"Levitation in Early Buddhist Discourse"
A comparative study of reports that the Buddha and his disciples journeyed to celestial realms or traversed considerable distances on earth through the power of levitation gives the impression that at an early stage these would have been envisaged as being done with a mind-made body. Probably as a result of literalism, a tendency that makes itself felt in various ways in the early Buddhist texts and which has led to a range of developments in the Buddhist traditions, at a relatively early stage this would then have led to the idea that such feats involve acts of levitation done with the physical body.