Auras and Halos

This topic includes the following subtopics:

The Aura in Great Art

Halos were added to the portraits of holy people first in Byzantine art (Constantinople), and this became traditional ever afterwards. The halo is actually the energy body or aura that surrounds the entire physical body, not just the head. Why most people don't notice the aura today is that our culture has "filtered" it out and treats it like "noise."

Most of you know about the optical illusion in which what originally looks like a loving cup can be made to appear like two profiles, if one refocuses the eyes. One can usually see the aura merely by refocusing when looking at someone. Mostly the aura appears as a thin line of white light. When the mind is in gear (that is, when one is thinking and is in "sending mode") the aura shrinks so that it is only a very thin line, but when the mind is out of gear (when one is musing or merely observing and is in "receiving mode"), it often expands and sometimes even takes on various colors.

Below are Jacopo Tintoretto's The Last Supper (1594) (left) and Matthias Grünewald's panel, "The Risen Christ," (1515) from the Isenheim altar (right):

In The Last Supper, Tintoretto presents auras very realistically, exactly as one who can see auras would see them today. The most impressive aura depiction that I know of is Grünewald's. This is so spectacular that it is worth making a special trip to the Musée d'Unterlinden in Colmar, France, just to look at it.

I have always seen auras. I was in the fifth grade when I first realized that most people can't see them. For the record, the way the auras are depicted in Tintoretto's painting is exactly how I see them myself.

A Living "Work of Art"

When halos are discussed, it is mostly with regard to artistic depictions of the halo in medieval and Renaissance paintings. The halo is the radiant energy that is superimposed upon the physical body, a phenomenon so non-mystical that using Kirlian techniques, scientists have succeeded in photographing it. This discussion focuses on a child I recently saw in a supermarket, whose aura struck me as particularly impressive.

The 18th century embraced the ancient Greek concept that "Art should follow Nature." Indeed, if one contemplates the artistic excellence of flowers, birds, seashells, animals, landscapes, and so forth, the precept that art should imitate Nature seems to be useful advice indeed. During the Age of Enlightenment a work of art was often judged by the degree to which it reflected what was already in the natural world.

That means that not every "work of art" involves a manipulated medium such as marble, paint, words, architecture, or sounds. This idea came to mind several weeks ago as I was making my way down the isle of my local supermarket. I happened to notice a mother shopping with her small son, who looked to be about two years old. The child was sitting in the front part of the shopping cart, with his legs dangling down.

I was struck by the extraordinary beauty of the child. His golden hair was a mass of elegant curls. The expression on his perfect face radiated a profound serenity. Moving closer, I noted that even the child's aura was unusual. It was faintly golden, shading into a delicate lavender at the edge. Passing the child and mother, I thought, "This child is a very old soul."

Then I remembered reading in the literature of Tantric (that is, Tibetan) Buddhism how at the death of a Dalai Lama a delegation of monks would go among the people to locate the next Dalai Lama. They would look for a child whom they would designate the "latest incarnation of the Buddha." I reflected that if I were a monk entrusted with the sacred task of locating the next incarnation of the Buddha, a child like that beautiful, serene little boy with the exquisite aura would be just the soul that I would be looking for.

Catching another glimpse of the child in another isle, I thought "At the very least, this exceptional creature is an example of living art, perhaps the ultimate expression of what we mean when we use the term art." On the way home, I kept thinking about what I had just seen. I see attractive children all the time, but normally hardly notice. This child, however, seemed significantly different from other children. There was a quality about the child that had caused something inside me to resonate.

The Jungians would say that the reason this child affected me as he did is that something about him "constellated" an archetype of the collective unconscious in my psyche (C. G. Jung, ed., Man and His Symbols), specifically the archetype called the "Divine Child." Most of us are already familiar with this archetype. This is related to what we see when an unknown child appears in a dream. This archetype is behind every story of miraculous children we have ever encountered in folklore, legend, or myth. In the first century of our era the birth of Christ activated this archetype with overwhelming force.

The creative artists in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance captured the characteristics of this archetype whenever they depicted the Christ child in their work. The awe that we feel when experiencing certain works of art is a result of this and associated archetypes activating their potential in our individual psyches.

We can understand more clearly the nature of genius as well as the power that makes a great work of art "come alive" if we understand that the archetypes already exist in each of us, just waiting for the right combination of cues to activate them. When archetypes are activated in this way, we feel a surge of creative energy, awe, and exhilaration. We feel that we have caught a glimpse of our better self. We feel at one with the world, and with all of humanity.

A beautiful child can do this for us, or a great work of art.