A Sense of Color

ధవళం – ఇదే వైరాగ్యం…!!

V ery few people have a vivid sense of colors and their many shades. Even a painter, when painting a bunch of trees, may only create fifty shades of green on the canvas, while there are a thousand shades of green in the forest. Still, if you watch a painter at work, how they grasp various shades of color and try to get them as close to reality as possible is quite amazing.

A thinking mind does not care for color. If you look at it logically, black, white, and shades of grey would have been enough for contrast. From that perspective, one could conclude that the Creator must be crazy to create so many colors. In order to have a real sense of color, your anahata needs to be active. If for example you have a powerful spiritual experience, or let us say you fall in love with someone, it can activate your anahata, and consequently, you could see colors more vividly. There is also a difference between genders – scientific research shows that women see colors better than men.

On the surface, color is a visual sense. But there is a significant connection between the perception of the many colors that occur in nature and your senses. The same fundamental force has created everything on the planet – from a worm to a flower to you. Modern science has arrived at the conclusion too now that the fundamental design of everything, from the atomic to the cosmic, is essentially the same – what differs is only the level of sophistication and complexity. Since the design is fundamentally the same, the way your senses are made, the way colors are made, and the way your senses perceive is all related.

Specific colors are related to specific aspects of the senses. Consequently, different colors can activate different dimensions within you. Every form has a corresponding color scheme. If one pays the necessary attention, one can experience that every form, irrespective of how subtle it is, has a color aspect to it. Even sounds, as sounds have form, have a distinct color imprint. This is in the experience of many who practice Mantras – there are very vivid color schemes.

In the classical music forms of India, specific structures of melody are referred to as ragas. Raga essentially means color. Through meticulous use of sounds, color and form are created. “In the beginning, there was a word.” The word may acquire meaning in the psychological space, but essentially, it is just sound–color–form. Hence all the talk about primordial sound. As all physical substance, if pushed to a certain speed, will become light, color is inherent in all that there is.

If you pay constant attention, all these aspects will reveal themselves. Someone said, “Knock and it shall be opened unto you.” Human consciousness can open every door in the universe, if only you raise the quality and the intensity of your attention – attention for every aspect of life.

Colourless

The exuberance of colour
in sunrises and sunsets,
in leaf and flower, in rainbows
and shadows. All the play
of colourless light! In touching
the hueless Being, shall
become capable of every nuance
of colour. The myriad impressions
of this colourful universe just
the leela (play) of the hueless Being
Vairagya (beyond colour)