Auras in Mysticism and Synaesthesia: a Comparison ⇑ E.G
Consciousness and Cognition 21 (2012) 258–268 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Consciousness and Cognition journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/concog Auras in mysticism and synaesthesia: A comparison ⇑ E.G. Milán a, , O. Iborra a, M. Hochel a, M.A. Rodríguez Artacho a, L.C. Delgado-Pastor a, ⇑ E. Salazar a, A. González-Hernández b, a Departamento de Psicología Experimental, Universidad de Granada, Campus de Cartuja s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain b Departamento de Psicología Social, Antropología Social, Trabajo Social y Servicios Sociales, Universidad de Málaga, Campus de Teatinos, 29071 Málaga, Spain article info abstract Article history: In a variety of synaesthesia, photisms result from affect-laden stimuli as emotional words, Received 6 June 2011 or faces of familiar people. For R, who participated in this study, the sight of a familiar per- Available online 23 December 2011 son triggers a mental image of ‘‘a human silhouette filled with colour’’. Subjective descrip- tions of synaesthetic experiences induced by the visual perception of people’s figures and Keywords: faces show similarities with the reports of those who claim to possess the ability to see the Synaesthesia aura. It has been proposed that the purported auric perception may be easily explained by Aura the presence of a specific subtype of cross-modal perception. We analyse the subjective People–colour synaesthesia reports of four synaesthetes who experience colours in response to human faces and fig- Mysticism Photisms ures. These reports are compared with descriptions of alleged auric phenomena found in Stroop effect the literature and with claims made by experts in esoteric spheres.
[Show full text]