Perceiving and Reading the Aura

copyright Julia Jablonski, 1998

Section I :  The Basics

You can see or otherwise perceive and read people's auras. If you don't believe me, you're right. Of course, if you believe it is possible, you are also right!

I will never forget the first time my left-brained, generally skeptical engineer of a husband saw an aura (mine). Never before or since have I seen such a look of wonder on his face. It was like he was a child witnessing the tooth fairy flying out the window with his tooth in her magic satchel. I figure if I can help him to see auras, I can help anyone.

While I'm sure everyone has heard the term "aura" before, it may be helpful to define what we're talking about. The aura is a field of energy (electromagnetic and other finer energies) surrounding all living things, and some would say all atomic forms, animate and inanimate. For the skeptical or the scientifically inclined, we are fortunate to live in a time when the latest technology now enables us to measure and observe these energy fields. Our technology confirms what mystics have taught for ages. For more information on the science underlying the aura, especially energy healing, check out Psychophysics: A Wholistic Approach to Healing through the Aura

Our auras are in constant interaction with each other and with our environments. The more prolonged or profound the interaction, the greater the affect on the auras. Consequently, the auras of family members, longtime friends, and people married for many years are likely to grow more and more similar.

The residue of auric interactions is what imprints places and things with our unique energies. Notice, for example, how different houses feel. Every house has its own aura, arising from the people and other influences residing there, and every room in every house has it's own unique feeling, depending on who lives and sleeps there. A house that is deserted most of the time "feels" more empty than a house that is full of daily living, even when no one is home at the moment. Contrast such a house with a hotel room. The hotel room has a constantly changing but shallow interaction with many diverse energetic influences. We leave the residues of our energy everywhere. Those things we interact with most or most deeply, such as our clothes, jewelry, cars, beds, favorite chairs, pets and loved ones become most strongly imprinted with and affected by our energies. It is this residual energy that psychics read when performing psychometry. It is also the residual energy of very intense or traumatic experiences that usually create "hauntings," which are often simply "tears" in the fabric of space and time, or windows into the past.

We are already aware of others' auras, though most of this awareness takes place at a less than conscious level. We feel drained by some people, others energize us. Some people we feel in harmony with, others discordant with. Someone who is close to or shares our energetic vibration we are likely to feel attracted to. Someone on a vastly different "wavelength" we feel uneasy around. Our language reflects our unconscious awareness of the energy interactions underlying these experiences.

When we sense someone looking at us, we are aware of their energy literally interacting with ours. To a clairvoyant, this is visually observable. I experienced an interesting example of this years ago when I was first starting to see auras. I was waiting for a friend to eat dinner in the large coop house she shared with about a dozen other university students. As I was sitting there relaxed and looking around, I noticed a young man enter the dining room. He looked at my friend, who was facing the other direction, preparing her plate. As he looked at her, I saw a tentacle of deep murky red energy extend from his solar plexus, travel across the room, and sort of "swarm" all over her energy field. As soon as this "tentacle" made contact with her field, she stiffened, then turned around and looked directly at him, with an annoyed look on her face. At that point the tentacle of energy was withdrawn.

Later when I told her what I had seen, she explained that he was someone she'd been having a lot of trouble with, for he was constantly harassing her sexually. It was then that I put together consciously what I had witnessed. He had been fantasizing about her sexually, and I had seen both his "fantasy" and her recognition at a less than conscious level of this. She had simply "felt" someone looking at her and felt annoyed, though she hadn't consciously known why until she saw who it was.

The first aura I ever perceived belonged to an instructor of mine at the University of Michigan. I didn't set out to try to see auras, it just happened one day. I was sitting in a large lecture hall, and I was very tired. In front of me several classmates rested in apparent blissful slumber. I was in a half-trance, relaxed and open. As my attention drifted in and out, I began to notice this golden yellow glow around my professor's head. As he leaned forward toward the microphone and into the spotlight, it was harder to see, but each time he stepped back just out of the bright light, it was there. As I played with my vision a bit, it became clearer, bigger, and brighter. I was surprised.

Knowing next to nothing of what I do now, I remembered something called an aura, and wondered if that was what I was seeing. Then I began to look around the dim auditorium, and was amazed to see auras here and there around my fellow students' heads.

I share this experience because it highlights some key ingredients of the ideal conditions for perceiving auras. First, I was going through a period of disciplined meditation, and many interesting psychic and spiritual experiences were arising that were interrelated. Meditation is the one main ingredient that is universally prescribed for psychic and spiritual development. When one quiets the conscious mind's chatter, whispers and subtle energies can be perceived.

Second, the instructor taught Eastern Religion. While I hadn't considered it at the time, he no doubt had spent years in meditation and spiritual practice. The healthier an individual and the more spiritually developed, the bigger and brighter the aura will be. Hence, the paintings of Jesus, saints, and other holy people throughout history are often depicted with a halo. Their auras were so bright, they were easily perceived by the artist, and perhaps everyone.

Third, I was in a very relaxed state. My mind was blank and open, my eyes were unfocused. This half-trancelike state is essential, especially when first learning to view the aura.

Fourth, the subject, my professor, was speaking before a large group of people. The "charge" that people feel when speaking before an audience (whether defined as exhilarating or terrifying) arises in large part from the tremendous amount of psychic/auric energy that is flowing from the audience to the speaker through their attention. This pumps up the speaker's energy or aura dramatically. The easiest auras to see belong to people standing up and teaching, performing or speaking in front of a group. If the person is teaching a spiritual workshop, the energy that one can observe on the stage is amazing.

The most interesting auric displays I've observed have been while watching someone "channel" entities who supposedly enter and take over the body of the channeler. I've see this actually happen (though I was a bit skeptical, as my own experiences with spirit communication have been different). I've also seen a channeler who says this happens actually be relaying information from at times a spirit outside of her, and at other times from her own "higher self," though I believe that she believed an entity was entering her body. Of course, I listened for the truth in what was communicated, regardless of the source. It's been fascinating to observe such situations.

Read on about how you can learn to see auras here.

E-mail me your comments/questions/suggestions!  

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