Uri Geller made his name in the 1970s through countless experiments performed before the public, consisting in particular of spoon-bending. He was caught cheating one day, and his reputation suffered for it. But what to make of him today? He has, it seems, moved into oil prospecting (using map-dowsing in particular) and is said to make a very good living from it.
Rather than dwell on whether or not his faculties are genuine, I would prefer to relate an anecdote that the man himself told me:
At the time when Uri Geller was at the height of his fame, a magician friend of his thought he could make him look ridiculous. On a television show, in agreement with the presenter, he had himself introduced as a powerful medium. He then performed spoon-bending feats, using various tricks of classic stage illusion. But straight away the studio telephone began to ring. Viewers were calling in a panic: while watching the broadcast they had tried, as they used to with Uri Geller, to bend their own spoons. The spoons had indeed bent, but the phenomenon had spread to other objects, and it was becoming catastrophic. They were calling for help.
How should we interpret this anecdote? In the paranormal, there is no neutral observer. The spectator takes part in the phenomenon, whether he wishes to or not. The “actor” in this process here appears to be the viewer himself. Out of the hundreds of thousands watching the broadcast, simple statistical considerations are enough to explain the appearance of “gifted” subjects. The evocative and persuasive power of the small screen will have strongly engaged the mental activity of these viewers, steering it in a specific direction. These capacities had gone unrecognised, since nothing had ever before prompted them. Such “artefacts” are formidable: fragile personalities can be overwhelmed by facts whose reality is sometimes beyond dispute.
Uri Geller, too, gave rise to such phenomena. One sees that he had no need of real “powers”.