Part of my “supernormal legacy” is an appreciation of a book written by my grandmother “Life is the Healer” published in 1957 by Dorrance and Company. She stated, “My own role in contributing somewhat toward concrete incidents of healing is based on a gift of perception that I never sought. Rather, I often felt that these gifts more or less used me, that I was compelled to focus attention on the human mechanism and its various interacting components. It was not always easy to control these faculties, to prevent them from flooding my own life, as I wanted to use it. My own perspective ability had to be disciplined, although its power had the strength of man’s age-old instinctual processes—faculties that have been shunted aside by evolutionary developments and by the instinct-inhibiting impact of modern civilization…
Many are unaware that each of us is enveloped in a haze or nimbus intimately connected with the body. It is with us sleeping or waking. To those who have the ability to study it, it is visible as a kind of mist, with the appearance of having picked up colors from the sunlight. It has always been manifest, and in ancient days was spoken of as enveloping saints and especially holy men.
Clairvoyants constantly refer to this field as the ‘aura,’ and because it has not been visible to all, claims for its authenticity are often denied. This does not disturb me in the slightest, since from early childhood it has been as natural for me to see the auras of living things as to see anything else. I know that the aura is real because I have observed it under all kinds of conditions; I know that study and observation of the aura can enable one to achieve a vast amount of information about the spiritual and physical history and condition of the person. I know this because I have tested it over and over. But because many quite normal people have not seen the aura, it has in their minds been relegated to the category of ‘subjective vision’—probably because it has been visible to those with clairvoyant powers. I do not consider it to be a matter of subjective vision in any sense. Not all have been able to see it, but it is there, just as really as any other part of us can be said to be ‘there’…
Nobody knows, of course, the exact composition of this field we call the aura, and which has sometimes been called the ‘etheric lung,’ since it sometimes seems to change shape as if it was breathing. And what it does I think is breathing as it fulfills its function of protecting the body…
In my estimation, the aura has several functions. I regard it as an external lung. It separates the particles in the atmosphere, and acts almost as a sieve, drawing from the atmosphere what is necessary for the body of oxygen, hydrogen and carbonized gases. It draws them into the body while at the same time drawing the used gases from the body. Men of the stature of Paul Brunton have called it the ‘oversoul,’ but I prefer to call it an etheric lung because through it one breathes in from the vast storehouse of knowledge that is within the cosmos, and it is with this field rather than the body within that one can work…
I believe that in all probability the aura is at least in part a magnetic and electrical field…I am not at all sure that medical men generally will agree with me about this field, but it is within it that I first seek to work, and through it to strengthen the person who has need. That a great many persons cannot see it and therefore deny the aura’s reality does not disturb me. I see it, and it has helped immeasurably in diagnosing the real maladies to which people are subject…It is prolonging observation, I think, into new frontiers which while not as yet generally known or mapped, are as real as anything on earth can be.”
I can attest that I too accepted it as the norm growing up with Garrett who would “catch me out” while entering the room that something was troubling me physically or emotionally. Rather than “reading” my thoughts it was a person’s aura that held her attention with no big induction process necessary to view it. She would simply instantaneously state that “your aura is depressed along your right side”, or alternatively comment on its color which provided her insight. In hindsight I guess that was somewhat strange but I just took it as part and parcel of the human condition. I still do for that matter. When at some point I questioned the existence of the aura she explained “Well, when you hear a sudden unexpected noise don’t you feel your body condensing, contracting? You see that is your aura withdrawing and protectively encapsulating your body.” This made sense to me so I pass it along in case it does you too.
As early as the Spring of 1954 Garrett organized within Parapsychology Foundation an “International Study Group on Unorthodox Healing” in St. Paul de Vence, in the South of France, our then European headquarters in hopes of focusing on a number of elements that make unorthodox healing methods an important part of future medical research. Although most probably remembered best for her mediumship her interest in healing was also a constant and she often worked “under the radar” with several medical doctors, psychiatrists and therapists on difficult cases which were not publicized for obvious reasons but was very near and dear to her heart.
In any event I would urge you to check out my personal Supernormal Legacy Face book page and YouTube Channel for more eclectic commentary and at times provocative but illuminating opinions and statements that I come across by my continually curious and thoughtful psychic grandmother….I will note that with all this she did not bake pies as I longed for as in stereotypical Norman Rockwell grandmother portrayal.