Yogic flying
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Yogic flying is the purported ability to levitate which is a capability one gains through advanced practice of transcendental meditation (TM). While sitting cross-legged, yogic flyers can move around in a hopping kind of motion. The TM organization claims this the earliest part of levitation, the "perfection of leaping like a frog". Proponents of yogic flying claim world peace can be brought about by thousands of simultaneous yogic flyers spread world-wide.
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History of Yogic Flying
Yogic flying traditionally stems from the Vedic rishi Avatsara, "the flying-one". Later yogic texts also describe this siddhi ("perfection") in varying degrees of detail, most notably the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali.
A system of yogic flying also exists within the inner tantras (anuttara-tantras) of Tibetan Buddhism as a system to attain enlightenment. In this system the practitioners work at the dissolution of the vital airs, prana, into the centermost part of being, the avadhuti or "central channel". In the initial stages this is used in a system of yogic-running where the practitioner is able to proceed across the ground in large jumps. Some of kings of the Himalayan kingdoms kept speed-runners from this tradition to carry messages over long distances.
Once perfected, the adept of this school (rlung-gompa) can then work for the attainment of simultaneous bliss and emptiness (in Sanskrit, shunyata). Ultimately one attains mahamudra siddhi, total non-dual realization, and is able to radiate bodhichitta, the thought of enlightenment, for all sentient beings.
Facilities and Practitioners
Facilities for purported yogic flying are located at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa and at Maharishi European Sidhaland in Skelmersdale, U.K..
During the 1990s, various Natural Law Parties encouraged the use of yogic flying as part of their party platform. Current plans by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation Program and related programs, include building 3000 Peace Palaces in major cities, and creating permanent groups of 8,000 yogic flyers to create permanent world peace. A group of 500 Vedic pandits, all flyers, will soon be in residence at Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa.
Criticism of Yogic Flying
Yogic flying is not accepted by the scientific community. Though members of the TM organization have claimed that TM practitioners have achieved actual levitation [1] [2], a 1987 Washington Post article, criticized yogic flying as "fake," and to date, no one has demonstrated levitation. Former TM adherents from Maharishi University of Management say the activity was "strictly physical exercise ... [with] nothing spiritual about it." [3]
One man actually sued the TM organization for over $100,000 and won for being promised the ability to fly. [4]
More recently, in the 1998 ABC News special The Power of Belief, John Stossel documents a series of disputed phenomena beginning with yogic flying.