Asahara’s flying circus? Thank heaven for the laws of physics

Asahara’s flying circus? Thank heaven for the laws of physics

Photo by Carlos Arthur M.R on Unsplash

Originally published 15 May 1995

Come, Josephine, we don’t need a machine. Sit with me here on the floor. Cross your legs into the lotus posi­tion. Close your eyes. Chant this mys­tic mantra:

Hig­gi­ly, pig­gi­ly, dig­gildy, dare. Here we go soar­ing up in the air.”

It’s a lit­tle some­thing I picked up from Shoko Asa­hara, guru of the Aum Supreme Truth cult, sus­pect­ed of involve­ment in a Japan­ese sub­way gas attack. Did you catch the pho­to­graph of him lev­i­tat­ing, cross-legged, six inch­es above the ground? It was in sev­er­al news magazines.

In the pho­to­graph, Asa­hara has a pained look on his face, as if from the exer­tion of bounc­ing off the floor. But the impli­ca­tion is oth­er­wise — that he’s float­ing, serene­ly, above it all.

Shoko Asa­hara isn’t the first cult mas­ter to promise the abil­i­ty to fly. The Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi, guru to the Bea­t­les, was also into lev­i­ta­tion. I remem­ber a “yog­ic fly­ing” com­pe­ti­tion staged by the Mahar­ishi’s fol­low­ers in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. some years ago. They demon­strat­ed their mas­tery of Stage 1 of lev­i­ta­tion, a bounce from the lotus posi­tion called “hop­ping.”

Appar­ent­ly, they had not yet moved on to Stage 2, “hov­er­ing,” and Stage 3, “free flight.”

In 1977, when the Mahar­ishi went to India with his dis­ci­ples, an Indi­an skep­tics group offered him 10,000 rupees (about $1,000) to fly from Old to New Del­hi, a dis­tance of about two miles. He agreed, but then backed out when the time came to soar up or shut up. Yog­ic trans­porta­tion is a spir­i­tu­al activ­i­ty, he claimed, not for sec­u­lar demonstration.

Lev­i­ta­tion has a long myth­ic asso­ci­a­tion with the spir­i­tu­al life. Holy men and women of many reli­gions have been reput­ed to lev­i­tate, includ­ing hun­dreds of saints from the Roman Catholic Church, and these sto­ries undoubt­ed­ly play a salu­tary role in the lives of the faithful.

Per­haps the most con­sis­tent­ly air­borne saint was Joseph of Cuper­ti­no (Italy, not Cal­i­for­nia), who report­ed­ly made dozens of flights in or about his church, once land­ing amid light­ed can­dles and becom­ing bad­ly burned. Many peo­ple claimed to have wit­nessed Joseph defy the law of grav­i­ty, but since it all hap­pened a very long time ago there’s not much we can do to check the reli­a­bil­i­ty of their reports.

Unholy peo­ple, such as witch­es and war­locks, also flew, pre­sum­ably with demon­ic propul­sion. It is worth not­ing that in our more sci­en­tif­ic age, saints, witch­es, and war­locks no longer fly.

In recent times, lev­i­ta­tion has been most fre­quent­ly claimed by spir­i­tu­al­ists, dab­blers in the para­nor­mal, and mem­bers of fringe cults. Many well-known medi­ums estab­lished rep­u­ta­tions as fly­ers, includ­ing D. D. Home, W. Stan­ton Moses, Eusapia Pal­adi­no, and Willy Schnei­der. Their demon­stra­tions often took place in dark­ened rooms. Appar­ent­ly, dark­ness enhances the abil­i­ty to levitate.

What does sci­ence make of all this mys­tic soar­ing? Is the law of grav­i­ty sub­ject to amend­ment? Are there spir­i­tu­al pow­ers that can make New­ton’s apple ascend to the tree?

Not like­ly. Lev­i­ta­tion is a sci­en­tif­ic prob­lem for psy­chol­o­gists, not physicists.

Sig­mund Freud wrote about the desire to fly in his essay Leonar­do da Vin­ci and a Mem­o­ry of His Child­hood. Leonar­do was pas­sion­ate­ly inter­est­ed in fly­ing. He stud­ied the anato­my and flight of birds, and designed sev­er­al kinds of fly­ing machines, includ­ing some­thing akin to the helicopter.

One of Leonar­do’s ear­li­est “mem­o­ries” was of being vis­it­ed in his cra­dle by a bird. The bird opened Leonar­do’s mouth with its tail, and thrashed the infant on the lips. It is not dif­fi­cult to guess what Freud made of this.

The fly­ing fan­ta­sy, says Freud, is a dis­guise for the infan­tile wish to be capa­ble of sex­u­al per­for­mance. He but­tress­es his case by com­pil­ing instances of words in var­i­ous lan­guages that asso­ciate birds and fly­ing with sex­u­al organs or sex­u­al activity.

For exam­ple, Freud tells us that the com­mon­est expres­sion in Ger­man for male sex­u­al activ­i­ty is vogeln “to bird,” and in Ital­ian the male organ is called l’uc­cel­lo “the bird.”

I don’t want to make too much of Freud, but his is the only analy­sis I know of that might help us under­stand the pop­u­lar­i­ty of levitation.

As we approach the end of the mil­len­ni­um, we can expect a ris­ing crescen­do of cul­tic activ­i­ty, includ­ing hoards of apoc­a­lyp­tic bird­men and bird­women claim­ing the abil­i­ty to fly.

Imag­ine great cadres of lev­i­ta­tors, serene­ly dis­posed in the lotus posi­tion, over­fly­ing our cities, dark­en­ing the sun like vast flocks of pas­sen­ger pigeons. Imag­ine kamikaze lev­i­ta­tors, cul­tic leaflets in hands, div­ing into our homes and places of work. Imag­ine a great end-of-the-mil­len­ni­um air show, with thou­sands of yog­ic fly­ers doing bar­rel-rolls and loop-the-loops, and sky­writ­ing for all to see dire warn­ings of Armageddon.

Be glad we have the laws of physics to keep them on the ground.

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