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According to spiritual beliefs, anaura orenergy field is a colored emanation said to enclose a human body or any animal or object.[1] In someesoteric positions, the aura is described as asubtle body.[2]Psychics andholistic medicine practitioners often claim to have the ability to see the size, color and type of vibration of an aura.[3]
Inspiritualalternative medicine, the human aura is seen as part of a hidden anatomy that reflects the state of being and health of a client, often understood to even comprise centers of vital force calledchakras.[1] Such claims are not supported byscientific evidence and are thus consideredpseudoscience.[4] When tested under scientificcontrolled experiments, the ability to see auras has not been proven to exist.[5]
InLatin andAncient Greek,aura means wind, breeze or breath. It was used inMiddle English to mean "gentle breeze". By the end of the 19th century, the word was used in some spiritualist circles to describe a speculated subtle emanation around the body.[6][7]
The concept of auras was first popularized byCharles Webster Leadbeater, a former priest of the Church of England and a member of the mysticTheosophical Society.[8] He had studiedtheosophy in India, and believed he had the capacity to use his clairvoyant powers to make scientific investigations.[9] He claimed that he had discovered that most men came fromMars but the more advanced men came from theMoon, and thathydrogen atoms were made of six bodies contained in an egg-like form.[10] In his bookMan Visible and Invisible, published in 1903, Leadbeater illustrated the aura of man at various stages of his moral evolution, from the "savage" to thesaint.[11][12] In 1910, he introduced the modern conception of auras by incorporating theTantric notion ofchakras in his bookThe Inner Life.[13] Leadbeater did not simply present the Tantric beliefs to the West: he reconstructed and reinterpreted them by mixing them with his own ideas. Some of Leadbeater's innovations are describing chakras as energy vortices, and associating each of them with a gland, an organ and other body parts.[14]
In the following years, Leadbeater's ideas on the aura and chakras were adopted and reinterpreted by other theosophists such asRudolf Steiner[15] andEdgar Cayce, but his occult anatomy remained of minor interest within the esoteric counterculture until the 1980s, when it was picked up by the New Age movement.[16]
In 1977, American esotericistChristopher Hills published the bookNuclear Evolution: The Rainbow Body, which presented a modified version of Leadbeater's occult anatomy.[17] Whereas Leadbeater had drawn each chakras with intricately detailed shapes and multiple colors, Hills presented them as a sequence of centers, each one being associated with a color of the rainbow. Most of the subsequent New Age writers based their representations of the aura on Hill's interpretation of Leadbeater's ideas.[18] Chakras became a part of mainstream esoteric speculations in the 1980s and 1990s. Many New Age techniques that aim to clear blockages of the chakras were developed during those years, such ascrystal healing and aura-soma.[19] By the late 1990s chakras were less connected with their theosophical and Hindu roots, and more infused with New Age ideas. A variety of New Age books proposed different links between each chakras and colors, personality traits, illnesses, Christiansacraments,[20] etc.[21] Various type of holistic healing within the New Age movement claim to use aura reading techniques, such asbioenergetic analysis,spiritual energy andenergy medicine.[22]
Inyoga participants attempt to focus on, or enhance their "auric energy shield".[23] The concept of auric energy is spiritual and is concerned withmetaphysics. Some people think that the aura carries a person's soul after death.[24]
There have been numerous attempts to capture an energy field around the human body, going as far back as photographs by French physicianHippolyte Baraduc in the 1890s.[25] Supernatural interpretations of these images have often been the result of a lack of understanding of the simple natural phenomena behind them, such as heat emanating from a human body producing aura-like images underinfrared photography.[26]
In 1939,Semyon Davidovich Kirlian discovered that by placing an object or body part directly on photographic paper, and then passing a high voltage across the object, he would obtain the image of a glowing contour surrounding the object. This process came to be known asKirlian photography.[27] Some parapsychologists, such asThelma Moss ofUCLA, have proposed that these images show levels of psychic powers and bioenergies. However, studies have found that the Kirlian effect is caused by the presence of moisture on the object being photographed. Electricity produces an area of gasionization around the object if it is moist, which is the case for living things. This causes an alternation of the electric charge pattern on the film.[28] After rigorous experimentations, no mysterious process has been discovered in relation to the Kirlian photography.[29][30]
More recent attempts at capturing auras include the Aura Imaging cameras and software introduced by Guy Coggins in 1992. Coggins claims that his software usesbiofeedback data to color the picture of the subject. The technique has failed to yield reproducible results.[26]
Tests of psychic abilities to observe alleged aura emanations have repeatedly been met with failure.[26]
One test involved placing people in a dark room and asking the psychic to state how many auras she could observe. Only chance results were obtained.[31]
Recognition of auras has occasionally been tested on television. One test involved anaura reader standing on one side of a room with an opaque partition separating her from a number of slots which might contain either actual people or mannequins. The aura reader failed to identify the slots containing people, incorrectly stating that all contained people.[32]
In another televised test another aura reader was placed before a partition where five people were standing. He claimed that he could see their auras from behind the partition. As each person moved out, the reader was asked to identify where that person was standing behind the slot. He identified two out of five correctly.[33]
Attempts to prove the existence of auras scientifically have repeatedly met with failure; for example people are unable to see auras in complete darkness, and auras have never been successfully used to identify people when their identifying features are otherwise obscured in controlled tests.[26][31][32][33] A 1999 study concluded that conventional sensory cues such as radiated body heat might be mistaken for evidence of a metaphysical phenomenon.[34]
PsychologistAndrew Neher has written that "there is no good evidence to support the notion that auras are, in any way, psychic in origin".[35]
It has been suggested that auras may result fromsynaesthesia.[36] However, a 2012 study discovered no link between auras and synaesthesia, concluding that "the discrepancies found suggest that both phenomena are phenomenological and behaviourally dissimilar".[37] Clinical neurologistSteven Novella has written: "Given the weight of the evidence it seems that the connection between auras and synaesthesia is speculative and based on superficial similarities that are likely coincidental."[38]
Bridgette Perez, in a review for theSkeptical Inquirer, wrote: "perceptual distortions, illusions, and hallucinations might promote belief in auras... Psychological factors, including absorption, fantasy proneness, vividness of visual imagery, and after-images, might also be responsible for the phenomena of the aura."[39]
Scientists have repeatedly concluded that the ability to see auras does not actually exist.[26][31][32][33]
Thus, perhaps some cases of seeing auras can be explained by synesthesia rather than assuming that auras are energies given off by chakras or signs of delusion or fraud.
