By Jean Christou
I’VE read he’s not too keen on the moniker “Spoon Bender”, but it’s hard to introduce Uri Geller in any other way — after all, that’s what most people know him for.
Geller has been wowing the public for three decades with his paranormal abilities. This week, he will be in Cyprus for a performance tomorrow at the Ayios Andreas market theatre in Nicosia and an art exhibition opening on Wednesday at the capital’s Gallery K.
Geller was born in Israel in 1946. It was when he was just five that his spoon-bending abilities surfaced after he was apparently struck by a beam of light while playing in a garden.
When his parents divorced five years later, he moved to Cyprus with his mother and stepfather. He remained in Cyprus until he was 17 and then returned to Israel.
After working as a model for a short time he began to use his abilities and by 1971 he was giving stage performances and became a household name; the rest, as they say, is history.
He is known all over the world and has written 15 books, which have been published in 28 languages, including Greek. Another 14 books have been written about him and he has been mentioned in 500. An Internet search comes up with about 27,800 hits.
It’s therefore no exaggeration to say that Geller is probably the most famous psychic in the world. His website claims he is related to Sigmund Freud.
Hollywood seems to be in awe of him. Among his many tinsel-town admirers is — ironically — X-Files sceptic Gillian Andersen, aka Dana Scully, who has called him “astonishing”. Troubled singer Michael Jackson, a good friend of Geller’s, has said: “The world needs your amazing talents.”
Geller’s list of achievements and psychic activities is pretty much endless. Famous names, places, stunts, you name it, he’s done it.
Of course, like all those who claim to have supernatural powers, Geller has come in for his fair share of criticism and outright accusations of, at best trickery and at worst fraud, from the sceptics who tried to bend spoons, couldn’t and thus believed it could not be done.
Without being in a position to attest that Uri Geller is the ‘real McCoy’, there is much evidence out there that hundreds of other people can bend spoons and they don’t think it’s a big deal. All you need is an open mind, and generally that is not the domain of the sceptic.
It’s been said that everyone is psychic but most people don’t know it, so there is really no reason to be in awe of other people who have managed to develop their abilities. All you need is complete belief that it can be done, so with an open mind, it should be possible for anyone to bend spoons at the very least.
According to one apparently successful spoon bender, your energy flows to whatever you focus your attention on.
“When you pick up an object like this and you intend it to bend, and you know that where you pay attention is where the energy goes, then the energy is going to go there… focus between the fingers… you expect it to bend… make an agreement with the metal that it is going to bend… now go!
“You are now at the point where you know that it is going to bend. What you have to do next is visualise it bent, and know that what you are doing is getting the metal to bend ahead of time, as you see it in your mind, so that you know you are now transferring your energy to that metal, so that it will in fact bend. The reason that you did it was that, at the time, you didn’t doubt that you could.
“You see, everyone else is still trying to make some scientific phenomenon out of it, but it isn’t a scientific phenomenon, it’s a fact. Once you believe you are capable of doing it, from that point on, it’s possible.”
Another said: “It’s been said that spoon bending requires ‘relaxed inattention’, in the sense that it’s better to not get too preoccupied with worrying about whether your spoon is bending. People who are most successful at this say that it works when they’re not even paying any attention… that’s when your spoon is most likely to bend! You first have to try to get it to bend, and then change the focus of your attention to something completely different, while continuing to touch or stroke it.”
So it seems the only difference between Uri Geller and the man on the street is that Geller has managed to harness the power of his mind, starting with a spoon, and has made full use of it to launch and sustain his expansive career
His success lies not in the possession of a single psychic gift, but in the fact that he has made full use of it, authentic or otherwise, to make his mark on the world.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
