St. Joseph & Levitation
Professor of humanities and philosophy, Michael Grosso, discussed his study of St. Joseph of Copertino, who was known as a great mystic. He became interested in the St. Joseph case, as it was very well documented and challenges the dominant materialist worldview. Dating back to the 17th century, Joseph was an impoverished man from Italy whom "scholars say is perhaps the most extraordinary individual on record for producing so-called paranormal or unusual...phenomena." He began having divine visions as a child, and eventually became a priest, even though he was prone to trance states.
His ecstatic states eventually evolved into levitation of his own body, and occasionally even other people that were with him. The process was involuntary, and he would levitate unexpectedly, which led him to be viewed suspiciously by the Catholic church, Grosso reported. Sometimes he would lift just a few inches off the ground, but there are numerous accounts of him rising over the heads of people at church, and hovering and flying through the air, he added. Grosso also touched on people's near-death experiences (NDEs), and how afterward, they are sometimes opened up to new psychic or spiritual abilities. Through such experiences as NDEs, OBEs, spiritual practices, and certain psychedelics "it is possible to catch glimpses of a much larger universe of mind and spirit," he remarked.
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Could-Fly-Levitation/dp/1442256729/ctoc
