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life is about colours
> Guest contributors > Know Thyself: Life is about colours

Know Thyself: Life is about colours

"We are trying to find out if what we call substance, what we think is substance, according to the specifications that we give it, whether it's really so or just that we think it is so." - Sri M

We are going to look carefully, observantly, at the outside world, the physical world, setting aside all other preconceived ideas we have about it. We are trying to find out if what we call substance, what we think is substance, according to the specifications that we give it, whether it’s really so or just that we think it is so.

This is actually part of the discussions I had with my master and teacher, Maheshwar Nath Babaji, in the Himalayas, sitting beside the ‘dhuni’. This happened one lovely night and many more nights after that.

For the purpose of study, for the purpose of examination, let us take an ordinary object like, a cube. A wooden cube, painted red, and of a reasonable size.

Now, one by one, we are going to look at the characteristics, the qualities of this red cube that is before us. The qualities that, we think, belong to the red cube and, are the reason why we call it a red cube. We are going to look and find out for ourselves, in a perfectly logical way, whether the qualities really belong to this object or is it that we just sense them to be so.

Colour

Now, the first thing that strikes us about the cube is the colour. We all like colour. Colour peps up our psyche. Good colours make you feel vital and happy while dull colours make you feel drowsy and depressed. Also, there are beautiful purples and blues that make you calm and quiet. In fact, if you are suffering from high BP–now this is yoga therapy–and if you have a room that is painted a beautiful shade of pink with curtains in soothing pink, it is proved that it has an effect in lowering your blood pressure.

When there is no light, then it is darkness, which is black.

Also, it’s a fact that if you sleep leaving on a blue, dim light at night, you are likely to feel calmer and relaxed in comparison to leaving on a bright, red coloured light. What I am trying to say is it’s colour that first strikes us, whether it be the butterfly, the trees, the sky, the mountains, and the snow. For instance, just see how many brilliant, lovely colours you come across while walking around the streets of Bangalore. You sure do enjoy the colour. Even the monks wear bright orange. Look at the sunset, the sunrise, the deep sea. So, colour is the first sensory stimulus that we get and is the most important. See, how the paint industry is a roaring business!

Now, this red-coloured cube in front of us, we call it red because it appears red. Now, what is red? What is colour? Is red the quality of the cube in front of you or is it the quality of light? You know the sun sheds light on this earth. If you pass the white light of the sun through a prism, it splits into the VIBGYOR–Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red. Now, this is the light of the sun that comes in these different shades. In a high school laboratory, you must have experimented with a disc that has all these colours of VIBGYOR painted on it. When you turn the disc around fast, you see the disc has turned white. So, white light consists of these seven colours.

When there is no light, then it is darkness, which is black.

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