“like that waterfall on the upper Suli Gad
that turns to mist before touching the earth
and rises once again into the sky.”
— Peter Matthiesssen,
The Snow Leopard
The word levity derives from a root “lev-” that is also found in words such as levitation, and in virtually all the world’s religions there are stories not only about the levitation of saints, but also about feats of flying. And this brings to mind Superman, Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, and the flying escapades in the wildly popular Harry Potter novels and films.
Indeed, levity is about “getting high,” and one way to get high is simply to go high. Some astronauts who have soared up into orbit and, while there, experienced the weightlessness of space, have come back down to earth as mystics. Flotation tanks, which simulate the weightless state, produce similar results. Some ocean divers report “rapture of the deep.” To such “psi” experiences as out-of-body and near-death, perhaps we should add another: the O.G.E, or out-of-gravity experience.
The force of levity is not directed solely up, but also outward. Whereas gravity has to do with contraction, cohesion, and density, levity is the force that expresses as growth, extension, and expansion. Mix flour with water and leaven with yeast and, as the dough begins to rise, this is levity in action as is, later, the aroma of the freshly baked bread. In our own lives, we can sense levity as the innate urge to become more, the inner impulse to stretch, to move beyond boundaries. Goethe has a word for this: Steigerung, meaning a heightening, intensification, or enhancement of experience.
The quantum of gravitational energy, a hypothetical particle called the graviton, is said to carry the forces of gravity between bodies such as the earth and moon, or the apple that may or may not have fallen on Sir Isaac Newton’s head. Levity figures in this hypothesis, and the particle of levity, known as the leviton, plays a counter, or balancing, role to that of the graviton. It is crucial that things, such as molecules, be held together, but equally important that the components be held apart—so that there is not a complete collapse or implosion. This suggests that specific gravity is balanced by specific levity; gravitational fields, by levitational fields.
A solid, such as lead, tends to be heavy with gravity whereas helium, a gas, is buoyant with levity. In the change from solid to liquid to gas, such as ice-water-steam, an increase in levity can be clearly observed. It is interesting to note that the radioactive metal radium disintegrates into two other elements: lead and helium—one that sinks, such as the lead sinkers that fishermen use, and the other that spontaneously rises!
And the plot thickens—or does it lighten?—to learn that the word “helium” derives from the Greek word helios, meaning “sun,” and was first discovered not on earth but in the atmosphere of the sun. Light itself shines forth as the very paragon of levity. Like fire, light is “light” in both senses of the word.
And so, to slightly retell Genesis 1:3-4, God said, Let there be light, yes, and let there be lightness. Let there be . . . levity! And God saw that it was good.
HyC