A Guide to Emotional Synaesthesia: The Science of Auras

The Aura - a halo of coloured light surrounding a person, whose colours and patterns change according to that persons health, mood, intentions, spiritual condition and so on is a staple of 'New Age' theory. It is a phenomena which people have claimed to have seen for as long as such things have been recorded, and in as many places as such things have been recorded. And as part of the multi-billion dollar new age industry that has sprung up over recent decades there are now a multitude of proffessional aura readers, along with a plethora of books in any average bookstore which suppossedly teach interested candidates how to read auras themselves.

The attitude of the scientific establishment to such things is, of course, that it is just a load of rubbish and that people who claim to be able to see auras are just con artist out to make a quick buck from gullible and naive 'seekers'. It has always been my opinion, however, that the scientific establishment discounts such phenomena far too readily. In such cases a judgement is based solely on the explanation given to said phenomena by its proponents rather than on the phenomena itself. When hippies and occultists talk about spiritual energy, or the light of the soul or whatever their pet theory happens to be then the automatic reaction of the scientist is to dismiss it as religion ro superstition and then not pay the matter a second thought. But just because the vikings thought thunder and lightening where caused by one of their gods striking a hammer in the heavens does not mean that thunder and lightening don't exist, just theat they were wrong about the reasons. I beleive the same is true for many new age phenomena, including auras; and that is why I was fascinated to read of research conducted by Jamie Ward of University College London and reported in the journal Cognitive Neuropsychology which suggests that a rare form of synaesthesia could explain the phenomena of auras.

Most people are now familiar with the condition called synaesthesia. It is not a common condition, and has only been thoroughly documented and explained quite recently, but because it is such an interested condition it has received a good amount of publicity, including television programs and magazine articles.To summarise the condition briefly synaesthesia, in its most common form, is when the area of the brain dealing with two separate sense becomes linked. When this happens the subject is able to smell colours, taste sounds and so on. Synaesthesia may also involve the subject associated colours, or tastes, or whatever to certain words ror numbers; so that whenever they come across a particular word a particular taste occurs to them simultaneously.
The idea being put forward is that the phenomena of auras can be explained by an unusually strong connection between the areas of the brain handling emotions and colours, reinforced by the innate pairings of certain emotions and colours that all cultures seem to share. In this case when a person sees and aura what they are actually seeing is a mixture of their own emotional response to a person combined with their intuitive understanding of the persons own emotional state.

I would also add, before finninshing this article, that to explain such a phenomena scientifically in no way invalidates its practical use. It is a peculiarity of the modern world that when a proper scientific explanation for such things comes along people say that they have been 'debunked', and that their invalidity has been proven. This seems perverse to me; to explain something scientifically does not disprove something - it proves it. In the case of Auras one can easily imagine how such an emotional synaesthesia could lead to an intuitive sense far more advanced than that of the ordinary person. Huge amounts of information are continually being exchanged between our subconscious minds and the main obstacle to our accessing and using this information in our day to day lives is the burden of proof required by our logical consciousness to turn a vague feeling into a thought that can be acted upon. A form of synaesthesia which displayed such vague feelings as concrete sensory symbols, colours and even images could greatly increase the ability of the conscious mind to access and utilise subconscious information.
If science could put aside its emnity towards such 'new age' subjects a great deal could be accomplished.