The Wholeness of Colour
The eye is the window to the soul
The old saying 'The eye is the window to the soul' is difficult to grasp when many current psychological schools approach human nature as a sum of parts rather than a whole. The notion of soul can be understood through a conscious use of colour. This sense of the whole human being can be explored and experienced through studies of the rainbow.
Sounds like a throwback to hippydom of the '60s? If we look at what aspects of human nature were being expressed during that time, rainbow studies give insight into the spectrum of human nature from a soul perspective. People were looking for a more soulful expression of humanity. If, as Victor Frankl and Carl Jung, two of the most respected psychologists and philosophers of the early twentieth century suggested, modern people are in search of their souls, they can be found in consciously experiencing colour.
The rainbow is the archetypal symbol of wholeness, because it encompasses the entire spectrum, yet rarely do we experience how the rainbow in its wholeness comes into being. If we can experience the birth of a rainbow in nature, its mysterious creation between light and darkness, a connection is felt between our own inner life of colour and that of the life of colour in nature. Colour is a language of the soul, living and breathing between light and darkness, such as we experience between dawn and dusk, and between the seasons throughout the year.
Experience how a rainbow is created with a prism. Hold the prism between thumb and forefinger on either end. Pivot the prism and look through one face to the other side. Look around the room, through windows, at the edges of contrasting light and dark objects, such as the edges of tables and the surrounding space, books placed on a table, the black and white text in a book, or a light shirt against a dark coat. Find the rainbow and study closely how it is created at the boundaries between light and darkness.
The eye desires wholeness
The eye desires wholeness through seeking balance between light and darkness. We know this by the way colour is created by a process in the rods and cones of the retina, which are made up of three complementary pairs of receptors. Colour designers build these basic psychophysiological principles of colour into images to make colour impact upon the viewers.
The need for contrast and difference
Recent research has shown that the contrast in light and darkness is as important in human functioning as much as any particular hue. Any colour can be boring, even it is bright, because it is the contrast which activates the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. A sterile boring beige or white-on-white environment does not create a vital and dynamic atmosphere but may be great to use in a room to retreat from an intense and active area.
Colour Balance in your home
Colour relationships in your home are like human relationships: opposites attract. Complementarity is a basic principle in colour composition reflecting the opponency processes of human vision operating in the rods and cones of the retina. Whatever your colour preferences, make them work best by juxtaposing complementary, analogous or split complementary colours from around the colour wheel.