I have had a few people tell me they could see my aura. One was a woman at the ABA BookExpo, the annual booksellers convention I have luckily been able to attend a few times (lots of fun, and tons of free book!). If I remember correctly, she said my aura was green – I haven’t read her book, so I have no idea what that means for me – I hope it’s good. The other people who said they saw it were watching me do a kata at the time, which is kind of like a slow karate dance. They used to be my favorite part of karate class (American and Chinese Kenpo) and I really used to concentrate while I was doing them – one day someone told me that they saw a light all around me during one of the longer forms, which they interpreted to mean I was releasing energy through my movements.

I really don’t know about all of that, but I read chapters 3-4, and some people tried photograph auras of humans and animals (and even a leaf). Mary Roach seemed surprised by the idea that a leaf might have an aura, but it sort of reminded me of The Celestine Prophecy. Have any of you read this? It was shelved as fiction, but the author was more in the “New Age” category (which is probably where you will find this book today if it’s still in bookstores**). People did all sorts of interesting things in that book like making plants grow by putting their hands over them and concentrating really hard. Which reminds me, did you know that banana trees can grow a noticeable amount (a lot, like half an inch) in a single day. I can’t tell you how tempted I would be to try to sit and watch a banana tree grow all night, to see if I could witness it growing (maybe give it a little Celestine Prophesy action to help it along), so it’s probably best that I don’t have one.

This section covers experiments where very sick people (they had consumption; animals were also used in later attempts) were placed on scales to see if they would lose weight when their souls left their bodies. I had thought there was stronger evidence of this, but I guess that was just wishful thinking. Roach interviews a scientist who wants to repeat this test using far more sophisticated methods than the original ones (and not with humans) – he has spent the past several years unsuccessfully trying to get funding to design special equipment, etc.

Other scientists have tried to use various different kinds of equipment to photograph the soul. Mary Roach mentions her surprise that more of this was not considered “fringe science.” This got me thinking – a lot of science from yesteryear was what we would now consider “fringe.” I mean, why not try to weight the soul – it makes a lot more sense than some of the other things science has attempted before we had IRBs, ethical standards, etc. (I was tempted to include a link here, but I’ll let you Google it – please let me know if there is something I should know about, though.) Some of the science from the past is now widely recognized to be crap non-science (I’m pointing at you, eugenics).***

*This post is an homage to Mary Roach and her fun and informative footnotes. Really, if you read this book, don’t skip them. Also, lots of people have been watching Ghostbusters this week in honor of Halloween, in case the title of this post made no sense to you.

**Evidently you can find The Celestine Prophesy in the film section as well. Huh. Also, I read this book a hundred years ago – long before I was blogging – so my memory might be a bit sketchy with regard to the book’s contents.

***If you Google “eugenics,” you will find that there are some who still believe in it. Word to the wise – with few (if any) exceptions, these people are commonly referred to as “racists.”