Levitation

Because people keep asking me about the fake levitation described in Chapter 13: "Wizard Merlin," I feel that I must at least comment on it. Actually, there is little that I can add, since this is an accurate description of what really happened in one of my Humanities classes shortly after the conclusion of the telepathy research for which I served as subject.

The purpose of this demonstration, of course, was to illustrate the unreliability of eye-witness accounts. The class was reading and discussing excerpts from Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book. The fact that I set this happening on April 1st, which is April Fools' Day, should have suggested that this might have been intended as a practical joke.

How I managed to make everyone in the class think I had actually levitated was that they all responded to the strong telepathic message that I sent. I was expecting that while some students might think they saw me levitate, but there would surely be others who would observe that throughout the event my feet were firmly planted on the floor.

Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way. Everyone in the class (about 15 students) were convinced that I had actually levitated, which thoroughly undermined the point I had hoped to make. For the students, the levitation was a psychological reality, even though it never actually occurred.

As Merlin Zauber reports in his account of the event, the only result was that I (or, more properly, he) inadvertently solved the ancient mystery of the Indian Rope Trick.