Colours

Colours

COLOUR GREEN

Green is not a property of grass, it is not stored in the grass. What is really there are photons bouncing off surfaces. It is your brain that turns those waves into colour. A dog would see that same field in yellow and grey; a bee might see ultraviolet streaks you will never perceive.

The green is not out there; it is something that your consciousness invents. This is not only true for colour, but also for time, which is the ticking sensation of moments passing, that vanish in a dream, that stretch infinitely in a moment of fear; the future you fear, the past you regret, even the now you cling to, nothing of this exists without your awareness shaping it.

And the self that you having these thoughts watching this video trying to make sense of it, that sense of identity, of continuity, of ‘I am’ it is a story that your brain writes, edits and rewrites with every- heartbeat. You likely never question these things, most of us don’t, we assume colour is objective, time is linear and the self is solid, but none of that is true.

We experience colour, time and self that only exists because we are conscious. Neuroscientists have said so for decades but knowing the theory and seeing the truth are two different things. This is about waking up to the strange truth which is out there that this is beyond reality, a space where perception and mystery collide. You walk through the forest at sunset, with all the colours, it all feels real but none of those colours exist without your perception, they enter your eyes as a vibration, a wave moving through space, the green is just light with a wavelength of about 530 nano meter but green itself, that is something the brain paints upon the world.

This is biology, when the light waves hit the retina, they activate the brain interprets them, copies them, fills in what it expects to see, what makes the most sense given context memory and light conditions, colour is never just receives, it is predicts and the predictions vary wildly. A dog would see fewer colours, their world is yellow, brown muted, a bee would see ultraviolet patterns hidden in flowers. Colour is a translation, and every species speaks a different dialogue. Even within our own kind perception wavers.

The brain filters light not for truth but for function. From an evolutionary perspective you do not need to see the world accurately, you need to see it in a way that helps you survive, find food, avoid danger, recognise patterns. Colour is part of that system, a tool, a useful lie, and yet we live by it, we fall in love with eyes that shimmer green, we choose foods by colour, we signal danger with red, calm, with blue, freshness with green, these shape our choices beliefs and identities. This does not make colour meaningless, it makes it more precious, like a dream we all agree to share even though we never quite see it the same way. The senses show simplified representations, not reality itself.

Colour is one of the clearest examples, remember that what you are seeing is not the world, it is a version of the world your consciousness is creating for you moment by moment

Time:

You close your eyes and an hour goes by, you are in an accident and your life plays out in slow motion. Time bends, not just in dreams, but in the waking world too. It moves fast, then slow, then not at all, but the clock on the wall never changes pace, so what is real, the numbers on the dial ticking forward or the stretch and squeeze of the living experience.