Coloration of Mentality

One of the most interesting points in Jainism, at least as it seems to me, is the concept of Leśyā which, like so many other points in Jainism, has no direct philosophical value but culturally is worthy of study. In brief words, Leśyās are the codes for coloration of the mental states.

If one asks me why I am interested in this coloration, I cannot say any thing but this fact that we can find the same attitude to visualization of soul, mind or so-called aura, through colors, in the other traditions and disciplines of spiritualism which apparently have no philological relationship with Jainism.

In spite of the main idea which assigns colors to souls, it may be useful if we consider technical similarities among their methods. It may urge us to search a common historical synapse among them or more bravely, a common scientific or psychological fact as their common root, though the latter idea may be charged for a pseudoscientific approach.

Considering the former idea, we should be aware that in the spiritual traditions which believe in immateriality of soul and spiritual entities, it’s difficult to justify how the spiritual states may be visualized through the colors, but in Jainism in which every thing, some how is material (in the terms of tempo-spatiality and atomism), that’s much easier to claim for visibility of the mental effects, especially while the variety of mental levels is determined by involution of material factors (karma pudgala) rather than pure spiritual factors (absolute jiva). Consequently, if historical stream of ideas flows from natural to unnatural and from easy-justification to complicated-justification, it will not be unreasonable if we provide a possibility for a hypothetical proclaim for the Jain theory of Leśyā as the philological root for the counterpart theory in the more abstract spiritual systems.

The aim of this paper is to show how the Jain theory of Leśyā and the other methods of coloration of mentality are similar or dissimilar. But first I would like to explain the nature and source of Leśyās.


Nature and Source of Leśyās

It’s debatable whether in Jainism by Leśyās, they mean only the color of the combination of the soul and karmas or that’s a six-fold classification of mental attitudes regarding Jain moral ideals. Even it’s debatable whether Leśyā is associated directly with emotion or activity or karma. If we suppose the idea of Leśyā, primarily and factually concerns the coloration of soul, as the only visible substance is pudgala[1], the Leśyās should be supposed to be directly a production of karma and therefore, the color of Leśyās, in fact, should be supposed to be the color of karmas. However, probably in order to extinguish this argument, the Jains distinguish between two kinds of Leśyās: first, the emotion or mental dispositional attitude which is called as Bhāva-Leśyā and second the very coler cause by this attitude which is called as Dravya-Leśyā.

Dravya-Leśyās and accordingly Bhāva-Leśyās are of six classes which I will display them and their correspondence in the following table[2]:


1
kŗşņa
black
Violence and disorder in personality
2
nīla
blue
Mental evil
3
kāpota
grey
Vocal and actual evil
4
tejas
yellow
Vocal and actual righteousness
5
padma
lotus-pink / golden red
Mental righteousness
6
śukla
white
Non-violence and tranquility in personality

There are two famous narrative similes in the Jain literature showing the type of mental attitude of the people under each Leśyā. The remarkable point is that both the similes are oriented towards violence as the criterion[3]:

“Six men arrived at a jambu-tree being interested in eating its fruit but that was difficult to climb the tree. The black man suggested cutting down the tree from the root. The blue man suggested cutting down the boughs. The grey man suggested cutting down only the branches. The yellow man proposed only to take bunches. The pink man suggested only plucking the ripe fruits but the white man was interested to take only the fruits which had fallen on the ground.”

The other story also has a similar structure:

“Six robbers were planning to rob a village. The black robber said that they had to kill all humans and animals. The blue one said that they had to kill only the humans. The grey one said that they had to kill only the men. The yellow one said that they had to kill only the armed men. The pink one said that they had to kill only the people who would attack them. But the white one sad that it was enough to take the goods which they desired and there was no need to kill any body.”

Both the stories show a gradual decline in generality of the set of objects of violence. Though the most normal and most wise suggestion belongs to the pink one, a Jain follower should be closer to the white one. One may say these stories intend to show that the end should not justify the means. But it’s very notable that none of the mental categories are going to the neglect the end due to insufficiency of justifiability of the means. It means there is no sense of renunciation in the stories. Shall I conclude that this classification of the mental attitudes don’t concern merely the monks but even the householders?

Now, it’s the time to investigate whether there is any coloration code in the other disciplines of spirituality or not.




Samkhya and Yoga

The typical of Samkhya system is to analyze everything through three Gunas, namely sattva, rajas and tamas, among which sattva is associated with the mental virtues and clarity while tamas is whit mental vices and ambiguity. Rajas play the role of a mediator between them.

Following a metaphorical Upanisadic clue[4], sattva is represented by the white color, tamas by the black color and rajas by the red color[5].

Additionally, the seventh verse of the fourth pada of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, asserts that: “the yogin’s karma is neither while nor black. That of others is of three kinds.[6]” This point is important because this phrase assigns color, even though in a metaphorical sense, to Karma. Vyasa, the interpreter, gives a four-fold classification for the karmas: black for the evil-minded people, white and black for the people who are engaged with the injury and the favor to the others, white for the people who are engaged in three principles of karya-yoga and have ceased hurting the others, and finally neither white nor black for the people who have detached from their all karmas.


Buddhism

In the early Buddhist tradition, in two places, colors are applied to spiritual development: first as the object of visual meditation (kasina); second, the radiation of the Buddha at the time of Enlightenment.

The first case is developed by Buddhaghosa. He prescribes to meditate on four colors: blue, yellow, red and white[7].

But the second case is more complicated: it’s said that when the Buddha became enlightened, six lights were shinning forth from him: blue which stood for peace and compassion, yellow standing for the Middle Path, red standing for bless, white standing for purity of Dharma and Nirvana, golden standing for wisdom and finally a light which was a combination of all those previous five lights.

If we can identify red or golden color in the Buddhist system with the padma-color of Jain system, it seems that he Buddhist system includes all virtuous Jain colors in addition to blue which is a vicious color. Even the traditional order of the colors is the same as the Jain order.


Mithraism

Mithraism was a world wide religion which can be traced to the Vedic tradition. In this tradition the stages of spiritual development are corresponding to the hierarchy of the plants in ancient astronomy. In this system, each plant is assigned to a color which determines the spiritual attitude of the follower. Those colors are:
dark grey - Moon
blue - Mercury
green -Venus
yellow - Sun
red - Mars
white – Jupiter

As we can see, in spite of the third color, green, the others are the same as the Jain system.


Sufism

Sufism is an Islamic discipline of spiritualism. The first important mention to coloration of soul in the Sufi literature appeared in the works of a grand master from the Middle Asia, Najm-ud-din Kubra (12-13 century CE) who according to his own experiences state that through meditation one can achieve a clairvoyance visualizing the color of the soul. That claim got more elaborated by the contributions of another Iranian grand master, Ala-ud-dawla Semnani (13-14 century CE). He asserted that there are seven subtle substances in a man which are responsible for his emotional and spiritual activities. The patern of color hierarchy which he suggested is like the following:
black
blue
red
white
yellow
luminous black
green
If we add grey between the second and the third color and replace the fourth and the fifth, the first five colors will be in the same order which Jain system suggests.

In the 17th century an Indian grand master, Ahmad Sirhindi, suggested another order:
blue
yellow
red
white
luminous black
green
Again if we add grey between the first and the second color, the first five colors will be the same as the last five colors of the Jain system.


The New Age interpretation of aura

The New Age school of mysticism supports this claim that around man’s body, there is a luminous halo (aura) which takes various colors according to the spiritual, emotional or psychic situation of the man. It may be interesting if we compare their interpretation and analysis of these colors with the Jain decoding of the colors. The New Age analysis is as follow[8]:

Black: hatred, lack of forgiveness, unresolved karma, dark intentions

Blue: relating to structure and organization, emphasis on business, sadness

Grey: grounding, down to earth, practical, invalidating, emphasizing body and denying spirit, feeling worth-less

Yellow: mental alertness, analytical thought, happiness, optimism

Golden: high spiritual vibration, integrity, respect, freedom, clear seeing

White: very high spiritual vibration, godly, divine, inspiration, seeing spiritual big picture, compassionate

As we can see their interpretation is almost the same as the Jain system.

Notes:
[1] If we believe whatever is visible has Rupa and color is a property! Because the only substance having Rupa and property is pudgala!
[2] According to Jain Psychology by Mohan Lal Mehta, p. 139, which in its own turn refers to Uttarādhyayana-Sūtra, XXXIV, 21-23 (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XLV, pp. 199, 200)! This account seems very confusing to me. It’s very difficult to extract a clear distinct idea from that. I tried t give whatever I could get as the main characteristics in the case of each Leśyā in the table.
[3] Both stories are related by Jain psychology, p. 140. That source also referred to Karma-grantha, IV, pp. 113, 114.
[4] Chandogya Upanisad, Ch. VI.
[5] This concept that red is a mediator between white and black, or a mixture of white and black, is mentioned by a Muslim Theosophist philosopher, Sohrevardi (12 century CE), in his Aql-I Sorkh (Red Reason).
[6] Karma’suklakrsnam yoginas trividhami taresam.
[7] The Buddha and his teachings, Narada Mahathera, Ch. 36.
[8] This analysis is taken from this New Age web page: http://www.the-auras-expert.com/aura-colors-meaning.html