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It is this vary inability of the persons who claim to have the talent to agree amongst themselves about the aura of any given test subject that throws doubt on the whole affair.

From a scientific standpoint, I agree.

There's an assumption inherent to your phrasing of the issue, though: that an aura would have a "form" that should exist independent of the observer. I submit to you the opposite: the aura is an energy without form, and in "seeing" it we are projecting it into a form. That projection comes through the lens of your own access to the perception. That is, if an aura is a spiritual energy (not physical, no physical component) and it is being perceived "through clairvoyance", the mechanism of sensing the "data" is not a physical sense, but some kind of spiritual sense.

This lens factor pretty much distorts whatever comes through. Even to the point where, scientifically, you could hypothesize that the "data" is internally generated by the person, rather than being a perception of something with independent existance, and none could prove otherwise. If you are content with that explanation, so be it.

However, if the means of perception comes inherent with bias, to expect the same results from different observers would be to expect the sun to look exactly the same when observed from different points on the earth at the same time. That's erroneous. There is a matter of perspective involved, and a matter of distortion. For the sun, its rays passing through the atmosphere defracts the light, giving the sun a reddish appearance in some few cases, and in the case of nighttime, a complete absence of data because the earth is in the way. So with auras. Even if there is an independent energy there, there is distortion in the perception, the interpretation, and perhaps even in what is being perceived. You would have to identify all the various distortions and account for them, to reach a set of data that could be meaningfully compared. How are you going to do that? I don't know of a way.

I didn't broach the subject, though, nor speak to it in support of anything else. I would have been happy never to mention auras to anybody here. Doc raised the subject, though, and I see no reason not to speak to it. It's just not that big a deal either way.


We can all make claims. And they might be true. But can we prove them?

I said up front (I believe in the first post on a directly spiritual subject -- but if not, surely in the first thread) that I can't prove my postulates. I also noted that you can't prove yours. You then went on to give reasoning as to why yours make for better presumptions, why they've been tested more, held up to scrutiny better, etc etc. You even tried flat scorn at a few points. Inherent of all of that remains your firm faith in those first assumptions. Fair enough. But you accuse me of overlooking or ignoring key elements in the article, while your whole post overlooks a key admonishment I've made repeatedly: DON'T take my word on anything spiritual. Be your own judge. Put these things to the test, if you are so minded. Not so they can be proven -- don't waste your time -- but to see if they can be experienced. My treatise on domination vs dominion remains the place to start, for those interested. I laid out specific principles, concrete phenomena with detailed patterns. I have yet to find behavior that does not fit that model.

Your notion that something must be proven to be of value is your prerogative, but any who adopt that standard will, by defintion, cut themselves off from spirituality. If there is no such thing, then they have done themselves a favor. Perhaps that is best. Only if someone has such longing in their heart that they would not be dissuaded by the insecurity of walking their own path, alone, unaided by fellows, beyond the reach of help, where they have only their own abilities and understandings and conceptions, fallible as these might be, to carry them onward, should they even CONSIDER rigorous spiritual pursuits. It is only when you set aside the considerations and standards of others, that you could enter into an altered state in which you have unplugged your focus from the physical sufficiently to remove enough bias to be enabled to interact directly with spirit, AND KNOW IT, if there even is such a thing.

The question to ask oneself is do you trust yourself? Do you trust your own judgement? Your own ability to discern reliable data from misinterpretations and false assumptions? You must, to proceed. Science trusts empirical data, independently reproducable data, but to enter into the spiritual realm in which there is no data but that which you personally experience, is to admit you can make no progress with a standard of proof. Reproducibility is still quite important -- but just because some elements of the spiritual cannot be proven does not mean that pursuing the spiritual path cannot lead to things that ARE demonstrably reproducable.

If you can reach some reliable results, some information or techniques or interpretations or analysis that DOES yield fruit, should these be discarded just because the path of reasoning that led to them cannot be scientifically verified at each step?


We can all make claims. And they might be true. But can we prove them?

There's a spiritual principle that applies: you shall know the tree by the fruit it bears.

Carrying on with this concept, sometimes you find a piece of fruit, but no tree. Can you prove the tree exists? Not exactly. You can reason it out, but... if no second piece of fruit happens to show up out of the blue, the fruit is not reproducable on demand. Yet if you taste it, it is sweet, and the experience of the fruit is real to you. If you have already eaten the fruit, though, when another person comes along, you can tell them you found a fruit, that you ate it, but if they want proof there is none to offer them. If you don't know where the tree is, or you do but when you go there it has no fruit on it, and you wait around and it produces no fruit, the other party may conclude that you're being deceptive, or that you are crazy. Yet you know you found that piece of fruit and you remember what it tasted like and how it nourished you. You may so long to find the tree and obtain more fruit that you venture off in search of the tree, and not knowing where to look and not finding any who know of the tree, or finding only rumors about the tree, fourth and fifth hand accounts of those who've seen the tree, you might search for a long time with little or no results but still remain convinced the pursuit is worthwhile, since you know you have tasted that fruit and believe it must have come from a tree that exists somewhere, of some kind, if only you can find it.

It's one thing to be told by others that such a fruit exists, that such a tree exists, and spend your energy searching for their promised vision. It is something else to have found the fruit yourself, on your own, tasted it, and KNOWN that it is real. THAT is my standard. Rumors of fruit don't cut it. Don't believe my rumors. If my tale intrigues you, feel free to check it out. If you find no fruit for yourself, feel free to dismiss me as a loon. I won't care. I never asked you to follow me. There's nothing I get out of talking about the fruits I have found. Can you, do you doubt my sincerity? If not, then I am either on to something, or deluded. You have your opinions of that, but I value my memory of the taste of fruit more than I do your opinions. I've said as much to you before, and at the time you countered with telling me that you did value my opinions, at least to a point of considering them closely. I think you missed the point there. I never meant to imply that I did not value your opinions and views, only that I did not value them enough to replace my experiences with your theories.

Some issues defy proof. I've said that many times now, and each time you take it to be an admission of weakness in my argument. So be it. That is the way of my pursuit, to be more persuaded by my experience than your logic. What is left to say at that point? You see me as dismissing logic. I see the logic as inadequate to explain my data. We reach the end of the road and must part in disagreement.


- Sirian