VI. Thought-forms and the Human Aura

In people who for the time being are remote from the experiences of the “Path of Knowledge” described in a later chapter of this book, misunderstandings may arise with regard to the nature of what is here described as “Aura.” It would be possible to arrive at the idea that the “colours” here described came before the soul just as a physical colour comes before the eye. But such a “soul colour” would be nothing but an hallucination. With impressions that are “hallucinatory,” spiritual science has nothing whatever to do. And in any case they are not what is meant in the description now before us. We reach a right conception if we keep the following in mind. The soul experiences in a physical colour not only the sense impression; it has an actual experience. This experience is different when the soul—through the eye—perceives a yellow surface from what it is when it perceives a blue one. This experience may be called “living in yellow” or “living in blue.” Now the soul that has trodden the path of knowledge has a similar “experience in yellow” when observing the active soul-experiences of other beings; an “experience in blue” when observing devotional moods of soul. The essential point is, not that in the thought of another soul the seer sees “blue,” just as he sees blue in the physical world, but that he has an experience which justifies him in calling the thought “blue,” just as the physical man calls, for instance, a curtain “blue.” And further, it is essential that the “seer” should be conscious that this is an experience free from the body, so that it is possible for him to speak about the value and the meaning of soul-life in a world the perception of which is not mediated through the human body. Although this meaning of the description must in all cases be taken into account, it is entirely a matter of course that the seer should speak of “blue,” “yellow,” “green,” etc., in the “aura.”