One of the most exciting and important lessons I've learnt on my own spiritual journey, is known as The James Randi Challenge. Back in the 1960s, there was a famous Canadian magician call James Randi AKA Randal James Hamilton Zwinge better known as The Amazing Randi. Randi was a stage magician and illusionist and made his living touring around doing stage magic from the age of around 15.
Several years later, Randi, was challenged on a radio talk show, to “put his money where his mouth is” while discussing the public being scammed under the false pretense by con artists using ‘magic’ as some form of paranormal activity. Randi put out a challenge. The challenge which started at $1000, which he later added $9000 to make the grand prize a very attractive $ 1000 in 1964. A fair sum back then, which was further increased, to eventually became $ 100 000, when a TV broadcasting company. added $ 90 000. In the 1980's, one of the first internet millionaires, Rick Adams, donated one million dollars to the challenge. The challenge was for anyone, anyone at all, in the world, to prove under agreed conditions, that they had supernatural powers. Any medium, fortune teller, telepathist, spiritualist, illusionist, dowser, psychic, even evangelist, was welcome to claim the prize if they could prove that their claim of magic or miracle was supernatural and not sleight of hand or illusion. For 50 years the James Randi Challenge, also called the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, was up for grabs and over a thousand people, from all over the world tried their luck, but none succeeded to fool Randi and his panel of scientists. The challenge was withdrawn in 2015 and the money assigned to other beneficent causes. Several celebrity mediums like John Edward, Rosemary Altea, Sylvia Browne, Leigh-Catherine Salway, Uri Geller and others were challenged publically and on TV shows. Those that were brave ( or deluded) enough to attempt it, failed. Some agreed in public but never showed up or simply declined for fear of damaging their careers. On a Larry King Live show in March, 2001, King asked psychic Sylvia Browne, if she would take the challenge and Browne initially agreed. When Randi appeared with Browne on the show in September, 2001, she again accepted the challenge. However, she changed her mind and refused to be tested, so Randi kept a clock on his website, recording the number of weeks as they passed, since Browne first accepted the challenge but never followed through. Eventually the clock was replaced with a statement tat simply read “ More than 5 years". Browne passed away in 2013.
There is a famous clip on You Tube, Randi assisted Johnny Carson, who set up Uri Geller, in a similar test, when the spoons he claimed he could bend, were replaced by Carson's crew and Geller sat with ‘egg on his face’, as he could not bend the spoons, even slightly. Randi made sure Geller could not tamper with the props. Randi and Geller have been life long enemies, since Randi called Geller out as a hoax, years before. Geller has since tried to sue Randi several times, but all the cases so far have been thrown out by the judge as unwarranted.
Geller also tried to sue Timex , the watch company for an ad where a Geller look alike, attempts to stop a Timex watch with his mind, but of course could not. Geller claimed that Timex benefited financially, while his reputation was damaged. A survey by Timex, on random members of the public, failed to prove that anyone even knew who the magician in the ad was supposed to be.
As an April Fool's prank on April 1, 2008, at the MIT Media Lab, Randi pretended to award the prize to magician Seth Raphael after participating in a test of Raphael's "psychic abilities". But the prank was considered in bad taste and only confused viewers who weren't aware of the full story.
Randi retired from being a
magician and began touring around debunking fraudsters. Randi
won a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant." and spoke
at Google in August 2007. He was a founding member of the Committee
for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
(CSICOP). Known as PsyCops.
Randi’s true joy comes from explaining the inexplicable.
“The ability for people to think in a medieval fashion, never ceases to amaze me,” he says. Not that he ever tires of it. “Does a doctor get tired of curing people?” he asks.
My greatest satisfaction is seeing that look in people's eye, when they eventually wake up to reality and see the light of reason.
Randi passed away in October 2020 age, 92 after announcing he was gay in 2013 age 85 and marrying his long time partner the following year.
The James Randi Challenge AKA...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge
Randi and Geller battle
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-09-13-vw-2279-story.html
James Randi speaks at Google
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