YOU could drive past the hulking warehouse on the rough patch of waterfront in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, several times without ever figuring it for the latest frontier of neurological thrill-seeking. But that’s where Yehuda Duenyas, 38, who calls himself “a creator of innovative experiences,” was camped out last week, along with his team of scrappy young technical wizards and a quarter-million dollars’ worth of circuitry, theatrical lighting and optimism called The Ascent.

Part art installation, part adventure ride, part spiritual journey, “The Ascent” claims to let users harness their brain’s own electrical impulses, measured through EEG readings, to levitate themselves. During its brief stay in New York, it welcomed representatives from cultural organizations like PS 122 and Lincoln Center, event promoters and friends of the team.

In the shadowy vastness of the warehouse, “The Ascent” looked spare and heroic, like the setting for the final showdown between good and evil. Up high, a large circular track of lights and equipment hung from the ceiling. Down on the floor, another circle mirrored the one above, with incandescent bulbs illuminating transient puffs of smoke and casting the apparatus in a ghostly light. In the 30 feet between the lights above and the lights below, the air seemed heavy with magic and danger.

An assistant outfitted me with a harness around my middle and a couple of EEG sensors across my forehead. Another assistant led me to the center of the circle and snapped me into the two hanging cables. For one long and mysterious moment, I stood alone in silence. Then the fun began.