Humans Glow: Auras, Bioluminescence, and the Emanating Light

Living organisms emit light — and so do we. The human body produces a faint but measurable glow, a byproduct of the metabolic processes that sustain life. This phenomenon, known as biophoton emission, bridges what science observes in the laboratory with what spiritual traditions across cultures have described for millennia.

The concept of the aura — a luminous field surrounding the body — appears in Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Indigenous traditions around the world. Artists have depicted it for centuries in halos and radiating light. Modern science, through the study of biophotons and bioluminescence, offers a new lens through which to understand what those traditions were perceiving.

Science and spirituality are not opposites. Sometimes they are simply different languages describing the same luminous reality.

Bioluminescence — the production and emission of light by living organisms — is well documented in the natural world, from fireflies to deep-sea creatures. In humans, this light is far too faint to see with the naked eye, but sensitive cameras have captured it. The glow fluctuates throughout the day, corresponding to the body's metabolic rhythms, and is strongest around the face and hands.

What does this mean for how we understand ourselves and each other? This piece invites both the scientifically curious and the spiritually inclined to consider that the light humans have long attributed to the divine may, in part, be the light of life itself — radiating from every living body, all the time.