The Color that Doesn’t Exist

Magenta.

What color is that?

It isn’t violet and it isn’t purple.

And why isn’t it in the rainbow?

Doesn’t the rainbow contain the whole color spectrum?

The short answer is that magenta doesn’t actually exist. (Well, none of the colors actually exist, but we’ll get to that in a little bit. Magenta doesn’t exist in an additional way. Now that’s real commitment to not existing.)

Your eyes contain three kinds of cone cells whose job is to detect certain wavelengths of light. One of these sees only blue. Another sees only green. The third sees only red. There are no cone cells to see yellow, purple, orange or any of the other colors.

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Mix any two colors on the spectrum and you get the color in between. (Keep in mind that we’re mixing light waves, not paints, inks or dyes.)

Mix green light and blue light and you get cyan, the color in between.

Mix red light and green light and you get yellow. Again, the color in between. Here’s what’s happening: the wavelength of yellow light is close to green and it’s also close to red, so both your “green” and your “red” cones send a partial signal to your wonderful, amazing brain. It somehow realizes these lightwaves are in between the wavelengths of red and green and BINGO! You see yellow.

Now take a look at the extreme ends of the spectrum where the shortest wavelengths are blue and the longest are red. If your blue cones are sending a partial signal and your red cones are sending a partial signal, this should mean you’re seeing the color in between blue and red, right? But green is between blue and red! And the eye has dedicated cones for seeing green!

What your brain “sees” in this instance is magenta, a completely imaginary color. If your brain had a name for magenta, it would probably be “the absence of green.”

Color is a language, a mystery beyond words.

Mystery. There’s an interesting word for you. The ancient Greeks had two different words for mystery. Kruptos (kroop-tos’) was a regular mystery, a secret that could be uncovered. But musterion (moos-tay’-ree-on) was a deep mystery, a secret of kings, a secret into which one had to be initiated.

Science can reveal kruptos, but musterion lies beyond its boundaries.

That statement chafes a little doesn’t it? We of the 21st century prefer to believe that what we have seen, heard, tasted, touched or smelled is “real,” and what cannot be detected through our senses is imaginary.

That’s really funny. Because most of what our senses detect is – by definition – imaginary. It exists only in our minds.

I’m not being metaphysical. I’m speaking factually of objective reality.

Dr. Jorge Martins de Oliveira, a neurologist, says,

Our perception does not identify the outside world as it really is, but the way that we are allowed to recognize it, as a consequence of transformations performed by our senses.

We experience electromagnetic waves, not as waves, but as images and colors.

We experience vibrating objects, not as vibrations, but as sounds.

We experience chemical compounds dissolved in air or water, not as chemicals, but as specific smells and tastes.

Colors, sounds, smells and tastes are products of our minds, built from sensory experiences. They do not exist, as such, outside our brain. Actually, the universe is colorless, odorless, insipid and silent.”

Vibrations are real but sound is imaginary. It exists only in our mind.

Electromagnetic waves are real but color is imaginary.

Chemicals are real but smells and tastes are imaginary.

Wrap your head around that and you will escape the Matrix.

Welcome to the real world, Neo.

You have now been initiated into the musterion.

Roy H. Williams