Uri Geller on the Web: A Spoonful of Cyberspace

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Once renowned as the world's foremost psychic, Uri Geller has maintained a relatively low profile in recent years, occasionally appearing on talk shows or offering to fix malfunctioning space probes mentally for NASA. But now, Geller has made his most powerful effort yet to instantly touch the minds of people all over the world.

Not telepathically, but electronically.

Uri Geller's Psychic City is Geller's home page on the World Wide Web (http://www.urigeller.com/index1.html). The site contains a wealth of information on Geller's life and recent endeavors, the most prominent being a unique online contest for visitors to test their own mental powers for a chance at a million dollars.

"The Internet Challenge" invites folks to telekinetically bend a closely observed spoon from the comfort of their home computers. Secured within a "see-through safe," the spoon appears on Uri Geller's Psychic City via a real-time video image.

Sensitive electronic equipment ensures that the slightest movement will register on the dial of an onscreen "bendometer." Any successful psychic hopefuls (who much properly "register" with the site first to confirm their identities) will be invited to Geller's home in Great Britain to participate in further testing. The most successful of these finalists will win (or split) the million-dollar prize.

Also featured on Geller's page is an online application for contacting his psychic enterprise, "The Uri Geller Business Consultancy." Aimed at the corporate community, this venture offers Geller's services as a paranormal business consultant.

Geller makes predictions about future market trends, telepathically assesses the strategies of the competition, and advises on new places to drill for oil, dig for gold or locate a new building, all for a fee in the neighborhood of one million British pounds.

Those unable to afford the man himself can still get a taste of Geller's psychic capitalism by playing Psychic City's interactive game, "Strike." Geller's staff has secreted forty "items of value" at points all over the globe; in a round of "Strike," you have twenty opportunities to click on a map in hopes of telepathically divining the location of the treasure--just as Geller might.

Geller's life has been anything but uneventful lately, as Psychic City's "news items" modestly reveal. He is introducing a line of T-shirts, every single one infused with Geller's power, since he has personally touched them all prior to shipping.

He has been assisting record-setting cyclist Bruce Beresford, whom Geller claims surpassed 207 mph on a bicycle thanks to psychic training; the two will be marketing The Ultimate Bike, a futuristic, high-performance model Geller calls the most advanced ever made.

A movie of Geller's life, "Mindbender," starring Terence Stamp ("The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," "Superman II") and directed by Ken Russell ("Altered States," "Tommy") will hit video stores in April.

In a recent interview on Camden Lock, a British entertainment Web site, Geller was asked about his reaction to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. A native-born Israeli, Geller responded that he foresaw the prime minister's tragic death a week before it occurred.

"I get a magazine called the 'Jerusalem Report'," Geller said, "and a week before Rabin died there was a full page article about the religious fundamentalists. One of them put a curse on Rabin's life. That person said that Rabin will be dead by the first week of the month he died."

To do his part for the continuing Middle East peace process, Geller announced that he will cross the region during April in his custom Cadillac, which is plated with five thousand spoons.

Geller also discussed the nature and possible origin of his abilities:

"Maybe this is a power we all have and I got it because I was electrocuted as a child by my mother's sewing machine, and it triggered off more of my brain, thereby enabling me to demonstrate these phenomena. Next theory I have is that when I was very young I saw a light in the sky and it struck my forehead and I fell into the grass. I still don't know what that was, but I'm open to the theory that it could be some kind of outside intelligence."

Geller asserts that he merits his prominence as a psychic because, he claims, his skills have been verified by scientists in scores of grueling tests over the years. Asked why there are nevertheless so many who deny that his abilities are real, Geller offers the following reply:

"You can ask the same question to people who don't believe in Jesus Christ or God. Historical religious figures always had enemies. They always had those who said they were charlatans. In my field it's even easier to accuse someone, because my powers are hard to demonstrate. ... I think that in the coming 30 years finally, telepathy, extra-sensory perception (ESP), remote viewing, psychokinesis will be validated by the hard scientific community."

(c) Copyright 1996 ParaScope, Inc.