Putting up a post about the building of the Houston Astrodome reminded me of this old one about a young guru who believed in 1973 that he could levitate the enclosed stadium.

The world was strange in 1973, even stranger than it is today. That was the year of the three-day festival, Millennium ’73, when thousands of Vietnam War protestors gathered at the Houston Astrodome to hear the words of 15-year-old Shri Guru Maharaj Ji, who they believed was God. The attendees also thought that perhaps they could use their spiritual powers to levitate the stadium and make it fly, which would somehow stop the war.

i found a three-and-a-half-minute clip from the David Loxton documentary The Lord of the Universe, which captures some of the madness surrounding the teenage guru, who later changed his name to Prem Rawat. This segment particularly examines how the controversial event caused a deep rift between Chicago Seven member Rennie Davis and leaders of the Left, including Abbie Hoffman.