science starts with the senses

The first Aura I ever saw was of Hubert Reeves, probably the most famous astrophysicist in the French speaking world. I had just read his book Poussière d’étoiles (stars’ dusts) and when he came to my college, I told the person sitting next to me that they did an amazing light show around him, like with the spots, you know, the professionals that light the stage.

This person looked at me with weird disgust which I thought at first only meant to shut up.
So I did, I don’t talk during lectures, it was just so amazing what I was seeing.

Then Hubert Reeves went outside, in the hall, and people continued speaking with him, I kept looking at the same light around him, I started to be confused and simply asked another person if they saw that light around him.

I remember I had a serious discussion with the person because I was clearly seeing that around him, explained to him that I had seen it on stage as well… that person was skeptical, but a scientific so they proposed an hypothesis : maybe you are seeing what people call an aura.

I don’t believe I had ever heard that word before, so I said a what? He said, you know, like in the old paintings, where people have a yellow hallow around their heads?

How do you call that again?

An aura.

Next day I was at the library looking for such books, a lot of them just looked like dogma to me, but I had the chance to stumble upon a book by Charles Webster Leadbeater.

If I remember correctly, in any case, it was a book with clear categories of colours, shapes, the guy seemed to describe what he was seeing and not repeating some dogmatic fantasy from someone else.

Science is first the senses.