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None Provided60 Levitation is the ability to suspend the laws of gravity that bind us to the earth. It has a lot to do with mind over matter. A person being able to clear his or her minds and think nice, good things enable them to do things that they have never done before. Sounds unheard of, but this has been researched, tested, and even observed by people and scientists from all over the world. Extreme mental concentration is all that is needed. A great subject to prove mind over matter is firewalking. It is said that thinking "cool moss" can actually help a person walk right over top of burning coals without getting burnt (Fighting 15). People actually train to go firewalk. Ronald J. Pekala, from the Mid-Atlantic Education Institute in Westchester, Pennsylvania trains people for six hours, teaching them to focus their attention on a single image. Then, one by one the virginwalkers, as they are called, walk across the pit of fire without getting burnt. Could this be a way for people around the world to gain more confidence and self-esteem? Most of the firewalkers walk across the fire because after they have done it they feel that they can do anything after that. Firewalking is a real confidence booster for people with low self-esteem. Motivational trainers across the United States have seen what firewalking does to their patients. They are impressed. They see it as a way to "free them for achievement" (Fighting 15). The trainers have used meditation and massage to try and help their patients calm down and to relax. Firewalking seems to be the new big thing out there that is working very well. What can massage or meditation be used for now Ed Hipp coaches golf at a small high school in Fairfield, Iowa. He teaches his players yogic flying and transcendental meditation to be mentally prepared before a match. "His golfers meditate up to three hours a day, eat no red meat and get to bed by 10 p.m." (Lidz 122). After leaving North Carolina State early, Hipp went to Europe for a few years. There he learned Transcendental Meditation (TM) and started teaching it. He taught it mostly at Maharishi High School. TM seems to be working to Hipp’s advantage because "last may, in his teams third season, they won Iowa State High School Class IA Championship by 19 strokes"(Lidz 122). In his first year there, Marharishi ended up with an impressive year with a 10-1 record. His player respect him and they know that he obviously knows the game. "Golf is a test of mind-and-body coordination", says Noah Schechtman, a senior captain on the team (Lidz 122). The players on the team know Coach Hipp’s style of coaching and know that this system works to your advantage. They all know that this is his style of coaching and if they don’t go by it they will no longer be on the team. Also they all obviously know that it works because what happened last May. Coach Hipp plans on keeping his style of coaching in the program for as long as he can. But can TM also be involved with the mysterious art of levitation? Deep thought and concentration is all that is needed in levitation of an object or body. Many of the famous levitators in American history used both of these ideas. One of them was Daniel Douglas Home. He astonished and amazed people from all around in 1868 when he supposedly levitated himself and flew from one fourth story building window to another. Home had 3 witnesses while he levitated himself. They were Captain Charles Wynne, Lord Adare, and the Master of Lindsay (Unsolved 102). He had these witnesses to tell people that this trick was possible because Home was able to meditate and clear his mind. People could not believe what Home did, but they believed it and were amazed. These were the first forms of levitation. In the 1990’s, came a more fun and more believable form of levitation. In this, there is one person being levitated and 4 other participants around that person. The 4 participants are told to concentrate, clear their minds and put both their hands together in a fist extending their index finger. There are two people underneath the persons arms and two people underneath the persons knee caps. Once they have concentrated enough, they pick up the person without any struggle at all. This whole activity relaxes and makes the people feel refreshed and very alive and healthy. The person being levitated gets a little out of it, because he is the one being levitated and doesn’t have to do a thing! Maybe this concept of levitating objects can be used to our own advantage. Levitating trains could very well be the new form of transportation in the near future. Brandweek magazine says that the trains "have yet to be materialized" (Ebenkamp 19). Many countries have come up with test models and other gimmicks to simulate this. "Japan has made a test model that levitates a train car four inches off the road". However, no country has came up with anything of larger proportion to simulate the real thing. In a few years, it should be possible and should be done. This system is called "Maglev". Even the US is serious on this form of transportation. "Last summer our government authorized $1 billion to help build a Maglev line". It is expected to be in serious use in the year 2006, which isn’t too far away considering how long it took to make ordinary cars. This not the first time that the US has tried to make a Maglev line. In 1968, the US government tried to fund enough money to make a line, but the funding never came through seven years later. It never came through until this decade. Now we are spending a lot more money on it. We are spending all this money on levitating trains, but how does it work? Levitating frogs opened the minds of a team of British and Dutch researchers and also scientists all over the world. In April of 1997, the researchers successfully levitated a frog by a powerful magnet. The key to this whole experiment was that the researchers saw that nonmagnetic objects do have magnetic properties. All of the components that make up a frog and other living organisms, are diamagnetic. This means that when they are in the area of a magnetic field, they are weakly magnetized and oppose the field. The idea of diamagnetism is solution to levitating the frog. With this new experiment, scientists used the same or a little different ideas in order to levitate trains. The metal on the bottom of the trains are opposed to the tracks on the ground, which help let the trains glide. This also helps the train go to the speeds that they are reaching. "The Federal Railroad Administration and the U.S. Air Force are collaborating on a Maglev track … for high speed ground transportation and for missile defense warhead testing" (FRA Air Force 51). The Air Force is building a 9.6-km track in New Mexico. This project is costing $49 million. It is supposed to be completed in 1999 and also supposed to break track records! The track is expected to break the record 9,852 km per hour. Maglev does not have a contract that allows FRA to have safety issues. But they do know that this project will have an impact on society. Due to levitation, things like the Maglev train and magnetic levitation is possible with today’s technology. It is said that magnetic levitation technology is the most radical advance in rail technology since the days of Stephenson’s Rocket. Stephenson’s Rocket was a huge technological advancement 200 years ago on trains. Since then, trains have begun to go much faster (A Better Way 21). The Maglev trains have a low pitched scream as it goes nearly 350 mph. This is the test vehicle that the Japanese have high thoughts on. That sound is the sound of the future. Levitation, as much as it doesn’t seem like it, has a lot to do with today’s and the future’s society. It is also the solution to some of societies problems and will improve society in years to come. It is the reason why the trains are able to move to the speeds that they are. They are gliding on the air. This kind of levitation does not require mind over matter or intense meditation. This requires hard thinking by smart people. Those smart people had to over come the challenge that was set forward to them. That challenge was to come up with a new and more efficient way of travel. They obviously have some good ideas. Mind over matter may have a different meaning. Instead of it meaning clearing ones mind and overcoming the thoughts of fears, it may mean people overcoming challenges of everyday life. A person coming up with a great idea for a problem that other people labeled it as impossible overcome, is a good example of this kind of mind over matter. Life is full of challenges and it is our job, as a country, to overcome them and to make life as easy as we can make it. Setting what people say to the side, then doing the job to the fullest of abilities. Would this world be a better place if everyone had that same kind of mentality? If they did, maybe levitating trains would not be the latest ideas of the 19th century. Then, what would be next? Bibliography: Works Cited "A Better Way to Fly." Economist February 1998: 21. Ebenkamp, Becky. "Techno Tidbits." Brandweek April 1999: 19. "Fighting Fire with Focus." Facts of Life Jan./Feb. 1993: 15. "FRA Air Force Building Maglev Track." Public Roads Winter 1996: 51. Lidz, Franz. "Different Strokes." Sports Illustrated December 1996: 122. Unsolved Mysteries of the Past. Pleasantville: Reader’s Digest Inc., Ed. Reg Grant, 1991. Wu, Corrina. "Floating Frogs." Science News December 1997: 362.

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