Many of the levitating and bilocating saints also placed a focus on mystical ecstasy. For me, there has to be a connection to human physiology. This is not the historian speaking, this is getting to be, you know, theological and metaphysical and pseudoscientific. But there has to be a physiological link between the material human body and the divine. And as a matter of fact, neurologists have discovered in which regions of the brain religious experiences take place. So if there is a supernatural realm, well, our brain is the point of contact. All humans have brains. And it’s that training – What happens if you pray all day for all your adult life? You spend your whole day praying; that part of your brain is activated! This was Teresa of Ávila’s sixteenth-century take on levitation: in ecstasy, the soul is pulled toward heaven so strongly, so quickly, so irresistibly, that the body must follow.

For saints who flew, miracles came as a byproduct of holiness.