THE RECORD: EIGHT DAYS WITH URI GELLER
by Harold E.
Puthoff, Ph.D., and Russell Targ, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park,
California.
The following paper is not a technical report. Rather, it is
a daily log kept by the SRI scientists on their observations of Geller during
the experimental period from August 4 through August 11, 1973. Most of the
scientific results in "The Record" appear in the preceding paper, "Information
transmission under conditions of sensory shielding." However, "The Record" is
printed here because it shows the ease or difficulty with which Geller received
his psychic impressions of target pictures.
Published here for the
first time, with the permission of the authors.
Objective
The
objective of this first group of experimental sessions is to verify Geller's
apparent paranormal perception under unambiguous and carefully controlled
conditions. A second objective is to achieve an understanding of the physical
and psychological variables underlying his apparent ability.
Experimental
Program
In each of the eight days of this experimental period we
conducted picture-drawing experiments. In these experiments Geller was separated
from the target material either by an electrically isolated, shielded room or by
the isolation provided by having the targets drawn on the East Coast. We have
continued to work with picture-drawing tasks in an effort to achieve
repeatability, so that we could vary the experimental conditions to determine
the effect of physical parameters on the phenomena. As a result of Geller's
success in this experimental period, we consider that he has demonstrated his
paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner.
Saturday, August 4.
Two drawing experiments were conducted this
day. In both of these, Geller was closeted in an opaque, acoustically and
electrically shielded room. This room is the double-walled shielded room used
for EEC research in the Life Sciences Division of SRI. It is locked by means of
inner and outer doors, each of which is secured with a refrigerator-type locking
mechanism.
The two drawings used in this experiment were selected by the
experimenter's randomly opening a large college dictionary and choosing the
first word that could reasonably be drawn. The first word obtained in this
manner was fuse and the object drawn was a firecracker. All target
selection and picture drawing was done with Geller already in the shielded room.
Geller was notified via intercom when the target picture was drawn and taped to
the wall outside his enclosure.
His almost immediate response was that he
saw "a cylinder with noise coming out of it." (He was continuously monitored by
a one-way audio circuit.) His drawing to correspond to the target was a drum,
along with a number of other cylindrical-looking objects.
(See Plate 1(a).)
The second word selected was bunch, and the target was a bunch of
grapes. Geller's immediate response was that he saw "drops of water coming out
of the picture." He then talked about "purple circles." Finally, he said that he
was quite sure that he had the picture. His drawing was indeed a bunch of
grapes. Both the target picture and Geller's rendition had twenty-four grapes in
the bunch. (See Plate 1(b).)
In this work the target picture is never
discussed by the experimenters after the picture is drawn or brought near the
shielded room. The intercom operates only from the inside of the room to the
outside, except when the push-to-talk switch is depressed on the outside of the
room. In our detailed explanation of the shielded room and the protocol used in
these experiments no sensory leakage has been found, nor has any defect in the
protocol been brought to our attention.
Sunday, August 5.
Geller
is locked in the shielded room and the target is drawn in the experimenter's
office about a half mile away. The target selected from the dictionary was an
outline drawing of a man, which evolved through the drawing process into a devil
with a pitchfork. To start the experiment, Puthoff, who was with Geller, called
Targ, who was with the drawing. Geller spent almost a half-
hour working on
the drawing before producing the first of several responses.
His drawings
were as follows. (1) "Moses' Tablets"; i.e., Ten Commandments, inside the world
with a trident on the outside. (2) Apple with a worm coming out of it. A snake
was in the same picture. (3) Composite picture with the Ten Commandments on top
of the world, God inside the world, and the pitchfork on the outside, along with
a neatly drawn leaf. One is led to speculate that the Garden of Eden
representation in these three drawings is perhaps associational material
triggered by the target. The inability on Geller's part to draw the devil may be
culturally induced.
With regard to the pictures, Geller did draw the
pitchfork from the target picture, but, he did not draw the man who was holding
it. From this it seems, then, that Geller does not simply copy lines from the
target picture, but rather does perform some mental processing on them before
drawing them himself. (See Plate 1(c).)
The second target picture was drawn
by an experimenter while he was inside the shielded room, and Geller outside the
room with another experimenter. In this case the target was a representation of
the solar system, drawn without the orbit lines. His immediate verbal reaction
before drawing was one of "space." (See Plate 1(a).) Geller's drawn response to
the target while outside the room also omits the conventional orbit lines and
appears to have many similarities to the target drawing. The block in the center
of Geller's picture, according to his statement, was his afterthought, suggested
by the movie 2001, and was drawn as an addition just before comparing target
with response.
Monday, August 6.
The experiment to be done this
day was a pure clairvoyance task. A picture was drawn by a scientist outside the
usual experimental group. The picture was locked in the shielded room before
Geller's arrival at SRI. Geller was then led by the experimenters to the
shielded room, and asked to draw the picture inside the room. He drew a number
of pictures, all of which he rejected as not being applicable. He said that he
got no clear impression, and passed. The target was a rabbit, and nothing Geller
drew in any way resembled a rabbit. It should be added that the picture was
drawn by a scientist whom Geller considers a skeptic, and Geller asked at the
outset if this was the case. The experimenters said that this was not the case,
since they did not know who had drawn the picture. Geller felt vindicated to
some extent when he found out that his initial guess as to the artist had been
correct.
Tuesday, August 7.
This day two target pictures were
attempted with Geller in the shielded room. He was connected to an EEG apparatus
to allow measurement of his brain waves at the time that he was attempting to
perceive a hidden picture. The two target pictures were a tree and an envelope.
He experienced difficulty, did not make a drawing that corresponded to either
drawing, and passed. Also, he found it very difficult to hold adequately still
to make good EEG records. We will repeat the EEG experiment another time to try
to obtain better data.
Wednesday, August 8.
Three targets were
drawn during the course of this day's work. For the first, the experimenters
closed the outer door of the laboratory in which the shielded room is located
(in addition to the inner double doors) and worked in an adjoining room.
The
target picture in this case was a camel. Geller felt unsure and passed, but his
first-choice drawing was a horse. (See Plate 1(e).)
The experimenters then
returned to the room outside the shielded room and drew the second picture,
which was of the Golden Gate Bridge. Geller inside the shielded room drew some
curved lines with some squares underneath. He said that he didn't know what the
picture was, and passed. (See Plate 1(f).)
The third picture was a flying
sea gull. Geller almost immediately said that he saw a flying swan over a hill.
He drew several birds and said that he was sure that his drawing was correct,
which it was. (See Plate 1(g).)
In these experiments conducted with this
shielded room, six days' work was done. Good results were obtained on the four
days when there was no openly skeptical observer (except the experimenters, whom
Geller had learned to accept).
Thursday, August 9.
We moved the
experiments to a new shielded room from the Life Sciences to the Engineering
building in order to make use of the computer facilities available there.
After Geller was secured in a shielded room about 150 feet down the hall and
around a corner from the computer room, a picture was drawn on the face of the
TV screen, driven by the computer's graphics program. The picture drawn was a
kite. Shortly after Geller was notified that the picture had been drawn, he had
the computer room called to determine if the target picture was a geometric
picture or an object. We told him by talking to an intermediary who was ignorant
of the target picture, that it was an object. Geller's first drawing in this
case was a square with the diagonals drawn in. He then also drew some triangular
airplanes, and passed. His first drawing was a good representation of the actual
target picture. (See Plate 2(a).)
Friday, August 10.
Two pictures
were drawn and stored in the computer memory so that no visible evidence was
available in the computer room after the picture was drawn.
The first
picture was a church. The picture was drawn and stored in the memory of the
computer. Geller's responses are shown in the collection of drawings. It is
clear that both of his attempts have some elements in common with the target
drawing, but he had no idea that it was a church and he passed. (See Plate
2(b).)
The second target picture was stored on the face of the TV tube with
the intensity turned off so that no picture was visible with the room lights
turned on. Geller immediately drew an arrow under a rounded brick and then drew
another arrow inside a suitcase. We consider the arrow in the suitcase similar
to the target, which was an arrow through a heart. (See Plate 2(c).)
These
latter two experiments admit of at least two hypotheses, which will require
further work to differentiate: (1) clairvoyant perception of information stored
in the computer, or (2) telepathy, since there were several people in the
computer room, all of whom knew the nature of the target that was stored.
A
long-distance telepathy experiment was also done on Friday. An East Coast
scientist was called and asked to draw a simple representational object for
Geller to copy. Following the experiment he indicated that he drew two peaked
mountains with a sun in the upper right. Geller drew two arches side by side
with a circle in the upper right. Geller's picture also had a trainlike object
running through it. We consider this to be suggestive of communication but not
conclusive. We do not have the East Coast original.
Saturday, August
11.
A lengthy long-distance experiment was performed with another East
Coast scientist. In this case the man chose to draw a cross-sectional view of
the brain. (In retrospect we consider this to be an unsuitable target since
Geller would not recognize the drawing even if he were successful.) Geller began
by writing down the words medical, organic, and living on the top
of his paper. Later he wrote the words aviation and architecture.
He made two drawings, one of which was complex and indescribable. The second did
somewhat resemble an anatomical cross section. These responses are being sent to
the originator for comparison.
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