Auras ?

Just out of curiosity, I read about auras on the internet and tried to see if I could see mine while sitting in a dimly lit room, in front of a white background with the mirror in front of me. After some practice at defocussing and concentrating on my peripheral vision I was able to make out a very faint whitish outline around my head and shoulders. With practice the outline became clearer. Could this be an optical illusion or a double image? However I am not able to see any colours in this ‘aura’. I can also make out very pale luminiscent ‘auras’ around trees when the sky is not too brightly lit and also in the night time, especially on moonless nights.

Multiple consciousness ?

There is another ‘weird’ feeling that I get sometimes, usually when I am sitting quietly in my garden looking at the trees, plants and stones around me, are in a bus riding through unknown streets lined with houses and shops. I can almost ‘ identify’ with the plant, or a stone or a quiet shady corner of the garden as if I could enter into the existence of a lonely stone, or a plant or a balcony overlooking a street, as if I could touch these ‘inanimate’ things with my consciousness, perhaps a kind of multiple consciousness. It is very difficult to describe this feeling/awareness in words.

Antenna of the unconscious mind

My experiences with the prophetic power of hypnogogia leads me to believe that everything in the lives of ordinary people like us is pre-determined according to the law of karma. As mentioned earlier in a previous post, I often dream of minor everyday things like a word or an image which I then come across in the course of few days in real life. Only last night I dreamt about Niagra Falls, saw a visual image of it, and today while watching TV, I chanced upon a programme on Zone Reality channel, it was titled ‘hunting legends’ or something, in which an American - Mason Whinefield was investingating paranormal phenomenon in western part of New York State, and the site in question was in the proximity of Niagra Falls and according to Mason, the Falls might be one of the reasons for the presence of strong spiritual/psychic current in that area. I had never watched his programme before, nor did I have a pre-knowledge of such a programme being aired on Zone Reality.
So the question which comes to mind is whether even the minutest things in our lives are pre-determined ? And whether it is just a question of being able to tune into the right kind of frequency to be able to forsee our future ?
Is it also possible that due to my deep interest in the spiritual and occult, my unconscious mind is able to tune into, and inform the conscious mind about things/people/events that are related to this area, that I will chance upon in the future ?
During the course of my study of occult and spiritual subjects, there have been numerous co-incidences, which are too many to be called ‘chance events’ where I would come across the books/websites/references related to my interest with hardly any effort or search. Perhaps the unconscious mind does have some kind of an antenna which leads us to the things/people that are related to the thoughts and feelings that pre-occupy our hearts and minds……

Precognitive dreams

I also have occasional precognitive dreams. Nothing dramatic- just small events in my everyday life. For instance, I mostly see words during hypnopompia and I later come across them during my writing or research. For instances, I recently saw the word ‘Dadu’. At that time I did not know what it meant and later during my research on the saint poet Kabir, I came across a reference to the sect of Dadu Panthis who are followers of Kabir. On another occasion, I saw a bright pink saree during hypnogogia and later I came across a photo of one of my relatives wearing the same saree !! The photo was taken recently so the possibility of my having seen the photograph some time in the past and then dreaming about it is ruled out. Recently, I accidentally discovered that I could see a bright golden aura like globes around lighted candles in a dim room. I could not see this earlier.

Orgone or Human Aura ?

Gradually I also began to see luminescent dots of light darting about in the air. These were different from floaters. Floaters are supposed to be suspended particles in our eye fluid. Many people can see them drifting in front of their vision when they look towards the sky and defocus their eyes. I can see the luminescent darting dots more clearly when the sun is closer to the horizon and the sky is not too brightly lit. I can see them even when it is raining. There movement does not seem to be effected by the weather. However their visibility to the human eye seems to be effected by light conditions. There are various theories on the inter net about these luminescent dots. Some say it is orgone energy – the building blocks of life on earth. Some think that it is a kind of optical illusion that is related to migraine aura. But I can see them even when I am not having a headache.
I later came across the following account from the book ‘ The Human Aura’ by Swami Panchadasi on the Project Gutenberg website : ……‘Another peculiarity of the prana-aura is that it is filled with a multitude of extremely minute sparkling particles, resembling tiny electric sparks, which are in constant motion. These sparks, which are visible to persons of only slightly developed psychic power, impart a vibratory motion to the prana-aura which, under certain conditions is plainly visible to the average person. This vibratory movement is akin to the movement of heated air arising from a hot stove, or from the heated earth on a mid-summer day.’
This is exactly what I have been seeing.

Past life memories ?

“Both you and I have taken many births, I remember them all, O Arjun, but you do not remember.”
- Shri Krishna to Arjun in the Bhagavat Geeta

The phenomenon of visual hypnogogis gradually became less frequent and I begun to experience something else. Just before I fell asleep scenes, sometime with people in them, begun to ‘pop up’ randomly in my mind I use the word ‘pop up’ for a lack of a more appropriate word. The difference between this and hypnogogia, was that while hypnogogia seemed as if I was sensing something outside of me, these scenes seem to come to the surface from somewhere deep within me, like some long lost memories. However they were strange to me because I did not seem to have any conscious memory of having visited those locations or having met those people. It was almost as if somebody else’s memories had been put in my head !! On one occasion I saw a child climbing some dimly lit staircases. He seemed to be wearing modern western clothes. In another occasion I saw a young man riding a motorcycle across a field. He seemed to have western features. On another occasion I was a young boy sitting on a ramshackle bridge which overlooked some kind of a big dug out pit. On another occasion I was a small child with a woman who appeared to be my mother. We were sitting atop a dome shaped building, and some kind of a commotion seemed to be happening below us. When I recollect, from the look of the people around me, it was probably a time period of 18th century. On another occasion I was a young man (westerner) named Illad, there was a radio in the room, this model was in use during the period of the Second World War. Somebody seemed to be calling out my name and was backing against the wall in fear. There are numerous such instances and I have written them down in my diary in detail, sometimes with sketches. In a lot of these scenes I seem to be an outsider looking at the scene and in some, as in the above mentioned case, paradoxical as it may sound, I was both the character and the onlooker. So I was both Illad as well as someone who was looking at this scene from ‘outside’. As if my consciousness was at two places at the same time!! The question is are these past life memories?

Hypnogogia and Hypnopompia

I began to grow more sensitive to the world around and within me at the age of 44. This was also a period when I had begun to suffer from severe anemia and chronic fatigue. I do not know whether this was a mere coincidence or a trigger for the latent abilities to begun to develop in me. It was not all like the dramatic accounts of sudden development of clairvoyance among people, which we come across in books and other media. It was slow and gradual, and in bursts. During this period I was living alone in Delhi with my two sons. My husband was away on a foreign assignment. So apart from the health problem there were other stresses and tensions that I had to deal with. It started with very vivid visual hypnogogia and hypnopompia (please see the Appendix page for explanation of these terms). I would see outdoor locations, landscapes, inside of houses. One incident of hypnopompia that I can still visualize in detail was an old European- mansion like building. I seem to be looking at it from the top, as if my consciousness was floating above it and I could look at it from various angles. The image was crystal clear and life like. In fact it would not be an exaggeration to say that it appeared more real than real life!! I started seeing these images quite often - almost twice or thrice a week. There was no pattern to it. Nor was it under my control. Sometimes it would seem as if I was looking through or telescope/tunnel. Sometimes the images were in miniature. Some times strangely illuminated faces seem to materialize in front of my closed eyes just before I fell asleep.