I’ve dismissed this concept all my life but a few events in my journey have turned this from outright non-belief to high skepticism.
In the spring I went to an aura cleaning workshop. It was nearby and I was curious to put myself in the center of something I don’t believe in.
It started with the workshop leader telling us to hold our hands slightly apart and start to feel a gentle energy that actually keeps pushes against the palms.
Later we would hold this above our heads and slowly lower it down, move our hands around the head towards our ears and then, at the ear level, move the hands as far away as possible to the left and right. When fully stretched rub the thumbs against the fingers and then repeat.
This was the idea that you create energy between your hands and then use it to clean up your aura, rubbing off the dirt far from your body. A bit of care is , we were told, not to go too close to your head with your hands for danger of removing some of the clean aura in the action.
There were about 20 people in the workshop and although I didn’t feel much the majority seemed convinced (although they probably were before they arrived) and spoke about seeing colours of whites and yellows.
Interesting experience I thought and put it to the back of my mind.
But then I was listening to some Alan Watts and he pointed out how we can now use goggles to see the heat people are giving off. We can see which parts of their body are hotter and which parts are cooler.
These waves have always been there but our eyes are too limited to see them in much the same way that we can’t see ultraviolet light or hear sounds at certain frequencies.
In other words not being able to see or hear things does not mean they aren’t there, they are just beyond the senses of most, or all, humans.
Following this through I considered the idea of a person born 200 years ago that was a slight mutation (as evolution does). Someone whose eyes could see heat radiation.
If this person had tried to explain it to others they would have concluded some kind of madness, perhaps even some kind of demonic possession, simply because the man made technology that would allow us to see the reality did not yet exist.
Alternatively they might have seen him as some sort of wise man to be worshiped and consulted. These things generally swing one of two ways.
This also reminded me of a passage in the Robin Skynner and John Cleese book Families and How to Survive Them. Skynner, a therapist, recalled an often repeated experiment where a large group of people are asked to each choose another person from the group that either reminds them of someone in their family or who they feel would fill a gap in their family.
The group members have only recently met and they are not allowed to talk during the exercise.
Next each couple are asked to chose another couple in a similar way.
What they found was that each group of four discovered they really did come from similar families. Although it can be suggested that the group members may have simply looked for similarities Skynner argues “That’s not really a good enough explanation for the number of connected similarities” over numerous workshops.
Skynner explains them as “These unconscious attractions that we call ‘chemistry”.
Could this be aura?
Is it possible that we subconsciously see aura which helps us make decisions about people we meet and that some people have been able to remove their mental block so they can actually view it?
While I don’t write the idea off completely there are a couple of concepts that make me sceptical.
The first is an another experiment (I will have to dig out from somewhere) about how we are attracted to each other, especially sexually.
In the experiment different groups of women are asked to sleep in T-shirts given to them. The next day the T-Shirts are put in closed jars and men are asked to sniff each one and chose their favourite.
The experiment concludes that men chose the T-shirt belonging to the woman with the best genetic make up for them to have the greatest chance of healthy offspring.
So could it also be possible that are sense of smell does much more for us in other situations. If it can seek out a good mating partner then could it also sniff out people who are similar to us, or different from us, in other ways?
Slightly overlapping, and my second source of scepticism, are pheromones.
Studies have suggested animals can change their behaviour in all sorts of ways when one of the same species releases pheromones of various types. Pheromone release can be detected up to two miles away by some animals or insects.
There is a great deal of debate on how well humans communicate via pheromones and research is ongoing. I am just going to use pheromones as a possible explanation of aura because it is something that is half understood.
If we are sensitive to pheromones then unlike most of the information we get via our senses, pheromones sneak in through a backdoor in a way that we are not aware. And as with any other of our senses some people may be more sensitive than others to it.
So we could be receiving information but not understand how we are getting it. “I sense this person is dangerous but I don’t know how I’m picking this up”.
Its very possible that the aura is an invention in some people’s minds to explain to themselves how they are getting their information. They may even hallucinate the aura – our minds are powerful enough to override the real information coming from our senses.
Perhaps we are aware of when someone has good or bad intentions because of the pheromones they release but some people then imagine an aura and say, “Ah, I know this person is good because I see a white aura” when all they have really done is sense the pheromones.
What they have sensed might be very real. How they then deal with it and explain it is fantasy just as we don’t understand the universe fully so we make up a concept to cover this gap in our knowledge or our ability to comprehend. Some people call this concept God or Allah or Witchcraft and then go on to embellish it with things, stories and rituals to make it feel more real.
This is just my aura theory. If someone handed me aura goggles tomorrow, as they once handed someone heat revealing glasses, I would be all “Oh, OK auras do exist, can we also see if this cleaning ritual thing really works?”
In other words just because it can’t be proved yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist although we may find out in time that it exists in a slightly different way than we thought.
And once again I find myself saying there is no harm in the idea if a person really feels they see auras and it helps them with stress or self-awareness. But to me it remains another psychological gateway that you have to ‘believe’ just as a religious person has to believe in their deity – there is no proof.
For a bit of fun I did try the BuzzFeed What Colour is your Aura test. I knew it wouldn’t really work because it asked things like “What do you prefer – city or forest”. I like both without preference and like to spend time in both.
Never mind, I got ‘Green’ which apparently means:
A green aura represents earth, growth, and balance. You like things to be organised and efficient and represent high intelligence and healing abilities — leading to careers in medicine, teaching, and public service. A person with a green aura is passionately monogamous and tends to have long-lasting, committed relationships.
That was nice and I can say “Oooh yes all those things are so me” but I hacked the site for a random color and pulled out Silver which said:
A silver aura radiates abundance. You are intuitive and peaceful, and many gaze in wonder at your ethereal presence. The shininess of your aura reflects both your spiritual and physical wealth. You tend to prefer solitude and as a reflective aura, and your personality may change depending on those who surround you.
A great deal of that also applies to me (or I would like it to apply to me) although I can’t confirm if “many gaze at me in wonder”! Generally however it comes across as a bit of a horoscope where all outcomes can be interpreted as ‘you’.