To clairvoyant sight one of the principal features of an emotional body consists of the colours, which are constantly playing through it. These colours correspond to and are the expression in emotional matter, of feelings, passions and emotions. All known colours and many, which are at present unknown to us, exist upon each of the higher planes of nature. As we rise from one stage to another, they become more delicate and more luminous, so that they may be described as higher octaves of colour. As it is not possible to portray these octaves physically on paper, the facts just stated, should be borne in mind when considering the coloured illustrations of the emotional body presented here.
The following is a description of the principal colours and the emotions by which they are expressed:—
Black: in thick clouds: hatred and malice.
Red: deep red flashes, usually on a black ground: anger.
A scarlet cloud: irritability.
Brilliant scarlet: on the ordinary background of the aura: ” noble indignation”.
Lurid red: unmistakable, though not easy to describe: sensuality.
Brown-grey: dull, hard brown-grey: Selfishness: one of the commonest colours in the emotional body.
Brown-red: dull, almost rust-colour: avarice, usually arranged in parallel bars across the emotional body.
Greenish-brown: lit up by deep red or scarlet flashes: jealousy. In the case of an ordinary person, there is usually much of this colour present when they are “in love”.
Grey: heavy, leaden: depression. Like the brown-red of avarice, arranged in parallel lines, conveying the impression of a cage.
Grey, livid: a hideous and frightful hue: fear.
Crimson: dull and heavy: selfish love.
Rose-colour: unselfish love. When exceptionally brilliant, tinged with lilac: spiritual love for humanity.
Orange: pride or ambition. Often found with irritability.
Yellow: intellect: varies from a deep and dull tint, through brilliant gold, to clear and luminous lemon or primrose yellow. Dull yellow ochre implies the direction of faculty to selfish purposes: clear yellowish pigment indicates a distinctly higher type; primrose yellow denotes intellect devoted to spiritual ends; gold indicates pure intellect applied to philosophy or mathematics.
Green: in general, varies greatly in its significance, and needs study to be interpreted correctly: mostly it indicates adaptability. Grey-green, slimy in appearance: deceit and cunning. Emerald green: versatility, ingenuity and resourcefulness applied unselfishly. Pale, luminous blue-green: deep sympathy and compassion, with the power of perfect adaptability, which only they can give. Bright apple-green seems always to accompany strong vitality.
Blue: dark and clear: religious feeling. It is liable to be tinted by many other qualities, thus becoming any shade from indigo or a rich deep violet to muddy grey-blue. Light-blue, such as ultramarine or cobalt: devotion to a noble spiritual ideal. A tint of violet indicates a mixture of affection and devotion. Luminous lilac-blue, usually accompanied by sparkling golden stars: the higher spirituality, with lofty spiritual aspirations.
Ultra-violet: higher and purer developments of psychic faculties.
Ultra-red: lower psychic faculties of one who dabbles in evil and selfish forms of magic.
That is a lot to take in at one go, but if you could see an emotional aura, you would be able to relate colours to emotions. In such a manner, you would be able to read a person like a book. Joy shows itself in a general brightening and radiancy of both mental and emotional bodies and a peculiar rippling of the surface of the body. Cheerfulness shows itself in a modified bubbling form of this and also in a steady serenity. Surprise is shown by a sharp constriction of the mental body, usually communicated to both the emotional and physical bodies, accompanied by an increased glow of the band of affection if the surprise is a pleasant one and by an increase of brown and grey if the surprise is an unpleasant one. The constriction often causes unpleasant feelings, affecting the solar plexus, resulting in sickness, and sometimes the heart centre, causing palpitation and even death.
It should be understood that as human emotions are hardly ever unmixed, these colours are seldom perfectly pure, but more usually mixtures. Thus the purity of many colours is dimmed by the hard brown-grey of selfishness, or tinged with the deep orange of pride. In reading the full meaning of colours, other points have also to be taken into consideration: For example, the general brilliance of the emotional body: the comparative definition of or undefined nature of its outline and the relative brightness of the different centres of force.
The yellow of intellect, the rose of affection and the blue of devotion are always found in the upper part of the emotional body: the colours of selfishness, avarice, deceit and hatred are in the lower part: the mass of sensual feeling floats usually between the two.
From this, it follows that in the undeveloped person, the lower portion of the ovoid tends to be larger than the upper, so that the emotional body has the appearance of an egg with, the small end uppermost. In the more developed person, the reverse is the case, with the small end of the egg pointing downwards. The tendency always is for the symmetry of the ovoid to re-assert itself by degrees so that such appearances are only temporary.
Each quality, expressed as a colour, has its special type of emotional matter, and the average position of these colours depends upon the specific gravity of the respective grades of matter. The general principle is that evil or selfish qualities express themselves in the comparatively slow vibrations of coarser matter, while good and unselfish qualities play through finer matter. This being the case, fortunately for us, good emotions persist even longer than evil ones, the effect of a feeling of strong love or devotion remaining in the emotional body long after the occasion that caused it has been forgotten.
It is possible, though unusual, to have two rates of vibrations going on strongly in the emotional body at the same time, e.g., love and anger. The after-effects will go on side by side, but one at a very much higher level than the other and therefore persisting longer. High unselfish affection and devotion belong to the highest molecular emotional subplane (48:2) and these reflect themselves in the corresponding matter of the mental plane. They thus touch the causal (higher mental) body, not the lower mental. This is an important point of which we should take special note. The monad, focused in the causal envelope between incarnations, is only affected by unselfish thoughts. These effects are only registered when the monad is at least subjectively conscious in its causal envelope. This occurs after the (i2) is taken; when the focus relocates from the 48:1 permanent atom to the 47:4 permanent molecule. Lower thoughts are retained within the permanent molecule 47:4. Consequently, in the causal body, there would be gaps, not bad colours, corresponding to the lower feelings and thoughts. Selfishness, for example, would show itself as the absence of affection or sympathy: as soon as selfishness is replaced by its opposite, the gap in the causal body would be filled up. An intensification of the coarse colours of the emotional body, representing base emotions, whilst finding no direct expression in the causal body, nevertheless tends somewhat to dim the luminosity of the colours representing the opposite virtues in the causal body.
To realise the appearance of the emotional body, it must be borne in mind that the particles of which it is composed are always in rapid motion. In the vast majority of cases, the clouds of colour melt into one another and are all the while rolling over one another, appearing and disappearing as they roll, the surface of the luminous mist resembling the surface of violently boiling water. The various colours, therefore, don’t retain the same positions, though there is a normal position towards which they tend to return.
Referring to the book, Man Visible and Invisible, by C. W. Leadbeater, humanity can be roughly divided into three categories. The undeveloped person, the average person and the developed person. The characteristics of their emotional bodies may be delineated as follows:
The Undeveloped Type. — A very large proportion of sensuality, deceit, selfishness and greed are conspicuous: fierce anger is implied by smears and blots of dull scarlet: very little affection appears and such intellect and religious feeling that exist are of the lowest possible kind. The outline is irregular and the colours are blurred, thick and heavy. The whole body is ill-regulated, confused and uncontrolled.
The Average Type.—Sensuality appears much less though is still prominent: selfishness is also prominent and there is some capability of deceit for personal ends, though the green is beginning to divide into two distinct qualities, showing that cunning is gradually becoming adaptable. Anger is still marked: affection, intellect and devotion are more prominent and of a higher quality. The colours as a whole are more clearly defined and distinctly brighter, though none of them are perfectly clear. The outline of the body is more defined and regular.
The Developed Type.— Undesirable qualities have almost entirely disappeared: across the top of the body, there is a strip of lilac, indicating spiritual aspiration: above and enveloping the head there is a cloud of the brilliant yellow of intellect: below that there is a broad belt of the blue of devotion: then across the trunk there is a still wider belt of the rose of affection, and in the lower part of the body a large amount of the green of adaptability and sympathy finds its place. The colours are bright, and luminous, in clearly marked bands, the outline is well defined, and the whole emotional body conveys the impression of being orderly and under perfect control.
Although examining the mental body at present, it should be mentioned that as a person develops, their emotional body begins to resemble their mental body, until it becomes little more than a reflection of it in the grosser matter of the emotional plane. This, of course, indicates that the person has their desires thoroughly under the control of the mind and is no longer apt to be swept away by surges of emotion. Such a person will no doubt be subject to occasional irritability and undesirable cravings of various sorts, but they know enough now to repress these lower manifestations and not to yield to them.
At a still later stage, the mental body itself becomes a reflection of the causal body, since the person now learns to follow solely the promptings of what is called the higher self, which in our case is the urgings of our solar devas. Now we are guided almost exclusively by them, or at least should be.
The mental envelope and the emotional envelope of an Arhat (46-Self), would have very little characteristic colour of its own. There would be no elemental matter in these envelopes. Elementals stop at the causal level. To view the mental and emotional envelopes of an arhat would be to see a reproduction of causal matter, as much as the lower envelopes could express it. The colours would have an iridescence; a sort of opalescent, mother-of-pearl effect, which is far beyond either description or representation.
On that uplifting note, let’s leave it there for today and finish off our look at the topic of colours found in our envelopes of incarnation, with special reference to our emotional body.