Have you ever seen a spiritual aura around someone?

[Bariyon]

Has anyone had an experience that lies outside the understanding of present science? Please only experiences that have a degree of credulity and objectivity.

I will start by recounting an experience of my own.

A few years ago I attended a lecture given by a native woman on native spirituality. I was sitting about ten rows from the stage. I was amazed to see a strong blue "bubble" surrounding the speaker. I spent some time watching it, how it tended to wobble whenever the woman moved, how it behaved when another person approached, etc. The "bubble" remained around her for the entire duration of the talk, about one hour. After the talk I spoke to each of my neighbours, they had both witnessed the same effect.

 

[talksintheclouds]

bubbles? clouds?

hi i thought i might comment on your spiritual experience/insight

the bubble you and your friends witnessed might have been what is known as an 'aura' or phychic(conscious)/emotional energy field around the person-

another idea i have for you is to check into the books series written by james redfield, beginning with the book 'celestine vision' these books are a fictional parable to a spiritual journey which protrays insights which are awaken one after another in individual and collective peoples awareness, perceptions, and ultimately experiences as the theme is humanity, or creative evolution into a spiritual culture on earth

one of the insights presented has to do with seeing energy, such as the bubble you and your friends percieved

goto www.celestinevision.com

also you would find several hits if you searched for auras on the internet

i have had several spiritual experiences, although now is not the time i can share them with you, though it will be soon!

peace & music,
david talks in the clouds

 

[Bariyon]

talksintheclouds,

Of course I have heard of auras before, but the "bubble" I saw was quite different to the light spectrum around a human seen on a photograph when kirlian photography is used say. It was a uniform colour, had a distinct boundary, and was exhibiting certain physical behaviour.

The most important point is that this is a phenomenon that is unable to be explained by physics at the present time. Even more interestingly, it seems to be a phenomenon that is exhibited by humans and perhaps other life forms, but not exhibited by crude matter such as rocks, protons, etc.

 

[FZ+]

Humans are made of protons, last I looked.

10 rows from the stage? Have you asked anyway closer to the stage, or on the other side of the room? A visual illusion seems likely. I kinda doubt there is anything special about a certain lecture, which would let this appear around a specific person for that duration, and not be noticed again.

 

[Bariyon]

FZ+,

<<Humans are made of protons, last I looked.>>

I knew someone would react to that statement. If you're telling me that the same laws act for rocks as for humans, then I might as well be speaking with a stone wall.

<<A visual illusion seems likely.>>

Perhaps you would only believe if you saw for yourself. But the subtle part is that you must also believe before you can see.

 

[Fliption]

The problem with stories that will come up in a thread like this is that there's no way to show anyone that it's true. You have to get past someone elses subjective interpretation of an event in order to believe the story. I have spent my entire life doing exactly what FZ has just done: Try to point to a more reasonable explanation. I had gone my whole life without seeing anything that I couldn't explain this way. Nothing. It's funny when I actually witness the same thing someone else does and then I hear them tell the story later lol. So I know first hand people can see what they want to see! BUT...something did happen to me recently and quite frankly my reasonable explanation is just not very satisfying. It happened earlier this year and I posted it on PF2 as soon as it happened and I got blasted by Sivakama! It's not as sensational as the story above but it is amazing to me.

I was asleep one morning. I was dreaming that I was standing in my parents back yard with my dad. All of the sudden the top third or so of one of the trees in the front yard broke off(I could see it over the house). During it's fall toward the ground a bolt of lightning came out of the sky and popped the falling part of the tree with such a force and loud sound that I bolted right out of bed. It was time for me to get up anyway so I got up and just thought about how weird that dream was. I'm not calling it weird because the lightning hit the tree after it fell instead of before or anything like that. Dreams are always stupid like that and never make any sense. I'm talking about how it was a typical dream until that lightning hit. It was so vivid and real that I can't describe it. I am rarely startled awake like this. It was more like an actual sound woke me up rather than a dream sound, if that makes any sense. I woke up once to an "actual" earthquake and it was kinda like that.

Anyway, that evening I called my parents for some other reason. I had actually forgotten all about this dream. In my conversation, my mother told me that they lost a tree "last night". At first I thought somebody was playing a trick on me. She went on to tell me that a tree in the front yard got struck by lightning toward the top of the tree and broke. Since they literally have hundreds of trees, I couldn't really confirm anything until I went to visit and it was indeed the very same tree in my dream. (BTW, I live 5 hours away from my parents)

My first thought is that this is coincidence. But wow what a coincidence! Sivakama told me that people only remember the hits and never remember the misses. But I tried to explain to her, while what she is saying is reasonable, that I so rarely am startled awake from a dream that there are no misses to forget! It just doesn't happen that much. This is truly one of the most amazing coincidences. Or it is something else.

But anyway, I don't believe in "supernatural" as the title suggests. Nature itself is strange enough that until we truly understand all of it, we don't really need the supernatural.

 

[Bariyon]

Fliption,

Thank you for your considered response.

Actually I don't really expect people to believe things they haven't experienced themselves. I don't think the experience I reported has influenced my beliefs to any great extent.

However I started this thread as an experiment, because claims in "god" threads that there is more to nature than we presently understand can fall on deaf ears.

I have had premonitionary dreams also. In one my parent's cat told me that she was starving and about to die, and a few days later my parents rang to tell me that she had just died, and had not eaten for many days before hand.

But of course this could be explained as a coincidence.

 

[FZ+]

I knew someone would react to that statement. If you're telling me that the same laws act for rocks as for humans, then I might as well be speaking with a stone wall.

I'm not telling. I'm saying I think so, because we haven't found anything to the contrary.

However I started this thread as an experiment, because claims in "god" threads that there is more to nature than we presently understand can fall on deaf ears.

There is definitely more. No point doing science otherwise.

 

[talksintheclouds]

i don't believe in anything...

why believe in something? make-believe?

here are three words:

Dream Imagine Create

thanks

 

[Bariyon]

FZ+,

Let me talk about another supernatural phenomenon.

Right now you are alive and reading these characters. But science has no understanding of consciousness. So do you believe that you are just a chunk of meat, or do you believe supernatural trickery that lies outside accepted scientific doctrine?

 

[Mumeishi]

Science has significant understanding of consciousness. An understanding which has made successful predictions unlike traditional explanations in terms of 'souls' or 'life-force'.

Read 'A Universe of Consciousness' Edelmann & Tononi

 

[Mumeishi]

I agree that I've not read any account of philosophy of mind which is without problem and thus we could say that the hard problem of conciousness is not solved. But the idea of souls and life-force as a serious explanation of consciousness was in many ways the first to go. Its entirely irrational to say

No explanation of mind is entirely unproblematic
Therefore the soul/life-force explanation of mind must be true

 

[radagast]

Originally posted by Bariyon
Right now you are alive and reading these characters. But science has no understanding of consciousness.

You're on uneven footing, here. This has the same drawbacks, logically speaking, as the 'god-of-the-gaps' argument flaw. Just because we don't understand or can't explain something, doesn't imply
there is a supernatural cause.

So do you believe that you are just a chunk of meat, or do you believe supernatural trickery that lies outside accepted scientific doctrine?

While I'm not sure that there are only these two answers, what, aside from the desire to fall into the first category, would lead you to believe the second? This also ignores that non-supernatural, physical laws and relationships, currently outside known/accepted scientific doctrine, are the reality.

 

[Bariyon]

Mumeishi and radagast,

Of course science has attempted to explain consciousness, but that does not necessarily mean that it understands it.

I am saying that consciousness is "supernatural" in the sense that it lies outside present understanding. I am not arguing that we should resort to "souls" etc.

The problem is that physics is a "natural" science in that it studies the matter around us, but does not study the "life" associated with that matter. Such a study may be done subjectively, by examination of oneself. Unless science can change its approach radically, and become more sympathetic with spiritual approaches, then it will remain an immature body of knowledge, unsatisfying to many, and will ultimately be replaced by a wiser body of knowledge.

 

[FZ+]

I am saying that consciousness is "supernatural" in the sense that it lies outside present understanding. I am not arguing that we should resort to "souls" etc.

The core of science is the assumption that we do not understand *anything* in a complete way. This makes the concept of supernatural rather useless, eh?

Such a study may be done subjectively, by examination of oneself.

People called philosophers have done such studies, they all got different answers. And many were shown by science to be contrary to experimental findings.

will ultimately be replaced by a wiser body of knowledge.

Like?

 

[Bariyon]

FZ+,

The core of science is the assumption that we do not understand *anything* in a complete way. This makes the concept of supernatural rather useless, eh?

So is a theory of everything a useless concept also? Perhaps you are just being denominational and reacting to a word I have used.

People called philosophers have done such studies, they all got different answers. And many were shown by science to be contrary to experimental findings.

I can't answer for bad philosophy. Also modern physics is becoming more philosophical, since your treasured well of experiment is beginning to run dry. I am amused that you have rejected my observational findings and turned this discussion into a pointless philosophical debate.

Like?

To a member of the science church like yourself, I would say christianity, and to a christian I would say science. Why does science need christianity? Because "a tree is known by its fruit" and anyone who is scornful, patronising and arrogant towards another without even checking whether they are friend or enemy cannot be in possession of true knowledge.

 

[Dark Wing]

If you don’t want anyone to jump on your terms like 'supernatural' then you should define them properly at the offset. There is no use in just throwing these heavily loaded terms in then get upset when people think that you mean them in the common sense of the term: that is something outside of physics instead of outside of current knowledge as you have now defined it.

As far as consciousness goes, there has been a lot on it, in science, philosophy and religion. What science does it show which of these theories are verifiable. Do I believe that we are just a piece of meat? Who is claiming that? Science would claim that we are a piece of meat with this amazing other piece of meat in our heads that is full of electricity and is made of a different configuration of everything else in the universe that seems to give rise to consciousness.

What is this consciousness and how does it work? Well, theories are being brought up and tested for observational accuracy by the day. Why don’t we have an answer yet? Its not surprising since the psychologists only recognized consciousness even existing in the last 60 something years. But a lot of things have been discovered, and one of those things is the studying of phenomena such as you describe.

For instance, dreaming and false memory. Now don’t jump on me here. Our memory and its recall/encode procedures can be very dodgy to say the best. It is easy to create false memories of events. Like 2 people experiencing the same visual stimulus, one attributing it to a 'supernatural' cause, the other finding a scientific explanation. 2 different explanations and recalls of the same event. So which is 'true'? Did you really see the bubble around your lecturer? Well, you and those who were around you, presumably within the same mind set as you (as you claim that only those who whish to see it will) all saw the bubble and instantly did not attribute it to anything other than a supernatural cause: you did not understand it, but neither did you delve into it very far to explain it through visual illusion. The eye is a very very deceiving thing. These things, when scrutinized through scientific inquiry can be explained. You cannot go from a story like this into the argument that we do not (an may not ever) understand consciousness through science. If you really thought that science could explain things, and it was 'supernatural' because it was outside understanding then you would do everything to find an explanation for it. These things are complex, and cannot be thrown away so quickly.

What is your explanation for what you and others have seen? What do you see as happening in these cases?

 

[Bernardo]

<<Just because we don't understand or can't explain something, doesn't imply there is a supernatural cause.>>

True -

But -

just because we can explain something dosen't mean there isn't a supernatural cause behind it either. Science and spirit why do they have to be separate - why does one always have to exsist apart from the other?

 

[Bariyon]

Dark Wing,

We are getting into the tricky area of definitions here. When you talk about standard definitions, you are almost beginning to speak a different language to me. The way I see things, we start with simple understanding of a conecpt, then as we learn, we refine our understanding. So if the standard view is that "supernatural" is somewhat akin to "unphysical", then I hold no apologies for holding a different understanding, for I view that all phenomena are physical, whether our limited knowledge understands it or not.

The issue I am discussing becomes very apparent when we start talking about god. The most fervent arguers against god are those who have a very naive understanding of god, then spend their time reacting against their own naive understanding.

Recently I heard about the phenomenon of synesthesia, and in the case being discussed, people see colours around roman numerals and associate colours with numbers. This is probably a limited example of a more general phenomenon. For example, it seems to me that mediums, who claim to see "glows" around people which exhibit a spectrum of colours (the usual word for this phenomenon is aura) are synesthetes. However no self-respecting medium would even think of subjecting him or herself to the scrutiny of a sceptical scientist. So faced with this fact, any scientist would have to admit that the scientific method applied to supernatural phenomena is rather like a survey with inbuilt bias, and it is scientific scepticism that is fuelling the bias.

However the phenomenon that I saw does not fit with synesthesia. I am not usually synesthetic. It was not just me who saw it, but others around me. It did not have the form of an "aura" that mediums claim to see. Furthermore it was exhibiting the behaviour of a physical object. It was fixed to the body of the woman, moving with the woman, it would "wobble" whenever she moved, it would act repulsively whenever anyone else came close. I do not believe that an optical illusion or a figment of my imagination would behave like that.

Ultimately I don't expect you to believe the evidence of a single person, after all you don't know me from a bar of soap. So if you prefer to believe that it was an optical illusion, or my mind was playing tricks on me, or I don't remember correctly, then so be it. But how much evidence would it take to make you listen? I started the thread by inviting other people to share some of their experiences. So far few have come forward.

I do not claim to understand the phenomenon I saw. If you like, it is sitting in the "too hard" basket. I am content with it being there. For me, the first step in gaining higher understanding is to clean up the personality. When this has been done, then I can expect that answers to questions such as the "bubble effect" may come along.

 

[Bariyon]

Bernardo,

Science and spirit why do they have to be separate - why does one always have to exsist apart from the other?

Now we're talking. However I suspect that your question might be the same as asking "Why are cats and dogs always fighting with each other?"

There is a shocking mindset, often expressed, that we in the modern age are highly knowledgeable, but our ancestors were basically ignorant. I find this to be a highly disrespectful "ism", ultimately indicative of our inability to understand different ways of thinking. For example, few are aware that old testament prophecy was the ancient jewish equivalent of physics, but with different methods and a different outlook. However the prophets probably don't mind, their writing made use of the fact that the majority of people were going to misunderstand them. At the core of prophecy lies knowledge that physics does not currently possess, but when it does possesses it, it will spell a new revolution in physics.

To each person reading this, I ask, do you truly welcome change, or will you try to knock it down?

 

[Bernardo]

Supernatural experience?

I'm not so sure but here's mine. It's not going to seem very amazing though.

When I was a kid my family took a trip to the rockie mountains, we were stopped for lunch and I was playing along the side of the river jumping from rock to rock. I jumped across this small span filled with very jagged rockes over to this one large rock. The problem was it was coverd with sand and my feet slipped. I was completely horizontal with my head over these jagged rocks. for just an instant, it was like I got pushed behind my shoulders, and I found myself landing on me feet.

Most of you are physicist, I was in mid air with my momentum moving backwards and down - I don't see anyway my reflexes could have caused me to land on my feet.

Yes I believe in guardian angels - even before this event - but since then certainly.

 

[FZ+]

So is a theory of everything a useless concept also? Perhaps you are just being denominational and reacting to a word I have used.

The theory of everything is really two things. One is a very limited definition some theoretical physicists use - that a theory which describes to an acceptable degree of accuracy all 4 fundamental forces, and are consistent with current experimental results were constitute a theory of everything - the 'theory' word implies that there must be a possibility of change.

The second type of theory of everything is a goal, or ideal that the empiricist wing of scientists aim for. They do not usually really expect actually to reach it.

Also modern physics is becoming more philosophical, since your treasured well of experiment is beginning to run dry.

Well, we'll just have to dig a deeper one, then?

I am amused that you have rejected my observational findings and turned this discussion into a pointless philosophical debate.

Heads up! This is the philosophy section, after all...

To a member of the science church like yourself, I would say christianity, and to a christian I would say science.

I was a christian once, and now I am not. I saw that there was nothing wise in it that did not come from a few wise men, scattered around the world, and maybe even myself. I saw that churches - of any sort - serve only to exclude such wisdom, and that we must not confuse wisdom with knowledge.

The most important thing, the most treasured thing, science has is its incredulity at itself. By constantly rejecting science, we can reforge it. By building their churches, many people have forgetting that the wise cannot afford to sit still.

Science welcomes supernatural experiences because it satisfies its own proud self-hate. And through that self hate, now science is born. The wells of experiment are often sprung on the virgin like of what we today call supernature.

I don't see anyway my reflexes could have caused me to land on my feet.

Have you ever seen a cat fall from some height?

 

[Swamp Thing]

Sivakama told me that people only remember the hits and never remember the misses.
- Fliption

If I may ask... who is Sivakama?

 

[FZ+]

Former (or currently missing) PF member. Big fan of Sagan and Dawkins.

 

[Bernardo]

Originally posted by FZ+
I was a Christian once, and now I am not. I saw that there was nothing wise in it that did not come from a few wise men, scattered around the world, and maybe even myself. I saw that churches - of any sort - serve only to exclude such wisdom, and that we must not confuse wisdom with knowledge.

So you had a 'natural' experience when you were looking for a supernatural one. It's not uncommon to have an experience like this. This is a sad thing when people are hypocrites. These people you base this opinion on - I don't excuse their conduct, there are too many people out there giving Christianity a bad name. People doing things 'in the name of God' that contradict everything He stands for. People who go to church on Sunday and forget it all on Monday - this really bothers me.

but. . .

To place the burden of our belief in a creator on the conduct of someone else, the creation, is to ensure failure. Preconceptions always lead to disappointment. Have you looked past the teachings of the particular denomination you were in, did you test them like you do in science. Did you ever read your Bible and try to learn on your own when attending, or did you just expect to be spoon fed?


What wisdom do you see being excluded?

 

[selfAdjoint]

May I jump in here a second? To me it's not that the Christians are hypocrites, many I have known are sincerely good, in the way good has been prescribed for them. It's just that there is a world of goodness out there that is beyond their ken.

And what wisdom do they leave out? Start with fun. There are passages about Jesus weeping, and Jesus praying, and Jesus doing all sorts of things, but I don't know of any passage where Jesus enjoys a belly laugh. And as for St. Paul, I don't believe the man ever enjoyed even a private chuckle.

 

[Evo]

I have had an experience that I have been unable to find a rational answer to. I'd like to hear opinions on what I might have experienced.

This was several years ago. I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea. The cup was on the counter with a tea bag in it. I picked up the teapot and started to pour the boiling water into the cup. As I did, the cup cracked and the hot water poured out onto the counter, suddenly, there was no water on the counter, I had not poured the water into the cup, the cup had not cracked and I was holding the teapot, ready to begin pouring.

I was startled, to say the least, and decided it was some odd mini "daydream", so I poured the boiling water into the cup, and as I did, the cup cracked and the hot water poured out onto the counter. Exactly as it had just happened.

 

[confutatis]

Originally posted by Evo
I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea. The cup was on the counter with a tea bag in it. I picked up the teapot and started to pour the boiling water into the cup. As I did, the cup cracked and the hot water poured out onto the counter, suddenly, there was no water on the counter, I had not poured the water into the cup, the cup had not cracked and I was holding the teapot, ready to begin pouring.

I was startled, to say the least, and decided it was some odd mini "daydream", so I poured the boiling water into the cup, and as I did, the cup cracked and the hot water poured out onto the counter. Exactly as it had just happened.

I once had a strange experience myself. It was entirely different in nature and content, but the explanation I eventually found for it seems to explain your own experience very well.

The content of our minds is not directly forced on them by reality. The recording-camera view of the brain has been disproved a long time ago. What in fact happens is that the brain does quite a lot of work to put together a coherent picture of reality, complete with images, sounds, smells, etc., out of millions of disparate nerve signals. That so many signals, coming from so many different sources in your body, can be fully integrated into a homogeneous picture where every detail is in perfect harmony with the whole, that is nothing short of mindboggling.

Now I noticed two interesting things from my "paranormal" experience. The first was that this activity of putting together a coherent picture is an ongoing process; the picture does not get created and just stays there, it has to be refreshed several times per second, so as to keep pace with changes in reality. The second interesting thing is that there's quite a lot of "figuring out" going on to refresh the picture. That is, the brain does not recreate the whole picture from scratch several times per second - that would be inefficient, I suppose - but rather "guesses" what comes next based on the previous picture. Very much like digital compression, for those who are familiar with the process, only far more sophisticated.

This "guessing game" is pretty good, but it does go wrong sometimes. When the brain guesses wrong, you suddenly lose touch with reality, and the picture in your mind does not correspond to what is really going on outside your mind. That seldom lasts longer than a split second; as soon as the discrepancy is perceived the brain re-adjusts itself and gets in sync with reality again. It's a marvelous process.

Now in your case, let me tell what I think the best explanation is. Before pouring water in the cup, your subconscious must have figured out that, given the state of the cup and the water temperature, that there was a good chance the cup would crack and the water would spill over the counter. That's not a difficult thing for the subconscious to guess. So your brain was getting ready ("guessing") the picture of a broken teacup and spilled water. Then for some reason you lost sync with reality, and the event did not happen when your brain expected it. You saw the image of what would happen, but it was a fluke. It didn't last long though, and eventually you realized it was a fluke. "Odd", you think, but nothing phenomenal. What seems phenomenal is that what your subconscious had guessed before actually happened, and you got the same picture in your mind again, only this time it was not inconsistent with what was really happening - it was, as we say, real.

Pretty strange, but easy to understand if you see it in those terms. And for the record, I don't think this is really, really what happens, I just think it's a good explanation which fits the facts of your experience as well as the experience I had. But I wrote too much already and will save my experience for another post.

 

[Evo]

Hi Confutatis,

That is the best explanation I have had so far! I believe that may be the answer. Strange how the mind works...

 

[confutatis]

Originally posted by Evo
Hi Confutatis,

That is the best explanation I have had so far! I believe that may be the answer. Strange how the mind works...

I'm glad it made sense to you. I think the idea could be hard to understand for those who never had experiences like that. Those experiences are quite common, by the way.

In a sense, what happened to you could also be explained as traveling to the future. That seems to bother some people who have those experiences, they seem to think the experience implies that the future is already determined. But if you think of the future as just our imagination, the past as just our memories, and the present as the only thing that is real in a physical sense, then there's nothing extraordinary about traveling to the future. We probably do it all the time anyway.