Our Incredible Brain Part 3
Last month we determined that the entire brain is used to process and help navigate our environment through the course of an average day. Psychologist William James, however, believed that humanity possessed the potential for more. While science is of the general opinion that we already make use of the brain’s maximum capacity, what of the people who have demonstrated abilities that go beyond the norm? Over the next couple of months, we will be looking at some of these special individuals. Here is one of them.
As a child, Barbara Ann Brennan would spend hours alone in the woods on the farm where she grew up. She believes this solitary time contributed to the growth of her expanded state of consciousness as she developed the ability to see energy in the world around her. She described playing a game where she would blindfold herself and walk through the woods. She said that she could “feel” the energy of the trees before she could touch them. She writes in her book, Hands of Light (1990), “I discovered that everything has an energy field around it that looks like the light from a candle. I also began to notice that everything was connected by these energy fields, that no space existed without an energy field. Everything, including me, was living in a sea of energy.” As an adult, she studied atmospheric physics and earned a Master of Science degree. She worked for a number of years as a researcher for NASA until her path turned to a career in healing. She became a counsellor where, eventually, she began to see colours around her clients and developed the ability to locate illness by assessing energy patterns. Her ability to see energy as a child lay dormant through her years of advanced studies but returned as she worked extensively with her counselling clients. She describes this phenomenon as High Sense Perception (HSP), or clairvoyant vision.
The human eye can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum, or visible light spectrum. Some animals can see a greater range, including infrared and ultraviolet light, which should be invisible to our eyes. Interestingly, in an article in Science News (December 3, 2014), a group of international scientists found that under certain circumstances, the human eye can actually detect infrared and ultraviolet light.
Kirlian photography was first discovered in 1889 by Czech B. Navratil and called electrography. In 1939, Russian electrical engineer, Semyon Kirlian and his wife, Valentina, advanced the research on this technique significantly. So much so, that it was renamed after them. In a Kirlian photograph, an object’s energy field is shown as a corona of colour surrounding it. The Kirlians believed that the object’s corona was its energy field and reflected its life force. Parapsychologists and psychics would call this an aura.
It is not uncommon for people with psychic abilities to see such energy fields or aura that can otherwise only be seen via Kirkian photographs. Barbara Brennan also has this ability, although she does not consider herself psychic. What is so special about Brennan is that she has developed her skill sufficiently to see beyond the energy boundary visible with Kirlian photography. This is how she describes it, “…consider the candle and its flame. We normally identify ourselves as a body (the wax and wick) with consciousness (the flame). When we enter a state of expanded consciousness, we perceive ourselves also as the light coming from the flame. Where does the light begin and the flame end?...Where does the light from the room begin and the light from the candle end? According to physics, there is no boundary to a candle’s light; it reaches out to infinity. Where, then, is our ultimate boundary?...The more my HSP expands, the more I am able to see a reality that already is there but was earlier outside my perception range.”
Through extensive practice, Brennan has used that expanded perception to see energy and find and heal illness in others. Would we have that same ability if we applied ourselves so?
To be continued next month…
By Elaina Curran, HPD, DSFH, AdvDPLRT, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Past Life Regression Therapist
As published in BS35 Local Magazine, August 2019 issue