A Story of Flight - A story recorded in the Sungkao-seng chuan. Ying-fung was a Ch'an monk who had received instruction from Ch'an master Nan-chuan. From his meditative practice, Ying-fung attained some supernatural powers. Once he saw two armies fighting each other. In order to stop the fight, he flew over the battlefield and the soldiers were too busy looking at him flying to fight. He did many unusual things like this. To show his miraculous power, he died standing on his head and nobody was able to overturn him. His sister was a nun, who came and scolded him, "Old brother, when you were alive you did not behave according to the rules. Now when you died, you still want to show off and confuse people." After saying this, she touched the body lighly, and it fell down immediately. (T.50, p.847a)
In 1984 a German film crew filmed* the levitation of an African witch-doctor, Nana Owaka, in Togo. After meditating for a full day, he placed dry leaves and twigs in a circle and sat in the middle.
Just as the sun was setting, Owaka started to stir. A villager lit the circle of twigs and flames shot up. Drums began beating wildly – then we were hardly able to believe our eyes as Owaka stood and rose straight upward! It was as if he were being lifted on a pillow of air. He simply hung as if suspended, with nothing above or below him.
After about a minute, Owaka fell back to earth. He was filmed from two angles, and no one who has examined the film has been able to detect any signs of trickery.
* This film is on the internet on Youtube I believe, either way though you can see it on my video website at www.believeit.tv Just click on any word in the tag cloud on the lower left of my page and then look to the lower left of the next page for "levitation" I have 4 videos there.
Witness to Levitation by Anonomous - When I was growing up in the 1970s, my parents, somewhat hippies at the time, became followers of a guru after learning meditation. Now they stayed this way for several years, although this wasn't like a cult religion with communes or anything. But I remember seeing something that intrigues me to this day.
There was this man and his son, who had traveled India and Nepal from guru to guru attaining different disciplines and practices. I recall the name of his son as Jaoquin. Anyway, this kid wasn't westernized in the least, although American, I assume, at least by birth. He had rarely ever seen cartoons, which as a kid I thought strange. Never heard of Kiss, the rock group, which was really unusual for guys at that age. Basically, seemed to have lived a very cloistered life.
My parents used to go to an ashram, and while they were listening to other speakers, us kids would usually just go out and get ice cream or whatever in the area. One night, it was this man who volunteered to take us out and then over to his house where he was staying. There was his son Jaoquin, my younger sister and I.
Here's what I recall. We went into his backyard where they had a telescope set up. His father pointed it toward the planet Mars and we took turns looking through it. He told us about a dark spot on the planet that they focus on that can make them do something remarkable, but at that point we didn't know what. Then we went inside into their strangely empty house and hung out for a bit. This man let us know that what they were doing required a lot of concentration, so they needed some quiet, regardless of what happens. So we agreed and just sat around to watch whatever was going to happen. Then he turned to us and said that he was going to float. So I was like, okay, go ahead. The man faced the wall, folded his hands in front of him and stood in concentration. Then he began to teeter slightly back and forth, then his feet lifted off the ground as he carefully wiggled his toes underneath to tell whether he was off the carpet on not (or maybe to tell how far up). Granted it was no more than an inch or so, but he eventually rose higher to approximately six inches and was in fact floating.
When he got to this height, he held his hand out to the wall to stabilize himself and then drifted down. I remember being quite amazed and then it was Jaoquin's turn. His father stood behind him as if to help if he was to fall or something and sure enough the boy rose off the ground about six to eight inches.
Later when I asked how it was done, his father simply told me that on the surface of the planet Mars there is a whirlpool that can, I suppose, lift people up when they connect to it and concentrate it.
Now there are a lot of stories on this site that may or may not be true but this one is real, I assure you. Now I myself have tried this a few times and what I get is a teetering back and forth thing with a sense of lightness in my body, but it does seem to do something strange. I get a sensation of smoothly lifting upward, but I can't get off the ground. I always sense like I am falling forward, which makes me nervous and totally breaks my focus. This is a true story, but there are secrets to it I have yet to figure out. But please let me attest to this as an actual witness of this, human levitation is a real phenomenon. They did levitate but the bit about Mars isn't true in that there is no place there that has such an effect, rather it is the belief they have that makes the levitation possible with their meditational practice.
There are reports of over 200 Christian saints levitating or flying – usually involuntarily – during religious raptures, and some of these cases are supported by an impressive amount of eyewitness testimony.
For instance, the 16th-century mystic St Teresa of Avila (d.1582) was observed on many occasions, typically when deep in prayer, to rise anywhere from a few feet to as high as the ceiling of the room. When she felt an 'attack' coming on she would beg the sisters in her convent to hold her down, though they were not always successful. Once while receiving Holy Communion from the Bishop of Avila, she felt her knees begin to leave the floor so she clutched onto the grille. But after receiving the sacrament, she let go and rose into the air.
She wrote a first hand account of her experiences in her autobiography. In her experience it came as a shock, quick and sharp, before you can collect your thoughts or help yourself in any way and you see and feel it as a cloud or as a strong eagle rising upward and carrying you away on its wings." Also: "It seemed to me… as if a great force beneath my feet lifted me up...I confess that it threw me into a great fear, for in seeing one's body thus lifted up from the earth, though the spirit draws it upwards after itself (and that with great sweetness if unresisted) the senses are not lost; at least I...was able to see that I was being lifted up...after the rapture was over, my body seemed frequently to be buoyant, as if all weight had departed from it."
A 17th century Franciscan monk St Joseph of Copertino began levitating during services and was often observed by whole congregations. Once while walking in the monastery grounds, he soared up into the branches of an olive tree and remained kneeling on a branch for half an hour, the thin stem hardly moving under his weight. Unable to glide down, after his ecstasy had passed, he had to wait for a ladder to be brought. For 35 years he was banned from all public services. He levitated before the Pope, his fellow monks, Europe's titled heads and the philosopher Leibnitz.
The Spanish ambassador to the papal court watched him fly over the heads of a crowd to a statue of the Virgin Mary, where he briefly hovered. After giving his customary shriek, he flew back; the ambassador's wife had to be revived with smelling salts. The duke of Brunswick hid himself in a stairway to observe one of Joseph's levitations. After observing a second levitation, the duke renounced his Lutheran faith and became a Catholic. At Osimo, Joseph flew eight feet into the air to kiss a statue of Jesus then carried it off to his cell and floated about with it. He is also reported to have caught up another friar and carried him in the air around the room.
The Sienese Nun Passitea Crogi who died in 1615, was seen traveling a considerable distance just above the ground.
18th Century St Adolphus Liguori who was raised into the air in front of a whole congretation in 1777
The annals of 19th-century spiritualism contain many references to human levitations, as well as to tables, chairs, and other objects gaining or losing weight, levitating, and moving without human contact.
Padre Pio (1887-1968), a humble Capuchin priest from San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, was blessed by God in many wonderful and mysterious ways. The most dramatic was the stigmata. Padre Pio bore the wounds of Christ for fifty years! Among his other gifts were perfume, bilocation, prophecy, conversion, reading of souls, and miraculous cures. People are still being cured through his intercession in ways that cannot be explained by medicine or science.
Padre Pio Levitates: Here is Padre Ascanio's story about that: - "We were waiting for Padre Pio who was coming to hear confessions of the penitents. The church was crowded and everybody watched the door through which Padre Pio would enter. The door stayed closed but suddenly I saw father Pio walking above the heads of the people, he reached the confessional, and then disappeared. After some minutes he started to receive the penitents. I didn't say anything, and I thought I was dreaming, but when I met him I asked him: "Father Pio, How did you manage to walk above the heads of the people?". He jokingly responded: "I can assure you, my child, it's just like walking on the floor... ".
Padre Pio Bilocates: A woman was sitting in the square of the church of the capuchins. The Church was closed. It was Late and she prayed with the thought, and she repeated with the heart: "Padre Pio, help me! Guardian Angel, please, go to tell father Pio to help me, otherwise my sister will die"! From the window above her Padre Pio's voice came: "Who is calling me at this time? What is the problem? The woman told about her sister's illness. Padre Pio went in bilocation, to the sick woman and healed her.
Here is a great site with much on Padre Pio's miraculous actions.
http://www.padrepio.catholicwebservices.com/ENGLISH/ENGLISH_index.htm
Syrian Carmelite, Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified who would sometimes be levitated into the treetops of the garden
Besides the "saints" there have been plenty of others. The magician Harry Kellar, who enjoyed showing audiences how mediums did their tricks, described how during a world tour in the 1870s he was watching a Zulu witch doctor go into a trance when suddenly "To my intense amazement, the recumbent body slowly arose from the ground and floated upward in the air to the height of about three feet, where for a while it floated, moving up and down."
In 1882 he challenged the medium William Eglinton to perform some feat which no conjuror could repeat. Eglinton then levitated, carrying Kellar, holding his feet, into the air – an achievement which Kellar had to admit he could not explain.
Italian medium Eusapia Paladino occasionally used to levitate and was also able to increase or decrease the weight of objects. Her paranormal powers were verified in investigations conducted by European scientists around the turn of the 20th century. After witnessing her demonstrations, the French astronomer Camille Flammarion stated that levitation should no longer be any more in question than the attraction of an iron by a magnet. I have much more information on her and her achievements (which are considerable). Click here to read the rest of the story.
In the 1920s Brazilian medium Carlos Mirabelli performed stunning phenomena under test conditions. Full-form materializations of deceased individuals known to the witnesses appeared, who were able to converse with the investigators, and to touch and be touched. He was also able to levitate and remain floating for minutes at a time. In one instance, a chair with Mirabelli in it rose into the air until it was two metres above the floor, where it remained for two minutes. Levitations of mediums have frequently been reported since then in spiritualist journals, some of these produced in fraud-proof conditions.
While traveling in Sikkim in the 1950s, American journalist John Keel met an old lama who demonstrated his ability to levitate. He ... pressed one hand on top of his stick, a heavy branch about four feet long, frowned a little with effort, and then slowly lifted his legs up off the floor until he was sitting cross-legged in the air! There was nothing behind him or under him. His sole support was his stick (picture), which he seemed to use to keep his balance. I was astounded. The lama then conducted the rest of the conversation 'sitting there in empty space'.
A 12th century Iranian dervish by the name of Haydar was noted for his sudden flights to tree and rooftops.
Roman historian Palladius saw the levitation of a child with his own eyes. He says that the boy rose and remained suspended in the air for some time.
A fakir by the name of Covindasamy was seen to levitate twice by a French Official and travel-writer in India, Louis Jacolliot. They were done in broad daylight and one of them was on the terrace of his home and lasted 10 minutes.
A Yogi's description of his levitation experience:
From Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda
Pgs. 320 and 321 After I had finished writing this chapter, I sat on my bed in the lotus posture. My room was dimly lit by two shaded lamps. Lifting my gaze, I noticed that the ceiling was dotted with small mustard-colored lights, scintillating and quivering with a radium like luster. Myriads of penciled rays, like sheets of rain, gathered into a transparent shaft and poured silently upon me.
At once my physical body lost its grossness and became metamorphosed into astral texture. I felt a floating sensation as, barely touching the bed, the weightless body shifted slightly and alternatively to left and right. I looked around the room; the furniture and walls were as usual, but the little mass of light had so multiplied that the ceiling was invisible. I was wonder-struck.
"This is the cosmic motion-picture mechanism." A Voice spoke as though from within the light. "Shedding its beam on the white screen of your bed sheets, it is producing the picture of your body. Behold, your form is nothing but light!"
I gazed at my arms and moved them back and forth, yet could not feel their weight. Ecstatic joy overwhelmed me. The cosmic stem of light, blossoming as my body, seemed a divine reproduction of the light beams that stream out of the projection booth in a cinema house and make manifest the pictures on the screen.
For a long time I experienced this motion picture of my body in the faintly lit theater of my own bedroom. Though I have has many visions, none was ever more singular. As the illusion of a solid body was completely dissipated, and as my realization deepened that the essence of all objects is light, I looked up to the throbbing stream of lifetrons and spoke entreatingly.
"Divine Light, please withdrew this, my humble bodily picture, into Thyself; even as Elijah was drawn up to the heaven in a chariot of flame."
This prayer was evidently startling; the beam disappeared. My body resumed its normal weight and sank on the bed ; the swarm of dazzling ceiling lights flickered and vanished. My time to leave this earth had apparently not arrived.
beside is a fellow in Amsterdam who while still a little trepidatatious about the people around him still manages to levitate himself considerably off the ground. His bamboo rod is a device he uses to gather the energies (the prana or universal life force) thats all around him, into himself. The rod, while not necessary to levitate (as you can see from the pictures below) has been used commonly amongst yogi's, witch doctors, shamen and the like for centuries if not thousands of years.
Source : http://stevyhanny.blogspot.com/2008/08/yogic-flying.html
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