The idea that human beings are capable of evolving the Third Eye with divine powers is not an uncommon belief among people who want to achieve success in life beyond the mundane and to achieve this aim are attracted to the paranormal world of metaphysics, esotericism, mysticism, eastern cults and religions, New Age spiritualism and sci-fi movies and literature.
What is the psychology behind this eccentric striving? For an actual third eye on the forehead - that is where it is usually depicted in its artistic renderings - in real life would only appear creepy and arouse horror.
In passing it may be mentioned that the horror at anatomical anomalies arises from the castration complex. Even the medical and accidental deformities such as the absence of an eye or a limb, the strange and distorted body postures and gaits seen in mentally retarded, mental retardation itself, growths from tumors, prominent birthmarks, skin aberrations such as vitiligo/leucoderma, even freckles to the evenly tanned Indian, cause a queasy repulsion and at bottom because they symbolize castration. The imagery of actual castration fails to emerge into consciousness, indicative of the strength of the repression, replaced by just a shudder up the spine in the sensitive ones and some such thought, "there but for the grace of God go I, for look how much worse my fate could have been. I should be thankful for what I have been blessed with."
Why does deformity in non-genital areas remind one of genital mutilation? It is simple association. One type of injury reminding of another. The vision of mutilation on one part of the body, through displacement, provoking the more dreaded possibility. The fear of castration is so ubiquitously present in all human interactions and so pervasively shapes every facet of our relationship with each other and yet so completely and phobically denied in the conscious thoughts, that any mutilation or deformity is capable of provoking the affect associated with castration without the emergence of its actual depiction in the consciousness.
Now the mutilation of other parts of the body while dreaded is less horrifying than the actual castration. And it is this lessening of the fear by repeating the idea of castration in other spheres than the genitals that lies at the core of festivals that celebrate castration, the chief of which would be Halloween.
That Halloween is at bottom a festival to abreact the fear of castration is further strengthened when one compares it to Dushehra, an ancient Indian festival, predating Halloween by thousands of years, and most likely its progenitor, for it is observed around the same time of the year as Halloween, where clay sculptures of demons, chief of which is Ravana, the ten-headed twenty-armed demon king, with super-sized canine teeth and protruding blood-shot eyes, are paraded through the streets and then laid to rest at the nearest expanse of water. All these multiplication and awesome enlargement of body parts being a defiant denial of castration by emphasizing just its reverse.
The macabre enjoyment from viewing mangled, grisly, grotesque bodies, whether depicted in Halloween attires and accessories, or in haunted houses, or in horror movies, arises from trying to obtain a mastery over the fear of castration. The fascination with cemeteries, zombies, ghosts, ghouls, goblins and gnomes is at bottom viewing castrated individuals who will attack and drag one, out of jealousy and vengeance, into the same fate as they have been unfortunately subjected to - brinkmanship with castration. Even our love for action movies to a large part owes its origin to the fascination with castration, where body parts (penis substitutes) are cut off or mangled. It is a revenge for subjection to the threat of castration during the Oedipal phase.
Anyway, coming back to the Third Eye. It cannot be a real anatomic event. No amount of spiritual practices, no matter how dedicated, can abrogate the laws of nature and the emergence of a Third Eye capable of making connections with the already formed brain and the preexisting pair of eyes has to remain a fantasy. A Third Eye, therefore, must be a symbol of the development of some other kind of ability which is akin to visual function yet distinct from it.
What could be this ability that the seekers of superhuman prowess prize so much and which they believe does happen though very rarely and only with great efforts?
Let us turn to the two great ancient religions of the world, Egyptian and Indian, where deities sometimes are shown with a Third Eye.
Egyptian Gods have the Third Eye at the same spot where often a serpent is shown darting out from a headgear. So behind the desire to awaken the Third Eye is there a desire to awaken some psychic force whose nature is similar to a darting snake?
Serpents, especially cobras, play a prominent role in enhancing the power of the Egyptian deities. Since cobra is a quintessentially phallic symbol, adorning them with it, is it a glorification of their phallic prowess? By showing the cobra specifically at the spot where the Third Eye should be is it possible that there is a connection between the power of the phallic energy, some coveted quality of cobras and the concept of the Third Eye? Let us see if such a view is confirmed by the Hindu religion and its mythologies.
Shiva is undoubtedly the Hindu deity most often shown with the Third Eye, and never without the cobra with its prominent hood encircling his neck, and the Third Eye so powerful that if His ire is aroused its fury can instantly burn the disturber into ashes.
His devotees often harbor the ambition of acquiring the Third Eye as a boon from Him through Tapasya.
What exactly is Tapasya?
It is a devotional meditation, usually concentrating upon a single favorite deity, but not necessarily so, and can be towards a few or towards Godhood in general, usually for something that one wants, which could be quite material, but most often it is for attaining an all-encompassing wisdom. The possibility of its happening, it is believed, depends upon the degree of asceticism practiced. For example, while praying to the Sun, one may not breathe for so long that one may faint. Or one may stand submerged up to the waist in water for hours till all sensations from the body disappear. Or one may take a hatha yoga posture and stay in it concentrating upon the God from whom one wants the boon till he appears, a practice that may even lead to death. Buddha sat in a meditative pose for so long that the mud that had accumulated over his body had termites living in it and supposedly did not eat for 49 days under the Bodhi tree before the realization occurred to him that this is not the way to obtain Nirvana. Chandragupta Marya - a contemporary of Alexander the Great - took samadhi after abdicating his throne and died through starving himself (some variation of Anorexia Nervosa emerging as Tapasya). They are all forms of voluntary inhibitions of functions, especially motoric activity, something which happens involuntarily in depression, reaching complete immobility in catatonia.
What lies behind Tapasya? All forms of abstinence at the bottom are really refrainment from sexual satisfaction, with the sexual continence (brahmacharya) extending from genital sexuality to all forms of satisfaction. It is overdoing of not having sex into not having anything.
There is a belief that if I deny the body and mind gratification (self-mortification) it will be rewarded through obtaining something that will be manifold more than what is being sacrificed.
Now the word tapasya is interesting. It originates from the Indu-European word root Taap which means heat in Hindi. The English temperature appears to be derived from the same word-root. If Tapasya means a method to generate heat, it, in all likelihood, is the generation of psychosexual heat from denial of physical sexual discharge.
The popular language recognizes a close connection between the rise of sexual tension and the affect of heat. We often say when a girl is suffused with sexuality that she is hot. A bitch is in heat we say when the dog is in her estrous phase. So tapasya is nothing but raising of the sexual tension (cathexis) through extreme continence, where no gratification is allowed through not just the genital but pregenital anal and oral phases of sexuality. The Jain nun barely eats. She is allowed to beg for food but has to stop after whatever she gets from the first benefactor for the rest of the day. To further block oral libidinal gratification she often takes the vow of not speaking which can be for hours, days, sometimes for years. Neither she is allowed pleasure in accumulating material goods nor in discharging the sexual tension through cruelty, practicing preservation of life (prevention of cruelty) to such an extent that she wears mouth-mask to prevent swallowing of microorganisms. So what the devotee aims through tapasya is to block the pleasure from sexual discharge not only genitally but from pregenital channels as well. Such blockage of sexuality multiplies its force like the dammed river.
But sexual energy cannot be held in check completely for too long without causing the death of the person as it happens in Anorexia Nervosa or iatrogenically with Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome. It will search for some discharge somewhere. And if the Tapaswi (one who practices Tapasya) is not allowed to put the objects suitable for his sexual needs in a position favorable for the sexual act through physical action, his eyes, including his mental eye (the Third Eye), will scan every nook and cranny of his environment to find alternative paths to achieve his aims. He will look at the world and all aspects of it with a sexually jaundiced eye. It will watch the actions and the ways of fellow humans in a much deeper manner than he would if he was not in such a state of sexual pressure. Just like for the man with a hammer everything looks like a nail, the man whose mental eye is in extreme search for a conduit for the discharge of his sexual tension, everything will turn into a potential female sexual object, searching for a defect in them that can be treated as a substitute for the female genital, in to which the searching vision can dart into like the cobra darts into rodent burrows.
But we know the instinct to look and gaze is a component of the anal phase of psychosexual development. Now it makes sense when the mythology tells that if you cross Shiva His Third Eye, will turn you to ashes. The whole of his sexual energy will emerge in red hot cruelty and destroy you.
In short, Tapasya with the aim of developing the Third Eye is nothing but empowering the scopophilic instinct - the love for looking - in ways that would not be possible if they were not conditioned by extreme asceticism.
So behind the wish for the Third Eye is the desire to intensify the scoptophilic instinct - the love for looking or knowing - to the highest possibility. It is the wish for procreative energy instead of getting discharged in actual physical intercourse (direct gratification) into the wish to know everything about the sexual act - how babies are born - and since our attitude and behavior towards the world is modeled after our sexuality, extending from there to know the origin of everything. It is at its core turning the entire libido's satisfaction into getting curious about the world. Scoptophilia at its core is a form of discharge of cruelty where instead of tearing apart the loved object with hands one does it with the eyes.
So arousal of the Third Eye is giving ascendancy to the scopophilic instinct over all other forms of libidinal expression. It is a form of perversion but the most sublime perversion, where the pursuit of knowledge trumps every other desire.
It is interesting the Shiva is also called Bholenath - the credulous, gullible, simple God, who trusts everybody and is ready to believe in everything. His symbol is Om, ॐ, which is a modified way of writing the number 3. Now number 3, per Freud, in dreams symbolizes the phallus - the penis with the two testicles. Shiva, in fact, is also depicted as an elongated black rock, recognized as phallus (lingam) by the devotees, on which symbol of ॐ is drawn with the fragrant paste of Chandan, and everybody looks upon it as Mahadev, the chief God, under whose umbrella and through him all other Gods discharge their heat. Hindus are thankful for Mahadev who through its medium, absorbs and discharges the Taap of all other deities, singing his praise in hymns for doing so.
But does not it sound like the sexual tensions arising from all other pregenital impulses are displaced and concentrated upon the Genital Impulse (Mahadev), which through its satisfaction/discharge brings mental peace to the humans?
Why Shiva is called Bholenath? Now we know a person who is sick with sexual tension, thinks with his penis (dickhead) and can be easily manipulated. Shiva by extreme asceticism has all his sexual energy concentrated in his Third Eye and can be easily led by his devotees to be credulous towards the most outrageous things. And devotees who have more deviant aims behind getting favors from deities, choose Shiva over others, for he can be manipulated into granting boons which other Gods will immediately see as evil and not worthy of getting granted. Ravana, the great evil king of the demons, by hiding his wicked side, got Shiva to grant him the boon of immortality, by having 10 heads, each of which grows back the minute it is cut. This confirms the view that the nearest thing to death that humans can experience is the dread of castration (getting the penis/head cut off).
It is interesting too that Shiva's company is made up of the world's most outlandish motley crew. Not only Shiva when not in meditation hangs around graveyards/cremation grounds, where ghosts, spooks, spirits, ghouls, demons, and misfits of every kind, follow him - in fact, another name for Shiva is Bhootnath which means lord of the dead - his closest companions are Ganas, they are humanoid creatures with limbs that have no bones and which come out of odd parts of their bodies. They speak in the cacophony and appear distorted and demented beings. Now we are immediately struck here by recalling that they are similar to the folks with anatomical anomalies that arouse in us the horror of castration.
So Siva's companions are castrated individuals at least socially. Which makes sense. It is fear of castration that forces people to abandon genital sexuality and then in the attempt to regain it their whole interest turns into understanding the nature of sexuality itself, generating the Third Eye in a lucky few, whose thirst for knowledge, scoptophilia, becomes the main, if not the entire conduit for the discharge of their libidinal energy.
What is the psychology behind this eccentric striving? For an actual third eye on the forehead - that is where it is usually depicted in its artistic renderings - in real life would only appear creepy and arouse horror.
In passing it may be mentioned that the horror at anatomical anomalies arises from the castration complex. Even the medical and accidental deformities such as the absence of an eye or a limb, the strange and distorted body postures and gaits seen in mentally retarded, mental retardation itself, growths from tumors, prominent birthmarks, skin aberrations such as vitiligo/leucoderma, even freckles to the evenly tanned Indian, cause a queasy repulsion and at bottom because they symbolize castration. The imagery of actual castration fails to emerge into consciousness, indicative of the strength of the repression, replaced by just a shudder up the spine in the sensitive ones and some such thought, "there but for the grace of God go I, for look how much worse my fate could have been. I should be thankful for what I have been blessed with."
Why does deformity in non-genital areas remind one of genital mutilation? It is simple association. One type of injury reminding of another. The vision of mutilation on one part of the body, through displacement, provoking the more dreaded possibility. The fear of castration is so ubiquitously present in all human interactions and so pervasively shapes every facet of our relationship with each other and yet so completely and phobically denied in the conscious thoughts, that any mutilation or deformity is capable of provoking the affect associated with castration without the emergence of its actual depiction in the consciousness.
Now the mutilation of other parts of the body while dreaded is less horrifying than the actual castration. And it is this lessening of the fear by repeating the idea of castration in other spheres than the genitals that lies at the core of festivals that celebrate castration, the chief of which would be Halloween.
That Halloween is at bottom a festival to abreact the fear of castration is further strengthened when one compares it to Dushehra, an ancient Indian festival, predating Halloween by thousands of years, and most likely its progenitor, for it is observed around the same time of the year as Halloween, where clay sculptures of demons, chief of which is Ravana, the ten-headed twenty-armed demon king, with super-sized canine teeth and protruding blood-shot eyes, are paraded through the streets and then laid to rest at the nearest expanse of water. All these multiplication and awesome enlargement of body parts being a defiant denial of castration by emphasizing just its reverse.
The macabre enjoyment from viewing mangled, grisly, grotesque bodies, whether depicted in Halloween attires and accessories, or in haunted houses, or in horror movies, arises from trying to obtain a mastery over the fear of castration. The fascination with cemeteries, zombies, ghosts, ghouls, goblins and gnomes is at bottom viewing castrated individuals who will attack and drag one, out of jealousy and vengeance, into the same fate as they have been unfortunately subjected to - brinkmanship with castration. Even our love for action movies to a large part owes its origin to the fascination with castration, where body parts (penis substitutes) are cut off or mangled. It is a revenge for subjection to the threat of castration during the Oedipal phase.
Anyway, coming back to the Third Eye. It cannot be a real anatomic event. No amount of spiritual practices, no matter how dedicated, can abrogate the laws of nature and the emergence of a Third Eye capable of making connections with the already formed brain and the preexisting pair of eyes has to remain a fantasy. A Third Eye, therefore, must be a symbol of the development of some other kind of ability which is akin to visual function yet distinct from it.
What could be this ability that the seekers of superhuman prowess prize so much and which they believe does happen though very rarely and only with great efforts?
Let us turn to the two great ancient religions of the world, Egyptian and Indian, where deities sometimes are shown with a Third Eye.
Egyptian Gods have the Third Eye at the same spot where often a serpent is shown darting out from a headgear. So behind the desire to awaken the Third Eye is there a desire to awaken some psychic force whose nature is similar to a darting snake?
Serpents, especially cobras, play a prominent role in enhancing the power of the Egyptian deities. Since cobra is a quintessentially phallic symbol, adorning them with it, is it a glorification of their phallic prowess? By showing the cobra specifically at the spot where the Third Eye should be is it possible that there is a connection between the power of the phallic energy, some coveted quality of cobras and the concept of the Third Eye? Let us see if such a view is confirmed by the Hindu religion and its mythologies.
Shiva is undoubtedly the Hindu deity most often shown with the Third Eye, and never without the cobra with its prominent hood encircling his neck, and the Third Eye so powerful that if His ire is aroused its fury can instantly burn the disturber into ashes.
His devotees often harbor the ambition of acquiring the Third Eye as a boon from Him through Tapasya.
What exactly is Tapasya?
It is a devotional meditation, usually concentrating upon a single favorite deity, but not necessarily so, and can be towards a few or towards Godhood in general, usually for something that one wants, which could be quite material, but most often it is for attaining an all-encompassing wisdom. The possibility of its happening, it is believed, depends upon the degree of asceticism practiced. For example, while praying to the Sun, one may not breathe for so long that one may faint. Or one may stand submerged up to the waist in water for hours till all sensations from the body disappear. Or one may take a hatha yoga posture and stay in it concentrating upon the God from whom one wants the boon till he appears, a practice that may even lead to death. Buddha sat in a meditative pose for so long that the mud that had accumulated over his body had termites living in it and supposedly did not eat for 49 days under the Bodhi tree before the realization occurred to him that this is not the way to obtain Nirvana. Chandragupta Marya - a contemporary of Alexander the Great - took samadhi after abdicating his throne and died through starving himself (some variation of Anorexia Nervosa emerging as Tapasya). They are all forms of voluntary inhibitions of functions, especially motoric activity, something which happens involuntarily in depression, reaching complete immobility in catatonia.
What lies behind Tapasya? All forms of abstinence at the bottom are really refrainment from sexual satisfaction, with the sexual continence (brahmacharya) extending from genital sexuality to all forms of satisfaction. It is overdoing of not having sex into not having anything.
There is a belief that if I deny the body and mind gratification (self-mortification) it will be rewarded through obtaining something that will be manifold more than what is being sacrificed.
Now the word tapasya is interesting. It originates from the Indu-European word root Taap which means heat in Hindi. The English temperature appears to be derived from the same word-root. If Tapasya means a method to generate heat, it, in all likelihood, is the generation of psychosexual heat from denial of physical sexual discharge.
The popular language recognizes a close connection between the rise of sexual tension and the affect of heat. We often say when a girl is suffused with sexuality that she is hot. A bitch is in heat we say when the dog is in her estrous phase. So tapasya is nothing but raising of the sexual tension (cathexis) through extreme continence, where no gratification is allowed through not just the genital but pregenital anal and oral phases of sexuality. The Jain nun barely eats. She is allowed to beg for food but has to stop after whatever she gets from the first benefactor for the rest of the day. To further block oral libidinal gratification she often takes the vow of not speaking which can be for hours, days, sometimes for years. Neither she is allowed pleasure in accumulating material goods nor in discharging the sexual tension through cruelty, practicing preservation of life (prevention of cruelty) to such an extent that she wears mouth-mask to prevent swallowing of microorganisms. So what the devotee aims through tapasya is to block the pleasure from sexual discharge not only genitally but from pregenital channels as well. Such blockage of sexuality multiplies its force like the dammed river.
But sexual energy cannot be held in check completely for too long without causing the death of the person as it happens in Anorexia Nervosa or iatrogenically with Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome. It will search for some discharge somewhere. And if the Tapaswi (one who practices Tapasya) is not allowed to put the objects suitable for his sexual needs in a position favorable for the sexual act through physical action, his eyes, including his mental eye (the Third Eye), will scan every nook and cranny of his environment to find alternative paths to achieve his aims. He will look at the world and all aspects of it with a sexually jaundiced eye. It will watch the actions and the ways of fellow humans in a much deeper manner than he would if he was not in such a state of sexual pressure. Just like for the man with a hammer everything looks like a nail, the man whose mental eye is in extreme search for a conduit for the discharge of his sexual tension, everything will turn into a potential female sexual object, searching for a defect in them that can be treated as a substitute for the female genital, in to which the searching vision can dart into like the cobra darts into rodent burrows.
But we know the instinct to look and gaze is a component of the anal phase of psychosexual development. Now it makes sense when the mythology tells that if you cross Shiva His Third Eye, will turn you to ashes. The whole of his sexual energy will emerge in red hot cruelty and destroy you.
In short, Tapasya with the aim of developing the Third Eye is nothing but empowering the scopophilic instinct - the love for looking - in ways that would not be possible if they were not conditioned by extreme asceticism.
So behind the wish for the Third Eye is the desire to intensify the scoptophilic instinct - the love for looking or knowing - to the highest possibility. It is the wish for procreative energy instead of getting discharged in actual physical intercourse (direct gratification) into the wish to know everything about the sexual act - how babies are born - and since our attitude and behavior towards the world is modeled after our sexuality, extending from there to know the origin of everything. It is at its core turning the entire libido's satisfaction into getting curious about the world. Scoptophilia at its core is a form of discharge of cruelty where instead of tearing apart the loved object with hands one does it with the eyes.
So arousal of the Third Eye is giving ascendancy to the scopophilic instinct over all other forms of libidinal expression. It is a form of perversion but the most sublime perversion, where the pursuit of knowledge trumps every other desire.
It is interesting the Shiva is also called Bholenath - the credulous, gullible, simple God, who trusts everybody and is ready to believe in everything. His symbol is Om, ॐ, which is a modified way of writing the number 3. Now number 3, per Freud, in dreams symbolizes the phallus - the penis with the two testicles. Shiva, in fact, is also depicted as an elongated black rock, recognized as phallus (lingam) by the devotees, on which symbol of ॐ is drawn with the fragrant paste of Chandan, and everybody looks upon it as Mahadev, the chief God, under whose umbrella and through him all other Gods discharge their heat. Hindus are thankful for Mahadev who through its medium, absorbs and discharges the Taap of all other deities, singing his praise in hymns for doing so.
But does not it sound like the sexual tensions arising from all other pregenital impulses are displaced and concentrated upon the Genital Impulse (Mahadev), which through its satisfaction/discharge brings mental peace to the humans?
Why Shiva is called Bholenath? Now we know a person who is sick with sexual tension, thinks with his penis (dickhead) and can be easily manipulated. Shiva by extreme asceticism has all his sexual energy concentrated in his Third Eye and can be easily led by his devotees to be credulous towards the most outrageous things. And devotees who have more deviant aims behind getting favors from deities, choose Shiva over others, for he can be manipulated into granting boons which other Gods will immediately see as evil and not worthy of getting granted. Ravana, the great evil king of the demons, by hiding his wicked side, got Shiva to grant him the boon of immortality, by having 10 heads, each of which grows back the minute it is cut. This confirms the view that the nearest thing to death that humans can experience is the dread of castration (getting the penis/head cut off).
It is interesting too that Shiva's company is made up of the world's most outlandish motley crew. Not only Shiva when not in meditation hangs around graveyards/cremation grounds, where ghosts, spooks, spirits, ghouls, demons, and misfits of every kind, follow him - in fact, another name for Shiva is Bhootnath which means lord of the dead - his closest companions are Ganas, they are humanoid creatures with limbs that have no bones and which come out of odd parts of their bodies. They speak in the cacophony and appear distorted and demented beings. Now we are immediately struck here by recalling that they are similar to the folks with anatomical anomalies that arouse in us the horror of castration.
So Siva's companions are castrated individuals at least socially. Which makes sense. It is fear of castration that forces people to abandon genital sexuality and then in the attempt to regain it their whole interest turns into understanding the nature of sexuality itself, generating the Third Eye in a lucky few, whose thirst for knowledge, scoptophilia, becomes the main, if not the entire conduit for the discharge of their libidinal energy.
