The following supplements the chapter on Levitation found in "Special Teachings." When ready for re-embodiment, the human ego is drawn from the apex of the subjective arc of its cycle to successively lower conditions by desire for them. This desire eventually brings the ego to the material plane, and binds it to a physical body whose every atom is surcharged with desire for physical life. Moreover, that body is held to the solid globe by the desire, or, in other words, the attraction, of the earth's every physical atom.

During one's sleep, the grasp of the physical body upon its higher principles or bodies is more or less weakened; therefore, the buoyancy of these causes them to rise free until the renewed attraction of the awakened physical atoms draws these bodies back to their tenement.

Theoretically, it is possible to reverse the desire of the physical body atoms for their more ethereal associates. In those rare instances where this is accomplished, the energy employed is the wholly purified principle of spiritual desire peculiar to the buddhic body. The experiences of certain Catholic saints include seemingly verified instances of levitation during moments of religious ecstasy when earthly desire was nullified by its high, spiritual opposite.

One of the guarded secrets of the Initiates concerns the fact that the ethereal components of the triad in all beings, from man upward, are endowed with the potential power of dominating the more and more ponderable components of the quarter-nary in every kingdom of nature. The utmost degree of this power is possessed by the Solar Hierarchies alone. A lesser degree can be employed by the planetary rulers, while full initiates of the White Lodge are capable in a more limited way. Initiates seldom use this power upon man, because it tends to inhibit his free will, and so to retard his progress as an independent and responsible being.

That the Jewish Initiate understood in large measure the possibilities of this spiritual power, is shown by his memorable saying: "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove." In the word "faith," Jesus, after the custom of the Initiates, concealed the inner truth while seeming to reveal it. Since none of Jesus' disciples has yet penetrated his secret, none has achieved what the Master promised as the literal result of right procedure.

In the old Grecian story, the giants piled Pelon on Ossa in a vain attempt to scale the heavenly Olympus, and overcome the gods assembled there. Beneath this fable is concealed the occult truth that by the exercise of the polar opposite of "faith," mountains are removable. Were it not for the dedicated ones who draw their circle of protection around the human race, such catastrophes would occur to-day, even as they occurred in ancient Atlantis when the Brotherhood of the Shadow put forth a concerted effort to level the living stones of the "Guardian Wall." In Rev. 6, 14, we read: "And every mountain and island were removed out of their places." This occurrence at the opening of the sixth seal, was brought about through "faith," because, in the time of a general judgment, permission so to employ this force is granted by the solar Logos to the planetary Ruler.

Concerning the stories of the levitation of the physical bodies of entranced mediums, we would say first, that if these stories be true, then, during that entrancement, the atoms of those bodies were largely deprived of their desire for the earth's material atoms: secondly, that whoever caused the levitation were discarnate beings freed from desire for physical life: thirdly, that, under the most favorable conditions, the combined buddhic energy of the discarnate group might prove adequate to their purpose.

The moving of furniture, and the manipulation of various articles in the seance room, are not instances of the levitation here described; these phenomena are produced by more or less mechanical means; in fact by rods of semi-astral matter, caused to project from the medium's body, and then made rigid by the combined will and desire of the discarnate entities present.

The vast majority of the feats of levitation witnessed by travelers in the East, are mere conjurer's tricks, and if the small minority be genuine, the operators are necessarily holy men who have renounced all worldly interests. Inventors have dreamed of a mechanical device capable of neutralizing the gravitative pull of the earth; but, if our few hints concerning levitation be in any measure correct, such a mechanism, if efficient, will to some extent be a super-physical one, that is, it must act in conjunction with the human mind.

H. P. B.