I returned to New York to take care of my long-neglected personal and business affairs. In mid-May I went to Chicago to attend the twenty-fifth annual reunion of my medical school class at Northwestern University. While in Chicago I found that Captain Edgar Mitchell was the featured speaker for the annual meeting of the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship. Mitchell planned to devote his time after retirement from the Navy to consciousness research. He offered to raise money and manage a United State's-based research program whose first venture was to be a study of Uri. I promised him that he would have the right to do the first United States research on Uri, provided he could raise the necessary funds, and would manage the effort.
As June 1 approached, I got more and more apprehensive about the forthcoming
"instructions." What would be the next crisis that Uri and I would work on? Where would we have to move on planet earth? How could we support ourselves? The rumor mill that had been generated in the United States about Uri's "evil powers" helped me enormously in that I did not have to explain anything to anybody about my long absence from the United States. My daughter Illyria and I were home alone in Ossining at midnight June 1; I waited for the next twenty-four hours for the "instructions." None came. I began to have doubts. Why had they not kept the promised rendezvous?
On June 2 Uri phoned me from Rome to tell me what had happened to him in Tel Aviv the day before. On the morning of June 1 at 7 A.M. he drove the two miles from his mother's
apartment to his new apartment, and when he opened his door, there was a sealed letter on the floor. The letter was from me on my stationery in my handwriting, duly stamped and
postmarked June 1, 1972, Ossining, New York. He thought this very strange because at that time it was not yet June 1 in New York. He read the enclosed letter from me, which said: Dear Uri,
I must remain in the U.S. for another three months, probably September or October before I can join you in Germany.
Sorry for change of plans. Shalom,
Andrija
Now, I must emphasize the importance of the fact that I did not write Uri such a letter. When Uri told me its contents, I was hearing it for the first time.
But Uri, when he read the letter, really believed that I had written it. When he got on the plane on June 2 to fly to Rome, he put my letter in the breast pocket of his shirt. On the flight he suddenly noticed that the letter had vanished from his pocket. He searched the plane but could not find the letter. Then he realized that the letter had vanished and that the contents must be the promised instructions from IS.
Uri went to Munich to work with Yasha Katz whom I had selected as his manager, and was there from June 7 to 12. One series of events that happened in Munich is worth recording. Uri was introduced to a lyricist by the name of Herr Brandin, who wished to see Uri work. On Friday, June 9, 1972, Herr Brandin and ten of his guests saw Uri do the following things: a crystal ball materialized before the witnesses; a professional movie camera weighing twenty kilograms was levitated; lead wire was transmuted into gold.
Professor Friedbert Karger, of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, witnessed some of these things and telephoned me from Munich to tell me about them. He was most
impressed with Uri's powers and wanted to start a research program immediately I welcomed his support but told him of the prior commitment to Captain Mitchell; so Dr. Karger agreed to join the newly formed Theory Group.
Uri cleaned up his affairs in Israel so that he could move to Germany, where he was told to go by IS by July 1, 1972. As a result of the June 1 "letter," I settled down in the United States and assembled a staff to carry out my scientific research program. Melanie Toyofuku came from Rome to begin the research preparatory to planning for a documentary movie on Uri; Carolyn White came from Florence, Italy, to coordinate the university research efforts; Solveig Clark worked part-time with us in the publications area; Sidney Krystal assumed the legal tasks that had to be done. With this loyal group of associates I was able to initiate and carry out a program whose specific purpose was to alert the scientific world to the existence of the powers that Uri and I had witnessed. Captain Mitchell undertook the problem of raising funds to carry out the first "validation" research on Uri. Validation meant the scientific
verification of the claims I made for Uri's powers in the areas of telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis. I took on the task of mobilizing and informing some of the scientists who had been a part of the Life Energies Conference of 1970. Here I ran into my first problem. One of my Israeli colleagues had already approached this same group of scientists with a tale of "evil powers." I approached some members of this group first with a written report and eventually introduced Uri to them individually, who then gave a demonstration of his powers.
What happened among this group of mature scientists was an interesting sample of human reactions to Uri and his powers. About half of the men and women we approached believed the rumors concerning Uri's "evil powers"; by this I mean that they were fearful enough of Uri by prior stories that they did not even want to meet him personally. The other half who saw Uri demonstrate his powers believed the evidence of their own senses and judgment but were completely baffled. They could find no scientific explanations and therefore had no idea how
to cope with the phenomenon.
In order to deal with the problems of scientific importance, I organized a group of scientists into a Theory Group, whose goal was to find a theoretical framework that could accommodate the effects exhibited by Uri. The leadership of this group was eventually assumed by Dr. Ted Bastin, of Cambridge University, England.
In cooperation with the Theory Group a formal proposal for further research on Uri Geller was made to the (U. S.) National Science Foundation (NSF). Captain Mitchell personally carried this proposal to Dr. Guyford Stever, the director of NSF. The same proposal was personally delivered to a key member of the President's White House staff. I might state now that this attempt at open discussion of Uri's powers in the United States failed. None of the parties we reached was prepared to consider seriously the new data that Uri Geller was bringing to science.
My next concern was to make an announcement of the verifiable scientific data that I had collected on Uri in Israel in an appropriate academic meeting. I got such an opportunity through invitations to speak at two meetings, one at Stanford University and the other at University of California at Los Angeles in late September 1972. These meetings were sponsored by the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine.
Thus the summer passed in the preparation of lectures, reports, proposals, and in many meetings and telephone conferences. My personal conviction was that Uri and his powers would never receive acceptance in a serious way until he ran the gauntlet of scientific evaluation by established scientists in a prestigious scientific institution.
Captain Mitchell had concentrated his efforts on trying to arrange for validation experiments at Kent State University, where he had the personal support of the president, Dr. Glenn Olds, and a professor and coordinator of graduate studies in Physics, Dr. Wilbur Franklin. However, the enthusiasm and deep interest in this experiment on the part of these fine scholars could not produce the funds and the other resources required to do the experiment. So on my own initiative, and with Captain Mitchell's permission, I opened up discussions with two scientists, Dr. Harold Puthoff and Mr. Russell Targ, about doing the validation experiments. They welcomed the idea of working with Uri Geller and agreed to accept the experimental design of the Theory Group for this study and to accept Captain Mitchell as the sponsor of the project in terms of being the funding and contracting agent. Since they had been successful in getting Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to support their plans for parapsychology research, they arranged for Captain Mitchell to meet with the officials of SRI and work out all the details of the research project. We set a target date to begin the validation experiments for the first week in November 1972.
This is merely a brief summary of the planning for the scientific research with Uri, which omits all the headaches that arose in the coordination of so many people in a highly controversial subject.
Uri's work in Germany was going well. He gave many public demonstrations of his powers, which have been adequately covered by the German press and television. He and Shipi entertained themselves there in a style that Uri had never experienced, and he enjoyed every moment. It also helped to erase from his mind the heavy burden of the knowledge of his role in the affairs of humanity. But I had to shatter this temporary "oasis" of comfort by calling him to the United States in late August to meet Captain Mitchell and some of the scientists he was going to work with.
Professor Gerald Feinberg, of the Physics Department of Columbia University, was present to see what Uri could do. He had been waiting to see him in person since November 1970, when he had heard the letter report on Uri given at the International Life Energies Conference. Uri did not disappoint this distinguished physicist as he moved the hands of a watch and broke a ring and a steel sewing needle. Professor Feinberg agreed that Uri's abilities should be the
subject of careful scientific study. This opinion was shared by another scientist who was present, Dr. Wilbur Franklin.
Many other people came to meet Uri during this period, and all were impressed with his honesty and with his powers. Uri on his part began to feel hemmed in and pressured by all this unusual attention from scientists. And when he begins to feel that his freedom is being eroded the least bit, Uri reacts defensively. Captain Mitchell, who was thoroughly impressed with Uri, was the first to sense this reluctance on Uri's part to be a guinea pig for science. When the scientists had left, we had a reading of the first draft of the documentary movie script about Uri written by Melanie. Uri suddenly began to show more and more signs of irritation as the script was read; finally he stopped the reading and went into a monologue: "Here you are, all of you. You have been working for months on this movie script. All my life I wanted and waited for a movie about me. Now it is almost here - and I don't want it. What is wrong with me? Why am I so unhappy? Look at the chance I now have to progress in my career - yet something is wrong! Why am I behaving in this way? I now feel that something big has to happen - and I don't know what. I know it is not this movie, or Mitchell, or science. Are there two powers here who are fighting over me? They disturb some other people, or they disturb us here. They are so powerful. We have no idea why they are here. Look, I have some little powers by myself, but the big powers come from above. There's something funny about them. I still find it very funny that they will transport a bottle of cologne from Andrija's room on the fourteenth floor of a hotel down to the dining room in the basement. I think somebody is playing games with us. Perhaps they are a civilization of clowns. Or maybe one of their clowns escaped and he is playing jokes with us. And now I am coming to the main point. The things that happen like a fork bending - this has no connection with anything. They don't live in time. And who knows where they came from? They appeared on earth thousands of years ago. So they are not here to take us over. They are here to teach us something in our stupid and idiotic way which is why they appear to be clowns and idiotic. They are performing for us at our level."
Everyone present was shocked not only at these words but at the brusqueness of Uri's attitude. All thought of a constructive discussion of the movie script was over; for Melanie this was a discouraging rebuff.
As August 26 drew to a close, all of us were thoroughly depressed by Uri's attitude, especially about not wanting to be involved in research. Nothing that had been done, or was going to be done, pleased him. He himself said, "I am sorry to be this way, but it is not me feeling this way." So I had to beg Uri to sit down with me by the tape recorder to see if we could find out what was going on.
We sat together for several hours calling silently into the unknown. There was no response. Why were we being deserted in this moment of personal crisis?
At 1:01 A.M. of August 27 a large conch shell on a shelf near Uri levitated and slowly fell to the floor. We waited for a voice to appear on the tape recorder monitor speaker. Finally there came the voice of IS on the tape at 1:03 A.M., as follows:
Andrija! [Pause] The tape will disappear. [Pause] For five and half months we have left you alone. You did quite a nice job. But there have been some problems. [Pause] You have gathered many people. All your friends that have been gathered must work in harmony. Andrija, have you been scared?
AP: "No."
Are you prepared? Do you have any fear? Are you ready for the work?
AP: "I am ready for any work."
Uri and Andrija, listen carefully! We hope to land on your planet in a few years. We are seen more and more by people. We will enter your orbital system through [word lost]
AP: "No, I do not."
One of our failures is that we cannot contact you directly. We can only talk to you through Uri's power on the tape recorder. It is a shame that for such a brilliant mind we cannot contact you directly. Maybe in time we shall be able to contact you directly.
AP: "In other places you used the telephone, radio, television, etcetera. Will you still use these?"
Yes, when that is needed.
AP: "Shall I go back to Germany with Uri?"
We always keep you in contact, you are always together. You must be where the people are who support and help you. [Pause] This afternoon we heard the movie script. We used Uri to speak, although neither he nor any of you was aware of this. It is a brilliant movie, but not the story we want. We want you to prepare the earth for our landing, a mass landing on earth. We landed in South America three thousand years ago, and now we must land again. We want you to tell our story - what you call the UFO experience. Use all the collected data and
literature.
AP: "How do we know which is the relevant, or true, data?"
Research the data published You will know what is correct. Write the movie script carefully, slowly, properly, and cleverly.
AP: "Are you landing on earth to help mankind?"
Yes, but also to help ourselves Therefore, we must land and reveal ourselves. We draw our power from this solar system.
AP: "When will you land on earth in local earth time?"
We will not reveal to you our timetable in landing on earth in your local time. It may be some years, or sooner.
AP: "In 1952 I was contacted through Dr. Vinod by the Nine. Are you part of them?
Do you remember exactly what happened in 1952?
AP: "Yes, on December 31, 1952, I was contacted by the Nine through the voice of Dr. Vinod. The message started out, 'We are Nine Principles and Forces, personalities if you will.' The equation was:
Mi=m0*c^2/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2)
Yes, that was us, but in different units. We are under their control. You faithfully scribed his words. The real important work is to come. The Knowledge Book is the main work. Shipi will find the book, then Uri, then you. You have many years of work on it. Then it will be released.
[Pause] One of your earth scientists, Einstein, knew about us. Just before he died, he knew the
secret. You will carry on the work. Then in centuries, another, and another, to keep the data rolling - until man finds infinity.
As the voice said "infinity," the tape recorder was switched off. The room was lit by one 200- watt lamp controlled by a dimmer switch. This lamp was slowly dimmed by some invisible hand, and Uri and I sat in the darkness. Through the north window of my study a brilliant white light suddenly flooded into the room. (My house is in a forest away from any automobile headlights.) The light was very much of the quality of moonlight - but much brighter. We rushed to the window but could not see the source of the light, which was beyond some giant Norway spruce trees. We rushed outdoors, but the light had disappeared. The full (waning) moon was to the south - a full 180° from where we had located the light source. I went back to the tape recorder; the cassette had already vanished. So I sat down to write down what had transpired. But I cannot vouch for the word-for-word accuracy of my transcript - only the sense of this remarkable message.
What I had just heard put me into the most reverential state of contemplation that one can imagine. The weight of what I now knew stretched my load-bearing capacity to the limit. I could not sleep for two days. During the next day Uri and I were driving across the Triboro
Bridge into Manhattan, and I was trying to explain to him people's reactions if they really believed that an extraterrestrial civilization was going to land on earth. I said that I thought that people would stop all normal activity; that others would sell stock holdings in panic; that a financial collapse would be triggered, leading to economic paralysis; that governments would mobilize troops and weapons; that looting, riots, and panic would spread. The reason