As the leaves change their hues with the chilled air, the trees seem to form rainbows. Sometimes a single leaf can blend from red to orange, yellow and green, and the effect of millions of leaves is heavenly. There is in fact a kind of rainbow heaven, where “the whole atmosphere seems to be made of tiny rainbows, one after another…. The entire atmosphere there — all the air — consists of these gleams of light and therefore radiates out of each individual "beacon," so to speak. A much larger rainbow (compounded of similar smaller ones that are exquisite miniatures of the big one) forms a gorgeous belt around the outside.
Each color, then, consists of many, many rays, so that millions of rays make up a single, all-inclusive rainbow visible to the eye.” (Secrets of Heaven 1623)
We know from science that there is no actual color in the light waves that strike our retina, nor in the electrochemical signals that race from there to our brain, nor is any color passed from one neuron to another within the brain. Rather, our inner sight—our mind—paints color into the signals it perceives in the brain, and in this way seems to fill the whole natural world with color and beauty. Yet it is not the eyeball, but the mind, that puts color into the objects we see.
“If our deeper power of sight did not constantly act on our outward eyesight, our eyes would never be able to seize on any object and make it out. It is our more inward power of sight that uses the eye to take in what the eye sees. It is never our eyes that do this, although they seem to…. It is our spirit that sees things, not our eyes, although it sees them through our eyes. Dreams illustrate the same point, since in them we sometimes see as clear as day. Even so, this deeper sight of our spirit functions in the same way. Our more inward eye does not see anything on its own but only from the still deeper sight of our rational mind. In fact, neither does this power see anything on its own; there has to be an even deeper power, which is that of our inner self…. Even then, it is not the inner self that sees but the Lord working through our inner self. He alone sees, because He alone lives and gives us the power to see–and to feel as though we see things on our own.” (Secrets of Heaven 1954)
The color I see in nature does not flow in from our surroundings into our eyes and consciousness, but rather flows in from the Lord’s sight into our own consciousness and from there fills the world around us with beauty. It reminds me constantly that every moment and every rainbow leaf is a gift of the Lord’s inflowing life.