Third Eye Definite Opening

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date:  Posted 3 years before Sep 04, 2016

MiBeloved 3 years ago

This is from an Email correspondence:

I read chapter 1 of Meditation Pictorial  in order to start a meditation practice, but I found it a bit confusing. There are so many steps to memorize that when I start reading again I get lost once again when I reach the last step. I even tried to record them in a MP3 player for not missing any step, but this proved to be disturbing since when I tried some of the initial steps, the player was already explaining 4-5 steps ahead.

Is there a way of summarizing this first exercise?

MiBeloved's Response:

As the author, I must admit that it is confusing, that first chapter but only if you try to do it all at once in one sitting. What you should do is take out the first 5 steps, or the first 3 steps, whatever you can handle, whatever you will remember and then do that sequence. As soon as that becomes easy to do and you are used to it and your mind does it automatically because of a cultivated habit, then you can move on and take another 3 or five steps. Practice that and then keep adding a little at a time.

With the mind space in the subtle head each person has to feel their way through the first years of meditation. And then finally when the psyche becomes ordered the instructions can be taken in a detailed and concentrated way. Initially the student should try to do what is recommended but only in small bits.

A text book on Algebra, usually have more and more difficult exercises. Informed student master the book over a period of months if not years. This is done because the student takes it a little at a time, until the whole course is integrated.

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Query:

You have stated that one must not imagine the third eye, that visualization is sort of useless, like a waste of time. In those steps you talk about pulling and pushing the subtle eyeballs, to move the energy/power to a certain area of the head... Is this not applying the imagination? Is one supposed to feel something instead of imagining? If this is the case, how can I feel the optical meeting point -for instance- if I have never felt it before?

MiBeloved's Response:

As you surmised, this is based on feeling instead of imagination or visualization.

For the optical meeting point you have to feel that out from within your head by first feeling the energy which courses through the eyeballs into the environment. Once you feel that energy, then you can track to find its beginning or source point.

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Query:

You said in Meditation Time that the breath of fire starts with kapalabhati, so I searched how to do kapalabhati and I've been practicing it these days, but I'm not sure whether I'm doing it right or not. In the book Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha by Swami Satyananda Saraswati it's explained:

"Exhale through the nostrils with a forceful contraction of the abdominal muscles. The following inhalation should take place passively by allowing the abdominal muscles to relax. Inhalation should be a spontaneous recoil, involving no effort."

When I do it I focus on the abdominal muscles trying to isolate entirely the chest area, but the diaphragm and the lower ribs get contracted also by the movement. Is that right?

After 15 inhalations I need to stop and get some air since I'm exhaling more than what I inhale..

What am i doing wrong?

MiBeloved's Response:

The first thing you are doing wrong is that you are following Swami’s instruction verbatim. That instruction is for yogis who were using the diaphragm before in the yogic way, where they contract various areas and even isolate the musculature of those areas without causing other areas to tense up also.

Turn your palm up and try to move your thumb by itself. That is very easy to do. As soon as you will it, the thumb moves alone. Now try to move any other finger alone. You will find that the other fingers want to move with that single finger and you might have to make a special will power action to cause one of the single fingers to move.

You should always remember Swamiji’s instruction and use it at a later date when you are more advanced in diaphragm and chest/abdomen muscle control. For now you are just a beginner. You cannot sit in a language class because you have not even done your A, B, Cs.

Here is what you should do for at least two years:

Do kapala bhati by forcefully exhaling and allow the inhale to just happen as a reflex which you do not control.

After 15 inhalations you need to stop because your lungs are not absorbing the air which enters into them. They are remaining passive, and so after 15 inhalations they ask for more air, and they hope that you will give up this crazy yoga stuff and settle down to be a normal human being.

If you keep practicing however eventually your lungs will change their attitude. There is a specific exercise which helps with this and that is the push down the fingers exercise.

This use of the fingers (not the thumb) causes the brain to interpret that the body is working strenuously. It then sends a message to the lungs to accept air which comes into the lungs, air which it normally would not absorb.

Merely breathing does not guarantee that the lungs are absorbing the air. You can breathe as much as you like and if the lungs have an attitude of indifference, none of the air will enter the breath stream. A case in point, is the medical evidence about  pneumonia or asthma  where the person may breathe, oxygen may even be inject into the lungs by mechanism means and still the lung might be indifferent to all of that.

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Query:

This evening I sit to meditate. After a couple of minutes doing kapalabhati, I paid attention to the naad sound. I've always had this sound in my head, especially when in complete silence. It was more intense on the right ear so I stayed there for a while. Then I tried the exercise on Chapter 1 of Meditation Pictorial. When trying to feel the left and right eyeballs I started to 'see' some 'flames' or shadows wobbling, like when you are about to loose conscience in sleep. I moved my eyes to focus on the third eye (as if trying to watch it with my physical eyes -eyelids shut-) and then I saw this dark blue-purple flame changing shape into an eye, like the one in the one dollar bill but without the pyramid:

I thought: 'Yeah, right, my mind is playing tricks because I want to open my third eye...' and this eye vanished into another blueish formless cloud and came back as an eye, and turned again into a formless wobbling cloud... 3-4 times. My mind then started to analyze whether this was real or just my mind making pictures out of those bright dots we can see when closing our eyes, like when one is about to fall asleep and see many incoherent things... And then I lost the focus in this train of thought so I ended the meditation session.

By the way, I smiled when I saw this picture in your book, because this is what I usually see every night before falling asleep:

When I try to explain these images to my partner and family members to see if they are aware of them too in the moment of falling sleep, they always look at me as if I am crazy; I don't blame them, I noticed them a couple of years ago only. And now I even see more clear images when I'm waking up. These incoherent images appear in front of my mental screen and in this case I have to move my mental eyes up and down to see the image properly, as if I'm using a flash light to see an object in a dark room.

MiBeloved's Response:

Your background from past lives is different to most people and this is why you are having these experiences. You must have had many past lives doing yoga and in one of those past lives you went to a very advanced stage. Your subtle body has the information regarding this and so it is manifesting some of the yogic skills or siddhis in this life on the basis of what it attained before.

Other persons even relatives, who do not have such background cannot relate to that because it is just not within their conscious or subconscious scope.

A bluish or greyish or dark brownish cloud usually means that the third eye is about to be opened or that it just closed. In some experiences one sees the cloud of energy and then the third eye does not open.

There is a verse in the Bhagavad Gita about why a person suddenly begins to experience mystic stuff:

तत्र तं बुद्धिसंयोगं

लभते पौर्वदेहिकम् ।

यतते च ततो भूयः

संसिद्धौ कुरुनन्दन ॥६.४३॥

tatra taṁ buddhisaṁyogaṁ

labhate paurvadehikam

yatate ca tato bhūyaḥ

saṁsiddhau kurunandana (6.43)

tatra — there; tam — it; buddhisaṁyogam — cumulative intellectual interest; labhate — inspired with; paurvadehikam — from a previous birth; yatate — he strives; ca — and; tato = tataḥ — from that time; bhūyaḥ — again; saṁsiddhau — to perfection; kuru-nandana — O dear son of the Kurus

In that environment, he is inspired with the cumulative intellectual interest from a previous birth. And from that time, he strives again for yoga perfection, O dear son of the Kurus. (6.43)

पूर्वाभ्यासेन तेनैव

ह्रियते ह्यवशोऽपि सः ।

जिज्ञासुरपि योगस्य

शब्दब्रह्मातिवर्तते ॥६.४४॥

pūrvābhyāsena tenaiva

hriyate hyavaśo'pi saḥ

jijñāsurapi yogasya

śabdabrahmātivartate (6.44)

pūrvābhyāsena = pūrva — previous + abhyāsena — by practice; tenaiva = tena — by it + eva — indeed; hriyate — he is motivated; hy — indeed; avaśo = avaśaḥ — without conscious desire; 'pi = api — even; saḥ — he; jijñāsuḥ — persistently inquiring; api — even; yogasya — of yoga; śabdabrahmātivartate = śabda — spoken description + brahma — spiritual reality + ativartate — instinctively sees beyond (śabdabrahma — Vedas)

Indeed, by previous practice, he is motivated, even without conscious desire. He who persistently inquires of yoga, instinctively sees beyond the Veda, the spoken description of the spiritual reality. (6.44)

Neo_Yogi 3 years ago

MiBeloved wrote:

What you should do is take out the first 5 steps, or the first 3 steps, whatever you can handle, whatever you will remember and then do that sequence. As soon as that becomes easy to do and you are used to it and your mind does it automatically because of a cultivated habit, then you can move on and take another 3 or five steps. Practice that and then keep adding a little at a time

Neo_Yogi's Reply:

Yes, it makes more sense to me this way, thanks!

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MiBeloved wrote:

Here is what you should do for at least two years:

Do kapala bhati by forcefully exhaling and allow the inhale to just happen as a reflex which you do not control.

Neo_Yogi's Reply:

If I understand you correctly, I should just focus on the forceful exhalation part without worrying about which muscles are contracting, right? I just exhale forcefully, my lungs inhale automatically and that's all for the moment...?

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