UriGeller.com

It’s rare to meet a medic who will confess to an inexplicable, unscientific ability. My friend Dr Deepak Chopra is one, but he came from the ancient Indian tradition of medicine, very different to the West with its emphasis on hard evidence and its contempt for intuition.

Serhat Gümrükςü could only have grown up in Turkey, where Europe and Asia meet. His mind is a fascinating combination of East and West: he has studied martial arts, transcendental religions and esoterica, but he is also a practical man with great faith in the power of conventional medicine.

Most of all, he truly possesses the healing touch. Hanna has been troubled by pain in her shoulder for years, despite the attentions of the best specialists in Harley Street and the NHS: Serhat’s hand has taken away the pain.

“The sensation was indescribable,” Hanna said afterwards.”There was a little tingling, a feeling of warmth — but most of all I was aware of a higher intelligence, something guiding the energy.”

Serhat’s fame is spreading, and he is jetting across Europe, trying to use his learning and his gift to help as many people as he can. Some are wealthy, some are ordinary and at least one is a titled member of a Eurpoean royal family.

This week he stayed at my home for three days while he visited a family I know well and love dearly, whose son is in a coma after a horrific accident. I asked Serhat why he had approached me before my series launched in Istanbul — after all, few Turks had ever heard of me until recently.

“There are two people I have always wanted to meet,” he told me. “I’ve known about both of you since I was a teenager. I saw your life story, the movie Mindbender, on TV and I was transfixed by the bending spoons — it was a life-changing moment, to realise that the mind is more powerful than metal.

“The other person who changed my life is a writer.” He pulled a book out of his pocket and I shouted aloud in surprise — it was Illusions, by Richard Bach.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I told Serhat. “Richard and I were friends, back in the Seventies, but we lost touch and I hadn’t heard anything of him for 30 years... until this week!”

Serhat was speechless at the synchronicity, so I pulled out my BlackBerry and dialled Kermit. I could easily imagine that he and Richard would enjoy each other’s conversation — both believe in living within the present moment, savouring every experience.

More than that, Richard has always been a fanatical flier. I could imagine him standing like a little schoolboy in awe of Kermit’s magnificent array of Wildcats, Helldivers and Corasirs.

Now Serhat is determined to meet his mentor when he visits the States later this year. There is no doubt in my mind that this meeting is meant, and that somehow I have been involved, worked into the pattern by the intelligence which guides all our lives.

Perhaps I should join Serhat in America. It would be great to see Richard after so long, and I know he’d be entertained to hear of my surprise flight above Budapest with the prince of aerobatics, Peter Besenyei.

But on the other hand, maybe I should stay well away. When Kermit hears I’ve been barrel-rolling and tail-spinning, he’s going to wanted to top that thrill by taking me up in some 100-year-old biplane...

 
Richard was surprised and delighted when I delved into my archive to find photos of us together in the early Seventies. He’s a modest, private man who rarely poses for the camera, and he emailed me as soon as he saw the shot of us beside an aeroplane. The woman in the middle is his brilliant editor, Eleanor Friede, who discovered and published his bestselling story, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

That picture, he wrote, was “a bit of a mystery. The one with Eleanor must have been taken at the East Hampton airport, and though I had a Grumman Widgeon at that time (and still do), the airplane in the picture is not it.  From the bag in my hand, I can only guess we must have been airplane-shopping...”