Andrija Puharich was an American parapsychologist who brought Uri Geller to the United States in 1971 and arranged for him to be studied under laboratory conditions at several scientific institutions.1 He was a graduate of Northwestern University2 and was well known within psychic phenomena research circles.3 He has been placed, alongside J. G. Pratt, Robert Crookall, Hornell Hart and Gardner Murphy, in the same professional category as J. B. Rhine within the field of parapsychology.4
According to Jacques Vallée, a series of contacts between Puharich and an “Intelligence in the Sky” calling itself SPECTRA or Hoova began on 1971-11-30, when Puharich hypnotised Geller for the first time.5 Puharich sometimes received messages from SPECTRA when Geller was not present.6 According to The Invisible College, SPECTRA communicated to Geller and Puharich in 1972 that it was a spacecraft, used as humans use a planet, that had been stationed over the earth for the past eight hundred years.7 Vallée wrote that Geller and Puharich took these taped messages literally, including a claim that atoms possessed a dematerialised aspect that could be used, and a description of a coming “mass landing” likened to refuelling and charging via the earth’s barometric and cosmic layer.8 Vallée also wrote that the pair received messages predicting mass landings that would perhaps be visible only to themselves,9 and that Puharich predicted a mass landing of extraterrestrials.10 According to The Invisible College, Geller and Puharich forecast massive flying saucer landings.11
Puharich’s tapes recording the voice of SPECTRA mysteriously disappeared,12 and the magnetic tape recording of the 1972 communications vanished after it had been transcribed.13 Vallée wrote that Puharich claimed to receive messages on his tape recorder from a mysterious cosmic source,14 and that the recordings vanished regularly with nothing he could do to prevent it.15
Jim Hurtak, a friend of Puharich, was involved in the Uri Geller affair and claimed to be psychic and to have had UFO encounters.16 On 1976-04-01, Hurtak and Puharich appeared together on a talk show broadcast in San Francisco, California.17 Hurtak later told Vallée that at the end of a meeting between them he shared a statement, prepared with Puharich and a “sensitive” working for the American Navy, predicting that Earth would be contacted within eighteen months by highly evolved intelligent beings from other worlds.18 Puharich also appeared on a panel with Arthur Young, Charles Muses and Thomas Bearden,19 chaired by Ira Einhorn, a poet from Philadelphia,20 where he described his latest experiences with Geller.21
Vallée, who met Puharich, regarded him as an intensely sincere man.22 He considered the exchanges between Puharich and SPECTRA to consist largely of elements borrowed from Puharich’s and Geller’s own brains and reflected back on them,23 and did not accept the idea, proposed by Puharich and others, that mankind was being psychically contacted by a benign intelligence from outer space.24 He considered the cult building up around Puharich and Geller very similar to a number of other belief structures that had developed in the United States and other countries in recent years,25 and argued that the phenomena at the 1899 Victor Hugo séance, Jersey could be explained by unconscious mental processes among the attending spiritualists, an explanation he considered equally applicable to Puharich and Geller.26 Vallée argued that both believers and sceptics in the UFO debate were wrong, citing Puharich’s disappearing tapes and Geller’s voicing of messages attributed to the Rhombus 4-D computer as examples.27 He also wrote that Puharich was committed to the idea that he and Geller were guided by a very high source of wisdom, and that mankind’s only course was to place its destiny in that source’s hands.28
In his book Uri, Puharich wrote that a Prophet, such as Geller, is specifically created to serve as an intermediary between a divine intelligence and man,29 and stated flatly that the relationship between the superior beings and Geller and himself continued to grow deeper and mutually more meaningful.30 Vallée wrote that a communication told Puharich he had passed a test and that he must tell the world everything about the alleged cosmic intelligence,31 and that SPECTRA told Puharich its computers had studied everyone on Earth and that he had been noticed for his abilities as the perfect man for the mission.32 On another occasion, Vallée wrote, SPECTRA told Puharich it was a shame they could not contact him directly, but that perhaps in time they would be able to.33 Vallée also wrote that Geller and Puharich described events around Geller as including contact with UFO entities.34
Puharich’s first contact with alleged UFO entities came through the same man who had been a leader in Mrs. Keech’s sect, associated with the 1954 Mrs. Keech ‘Guardians’ flood prophecy, and whom the sociologists who wrote When Prophecy Fails referred to as Dr. Armstrong.35 Robert Monroe recounted that on 1961-05-05 he attempted an out-of-body visit to Puharich and found a man resembling Puharich, but with lighter or blond hair, sitting at a table writing, who spoke with him about “their project” before he returned to his body.36 Monroe wrote that Puharich later confirmed the described locale and actions were correct but had no memory of the visit himself, and that Monroe attributed the perceived blond hair to a reflection from a strong overhead light.37 Monroe also wrote that Puharich, although awake and aware Monroe was specifically attempting to visit him out-of-body, had no conscious recollection of any such meeting.38 Monroe recounted an earlier attempt, on 1960-06-29, to visit Puharich somewhere in California, in which he instead found himself among four unfamiliar people around a table who were wary and refused to answer his questions, one of them saying “Don’t tell him!”; the experience lasted eighteen minutes, and Puharich later reported no connection to the scene described.39