Forget the psychic healers, as a bioeffect researcher, I and my bioelectromagnetics colleagues have long studied the induced 'aura' of people due to mobile phones and other devices such as hand-held RADAR devices.  These are examples of induced electromagnetic fields due to EM devices. But there are also biogenic EM fields (fields created within the body) that surround and permeate the body.  Our cells for example are replicated by the action of these 'internal' electromagnetic fields.   A small proportion of people are electrosensitive and magnetosensitive to electric and magnetic fields. This is an ailment rather than an ability. People who are ( or claim to be) healers may have a sensitivity that is not an ailment but a particular insight that many do not possess.  Synaesthesia may perhaps be the basis of some of these healers. But there is a simple explanation of these fields besides 'self-deception'; au contraire I suggest the authors should investigate the recent progress in mathematical physics that has taken place over the past decade.

Using (the current versions of) quantum theory we have no ability to describe such auras.  This is the 'atomic chemistry' known by mainstream science. However there is now a mathematical formulation (self-field theory) that can indeed give us a quantitative description of the fields between objects, similar to the reaction of the binding energy between atoms that we call molecules. This is called 'photon chemistry' a level of description below current quantum formulations. These interactions are the basis of what the article refers to as auras but which we can also refer to as 'biofields' or 'bodyfields'.

  

Hi Tony,
Jo, my wife, and I were at the Trouville Hotel, Bournemouth, for a break way from home, when I saw your post and responded, but have been very busy since we got back. I also had problems with my Virgin Media broadband, which did not help and is, still, barely working, and very “hit and miss”.

“Actually Richard I was defending psychic healing from the materialistic view expressed in the article, where it is said to be a form of 'self-delusion'. If you read my comment again you will find that I do NOT put psychic healing into the materialistic basket (yes I do tend to think of spirit as connected to the materialistic). Mathematics covers fractals which are infinite in their structure. There is reason to believe the photon, and indeed physics may have a fractal structure with domains ranging from beneath the photon to the multiverse and beyond.”

I sought of assumed that was your position, read some of your post as a mixture of that and more the mainstream position, maybe incorrectly, and responded as if it was closer to the latter than the former. Given the conductivity of our bodies and the various currents flowing through them, there must be magnetic fields associated with the body. I was starting to think that you were beginning to explain what healers perceive as something along those lines, though erroneously it seems. The approach of a Yoga teacher I used to know also coloured my thinking when I was responding. She used to describe the aura to her clients as a magnetic field emanating from the body because, apparently, for cultural religious, reasons the term “etheric field” was not soemthign that was acceptable to them. They certainly would not have understood a tensor concept, let aloen the added extras in relation to that type of description of such field, e.g. Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Chromo Dynamics, which is not my specialist field but I can handle the concepts.

“I am personally aware that healers are REAL, they have an ability; as you say "Everyone has the basic abilities. To a large extent it is down to awareness, or lack of it." No I have not been treated by healers but it has been a part of my work as a bioeffects researcher, especially being a member of the Bioelectromagnetics Society (BEMS) (hope this isn't called 'promotion' Hank) where this debate has been aired on a regular basis over the years. In fact my daughter suffers from a form of muscular dystrophy and does use psychic healers AND gets relief via this ministry. I know many people who regularly use psychic healing with effect. I myself have discovered that I possess an ability to use water dowsers I won't call this 'divining' for the same reason I did not like the term 'aura' being used in the context of this article. I see many authors who put down unknown effects as 'self-delusion' or 'placebo' as you rightly say.”

I am uncomfortable with the use of the word “ministry” in relation to spiritual healing as it implies religion of the dogma kind and spiritual healing is related to Real Reality, as opposed to physical reality, or any other kind of reality, that which Really Is, rather than that which is perceived to be in the more limited perception sense. (The capitalisations are deliberate.) I regard that which is Spiritual to be beyond religion, dogma, or anything else; it is the fundamental Is, or at least represents It.

Putting such matters down to self delusion, or placebo, is the easy way out. The mainstream people have to be right and circumstances have to be arranged to accommodate that; hence useful get outs like delusion and placebo. As far as the physical is concerned, the illusion is with them but they will never accept that, at least not until they go Home, when they have no choice to accept, realise.

“These effects are not beyond our understanding, even if they are spiritual in nature. However science has long left metaphysics out of its scope and mandate; science was called 'natural philosophy' in times past. There is a connection between all levels of matter and field that is currently being overlooked within science.”

Agreed, to a large extent; mainstream science leaves out that which it cannot explain because those people who propound it have to be “on top”, have to be right, all knowledgeable. I am aware of the history and origins of science but, these days, it seems to have been hijacked, to a large extent, by the atheistic, materialistic know alls and turned into scientism, which I regard as a religion in its own right, along with its own high priests, infallibility, dogma, etc. scientism is not science, it is a way of life, way of thinking, way of believing that is based on a hijacked, limited version of science. The latter comment is more for other readers than yourself, Tony.

Re:
"There seems to be an implication in those words that the energy field referred to as the aura is a product of biological processes; in our knowledge and experience the converse is the case."

And:
“Richard I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here, could you explain further please.”

The concept which is far beyond the grasp of mainstreamers is that the non-physical bodies do not emanate from the physical body, the converse is the case. There is little point in trying to explain it to them, there are levels of understanding which one can accept, grasp, or not, as the case may be.

“It is certainly not an ailment, quite the reverse, and it is, in a sense, an insight that many do not posses, though, more accurately it is an insight that many are not aware that they possess, though actually do if only they took the trouble to access it; it is part ofthe fundamental nature of all of us.”

Agreed.

“I've have people write to me about their electro- or magneto-sensitivity. And this can be an ailment.”

I can, sort of, accept that, though what some, most (?) consider an ailment, others consider part of that lifetime’s experience.

“My wife who had a brain tumour removed is electrosensitive and will get headaches with a radio near her head at night. What is apparent is that what can be harmful can also be helpful. ‘One man's meat is another's poison’. What I mean here is that radiofrequency can be used to treat cancer but in exactly the same way it can also be used to damage tissues.”

We are all different and various things affect each of us in different ways, even on the higher levels. For example, I had an exhilarating experience in the 1990s while with a healer, David. A certain long term (many millennia long term) “friend” turned up and showed me her true nature; the energies involved were phenomenal. To me it was like a glorious invigorating shower of those energies, while David, I later learned, apart from wondering what was going on, felt as if his “head was lifting off”. It seems that I can take those types of energies, comfortably, at levels at least an order of magnitude, more like two orders of magnitude, stronger than the “average healer”.

It seems fairly “obvious” that various types of EM radiation will have an affect on our bodies given their structure, conductivity, etc.; how, why and how much is, equally obviously, open to dispute.

“Yes, I had no idea of my dowsing ability until it was demonstrated to me on a trip to Atlanta by a native American who explained to me how in older times tribes would seek rivers etc near their camp sites. The Australian aborigines and probably other nomadic tribes also possessed such water finding skills that we today do not recognize or understand.”

The more “primitive” the ways of various peoples compared with Western “civilisation” and culture, the closer they seem to be with what Really Is and the greater their abilities in that respect.

“Finally my comment also pointed out the difference between a field-level mathematics and a particle-level mathematics where the photon has no mass only energy, which gives it no structure except for the Dirac delta function, the singularity at a point.”

When I completed my Degree at Brunel University in 1971 my mathematical ability would have been not to far from the Dirac equations; it certainly went as far as delta functions. A lot of “rust” has set in since then, as far as mathematics is concerned, though I managed to get quite a long way through Roger Penrose’s book “The Road to Reality” before I ran into the sand, so to speak.