Measuring your Aura

The concept of aura has its beginnings in Indian spiritualism. The aura is supposed to be a field of energy that surrounds human and other animate and inanimate objects. The state of the aura is supposed to be an indicator of the physical and mental condition and well being of an

individual.

It is often claimed that understanding the aura can help arrive at better or faster diagnosis. The purpose of this article is not to support or oppose the claims of those who use or promote these techniques. The objective is to expose the reader to the usage of computers even in these areas.

So, the argument is that if you can see the aura of a person, you can diagnose disease at an early stage. While the existence of an aura seems to be a widely accepted concept, not everyone has the ability to see it. So, such diagnosis was restricted largely to the realm of faith healers till the advent of Kirlian photography.

Discovered by Semyon and Valentina Kirlian in 1939, Kirlian photography is a technique of photographing the aura around an object. Kirlian photography is contact photography, with the object being photographed being in contact with the film. A high voltage, high frequency, ultra low current electric discharge is introduced around the object being photographed, to produce the Kirlian photograph of the aura. In its original form, Kirlian photography does not work for the whole body, but for small areas like the thumb or fingers. 

The aura is supposed to be many hued and in constant motion, but the original Kirlian photographs were black and white. Today’s Kirlian cameras (also called gas discharge visualization or GDV cameras) are capable of producing color photos as well as videos that are directly recordable on to a PC. 

The Crown TV model, for example, does not produce a photograph, choosing instead to transfer the images captured using CCD sensors directly to the PC. The GDV digital videostation also contains a CCD color video camera and connects to a PC through the USB port. The CCD camera can take pictures of 640 x 480 pixels at 350 k pixels.

There are also software packages that help in capturing and analyzing auras. WinAura for example claims to work with a standard PC equipped with a regulation webcam and a bio-feedback unit.

Krishna Kumar