By Raymond Buckland

Colors have been attributed with various healing properties. But colors can also be used for psychic development. Here are some simple exercises to use colors to awaken your psychic powers

There are many people who have extrasensory perceptions (ESP). People who know that the telephone is going to ring before it actually does, know who is on the line before they even pick up the receiver. They seem to have natural psychic powers.

It is just that in some people it is an inherent ability while in others it has to be drawn out. There are many ways to enhance psychic powers. Some of these use colors for psychic development.

Here, we will discuss some of them which involve various aspects of ESP including clairvoyance (clear seeing), clairaudience (clear hearing), clairsentience (clear sensing), psychokinesis (moving objects without physical contact) and other allied practices.

First exercise

Take seven pieces of any material, be it cloth, silk, felt, construction paper or cardboard. Each should be in one of the seven colors of the prism, and of the same size. Now sit quietly and begin with breathing exercises. Correct breathing is a significant part of psychic development.

Sit at a table with the colored items spread before you, close your eyes and shuffle them. Then, select one color and with your eyes closed, hold it between your hands, palm to palm. Concentrate on the material and visualise (not guess) the colour.

Does it feel warm or cool? Do your palms or fingers tingle? Hold it against your forehead and cheek. Any different reaction? When you feel you know the color, open your eyes and check. If you are wrong, do not worry.

Make a note of your choice. Take a sheet of paper and draw three columns. Column one is for 'color'. Write the actual color you find yourself holding. Column two is headed 'sense'.

In that column, write the color you thought you held. Column three is 'sensations'. Write down your reactions here. The chart below shows how this is to be done.

COLOR SENSATION CHART

For example, you may feel a color cool and vaguely unpleasant. Write down anything you feel even if it does not seem necessarily applicable to a color. Put the previous color back with the rest and again close your eyes and shuffle them. Go through the same procedure for at least 10 minutes and then check your results.

Do not be disappointed if you do not judge the right color. A close is as good as correct (e.g., if the color was red and you thought it was orange). Examine the sensations. The red end of the color scale is the hot end; the blue is the cold. Red will stimulate, while blue will calm.

Let us examine the results of a test conducted on school-going children in England. They were shown fabrics of different colors and asked to write down their feelings about these colors. This was the result:

Red: Danger, anger, fire, love, thirst, meanness, hate

Orange: Woods, autumn, warmth, kindness, fire

Yellow: Summer, sleep, gladness, light, Easter, sickness

Green: Cool, nice, flowers, ocean, picnic, reading, snakes

Blue: Water, cool, laziness, home, frost, lonely

Indigo: Soft, gentle, sweet, prayers

Violet: Sadness, church, love, warmth

From this list you may find certain parallels with your own perception. It is interesting to observe one or two seeming contradictions in the list. For example, red stimulates both love and hate; yellow both gladness and sickness.

Traditional associations

In the metaphysical world, colors have certain traditional associations. It is useful to know these associations for psychic development. These associations are:

Red: Strength, health, vigour, sexual love, danger, charity

Orange: Encouragement, adaptability, stimulation, attraction, plenty, kindness

Yellow: Persuasion, charm, confidence, jealousy, joy, comfort

Green: Finance, fertility, luck, energy, charity, growth

Blue: Tranquillity, understanding, patience, health, truth, devotion, sincerity

Indigo: Changeability, impulsiveness, depression, ambition, dignity

Violet: Tension, power, sadness, piety, sentimentality

Second exercise

The transitional period between waking and sleeping is the 'hypnogogic' state; between sleeping and waking is the 'hypnopompic' state. Either of these states is excellent for psychic experimentation.

Take seven colored pieces of material and place each in a separate window envelope, properly sealed. With the windows facing down, mix them up. Before you go to bed, pick one envelope randomly, and place it under your pillow.

As you are on the point of falling asleep, concentrate your thoughts on the envelope under the pillow, trying to sense the color inside. There is a simple way to do this. Lie on your back with your arms on your sides, raise one hand and forearm (bent at the elbow) straight up in the air.

As you begin to fall asleep your hand and arm will fall back across you, waking you again. At that moment, try to sense the color beneath your pillow. Write it down (however roughly and quickly), then go to sleep.

As soon as you wake up in the morning, again write down the color you sense, along with any sensations, thoughts or feelings associated with it. The color you sense in the hypnopompic state may well be different from what you sense in the hypnogogic state.

Do not worry. List them both. You will need three headings on your recording sheet: 'color' (as seen through the envelope's window in the morning); 'hypnogogic' (falling asleep sensation); and 'hynopompic' (awakening sensation). Put the envelope back with the others and mix them.

Repeat the experiment the next night, and for a total of 21 nights. From this, as well as seeing how well you are able to pick up the colors, you will know which is the better time for you to do your psychic work-evening or morning.

Third exercise

A simple, yet effective ESP test can be done using 12 playing cards. From a deck of regular playing cards take out the eight, nine and ten of clubs; eight, nine and ten of spades; eight, nine and ten of hearts; and the eight, nine and ten of diamonds (these are the 12 cards bearing the largest number of pips-most useful for differentiating between red and black, which you are going to do).

Shuffle these 12 cards and then put them, face down, in a row on the table in front of you. Now, going from left to right, try to sense whether each card is red or black. Do not concern yourself with the actual suit or the value.

You may find it helpful to gently lay your fingertips on the back of each card or, perhaps, to hold the palm of your hand over it. Write down your guesses (senses).

Then turn the cards over and see how correct you are. Shuffle the cards and repeat the experiment. Always work from left to right.

Do it 10 times, keeping score of your results. Since there are only two possible answers to each guess, expect an average of six correct each run, for chance.

If chance alone is at work, you will have approximately 60 correct in 10 sessions. If, however, you find you have considerably more than 60 correct (or considerably less), then ESP is at work.

For example, if you have 73 correct, the odds are 20 to one against chance; 78 correct and the odds are 100 to one against chance. Of course, the more times you go through this exercise, the more accurate a picture you will get. Here are the odds for various run throughs:

Fourth exercise

Radiesthesia, the use of a pendulum for metaphysical purposes, can be extremely effective. Try this simple exercise.

Cut a strip of white paper or cardboard, approximately 12 inches long and one inch wide.

Color one end of the strip red, about two inches of it will do, and the other end blue.

A two-inch section in the centre should be colored yellow. If you have a pendulum, it is fine. If not, making one is easy. Virtually any weight at the end of a string will do. A favourite is to loop a length of silk ribbon through a ring.

Even a needle at the end of a thread will do. A neck pendant on a fine chain is another possibility. The length of the thread/string/chain should be 7-10 inches.

Hold the chain between the thumb and the forefinger in such a way that, with the elbow resting on the table, the pendulum is suspended just above the table's surface.

(Some radiesthesiatists suggest keeping the arm in the air, with the elbow off the table. Resting the elbow is certainly less tiring.)

Use the right hand if right-handed, the left if left-handed. Hold the pendulum so that it is suspended over the centre of the red section of your strip of paper as it lies on the table. Hold the chain still; do not consciously swing the pendulum. Do not grip it too tightly.

Now, concentrate your thoughts on the color red. See a ball of red light at the end of the strip of paper. See it encompassing the pendulum.

You will soon notice that the pendulum is starting to swing. It will swing more and more strongly, moving in a circle, clockwise about the red area.

When it is swinging well, move your arm across so that the pendulum is now suspended over the blue end. Now, try to see a blue ball of light encompassing the pendulum. You will probably be surprised to find that the pendulum will slow, stop, and start to swing again in the opposite, counterclockwise direction.

As often as you change ends, and color concentrations, so will the pendulum change directions. If you stop it and then hold it over the centre, and imagine yellow, it will swing backward and forward along the line of the strip of paper.

You will get the same reactions from the pendulum if, instead of simply imagining the appropriate colors, you concentrate your thoughts on those things that are associated with the colors (see traditional associations).

Over red, think of strength, health and vigour. Over blue, think of tranquillity, understanding, and devotion. Over yellow, envision attraction, charm and confidence.

Fifth exercise

Psychokinesis (PK) is the movement of material objects without physical contact. To demonstrate the pressures applied in PK, we can perform a simple exercise using an animate object… a person.

You need a minimum of three persons for this exercise. On one side of the room sits a person (or group) we will call A. On the other side of the room sits another person (or group) we call B. A toss of coin decides which person or group will be red or blue.

For the first run, let us say that A is red and B is blue. Now, bring in the person who has been outside while the coin was tossed. Have him or her stand in the centre of the room, at ease, with the legs slightly apart. Let us call this person X.

Groups A and B must now concentrate their thoughts on their respective colors. With eyes closed, they should see themselves surrounded by red or blue light and should see it extending out to touch X.

If there are several people, so that you have a group rather than individuals, then let one or two of each group concentrate on the traditional associations, rather than on the actual color. What will (or should) happen now is that X will find him/herself being drawn towards the red group in this first run, A-and repelled by the blue group.

X probably becomes aware of feelings of warmth and love coming from the red group; coldness from the blue. Do this experiment a number of times, flipping a coin each time to determine who will be red or blue. You will find that X will be far more frequently drawn to red than to blue. Question X after each run and record the reactions.

Sixth exercise

A simple exercise can be done using a cork ball. Tie a length of thread to a pin and then push the pin into the cork ball. Hang the ball so that it is free on all sides. Point your forefinger at the suspended ball, as close as you can without actually touching it, and concentrate your thoughts on the color blue.

Feel the blue all about you; see it around and even within your body. Direct it down your arm and out of your finger. As you direct out the blue, you should see the cork ball move away from your finger. Concentrate on red, and the cork ball will swing towards you, actually hitting the tip of your finger. Experiment with other colors.

Seventh exercise

Clairaudience is the ability to hear psychically. It may be accompanied by clairvoyance, but not necessarily so. How do we hear colour? Through music. Color and music share common terms. We speak of tone, pitch, intensity and volume, for both arts.

Chromatic is another common word. There is a psychological phenomenon whereby certain people subconsciously see colors in sounds. This is known as color synesthesia.

Color can even be brought about by sound. In Los Angeles Times (December 3, 1948) there was an Associated Press report on a machine known as Auroratone, invented by an Englishman named Cecil Stokes. Musical vibrations were registered on a sensitised emulsion and photographed by a movie camera.

A different pattern of color was created in the emulsion by each individual note. When projected, accompanied by the music, the result was a glorious series of color patterns subtly changing with the mood of the music. More recently, a color organ has been developed by Thomas Douglas Jones.

The Chromaton produces coloured light as it plays. Sir Issac Newton related colours to the diatonic scale: C = red; D = orange; E = green; G = blue; A = indigo; B = violet.

Slow music is generally associated with the blue end of the scale, and fast music with the red end. An interesting exercise of clairaudience can be performed using a large conch shell. We are all familiar with sounds of the sea that can be heard by holding such a shell close to the ear.

Sit comfortably, back straight after doing some breathing exercises, and hold the shell to your ear. You will first hear the familiar rushing sound but, if you concentrate, you may become aware of a subtle musical background.

Concentrate and try to bring it out. In clairaudience a shell is often used by a developing medium to spark the initial contact and to focus the voice(s) being heard. If you can also pick up a musical accompaniment, as it were, then you can glean additional, useful information based on the tempo and pitch of the music, together with any repeated, emphasised, individual notes.

This is not easy to do. You might take heart from the fact that some years ago, F. Karwoski and Henry S. Odbert conducted a study with 148 people, testing color response to music. Of these, 60 per cent did get a response of some kind (40 per cent of these actually saw colors).

If you get that sort of response then, again refer to the traditional associations. These are some simple exercises in psychic development associated with colour. Color can be a useful tool in enhancing our psychic faculties.

Always go through the breathing exercises before any experiment. In fact, it certainly will not hurt you to do a complete color meditation each time! And remember…practice makes perfect.