In parapsychology

Parapsychology

The term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir, and originates from para meaning "alongside", and psychology. The term was adopted by J.B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical research...

 and many forms of spiritual practice

Spirituality

Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...

, an aura is a field of subtle, luminous radiation surrounding a person or object (like the halo

Halo (religious iconography)

A halo is a ring of light that surrounds a person in art. They have been used in the iconography of many religions to indicate holy or sacred figures, and have at various periods also been used in images of rulers or heroes...

 or aureola

Aureola

An aureola or aureole is the radiance of luminous cloud which, in paintings of sacred personages, surrounds the whole figure...

 in religious art). The depiction of such an aura often connotes a person of particular power or holiness. Sometimes, however, it is said that all living things (including humans) and all objects manifest such an aura. Often it is held to be perceptible, whether spontaneously or with practice: such perception is at times linked with the third eye

Third eye

The third eye is a mystical and esoteric concept referring in part to the ajna chakra in certain spiritual traditions. It is also spoken of as the gate that leads within to inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness...

 of Indian spirituality. Various writers associate various personality traits with the colors of different layers of the aura. It has also been described as a map of the thoughts and feelings surrounding a person.

Skeptics such as Robert Todd Carroll

Robert Todd Carroll

Robert Todd Carroll , Ph.D., is an American writer and academic. Carroll has written several books and skeptical essays but achieved notability by publishing the Skeptic's Dictionary online in 1994.-Early life and education:...

 contend that auras may be seen for reasons such as migraine

Migraine

Migraine is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by moderate to severe headaches, and nausea...

s, synesthesia

Synesthesia

Synesthesia , from the ancient Greek , "together," and , "sensation," is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway...

, epilepsy

Epilepsy

Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. These seizures are transient signs and/or symptoms of abnormal, excessive or hypersynchronous neuronal activity in the brain.About 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and nearly two out of every three new cases...

, a disorder within the visual system

Visual system

The visual system is the part of the central nervous system which enables organisms to process visual detail, as well as enabling several non-image forming photoresponse functions. It interprets information from visible light to build a representation of the surrounding world...

, a disorder within the brain

Brain

The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...

, or due to the influence of psychedelic drugs such as LSD

LSD

Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...

. Eye

Human eye

The human eye is an organ which reacts to light for several purposes. As a conscious sense organ, the eye allows vision. Rod and cone cells in the retina allow conscious light perception and vision including color differentiation and the perception of depth...

 fatigue can also produce an aura, sometimes referred to as eye burn

Aura (symptom)

An aura is a perceptual disturbance experienced by some migraine sufferers before a migraine headache, and the telltale sensation experienced by some people with epilepsy before a seizure. It often manifests as the perception of a strange light, an unpleasant smell or confusing thoughts or...

.

Spiritual traditions

In Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 the aura is known as farr or "glory": it is depicted in association with Zoroastrian

Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster and was formerly among the world's largest religions. It was probably founded some time before the 6th century BCE in Greater Iran.In Zoroastrianism, the Creator Ahura Mazda is all good, and no evil...

 kings.
Ideas of the aura are well represented in Indian religions. The Buddhist flag

Buddhist flag

The Buddhist flag is a flag designed in the late 19th century to symbolise and universally represent Buddhism. It is used by Buddhists throughout the world.-History:...

 represents the colours seen around the enlightened Buddha. In Jainism

Jainism

Jainism is an Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence towards all living beings. Its philosophy and practice emphasize the necessity of self-effort to move the soul towards divine consciousness and liberation. Any soul that has conquered its own inner enemies and achieved the state...

 the concept of Lesya

Lesya

Lesya, according to the Jain theory of karma, is the coloring of the soul on account its association with the karmic matter. The colour of leśyā varies from person to person depending on the psychic states and mental activities behind an action. The coloring of the soul is explained through the...

relates colours to mental and emotional dispositions. To the Indian teacher Meher Baba

Meher Baba

Meher Baba , , born Merwan Sheriar Irani, was an Indian mystic and spiritual master who declared publicly in 1954 that he was the Avatar of the age....

 the aura is of seven colours, associated with the subtle body

Subtle body

A subtle body is one of a series of psycho-spiritual constituents of living beings, according to various esoteric, occult, and mystical teachings...

 and its store of mental and emotional impressions. Spiritual practice gradually transforms this aura into a spiritual halo. Hindu

Hindu

Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

 and Buddhist sources often link these colours to kundalini

Kundalini

Kundalini literally means coiled. In yoga, a "corporeal energy" - an unconscious, instinctive or libidinal force or Shakti, lies coiled at the base of the spine. It is envisioned either as a goddess or else as a sleeping serpent, hence a number of English renderings of the term such as 'serpent...

 energy and the chakra

Chakra

Chakra is a concept originating in Hindu texts, featured in tantric and yogic traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Its name derives from the Sanskrit word for "wheel" or "turning" .Chakra is a concept referring to wheel-like vortices...

s.

In the classical western mysticism of neoplatonism

Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism , is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists, with its earliest contributor believed to be Plotinus, and his teacher Ammonius Saccas...

 and kabala

Kabala

Kabala can refer to:*Kabbalah, system of Jewish mysticism*Kabala, Sierra Leone, town in Sierra Leone*Kabala, Estonia, village in Türi Parish, Järva County, Estonia*Kabala, Mardin a town in Mardin Province of Turkey*Ka-Bala, 1967 fortune telling board game...

 the aura is associated with the lustre of the astral body

Astral body

The astral body is a subtle body posited by many religious philosophers, intermediate between the intelligent soul and the physical body, composed of a subtle material. The concept ultimately derives from the philosophy of Plato: it is related to an astral plane, which consists of the planetary...

, a subtle body identified with the planetary heavens, which were in turn associated with various mental faculties in an elaborate system of correspondences with colours, shapes, sounds, perfumes etc.

The symbolism of light found in The Bible is at times associated with the idea of the aura or "body of light": similar interpretations are found in Islamic traditions.

According to the literature of Theosophy

Theosophy

Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...

, Anthroposophy

Anthroposophy

Anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development...

, and Archeosophy

Archeosophy

Archeosophy is an original form of Esoteric Christianity developed by Tommaso Palamidessi in the late 1960s.-Definition:...

 also, each colour of the aura has a meaning, indicating a precise emotional state. A complete description of the aura and its colours was provided by Charles Leadbeater

Charles Webster Leadbeater

Charles Webster Leadbeater was an influential member of the Theosophical Society, author on occult subjects and co-initiator with J. I. Wedgwood of the Liberal Catholic Church...

, a theosophist of the 19th century. The works of Leadbeater were later developed by Palamidessi

Tommaso Palamidessi

Tommaso Palamidessi was an Italian esotericist. Precociously attracted by astrology, parapsychology and yoga-tantric doctrines, he was led by his manifold interests in the field of the occult and by his intense spiritual pursuit to build up an original form of Esoteric Christianity, which he...

 and others.
The British occultist W.E. Butler connected auras with clairvoyance

Clairvoyance

The term clairvoyance is used to refer to the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory perception...

 and etheric

Etheric body

The etheric body, ether-body, æther body, a name given by neo-Theosophy to a supposed vital body or subtle body propounded in esoteric philosophies as the first or lowest layer in the "human energy field" or aura...

, mental and emotional emanations. He classified the aura into two main types: etheric and spiritual. Auras are thought to serve as a visual measure of the state of the health of the physical body. Robert Bruce

Robert Bruce (author)

Robert Bruce is an English-born mystic author living in Australia. Bruce is best known for his studies of Out Of Body Experience, which first became public in the early 1990s through his activity in the alt.out-of-body Internet news group...

 classifies auras into three types: etheric, main, and spiritual. According to Bruce auras are not actual light but a translation of other unknown sensory readings that is added to our visual processing. They are not seen in complete darkness and cannot be seen unless some portion of the person or object emitting the aura can also be seen.

Glenn Morris, grandmaster head of the Hoshin Roshi Ryu lineage, included perception of the aura in his training of advanced martial artists. His experience was that it consisted of multiple layers. He described the most easily visible of these as being "light and denser than the air in which the body is immersed", typically half to quarter of an inch thick and correlating with the etheric body

Etheric body

The etheric body, ether-body, æther body, a name given by neo-Theosophy to a supposed vital body or subtle body propounded in esoteric philosophies as the first or lowest layer in the "human energy field" or aura...

 of an individual. Around this he described a yard thick egg-shaped layer reflecting hormonal state that he linked to the emotional body, and outside this, other barely perceptible layers corresponding to the mental body

Mental body

The mental body is one of the subtle bodies in esoteric philosophies, in some religious teachings and in New Age thought. It is understood as a sort of body made up of thoughts, just as the emotional body consists of emotions and the physical body is made up of matter...

 and beyond. Recalling the aura of another sōke

Soke

The word soke has several meanings:* Soke , an early Western jurisdictional concept.* Soke or eke is a Tongan stick dance, originating from Wallis and Futuna., a Japanese title meaning "head of the family," and is usually used to denote the headmaster of a school of Japanese martial arts.* Soke of...

, he wrote, "The first time I saw Hatsumi, he was running continuous bright, lime, neon green a foot wide and was so easy to see he would flash in bright sunlight".

For holistic healers, aura reading is the art of investigating the human energy field, or the energy fields of other sentient beings. It is a basis for using techniques of holistic healing, and includes such practices as bioenergetics

Bioenergetics

Bioenergetics is the subject of a field of biochemistry that concerns energy flow through living systems. This is an active area of biological research that includes the study of thousands of different cellular processes such as cellular respiration and the many other metabolic processes that can...

, energy medicine

Energy medicine

Energy medicine is one of five domains of "complementary and alternative medicine" identified by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States...

, energy spirituality, and energy psychology.

Tests

Recognition of auras has occasionally been tested on television. One test involved an aura reader standing on one side of a room with an opaque partition separating her from a number of slots which might contain either actual people or mannequins. The aura reader failed to identify the slots containing people, incorrectly stating that all contained people.

In another televised test another aura reader was placed before a partition where five people were standing. He claimed that he could see their auras from behind the partition. As each person moved out, the reader was asked to identify where that person was standing behind the slot. He identified only 2 out of 5 correctly.