Kirlian Photography & Auras Two ways of approaching what is known about 'Auras': The first has to do with some experiments in kirlian photography: ...a Kirlian camera is a simple device consisting of a high voltage source, a metal plate, and a piece of film. In 1939, Seymon Kirlan began his work developing a new concept of electrophotography. Kirlian found that by subjecting animate and inanimate objects to a high-voltage, high-frequency pulse, that an *AURA* or halo would form around the object and could be recorded on film. The illumination of the halo was sufficient to make the exposure, so no lights were required. Though Seymon Kirlian lived and died in relative obscurity, Kirlian photography is the subject these days of heated debate. The pro-Kirlians insist that the unique photographic method can capture moods of people, pinpoint illnesses that have yet to manifest themeselves in other forms, and graphically depict an individual's psychic aura. The anti-Kirlians, mostly hard-line [physical] scientists, insist that there's nothing to the method other than the natural corona discharge of high-voltage, high-frequency potentials. (Gordon McComb's Gadgeteer's Goldmine, Chapter 7, McGraw-Hill, 1990) To these sorts of contentions of the human Aura, I must contrast the following extract from a Theosophical publication on the matter of human auras -- the same word is ascribed an entirely different character in this usage: This book's statements about the human AURA are not intended to accomodate spiritual sensation seekers who will be satisfied only by being presented with something 'spiritual' that can be conceived of no differently than something physical -- that is when they can rest content in the sense world with their usual ideas... It is not something that the perceiving soul makes up arbitrarily; it takes shape of itself in supersensible perception. It should be empahasized that the AURA discussed in this book is to be grasped by spiritual means and is something completely different from [those which] can be studied by physical means. We would be surrendering to a gross illusion if we were to believe that spiritual auras could be investigated by any outer scientific methods. (from the appendix to chapter 3) We are never justified in saying that only what we ourselves can percieve is real. Many things can be real, but we simply lack the organs to percieve them... No physical eye can see feelings and concepts, but they are real nonetheless. We encounter the phenomenon of the physical world through our outer senses; similarly, feelings, impulses, instincts, thoughts and so on become perceptions for our spiritual organs. How these soul and spiritual phenomenon become perceptions by means of our inner senses is analogous to how certain processes in space are percieved as colours... People who are currently far from being able to experience the path to knowledge... are likely to misunderstand the nature of what is described here as the 'AURA'. They may imagine that the colours described here are present to our mind's eye in the same way that physical colours are present to our physical eyes. Such 'soul colours', however, would be mere hallucinatinos. Spiritual science has absolutely nothing to do with hallucinatory impressions, and in any case that is not what is meant by these descriptions. WE CAN GET A RIGHT IDEA OF WHAT IS MEANT IF WE KEEP IN MIND THAT WE NOT ONLY EXPERIENCE A SENSORY IMPRESSION OF A PHYSICAL COLOUR, BUT ALSO HAVE A SOUL EXPERIENCE THAT IS DIFFERENT WHEN OUR SOULS -- BY MEANS OF OUR EYES -- PERCEIVE A YELLOW SURFACE THAN IT IS WHEN WE PERCIEVE A BLUE ONE... The point is not that seers visualizing another soul see 'blue' in the same way they see it in the physical world, but rather that they have an experience that justifies their calling the visualization blue, just as people who are percieving physially call a blue curtain 'blue'... so that they acquire the possibility of speaking about the value and significance of the soul's life in a world NOT percieved through the medium of the human body... (Rudolf Steiner, *Theosophy*, 1910, Chapter 3, Section VI - 'Thought Forms and the Human Aura') So - auras - one side: we have the physical phenomenon of Kirlian photography. On the other - a non-physical sensing of people's soul-moods that can be felt upon an encounter the same way that one FEELS if one is LOOKING at blue. In the Theosophical literature on the subject -- they are emphatic in stating this 'blue' IS NOT a physical phenomenon -- but is rather based on the FEELING which arises in an individual upon seeing something that is blue. Thus, the two uses of the word 'AURA' would not correlate. SUBMIT AN ARTICLE posted: february 28, 2001