Levitation

About Levitation

Levitation refers to the unsupported elevation of a human body above the ground, reported across contemplative and mystical traditions for more than fifteen centuries. Sanskrit texts catalog the phenomenon as laghima, the siddhi of lightness, listed in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras 3.45 as one of the eight major attainments that follow mastery over the five elements. Christian hagiography documents levitations among ascetics, mystics, and contemplatives from the desert fathers through the Counter-Reformation. Tibetan Buddhist literature attributes the capacity to advanced tantric practitioners who have achieved mastery over the subtle winds (lung) through years of tsa-lung training.

The accounts converge on a pattern that is difficult to harmonize with ordinary physics: witnesses across independent cultures describe human bodies rising against gravity, sometimes hovering motionless, sometimes drifting horizontally, sometimes shooting upward with startling velocity. The duration reported ranges from fleeting elevations of seconds to sustained suspensions lasting many minutes. Altitude varies from a few inches above the floor to heights that required witnesses to look up at rafters or treetops to follow the levitated body.

What distinguishes levitation from almost every other paranormal claim is the density and quality of its testimonial record. Saint Joseph of Cupertino, a seventeenth-century Franciscan friar, generated more than seventy independently attested levitation reports from witnesses including cardinals, the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See, the Duke of Brunswick, and Pope Urban VIII himself, who reportedly fainted when the friar rose into the air during a private audience. Teresa of Avila wrote in her autobiography that she begged her sisters to hold her down and prayed desperately for the raptures to stop because of the public attention they attracted. The Scottish-American medium D.D. Home gave some fifteen hundred seances over three decades without ever being caught in fraud, including the 1868 Ashley House episode in which three witnesses testified that Home floated out a third-story window and returned through another.

The practices associated with producing levitation, the theological and philosophical frameworks offered to explain it, and the scientific attempts to investigate or debunk it form a coherent thread running through yogic, Christian, and Tibetan contemplative cultures. Each tradition developed its own vocabulary for the phenomenon: laghima and utkrama in Sanskrit, raptus and levitatio in Latin, pāda-vikāra and lung-gom in Tibetan, each word pointing to slightly different aspects of the same underlying event. The cross-cultural convergence is more striking than the terminological differences. Practitioners separated by thousands of miles and many centuries, working within theological frameworks that differed radically in their metaphysical assumptions, produced overlapping descriptions of a body rising, hovering, returning.

Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, first published in 1946, introduced the phenomenon to a wide Western audience through accounts of Indian masters, placing levitation within a framework that treats siddhis as reproducible effects of specific spiritual causes rather than as random miracles. This framing is closer to the traditional yogic understanding than to either Western materialism or Christian miracle theology, and has shaped much of the contemporary conversation about the phenomenon.

The Ability

Within the yogic framework, levitation is classified as laghima, literally the quality of lightness, and appears in the standard list of eight great siddhis (ashta-mahasiddhi) alongside anima (miniaturization), mahima (enlargement), garima (heaviness), prapti (reaching anywhere), prakamya (irresistible will), ishitva (lordship over nature), and vashitva (control over others). Patanjali addresses laghima directly in Yoga Sutra 3.45, which states that mastery over the gross, essential, subtle, pervading, and purposive aspects of the five elements brings perfection of the body and the siddhis including anima and its companions. The Vyasa commentary and later glossators treat laghima as the condition in which the body becomes as light as cotton fiber, capable of traveling on a single ray of sunlight or resting on the petals of a flower.

The Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the Gheranda Samhita describe specific bandhas, mudras, and pranayama practices said to generate the physiological conditions in which laghima manifests. These texts treat the siddhi not as a separate miracle but as a predictable by-product of subtle-body purification: when prana is stabilized in sushumna nadi and the body is saturated with the lighter elements (vayu and akasha) while the heavier elements are suppressed, the gross body loses its ordinary weight. Padmasana posture, khechari mudra, and bhastrika breathing are repeatedly named in this context. The eighteenth-century Shandilya Upanishad lists laghima specifically among the results of sustained samyama on the relationship between body and akasha.

Christian mystical theology approaches the same phenomenon through a different conceptual architecture. The Latin tradition uses terms like raptus, levitatio, and sublevatio to distinguish different qualities of the experience. Raptus refers to ecstatic rapture in which the soul is seized by God so powerfully that the body is drawn after it. Levitatio denotes a more sustained or controlled elevation. Sublevatio describes a partial lifting of the body off the ground. The Spanish mystic Saint Teresa of Avila provides the most detailed first-person account, describing in her Vida how her body would rise against her will during contemplative prayer, sometimes carrying her across the choir of her convent while she clutched at grilles and floors trying to remain earthbound. Her contemporary John of the Cross reportedly levitated in her presence, and the two were supposedly lifted together during a spiritual conversation at the grille of the Avila convent.

Joseph of Cupertino, canonized in 1767 as the patron saint of aviators and students, presents the most densely documented case in the Catholic record. Herbert Thurston's The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, published posthumously in 1952, catalogs more than seventy distinct eyewitness accounts of Joseph's flights, many recorded during the formal beatification investigations that required sworn testimony from multiple independent witnesses under ecclesiastical oath. The Duke of Brunswick converted to Catholicism after witnessing Joseph rise toward the altar during Mass. The Spanish admiral Cassanate reported Joseph flying into a crowd of Spanish visitors and returning to his starting point. Pope Urban VIII summoned him to Rome, witnessed a levitation during the audience, and was reportedly so shaken that he needed to be assisted from the room.

Tibetan Buddhism locates the capacity within the broader category of powers (siddhis or ngodrub) that arise from completion-stage tantric practice. Advanced practitioners of tsa-lung trul-khor and the Six Yogas of Naropa, particularly tummo (inner heat) and bardo yoga, are said to develop mastery over the inner winds to the degree that the gross body can be temporarily released from gravitational constraint. The biography of Milarepa, the eleventh-century yogi-poet, describes his flight from his teacher Marpa's house on at least one occasion and his later capacity to travel through the air during teaching journeys. Padmasambhava, the eighth-century tantric master who brought Vajrayana to Tibet, is traditionally depicted standing on or above a lotus seat floating in space, and the hagiographic literature assigns him routine aerial travel. Tibetan sources also describe lung-gom-pa, trance runners who were said to cover enormous distances in a state of semi-aerial suspension, barely touching the ground.

The phenomenon in every tradition is described as emerging spontaneously from deep contemplative states rather than being willed directly. Practitioners consistently report surprise, embarrassment, or concern about attention when the levitation occurs. The Tibetan tradition of lung-gom-pa, trance runners reported by Alexandra David-Néel, describes adepts covering enormous distances in a state of semi-suspension, barely touching the ground. The lung-gom phenomenon belongs to the same family of subtle-body achievements as the full siddhi.

The nineteenth-century spiritualist movement produced its own category of levitation phenomena, centered on trance mediums who claimed to be vehicles for the action of discarnate entities. Daniel Dunglas Home, born in Scotland in 1833 and raised in Connecticut, generated the most detailed and best-witnessed mediumistic levitation record in the movement's history. Home sat for approximately fifteen hundred seances between 1855 and 1886, frequently in well-lit rooms with witnesses of his own choosing and often of theirs, and was never caught in fraud despite intense scrutiny from investigators including Sir William Crookes, one of the leading physical scientists of the period. The 1868 Ashley House incident, in which Home is said to have floated out of a third-story window and returned through another window in the same room, was witnessed and separately recorded by Lord Adare, Captain Charles Wynne, and the Master of Lindsay. Though spiritualism's metaphysical framework differs from the contemplative traditions, Home's case is frequently cited alongside Cupertino and the yogic record as evidence that the phenomenon is not confined to one cultural setting.

Training Method

Traditional training methods associated with levitation differ across the three main source traditions, but they share a common structural logic: stabilize attention, purify the subtle body or interior disposition, and approach the phenomenon as a by-product of disciplined practice rather than a direct goal. No serious source in any tradition presents levitation as a technique to be rehearsed like a physical skill. It is always framed as an emergence from deeper work.

In the yogic context, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras prescribes samyama, the combined practice of concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and absorption (samadhi) directed at a specific object. Sutra 3.45 locates the eight siddhis, including laghima, as results of samyama on the five elements in their five aspects (gross, essential, subtle, pervading, and purposive). The preparatory stages are the full eight limbs of ashtanga yoga: the ethical yamas and niyamas, asana for bodily stability, pranayama for breath and energy control, pratyahara for sense withdrawal, and then the three internal limbs of samyama itself. Later hatha yoga manuals such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Gheranda Samhita, and the Shiva Samhita add specific technical practices: mula bandha, uddiyana bandha, and jalandhara bandha to seal the subtle body; khechari mudra, the practice of turning the tongue back into the nasopharynx, to generate nectar and stabilize consciousness; and vigorous bhastrika and kapalabhati pranayama to charge the system with prana. The texts warn repeatedly that pursuit of siddhis for their own sake creates attachment and obstructs the ultimate goal of liberation.

Christian contemplative tradition offers no equivalent technical manual for producing levitation and in fact treats any attempt to engineer the phenomenon as spiritually dangerous. The training that preceded levitations in documented cases consisted of years or decades of ascetic discipline, liturgical prayer, sacramental life, and interior silence. Saint Joseph of Cupertino was famous for his extreme simplicity, near-illiteracy, constant fasting, and capacity to enter rapture at the mere mention of divine things, particularly the name of Mary. Teresa of Avila developed her practice of mental prayer through years of struggle with distraction before the raptures began. The tradition's manuals, from Pseudo-Dionysius through John of the Cross to Francis de Sales, treat extraordinary phenomena (raptures, visions, locutions, levitations) as graces that may or may not be given and that should never be sought. John of the Cross particularly warns in The Ascent of Mount Carmel that attachment to extraordinary phenomena can derail genuine spiritual development.

Tibetan Buddhist training for the powers associated with levitation is codified in the Six Yogas of Naropa and the broader tsa-lung trul-khor tradition. The practitioner first completes the preliminary practices (ngondro), typically involving one hundred thousand prostrations, mantra recitations, mandala offerings, and guru yoga sessions. After receiving empowerment and completion-stage instructions from a qualified teacher, the student engages in prolonged retreat (often the traditional three-year, three-month, three-day retreat) during which the inner winds, channels, and drops are worked directly through visualization, breath retention, physical yogas, and specific postures. Tummo meditation generates the inner heat that is considered the foundation for subsequent powers. Advanced practices target the central channel, the knots at the chakras, and the very subtle wind-mind that is said to be the basis of all physical appearance. The resulting command over the subtle body is said to permit temporary suspension of ordinary physical constraints, including gravity.

The Transcendental Meditation organization introduced a modern program in 1977 called TM-Sidhi, marketed as a method for developing the yogic siddhis based on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's reading of the Yoga Sutras. The program includes a practice called yogic flying in which practitioners sit in padmasana and silently repeat sutras associated with laghima. Participants report hopping movements that they interpret as the first stage of full levitation, though observers and critics describe the phenomenon as unassisted hops produced by the muscles of the legs and lower back. No scientifically documented case of actual unsupported suspension has emerged from the TM-Sidhi program in nearly fifty years, despite thousands of practitioners and extensive claims. The case illustrates the gap between training designed to produce siddhis and the phenomenon's historical pattern of emerging unexpectedly from contemplative depth rather than from technique targeted at the siddhi itself.

Common elements across the three frameworks are worth noting. All three require a qualified teacher and a long apprenticeship before advanced practices are introduced. All three treat ethical preparation as non-negotiable: the yogic yamas and niyamas, the Christian life of charity and obedience, and the Buddhist refuge and bodhicitta commitments function as containers stabilizing the personality so that the intensities of advanced practice do not produce unhinged results. All three emphasize right view over technique, and all three insist the phenomenon is a side effect, not a goal. The practitioner who pursues levitation directly is almost universally said to fail.

The role of devotion or surrender is another shared element. Joseph of Cupertino's flights frequently followed mention of holy names, particularly the name of Mary. Teresa of Avila's raptures arose during periods of intense devotional prayer. Yogic and Tibetan accounts emphasize bhakti or guru devotion as integral to the bhumi or stage at which siddhis arise, with Yogananda crediting devotion to his guru as the practical means by which his lineage's powers were transmitted. The element of surrender appears in all three traditions as the proximate condition under which the phenomenon occurs: not strain, not technique, not ambition, but a settling of the will into something larger than itself.

Scientific Research

Scientific investigation of levitation falls into three broad categories: historical-documentary analysis of past cases, laboratory investigation of living claimants, and physiological or neuroscientific study of the altered states in which levitation is said to occur. Each approach has produced useful results and serious limitations.

The most extensive historical-documentary work is Herbert Thurston's The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, compiled over decades by a Jesuit priest and published posthumously by his order in 1952. Thurston approached the material with methodical skepticism, evaluating each reported case against standards of evidence similar to those used in psychical research of the period. He concluded that a small number of cases, particularly those of Joseph of Cupertino, Teresa of Avila, and a few others, rested on testimony sufficiently detailed, redundant, and independent that ordinary dismissal was not adequate. Michael Grosso's The Man Who Could Fly: St. Joseph of Copertino and the Mystery of Levitation, published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2016, builds on Thurston with new archival research into the beatification documents and offers a sustained philosophical argument that the Cupertino case presents genuine empirical challenges to strict materialism. Grosso catalogs more than one hundred and fifty specific incidents witnessed by named individuals, many of whom gave sworn testimony under canonical oath during the beatification process.

Stephen Braude, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, has examined levitation claims within his broader work on macro-psychokinesis. His The Limits of Influence, first published in 1986 and reissued by Rowman and Littlefield in 1997, analyzes the case of the medium D.D. Home in detail, including the 1868 Ashley House incident in which three witnesses (Lord Adare, Captain Charles Wynne, and the Master of Lindsay) testified that Home floated out of a third-story window and reentered through another window in the same room. Braude's subsequent book The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations (University of Chicago Press, 2007) examines more recent psychokinetic claimants and argues that the pattern of evidence in the strongest historical cases is difficult to reduce to fraud, hallucination, or misperception.

The TM-Sidhi yogic flying program has been the subject of the only large-scale modern laboratory examination of a levitation claim. Maharishi International University (now Maharishi University of Management) in Fairfield, Iowa, has published studies claiming that the practice produces reduced crime rates and other field effects when practiced in groups (the so-called Maharishi effect), with claimed results appearing in Journal of Crime and Justice and Journal of Conflict Resolution in the 1980s and 1990s. Independent researchers have criticized these studies for methodological problems including post-hoc variable selection, absence of pre-registration, and failure to replicate under tighter conditions. The physical phenomenon itself, the hopping movement the program calls yogic flying, has been analyzed in video and shown to be consistent with leg-muscle propulsion from padmasana rather than unsupported levitation. No controlled demonstration of actual gravitational defiance has been produced by the program.

Neuroscientific research has not directly investigated levitation but has examined the contemplative states in which historical levitations are said to have occurred. Studies by Andrew Newberg and colleagues using SPECT imaging on Franciscan nuns and Tibetan meditators during deep contemplative states show significant changes in parietal lobe activity correlated with the dissolution of ordinary body boundaries, as reported in Why God Won't Go Away (Ballantine, 2001) and subsequent work. Studies of advanced meditators by Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have demonstrated unusual EEG signatures during deep meditation. None of this research approaches the specific physical question of whether a body can be suspended against gravity, but it does establish that contemplative adepts enter measurably distinct neurological states.

The fundamental difficulty facing scientific investigation is that the phenomenon, to the extent it exists, appears spontaneously in individuals who did not seek it and resists production under controlled conditions. Joseph of Cupertino was confined to a cell for most of the last thirty years of his life precisely because church authorities found his public levitations disruptive and wanted to contain the phenomenon, yet the levitations continued in front of his few permitted visitors. The phenomenon's apparent resistance to observation on demand limits what laboratory science can say about it, leaving the question in an uncomfortable middle ground between dismissed and demonstrated.

Theoretical frameworks proposed to account for levitation fall into several families. Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance hypothesis, developed in A New Science of Life (1981), suggests that habits of form and behavior in nature are stabilized by fields not reducible to currently known physics. Psi-hypothesis frameworks, developed by researchers including J. B. Rhine, Dean Radin, and Stephen Braude, treat levitation as macro-psychokinesis, the direct effect of mental intention on physical systems, for which small but statistically significant laboratory evidence exists in micro-PK experiments. The thought-body hypothesis in tantric metaphysics treats the gross body as a manifestation of subtler bodies, proposing that mastery over the upstream bodies can temporarily alter the downstream appearance of the gross body. None of these frameworks has been tested in a way that rules it in or out, but each provides a conceptual space in which the phenomenon could exist without violating physics. Stephen Braude has argued at length that demanding laboratory replication ignores the historical reality that the strongest evidence in many sciences (forensic, geological, astronomical, historical) is testimonial rather than experimental, and that a coherent epistemology must take the testimonial record seriously when its quality is high.

Risks & Cautions

Every tradition that discusses levitation also issues warnings about it, and the warnings converge on three distinct categories of risk: spiritual, psychological, and physical.

The spiritual risks are the most consistently emphasized. Patanjali addresses the siddhis in Yoga Sutra 3.38 and 3.51, warning that they are obstacles to samadhi when clung to as achievements. The eight-limbed path aims at liberation from identification with the body and mind, and any attainment that produces fresh identification (I am the one who can levitate) reinforces the very structure the practice is meant to dissolve. The Buddha's teaching recorded in the Kevatta Sutta rebukes a disciple who wanted the Buddha to demonstrate psychic powers for the sake of converting skeptics, pointing out that a person hostile to the teaching would attribute any demonstration to magical charms rather than genuine realization. Christian mystical theology reaches similar conclusions from a different angle. John of the Cross devotes substantial sections of The Ascent of Mount Carmel to warnings against attachment to extraordinary phenomena, arguing that the soul must pass through the dark night precisely because dependence on consolations, visions, and sensory graces obstructs union with the formless God. Teresa of Avila prayed desperately for her raptures to stop and begged her sisters to hold her down, treating her levitations as obstacles to her vocation rather than achievements.

Psychological risks appear across traditions in the form of grandiosity, spiritual bypassing, and dissociation. A practitioner who believes that a genuine or imagined siddhi sets them apart from ordinary humans can develop a personality structure resistant to correction, feedback, and ordinary relational intimacy. The TM-Sidhi yogic flying phenomenon provides a documented case study: practitioners who interpret unassisted hopping as the first stage of levitation can construct an entire identity around an experience that independent observation does not support, and the social pressure within the community makes correction difficult. Similar patterns appear in other groups that claim paranormal achievements. Tantric teachers in both Indian and Tibetan traditions warn that siddhis pursued without adequate preparation in ethical discipline and right view can produce an inflated ego that is more bound, not less bound, than it was before the practice began.

Physical risks, though less emphasized in the sources, are not absent. Christian hagiography records cases of levitating mystics falling from unexpected heights, including reports of Joseph of Cupertino returning to earth abruptly when his ecstasy was interrupted. Teresa of Avila describes the sensation of her raptures as violent and sometimes frightening, beyond her control, and fears that her body might be damaged when her soul returned to ordinary awareness. Tibetan tsa-lung practices carry documented physical risks when attempted without proper preparation or guidance. Pranayama practices at the intensity described in the hatha yoga manuals have produced documented cases of injury, including forceful disturbance of the nervous system that some modern practitioners describe as kundalini crisis.

The convergent traditional warning can be stated simply: pursue the siddhi and you get neither liberation nor the siddhi; pursue liberation with diligence and whatever siddhi is going to arise will arise as a by-product, if at all, and will be handled without attachment.

A fourth risk is sociological. Communities organized around claimed paranormal achievements tend to develop insular norms, in-group loyalty that resists outside scrutiny, and structures dependent on the continuation of the claims. A practitioner evaluating a teacher or community that promises levitation is well advised to look at signs of community health: is there transparency about failures, freedom to leave, room for honest disagreement, and a sustainable financial structure? The phenomenon's highest historical exemplars all emerged from communities that scored well on these criteria.

Significance

Levitation occupies a distinctive place in the landscape of contemplative phenomena because it touches a fundamental physical law and does so across cultures that had no historical contact. Unlike visions, locutions, or altered states that can be referred to subjective experience, a levitation is by definition a public, shared, material event: either the body is suspended unsupported or it is not. The phenomenon therefore functions as a boundary marker in the conversation between contemplative traditions and materialist epistemology.

For the traditions themselves, the significance is paradoxical. Yogic sources treat laghima as real and attainable but warn sternly against pursuing it. Christian hagiographers treat reported levitations as evidence of sanctity but refuse to accept any case as canonically proven without exhaustive independent testimony under oath. Tibetan sources weave levitation into the biographies of their greatest masters while emphasizing that the powers are merely incidental markers of attainments oriented toward liberation and service to sentient beings. The traditional consensus is that the phenomenon matters far less than the transformation of consciousness that produces it.

For contemporary practitioners and researchers, the significance lies in what the phenomenon suggests about the relationship between mind, body, and physical law. If the strongest cases are what they appear to be, then either the laws of physics admit exceptions under rare conditions or current physics lacks an account of the mind's relationship to matter in certain states. Both possibilities have implications for how contemplative practice is understood and valued. The cross-cultural convergence, across traditions with no common origin and vastly different theological frameworks, suggests that whatever the phenomenon is, it is tracking something real about advanced states of consciousness rather than being a local cultural artifact.

Within the Satyori framework, levitation matters less as a goal or even a curiosity than as a signpost pointing to the seriousness of what the great contemplative traditions understood themselves to be doing. The practices that produced the documented cases were the deepest versions of practices still available today: sustained concentration, ethical discipline, sacramental or devotional life, breath and subtle-body work, and the surrender of self-concern in favor of union with what is greater than self. The phenomenon functions as testimony, imperfect and contested but substantial, that these practices were not metaphor or moral exhortation only but pointed at real transformations in the relationship between consciousness and the material world. Whether or not any contemporary practitioner ever rises into the air, the historical record stands as evidence that something happened to certain human beings under certain conditions that current understanding has not absorbed. The student of contemplative practice is invited not to belief or disbelief but to the question of what kind of life produces such reports.

Connections

Levitation sits within a network of related practices and phenomena that illuminate its context. The broader category of siddhis provides the yogic framework within which laghima is classified and discussed. Within yoga, the foundational training for any siddhi begins with seated posture, and padmasana is the specific asana most often associated with laghima practice because of its sealing effect on the downward-moving apana vayu. Breath work is equally central: bhastrika pranayama is named in the hatha yoga manuals as the vigorous practice that saturates the body with the light elements said to enable laghima.

The subtle-body practices that prepare the system include khechari mudra, which stabilizes consciousness and is said to generate the amrita nectar that changes the body's relationship to gravity. Energetic flow through the central channel culminates at the sahasrara chakra at the crown, while the ajna chakra between the brows is the seat of the concentrated attention required for samyama. The balancing force comes from the grounded muladhara chakra, which must be stable before any ascending practice is safe.

From the Ayurvedic side, the guna laghu (light) is the physical-qualitative foundation of laghima, and the prana vayu is the specific sub-dosha whose mastery is most closely tied to the siddhi. The Tibetan parallel to laghima practice is tummo, the inner heat yoga that generates the subtle-body mastery underlying all the powers. Related siddhi phenomena include bilocation, which the Catholic tradition reports from many of the same saints (notably Joseph of Cupertino and Padre Pio), and stigmata, another cross-cultural psycho-physical phenomenon associated with intense contemplative states. The underlying energetic architecture in all these cases is the subject of kundalini awakening, the rising of the primordial energy through the central channel that tradition holds as the substrate for all siddhis. Some researchers have also noted formal similarities between the contemplative levitation accounts and reports from entheogenic traditions, in which altered states induced by plant medicines are said to occasionally produce sensations of unsupported flight, though here the phenomenon is almost always reported as subjective rather than as physically witnessed by outside observers. The distinction between subjective experience of flight and physically witnessed suspension is one of the sharp lines that the strongest historical levitation cases are said to cross. Each of these connecting practices and phenomena belongs to a network of cross-tradition contemplative work that the documented levitation cases bring into focus, and the student who wishes to understand the phenomenon at depth will find that the path leads outward through every part of the broader contemplative landscape rather than inward toward a single technique.

Further Reading