In the mythology of the East, the distinguishing feature of the gods is the ability to fly. But ordinary mortals also possessed a unique art. In India, for example, brahmanas, yogis, hermit saints, magicians and fakirs possessed km …
In the Indian Vedas, which literally means "knowledge" in Sanskrit, there is even a practical guide to levitation, a kind of know-how that describes how to bring oneself into such a state to get off the ground. But over the past centuries, the meaning of many ancient Indian words and concepts has been lost, therefore it is impossible to translate this priceless instruction into modern language.
As for the ancient Levitants, according to the evidence that has come down to us, they rose into the air two cubits from the ground - about 90 centimeters. Moreover, they did this not at all in order to amaze someone with such miracles, but simply because the "floating" position is more convenient for performing religious rituals.
Along with India, levitation was also practiced in ancient times in Tibet. Buddhist texts tell that, after the Indian founder of Zen Buddhism, Bodhid Harma, came to the Tibetan Shaolin monastery in 527 AD, he taught the monks how to control the energy of the body - a prerequisite for flying. Both the Buddha himself and his mentor the magician Sammat, who could remain hanging in the air for hours, used levitation.
It is characteristic that both in India and in Tibet the art of levitation has survived to this day. Many orientalist researchers also describe the phenomenon of "flying llamas". For example, the British traveler Alexandra David-Neel watched with her own eyes how one of the Buddhist monks, sitting motionless with his legs bent under him, flew tens of meters, touched the ground and again soared into the air, as if bouncing after a strong throw, on the high plateau Chang-Tanga … Moreover, his gaze was directed into the distance - at the "guiding star", visible in the light of day only to him.
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Levitation has long been known not only in the East, but also in Europe. Moreover, medieval European levitants have one characteristic feature. Unlike the eastern brahmanas, yogis, lamas, none of them specifically sought to master the art of levitation and did not prepare for flight. Usually they soared into the air, being in a state of ecstatic religious ecstasy and not even thinking about it.
If we turn to reliable facts, then among the first officially recorded Levitants should be called St. Teresa, a Carmelite nun, whose flights were witnessed by 230 Catholic priests. About her unusual "gift", as the saint herself believed, she told in her autobiography dated 1565.
“Ascension comes like a blow, unexpected and sharp,” she writes, “and before you can collect your thoughts or recover, it seems to you that a cloud is taking you to heaven or a mighty eagle on its wings… I was quite aware of myself to see that I am in the air … I must say that when the ascension ended, I felt an extraordinary lightness in my whole body, as if I were completely weightless."
And here's the curious thing: Saint Teresa herself did not want to fly! For a long time, the Levitanian nun desperately prayed that the Lord would deliver her from this sign of his mercy. In the end, the Carmelite's prayers were answered: Teresa's flights stopped.
The most famous "flying man" is Joseph Deza (1603-1663), nicknamed Cupertinsky after his native village in southern Italy. From childhood he was distinguished by extraordinary piety and tortured himself in every possible way in order to experience a state of religious ecstasy. And after he was accepted into the Franciscan order, he began to really fall into ecstasy. However, the matter was complicated by the fact that in such cases he soared into the air. Once it happened before the very eyes of the head of the Catholic Church.
Joseph arrived in Rome, where he was given an audience with Pope Urban VIII. For the first time beheld his Holiness, he came to such an ecstatic state that he took to the air and soared until the head of the Franciscan order, who was present, brought Joseph to his senses. More than a hundred cases of Joseph's levitation were observed by the then scientists, who left official evidence on this score. Since these flights confused believers, in 1653 he was ordered to withdraw from Assisi to a remote monastery.
However, after three months he was transferred to another monastery, then to the third, fourth - wherever he found himself, the news of the arrival of the "miracle worker" spread throughout the district, and crowds of people flocked to the monastery. Finally, Joseph was transferred to a monastery in Osimo, where in the summer of 1663 he fell seriously ill, and on September 18 of the same year he died and four years later was canonized.
In total, as evidenced by church records, the number of people who demonstrated the phenomenon of levitation in front of believers is approaching three hundred. Of the Russian levitants, one can name Seraphim of Sarov, Archbishop of Novgorod and Pskov John. And the Moscow chronicles tell about Vasily the Blessed, who more than once in the eyes of the crowd was carried by an unknown force across the Moscow River.
Moreover, witches are not among the officially recognized levitants by the church. How many of them were burned at the stake by the Holy Inquisition cannot be counted. During the Middle Ages, suspects in connection with the devil and witchcraft were subjected to tests with water or scales.
The accused were tied up and thrown into a body of water. If they did not drown, the guilt was considered proven, and a fire awaited them. The same thing happened if the person weighed less than a certain norm.
Levitants amaze scientists
The most famous flying man of the 19th century was Daniel Douglas Hume. The editor of an American newspaper describes his first famous singing as follows: “Hume suddenly began to lift off the floor, which was a complete surprise to the whole company. I took his hand and saw his legs - he was floating in the air a foot from the ground. The struggle of a variety of feelings - alternating bursts of fear and delight made Hume shudder from head to toe, and it was clear that he was speechless at that moment. After a while, he sank, then again soared above the floor. For the third time, Hume climbed to the very ceiling and lightly touched it with his hands and feet.
Later, Hume learned to levitate at will. For forty years, he demonstrated his unique art in front of thousands of spectators, including many of the then celebrities: the writers Thackeray and Mark Twain, Emperor Napoleon III, famous politicians, doctors and scientists. And I have never been convicted of fraud.
Hume himself described his condition during levitation in the following way: “I did not feel any hands supporting me, and from the very first time I felt no fear … I usually rose vertically; often my arms stretched out over my head and became stiff like sticks when I felt an unknown force that slowly lifted me off the floor.
However, Daniel Douglas Hume is far from the only one who puzzled scientists. So, in 1934, the Englishman Maurice Wilson, who had trained in the art of levitation according to the yogic method for many years, decided to conquer the summit of Everest with huge jumps, soaring above the ground.
His frozen body was found in the mountains the following year. Wilson did not reach the summit quite a bit. But the fact that he was able to overcome the most difficult route without special climbing equipment speaks in favor of levitation.
Soaring yogis
Currently, the greatest results in the field of levitation have been achieved by those who use the yoga technique. Over the centuries-old history of the era of loss of knowledge and the era of ignorance, much of this technique has been lost. But part of the innermost knowledge was still preserved.
One of their guardians was the Indian guru Devi. Our contemporary, a young physicist, became his student. In 1957, having moved to the United States under the name of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, he preached the new philosophical and religious teaching of the Science of Creative Reason.
Its cornerstone is transcendental consciousness, which is not limited by any framework and can receive information directly from the surrounding world and from the universal mind, and not only through the senses. To do this, you need to turn off consciousness, and then a person will begin to perceive a huge flow of information that enters the subconscious and remains unclaimed.
The same state of altered consciousness is achieved with the help of transcendental meditation, the program of which was developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yoga. Its goal is to improve a person through the liberation of consciousness and thereby reveal all the potential capabilities of his body. These include, in particular, levitation. The ability for it is inherent in everyone, you just need to learn to use it, says Maharishi.
In 1971, the new messiah founded his university in Feyerfield, Iowa. Then the European Research Center was opened in Switzerland and training centers in Germany, England, India and a number of other countries. Prominent specialists of various profiles were invited to them - physicists, experts in Indian philosophy, mathematics, doctors, engineers, psychologists, who were united by one goal - to make a person happy. And one of the applied tasks of the transcendental meditation program was teaching levitation.
In July 1986, the first "flying yogis" competition was held in Washington, DC, prepared under the program of transcendental meditation, about which a lot was written in the press and films were made. Although the results shown by the participants are incomparable with the descriptions of levitation that have come down to us in the past, they can certainly be considered very impressive: lifting 60 cm in height and moving 1.8 m horizontally.
True, it is impossible to call what the "flying yogis" demonstrated as flights. Rather, these are just short jumps: a person sitting motionless in the lotus position suddenly rises smoothly into the air, hangs motionless for a while, and then lands just as smoothly. Well, at the sixth competition of "flying yogis", held in 1993 in The Hague, Subha Chandra took the lead, having risen a maximum of 90 cm above the ground, flying 187 cm horizontally and staying in the air for 3-4 minutes.
Unrecognized pattern
Despite numerous cases of levitation, it is perceived as a miracle or, at best, as a mysterious phenomenon, bordering on science fiction and contrary to scientific laws. And this assessment will not change until the answer to the main question is found: what is the nature of the force that lifts a person into the air? Does it arise in the body itself due to the mobilization of some internal reserves, its unknown, hidden capabilities, or is its source located outside the person and he only "connects" to him?
Judgments about the physical nature of levitation are very contradictory. A number of researchers believe that levitation occurs as a result of the appearance of a biogravitational field, which is created by a special psychic energy emitted by the human brain. This hypothesis, in particular, is supported by the Doctor of Biological Sciences Alexander Dubrov. At the same time, he emphasizes that such a biogravitational field is born due to the conscious efforts of the levitant, and therefore he is able to control it, and therefore, change the direction of flight.
However, even if this is so, many questions arise that have not yet been answered. For example, what areas of the brain and in what mode are involved in levitation? Is the special psychic energy that causes it electromagnetic in nature, or is it some other? Finally, what physiological factors contribute to the manifestation of such unusual capabilities of our brain?
Until recently, many serious scientists spoke of levitation and antigravity very harshly in the spirit that all this is “bullshit”.
Now they have to reconsider their position. It all started with the fact that in March 1991 the authoritative scientific journal Nature published a sensational picture: the director of the Tokyo Superconductivity Research Laboratory was sitting on a platter made of superconducting ceramic material, and a small gap was clearly visible between it and the floor surface. The director's weight together with the dish was 120 kg, which did not prevent them from floating above the ground!
This phenomenon was later called the "Meisker effect". It consists in the fact that if a superconductor is placed over a magnet, it will hover in the air. And in the space above it, a zone appears, in which, in turn, the weight of objects placed there, including living objects, decreases. Thus, the researchers have already managed to "hang" live laboratory mice and frogs in the air.
Of course, this is not yet levitation in the full sense of the word. But, if it is possible to prove that in such cases, the hovering of living objects is due to "molecular magnetism" as a result of certain cellular processes, perhaps the secret of "flying people" will be revealed.
S. Basov
“Interesting newspaper. The world of the unknown”№2 2013