Fringe-ology by Steve Volk

Author:Steve Volk
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins US

BECAUSE IT WAS HIS own consciousness that provided Mitchell the sense of being one with all creation, and because no one has defined the mechanism that makes consciousness possible, Mitchell felt his course was clear. It was toward the riddle of consciousness that he would first look for evidence of the unity he felt. Forty years later, he is still endeavoring to mine those same depths—sometimes in a manner dangerous to his reputation.

Shortly after his return, in the early 1970s, he struck up a relationship with the famous Israeli psychic Uri Geller. Mitchell stood by as Geller took part in a series of experiments at the Stanford Research Institute, experiments in which Geller purportedly read minds, viewed remote images with his “mind’s eye,” and attempted to bend spoons, psychically. I write that he “attempted” to bend spoons because Mitchell is the first to point out that, under strictly controlled conditions, Geller failed to bend any spoons at all. But reading minds? Remote viewing?

“Yes,” says Mitchell. “He did that.”

Today, the Internet is filled with claims and counterclaims about Geller—that he is a con man, a magician, a genuine psychic, or some combination of them all. I spoke to Geller on the phone and exchanged emails with him and found him to be difficult at best. “Uri,” I said, by way of introduction, “I’m one of those people who would perhaps like to believe but find myself unable—”

“I don’t give a damn what you believe,” he hollered at me over the phone, his first words since Hello, Steve. “Why should I care what you believe, or if you’re too stubborn to believe in anything at all? I don’t care. I’m way past trying to prove anything to anyone!”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down, Uri,” I said.

By this time, we had already exchanged emails in which I had assured him that the thesis of my book did not require me to make fun of Edgar Mitchell—the exact opposite, really. I was advocating we not make fun of anyone. Reminding Geller of this, I calmed him down enough that he went into one of his time-tested rants thanking the skeptical community. “They made me very wealthy,” he said. “They brought me more attention, for free, than I could have paid the greatest advertising firm on Madison Avenue to get.”

In the end, I felt like Geller taught me nothing at all, sharing only platitudes about Mitchell, who, for his part, merely smiles at the more colorful aspects of Geller’s act. Mitchell’s exact position on Geller is a bit complicated: he agrees with the Stanford Research Institute’s conclusion that Geller’s metal-bending ability could not be proven scientifically; but he also believes, on a personal level, that Geller bent spoons by means of psychic power. He saw him do it too many times, he said, under conditions he found stringent enough to constitute that kind of personal proof. Perhaps, he suggested to me, the conditions under which he failed to perform were . . . too rigorous, impeding Geller’s ability.

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