In Whitley Strieber’s book, Transformation, we can read the following description of an experience of involuntary levitation during an abduction by some Aliens who had been abducting him previously:

Anne fell asleep after a few minutes of reading a book.  I was absorbed in Joseph Campbell’s Occidental Mythology and stayed awake for some time longer.  At about eleven-thirty I turned off my light, pulled up the covers, and closed my eyes.

Almost at once I became aware of a rustling sound around me.  It was a small sound, as if the sheets were still settling.  When the sound didn’t stop I thought maybe a mouse had gotten in and was crawling on the bed, so I opened my eyes.  At that point I had not been asleep, I do not think, even for a moment.

I was disoriented by what I saw.  The first thing I was aware of was that I could see my hands straight out in front of me, as if they were pointed up at the ceiling.  The arms of my pajamas were still extended to my wrists.

The ceiling had changed remarkably.  It is a raw pine ceiling, slightly angled towards its peak, following the cant of the roof.  Now, however, it appeared flat.  The boards were no longer one-by-fours; they were at least eight inches wide.  And there was what looked like a huge, rectangular appliance hanging from it.

I was completely confused.  One moment I had been lying in bed.  I’d heard a rustling noise, opened my eyes, and found myself in a situation so totally different from what I had expected that I was simply silenced.

I lay there staring blankly at the scene before me.  After a moment I realized that the big rectangular object had a woman stuck to it.  I had the horrible feeling that the whole thing, woman and all, was about to come off the ceiling and fall on me.

Then I realized that there was a quilt on it, and sheets.  Our quilt, our sheets.  Beside the woman there was an empty place.

The scene resolved itself.  It was our bed; the woman was Anne.  Beside the bed was a table, and on the table were my lamp, radio, and book.

I understood that I was no longer in bed.  But what in heaven’s name had happened?  Was the bed now on the ceiling?  Or —

Suddenly I comprehended that I was on the ceiling.  I had somehow been pulled up against the ceiling.

Immediately I started trying to call Anne, to wake her up.  But all I could manage was a sort of whisper.  My vocal cords wouldn’t work.  I hissed and gasped, but she is a heavy sleeper and she just lay there like a stone.

Then I began to be lifted higher.  I would rise up, seemingly right into the ceiling, and a light of appalling brightness would come down into the periphery of my vision.

Once I went up, twice, a third time.  Each time it was as if the wood around me became like a sort of warm wind, and this overwhelmingly bright light would seem almost to come down and consume me from behind and above.

The light seemed thick, the density of water.  But it was so incredibly bright.  It felt like the truth must feel in the heart, an overwhelming, wonderful, painful brilliance.

I also had an impression that there were people near me, but I could not see them.  I was struggling, but seemed to be restrained in some manner.  I couldn’t move my arms, legs or torso.  The only motor control I had was over my face, and that was limited.

A short time later I went spiraling down to the bed, moving through the air quickly and landing softly.  As always seemed to be the case with these experiences, instead of waking my wife and telling her excitedly what was happening, I fell asleep instantly.  I recall a normal night’s sleep, uninterrupted.

I had not been unconscious when this took place.  I had not been asleep.  There was no amnesia and no confusion.  I was aware of the fact that I had risen up to the ceiling, remained there for a period of time, and then floated back down to the bed.  But surely that was impossible.  Things like that don’t happen.  What I can say for certain is that I have reported exactly what I perceived.

Comment:

His Alien Benefactor(s) does not appear to him beforehand and explain that he is about to be given an experience of Alien-induced levitation, nor is he given an explanation afterward of either his experience and how it works or of levitation in general.  His Benefactor(s) simply acts upon him as part of his Alien training for interaction with Them.

There is an interesting parallel to this in the book Tales of Power by Carlos Castaneda where the Teacher, Juan Matus, explains that the Benefactor of Castaneda will not explain anything to him, but just act upon him in forcible and peculiar ways, which in the book include the Benefactor, Genaro Flores, demonstrating extreme acts of levitation that act upon Castaneda to prepare him to sooner or later do such things himself.

Returning now to Transformation, we read:

As far as the levitation itself is concerned, that also has a long history among human beings.  Recently, physical levitation has been associated with a number of UFO contact cases, most notably that of the anonymous French physician “Dr. X,” a well-known medical official in southern France.  Dr. X encountered two UFOs on the night of November 1, 1968, at his home.  He experienced the healing of two injuries, had a triangular rash appear on his abdomen, as did his eighteen-month-old son, and afterward had numerous experiences of telepathy, instances of affecting clocks and — like me — electrical circuits, and at least one episode of levitation.  To this day Dr. X periodically experiences an eruption of the triangular rash.  It has been thoroughly examined by dermatologists and its origin remains unknown.

Except for the rash, his symptoms and mine were virtually identical.

In January 1988 I met another person who has had the visitor experience and lives in my neighborhood in Manhattan.  We talked over lunch about our experiences.  When she finally felt comfortable with me, she told me the thing she considers strangest about her encounters.  “I levitated,” she said with a defiant expression.  “I’m sure I did.”

Two months later, a woman had a levitation experience strikingly similar to mine.  She, also, was not asleep when it started.  She was lifted up to the ceiling of her bedroom and turned until her feet were facing out the window.  She then experienced a blank hour.  When she regained consciousness she was returning to the bed.  She frantically tried to wake up her spouse but could not do so.  Her next clear memory is of the morning.  About a week before this happened her husband and I had had dinner together.  I had been struck by the combination of fascination and fear that he exhibited toward the visitors.  Somehow I was not surprised when he and his wife became involved.  And I had learned not to reject testimony of levitation.

The visitors may represent a force of great power, operating at a level of scientific knowledge well beyond our own understanding.

Comment:

Strieber is still at a primitive stage in his development.  He does not see that he is being exercised and prepared.  He is still an overwhelmed and speculative human brain analyzer without a clue.  So, naturally he will try to compare the “fact” of “levitation” with other examples.  Of course, though he has been a Gurdjieff adherent in the past, he knows nothing of the levitating Sufis of Senegal (Part I) or the miracle of Haji Bektash (Part II).

  From the point of view of Islamic Sufi adherents, the fact that Alien Abductees are levitated by Alien Benefactors will not fit well into their cosmogony or worldview.  The needed Paradigm Shift about levitation is not going to be easy, just as it remains difficult for them to put levitation in the right place in their development.

Now, we find more in Transformation:

I also found that instances of levitation were not confined to people who have remembered visitors encounters.  A very pious young man, St. Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1660), had a habit of levitating, especially during mass.  He was a religious extremist, given in his adolescence to the wearing of hair shirts and self-flagellation.  In 1625 he became a Franciscan and soon started to fly.

Once he drifted over the altar during mass, and was set afire as he glided through the candles.  So distressing was this event to his superiors, it was thirty-five years before they dared let him appear at a public mass again.  His later encounters with altar candles were less traumatic:  After that first disaster they no longer set him afire even though he sometimes drifted through their flames.  He once flew up into an olive tree and had to be rescued, as he could not fly down again.

His levitations were witnessed by many people, among them Pope Urban VIII.  He died quietly at an advanced age.  The Church has thoughtfully made him the patron saint of airline travelers.

St. Teresa of Ávila was also a levitator.  She described her experience as “a great force” lifting her up.  She did not care for levitation and used to ask her fellow nuns to hold her down during the attacks…but as often as not she ascended before anybody could get to her.

In all, more than a hundred Catholic saints have been associated with levitation reports.  From my experience it would seem that sinners can also rise on occasion.

During the nineteenth century a controversial medium, Daniel Douglas Home, astonished many men of science with his remarkable feats of levitation, even at one point drifting out one window and in through another in full view of many witnesses — but none of them saw him while he was outside the window.  Maybe he “levitated” his way along the ledge.  His levitations produced an absolute storm of controversy.  The British satirical magazine Punch lampooned them.  Some scientists suggested that they were hallucinations, others that they were fakes.  It should be noted that Mr. Home levitated before the emperor and empress of France, but insisted on doing so in total darkness.  The imperial couple was convinced by the fact that the empress reached up and felt Mr. Home’s shoe about a foot above her head.  Mr. Home would have had to take further steps to convince me.

Comment:

How now do we choose between Muslim Saints and Christian Saints or account for Alien Abductees or the experiences and abilities of Mexican Naguals?  Please think about this.

One thing is for sure, Whitley Strieber is stumbling in the dark and lacks comprehensive information on the totality of levitation on Earth, let alone in the Universe at large, just like the vast majority of Sufi adherents.  And, his understanding of it as a necessary phase of human evolutionary development on Earth as well as on other planets is extremely crude.  He is, unfortunately, still at the silly “is it real?” stage.

Again, from Transformation:

My levitation seemed totally real to me.  It was real.  It had to be real.  And yet, it was levitation.  How could it have been real?

I suspect that whatever happened to me on that night, I was once again in the presence of this amazing and confounding force that has produced every unexplained apparition from the visions of Apollo that haunted the woods around Delphi to the massive UFO that was seen by Japan Air Lines pilot Kenjyu Terauchi and his crew near Anchorage on the night of November 17, 1986.

This force levitated me in order to continue its work of shattering my belief in the accepted paradigm of reality.  And it succeeded very well.

Something was done to me — something that was caused by a very real natural force, be it the higher technology of visitors or some other cause.  As such, mine was not a “paranormal” experience but simply an unusual one, proceeding as all experience must from the continuum of possibilities that define our world.

Comment:

  Again, he cannot grasp that he was being prepared for a higher stage of Contact and Learning.  He flounders in his “shocked” Western brain that is always worried about trying to prevent and resist, a “Reality Paradigm Shift”.  Whether we are rigid believers in Technological Atheism, one of the world’s dogmatic and prejudiced religions or in the assumed “superiority” of culture-bound “spiritual” tradition (Islamic Sufism, the Gurdjieff Work, Krishnamurti, Theosophy, Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, Zen or Mexican Nagualism, as well as “Ramtha” Ultraterrestrial ‘channeling’), there are always the reactionary “authorities”, “elders”, “respected masters”, who most definitely do not want their adherents finding out what is really going on.  And, let us not forget that most traditional “authorities” (or Western self-appointed “experts” or “counselors”) have never levitated in their life, which makes all of this an embarrassing and horrendous issue they desperately want to suppress.  What makes all this even more difficult, is that levitation (among other extraordinary things) is only proof of direct experience, but not of authority.  For instance, in the ancient tradition of Chinese Ch’an (Zen) we read the following Ko’an of Ch’an Master Huang Po from his life story as told by John Blofeld in The Zen Teaching of Huang Po:

Our Master came originally from Fukien, but took his vows upon Mount Huang Po in this prefecture while he was still very young.  In the centre of his forehead was s small lump shaped like a pearl.  His voice was soft and agreeable, his character unassuming and placid.

Some years after his ordination, while journeying to Mount T’ien T’ai, he fell in with a monk with whom he soon came to feel like an old acquaintance; so they continued their journey together.  Finding the way barred by a mountain stream in flood, our Master lent upon his staff and halted, at which his friend entreated him to proceed.

 ‘No. You go first,’ said our Master.  So the former floated his big straw rain-hat on the torrent and easily made his way to the other side.

 ‘I,’ sighed the Master, ‘have allowed such a fellow to accompany me!  I ought to have slain him with a blow of my staff!’

Now, if you want to enter the Sarmoun School, it is required that you induce in your consciousness a genuine direct experience of Zen Enlightenment through totally penetrating the meaning of the above Ko’an about Huang Po and the levitating monk.  You can consider all three of my articles on The Levitating Sufis of Senegal as my deep commentary of the Ko’an (Kung-an in Chinese) as ample material to prepare your breakthrough.  Now, wake-the-fuck-up!

As a further bonus, you can also expect that such entry into Heightened Awareness will also prepare your possible Extraterrestrial Pilgrimage to the Source of the Sufi Way on another planet of another solar system, which I will be revealing in another future article.  Of course, this could threaten you with another “Reality Paradigm Shift”, which happens all too frequently in the Sarmoun School.  It is a fundamental aspect of Learning How To Learn, which for most of our current visitors in cyberspace is a rather spluttering and crumbling possible start-up of a Learning Cycle in one or two here or there.