Color Healing Therapy

by Lily Cornford

When the subject of color healing is considered, we are touching upon a vast subject upon which a library of books could be written.  What is color? This lecture may act as a basis from which you can continue to carry out more research and uncover more knowledge for yourselves concerning color. We are told by the Tibetan, color is the language of an initiate. And so, therefore, if we are going to become initiates, ultimately, we’ve got to understand about color. 

Color is light, sound, heat, magnetism--they are all one and the same energy as was proved by Michael Faraday in 1845 by polarized light experiments. They differ only in frequency of vibration and medium of conduction. For a proper understanding of healing by color it is necessary to understand color and what it is;  it is not static, it is a live, vibrating energy;  it is light at varying rates of vibration.

And since color is light, in order for us to perceive it, there must be a light source.  In addition, however, there must be a receiving instrument, the eye, and also a brain, to interpret the signals given.  While other light sources than daylight exist, the colors in which we are interested are those produced by light emitting a continuous spectrum. The one to which we are all accustomed throughout our lives is sunlight, daylight. When thinking of colors as seen in daylight, one must be careful to obtain the correct color. For instance, a color when seen when the light force is a reflection, is different from the color as seen from a direct light source. How many of you ladies have gone into a material shop and bought a color with which you’ve been absolutely entranced, only to take it out into the daylight and you wish you’d never seen it! This is what I’m trying to explain.

Another point to note is that color is three dimensional—there is hue (the kind of color, whether it is blue, green, orange), saturation (the difference between a degree of colorfulness), and there is brightness and this is the most difficult quality to understand. One can have two objects which are the same hue and saturation, and yet they are a different color because their brightness is different. Now returning to our light source, daylight, it must be emphasized that to see color the whole series of source, eye, and brain relationships must be properly functioning. One of the questions that often occurs is related to the blind. Blind people have such a fine sense of feeling that they feel color. I had two very wonderful blind friends and they taught me an awful lot. And I don’t know whether you have them here or not, but in England we have blind shops, blind work rooms, where the women weave beautiful tablecloths and napkins.  In the factory they have one sighted person and these blind workers know immediately when they have woven a wrong color by the feel of its texture.

This question of color and its nature is very important for a full understanding of color healing. It is a powerful energy and I have no hesitation in naming color as one of the most powerful and all-embracing energies in existence. It is with us always, in every life. It has a most profound effect upon our health, our strength, and our emotions. It heals, but equally it can destroy. Its vital quality should always be born in mind, also its variations. There are 49 shades to every color of the sprectrum and then the Masters tell us that in other worlds there are colors that we cannot even dream about. So it’s an all pervading subject. We live in a wonderful world of color, and particularly at this time of the year when it is spring. I don’t suppose you have a dull winter here, but we do in England. We have gray winters. And when spring first comes and you see the little tiny flowers popping out, it’s a great joy because then you know spring is coming and color is here.

The astral body of man is a vehicle to clairvoyant sight, not unlike the physical body, but it is surrounded by an aura of flashing colors composed of matter of an order of fineness higher than that of the physical body in which feelings, desire, passions and emotions are expressed.  The astral body acts as a bridge or a medium of transmission between the physical brain and the mind.  The latter operates in a still higher vehicle, the mental vehicle.

Now I am going to shock you all and that will be lovely.  To clairvoyant sight, one of the principle features of the astral body consists of the colors that are constantly playing through it.  Now these colors respond and are an expression in the astral matter of feelings, passions and emotions. We’re not all as bright and clear as we think we are, you know.  And here I have a list of the colors that you and I radiate when we are allowing these various desires and passions to take hold of us. It’s good that we are not all clairvoyant at the moment!

The first color is black, in thick clouds.  And all of us, it doesn’t matter who we are or who we think we are, radiate this color black when we hate anybody or when we are malicious about anybody. That is the color that we are actually radiating. So when we get in a temper and we say that we hate him, we know exactly what color we’re radiating. And this is truth, this isn’t fallacy. 

Now we come to red—deep red flashes, usually on a black background, mean anger. And we all get angry at times and so we all must radiate this color whether we think we do or not.  Then there is a scarlet color, a scarlet cloud. And that is irritability. And the Master tells us that the worst of all our illnesses is to be irritable.  It is like little gnats. You can cope with the big things but with the little gnats you can’t, you’re flicking them away and they come back again. Then we have a brilliant scarlet on the ordinary background of the aura and that can be noble indignation.  Now I think everybody will have seen this color, it is the brown, dull gray of selfishness—and that is one of the most common colors in the astral body because, dear god, when you look around, there is an awful lot of selfishness about. So when we are selfish, we are radiating this dull, heavy, brown gray.

Then there is another brownish red, a dull, almost rust color and that is avarice. Now we come to another brown, a greenish brown, lit up by deep red or scarlet flashes.  Now do you know what that is?  Jealousy and that is a color that every one of us flash out when we are in love, because when we are in love we all get jealous. So next time you think that you are passionately in love, just watch.

Now every one of you has seen this next color in a person, and it doesn’t take clairvoyance to see it.  This is the heavy, leaden gray of depression. You don’t need anything to see that, it’s there. When people are depressed, there is that color and you can’t avoid it. Then in that category, there is another gray, a hideous and frightful hue.  And you can see this on the television when they are showing us the areas or the countries in the world where there is fear and depression.  Fear is a frightful hue.  

Then we get a crimson, a dull, heavy crimson, and that is selfish love.  But don’t worry, we do radiate some other colors.  We radiate rose color and that is unselfish love.  And when it is particularly brilliant and tinged with a little violet, that is spiritual love for humanity. Next we come to orange and that is pride or ambition and this is necessary.  We’ve all got to have pride and we’ve all got to have ambition but we’ve got to modify them a bit. 

Then we have the yellow of intellect.  Primrose denotes intellect devoted to spiritual ends.  Gold signifies pure intellect, applied to philosophy or mathematics.  Then, of course, we have a lot of greens and blues and there’s not time for us to go through them.  These greens and blues are radiated outward when we indulge in passions and desires.  And we all do this because we are human, we’re not perfect yet, so let’s just be human.  Then we come to the ultra-violet and this denotes the higher developments of the purer psychic faculties. Infrared depicts lower psychic faculties and one who delves into evil or selfish forms of magic.  Joy shows itself in a general radiance, both mental and astral.  These are the colors related to the astral body.

Now let’s see what happens in the mental body, because here again we radiate color.   Where aspirational thought exists, it invariably shows itself in a beautiful, little cap.  This is perhaps why bishops wear the little cap on the side of their heads.  As the aspirant draws near to the gateway of the path, this beautiful little violet circle increases in size and radiance.  In the initiate it is a splendid glowing cap of a most lovely color imaginable.  Now often below that there comes a ring of devotional thought and that is blue, usually rather a narrow ring except in the case of the few whose religion is deep and genuine.  Next to that there may be a much broader zone of affectionate thought which may be any shade of crimson or rose color, according to the type of affection it indicates.  Near the zone of affection, and frequently closely connected to it, there can be found an orange band which can be an expression of pride or ambitious thought.  Again, in intimate relation with pride comes the yellow belt of intellect, commonly divided into two bands, denoting respectively the philosophical and the scientific types of thought. 

I’ve had a naughty thought now coming through because I think if some of the scientists thought that when they were deep in their concentration that they were radiating yellow, they’d all have a fit.  The place of this yellow color varies much in different minds—sometimes it fills the whole of the upper egg, rising above devotion and affection, and in the case of pride it is generally excessive. 

Occupying the middle section of the ovoid is the broad belt devoted to concrete shapes, the part of the mental body from which ordinary thoughtforms issue.  The principle color here is green, often shaded with brown or yellow, according to the disposition of the person.

And as I have just said, there are 49 shades to each one of the seven colors of the spectrum and also not so long ago I found out that our organs were colors.  Here are the colors for some of the organs:  plasma—that is a straw colored fluid; we have red and white corpuscles, the spleen is purple; we have gray and white nerve cells; the pancreas is green-colored; the lungs are a grayish pink and the adrenals are yellow.  And what I thought was most fascinating of all, the thymus gland is a soft rose-pink. You see how color comes through every part of our life, no wonder it is a wonderful, healing potion.

A Californian scientist was quoted as saying that the idea of destroying an object by intensifying its frequency could lead to satellite born weapons tuned to frequencies of concrete and steel which could disintegrate cities.  Just think of that.  One can understand therefore the stomach ulcers, the hypertension, the degenerative diseases of the arteries, the nervous exhaustion and the many other ailments that can be caused or adversely influenced by the noise of our towns and cities.  As an example, a manual on certain aspects of yoga states that the average noise from a motor horn produces the level of 70 decibels from a distance of 10-15 feet away from the source. And it has been established that a noise of 90 decibels causes the amount of blood pumped through the heart to double.  So what must it do when you are sitting in the hotel and listening to the traffic on the highway.  These are things we don’t really understand, and sometimes perhaps we don’t want to understand them. 

In Egypt, India and China color was associated with religious rites and medicines.  Some of the more original and independent researchers have started rediscovering some of the originally known facts.  For example, it has been found that color significantly influences sexual activity.  Violet light increases the activity of the female glands, whereas red light stimulates the male reproductive organs.  Further, under red light, muscular tension increases from a normal level of 23 units to 42 units.  In orange light, tension increases to 35 units, yellow produces 30 units, green 29, and blue 24.  And the effect of color on the human mind is just as pronounced.  It was found that when a suicide bridge, long painted black, was changed to green, the death leaps decreased by one third.  This is all scientific knowledge.  Further, tests show that under a red light, a person will over-estimate the weight of objects whilst under green light objects will appear to be lighter. 

I have to close now.  But you can understand why I wanted to share with you this idea that color is not a fallacy and that it is part of our lives.  And when you can stand and visualize color coming through your hands, through your fingertips, through the palms of your hands and going into a human body and changing the rate of vibration of that body, you can see what a wonderful healing that can be produced by color.

Lily Cornford was the founder and director of the Maitreya School of Healing in London, England. Lily once said that by the age of 17 she knew that this lifetime was to be dedicated to a life of service.  She worked as an accountant until her retirement at the age of 65, when she embarked upon a full-time healing career and she never looked back.  She had tremendous energy and well into her eighties (until her death), she worked long hours in her healing work.  Lily has investigated many different aspects of healing but her primary area of interest was in direct, color healing—using her mind and her heart and her own hands directly with people.  This talk was given at the Seven Ray Institute/University of the Seven Rays Conference in 1989, in Mesa, Arizona.