According to Osho, color is not an inherent property of objects but an event between light, the senses, and consciousness. ‘Brown’ appears when a mixture dominated by long wavelengths (orange-red) is seen at low luminance and in contrast to lighter surrounds; the mind constructs this shade and names it.
Brown isn’t in the thing; your eyes see dim orange-ish light against something brighter, and your mind calls that color “brown.”
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, when one experiences different forms of light and colours in meditation -- such as red, yellow, blue, ochre, etc. -- how can one know to which layers of being they belong? Is there any gradual sequence of colour and light experiences before reaching the ultimate light experience?
There is a Sufi sect which uses black -- black clothes for their fakirs. Black is also very, very meaningful. It shows absence of color, everything absent. It is just the contrary of white. Sufis say that unless we become totally absent, the God cannot be present to us. So one must be like black -- absolutely absent, a nonentity, a nonbeing, just a nothingness. They have chosen black. Colors are meaningful. So with whatsoever you choose you show much. Even your clothes indicate much. Nothing is just accidental. If you have chosen a particular color for your clothes, it is not accidental. You may not be aware why you have chosen it, but science is aware -- and it shows much. Your clothes show much because they belong to your mind, and your mind chooses. You cannot choose without your mind having certain leanings, certain tendencies. So the sequence…
Osho, no, the same person has written three colors.
Yes, even one person can see three colors in three different states. Because is a person really the same person in all three states? Sometimes when I am in love, you see one color. When I am in anger, you see another color. And sometimes when you are in love toward me, you see a different color; when you are angry with me, again another. And those colors keep changing day by day. Colors change moment to moment. Everything keeps changing. Nothing is fixed here. In this world the very idea of fixity is false. Everything here is in flux. But most people saw a dusky hue in him. There are reasons for that. It seems the dusky hue must have been his steady undertone—the enduring note of his changefulness. That is, his very restlessness played in a dusky key. In the mind of this land there is a certain…
During my lsd experiences I saw a particular sequence of colors: saffron, then yellow, then white, then a deep blue. What do these colors mean?
We do not see every color. The seven colors that we can see are not all the colors that exist -- beyond those seven we are colorblind. Below and beyond these seven colors are infinite ranges of colors. We have not seen them so we will not experience them in our inner journey. All that is felt or experienced is what we have stored within us of the outer world. If a musician goes into meditation he will experience sounds that a nonmusician can never know. A painter will experience colors that a nonpainter can never know. If someone like Van Gogh were to go into meditation, we cannot conceive of the colors he would see or what new combinations he would know. This, too, will differ from individual to individual. Only one thing is certain: when you go deep within on your own inner path, things will begin to…
A white and small aura is visible just over your head. Why is not a colored one visible?
IT IS a colored one -- but all the colors are there, hence it looks white. White is not colorless. White is the presence of all the colors together. White is the most colorful thing in the world -- hence it looks white. When a white ray passes through a prism it divides into seven colors. That's how a rainbow is created in the rainy season. Small particles of water hanging in the air function as prisms. White rays of sun enter through those hanging particles of water and are divided into seven colors. If you mix all the colors in the right proportions, you will create white. White is all the colors together. I am not a Buddhist, I am not a Hindu, I am not a Christian, I am not a Jain, I am not a Mohammedan -- and I am all. All colors together! Hence white is…
Questioner: what is the meaning of wearing orange clothes as a sannyasin?
It is not accidental that a book on sexology like the KAMASUTRA was not written in a country with a cold climate. It is the same with TALES OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS; it is the product of a tropical climate. People living in tropical climates are more sexual because of the sun. Therefore people who were working on sannyas from many directions thought that sexuality could be calmed if the red color were kept away from sannyasins' bodies -- hence ochre was selected. You can ask why ochre was selected and not red. Pure red could well have been selected; it would have been more effective in calming sexuality. But there was a difficulty in choosing red, true out-and-out red; it would have totally prevented red from entering the body. But the body needs some amount of red rays to keep fit, so it would have been bad for the…