Auras in mysticism and synaesthesia: a comparison.
Consciousness and cognition March 1, 2012 E G Milán, O Iborra, M Hochel et al. 15 citations
Some synaesthetes see colors triggered by emotionally charged stimuli such as familiar faces. One participant, R, describes seeing a human silhouette filled with color when viewing a familiar person. These subjective reports resemble descriptions of seeing auras. The authors analyze reports from four synaesthetes who experience colors in response to faces and figures, comparing them with descriptions of auras from esoteric literature. The discrepancies indicate that synaesthetic face-color perception and claimed auric perception are phenomenologically and behaviorally different.