salyavin, do you think that the world's scientific experts on gravity know everything there is to know about it?! This is wrt your speculation that if you saw someone levitate, you'd think you were insane and then you'd get scientific about levitation. But your ability to get scientific about it would be limited to the current knowledge about it. On Friday, May 23, 2014 9:38 AM, salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote : Salya,I think it's reported that many saw him levitate. Many It means nothing to me. Would it if you had been one of them? Ah well, that would be different. Perhaps I should clarify what I meant: it's the claims of people who died 500 years ago that mean nothing. We simply don't know what they meant, it might have been that he appeared so consumed with holiness he looked like he might be pulled up to heaven, and the story just got so exaggerated between the disciples and the only guy in the area who could write that it started to be taken literally. People had a crazy reverence for the church in those days. Maybe the rumours were started by the church to get more donations. And then there's the way culture operated in those days, we don't know what role stories might have played and religious myths in particular. Things that people did even 120 years ago can catch us out now. For instance there used to be stories of mysterious airships reported in papers all over America. Nowadays it's seen by the Nabby's of the world as proof that UFOs have been around longer than we thought. The truth is more mundane, what we forgot is that a popular pastime in those days before TV were Liars clubs, where gents would meet and make up tall tales and the best would get sent down the wires as true the next day. So without knowing how society functioned in an age where people thought ecstasy could overrule the laws of physics we can't really interpret rumours of floating with any accuracy. There's too much time and evolution of culture for us to be sure what they meant. That's why it means nothing. The plural of anecdote isn't data, as we all know... I mean, ponder this. That's the situation I find myself in. We agree on SO many things, and I am in many ways as jaded a scientific heretic as you, and yet I've seen someone levitate. Many times. In many settings, from the Los Angeles Convention Center to the Anza-Borrego Desert to a Denny's restaurant in the wee hours of the night. I think I've said this before but I'd love to have been there as it sounds like a great party. I've had no actual experience of anyone I would call a spiritual teacher, I just got the old Marshy tapes and didn't like them much - occasional inspiration but mostly sleep inducing. I bet it would have been different if I'd been there in the early days, that sounds like fun too. But hanging around in the desert has always been my particular cup of earl grey. While I completely agree that someone else's claim of seeing something like this is Just Another Claim, and thus carries no weight, being the claimant is sometimes interesting. :-) I'm sure I would first doubt my sanity if I saw someone levitate, then I'd have to try and get scientific about it - if that's even possible. But what strikes me as odd - and a bit sad - is that TMers have to look back so far into the non-Hindu past to get validation of levitation. There they sit in the domes day after day, on the highest path, and doing a technique given to them by apparently the greatest spiritual teacher ever and NO ONE has floated. Must be a drag to have to evoke saint-whatever instead of turning round and looking at the guy next to you bang his head on the ceiling. Never mind, practise makes perfect ;-)
