Walter J. Kilner

Walter J. Kilner
Born	23 May 1847(1847-05-23) Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom
Died	23 June 1920 (73) Isle of Wight, Hampshire, England, U.K.
Nationality	British
Alma mater	B.A. (1870); M.R.C.S., L.S.A. (1871); Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, and St. Thomas's Hospital, London, M.B. (1872); M.R.C.P. (1883)
Known for	Auric research
Influenced Patrick S. O'Donnell; Francis J. Rebman; Oscar Bagnall

Walter John Kilner (May 23, 1847 - June 23, 1920) was an English medical electrician and researcher, noted for his invention of Kilner screens (using dicyanin dye, which he also referred to as spectauranine) for seeing auras.

Selected Bibliography

• Kilner, Walter J. (1911), The Human Atmosphere, or, the Aura Made Visible by the Aid of Chemical Screens, New York: Rebman Company, https://archive.org/details/humanatmosphereo00kiln 
• Kilner, Walter J. (February 1912), "The Shifting of the Chromatic Focus of the Eye by Use of a Dicyanin Screen", Archives of the Roentgen Ray (London: Rebman) 16 (9): 344-346, 351-353, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.c3312416&view=1up&seq=356 

Press Coverage

• ES (18 Jul. 1911), "PHYSICAL PHENOMENA - LONDON DOCTOR'S DISCOVERY OF ELECTRICAL RADIATIONS. THE 'VITAL SPARK.'", Evening Standard (London, England): 19, https://www.newspapers.com/article/evening-standard-physical-phenomena-lo/145112452/ 
• Wilcox, Ella Wheeler (8 May 1914), "Science and the Visible Aura: Science Brings Lagging Proof of Aged Claim of Theosophists; As You Beautify Your Aura You Also Help Body and Brain.", The Georgian (Atlanta, GA): 14, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89053729/1914-05-08/ed-1/seq-14 
  

  In the oldest religions of earth we find mention of the auras. Auras and haloes are generally supposed to be crowns of light hovering over the heads of saints. By practical minded people the aura has long been regarded as a delusion of overwrought sensibilities. Religious devotees, mediums, fanatics, poets and insane beings were alone considered susceptible to these hallucinations.

  Science Brings Lagging Proof of Aged Claim of Theosophists.

  Theosophists have always talked of auras as a part of the mental and physical belonging of every human being. But by the material mind the Theosophist is considered insane. And now comes Science, lagging along, with its proof of what the Theosophists and other advanced souls have long known to be true.

  That there is a haze or atmosphere surrounding the human body and differing In the case of each individual, and that its existence is susceptible of physical proof, is the assertion made by Dr. Walter J. Kilner, a London physician, whose investigation of the subject has covered many years. In a book Dr. Kilner gives the result of his investigations, and invites those interested in the subject to make the same experiments, using the means which he employed to aid the eye in perceiving what he calls the human aura.

  Dr. Kilner maintains that he has not only perceived what the clairvoyants have declared they saw, but even more. Not only do people possess auras, according to Dr. Kilner, but their auras, differing in the case of each individual, and very distinctly so in the case of women and men, are probably inherited, he thinks. Then, too, he says the physical condition affects at once the aura. Whatever value the revelation of auras will have for the scientific world, Dr. Kilner thinks it will lie in this point, for being thus affected by physical conditions, auras will be a distinct aid in diagnosis.

  “The influence of heredity and temperament upon the aura,” says the doctor, “is one of the most fascinating parts of this subject, and at the same time it does not require a prophet to foresee that an inquirer in this direction is likely to reap a big harvest.”

  Dr. Kilner likens the aura to the rays proceeding from a magnet. When looked at through his screen the magnetic cloud emanating from a magnet appeared distinctly visible in the same manner as did the human aura. He believes that the forces giving rise to the human aura are quite distinct from those producing the magnetic cloud, and that there is more than a single force at work, one producing the outer and another the inner aura. These forces, he believes, are most probably generated in the body in some such way as the nervous force.

  He also lays down the law that the aura is influenced by the will power. He has made many experiments which have gone to prove this, such as telling a person to will that a ray should extend from his finger toward another person. The ray, he says, soon made its appearance, and disappeared directly the patient left off willing.

  Dr. Kilner mentions a young woman 20 years old, upon whom he experimented, and whom he asked to shoot rays from her two shoulders, first one and then the other. The beams manifested themselves almost directly, taking an upward and outward direction. She was asked to turn sideways then, and to will a ray to extend from the tip of her nose.

  “In this,” said the doctor,” “she was perfectly successful, as it appeared almost immediately and stretched outward seven or eight inches. This was beyond the external margin of the visible outer aura.”

  “There can not be the slightest doubt,”” he says, “as to the reality of the existence of an aura enveloping human beings, and this will be in a short time a universally accepted fact now that it can be made visible to anyone possessing normal eye sight. It would indeed be strange if the aura did not vary under different circumstances, and we firmly believe that a study of its modifications will show that they will have a diagnostic value.”

  Now, in the face of these scientific facts, it behooves each one of us to give some thought to the subject of auras. We need to realize, first of all, that the aura is as much a part of us as our heads or hands. And that its shape and color is largely under our own control.

  Dr. Kilner's book gives three classes of people according to the color of their auras — those whose auras appeared to be blue mixed with gray and those with gray auras. Taking these classifications, he examined 100 persons. He found 40 in the blue aura class. Of these 40 persons none was below the average in mental power, and some were distinctly above it.

  As You Beautify Your Aura You Also Help Body and Brain.

  Thirty-six were in the second class, with auras showing a combination of blue and gray. Among these were two epileptics and one with meningitis. Seventeen had gray auras, and among these seventeen were two eccentric people, six epileptics, one insane person and three who were mentally dull.

  From those observations the doctor deduces the theory that if you have a blue aura you are most apt to be mentally fit, but if your aura is gray you are probably a bit deficient in intellectual power.

  Now that science so closely agrees with the seers, we can not reasonably doubt that psychic people have seen and do see auras. And it renders one a bit uncomfortable to think how many clear-seeing eyes may have be held very ugly auras emanating from us.

  Every thought, emotion and feeling is having its influence in shaping and coloring our auras. If we were given free choice of selecting a hideous or a beautiful headdress, or hat, there would be no hesitation about the one chosen. We are given this privilege of selecting our auras. Or, at least, we are given the privilege and power to change those which may have been given us by inheritance from other lives, or which may have been created by wrong methods of education in this life, where they stand, so far as speed is concerned.