Most scholars avoid delving into historical records of levitation and other forms of psychokinesis. In contrast, Dr. Michael Grosso deliberately researched them. Historical evidence about human nature and its hidden potential is as important to understanding our present and future as the lessons history has to offer, he says.
“It seems to me that if… some of the levitation stories are true… they are important for at least one reason,” Grosso said. "This is additional evidence that makes the idea of materialism completely unacceptable."
Over the millennia, humanity has had various "methods of dialogue with the divine," he said. Over the past several hundred years, however, people have increasingly turned to absolute materialism, denying everything that has not been physically measured. However, glimpses of something more are not fiction, they are based on real experience.
“There are paths back to the poetic, magical and transcendental dimension of human experience,” says Grosso. He received his Ph. D. from Columbia University and is an informal associate of the Department of Perceptual Research at the University of Virginia. He wrote a book about a specific case of levitation that by all accounts was genuine.
He contracted with Oxford University Press to publish the book, but his contract was terminated when he refused to soften his remarks about levitation. The book will be published this year by Rowman & Littlefield under the title The Man Who Could Fly: St. Joseph of Copertino and the Mystery of Levitation.
Joseph of Copertino (1603-1663) sometimes hovered several inches above the ground, sometimes flew high in the air in front of large crowds in Italy. The process of canonization by the church includes in-depth research, thus, a lot of written evidence has been collected, including 150 eyewitness testimonies that provided detailed information about the levitation of Joseph of Copertino.
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Some people today reject this, considering all claims of levitation to be a delusion of religious zeal or a backward superstition about a primitive society. But Grosso says: "This is something that really exists outside of time."
Regarding the potential objections from skeptics, he said: "All the witnesses who were involved … They were dignitaries - cardinals, popes, inquisitors themselves."
The church had no intention of advertising the miraculous Joseph at the time, Grosso said. There is no reason to believe that church records contain anything other than hard facts. Joseph was met with as much mistrust as he received recognition from the church over the decades.
He was transferred from one place to another, vaguely hinting or explicitly warning not to levitate, probably because he had a powerful ability to attract many of his followers wherever he went.
Joseph was even under a kind of house arrest in Rome, at the same time as Galileo Galilei, albeit for a different reason. One of them was a mystic, the other a driving force of modern science, but both were treated with distrust.
The church could easily declare him a heretic rather than a saint, claiming that his levitation is a sign of devilish mastery. He actually appeared before the court. But, says Grosso, the inquisitors "realized that this guy had no secret intentions, he was completely modest and even shy of his abilities."
He levitated not when he wanted, but only in a state of ecstasy. At certain moments, being in the crowd, Joseph was apparently so agitated that he entered an altered state of consciousness and began to levitate. He did not pay attention to what was happening around him, although he caused a great stir. This prevented him from leading the masses.
People today can't fly into the air for no reason at all while queuing at the grocery store, Grosso says. Joseph of Copertino had special conditions. He not only stayed in an altered state of consciousness - ecstasy, thanks to his faith, which seemed to be an integral part of his superpower. He was also a product of his time.
It is not that the people of that time were more gullible or easily subjected to mass delusion. It was the Reformation of the Church, the culture of the Baroque, the general practices of fasting and solitude, which created an environment in which one could enter an altered state of consciousness.
It was a very nervous time. Can any events or changes in modern society cause such circumstances?
It takes "a change in ordinary human existence," Grosso said, to move us into a collective state of consciousness, more open to our latent abilities. Instead of some catastrophe or tragic event, he would like to hope that this can be achieved by uniting all sciences in search of higher consciousness.
Joseph of Copertino and others throughout history, as well as in our time in many cultures, have had various superpowers. He was also said to have healed people and radiated a "scent of holiness." If one person could develop all the hidden abilities known to mankind and described in historical records, then he would become a superhuman: a superman or a superwoman, Grosso believes.
Psychokinetic abilities do not always manifest themselves in dramatic conditions, like the levitation of Joseph of Copertino. Perhaps people today are performing psychokinesis in more subdued forms without even realizing it, Grosso noted.
