"The exteriorization of sensibility" is a term used for one of the strangest effects ever observed. Albert de Rochas wrote a 300-page book on the topic, one entitled "L'Extériorisation de la sensibilité: étude expérimentale & historique." The book is in French, and has apparently never been translated into English. But by using the Google Translate utility, I can get English translations of whatever pages I want. I will quote some very interesting passages. My links will go to pages in French, but by using Google Translate on such pages you can get text like the text I quote below.
In some of the quotations below, the French word "effluve" (meaning "vapor," "steam," or "emanation") has been poorly translated by Google Translate as "effluvia," a word meaning an unpleasant odor, secretion or discharge. Since the text specifically refers to colors of this "effluve" (to use the French word), I believe a better translation in this context is the word "emanation" (a term that vaguely means something that flows out of something else). So I will substitute "emanation" for "effluvia" in the quotes below.
Near the beginning of the book we have the very interesting claim that people hypnotized (referred to below as somnambulists) often report seeing a kind of aura or foggy energy surrounding the person who hypnotized them (called a "magnetizer" in the account below). We read this:
"Most somnambulists see, says Delcuse (2), a luminous and brilliant fluid surrounding their magnetizer and going out with it. At the beginning of this century, Dr. Despine in Aix-les-Bains and Dr. Charpignon in Orléans confirm the preceding observations and furthermore establish by numerous experiments that certain somnambulists could perceive, like a fog more or less luminous, not only the radiations, obscure for us, of static or dynamic electricity, but also the emanations which escaped from some bodies and in particular from magnets, gold, money."
On page 24 we read this interesting set of claims about observations made by hypnotized people:
"According to the observations of M. Luys with the aid of Albert L., the right side of the human body presents, in general... a blue coloration. The eyes, the ears, the nostrils, the lips give off irradiations of the same colors, and the irradiations are all the more intense as the subject is more vigorous. The left side releases red emanation from the sense organs, and their intensity varies similarly with the state of the subject. Pushing his experiments in the direction of his professional occupations, Dr. Luys observed that, in male and female hysterical subjects, the coloring of the emanation of the right side becomes violet and that, in cases where there is paralysis by disappearance of the nervous activity, the luminous colorings...are sprinkled with black points. He also observed that the emanations from the eyes remain for a few hours after death, and that, if one opens the cone of a living animal, the right lobe of the brain appears of a beautiful blue...until the life completely disappears, which shows that there is no intercrossing in this kind of action of the brain as for its motor and sensitive actions."
On page 259 we read this, in which "the master" seems to refer to a hypnotist:
"Note furnished by M. Bodroux, doctor of sciences, at Poitiers. I had three remarkable subjects in which I perfectly provoked the externalization of sensibility.
The first was a 30-year-old woman..the second a student of special mathematics, M.B.; the third a girl...I have easily obtained this experience three times; I have only had experience with the customers of other subjects.
All three, in a state of rapport, saw the emanations coming out of the master's body. blue on the left, red on the right...while Mrs. A. and Mrs. C. described them as [flames], H. B. described them as ribbons."
The witnesses described such emanations as reaching between about thirty and fifty centimeters from a human body.
The author cites experiments he did with this strange effect called the exteriorization of sensibility. Due to translation difficulties and a lack of a concise clear description, I won't cite these accounts. On page 261 the author cites another investigator who gives a clear concise description of the exteriorization of sensibility. The effect is one in which the hypnotized subject will not respond to a pin prick to his skin, but will respond (just as if his own skin had been pricked) to a pin prick applied to the water in a glass of water he is holding. We read this astonishing account:
"The subject who has been kind enough to lend himself to these experiments is a very hypnotizable subject. It was easy for me to make him pass into catalepsy and, in this phase of hypnosis, I obtain fascination, which indicates a very great suggestability....My subject very quickly develops into third-degree somnambulism, a state in which he is insensitive to all the stimuli coming from outside, but he is in direct communication with me, he hears me and will respond to me if I give it to him. He is essentially suggestible, he executes unconsciously, involuntarily, the suggestions that I make to him, he will likewise execute the post-hypnotic suggestions: in a word, his responsibility has completely disappeared. He will have amnesia when he wakes up. Such being the state of the subject, I first ascertain his absolute insensitivity by sharply pricking the skin at various points of the body with a pin; I note that there is a complete [anesthesia] everywhere. I then place a glass filled with water between the hands of the subject....I then prick the surface of the water contained in the glass with a pin and immediately my subject, by the expression of his face and by an involuntary movement, testifies that he feels pain. I then ask him what he feels and he replies: You pricked my left hand. I then press the tip of my pin against the outer wall of the glass, not touching the water, the subject expresses no sensation; I push my pin into the water again without touching the glass in any way, immediately the subject repeats to me: You prick my left hand. The experiment is repeated several times, each time I prick the glass, the subject feels nothing."
Later the same writer states, "He said: 'You prick me' each time I stuck the pin in the water, and 'you pinch me' each time I pinched the water with my fingers." This anomaly seems inexplicable under conventional assumptions about the body, but might be explicable under the assumption that humans have some aura surrounding their body, one that might be sensitive to touch. If an aura extends a few inches beyond a body, and a person under hypnosis has an enhanced sensitivity of such an aura, the person might report someone else performing pinches and pin-pricks in a glass of water the hypnotized person is holding.
Regarding the book's claim about auras, some other books make similar claims. In one book we read, "Clairvoyants can see flashes of color, constantly changing in the aura that surrounds every person, each thought, each feeling thus translating itself in the astral world, visible to the astral sight." In the same book we read this interesting claim:
" 'Various observers have noticed that the aura of an Adept is not only silvery bright and intense, radiating infinitely farther into space than the aura of the ordinary man, but it is constantly pulsating and arranging itself into geometrical figures.' Colonel Olcott, who writes this (Theos. XVII, 142), seems to be rather dubious of the correctness of the fact; yet, from the observations gathered by the writer, it appears that these geometrical pulsations are not by any means confined to the auras of Adepts, but are common property; only in ordinary people, they are so faint as to be nearly invisible, even to expert seers, while in good moral persons of active intelligence, with tendencies towards occultism, they become quite apparent without the owner having any pretension to Adeptship.' "
In one of the most astonishing cases in medical history, physicians reported a blue glow coming from the body of a living woman. The woman (Anna Monaro) was called "the luminous woman of Pirano." A book gives this account:
"Signora Anna Monaro was an asthma patient, and over a period of several weeks she would emit a blue glow from her breasts as she slept. Many doctors came to witness the phenomenon, which was visible for several seconds at a time."
Below is a 1934 newspaper story of this event, from the London Times, one entitled "The Luminous Woman":
Whether such a report has any relation to claims of a human aura is unknown. In the bottom of the story above, some doctor is speculating about a kind over mind-over-matter effect producing the woman's blue glow, which is a sign of how baffled physicians were by this case. The book The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism states this: "There are so many stories of holy priests who lit up a dark cell or a whole chapel by the light which streamed from them or upon them, that I am strongly inclined in adhere to the more literal interpretation." The book then gives several accounts similar to this case of the "luminous woman of Pirano," although even more dramatic.
A book called The Human Atmosphere by Walter John Kilner which can be read here claimed that "chemical screens" could be used to make invisible human auras visible. The author tells us on one page that an aura has three parts: an "etheric double," an Inner Aura, and an Outer Aura. On the same page the author tells us that the "etheric double" part "is, as a rule, from one to three-sixteenths of an inch in width." Below is an illustration from the book.
The aura is sort of like a "glue" which binds the mind to the body.
ReplyDeleteIt is often thought that the aura comes before the physical body, rather than something just emanating from it. This actually seems to explain, for example, why phantom limb syndrome occurs - e.g. removing the physical limb does not necessarily remove the corresponding etheric limb, so the patient will continue to feel pain for some time.
"Hands of Light" is an interesting book I read about auras and its relation to mind-body and health. Some of the contents are quite technical though. Have you read it before?
https://archive.org/details/HandsOfLightGuideToHealingThroughTheHumanEnergyFieldBarbaraBrennan/page/n41/mode/2up
Thanks for the link. I'm starting to look at that book now, and it seems like a weighty treatment on this topic. The illustrations are fascinating.
DeleteHowever, its treatment of the topic is quite speculative and sometimes very dogmatic.
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