Dear Gillian
When sat in meditation – or involved in a lucid dream state when asleep – I have experienced a “willed” levitation that lifts me up from the ground on a pocket of air (or so it seems). I remain afloat and can move up or down in altitude and travel around the local area through an act of will. At all times I am aware that I am not conscious in the normal sense – and that my body is “still” and “stationary” in the physical world. When I exit the meditative state – or wake-up from sleep – I retain a perfect memory of the experience and automatically understand that nothing has happened in the material world.
If we travel back a thousand years or more – I would possess a pre-modern mind-set and possess no (or little) ability to discern the “inner” (imagined) experience from the “outer” (real) existence. Today, our thoroughly modern minds are conditioned to clearly dichotomise these experience (I have performed this function above – and am aware that this bothers and perplexes the more spiritually minded). We are made to know that the “inner” is entirely “imagined” – whilst the “outer” is entirely “real”. Playing (ironically) Devil’s Advocate – is this “modern” approach correct?
Are my levitation experiences entirely real – and my post-modern analysis of it completely wrong? Is it, as your interesting lecture suggests, a matter of altering perception? Are we victims of the conditions of the moment – which generate in us the ability to see things in a different light that is existentially required by some type of external agency – be it Church or State? I have also experienced transvection – but this has been invariably upon the back of a Chinese (serpentine) dragon that is just as happy to traverse the air – as it is the watery depths! The dragon transportations have been between different spiritual dimensions – rather than within or around my current location. Needless to say, my sponsoring of an “International Brigade of Levitators” was met with a stunned silence at a recent meeting of the Communist Party! A very kind Comrade took me aside and explained that Marx and Engels tended to travel everywhere by boat and train!
Thanks
Adrian
Dear Adrian
These schismatics produce some excellent lectures. The seminary they come from has disassociated itself from the rest of Orthodoxy because of the use of a different calendar. They run the risk of idolising the calendar, but still have very clear and eclectic thought.
If you have an hour it is worth a listen and I would be interested in what you think.
Best Wishes
Gilian
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 