Questions On The Colour Meditation
The colour meditation is a meditation technique that is explained in the Meditation Video Tutorial playlist No. 9. Recently I received an email from a MyHinduPage reader, Mr. Mandar, who has been practicing the colour meditation, with some questions and description of his experiences. I am including excerpts of his email, with his permission, and my response to him as I believe it will be helpful, especially the description of his experiences, for others who are practicing this meditation technique. Click on the Youtube videos below to learn the Colour Meditation.
The Colour Meditation (1)
Synopsis: Learn of the Role of Colour in Meditation.
The Colour Meditation (2)
Synopsis: How to do the Colour Meditation.
Mandar wrote:
"I tried the color visualization technique today and felt a deeper state of meditation than I had experienced before. I was having difficulty visualizing the colors while I breathed in and out (like red/pink, blue/sky blue, yellow/light yellow) but then I decided to first see the colors and then sync them with my breaths. I did a lot of iterations on colors and how I visualized me/my body from various angles/from the front and back/top. I am not sure how in sync the colors were with my breath inhalation/ exhalation when I tried to sync them again. I kept it up and went on to visualize the white light. I am not sure how bright my visualization must have been but I certainly got carried away and felt a deeper sense of myself that I did not experience before. During that state, I tried to make sure I was really there and the feeling was there. I didn't want to lose the state and so avoided my skepticim. I said we'll deal with the doubts later. I think I didn't want to come out of the state and think I must have been practising what seemed like 20-30 minutes. Distractions of thoughts were there but i think I was able to stay clear of most of them.
I want to be able to replicate the experience and am now my curious to keep up with my practice. As I said I am really a beginner. I must have done meditation for a handful of times before today.
Can you please share your views on my experience?
Why does color visualization work? Is it self hypnotism?
The feeling I had seemed deeper, but was I trying to make it up/create it to feel it? In other words, do we have to imagine the soul-unpurturbed Being to get in touch with it?
My Reply:
Namaskaram Mandar,
Thanks for your questions. First of all let me say your testimony is a testament to the efficacy of the color meditation. My guru, Satguru Sivaya Sumbramuniyaswami taught me this meditation when I was beginning training with him. At that time I too was amazed at how effective it was in elevating my mystical experience after exasperating trials with other methods. The color meditation works by calming our moods, emotions and concerns temporarily by manipulating the astral body directly through the colors and breath. Each color has a specific role, thus the sequence and the breathing technique which is just as important promotes relaxation of the mind and body as well as generating peaceful feelings.
It takes time to learn to visualize and sync the colors with your breath. If you keep practicing you will get better at it in a few days. Take your time and take your breaths slow and easy, eventually the whole process will become subconscious habit and then you will be able to enjoy this meditation without being distracted by the intellect and memory. You can visualize the colors in any of the iterations you had mentioned, another way you can use is, imagine pouring a bucket of paint with the color over your head. The brightness of the colours is medium though this aspect is not so crucial. Color meditation can be considered a mild form of self-hypnotism though you cannot hypnotize another person using it because at all times the person doing the colour meditation maintains full control of their awareness and will not be prone to suggestions or directions from others.
The color meditation is actually a preparation for deeper meditation and it is an universal technique applicable by anyone of any creed. After you have prepared yourself with the color meditation you can go deeper using other techniques. My suggestion for you now is to get comfortable doing the color meditation. After that progress into doing the Atma dharana. (No. 23 Step: Atma Dharana of the Meditation tutorial). Diaphragmatic breathing (No. 9 of the Meditation Tutorial) is important. Do learn the Vasana Daha Tantra too, it is also important for long term meditative progress and a great tool to have in managing life in general. (No. 16, 17, 18 of the meditation tutorial playlist).
The mystical experience you had is classic Anahatha Chakra (The Heart Chakra) experience, which is what the color meditation is supposed to do. The meditation gradually raises awareness of the meditator into the Anahatha Chakra. This chakra is the stepping stone into soulful experiences. I can assure you that you were not imagining your experience. It was a real mystical experience.
The metaphysics of the colour meditation works by stabilizing and energizing the lower three chakras, namely the Muladhara, Svadishtana and Manipura chakras. These chakras have functions in our astral body, which is why colours works wonders on them. These are how the colours work:
Red Stimulates the Muladhara chakra (the first chakra, which is at the base of the spine), while the infusion of white turns the red to pink. This energizes the chakra and directs the flow of energy in this chakra upwards to the next chakra, the Svadishtana chakra.
Deep ocean blue and bright blue, has the same effect on the Svadhishtana chakra (the second chakra, located behind the navel) while Yellow and bright yellow stimulates and directs the flow energy upward from the Manipura chakra (located behind the solar plexus). These three base chakras govern most of our basic mind and body functions that relate to the worldly physical world. After going through the red, blue and yellow colours, these three chakras are essentially reset cleansed of cumbersome worldly mood, emotions and thoughts, thus our awareness naturally turns spiritual from this point of the meditation.
The chakras above the Manipura, the Anahatha, Visuddha, Ajna and Sahasrara are all the spiritual chakras, with the Anahatha being the gateway to our soul. While the main colour of the Anahatha, the fourth chakra is emerald green, the final step of the colour meditation is not to visualize green and bright green, instead it is to visualize white and transparent.
White is the colour representative of spirituality and the soul in general and transparent is God. Thus, after one reaches the step of the colour meditation after the yellow/bright yellow visualization, with one's awareness effectively in a spiritual mood, the Anahatha chakra will naturally stimulate elavated mystical experiences.
The spiritual experiences one has in the Anahatha chakra resembles the peace and awe one feels when looking over a beautiful natural scenery from a mountain. It is actually experiencing the vast blissful spiritual space of God that flows through all of existence as Satchitananda. The experience is also accompanied by the sensation of floating through a vast space within oneself. It is a very freeing and satisfying experience as all normal concerns of life are temporarily relieved from our consciousness as we gain energy, inspiration and confidence from God within us.
After my reply, Mandar shared more of his mystical experiences, included below:
Mandar wrote:
"In today’s meditation, I was able to get into the deeper sense fairly quickly. In the beginning stages of color visualization itself I felt the calm and quiet state coming in. I felt movements and vibrations in my body especially in the neck area. I also felt my heart- beats if and when I focused on the heart area. I tried the color visualization as color being poured over the top of my head. I think this was much easier than imagining changes in color of the body as practised before. Initially, I had difficulty in clear visualization of the brighter shades (this was more so with the red color). Lighter shades imagined during exhalation were rather easy today. I also felt that my breath had become slower and longer as the process progressed. I took my time and made transition into next pair only after the pair I am working on took some form of perfection. Here I was focusing of whether I was able to see the right color and if I saw my whole body or semblance of it with the breath inhalation and exhalation. After I reached the last pair of white and transparent, I was already feeling the state of inner sense. At this stage I began the atma dharana. I said “Aham Bramhasmi” and felt really grateful for the state I was in. I thought that I had to keep on moving from one action to the next to keep the state from going away. I realized soon that there was no need for any action at that point. I decided to just be there and kept saying “Aham Brahmasmi/I am Brahma”. This I did for what seemed to be a few minutes. All this while, I was feeling the movement of my neck and some vibrations there. I said this is the inner self and kept experiencing it. At some stage I visualized light pouring in from the top and felt that the state was easy to visualize. This I must have done for a few more minutes. I felt that half an hour was over some time back and I was still locked in. The curiosity of what comes next just got me to be fixated in the experience. I tried to feel my fingers and just relaxed where I was and gradually came out. I opened my eyes and was happy that another session of meditation was fulfilling, I think even more so. Yesterday, I was unsure if I would be able to replicate my experience and today, I realized that I was more than able to do it. In today’s session, I also had very few distractions right from the start."
Thanks to Mandar for sharing.
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