Re: Levitation

["Rawn Clark" <rawnclark@...>]

Dear Zack,

>> Although levitation and many other magical powers are not the object
or purpose of the practice of magic, there must presumably be a
particular stage of development in the Bardon system when the power to
levitate the physical body is a natural by product and one of the
results of the completion of certain spiritual and developmental
accomplishments. <<
>> To put the question in another way, is there a particular step which
one cannot complete without producing the ability to levitate as a
natural byproduct of ones development at that stage. By natural
byproduct I mean someone who gains the ability to levitate without even
training to do so.<<
>> See the reference below; levitation is supposedly one of the easiest
byproducts of real esoteric training, that is, it has to develop as a
siddhi or ability at some stage. No one becomes a full magician without
it. <<

That's a very interesting theory. Unfortunately it's NOT what Patanjali
said in his famous Sutras. When he spoke about the powers, he always
prefaced his statements with "through perfectly concentrated meditation
on . . ." In other words, each of the powers he spoke of were attained
through VERY hard and VERY specific work. No where did he infer that
they came as a "by-product" of some sort of easy "esoteric training".

>> At what stage of the magicians career, in the Bardon system is
Levitation a natural result of work done, even if the aquired power were
never used? <<

At no point actually. If you look at Bardon's comments concerning the
work with the Air Element, he does state that if one were to focus
themselves exclusively upon working just with that Element, they would,
after a long time, perhaps attain the ability to levitate. However, he
then says that to do this would be to diverge from the path of
balance -- which is anathema to Bardon's system.

In other words, it's *possible*, but you'd have to work very hard and
very long to achieve it. It's not something that just happens to you
one day out of blue.

Another point I'd like to raise here is the assumption by Bailey (and
yourself) that Patanjali was even speaking of levitation in his sutra.
It's always revealing to note which parts of a document an interpreter
interprets as being symbolic and which as being literal. Here, Bailey
chooses to think Patanjali was literally speaking of levitating the
physical body. However, if you were to actually read Patanjali's
Sutras, you'd see that his language is figurative and what he's actually
referring to is the ability to raise one's conscious awareness above the
mundane and ascend to higher realms of consciousness. This has nothing
to do with the *spiritually useless* trick of physical levitation.

Nor for example, does "minuteness" have anything to do with making the
physical body as small as an atom, or "magnitude" have anything to do
with making the physical body immense. Why then do you assume that
"lightness" has anything to do with physical levitation?

I recommend reading Patanjali's Sutras instead of relying upon Bailey's
interpretation of them as your source of information. The Sutras
themselves are a very fascinating and valuable work which can help the
student better understand some of Bardon's teachings.

My best to you,
:) Rawn Clark
22 Nov 2003
rawnclark@...
rawn@...
http://www.ABardonCompanion.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BardonPraxis
http://E.webring.com/hub?ring=arionthebardonwe