Are Auras Real? Aura Colors, Cameras, and the Tests

**Dom Bettinelli** (0:00)
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You're listening to Episode 431 of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World, where we look at mysteries from the twin perspectives of faith and reason. In this episode, we're talking about auras. I'm Dom Bettinelli, and joining me today is Jimmy Akin. Hey, Jimmy. How do you do? Now folks, be sure to stay around for the end of the episode. We'll have your feedback on our recent episode, number 420 on the pre-Sputnik transience. But first, picture this. Someone walks into a new age bookshop, sits down in front of a special camera, and places their hands on two metal plates. A few seconds later, a photo prints out, showing their face surrounded by clouds of color. There is violet near their head, gold over one shoulder, and a flash of red off to the left. The shop owner studies the picture and tells them what kind of week they're having, what their gifts are, and where they have an energy blockage. They've just had their aura read, and these days, people can even have it done from a selfie without ever leaving their home.
So what is an aura supposed to be and where did the idea come from? What have psychologists and parapsychologists actually found when they've tried to test it under controlled conditions? And what, if anything, does faith have to say about the colored light people claim to see around each other? That's what we'll be talking about on this episode of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World.
So Jimmy, auras turn up everywhere now at New Age Fairs and yoga studios, and increasingly on Instagram and TikTok. So before we get to the testing, what is an aura even supposed to be?

**Jimmy Akin** (1:54)
Well, the way the term is used today, an aura is a luminous colored field that is said to surround every living thing and on some accounts every object as well. It's usually described as extending a few inches or several centimeters out to a few feet or about a meter from the body.
Though some sources will tell you it reaches much farther for spiritually advanced people. There are aura readers who say that Buddha's aura was visible for many miles or kilometers, which is not something we're going to be able to verify in this episode, but that's what's sometimes claimed.

**Dom Bettinelli** (2:36)
Does an aura have an internal structure or is it just one cloud of color?

**Jimmy Akin** (2:41)
Aura readers usually describe it as having several distinct layers. Common labels for these layers are the etheric, the emotional or astral layer, the mental and the spiritual or causal layers. Some systems list as many as seven layers, each one of which is tied to one of the different chakras.
The chakras, and there are different numbers of them in different systems, but they're supposed to be energy centers. In this system, which is found in Eastern religions, the body has a set of energy centers that run up the spine, and that's what the chakras are. And a life energy called prana is supposed to flow through them. The aura, the chakras and prana all belong to the same package, what's often called the subtle body. And the chakras come with their own color order, from red at the base of the spine up to violet at the crown of the head. So the rainbow chart that you see for chakras and the colors of the aura are part of the same general scheme. And when a reader tells you that there's a blockage in your aura, that's the framework they're drawing on. At a fair, the reading usually comes with an interpretation.
The reader tells you which colors in the aura are dominant, what they say about your personality, and where you may have a point where your energy is supposedly stuck. And you often walk away with not only a photo, but with a little booklet decoding the colors.

**Dom Bettinelli** (4:17)
Are the colors supposed to mean specific things?

**Jimmy Akin** (4:20)
Yeah, and depending on who you talk to, there may be a fairly elaborate code for interpreting them. For example, sometimes you'll hear that red is vitality or anger, orange is creativity, yellow is intellect, green is healing or balance, blue is calm or honesty, indigo is intuition, and violet is spirituality or connection with the divine. In addition, pink is sometimes said to be compassion, gold is said to be wisdom, and gray and brown or muddy hues are supposed to indicate sickness or stress or some kind of negative emotion. At least that's how these colors are sometimes interpreted. You may encounter other interpretations.