I don't know if you're like me, but as the years pile up and not much hair is left on the greying crown to make heads turn I am trying to compensate for the lack of Samsonian strength by falling back on attractive colors. Whether it's buying a shirt or a pair of socks I seem to be drawn towards more sober, more natural colors with a definite abhorrence for what is generally considered chic or trendy. I know that it takes all kinds to make a world and that life would be utterly devoid of any interest if every one were alike or interested in the same things. Nature herself seems to revel in such a variety of hues and colors, of shapes and patterns, that our appreciation of her manifold mysteries as the seasons wheel past our intellectual landscape adds in subtle ways to the richness of our emotional and spiritual lives, making of us artists and poets in spite of ourselves and thrilling us to great paroxysms of mystical bliss. Why is it that certain colors make us sad while others or a combination of them on and around us make us fly on the wings on ecstasy? I think it's worth our time looking into the mystic nature and significance of color and try and understand why we react to it the way we do.

Is it possible for us, through psychic development and the evolution of our inner powers, to attune to objective things, or, in other words, to vibrate in unison with nature or if we so wish to change the actual composition of the objects that surround us? I am sure there were days in which you could not, for instance, adjust yourselves to the color of gray or brown, or some other color, and that you really felt literally allergic and exceedingly tired by such colors whether they be in clothing, furniture, wood trimming, and so forth. Have you ever asked yourselves why this should be so? And if so, did you attribute your strong like or dislike of a particular color to natural causes beyond your control or to a certain caprice of the mind brought about by changes in the weather, stress at work or, worse still, a dysfunction of the mind itself? No matter what one has to say about this matter, there is no denying the fact that when it comes to colors that affect us inwardly we are dealing with a very complex problem with certain fundamental conditions.

In scientific terms, the reason certain colors are unpleasant and inharmonious to certain individuals (but obviously not to others) is that the rates of vibrations of those colors are out of harmony or out of sympathetic attunement with the rates of vibrations of their own auras. All this mystic verbiage only means that certain colors do not agree with us as a result of our physical and spiritual makeup. If the offending color is gray, for instance, its unpleasantness is said to be caused by vibrations that impact negatively on our own aura which is at that moment in time emanating different vibrations.

It is obvious that we cannot go about changing the vibrations of everything that is gray. We may avoid gray clothing, and may feel unhappy that we have to avoid a color that is often very appropriate and pleasing in many ways. A serious dilemma presents itself at times when whatever displeases us seems to please our mate no end. No amount of loving in this case would obviate one's own strong sense of displeasure. But try as we may, we cannot avoid the color of gray in all its shades and in all the things that we come into contact with. It would seem, therefore, that the next best thing to do would be to change our own vibrations so that they would be harmonious and sympathetically attuned with gray. Here lies the great trouble. To change the vibrations of our aura would mean that we would have to change our entire constitutional health, the keynote of the vibrations of all the cells in our body and the fundamental keynote of our psychic self within. All of these combined constitute the vibrations of our aura - at least, that's what the gurus tell us - and to change that aura to such a degree that its frequencies and its potential nature would be in harmony with gray would mean such a great and fundamental change in the entire nature of our organism and psychic self that we would have to be practically reborn and regenerated.

Such changes in the aura do come about with mystics, but only gradually as they evolve and develop to the highest degree of psychic unfoldment. It takes years for the lower vibrations of the average individual's aura to reach a higher degree, and as they reach the higher degree they become more definite in their attunement with other vibrations. Every mystic on the sacred Path, and any one who studies and develops the mystical principles becomes attuned very positively with one color, and passively with a number of others. There is a general alternating harmony and disharmony with definite colors and if you have ever tried to examine the question yourselves either through transcendal meditation or intensely focused observation you will have noticed that there is one color that pleases you more than all others, a color that seems to be beneficial to you and which gives you a sense of serenity, wholesomeness, vitality and joy if you surround yourselves with it. And you will find that there is another color that has the very opposite effect. We are not alike in the color that is kind to us, and not alike in the color that is unpleasant to us. For this reason there is a great variety in psychic auras and in attunement. To set about to change one of these, however, would be little benefit. If we brought ourselves gradually into attunement with gray and changed our whole psychic and material being in doing so, we would find in the end that while we had made ourselves pleasantly attuned with gray we had gradually made ourselves out of harmony with some other color and perhaps out of harmony with one that is now in sympathy and harmony with our innermost being. None of us can be in harmony with all of the colors, for such an aura and such a rate of vibrations cannot be possessed by any living individual. In like manner, no matter how hard we try, we cannot please every one we meet for no two individuals are at any given moment in time completely and perfectly in sync with another. Even Jesus could not bring himself to be liked by his enemies in spite of his greatly harmonious auric vibrations. It is just not in the realm of possibilities and philosophically it is wise not to attempt to please others at all times.

Going back to the topic under discussion, why is it that an individual concentrating upon a certain color and then discontinuing his concentration on that color, sees in his mind's eye another color, which scientists call the complementary color to the original color. In this context, I would like to draw your attention to something I read regarding the Buddhist custom of using round, colored disks of cardboard for fixing the concentration. Imbued with a strange sort of curiosity by a new-found interest in everything esoteric and mystical, I decided to try it out for myself. For my purpose I used a disk of deep rich blue. This is what happened. When I am through concentrating upon it, and then take my eyes from the disk and discontinue the concentration, I see the complementary color of yellow. It is a fascinating experience that I recommend to any one interested in colors and natural phenomena in general. But what is the law behind all this? For after all, the whole universe is governed by laws, be they mechanical or spiritual or divine.

I understand that nothing in nature is as simple as what it looks. And sometimes it is better to let things be as they are and not to always worry one's head off about the why and wherefore of things great and small alike. To understand colors thoroughly one would have to be well-versed in various sciences and I do not pretend to be an expert in any of them. Mine is the interest and the curiosity of the layman who tries to approach the mysteries of life and quell the aching pain of our finite being with the help of philosophy. I have been told that a knowledge of physiology is essential if one wants to understand the mechanism involved in the action of the vibrations of light upon the retina of the eye and the stimuli produced by these vibrations. I have only limited notions of physiology garnered from my fuitful albeit short years at University and with the help of those I managed to understand that when we concentrate upon one color, we inhibit the functioning of the eye and especially of the nerves that receive color vibrations and transmit them to the brain. The moment you relieve the retina and its nerves of the strain of receiving only one color, they act like a pendulum and swing to the opposite direction for rest after the strain of concentrating on one color, and that swing of the pendulum, so to speak, to the opposite direction, produces the so-called complementary color. Man did not establish the law of colors and their complementary ones. That is a fixed law of nature. Who and why was it created and how does it work will, I guess, never be elucidated. I suppose all of you know that every color has its complementary color and that every number can be reduced to decimals in order to find its complementary number. In other words, every entity or every complete unit of anything has two parts to it --a negative and positve. The positive is called the color, in dealing with tints and tones, and the negative half is called the complementary color. In all likelihood, the Chinese would place the first in the Yang and the second in the Yin.

If we are given any one of the pure, fundamental colors such as blue, red, green, yellow or purple, and concentrate upon it in a bright light for a little time and then suddenly lift our eyes and look toward a space in the room, a black surface, or a piece of black cloth, we will see mentally the complementary color to the one upon which we have been concentrating, and that means that we are seeing a mental stimulus that is the relaxing condition of the inhibition which we created by concentrating on the color.

To go any further into the subject would lead us very deeply into the science of colors and vibrations and the physiology of the functioning of the eye and the brain centers, and I leave that to the experts. What the Bhuddists are seeing and doing with their concentration on color disks in India is no different from what the Eskimos are doing in Alaska, or what was done in Egypt a thousand years ago, and probably will be done in other parts of the world or all parts of the world, a thousand years from now, if we survive the Armageddon. It is an immutable, established law, and it has no real mystical element in it, except that in concentrating on one color and then seeing its complementary color, the eye is exercised and stimulated, while during the original concentration on only one color a certain degree of ocular fatigue is produced that enables the objective consciousness to go partially dormant.

Without attempting to become pedantic, it is necessary to point out that white is not a color, but in reality conssists of all the colors. White, as we learned at school, is produced by a regular reflection of the rays of the solar spectrum, namely, sunlight. To put it more simply, white light is a harmonious blending of all the rays of light which emanate from the sun and are included in its spectrum. By contrast, black is the absence of color because it absorbs all light waves of the solar spectrum. Color actually does not exist, except as a sensation in our consciousness.

Sunlight consists of a series of waves of energy which, we may say, vary slightly though they all have the same velocity or speed. The optic nerves of the eyes are sensitive to some of these waves, consequently they fall within the ocular range; that is, we detect them as color, or we are conscious of them as color. All color is blended harmoniously in sunlight. Not until this light falls upon a prism and is diffused, are the waves separated and we see then, in sunlight, the many familiar colors. Objects themselves are colorless. All the particulars of reality are devoid of any color. They do have the capacity for causing us to realize them as colored. This, incidentally, becomes an excellent example of what some experts refer to as the doctrine of actuality and reality. An object appears red to us because its atomic and molecular structure is of such a nature or density as to absorb all light waves that fall upon it, with the exception, for example, of the red rays which are reflected to us, and the object is realized by us as red, whereas in actuality it is not. The same is true of any color. Objects, we may say, are filters of light waves. A white object is one that equally reflects all of the waves of light which fall upon it, and to which the eye is sensitive. No wave predominates in white light, so no color exists, and white is just something that the consciousness realizes. Black, as said, reflects none of the waves of light. It really traps them, to use a common expression; consequently, the object appears colorless. We might almost say that black is a hole in light. If we have a light area and in it we see a black object, the form of that object is the extent of the absence of light.

Now we are not in possession of any knowledge which discloses that the ancients knew that white light is a harmony of all color, and yet their symbolism of it would seem to point to it. White was most certainly not arbitrarily selected by the ancients to symbolize spiritual qualities. Certain other causes for this conception are posited. The earliest written records appertaining to the symbolic significance of white appear in the Old Testament. To the ancient Hebrews, white symbolized purity and innocence. It represented light, which not only impressed the Hebrew mind with its brilliance and purity, but with its divine symbolism, for it seemed to have a moral connotation. Priests, and those officiating in religious ceremonies, were clothed in white to symbolize the purity of their functions. In fact, in Leviticus 16:32, we find, "And the priest, whom he shall annoint, and whom he shall consecrate to minister in the priest's office in his father's stead, shall make atonement, and shall put on the linen clothes." Linen, which was superbly made by the Egyptians, and which was obtained by the Hebrews, was principally, in its finest texture, pure white, and we know from contemporary artists that the priests were clothed in it. The relationship of light and white to purity is expressed in Psalm 104:2: "Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment."

Conversely, black, the opposite of white, the absence of light or color, had a different meaning. Since black absorbs all colors and thus buries light, to the ancient Hebrews, who were the originators of much of the symbolism we perpetuate, it depicted death, humility, and mourning. The use of black, of course, for garments of mourning or as a sign of death, is commonly known to us today, because of the still prevalent custom throughout the world of using it in this manner.

Meanings were also associated with other colors. Blue represented the unclouded sky, and to the Hebrews it symbolized revelation. It was the first of the colors used for the curtains of their santuaries, and the Israelites were commanded to have a ribbon of blue fringe on the edge of their garments, in order to remind them of Yaweh. This is brought to our attention in Numbers 15:38: "Speak unto the children of Israel and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments, throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue." Then, again, red had its symbolical significance. It alluded to bloodshed or the running of blood. Purple was the sign of royalty; it represented dignity and honor. Green, as the color of plants, was the symbol of those growing things to which people looked forward during the drab, dismal months of the winter. It also objectively symbolized rejuvenation, resurrection, and hope. Oddly enough, it also represented the moon. The attachment of meaning to these colors and to white and black, however, is principally an obvious or logical deduction. In other words, they appeared to identify themselves naturally with the essence of certain things or conditions. The oozing of blood from a living thing, when injured, must have made a very definite impression upon the early minds -- as it still does upon us today. One could hardly look upon a similar shade of red without being forcefully reminded of blood. By association of ideas, that color would more quickly cause one to think of blood than anything else, especially in a time when colors, as paints, were either not used at all or sparsely so.

Nowadays there is a lot of talk about biofeedback which seems to indicate that we can influence our heartrate or the way we feel either deep breathing, meditation and other relaxation techniques. More and more people are looking into the curative and healing potentialities of new therapies like aromatherapy, color therapy and even numerology or the art of shamanism. It is already a given that certain colors affect our sympathetic nervous system in such a manner as to engender distinct emotional responses in such a manner as to engender distinct emotional responses or attitudes of mind, which we always consciously or unconsciously thereafter associate with the particular color.

In the Near East and in Egypt, where the earliest great civilizations began, the sunlight was so intense, so brilliant in its whiteness, it, too, made a profound impression upon the peoples. It appeared to bathe all things in its whiteness. Moreover, it, in itself, remained unblemished. There was nothing which man or the things of earth could do to alter it. It was thing of splendor to behold. As the sun, for various reasons, became deified in the various religions, white consequently became a symbol of divine efficacy. With respect to white, however, there are certain psychological reasons which we must take into consideration as well. White, like the sunlight itself, is searching and very revealing. It dispels all shadows. It makes any blemishes in an otherwise orderly surface or texture conspicuous and easily visible. We oursevles know how any spot of color is strikingly contrasted on white. Thus, in the minds of men, white became associated with purity and absolute perfection. It became a standard whereby to judge even moral attributes. Spiritual substances, such as man's soul, were conceived as white. As light and white were so identified, teachers of spiritual truths were therefore clothed in white, depicting the purity of their character and their doctrines.

Psychically, there are colors which actually depict and truly represent man's spiritual and psychic attainment. In other words, when we are pure in mind and consciousness, or have attained a degree of Cosmic Consciousness, our auras radiate colors quite different from white. Thus we can see that white is merely a symbol of mystical attunement and spiritual attainment, and not physically a result thereof. For example, the colors of the rainbow have a relationship to the twelve planes of Divine Consciousness as taught by the ancient mystics, the twelve stages or steps through which this consciousness passes. The color corresponding to the lowest of these twelve steps is a dark ultraviolet; then the color progresses by graduation to a violet, which is found at the highest stage, or as the top of the successive stages of development.

We also hear of white and black magic. White, as a symbol of purity and because it has been associated with divine things since time immemorial is also identified with that notion of our minds which we call good. Consequently, right conduct and morals, or the good of them, is symbolized by white. White magic, therefore, means the application of the laws and the phenomena of nature (which magic is) for good purposes. Conversely, black, being associated with moribund things, and with obscurity and imperfection, represents evil.

I could go on and on about other aspects of color and its overwhelming influence on our daily lives. Many of the things we say in our relationship with friends, foes alike refer in one way or another to color. Most of the time we do so without even knowing why and many of the words we use when we are happy or angry, or when the weather is dismal and sad, heavily rely on a very rich palette of familiar and not so familiar colors to express all our emotions and aspirations. But I think I have said enough on a topic that has always fascinated humanity and will continue to do so as long as the sun shines bright in the blue and cloudless sky. I am sure I have not taught any thing new under the sky but if I managed to stir your imagination somewhat and make you turn afresh towards nature and the cosmos at large and marvel yet again at the priceless beauty of it all and feel a sense of exhilaration at the uniqueness of your being given the chance of beholding such wonders, then I would feel it worth while to have written this brief essay on the mystic symbolism of color. Isn't it strange though that we should attribute so much importance to something that essentially does not exist? If science keeps finding new explanations for the things that we normally take for granted, is there any room left for the imagination to roam freely and soar skyward? In matters of color as well as in matters of taste or faith, there is always more to it than meets the eye!

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