Rung: Colours of Consciousness.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12726/tjp.33.2Keywords:
Colour, Consciousness, Sufism, Bhakti poetry, Philosophy of mind, Qualia, Indian philosophyAbstract
‘Rung,’ colour, has been a subject of exploration by philosophers as the study of consciousness progresses. They believe colours, besides their objective, physical understanding, also have a phenomenal and subjective understanding, for example, the ‘feeling’ that we get when the redness of the red setting sun is felt, or the blueness of the blue sky is experienced. This feeling or subjective phenomenal experience is what has been called consciousness or qualia, qualia being the properties of such experiences. However, deciphering such experiences is what has been the greatest task given to the philosophers; the mystery of this ‘feeling’ or phenomenal experience we get when a colour is perceived is also a mystery, if unfolded, it helps us to decipher what consciousness is. This paper attempts to investigate the subjective experience of colour as explored in Indian Bakhti and Sufi poetry. Colour or ‘rung’ has been extensively used as imagery in such poems, where the experience of being in a divine state is equated to being immersed in the experience of a colour. The divine, also known as ‘rungrez,’ the colour dyer or the colour giver, is the one who infuses us with such colourful experience, the experience of himself or consciousness. In this way, the paper will explore the subjective experiences (of colour) as portrayed in such poetry and will try to perceive the question of consciousness from a different perspective.
References
Abdel Haleem, M. A. S. (Trans.). (2005). The Qur’an (Reprint ed.). Oxford University Press.
Brentano, F. (2009). Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (pp.59–75). Routledge.
Bradley, D. (2012). Functionalism and The Independence Problems. Noûs. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12007
Bryne, A., & Hilbert, D.R. (2021). “The Science of Colour,” In Brown, H.D. and Macpherson, Fiona (Eds), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour. Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, New York.
Crane, T. (2022). Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental. In Hear, A.O. (Ed.), The Philosophy of Mind. (pp. 360–397). Cambridge University Press.
Cohen, J. (2009). The Red and The Real: An Essay on Colour Ontology, Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, D.J. (2006). Perception and the Fall from Eden. In T.S. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (Eds), Perceptual Experience (pp. 49–125). Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, D.J. (2010). The Character of Consciousness, (pp. 3–34). Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, D. J. (2002). Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oxford University Press.
Chittick, W. C. (2005). Ibn 'Arabi: Heir to the Prophets, Oneworld Publications, London.
Dalal, N. (2021). Śaṅkara, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed by Edward N. Zalta, Winter Edition, web. https://plato.st- anford.edu/archi- ves/win2021/entries/shankara
Dey, A. (n.d.). Aspects of Bhakti Movement in India, University of Calcutta.
Gert, J. (2021). Primitivist Objectivist. In Brown, H.D. and Macpherson, Fiona (Eds), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour. (pp. 299-310). Routledge
Nagel, T. (2002). What it is Like to be a Bat, Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (pp. 219-226) Oxford University Press, London.
Sharma, C. (1960). Indian Philosophy: A Critical Survey. Barnes & Noble, U.S.A.
Shelly, W. (2016). Consciousness in Locke, Oxford University Press, London.
Searle, J.R. (1983). Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Smith, K. (n.d.). Symbolic Colours of India. Sensational Colour. https://www.sensationalcolor.com/symbolic-colors-india/
Subramaniam, A. (2014). Eating God: A Book of Bhakti Poetry. Penguin Random House, India.
Tye, M. (1995). Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of a Phenomenal Mind. MIT Press, Massachusetts.
Kazemi, S.R. (2009). Paths to Transcendence: According to Shankara, Ibn Arabi, Meister Eckhart, Indica Books, Varanasi, India.
Khusrau, A. (2011). The Bazaar of Love: Selected poems of Amir Khusrau. (P. Losensky and S. Nayyar, Trans). Penguin Books, India.
Kind, Amy. (n.d). Qualia. Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/qualia/
Warrier, A. G. K. (Trans.). (1990). The Upanishads: Isha Upanishad. OneLittleAngel. https://www.onelittleangel.com/sacred/
books/upanishads.asp?mc=8
Warrier, A. G. K. (Trans.). (1990). The Upanishads: Mandukya Upanishad. OneLittleAngel.https://www.onelittleangel.com/
sacred/books/upanishadsasp?mc=8
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Zeenia Bhat, Vegitha Reddy
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
