Most do not know the difference between the human aura and the electromagnetic field. They are two very different things.
Your electromagnetic field is a measurable phenomenon of physics generated by the physical body, known as a bioelectric field. All living things produce this. A living body creates and uses a significant amount of electricity, mostly through ionic electrolyte elements. The heart generates the most powerful such field in the human body. Brainwaves are electrical impulses, but the entire body is electrical. These mostly infrared fields are scientifically detectable and measured, as with an electrocardiogram.
The aura, however, appears as patterns of colors, seen only by someone with auric vision. This vision requires having an awakened ajna center, also known as the “third eye”, or the sixth chakra. The actual center is behind the mid-eyebrow point, deep inside the brain in the pineal gland. A person with an awakened ajna center receives information that transcends the five senses. This was called “extra-sensory perception” or ESP in days past. We must clear all chakras above the heart for their higher functioning, (some people are born with them awakened).
What one with such sight is seeing are the colors in the astral body; also known as the emotional body. It is not a chakra.
The astral body, also known as the emotional body, is the first subtle body that actually inhabits another dimension, just as mental and causal (soul) bodies populate their own dimensions.
Society does not condition our five senses to be attuned to these dimensions, but they exist in the same space as our physical. Someone sensitive to it can sense the astral body to extend about 6 to 12 inches from the physical, depending upon the individual. It fades where the mental body begins. We sometimes inhabit the astral body in lucid dreams.
Our subtle bodies interpenetrate one another within the physical body and extend out from it. The thin etheric is right next to the skin, then the astral (emotional), the mental, and the casual in that order. Names for them vary according to traditions. My training and experience verifies them as aligned with this yogic understanding. We interact through the subtle bodies all the time on earth-plane, even though they also exist in their own dimensional reality. When one dies, the physical and etheric body double dies and decays.
When we read of a near-death experience, we are reading about the spiritual essence of the person which cannot die, (the soul). This is only as it takes the first few steps into the next plane of consciousness that the person was ready to experience, before returning to the physical.
Let’s speak of someone that isn’t returning to earth plane, a complete “death experience”.
The person’s consciousness will float up over their dead or dying physical body, and there is a sort of ‘adjustment’ period for the person’s awareness to realize what has happened and process it a bit. This can vary a lot from one person to another, depending on their belief systems. Unless they have been through high spiritual initiations, they will soon find themselves in the astral plane inhabiting their astral body, also known as the ‘emotional body’. The person’s temporary astral body contains the artifacts of their emotional patterns from lifetimes, including experiences from the most recent life. The essences are recorded in the causal body as vasanas and samskaras; habitual tendencies, like grooves worn into our being that continue life after life. They are what cause a person to be born with certain tendencies and personality traits. Vasanas and samskaras differ subtly; I encourage you to read about them as it is an interesting subject.
There are many levels in each dimension. If someone has been extremely negative on earth, such as a murderer or hardened criminal, they will go to the lower astral planes which are full of demonic beings and which the Middle Eastern religions consider Hell. Truthfully, none of these dimensions are permanent and eternal for humans, although they seem that way to the person’s essence upon first arriving and while there. Tibetan Buddhism refers to some of these astral levels as the ‘Bardos’.
For those so deluded and ignorant on earth-plane that they believed drugs, sex, or other such mundane activities were the things most worth pursuing, these often exist as “hungry ghosts”, as the Tibetans call them. They are still trying to score drugs or to have sex in large groups of naked bodies, yet are thwarted and unable to satisfy their desires. These are souls that do not realize they have died to the physical, because of their ignorant state.
Robert Monroe, the famous astral traveler, observed these beings and many others, and the astral planes with various religious “belief territories”, and documented it all in his three amazing books. I met him at The Monroe Institute in 1994, before he released his body. There are Christian, Muslim, Mormon, Hindu, Jewish, aboriginal, and all other types of heavens, and many territories that millions of earthly people’s belief systems have formed over the millennia. The astral is where ideas created on earth manifest, including fiction.
Shallow, self-interested people and religiously motivated types initially arrive in a mid-level astral plane. These dimensions are much like earth, with people doing things they did on earth and living in dwellings which were made by others, with the needs of the physical body absent. It is interesting but strange and full of opportunistic entities. This dimension is a lot like a rapid-pace cartoon, like one might see on a rather dark children’s program. In the astral, when one thinks of a place, they instantly find themselves there; it is a dream-like dimension and seems confusing for many. The non-corporeal entities there are parasitic and attracted to emotional wounds in the astral body of people, especially vulnerable and frightened children that still have a body. These entities have a simple consciousness and are often what I must discharge in my healing work before deeper work affecting the causal body can happen. I have developed an affinity for dealing with these astral entities, and can guide them to an incarnation in a higher plane and back to God in short order, benefiting both them and my client. They deeply affect their hosts in the physical, feeling like various uncomfortable blocks. I meet many people that know they have entities attached to them, even people that are not on a spiritual path. Realize that your astral, mental and causal bodies exist in the physical dimension right now, and their respective subtle dimensions, and so things that happen in the astral affect you. All subtle bodies interpenetrate the physical body.
All the subtle bodies and their respective dimensions co-exist. This is the true meaning of our “multi-dimensional existence”. You probably have had experiences in the astral during lucid dreams. Understanding the underlying events that happen in such dreams as if it were more than a one dimensional story and receiving revelations or prophetic visions that apply to your waking life are good indicators that you have astral travelled in your dreams. The Tibetans have taken this to a high art and science.
From physical to causal
The higher that one has developed spiritually in their last earth life, the higher the plane that their essence goes to after physical death. A Self-realized person, for instance, may bypass the astral plane all together and move into a higher mental plane, before rising to the causal (soul) realm, staying conscious the entire time.
‘Causal body’, ‘soul’, and ‘higher self’ are all different terms for the same thing. However, most people misunderstand the difference between ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’. Our soul is more individuated and is still learning; Spirit is more The Divine or God. The ‘Self’ in ‘Self-realization’ is the all-pervading shared consciousness known as ‘Atman’ in Sanskrit. The Sufis see it as the oversoul of humanity, willingly brought down from the Garden of Oneness with God by Adam, not by “falling”. When joined with the profound bliss of Shakti through a full release of the kundalini energy within a human body, this Shiva energy can help produce the first stage of true enlightenment.
If one can perceive the mental body, instead of colors one sees the symbols and pictures that represent the fabric of the person’s reality. In my practice, I began developing this ability in the 1990s through training in a very advanced healing mystery school. When I say “see” I mean perceiving, with eyes closed, on the inner (clairvoyance).
The soul is the more lasting, high-level being we are, but is still learning and growing through projecting physical incarnations to earth-plane as human beings. I believe our soul has us and the many other emanations that we think of as our past or other lives, more so than we “have a soul”.
When a person’s essence in the astral plane is ready to move on to the mental plane, the astral body dies and decays. Few can stay conscious as their essence moves higher from there, and most go into a deep dreamless sleep.
If they can stay conscious as they move into the mental plane, they then inhabit their mental body. This dimension also has many layers. In the lower to mid mental planes, the nature of our existence is more about symbology and concepts of reality, except for the pure feelings of love left from the previous dimensions. We shed negative impressions as our essence travels into finer dimensions. I do not judge physical life as “lower”, because earth is where deep spiritual evolution is possible. In the astral and finer dimensions, such advancement remains more static until another chance at earthly incarnation occurs. Robert Monroe claimed he had beheld incredible numbers of entities eagerly awaiting the chance to incarnate on earth as humans. I believe him; he was a remarkably advanced man of integrity and insight.
A person who, through spiritual practice (Sadhana), and grace, has transcended the typical emotional difficulties and egoistic temptations found on earth-plane and has developed complete equanimity, will hasten on to the higher mental planes. There, existence and intellectual cognizance occur through complete conceptual packets of knowledge and perception, not language as we know it. It is indescribably beautiful and profound.
Beyond this is the causal dimension, that of soul. We know the vibrations of high mental and causal planes as the ‘Vade’ and they create our earth-plane reality.
The Vedas are records of this, written many millennia ago during an age of exceptional spiritual achievement by Indian sages who lived this reality. They knew that humanity was about to enter a dark age (the current Kali-Yuga) and would lose the memory and telepathic ability to communicate within this rich context. Humanity has gone through many such ages and celestial cycles. That belief that the present technological age represents the pinnacle of human achievement is ludicrous. In fact, mostly only accumulated relative knowledge survives. We are only now turning the corner from a long dark age into another Golden Age, a yuga of wisdom, with time growing short for humanity.
European geniuses such as Aristotle, DaVinci, Copernicus, and Galileo probably also experienced some of these mental and causal planes of existence during their earth lives. After physical death, they would have had phenomenal afterlives in the causal plane that affected life on earth. Thus the causal realm is so-named; it is the “cause” of relative earth phenomena and is evolving along with humanity.
Bliss is extremely powerful in the mental plane and incredibly so in the causal. It is necessary to understand that bliss is not an emotion; it is a profoundly deep vibration of immense joy, gratitude and love throughout a being’s entire system that is physically felt. This is the reason Indian Swamis always have the addendum ‘Ananda’ added to their name, the first part of their names signifies their essential vibration, then Ananda is Sanskrit for ‘Bliss of’. Sanskrit is one of the Holy Languages that came into being fully formed in the aforementioned Golden Age. Something spoken in Sanskrit is summoned, and the energy of it becomes present because of the powerful Vedic sound current.
The levels of bliss in causal plane are a hundred times more intense than a physical orgasm. A full-on Kundalini-Shakti release may be the closest we have on earth.
A person’s essence that has developed to the point of staying conscious all the way into their causal realm will realize the point of willful, voluntary reincarnation, abiding in supreme bliss until reincarnating as a guru, savior, or perhaps a silent witness on earth or another world. This is the realized bodhisattva’s existence. Paramahansa Yogananda’s guru Sri Yukteswar has such an afterlife, as described in the best-selling book by his beloved student. The last chapters of ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ by Yogananda describe his master’s experiences in causal plane, and the Lokas, (other dimensional worlds).
Aware of all their lives, past and future, there is no earth equivalent to the profound bliss that is known by such beings in high causal plane. This may be the “Seventh Heaven” referred to by the Messiahs of the Prophetic religions.
A higher level of final beingness exists, a traceless merging into the Absolute; that of Oil into Oil. Our physical dimension may have no equivalent. All humans on earth plane have a body and personality. Approaching it in human form, the Sufis call it the station of “Fanâ fi’llah” (annihilation in God). The Vedic initiate has known it as “kaivalya moksha” (absolute liberation), and currently as Para-Brahmin Consciousness.
If you do not recognize some Sanskrit terms used here, it will be a deep and interesting process to look them up and follow a few links on the internet.
When one with auric vision sees another’s aura, one is seeing the colors of the prevalent emotions of that person in that life. The fleeting emotions are not what is being perceived so much as the more permanent present-life emotional state of the person. I see them to a degree as colors and patterns, just as I read the more permanent states of the chakras. (I do not use the aura as diagnostic, finding the chakra system much more revealing. My articles on the chakras in this site will shed light on first-hand experiences and more information.)
A person who goes around feeling hateful almost all the time will have a lot of red in their aura, since anger appears red. A fearful person usually has a lot of murky yellow around them. A drug addict will have a lot of hazy dull colors, and a “dark” evil person will have disharmonious murky black. The colors traditionally associated with emotions originate in our reality, as do many fairy-tales and fables.
A person of a very high spiritual nature will have beautiful colors of silver, mother-of-pearl, emerald green, gold, and white. Beautiful blues signify wisdom and are often tinge the pure white essence of the Divine. Angelic beings will often be their unseen companions. The electro (bio) magnetic field of the physical body is unrelated to these colors.
Please understand, therefore, that a Kirlian photograph is made by charging a metal plate with ultra-high frequency electricity from a Tesla coil, with a sheet of photographic film on top of it, and with the photography subject to be placed on top of the film, or near it. This high-frequency charge rips the electrons off of atoms, and the air around the photographed object becomes ionized. Any moisture in that air results in an image showing a glowing silhouette around the object. This is not an image of the aura which is why inanimate objects such as coins will also have the silhouette. In a vacuum with no moisture, no such image appears. It records electrical coronal discharges because it is super-charged with high frequency electricity. I had a Kirlian photograph made of my and a friend’s fingers in the 1970s at one of the last real old-time psychic fairs. These photographs have always worked this way. To represent that they’re taking a picture of the actual colors of the aura is erroneous.
We cannot capture the true astral body on film. A person with auric vision may observe it.
Of course, the entire energetic system of a person, including the chakras, affects the aura, but these are all woven into one complex system, and are beyond this article.
I hope that this clarifies some questions concerning the colors found in the aura, and the difference between it and the common physical electromagnetic field of the body.
Any question that delves into the spiritual realm opens the door to an infinite path into deeper knowledge, and more questions.
If you read an article here that leads to an interesting question, please email it to me at andrew (@) nrgheal.com.
I do private sessions by appointment and energy healing workshops occasionally.
Many Blessings of Light
© 2021 Andrew M. Williams