon sent me, I came back totally disengaged about money.
I must tell you that, yes, in the early 70s, all I cared was about money.
So finding oil and things, gold for other mining companies was all I cared about to enrich myself.
You can't really make money from bending spoons.
And that was actually the words of Serval Duncan, who was a chairman of the Bank of England and also the CEO, the chairman of Rio Tinto Zinc, the largest mining company in the world.
It was him who taught me how to douse because he was a secret dowser.
I didn't know what dowsing meant.
I didn't know that I can put up my hands or hold twigs and find water or oil or gold.
But yes, obviously I live in a very luxurious house, but that's where it stops.
I don't have private jets and I don't have helicopters and I don't have limos.
My wife drives in a Chrysler.
We don't have Bentleys and Rolls-Royce's.
I try to be very down-to-earth, very low-keyed, and that's it.
You do have a beautiful home with the most gorgeous kitchen and a lovely gym and a cinema that we're sitting in right now.
That is true, and it is a mind-blowing home.
It is really a mind-blowing house.
So why are you leaving?
I wanted to get into this later, but let's talk about it now briefly.
Why, there was a magazine here called Hello.
You were interviewed recently.
It's how I picked up on this.
You said that you planned to go back to Israel with Hannah, your wife, and live very simply.
Why would that be?
Because, Howard, every Israeli, I would say, well, most Israelis, if you're born in Israel, you're a Sabra.
You know, a Sabra is that term for a person born in Israel, obviously from the name of the Khakti.
There is a spiritual urge in you, a pool, a magnetic pool back to your homeland, back to the Holy Land.
And that urge has always been with me since the first when I stepped on those, I think it was in Lufthansa, they took me to Rome or in Alitalia in 1972, in June 1972.
Already then, when I boarded the plane, I knew that I'll be back someday.
No doubt, I will return.
And that's it.
I'm doing it now.
My heart is in Israel.
I've never left Israel, really.
We have a little tiny apartment in Old Jaffa.
Old Jaffa is 5,000 years old.
It's right next to Tel Aviv.
An amazing place.
If you don't know of Jaffa, do look it up because when I worked in Tel Aviv, we used to go for walks to Jaffa.
You can walk there.
And it's beautiful, it's ancient, and it has, in the sunshine, I found, and this was, we're talking about the 80s when I was there, a piece that I could never really pin down.
Our apartment is right next to the archaeological finds that go back 5,000 years.
And the view, you can see the Tel Aviv promenade, the Mediterranean, the Greek church.
I mean, we're in the middle of a garden with palm trees and so on, but it's tiny.
I could probably put this apartment into this cinema room.
It's that small, but I don't need anything anymore.
I'm very comfortable.
I want to help other people.
I've been working for peace.
You know, I've been working for the Israeli Red Cross, Magenta Vida Dom, and the Palestine Red Crescent.
Actually, I'm boasting now, but I'm entitled to boast because I managed to get both the Palestine Red Crescent and the Israeli Red Cross, Magenta Vida Dom, into the International Red Cross after three years of hard negotiations.
And sometimes spoon bending does help.
Well, I'm sure it does, but you're well received, I didn't know this, in the Arab world.
They accept you there?
Look, I have lots of Arab friends, lots of Muslims who are my very good friends.
And when I did this work for the Palestinians, well, I did it for the Israelis first, but I had to negotiate with the Palestinian Red Crescent people.
They're wonderful individuals who also wanted to get into the International Red Cross because we were banned for 60 years.
We never got in.
And I'm a positive thinker, I'm an optimist, I'm a loving person, I love animals, all my life we had dogs.
And every time I get an email now from a teenager who says, oh, Mr. Geller, because you see, I instilled spoon bending into world culture.
You know, movies like The Matrix with Keanu Reeves, little children teach them how to bend spoons.
Johnny Cash, Kenny Rogers, Michael Stipe, the big broadband Incubus, they mention me in their songs.
They sing about spoon bending.
Robert Di Niro just played me, Uri Geller, in a big movie, Hollywood movie called Red Lights.
So a lot of kids from all around the world send me emails and ask me, Mr. Geller, please teach us how to bend a spoon.
And my answer, and I think we'll finish with this, my answer is always on my BlackBerry, I answer them.
Forget spoon bending.
Instead, become a positive thinker.
Focus on school.
Create a target goal to go to university.
Never ever smoke.
Never touch drugs and always think of success.
Those are good things to say.
Can I ask you about one thing before we cease to do this?
And I know that your time is precious and you know how grateful I am to you for allowing me here.
And I wish you everything that you would wish for yourself in the future.
As long as you don't edit this show, I will do it.
I will not do it.
Well, the nice thing about it is you and I, when we talk, and we used to do live radio together in London, so no edits on that.
You just go on the radio.
So I promise you, no edits there.
Flight MH370.
Some people have said to me, and I've wondered myself, why has Uri Geller not found it?
Let me just mention this.
I got a request from a very substantial figure to find the plane in Malaysia.
And I worked on it very hard.
As a matter of fact, I wanted my Facebook followers to help me.
And I put it out on Facebook, and I got a huge backlash.
A lot of people left very nasty messages on my website.
Why did they think it was bad taste?
Why?
Yeah, they thought that I was riding on the tragedy of the people who were lost.
But it wasn't.
I really wanted help because I was...
Oh, yeah.
No, I wasn't asked to put it on Facebook.
No, no, no, no, but you were asked to find the plane.
Yeah, but I wanted the intuition and the remote viewing help from many of my followers on Facebook.
But I got coordinates and I think I know where the plane is.
I know where it went down or landed, let me put it that way.
And I sent those coordinates to Malaysia.
Whether they looked there or not, I don't know.
I did not get feedback back.
So that is the answer to your question.
Well, as we record this today, and this show will go out over this weekend, if you hear it when it first goes out, it also goes out on Art Bell's Dark Matter Network as well on Mondays.
The latest thinking we have is that the pilot may have been at the controls.
It may have been on autopilot, but the latest thinking is it ran out of fuel.
Well, if you look at what I said months ago about the pilot, it correlates to what you just said.
You have a look at that.
It's on the website.
But I do want to finish with something that you didn't mention, and I'm amazed that you didn't mention.
Michael Jackson.
It was his fifth anniversary, and I got tons of emails from around the world because Michael Jackson was my best man.
He was a close friend.
But I also did the devastating mistake of introducing him to Martin Boucher, who went on to do a documentary.
And a lot of people said that was the beginning of his downfall and so forth.
But Michael Jackson was and is an icon.
He is a legend and he is a phenomenon.
And what a lot of people don't know is that Michael asked me to design a part of his last album.
I'm privileged and honored to have designed his last CD.
It's called Invincible.
And Michael told me in the Hitts factory in New York, when I designed the drawing that went into the booklet, and he's in the booklet, he wanted a tribute for his children.
And he said, you've got to sneak the names of my kids into that drawing of Prince and Paris.
And I knew that Sony will look at it with a microscope.
And because they did censor certain things out of my drawing, certain symbols, they took it out and put other things.
And just for the conspiracy theorists, what sort of symbols were they?
Because they will ask, okay?
Oh, I can tell you.
I had a star of David in, and they took it out and they put a five-pointed star.
I had the word Jerusalem because Jerusalem has, in the middle of Jerusalem, there are the three letters USA.
I bet you never thought of that.
No, I never did.
Jerusalem has, in it, the United States of America.
I had the word angel in it.
They took it out.
I don't know whether it was a direct instruction by Sony or whoever, but it wasn't there.
But they missed my secret Paris and Prince.
That is there.
So they're not as clever as they think they are.
Well, I don't know, but if you take a magnifying glass, I urge you all to get the CD.
It's called Invincible.
Get it in Any record shop.
And if you look very carefully, I won't give you a clue, but you'll find Michael Jackson's kids in there.
I'm sorry for asking you a newsman's question.
You know that I'm a journalist as well as a presenter, so I have to ask things like this.
Of course, your connection with Michael Jackson was well reported, and you were on all the news networks when he died.
And, you know, I'm same kind of vintage as Michael Jackson, so his music was part of my life.
I bought every album.
I bought all the singles.
But there were always questions about him, and, for example, his, you know, his friendships with young children, for example, and that sort of stuff still goes on.
How, in retrospect, are we to look back on Michael Jackson and his life?
You knew him.
I knew him, and the man was innocent.
He was proven innocent in court, and he was innocent because, to me, at least, I have a very private validation.
And this was one of the things that went into Hello magazine this week, and it was reported in many countries.
When my friendship was developing with Michael, and we were in the HIT studio in New York, Michael asked me to that he had this junk food habit and he said, can I hypnotize him to take it out of him, you know, to make him not like junk food?
And I said, it's funny that you'd ask that because I was a hypnotist in Israel.
I did learn hypnotism from one of the greatest hypnotists who survived Auschwitz because he used to show hypnotism to the Nazi officers and they spared his life.
And I learned to hypnotize from him.
His name was Afsharon Drori.
And I told Michael, I'm a great hypnotist.
Let me try to hypnotize you.
And when I put Michael in a deep trance, I did, and I admit, I did something highly unethical.
I really did something that I shouldn't have done, but I did it because I just don't know why.
But I asked him under hypnosis, Michael, did you ever touch a child in an inappropriate manner?
And he immediately said, no, I would never do that.
And then I asked him, why did you pay this kid so many millions of dollars?
He said, because I couldn't take it anymore.
He wanted it to go away.
And then he woke up.
And then I knew that this poor man is totally and utterly innocent.
But, you know, Michael was gullible.
This is my opinion, and I'm entitled to voice my opinion.
I think he was gullible to a certain point, and I think he was very naive.
And he spoke about, you know, the children, the way he spoke about them.
And in my opinion, that was a mistake, especially when he sat there with Martin Bashir holding the hands of a 13-year-old kid.
Otherwise, if he wouldn't have done that, I think the documentary would have gone in a very good positive way for him.
But I can end on a positive note, that although there was a rift between us, when Michael came to England to announce this is it, he asked his bodyguard, Matt Fidesz, to find me, to make contact with me, because he wanted to meet me again.
But I was out of the country, sadly.
And of course, then he died.
And that's it.
Let's end the interview with telling you that I know that Michael, because we said that I believe in life after death, I know he's sitting there with John Lennon, with Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, and they are having a great time.
Well, you know, the jury will probably always be out in some people's minds about him.
My only thought about him was that Michael never had a childhood.
He had a father who drove him and the family tremendously.
He was a man who was just forced to succeed, and he did.
He was the greatest showman.
And I think this friendship that he had with children was to do with the fact that he still felt that he was a child and wanted to live as a child.
Now, I'm probably going to get people emailing me saying, no, I think something else.
But, you know, like you said, Uri, we're all entitled to our opinion.
I'll tell you what we'll do because I brought Michael Jackson.
I want you to grab your stuff, keep recording me.
And we're going to go upstairs and sit in the couch where he handed me the ring, where he slept.
So grab your stuff.
All right, let's do that.
Okay.
I'll help you.
Right.
You got everything?
Yep.
Come walk with me.
These days, you don't need nearly as much equipment to do something like this.
Now we're going through the door, the carpeted door of the cinema, and you can hear the acoustic change here because we're in Uri's gymnasium.
Okay, we're going up the wooden stairs here.
I'm really pleased we're doing this, because I can get the chance to talk to you about, as you hear in his footsteps, about this amazing house.
Right, big, big living room.
Fabulous views of rural Berkshire.
You have an atrium there and a beautiful big sofa here.
I mean, with sofa.
You sit right there.
This is where Michael sat.
Okay, now I am sitting.
I've been in his hotel room at Sun City in South Africa.
He had his own hotel suite there.
They're doing the talk now from exactly where he sat, and here is a proof.
Wow.
Describe what you're seeing.
I am seeing a light radiate from your right eye to Michael Jackson's temple.
I don't know where that's coming from.
It's some kind of artifact of a photograph.
Right on this sofa.
And no, I don't know either.
It's a very freaky thing.
It either is an optical illusion or there is something paranormal about it.
But you can see you're sitting on the sofa.
Here is a mirror behind you.
And it was right there that he sat and then he asked to just meditate a little.
And I just wanted to end the interview with this.
Even if that happened through natural phenomena.
It's a phenomenon.
The fact that a shaft of light goes from the middle of your eye, the pupil, to Michael Jackson's temple, and Michael clearly is unaware of it because he's looking in another direction.
And he's sitting here on this sofa here.
I think it's pretty damned amazing, isn't it?
So do I. When the photographer took this picture and sent it to me, I freaked out.
Can I ask you about one other thing?
You've got a wicker work motorcycle here.
It's a Harley-Davidson in wicker work.
Yeah, I collect little pieces of art.
And the, you know, art to me is, I've been an artist for all my life.
I've been designing jewelry and painting.
And I had the honor To work with Salvador Dali for two years.
Really?
Yeah, so whenever I see something unusual, I bring it into the house.
Howard, you are beautiful.
Thank you very much.
And my message to you out there: tomorrow morning when you wake up, learn to put yourselves in an attitude of gratitude.
Lovely.
Fine place to leave it.
I hope we talk again maybe in Jaffa one of these days, Uri Geller.
This is Howard Hughes in Uri Geller's beautiful home at Sonning in lovely Berkshire, one of the great relaxing and tranquil places of my life this has been.
And I'm delighted to have done this on behalf of you, I hope, and all of my friends, Uri, I wish you well with your move.
My name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained.
If you want to email me, go to the website, www.theunexplained.tv, where I'll put a link into Uri's website.
Thank you very much to Adam Cornwell, my webmaster, for designing the website.
And above all, thank you to you for being part of this special edition of The Unexplained.
And until we meet again here on the internet or wherever you are right now, stay safe, stay calm, and stay in touch.
My name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained.
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