I wondered whether levitation was obe of the siddhis, or powers experienced in Hindu medidations, or Buddhist, so I searched on some relevant terms at You Tube and found out that yes indeed, levitation ois one of the siddhis. So is the ability to make the body extremely small or extermeley large. Levitation is the result of making the body weightless, and it is also said to be possible to make the body extremely heavy. All these were listed as siddhis on one website, or You tube video I whould say. Their method seems to be mainly mediation or strengthening the power of the mind over the body, mind over matter, and they may or may not be specifically seeking the siddhis. Sometimes they occur inadvertently, depending on the type of spiritual practice, and are then rejected as irelevant to the quest, but in some disciplines they are actively sought.
In the Catholic monastic context they were not sought at all but occurred apparently as a result of the extreme ascetic practices which suppressed the body, but also they were a respond se to emotional triggers as the person contemplated some adored religious object, such as the feast day of the virgin marry or the meaning of the Mass and so on. In any case they were alsoways inacdvertent in that context, not soughtj.
Both the Hindu and the Catholic contexts serve to corroborate Watchman Nee's understanding of them as latent powers of the soul once acive in Adam and Eve but rendered inaccessible as a result of their disobedience of God in eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He says that these powers are sought in many of the pagan religions such as Hinduinsm and Buddhism, where some individuals are found to psossess the necessary abilities to bring them to expression. Not everyone has this ability, but those who have it become the religious sages of their time.
In Christianity they occur wherever concentrated practices can bring them out. The asceticism of the monasteries is one, but I also think of the Russian Starets who repeats over and over the line, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner, and in one particular accountj of this developed clairvoyance in particular as I recall, I'm not sure about other powers.
The atemempted scientific study of these things in the early tewentieth century, by J B Rhine and others, wasn't very successful, although Watchman Nee, writing ib that same time period seems to think they were successful. As I recall there were a few blips in the sutdies as it were where it seemed there was some kind of power manifesting, some psychic power, telepathy and that sort of thing, but it never ewent very far. I didn't read a lot about all that although I was interested in it for a while, so I don't know how they perpursuied their evidence beyond setting up testing for its appearance, but it seems they never hit on the idea of training the mind to control th body or suppressing the body through ascdetic practices. Those seem to be the key to the manifestation to these things in a person who icis temperamentally suited to them.
There is quite a bit of information aouabout the yogic practices that bring out such things on You Tube.
In all these cases the pwoers are considered to be manifestatios of the divine, spiritual powers. The only source of a conterary point of view that I know of comes rom Watchman Nee's book, the Latent POwers of the Soul. For fallen humanity in this fallen world, all there is is midn and body, or soul and body, but Christians receive the quickening of another faculty, the spiritual faculty lost at the Fall of Adam and Eve, with the indewelling of the Holy Spirit, and thus have the only rue spiritual power humniytuy is capable of. Only the born again can be truly spiritual. All these other powers are just soul powers, mind and emotion, exercised in such as way as to e taken for spiritual. The soul is considered to be mind, emotion and will, in schristian thinking about these things. God is not accessible through these faculties or pexperiences, even if refined greatly by medigations as mentioned above. God is only knowable through the psirit and in ono other way. He may vebe inferred, and is by much of humanity, but not experienced by any means at all available to fallen man. Only by believeing that Christ died for our sins on the cross and devoting ourselves to living for Him are we born again and begin to have the power to communicate with God.
Thaiss is what makes the souls powers, the siddhis, lying wsigns and wonders. They are not necessarily brought about by demionic influence although that may bget involvwed in them under some circumstances, and certainly as Nee points out Satan is very interested in finding wAYS TO GET PEOPLE TO EXPRESS THESE POWERS BECAUSE THEY CAN BE TURNED TO WORSHIPING HIM IN VARIOUS WAYS, WHICH IS HIS NEVERENDING QUEST, TO DISPLACE gOD IN HUMAN WORSHIP. tURNING cATHOLICS TO mARY INSTEAD OF cHRIST IS CERTAINLY ONE WAY THIS OCCURS. hE'S ALREADY SUCCEEDED IN GETTING THE cATHOLIC cHURCH TO OFFICIALIZE A LONG LIST OF FALSE DOCTRINES THAT REPLACE gOD AND cHRIST WITH DSOULISH AND DEMONIC SUBSTITUTES.
tHE ONLY SAFE HAVEN FROM ALL THIS IS BELIEF IN cHRIST'S DEATH ON THE CROSS TO PAY FOR OUR SINS AGAINST gOD'S LAW, MAKIBG US BORN AGAIN AND FIT FOR ETERNAL LIFE. oTHERWISE EPOPEOPLE ACAN ONLY BE EDECEIVED by these things.
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