Greg Mallozzi’s New Film About Andrija Puharich |370|

Dr. Andrija Puharich researched ESP and psychedelics, brought Uri Geller to the USA, and held seances with aliens… all while working for the deep state.

photo by: Skeptiko

(clip from the movie Altered Minds…) MKUltra… (disturbing music)… No matter how deep you dig, the only thing you’ll find is more lies… (disturbing music) I’m not the monster in the closet with the electrodes and the drones… oh my god!

That’s a clip from the 2015 movie, Altered Minds. The movie gives a human side to the story of MKUltra. That is, the horrible mind control and psychedelic brainwashing experiments done on behalf of us Americans, and Canadians too, by our deep state friends who were “keeping us safe.” The reason I play this clip, and the reason why it’s particularly relevant to today’s wide ranging show on Andrija Puharich, is that our history, the history of parapsychology, the history of the deep state, the history of mind control, the history of the paranormal, is always a lot more complicated than it seems, and that’s because there are these amazing people like Andrija Puharich, who are at the center of these stories.

Greg Mallozzi: We have footage of this, I mean, he was there, with a rather small team, I think a guy with a video camera and maybe two other people, a translator, and you know, it’s just incredible, just to think about in the early 50s, here is this guy, romping through the jungle finding these mushrooms. What he did was, he would bring them back to his laboratory in Maine, the Round Table Foundation and he would do all sorts of ESP experiments. So, he would test somebody when they were not on mushrooms, and then he would test somebody when they were dosed on mushrooms, and like you said, his theory was that, when you’re on these things it enhances your ability, it enhances your extrasensory perception ability.

Personally, I think there were some really interesting results. This is in The Sacred Mushroom book, if you read it, and there’s a little bit in his book, Beyond Telepathy, which came out around the same time, and there’s very convincing results. Of course, you know, people have all their different opinions on this kind of stuff, but…

Alex Tsakiris: Let me jump in there, because part of the reason that people have a lot of different opinions is because of the way the whole psychedelic thing plays out, right?

Greg Mallozzi: Yeah.

Alex Tsakiris: So, you’ve already set it up, that he has these folks that he’s talking to, Army connections, what we call deep state connections, intelligence connections, but again, as you said before, we’ve got to put this in context, and I would add, we have to put it in a historical context. This is right after World War II, we don’t know what’s up. We know we’ve dodged a major bullet, in terms of controlling the whole world with fascism, so the CIA, the new minted CIA has kind of got a blank check to go and do whatever they have to, to kind of “keep us safe,” kind of thing, you’ve got to imagine.

Greg Mallozzi: Exactly.

Alex Tsakiris: Now, we find out later that one of the things they got interested in, really early on was, how do we control people… and what if we could control people? They can always spin it around and say, “Hey, we’re trying to protect you, we don’t want other people controlling you. So, if someone’s going to control you, we better be able to know what it is.”

So, I just put that out there because it’s easy to take… I don’t want to give Puharich a free pass here, by any means, but what interests me is, what you just said, this guy doesn’t seem to be interested in, at least at this point, he’s not looking for the mind control aspect of it. It doesn’t seem like he’s all that interested in, although I want to kind of correct me or expand on this, you know, where he is on the spiritual aspect of it and extending beyond these consciousness realm. But his focus, what I found interesting, he’s like, “Darn, let’s see how…” He’s like the doctor scientist, “Let’s do experiments with this. Does this relate to telepathy? If you take the mushrooms, can you read my mind and I read your mind and what is that technology from a biological, medical perspective? Is there something going on in the brain that’s doing this?” He wants to know, he’s a curious guy.

So, can you pull that apart for us, both how deep state he is at this point, number one, and then number two, is he looking at it from the spiritual standpoint, from the extended consciousness standpoint? You said he was talking to the big kahunas in Hawaii, obviously when you talk to those people, the shamanic people are saying, “Hey dude, you can go and play around with that stuff, but it ain’t about that.” Is that it, or is he coming at it from this kind of western thing, where he says, “Well, you just don’t know. You don’t old man, what it’s really about is getting control of it so we can turn it into another medicine.” I’ve put a lot on the table there to pull apart?

Greg Mallozzi: It’s okay. Yeah, it’s interesting. In terms of the deep state, at that time, there’s documentation of this. Once again it gets murky with his involvement in some of these things, in terms of actual proof of what he did, where he was, who he was associated with. There’s a few things that show this, but he, at that time, was actually doing, sort of a tour, a lecture tour, and he was presenting papers about the possible uses of ESP in warfare, and he was giving these lectures at places like The Pentagon, Army Intelligence, all these sorts of places. Like you said, at that time there were sort of buying into this stuff, they thought that this could be helpful and he was the guy to go to for this. So, his name started to circulate around these sort of deep state areas.

It’s interesting what you say, because I think, at first, he was doing a lot of research because that was his job, he was being contracted to do this research with LSD and with mushrooms, but I think his spiritual side really came in around that time. We’re talking mid-50s, early-60s, where I think he started to sort of see what the army’s plan was, what they planned to do with these substances, to control people, and it’s really dark stuff, and I think, for whatever reason, he was sort of horrified, I think, when he realized what they were really going to do with this stuff.

So, our guest today is an independent filmmaker, Greg Mallozzi, who has taken upon himself to tackle this huge, and hugely important film project, documenting the life of Andrija Puharich. This interview is wide ranging because the life of Puharich is extremely wide ranging.

At the end of this, we’re going to ask you to help this filmmaker. I’m trying to help him and I think we all need to try and help him, pitch in a little dough so he can get this film made.

So, give it a listen, see if you think this is a worthy project to support, and of course, stay with me for Skeptiko.

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Read Excerpts:

Alex Tsakiris: I’ll tell you what, let’s switch gears for a minute, and I want to talk about Uri Geller, because that could be another touchstone that I think people can glom onto and there’s some really interesting connections there too. One is that Uri Geller, of course, is the very famous, Israeli born, psychic/entertainer/mentalist, who a lot of people will know or think, “Oh yeah, he’s the guy who was debunked on Johnny Carson, and I’ve got a picture there on the screen of, “Oh, you know, he was debunked,” and stuff like that. Then that gets into the whole skeptical thing and stuff like that. But, there’s a much, much deeper story.

We actually explored this on Skeptiko. Not too long ago I had an interview with Jacques Vallée, and low and behold Jacques Vallée tells this amazing story of being at the SRI lunch table and Uri says, “Hey Jacques, I want to do an experiment with you,” and they do this telepathy experiment right there, that Vallée says is like completely proof positive, that there’s something real going on.

But beyond that, there’s all these other cases where people have said, Uri Geller was for real. Of course, he was at Stanford Research Institute and he was tested under the tightest conditions. It doesn’t take much to test whether someone can draw a picture that’s inside of a manila envelope, I mean, the controls there are like high school level controls and you’ve got some pretty smart, smart topnotch people at SRI.

So, I say all of that as a background, so if people don’t know Uri Geller, or just have this basic understanding of, “Oh, Uri Geller was a show magician,” or is a show magician, a show mentalist, it’s much, much deeper than that.

Then there’s also the whole deep state angle, because once someone is known to have those powers, a lot of other people are going to be interested in him too and of course, those people include the CIA, they include Mossad, Israeli Intelligence.

So there’s that whole thing, but we’re talking about Andrija Puharich, and low and behold, he’s the guy who brings Uri Geller to the US. How does that happen? What’s the whole story there?

Greg Mallozzi: It’s quite fascinating. As you said, Uri is from Israel and we did a pretty extraordinary interview with Uri for this film. He’s a really remarkable guy, no matter what you think about him.

The story goes, I think it was around 1970, and Puharich was, as we’ve seen and as we’ve heard and as I’ve found to be accurate, was doing some contracting work for the CIA. At that time they were very interested in the paranormal stuff, ESP, even using magicians to trick people into things. The story goes, Puharich was sent over to Israel by the CIA, because somebody there had heard about this guy Geller. They said, “We’ve been to some shows, he’s this sort of illusionist. He allegedly does these tricks, he can read minds, he can bend these spoons, he can do all these sorts of things,” and people there were pretty convinced that this was real and they told Puharich to go and check this guy out.

So he did, he went over there, he went to one of Geller’s shows, and this is where it gets a little strange, because we don’t know what Puharich, what kind of mindset he was in at the time, what his real intentions were, but Puharich was convinced, as he writes in his book and as he says over and over again that he thought Geller was the real deal. He took him to a test facility after one of these shows, these magician shows that Geller did and they set up a little lab and did all these tests with him, which there’s some footage of, doing things like moving the hands of a clock, stuff like that, these little mini experiments that Puharich documented.

Alex Tsakiris: Let me just interject, because if you look at all, you’ll see that there’s dozens of people who had the exact same experience; they met the guy, they had a little bit of a scientific background, they said, “Okay, test it,” and he’d go, “Okay,” and he’d put his hand over your watch and your watch would stop, or you could take out your keys, forget the spoons, take out your key, your keys, and he’d hold them and bend them. So, I mean, I don’t think it would take too many of those experiences, right in front of your eyes, where you’d say, “Something’s going on here that I need to look into a little bit further.”

Greg Mallozzi: Yes.

Alex Tsakiris: So, there’s a lot of people that had the same experience, right?

Greg Mallozzi: Yeah, and I think, something I always find fascinating about this whole Geller/Puharich relationship, and it gets really strange very quickly, as I’m sure a lot of people know, but we’ve got to look at Puharich as a guy who… I mean, this guy, he clearly was a very bright individual and a lot of people, they would often say Geller was tricking people, it was a slight of hand thing, but to me, it always seemed like Puharich wasn’t the kind of guy who would fall for something like that. Do you know what I’m saying? I feel like it’s too easy to just say, “Oh, he was tricked.”

Alex Tsakiris: It’s ridiculous really.

Greg Mallozzi: Yes. I always looked at it as, Puharich, he didn’t seem like the type of guy who would fall for this kind of stuff. So that’s where it gets really juicy, because we’re saying, “What really happened that got this guy, who’s a medical doctor…” whatever you want to say about him, he wouldn’t just fall for this stuff. So, that’s where it gets really juicy.

What happened basically, he was convinced that Geller could do these things and so he set up a research program through his friend Edgar Mitchell, who I’m sure a lot of people know about, who listen to this show. Puharich was working closely with Edgar Mitchell at the time and Mitchell was able to get some funding to set up this research program with Geller.

So, Geller came to The States with Puharich, they set him up… At first it wasn’t SRI, they went and did a couple of quick tours to some universities and then they got set up at SRI and the whole story with Puthoff and Targ and they started to do these experiments with Geller. That’s where this whole crazy thing with him happens, you know, they’ve got that footage, the documentation of the stuff Geller was doing with them.

Once again, I keep saying it, but a lot of this stuff, it gets murky. What I found, doing this project, is there’s sort of the surface level story, that anybody can Google and you can read, and then there’s a lot of stuff that you start to hear, I mean, especially for me, when I start interviewing people and talking to different people, below the surface, people who were there, who you might not have heard of or read about online. That’s when these stories start to come out, where you really start to question what was really going on here, what were the intentions here.

Alex Tsakiris: Tell us more what you’re thinking when you say that Greg.

Greg Mallozzi: I think, for people who don’t know, Andrija actually wrote a book, I see you have the picture up there called Uri. It’s a very strange book, I don’t know if anyone’s read it. I suggest reading it, whether you’re interested in this stuff or not, because it’s quite an extraordinary book, but in the early 70s, while this sort of SRI stuff was going on, Puharich wrote this book on Uri and he puts out this message in the book basically. We can get into The Nine after this, if you like. But basically, Puharich wrote this book and the book puts out this message that Geller is able to do the things that he does because he’s getting some sort of power from extraterrestrials and the book is just so far out. It’s like you’re reading an amazing science fiction book.

Alex Tsakiris: This is what Geller has said, right?

Greg Mallozzi: Yeah.

Alex Tsakiris: So, this is the crazy thing that, again, on this show, Skeptiko, you say you’ve listened for a while, I mean, I started out really on a pretty straightforward path of looking at this consciousness stuff and I’m telling you, no matter where you start, you wind up with all of this weirdness that’s just unavoidable. So, try and take our story right now and try and take Puharich and try and stay between the little white lines, it’s impossible to do, you know? You’re going to wind up talking about all this whacky stuff.

So, I want to finish talking about Uri Geller and about his work at SRI and this again, straight up parapsychology work that’s being done, this is the basis of parapsychology and really the foundation of it is this work that’s done at Stanford Research Institute, but in a minute we’re going to say, “Screw all that. It’s just such piddly crap,” compared to where these guys are going, because you have somebody like Uri Geller and he’s saying, “Great, you think it’s cool how I can bend these spoons, and wow, but let me tell you, it’s really all about the aliens and the ETs and the other connection.”

Alex Tsakiris: On this show, Skeptiko, and you say you’ve listened for a while so you may understand with I mean, I started out really on a pretty straightforward path of looking at this consciousness stuff and I’m telling you, no matter where you start, you wind up with all of this weirdness that’s just unavoidable. So, try and take our story right now and try and take Puharich and try and stay between the little white lines, it’s impossible to do, you know? You’re going to wind up talking about all this whacky stuff.

Then, low and behold, as you’re going to tell us in a minute, when we start talking about The Nine, and maybe we’re ready to start talking about that now, this is where Andrija starts to go and he doesn’t go there, he’s taken there, like so many of these experiences that people have. It’s not where you want to go, it’s where the experience wants to take you. So, maybe you can lead us into talking about The Nine?

Greg Mallozzi: Of course. I think with Geller, like I said before with the surface level stuff, a lot of people know about the SRI experiments and it’s easy to look up the video and the documentation, but there’s sort of this whole story going on, behind the curtains in a sense, with Puharich and Geller, especially with Puharich’s book.

That book, basically, with Puharich so far out there, he sort of lost credibility with all the real scientific people, the academic people he would associate with and people thought he was nuts. I mean, that was really the turning point where they said this guy is totally far out. Geller even tried to distance himself from Puharich after that book came out.

It’s really just a story a lot of people don’t know about, when it comes to Geller, when it comes to their relationship, and the crazy thing is, that book was a bestseller. It was published by Doubleday.

Alex Tsakiris: Wow, I didn’t know that.

Greg Mallozzi: Which today is one of the biggest publishing houses. It was a bestseller. So, you’ve really got to think, it always comes back to, what was Puharich’s intentions here with this book?

Alex Tsakiris: Well, you know what? I think we’ve got to jump in and talk about The Nine, and then you can help us understand the timeline and how it fits into Puharich’s life, because I have a feeling, I didn’t think of this before, but this must have been going on for him, in a way that caused him to think differently and eventually, I guess, he probably had to share that and get that out.

So, tell us about The Nine, tell us, what is The Nine, who it was. Tell us about this amazing séance he had, who was there, what happened, and who was there is like a big part of this. This is like, unbelievable heavy hitters.

Greg Mallozzi: Yeah. The history of The Nine, it goes back to, once again the Round Table Foundation, which was a research laboratory that Puharich had up in Maine in the early 50s.

The quick story is, a lot of people would visit the Round Table Foundation, all sorts of people, psychics, mediums and everything. So, people would visit all the time, pretty strange people. Puharich would, sort of evaluate them, study them, you know, are these people the real deal? Are they a little iffy?

So, one day this Indian fellow came into the Round Table Foundation, a guy by the name of Vinod, Dr. Vinod. He was allegedly a medium and him and Puharich hit it off.

So, this one night, which there’s documentation of, there’s tape recordings of and everything, this guy, Dr. Vinod, allegedly goes into this trance and he starts to channel what he’s calling this entity, The Nine. So, he goes into this trance, he starts spewing out all of this really far out information. He starts telling Puharich things about his personal life that were really shocking.

So, that really affected Puharich. He, at that time, he was really just tipping over into the spiritual side of stuff and I think he was really interested in this guy, Dr. Vinod, and this thing, The Nine, that he was allegedly channeling.

So, they recorded it, and shortly after that, Puharich went off and did the mushroom stuff. So, The Nine was sort of this thing that happened, he was very interested in it, but I think he sort of left it there and didn’t go back to it for a long time.

Alex Tsakiris: Let me just interject here, because I just had it up on the screen, I don’t want to blow past this too quickly. So, The Nine, and I’m going to go ahead and read this off of the screen for folks, and then we can talk a little bit more about it, but in real, kind of simple terms:

On December 31st, 1952, through an Indian teacher who was visiting the US, Puharich made contact with The Nine, that is nine ascended beings, supposedly, spiritual beings, a group of high beings who have had a long and direct involvement with humanity’s evolution.

Okay, immediately we recognize this as the kind of new-ageish, kind of crazy, channeling stuff that everybody channels.

Greg Mallozzi: Yeah.

Alex Tsakiris: But this gets really, really weird, in terms of the information that they’re able to bring back, the verification of it over the years, and this becomes something that stays with Puharich for 20, 30, 40 years right?

Talk us through the timeline, because he also gets involved with this, at this initial séance that he has, that is very CIA connected and then that, after a couple of years, that stops, but then he finds this other medium, years later, in Florida, and he starts it up again, with some more crazy folks, including Bob Denver, one of the most famous entertainers of the time and some other really, really noteworthy people.

So, there’s a huge story to tell here. We can’t tell it all but, again, that’s why Greg is making this film and that’s why he needs your help in making this film, this is a really important story to get out there.

Fill in some of the pieces I’m missing about this longstanding experience he has with these ascended beings, who have a direct involvement with humanity’s evolution. I mean, you can’t get bigger than that, right?

Greg Mallozzi: Yeah, it’s unbelievable. Like I said, his first interaction, like you just read, was through this guy Vinod, and it really affected him. Puharich, I think, this is when he first really got interested in the channeling stuff in a big way.

So, you’re right, The Nine was this thing that really was a part of his life, basically until he died in the 90s.

So, if you cut from the 50s, with this Indian fellow Vinod, to the early 70s, if you read Andrija’s book on Uri, he references The Nine, and allegedly, through certain mediums, Puharich is able to communicate with them.

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