Chi Energy and Seeing True Colors
How the brain determines color, not the eye
Colors play an interesting role in Chi Cultivation, so much so that a myriad of terms and theories around the importance of and integration with specific colors and color patterns has woven its way into the exotic terminologies of chi energy over the centuries. Sadly, although their intentions were good, the originators of heretofore chi-color theories did not benefit from nor have access to the information produced by 21st century scientists. Fortunately, we do.
As demonstrated in the article “Energy Healing & Wavelengths from the Sky”, colors are components of the spectrum of [white] of light. What is not widely known that although the eye is the sensory mechanism that registers the electromagnetic energy that is light, it is the brain that assigns light its corresponding color value: the brain determines color, not the eye.
Researchers from The University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University demonstrated that an object’s color and shape are represented in different parts of the brain. When playing catch, for example, the brain recognizes and assigns a value for the shape, color, and velocity of the object more commonly referred to as a baseball. In the aptly titled article “Study Shows That It Is Our Brains, Not Eyes, That See Color”, Gene Ostrovsky quotes Shevell, the Eliakim Hastings Moore Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology and Ophthalmology & Visual Science as saying:
“The knitting together, or what can be called ‘neural gluing,’ of all those different features so we see a unified object is a complex function done by the brain. Our research focused on how the brain does that.”
Through a technique called binocular rivalry, the researchers from The University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University were able to trick the brain by presenting a different image to each eye, thus scrambling the communication between the eyes. Instead of both eyes seeing in unison, the eyes were sending divergent and competing signals, and caused the brain to show its true colors [pun intended].
According to Shevell:
“The brain has difficulty integrating the two eyes’ incompatible signals. When the signals from the two eyes are different enough, the brain resolves the conflicting information by suppressing the information from one of the eyes. We exploited this feature of the brain with a method that caused the shape from one eye to be suppressed but not its color.”
In the article “Chakra Healing Energy & Colors…”, the importance of the correlation between chi training and that it is the brain that interprets/assigns color is made readily apparent. As noted, the colors associated with the Northern Lights are a direct resultant of interaction between the electromagnetic field and various ions/charged particles available for consumption; “blue”, for example, is a result of large amounts of a charged form of nitrogen in the atmosphere.
Minerals play a very important role in the well-being of the human body, each mineral and combination thereof having key roles and attributes. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology lists 22 minerals in the composition of the human body; the Blood Index Organization lists 44. Often, the sources for these minerals come from the foods we consume. All this is to say that, the brain uses the minerals in our own bodies to constantly assign colors to our everyday world. Again, the “blue” we see in the Northern Lights is a result of large amounts of a charged form of nitrogen in the atmosphere; in the process of interpreting the frequency of the electromagnetic signal communicated by our eyes, the quantum computer that is our brain “burns” the same minerals and combinations thereof to effectively match the signal, and provide us with a resulting color; this is why red is red, and not blue.
[The human body generates electromagnetic energy and uses electricity to communicate via its nerve system. How is this any different than the macrocosm we observe in nature?]
As noted in the opening statement, colors do in fact play an interesting role in chi development. We caution the practitioner to use them wisely – extreme techniques are taxing enough on the body in and of themselves. Constantly engaging in and drawing upon the usage of colors for extreme techniques depletes the body and will require addition [and mindful] mineral management and upkeep. Moderation is often the secret…
V/r
Sifu Don Brown [certified instructor at the School of Chi Energy]
To learn more about the Science behind Chi Energy