Kirlian photography is a means of taking pictures of the nonmaterial world without a camera. It provides a way of viewing the unseen patterns of energy and force fields that probably permeate all substances. It offers us a tool with which to view both art and science. The technique can serve as a medical diagnostic instrument, too. The Kirlian effect is useful for recording energy balances and harmonies in all forms of life.

The equipment which produces the Kirlian photographic effect uses no light but only the radiation spark discharging from an object being photographed on a film emulsion. The equipment consists of a metal plate and a generator or oscillator that produces a high voltage field of variable pulse and frequency. Film put in contact with the plate and with the object on top of it causes a photograph to be produced. Depending upon the type of film used - instant color film, 35-millimeter black and white film, or something else with emulsion that records images - different colors or shadings appear in a brilliant corona surrounding the object.

Aura Photography was first experimented with by scientist Nicola Tesla in the 1890's. The Soviet Union included Aura Photography in the psychic research conducted in the 1960's. In 1975 The University of California at Los Angeles was able to measure Auras with great accuracy.

Semyon D. Kirlian a Russian technician was repairing equipment in a hospital when he noticed something unusual. He later found that through the interaction of electric currents and photographic plates, imprints of living organisms developed on film.

Kirlian and his wife developed the process in 1939. They call it the " Kirlian Effect" (pronounced keer-lee-an). In the late 1940's the Russians began serious research, but it was not until the 1970's that Kirlian photography research began in the United States.

Kirlian photography involves the transferring of a high frequency charge through a metal plate attached to a Polaroid film camera base. The finger tips are lightly placed on the film which is encased in a light-tight bag and an electric exposure is made. Sixty seconds later, after the film develops, the Kirlian photograph is complete and the subject's energy field is revealed.

The Aura, a field of energy that surrounds every living thing, is a reflection of the body's spirit energy. Kirlian Photography measures the electromagnetic energy field. The brilliant colors presented correspond to the the energy fields that are unique to each person at the moment the picture is taken.

Since the mid sixties, teams of Soviet scientists from Moscow to Siberia have plunged into the study of these beautiful colored lights in living things and have come up with some intriguing new conceptions about the nature of life itself.

Among the initial findings: Disease shows up in a disturbed pattern of flares long before it manifests in the physical body in any diagnoseable form. If portions of the physical body are cut away, the energy matrix or "phantom" of the missing part is still clearly visible in the photograph, although there is no tangible, physical substance there. Patterns vary according to mood and health and even thoughts. Hypnosis and drugs also alter the flare pattern and colors.

The patterns of the flares arc substantially altered by weather, day, night, and cosmic disturbances, such as solar flares. The brightest flares on the body show at the points on the skin known to be acupuncture points.