Spirit on the Brain

From Barbara Ann Brennan’s classic Hands Of Light:

With the light dim in the room, hold your hand so that the tips of the fingers point toward each other. Hold your hands in front of your face at a distance of about two feet. Make sure there is a plain white wall for a background. Relax your eyes and softly gaze at the space between your fingertips, which should be about one and a half inches apart. Do not look into bright light. Let your eyes relax…. About 95% of the people who try this exercise do see something….

Most people see a haze around the fingers and hands when trying to sense the aura. It looks somewhat like the heat wave over a radiator. It is sometimes seen in various colors, such as a blue tint. Usually, most people see it as colorless in the beginning.

The “artist’s rendition” picture is here:

The phenomenon which Brennan describes is real—physically real, that is. It’s just the product of light-wave diffraction, and can thus actually be photographed. Zajonc inadvertently gives an example photograph, in his Catching The Light:

That picture was created using laser light, which produces very sharp boundaries in the diffraction around the object blocking the light source; in his case, a human hand. Any other light source—e.g., the light reflecting from a plain white wall in the background—would simply produce a softer boundary around the object. Obviously, there is nothing special about using a “living hand” in the production of that diffraction pattern: an inanimate object such as a book or a pencil would work just as well.

The same is true, of course, of the “auras” which Brennan describes: Hold a pencil up against a white wall, and you will see exactly the same “aura” as you can see around your own hand.

Since those “colorless” or even “blue-tinted” “auras” can be photographed, they are not the product of the micromovement (i.e., the saccades) of our eyes. Rather, the phenomenon really exists in the physical world. There’s just nothing at all paranormal about it.

So, Brennan is actually being unduly modest in claiming that only “about 95%” of people can see that supposedly lowest level of the human aura: Everyone with good eyesight can see it.

Susan Blackmore, in her book In Search of the Light, provides another explanation of the existence of such simple “auras,” which is complementary to the (original, by Geoff) one given above:

[I]f you hold out your hand against a dark background and look at the space just beside the skin, you will begin to see a faint glow around it. Under some conditions it is possible to see colored halos and other more complex effects. If the fingers of two hands are pointed at each other and gradually brought together there comes a point at which the two auras seem to reach out and combine into one….

[T]he light skin against a dark background provides high contrast and good conditions for after-images. As the eyes move slightly but rapidly about (as they always do), an after-image builds up around the edge of the hand and produces a light blur. Colored after-images can also be formed.

Of course, if we can see these “auras” against both white and black backgrounds, any intermediate level of such contrast (and any background color) would also work, for producing a weighted mix of the aforementioned two visual effects.

There is at least one other contributing factor to at least some people’s ability to see (non-paranormal) auras. This is Dr. Jamie Wood:
 

A popular notion is that some people have a magical ability to detect the hidden emotions of others by seeing a colourful “aura” or energy field that they give off. Our study suggests a different interpretation. These colours do not reflect hidden energies being given off by other people, rather they are created entirely in the brain of the beholder….

Synesthesia is a condition found in 1 in 2000 people in which stimulation of one sense produces a response in one or more of the other senses. For example, people with synesthesia may experience shapes with tastes or smells with sounds. It is thought to originate in the brain and some scientists believe it might be caused by a cross-wiring in the brain, for example between centres involved in emotional processing and smell perception….

The ability of some people to see the coloured auras of others has held an important place in folklore and mysticism throughout the ages. Although many people claiming to have such powers could be charlatans, it is also conceivable that others are born with a gift of synesthesia.

Interestingly, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman may have exhibited a mild case of exactly that “gift.” From his “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”:

When I see equations, I see the letters in colors—I don’t know why. As I’m talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde’s book, with light-tan j’s, slightly violet-bluish n’s, and dark brown x’s flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students.

Such an association of colors with numbers is indeed a form of synesthesia, as V. S. Ramachandran noted in his A Brief Tour Of Human Consciousness (p. 18-9):

Synesthesia, which appears to be genetically transmitted, results in a mingling of the senses. For example hearing a particular musical note might invoke a particular color: C sharp is red, F sharp is blue, etc. Visually perceived numbers can produce a similar effect: 5 might always be seen as red, 6 always green, 7 always indigo, 8 always yellow … Synesthesia is surprisingly common, affecting about one in two hundred [sic] people.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 6:18 am and is filed under Auras, Synesthesia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.