aumgn said:
My next question, for those who do not acknowledge the existence of an aura around the human body, would be how would one explain "auric vision"?
As others have said, the simplest explanation is that you are lying. This is the explanation I favour for the people who claim to be able to see large, multicoloured auras.
Assuming you are telling the truth, the simplest explanation is that you have fallen victim to some combination of wish-fulfillment and optical illusion. Sorry.
I personally can attest that a hazy field (or, the "etheric" layer of the aura) is visible extending an inch all around the body of myself and others, because I have seen it and can see it at any time. My original ability to perceive this layer was minimal, but since practicing exercises to develop "auric vision" it seems much more tangible, and I don't need to relax my eyes or get in a calm state to see it. Assuming I'm not lying about what I'm seeing
, is there a scientific explanation for an indistinct hazy layer extending ~1 inch away from the body? I'm quite sure I don't have a vision disorder.
It's hard to tell exactly what you are seeing, so I can only make a few guesses.
Firstly, you might be unfocusing your eyes a trifle. This is easily done with practise, and is not a supernatural ability. One test for this explanation would be to see if you can perceive the aura when you are sharply focused on the object in question, and whether you can see auras at long distances as well as short ones.
Secondly, our brain naturally emphasises distinct objects in our vision, making them seem more distinct than they "really" are by editing the brightness of their surroundings. If you look for it you can see it, and it's a bit weird. Some optical illusions rely on this effect. It's possible you are mistaking a natural image-editing function for a superpower.
Thirdly, if the aura is as you describe it you should be able to see it in the dark, right? If you cannot use it to detect someone in pitch darkness, it seems that you are not seeing auras generated by the human body at all. You are seeing some kind of distortion at your end, rather than an energy from their end.
Fourthly, if the aura is a biological phenomenon you should be unable to get a similar effect from inanimate objects, storefront dummies and so on. Try it and see if you can see a dummy's aura.
Lastly, a very strong test would be to do a blind study with a partner where they tested your ability to detect a hand or other body part that you cannot directly see, seeing only the aura it emanates. If you can do this under conditions such that you cannot be picking up other clues to help you, then you have a superpower and the million will soon be yours!
A very psychically sensitive girl came to a meeting of a Reiki club I belong to (for those who don't know, Reiki is definitely "woo woo"). She is the only person I know who has felt physical pain during a Reiki session (though since receiving an attunement has not felt it since). I was talking about auras, something she expressed curiosity in, and said that all her life she had seen colors around people's heads, which she had chalked up to being a vision defect or something (she wears glasses). Based on her descriptions of what she saw, it was evident to me that she wasn't seeing full Kirlian photograph-sized color splotches around the head but spots of a smaller scale (as she had never developed, or even acknowledged, her natural ability to perceive auras). She, who had never read any books about auras or what emotions the colors correspond to, proceeded to say what colors were around the heads of everyone present. Her disparate descriptions of what colors were attributed to whom dovetailed with what I knew of color correspondences and what I could surmise of each person's emotional state. For example, she said green and purple were around my head, which made perfect sense since I had just given a Reiki treatment.
The simplest explanation is that this girl is an attention-seeking fraud. "Ooh, is that
really what all the books say aura vision is like? Wow, I
never imagined that!". Since no one has ever demonstrated "by the book" aura vision under conditions that exclude fraud, I think it's highly unlikely that she has a real superpower that lines up exactly with the book. It's far more likely she has read the same books you have and is lying.
I find the idea that a serious woo-woo who sees coloured spots around people's heads had never encountered the idea of auras before fairly hard to take. Your mileage may vary.
This also handily explains the pain she felt in a Reiki class. She felt like getting some attention and being the center of some drama, so she put on an act. People do that, and in fact such people are by all available evidence more common than people with genuine superpowers.
My personal experiences seeing a hazy glow around people's bodies and testing my book knowledge of auras against a girl who claims to see colors are in accordance with what is commonly known (in "woo woo" circles) of auric anatomy, and thus lead me to "believe" that auras surrounding humans (and some other forms of life and matter, to varying degrees) do, in fact, exist.
As I hope I have shown, the evidence you have at the moment does not justify this conclusion. More data might do so, or might justify discarding that conclusion.
If/when my auric vision progresses to the point where I can see the emotional layer of the aura, I may figure out some way to demonstrate it scientifically to such fine skeptics as all of you. Perhaps I could use colored pencils to sketch an auric portrait of someone then take that person's picture with Kirlian photography; if my drawing is the same as the photo, dontcha think I'd win a million bucks?
I saw Randi on telly a long time ago testing a woman who claimed to be able to see auras that extended a foot or so around people. He lined up ten or twelve booths that were just tall enough to hide volunteers, and asked her to determine which booths held a human and which were empty. She had a bold guess, but flopped completely.
A very similar protocol could quite easily test your current claimed ability, to see auras an inch around people. There would just have to be better controls to stop you peeking around the booth or whatever. You don't need a more developed power - what you have is plenty to take the million, if it's the real thing.
Cha-ching. But don't the rules of the contest say you have to prove something paranormal? I don't see auras as paranormal, just something science has yet to acknowledge. Well, I won't tell Randi that.
Anything that takes the million will, almost by definition, no longer be considered paranormal once it has won. But since your claimed power is considered supernatural at the moment, the money's all yours.
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