Mind Reader:
Unlocking the Power of your Mind
to Get What You Want
by Lior Suchard
HarperCollins,2012
240 Pages
Middle Grade (13 and up)
“World Renowned Mentalist” Lior Suchard has also been termed “The New Uri Gellar” by winning a television competition, and one of the sexiest men alive by People Magazine 2010!
I use my five senses to create a “sixth sense”. A sense of the mind. A sensitive intuition. Then I use this sense, in conjunction with a whole bunch of skills I’ve learned, to do the mind reading, persuasion, telekinesis, and other cool stuff. Skills like the power of suggestion, knowing how to read body language, persuasion, guided imagery, psychological analysis, and non-verbal communication. I put these techniques together in different combinations and and I use them to direct and influence people and read minds.
This fun book reads like the television show Brain Games. Not only is this a memoir about his performances, but Lior presents us with tricks that we can play even though he’s miles away. For instance, page 128 is missing. (Did you notice?) Every page number within the book has a symbol next to it. He demonstrates a mind trick, (and presumably once we catch on, readers will also be able to manipulate friends and family for entertainment as well,) where he can predict the symbol on a page YOU choose while reading. Like most pick-a-number addition games it is complex enough to hide the fact that all the math you do is systematic and must always result in a multiple of nine. Every nine pages in the book has the same symbol.
In a similar twist of focus and expectations, he next has us pick a card, any card from the photo he holds up. With a bit of study, it can be gleaned that not only is your card no longer there in the second page, (he made it disappear!) but in fact, it is a completely different set of cards! Nobody’s card is still there. This kind of mind trickery is the basis of becoming a mind reader, as promised.
Suchard mentions neuro-linguistic programming, how language and word-choice can be incredibly persuasive in getting what you want, and discusses the use of words like “now” and “because”, even the magic word “please” and how they effect results.
Luckily this magician relies on positivity. Just as he relies on his audience’s innate desire to lean towards the positive, he pragmatically reminds us that audiences forgive performers who know how to be funny about mistakes. He conveys the story of how one night he turned his act around when three people started walking out after he mentioned being from Israel. When he convinced them just to choose a number between one and one hundred before they left… he was able to make them laugh with a correct guess. They stayed.
Like other psychics Lior puts his skills where the money is, not just on stage. Hired by a telecommunications business to perform at a trade show he left them with a message the audience would not forget. He invited ten people at random from the audience to come n stage and call home or a friend. Only a few of the calls went through, most could not connect. No reception. Of those that were successful, the mentalist took them aside and asked each what phone they were using. The calls were all made from phones made by the company that hired him.
Suchard explains his stage trick where he will write down a number or random word in a book ahead of time as a prediction. But how can he predict a number you haven’t even thought of yet? Not a zip code or enlistment number (like Dunninger’s wartime shows, see our OTR review,) but an un-chosen wildcard. He says “The reality is that you chose a number or a word because I make you do so. I persuade you. I influence you. I zip into your thought process and plant that word or that number.”
No sleight-of-hand tricks are revealed here. In fact, the psychic never breaks character in this book. He insists, demands, that his skills are real. Not necessarily “magical,” but certainly “super-natural.” He claims to transfer Chi energy: “It involves extreme focus of my thoughts to gather and send energy– enough energy to make eyeglasses fly through the air, to bend spoons and coins in someone’s hand, or to stop a watch.” Suchard’s book is entertaining, but it does come off as grandstanding at times.
BUT– Even when I begin to doubt myself, to believe that maybe there is something unexplainable in the world, something some people have learned to control and manipulate, but guard very tightly, I remember that Houdini said, if there was any way possible, he would come back to Bess. He never did.
And yet there is still magic in the world. Stage performers like Suchard, whether mentalist or magician, can play an audience like a supernatural savant. There is no doubt they are gifted. They use mental prestidigitation to mesmerize us into childlike wonderment, manipulating the senses and thoughts of others as if omniscient and we, their playthings.
Always think happy thoughts, as you never know who’s reading them.
Psychics & Seances:
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