Color/Sense Worship
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Is there any context for color or sense worship? Are there any gods that represent these ideas? I don't mean hedonism, but exalting the senses and making them holy.
The sun may represent these ideas, as colors come to us through different waves of light and the sun is the source of that light. But I don't usually see the sun being talked about in that context.
I was thinking about the Skandhas in relation to this idea. This excerpt is from the Psychology of Hashish:
In examining any phenomenon and analysing it we first notice its Name and Form (Nama and Rupa). “Here is a Rose,” we say. In such a world live the entirely vulgar.
Next (with Berkeley) we perceive that this statement is false. There is an optical sensation (Vedana) of red; an olfactory sensation of fragrance; and so on. Even its weight, its space, are modifications of sense; and the whole statement is transformed into “Here is a pleasurable set of sensations which we group under the name of a rose.” In such a world lives the sensuous artist.
Next, these modifications of sense are found to be but percepts; the pleasure or pain vanishes; and the sensations are observed coldly and clearly without allowing the mind to be affected. This perception (Sañña) is the world of the surgeon or the man of science.
Next, the perception itself is seen to be dependent on the nature of the observer, and his tendency (Sankhara) to perceive. The oyster gets no fun out of the rose. This state establishes a dualistic conception, such as Mansel was unable to transcend, and at the same time places the original rose in its cosmic place. The creative forces that have made the rose and the observer what they are, and established their relation to one another, are now the sole consciousness. Here lives the philosopher.
Easily enough, this state passes into one of pure consciousness (Viññanam). The rose and the observer and their tendencies and relations have somehow vanished. The phenomenon (not the original phenomenon, “a rose,” but the phenomenon of the tendency to perceive the sensation of a rose) becomes a cloudless light; a static, no longer a dynamic conception. One has somehow got behind the veil of the universe. Here live the mystic and the true artist.
All our reality is an arrangement of the senses.