Acharya Mahaprajna
Light and colour profoundly affect the health and behaviour of living beings. Importance of sunlight to the vegetable kingdom is universally accepted. Ancient as well as modern science have been keenly interested in the studies of the effect of different colours on the physical, mental and emotional states and behavioural patterns of human beings as well as other animals. Scientists also believe that colours profoundly influence our entire life. Today psychologists and scientists have discovered that colour is the most important of the environmental factors, which affects the conscious, subconscious and unconscious minds of a person. Colour profoundly affects our entire personality.
Alexander Schauss, Director of the American Institute of Biosocial Research, believes that electromagnetic energy of colour interacts in some still unknown way with the pituitary and pineal glands, and the hypothalamus, deep in the brain. These organs regulate the endocrine system which controls many basic body functions and emotional responses such as aggression, fear etc.
Minute amounts of electromagnetic energy from light affect one or more of the neurotransmitters - chemical messengers that carry message from nerve to nerve and from nerve to muscle. Experiments have also provided evidence that light striking the retina influences the pineal gland's synthesis of melatonin, a hormone that has been found to help determine the body's output of serotonin, a neurotransmitter. [1]
[1] Adapted from an article by Lindsey Gruson, published in Times of India, Sundav. November 28, 1982
