The other day I read Miracles on Transcendental Street where Jiva talked about devotees becoming invisible. He ended the story with this,”When I submit another recollection for your entertainment, Dear Reader, it will be about the times I’ve seen Devotees fly and or levitate.”

The next day I was talking to an older gurukuli (who wants to keep his visit to New Vrindaban on the down low for personal reasons) and somehow the following story came up in conversation. Krishna doing a little syncronicity thing with Jiva, apparently, as the kuli hadn’t seen Jiva’s post.

He was remembering back when the temple was still part of the community and we used to have these team building exercises. Everyone would do their own service during the day, but several evenings a month, we would all get together and do a project as a group. These were nice because you would get to hang out with devotees from outside your little social clique or departmental work group.

One such exercise was roofing the temple. During the day, materials would be brought to the site and the trusses set up. At the “marathon”, as they were called, some devotees would work on getting the plywood up onto the roof via ladders and give it to guys who would set the plywood clips and kick the sheets into place, tacking them down with one nail.

Following would be a group of nailers, doing it the old fashioned way, with hammers. As you would finish the sheet you were working on, you would get up and walk past the other nailers until you got to the next sheet that was ready to be nailed down.

The kuli stepped onto the next sheet, but it was not to be. The kicker had tacked it insufficiently, and the plywood sheet took off like a sled, with the kuli aboard.

This was on the upper roof of the temple, the eaves of which are 20 feet (6 meters) above the ground. As the plywood sheet cleared the roof edge, it had enough momentum to move vertically and the nose went up into the air, catching the breeze like a sail and it flew cushioned on the air.

The kuli paid obeisances on the sheet as it cleared the 24 horizontal feet of the lower roof and landed in a pile of sand where the mailboxes are now. He was only 14 at the time and skinny so there had been enough loft to carry him.

Now that was “catching some air”.

He said that the amazing thing was that while everyone had turned to see what happened, once they saw he made it safely and verified he wasn’t hurt, everyone turned around and went back to work.

Kids — Krishna, who set up this trick, is a professional and you shouldn’t try it at home. You would never be able to duplicate all the variables and do it successfully.