Very narrow is the door that leads to the Kingdom of God," says Jesus in the New Testament. The third eye or the eye of the mind is very small and subtle. It operates in the astral body at a point corresponding to the pineal gland in the physical body. The mind itself stems out from the navel along the spinal cord to the brain. Its relay station or operating system is the brain via the spinal cord in the vertebral column of the physical body. This central nerve is known as the sushumna in the astral body. Mind and matter come into contact at the third lotus of the astral body, which is at the navel. Brain is matter, therefore gross, while mind is energy and thus subtle.
Science is still in the dark as to the bridging point of mind and matter. The navel is that point. The bridging does not take place directly from gross matter (the brain) to subtle matter (the mind). There
is first the brain, followed by the spinal cord, which is called centralis canalis in biology. And that, in turn, is bridged by the etheric body, which is subtler than the centralis canalis. The astral body is third in position and degree of subtlety. Here, the spinal cord in the form of the sushumna is so subtle that all our apparatus fail to sense it. Maybe the future scientist will come to see it with much more sophisticated apparatus. If the etheric body, the aureole and aura can now be detected, then there is still hope that the sushumna will one day be seen by scientific means. Yogis have beheld all these with the mind in deep stillness. Pandit Gopi Krishna, Swami Shivananda and many others have described these occult findings.
Before going to the third eye itself and its representation by the tika, l consider it important to throw some light on how the mind works and affects the brain and thus our whole system. We experience the external world with the mind through the ten senses. Messages come through them in the form of vibrations that pass through the brain, pineal gland, sympathetic and parasympathetic systems and then vibrate the etheric and astral bodies. The astral body, in turn, stirs the mind to reaction. The vibrations of the external world normally strike the conscious layers of the mind, but there are circumstances when the unconscious layers are touched. The reactions of the mind are conducted through the same route back to the brain. When the brain is touched, the whole or part of the body is stimulated depending on the type or degree of experience from the external world.
There are two types of external stimuli. The first is the daily routine of life like eating, drinking, jogging and others, and the second type is that which churns our basic instincts like jealousy, anger, desire and innumerable others. Because the pineal gland acts as a centre for distributing impulses or messages to the brain, some philosophers or devotees wrongly believe that it is the seat of the soul. While the whole nervous system, including the pineal gland, is only the mechanism through which impressions, impulses and the mental faculties operate, the mind, which in its most subtle state is nothing but the soul, is seated in the third chakra in the astral body.
Let us reflect on these few points. The center or the heart of the body is the navel, also called hara. The word Narayan, which means the One dwelling in the lotus of the navel, clearly demonstrates the seat of God in man, According to mystics and Kundalini Yoga, the deity of the third chakra is Vishnu and He represents the soul. The breath originates from the navel. It is God who is vibrating as the breath of human beings and all creatures.
Back to the third eye: it is clear that the eye of our life is the mind for without it, seeing, hearing or any other activity would not be possible. The mind manifests through the pineal gland situated at the
back of the forehead between the eyebrows. The eyes are like a pair of windows through which the mind sees the external world. But to behold the inner world, which is beyond all sensory perception, the mind uses the astral body whose system is similar but subtler than that of the physical body. The astral body has an astral brain containing seventy- two thousand nerves in the ida, pingala and sushumna, which correspond to the sympathetic nerve, parasympathetic nerve and spinal cord. But to have knowledge of past, present, and future, the mind does not require any means other than itself. What a marvellous and perfect system!
The eyebrow center, also called Ajna chakra, represents the sixth stage of the mind on the ladder of evolution. The mind is normally manifesting through the three lower centers. It sees the world in a
completely different way while operating through each of the apertures or the different centers in the spinal cord. For example, when the mind ascends to the fourth center, it beholds and experiences God as love and feels impregnated by it. Those in whom the fourth center starts operating view God as love. At the Ajna chakra, the mind sees itself as a wave in the ocean of energy of which it is part and parcel. For him, the whole of creation is nothing but energy in motion.
The tika is worn to remind one’ that behind the pair of ordinary eyes, there lies a third eye that bestows wisdom and direct perception. The third eye is also called the eye of Shiva who is the God of destruction. It is commonly believed that Shiva is in deep meditation and that when His third eye will open, the world will dissolve. Everybody is a Shiva, not in deep meditation but in deep sleep, and has built a dream—world of his own. When the eyes are open, our sleep and dreams vanish away. Similarly, when the third eye starts operating, much energy is released, shattering the illusive world of our unconsciousness. Then enlightenment ensues.
A few more words on the tika. Used as a verb, tika implies mental stability. This is achieved when the mind reaches the sixth centre. There are two types of tika: one which is worn as decoration by women and another which officiating priests apply on the forehead of devotees in temples and during religious ceremonies. Both represent the same truth; that of reminding us of the inner path, which can lead to the opening of the third eye. Chandan tika is normally used to cool the eyebrow center, which becomes hot by the practice of meditation. In ancient times, the priests, who were also enlightened beings, used the act of applying the tika to devotees as an initiation to remind them of the inner eye. The different colors of the tika symbolizes the different centers of consciousness or stages of the mind. All these seem to have lost their true meaning these days and tikas are applied mechanically.
