It is. It’s called “infrared radiation,” or “heat” to some people. And human eyes are simply not biologically capable of seeing into the infrared portion of the spectrum without special equipment.
What other forms of energy do you “aura viewers” suspect might be being given off? X-rays? Gamma rays? Other?
Why would they not be visible to equipment that can otherwise see or measure such things?
How are they being emitted, via what organ and from where? Any ideas?
A recent quip from a person quoted Skeptical Inquirer is appropriate here: “To wear the mantle of Galileo, it is not enough to be persecuted by an unkind establishment. You must also be right.”
IOW, “They laughed at Galileo/Curie/Einstein/Roentgen/whomever” really never proves anything. Demonstrate unequivocally that these things exist, and explanation (or good hypothesis) for their emanation is available, and they can be measured, and you will not be laughed at anymore.
Visible or not, if the human body is giving off energy, it would be detectable by something. Of course, the human body does give off energy all the time, in the form of heat. Some, such as lawyers, give off more hot air than others. < smirk > But seriously, if it’s just heat, that isn’t exactly a spectacular New Age discovery. If it isn’t heat, but is really some weird “aura,” then I encourage anybody to take the test mentioned above and go see James Randi.
David, you just keep adding more evidence to the theory that the rules of this place include the right of moderators to insult the members. Anybody who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, wander over to the Pit and check out the “Hey Ed – Lemme Get This Straight” thread started by another member.
-Melin
Ah, the trill of the New Age loon. When its idiotic made-up ideas are ridiculed or normal, rigourous standards of proof are demanded, it whines and whines and whines about being insulted, its opponents being close-minded, there are more things in heaven and earth Horatio and just about anything other than putting up or shutting up. Especially not the latter. Look, you’re so damned sure you can see “auras”, there’s a man offering you a million bucks if you can, go and do it.
I’m thinking of experimenting to see what these people won’t believe by reviving the lost art of phrenology. Throw in some Ogham writing, a set of copper calipers … “Spiritual Phrenology from the Celtic World”. What am I bid?
ben
Yeah, because, you know, Cecil would never make a lawyer joke.
This ‘aura’ stuff is getting out of control. I don’t care much when the new age types want to feel each other’s auras at parties and whatnot, but this crap is filtering down into actual medicine.
Here in Canada, some schools are requiring that nursing students take a course in ‘therapeutic touch’. And some hospitals have therapeutic touch practitioners treating people.
In a world of finite medical resources, this crap is hurting people.
Incidentally, I saw a report on the discovery channel yesterday about a 9 year-old girl who has won some science fair with a demonstration that therapeutic touch is complete crap. She set up an experiment with a number of TT practitioners. They put their hands through two holes in a shield, then the girl would flip a coin and hold her hand over one of their hands and have them try to ‘feel’ which hand was in proximity with hers. She’d then repeat the process a number of times and record the results. The TT people claim that they can feel the aura of the patient as they move their hands around the body. In all cases, with 20 different TT practitioners, the results came out completely random.
I got as far as, “contradicting the validity
of the auric colours of colour” on that website. Oh COME ON! Please! I’m sorry, but who wrote this thing? Have you ever looked at one of those 3-D pictures that you have to cross your eyes to see? Yep, same thing. Cross your eyes and everything blurs, let the brain try and sort it out and you end up with different colors. No diagnostic use whatsoever.
“I would far rather be ignorant than wise in the foreboding of evil.”
-Æschylus. 525-456 B. C.
Hmm, heretic, if you go back and read my posts you will see that I am not, in fact, complaining about being insulted for stating that I see auras, since I specifically state that I neither have seen any, nor have I tried.
I did raise a couple of questions about whether energy could be perceived, and both Phil and David gave reasonable, sensible answers to both of those questions.
Remember, the staff is promoting the “party” line. As in, we’re all at a party and should behave in well-mannered way accordingly. Hosts at parties don’t generally throw gratuitous insults at their guests.
-Melin
And people who are easily offended by lawyer jokes generally make lousy party guests.
I’d humbly suggest any further discussion be directed to one of the many “The moderators are big meanies” threads. Or we can start a brand spankin’ new one!
It’s all the rage nowadays.
Then why are you saying you’ve been insulted, or at least making a statement from which it would be hard to infer otherwise?
Your hypothesis is fundamentally flawed. If there was any evidence that anyone ever was able to detect a coloured aura, then we could look into how and why that happened, what mechanisms were at work and so forth. However, there hasn’t. There’s no point in dreaming up fantasies about “chemistry” and “energy” - used in their broadest, handwaving sense - to explain things that don’t happen. You might as well muse about a theory as to why all rabbits are green, have five ears and levitate.
And if any damn fool actually does believe in such a coney, or, in this instance, the existence of coloured auras he can see, this would be a cinch to prove. Just do it and stop with the nonsense about “cynicism” and “rigid belief systems”, which we all know to be well-established New Age code for “not being a credulous moron”. You’re the ones with the burden of proof.
ben
SqrlCub writes:
While GuanoLad was quite vociferous in his trashing of aura believers, more moderate folks like myself and David B. have suggested ways to prove without a doubt that auras are real. The Skeptic’s Dictionary Entry on Auras details one such unsuccessful test. Of course, that one person who failed to detect auras properly was probably just no good at it.
Before talking about someone else’s rigid belief systems, why don’t you yourself try the experiment to determine whether it is real or a trick of the eye? You would easily win the million dollar prize if successful. Don’t like money? Give it all to your favorite charity.
A quick search through the Randi Website shows that proving that one can see auras and $0.65 will get you a cup of coffee, not a cool $1,000,000.65.
The million WOULD, it seems, be given to anyone who can “manipulate patients’ “human energy field” or “aura” as part of the healing process.”
As to whether or not that can be done, well, I’m not gonna touch it.
I said it elsewhere and I’ll say it here too. No more picking on Melin, she’s not in the mood for it.
Tell me if you folks would consider this a fair study, and I’ll be more than happy to conduct it:
Let’s say I take like five or ten people, and give them copies of the aforementioned text file, editing out all of the metaphysical BS. When the subjects feel that they can indeed see auras, I’ll put them all in a room , with cubicle-esque walls between them. The subjects will then all observe a half dozen or so different people (all subjects observing the same person at the same time), and note the color of the aura, as well as anything else notable about the aura. When it’s all done, we compare the results, and see if there is any correlation.
Sound good? Any thoughts, comments, flames?
DougLips: I wasn’t saying that it wasn’t a trick of the eye. Nor do I say that auras mean anything other than a trick of the eye. I was saying that, in fact, you can see them. No where in my post did I say that it was anything else than a trick of the eye. Go to college. Take a critical thinking class. Don’t try to read into my posts something that I did not say.
Sqrl
Okay, I admit I went ballistic a bit, and fair enough for commenting on my extreme reaction.
But I don’t have to try it to know it’s not ‘reading an energy field’. What I was saying was, it’s an optical illusion caused by the eye. As many other people have reiterated since.
I don’t doubt the existence of the experience. Just the explanation given on that website.
-PIGEONMAN-
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I’ve alerted AuraSeer to this discussion and everything should be cleared up shortly 
Pldennison, that quote from the Skeptical Inquirer regarding Galileo’s mantle is wonderful.
I have tried the guide to see auras and realized that I have been able to see auras most of my life. It’s an optical trick with which I have been amusing myself since I was a child, and I am sorry to say that I do not find it conclusive in any way, nor do I consider it evidence for the existence of auras. It’s simply an optical illusion, and not a means of detecting any energies other than the wavelengths that the eye can normally detect.
Some posters replied to my question about electromagnetic fields being set up by the biochemical operation of an organism. Clearly most of the radiation coming out of us would be in the infra-red band. However there should be very small electrical and magnetic fields as well.
I imagine that the first step in testing the theory of aura-seeing would be to determine exactly what sort of energies we are emanating, and what sort of energies aura-people claim they can see. But then again that argument falls flat on its face when New Agers start talking about Life Force and similar nonsense. All right, so you don’t accept the electromagnetic spectrum as valid, or at least you claim that life force is an energy that is not classified on the electromagnetic spectrum.
So we look at the human eye, and we marvel how even one photon can trigger an optical response. But the human eye is able to see only in a very limited range of wavelengths, which we call visible light. Dogs see more poorly than we do, seeing blues and adjacent colours better than others. Many snakes get a better deal, and are able to see into the useful infra-red band. Several species are able to detect ultraviolet radiation. We know how they do such things because we study their organs and the way they interact with energy. When it comes to Auras we have ZERO information regarding the energy and ZERO regarding the sensory apparatus required to detect this energy (some people claim it is the Third Eye that senses this crap). All we have is a huge number of people who believe blindly in auras even though they have never seen one, and a smaller group of people who label simple optical illusions as auras.
Tests conducted to establish whether people can see true (and still wholly hypothetical) auras have all turned up negative.
What next? I was very interested to read the guide on how to see auras, but if those are the auras New Agers keep going on about then the case is closed, because they are mere optical illusions. What I still don’t know is how to convince people with little or no knowledge of physics and the other sciences that they might as well believe in fairies if they believe in auras.
Abe
IDIOT, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
–Ambrose Bierce