from The Probability of the Impossible by Thelma Moss

p. 133 and ff.

LEVITATION IN OUR LABORATORY

Occasionally the lab will receive an excited phone call from someone who has attended a "sitting" and has seen "with his own eyes" a table lift all four legs from the ground. In the early days, we would pay house calls on such seances. When such a seance would begin, usually nothing at all would happen. Sometimes we could observe the table performing little jumping movements, and on rare occasions, we have seen a table tilt so that it was perched daintily on one leg, remaining there when no one was touching it. But none of these observations satisfied the criterion that all four legs must be off the ground at the same time. Whatever else it might be, such movement is not levitation. There is, though, a simple demonstration which suggests that levitation might not be so paranormal or "occult" as it might seem on reading Batcheldon's account. (Why not try it and see for yourself? The directions folow.)

AN EXERCISE IN LEVITATION

1. Any five people may serve as the subjects, and one more acts as the experimenter.

2. The largest and heaviest subject sits on a small chair, preferably one without arms.

3. The four other people stand around the seated person, two behind him and two a little forward on either side, adjacent to his knees.

4. The experimenter gives the following instructions:

"The seated person simply remains seated where he is, and not to do anything: not cooperate, not resist, not become active in any way. The four participants must perform a specific set of movements, in a rhythm which will be called out by me. The movements are simple and are divided into two parts.

"Person 1, at the seated person's right, places his right hand on top of the head of the person who is sitting down. Person 2, right rear, then places his right hand on top of Person 1's right hand. Person 3, left rear, places his right hand on top of Person 2's right hand, and Person 4, left front, places his right hand on top of the others."

There are now four hands, one on top of the other. Continuing, the experimenter tells Person 4 to place his left hand on top of the pile of hands, and Person 1 and Person 2 to do likewise. These movements should be practiced until each person moves in an easy, rhythmic, flowing manner.

5. After a rhythm has been achieved, in this movement, the participants must make another set of rhythmic movements in unison. When the experimenter calls out, "Lift!" all will move their hands from the seated person's head, extend the forefingers of each hand, palm down, and place these fingers as follows:

Person 1 will place his forefingers under the right knee of the seated person; Person 2 will place his under the right armpit; Person 3 will place his under the left armpit; and Person 4 will place his under the left knee.

These movements should be practiced until they are effortless and smooth. Then the experimenter should explain: "When I say "Lift' you will move to this last position (under armpits and knees) and you will easily lift the seated person up into the air."

Usually when this statement is made all five participants will laugh, because the idea is absurd. It is. To show how absurd it is, suggest that the four persons all place two fingers in the designated places under knees and armpits and try to lift the person seated in the chair. It will be obvious that it takes an enormous amount of effort to lift the seated person (if they can) by so much as an inch.

6. The success of the experiment is in the rhythm with which these simple movements are carried out. The experimenter chooses the tempo. It can be as slow or as fast as he wishes, provided the rhythm is maintained. Keep rehearsing until the flow is nice and easy. When it is, the experimenter should count out the rhythm until everyone is in the correct position and then cry, "LIFT!" At this point, in unison, each person moves to the next position and lifts.

It is to be expected that the first three or four attempts will be unsuccessful. People will laugh, movements will be out of synch, and the ridiculousness of the movements will cause embarrassment. But if you persevere, after three or four false starts, the group will become cohesive and rhythmical. When the experimenter cries "LIFT!" the seated person will be lifted from two to four feet into the air, without any effort being experienced by the lifters. Usually, the participants are astonished, and the seated person experiences a sensation of lightness and exhilaration.

I have included this demonstration in several parapsychology classes I have taught and have met only once with failure. Therefore, it is with confidence that I offer the experiment. Furthermore, when some skill has been obtained (and this is easily achieved by having each of four lifters become, in turn, the seated person), you may find it is no longer necessary to go through the procedure of placing the hands on top of the head. All that seems necessary is for the four persons to chant a phrase in unison five or six times. Any phrase will do, provided it is done in rhythm. We have used with repeated success the phrase "chocolate cake". Another good phrase is "hot fudge sundae". "Abracadabra" doesn't seem too successful.

What happens in this simple process that enables a hefty man to be raised several feet in the air, supported by the backs of eight fingers? Lifting him that way, without the rhythm, is almost impossible. Done with rhythm, there is little sensation of energy being expended.

This apparently age-old experiment, which can be done by just about anyone, may be a variant of the extraordinary feat performed by 123-pound Mrs. Maxwell Rogers who, in 1960, lifted one end of a 3,600-pound automobile which, after the collapse of a jack, had fallen on her son. She was not aware, during that stress, that she had done anything remarkable. While performing this experiment, there is no sensation of anything remarkable.

(I am permitted a delicious side note here. The publisher of this book, a reasonable and conservative gentleman, was loath to print this recipe for Instant Levitation without proof that it worked. At first, he refused to attempt it; but eventually, without my being present, he did attempt it with wife and friends and found that it was [as he told me brusquely, with averted eyes] "simple, very easy". Shortly after his experiment was successfully concluded, he was visited by a physicist friend, who was immediately asked to supply a reasonable, mechanical explanation for the phenomenon. The physicist answered that he himself had performed the experiment but was at a loss to explain how it happened.)

let's put it this way. this stuff is dependent upon mood. the attack of laboratory rationalists affects mood, an uncontrolled factor in all those ganzfeld experiments. a paranormal scientist would suggest that energies for the levitation derive from the action of the several living human bodies involved. somehow, they overcome the normal action of the gravitational field of the entire planet. esp is an entirely different matter, and most will agree that it's a talent which some have far more than others, and that even for the gifted it works differently at different times. that'll trip up the ganzfeld herd in no time. the reason people like radin have gotten involved in this little sidelight of paranormality is that the real interesting stuff, such as moss dealt with, has be driven out of respectable academia.

i've never tried moss's experiment, but it seems simple enough to do if you get a little group together willing to give it a go. assuming this "trite" thing works the way she predicted, please explain to us in down-to-earth physics the mechanism involved. according to moss, that other physicist could not.

Imagine a meeting of mountaineers unable to agree about whether their sport ever entails walking uphill, and you will get a sense of how bizarre our deliberations began to seem.