third eye – Sat Sangha Salon

The Metaphor of the Third Eye – Osho

The other day, you talked about the third eye as a door for connecting with you and existence. Whenever I feel open, flowing, connecting with you, other people, nature or myself, I mostly feel it in my heart as silence and expanding spaciousness, and sometimes as radiating light. Beloved Osho, is this the same kind of experience you were talking about, or is there a difference between connecting through the third eye or the heart; or are there different stages?

What you are experiencing is in itself valuable, but it is not the experience of the third eye. The third eye is a little higher than your experience. The way the mystics in the East have categorized the evolution of consciousness is in seven centers. Your experiences belong to the fourth center, the heart. It is one of the most important centers, because it is exactly in the middle. Three centers are below it and three centers are above it. That’s why love is such a balancing experience.

Your description is, “Whenever I feel open, flowing, connecting with you, other people, nature or myself, I mostly feel it in my heart as silence and expanding spaciousness, and sometimes as radiating light. Is this the same kind of experience you were talking about?” I was talking about the third eye, which is above the heart. There are three centers above the heart. One is in your throat, which is the center of creativity; one is between your two eyebrows, exactly in the middle, which is called the third eye. Just as you have two eyes to know the outside world… the third eye is only a metaphor, but the experience is knowing oneself, seeing oneself.

The last center is sahastrara, the seventh; that is at the top of your head. As consciousness goes on moving upwards, first you know yourself, and in the second step you know the whole universe; you know the whole and yourself as part of it.

In the old language, the seventh is “knowing God,” the sixth is “knowing yourself,” the fifth is “being creative,” and the fourth is “being loving, sharing and knowing others.” With the fourth, your journey becomes certain; it can be guaranteed that you will reach the seventh. Before the fourth, there is a possibility you may go astray.

The first center is the sex center, which is for reproduction—so that life continues. Just above it… the sex energy can be moved upwards, and it is a great experience; for the first time you find yourself self-sufficient.

Sex always needs the other. The second center is the center of contentment, self-sufficiency: you are enough unto yourself. At the third center you start exploring—who are you? Who is this self-sufficient being? These centers are all significant…. The moment you find who you are, the fourth center opens and you find you are love.

Before the fourth the journey has started, but there is a possibility you may not be able to complete it. You can go astray. For example, finding yourself self-sufficient, contented, you can remain there; there is no need to do anything anymore. You may not even ask the question, “Who am I?” The sufficiency is so much that all questions disappear.

A master is needed in these moments, so that you don’t settle somewhere in the middle without reaching the goal. And there are beautiful spots to settle… feeling contented, what is the need to go on? But the master goes on nagging you and wants you to know who you are; you may be contented, but at least know who you are. The moment you know who you are, a new door opens, because you become aware of life, of love, of joy. You can stay there; it is so much, there is no need to move any more. But the master goads you on, “Move to the fourth! Unless you find the purest energy of love, you will not know the splendor of existence.”

After the fourth, you cannot go astray. Once you have known the splendor of existence, creativity arises on its own. You have known beauty; you would like to create it also. You want to be a creator. A tremendous longing for creativity arises. Whenever you feel love, you always feel creativity just as a shadow coming with it. The man of creativity cannot simply go on looking outside. There is much beauty outside… but he becomes aware that just as there is an infinite sky outside, to balance it there must be the same infinity inside.

If a master is available, it is good; if he is not available, these experiences will lead you onwards.

Once your third eye is opened, and you see yourself, the whole expanse of your consciousness, you have come very close to the temple of God; you are just standing on the steps. You can see the door and you cannot resist the temptation to go inside the temple and see what is there. There you find universal consciousness, there you find enlightenment, there you find ultimate liberation. There you find your eternity.

So these are the seven centers — just arbitrarily created divisions, so the seeker can move from one to another in a systematic way; otherwise, there is every possibility, if you are working by yourself, to get muddled. Particularly before the fourth center there are dangers, and even after the fourth center….

There have been many poets who have lived at the fifth center of creativity and never gone ahead—many painters, many dancers, many singers who created great art, but never moved to the third eye. And there have been mystics who have remained with the third eye, knowing their own inner beauty; it is so fulfilling that they thought they had arrived. Somebody is needed to tell you that there is still something more ahead; otherwise, in your ignorance, what you will do is almost unpredictable.

Mike had decided to join the police force and went along for the entrance examination.

The examining sergeant, realizing that the prospective recruit was an Irishman, decided to ask him a simple question. “Who killed Jesus Christ?” he asked.

Mike looked worried and said nothing, so the sergeant told him not to worry and that he could have some time to think about it. Mike was on his way home when he met Paddy.

“Well,” said Paddy, “are you a policeman yet?”

“Not only that,” says Mike, “but I am on my first case.”

Man is such that he needs someone who has known the path and knows the pitfalls, knows the beautiful spots where one can remain stuck, and has compassion enough to go on pushing you—even against you—until you have reached to the final stage of your potentiality.

-Osho

From The Golden Future, Discourse #6

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

The Third Eye and “Who am I” – Osho

The other night, following the energy between by eyes, I went into myself, looking for “Who am I?” At a certain point I found myself immersed in great nothingness. The sensation was very strong. I couldn’t go on; I felt so afraid of this emptiness that I stopped. Osho, what is this energy that is felt between the eyes? Is it the so-called “third-eye”? If this was the right way, why was I so afraid and trembling?

Ramaprem, this is the right way. That’s why you became so afraid, because the right way means a certain death, the death of your ego, the death of your personality as you have known it, and the beginning and the birth of your essential self. But the death comes first, hence the fear and trembling. The resurrection comes later.

You have been in a very beautiful space. This is the third eye that in the East has been talked about for at least ten thousand years. It is only symbolic. You have two eyes to see the world of duality – the day and night, the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false. The whole world consists of dualities. The third eye is a poetic and symbolic expression that your two eyes have become one, that all duality has disappeared.

For the outside world two eyes are needed, for the inside world only a single clear vision – because inside there is no duality, there is only oneness.

Your question is, “The other night, following the energy between my eyes, I went into myself looking for ‘Who am I?’ At a certain point I found myself immersed in great nothingness.” These are the spaces if you go inside. But this nothingness is not negative; just a little more acquaintance with it and you will be surprised: it appeared as nothingness because there was nothing that you have ever known before or even dreamt before. But once you become acquainted with the nothingness you start feeling an immense fulfillment, an overflowing energy. This nothingness is the beginning of fullness and wholeness.

“The sensation,” you say, “was very strong. I couldn’t go on; I felt so afraid of this emptiness that I stopped.” Just be a little more intelligent.

The nothingness was surrounding you, but you were not nothing. You were witnessing it; you were separate from it. The emptiness may be surrounding you; it may be vast and may create trembling in you, but you are not it; otherwise who will become afraid and who will stop going forward? Who will turn back?

Your being is totally separate from the nothingness and emptiness that you have felt. If you had remembered only this much, “I am not it,” the fear would have disappeared. Perhaps next time, remember that you cannot be anything that you come across. You cannot come across yourself; you cannot meet yourself. So whatever you come across is separate from you. There is no need to be afraid.

But Ramaprem, it happens to almost everybody. You are alone, surrounded by nothingness, emptiness, and a deep fear arises that perhaps you are coming close to death, because in our minds the association with nothingness and emptiness is with death. But even death is not you. You pass through it; it is a passage. And if you are alert, you can pass through without any fear. On the contrary, you can enjoy the silence, the peace, the immensity, the infinity that is surrounding you. You are almost in an oceanic state of consciousness.

But now you know the door, the third eye. Travel more into it so that you become more and more acquainted, and nothingness, rather than making you afraid, will make you dance, because it is not destructive. It will give you individuality, it will give you freedom, and if you go on and on you will reach to your innermost center, which is life.

Death always happens to the body, but never to you.

And if you have found the deathless in you, all your fears, forever will disappear – and a man without fear is truly and authentically dignified. You will be proud that you have found the right path.

Very few people have traveled inwards because of this fear. As they move in, the fear stops them and they turn back into the mundane world where everything is ephemeral, where everything is going to die, where all that you possess is going to be taken away by death.

Death is impotent only against a person who knows himself. But before you can know yourself, you will have to pass through this beautiful space of nothingness, emptiness, aloneness. So rejoice and be grateful that a great experience has happened to you.

A Catholic priest visited a Catholic family. There was a little boy sitting very happily beside his cat, which had just given birth to six kittens.

The priest asked, “Why are you so happy?”

The boy said, “Because all the kittens happen to be good Catholics.” Very satisfied, the priest went home.

Two weeks later he visited the family again. As soon as the little boy saw him, he began crying desperately. “What’s the matter?” asked the priest. “Why are you so sad?”

The boy replied, sobbing, “The kittens are no longer Catholic.”

“How can you say that?” asked the priest.

The little boy replied, “They have all opened their eyes.”

The moment your inner eye starts opening, you will not be a Catholic, you will not be a Protestant, you will not be a Hindu, you will not be a Mohammedan, you will not be a Jew – you will be simply yourself; hence, all the organized religions have been avoiding the very subject.

The science of how to enter into yourself has been known for thousands of years, but no religion wants you to enter into yourself. They want you to look upwards at the sky for a fictitious God. If your inner eye remains closed, you are going to remain a Catholic, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a communist, but once the inner eye opens, you start becoming free of all these fetters and all these imprisonments.

Every person has the potential, but you have been diverted into looking for God outside yourself – and He is sitting inside you. All the priests of the world are against God, because once you know that God is within you, the whole profession of the priesthood is finished. Churches will be empty, mosques will be empty, temples and synagogues will be empty, and the whole politics of numbers and the power that it brings to the priests will be gone.

You are only an individual without any adjective.

The world will be immensely beautiful if there are only individuals, not belonging to any religion or any political ideology, but belonging to their own inner self. That’s enough, more than enough. Belonging to life itself is the only true religion, the only truth that has to be discovered. And it is not far away, just a little fear has to be dropped.

And if you go on trying, as you will become acquainted with the beauties of nothingness, the fear is going to disappear automatically. You have accidentally found the right path – now don’t lose it.

Don’t become again a Catholic. Keep the eye open.

-Osho

From The Razor’s Edge, Discourse #30

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

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