Physician and parapsychologist who studied claimed psychic phenomena for the Pentagon, CIA, and Naval Intelligence at Edgewood Arsenal in the 1950s. In December 1952, an Indian mystic he'd invited to a channeling session, Dhundiraj G. Vinod, went into trance and claimed contact with a group of entities calling themselves "The Nine" — a thread Puharich pursued for decades and carried directly into his later work with Uri Geller. After meeting Geller in Israel in 1971 and bringing him to the U.S., Puharich became his most prominent public advocate, writing a credulous 1974 biography claiming Geller was in hypnotic contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence called "Spectra" — echoing the earlier Nine sessions. Journalist Annie Jacobsen has alleged the CIA used Edgar Mitchell's Mind Science Institute as a conduit for payments to Puharich and Geller during Geller's 1972 SRI evaluation.
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