The Complete Guide to the Spiritual Eye Adapted from Ananda.Org
We are literally made ‘in the divine image.’ This wasn’t a merely poetic image meant to indicate somehow a higher potential in ourselves. It didn’t mean, as orthodox dogma would have it, that only human beings possess souls. In fact, we are souls: we possess bodies.
Location: You may have heard it called Ajna, the “third eye” or “the sixth chakra,” located between the eyebrows, or just behind that point inside the brain. When we focus on this point in meditation it helps us to raise our consciousness and feel more uplifted.
Spiritual Eye Meaning: The spiritual eye is not a physical object located in the body, but a light which is actually visible there, ‘behind the darkness’ of your closed eyes. Through that light (the spiritual eye), the deep meditator can gaze into subtler-than-material realms. The spiritual eye is, in fact, a reflection of the cosmic energy entering the body and sustaining it. Its portal of entry is the medulla oblongata at the base of the brain.
The five-pointed star at the centre of the spiritual eye is the doorway through which our minds can penetrate into the inner kingdom. The five points correspond to the shape of the human body. Stand with your arms stretched out to the side, and your legs wide apart. That shape, with your head at the top: Da Vinci’s Man of perfect proportions.
The original design of our bodies was based on that star in the spiritual eye. We were literally made ‘in the divine image.’ This wasn’t a merely poetic image meant to indicate somehow a higher potential in ourselves. And it didn’t mean, as orthodox dogma would have it, that only human beings possess souls. In fact, we are souls: we possess bodies.
What Does the Spiritual Eye Look Like: When seen perfectly, it is a halo of golden light surrounding a field of deep blue, in the centre of which is a silvery-white, five-pointed star. When seen imperfectly, it is seen as a dim violet light with a faint circle around it, and an even fainter dot in the centre.
To see it in meditation, concentrate on the central golden star or in of the field of blue. Gradually the gold will expand and form a tunnel. Passing into this tunnel, you will consciously enter the light of the astral world. In time, the blue light will form a tunnel. Entering that, you will enter the light of the causal world, the cosmic consciousness. When you can penetrate the star in the centre, you will enter the Spirit beyond creation.
If uncomfortable to focus in cross eyed mode, imagine a flame or a distant mountain, and focus your gaze at the top of it. Your eyes should be closed, relaxed and looking slightly upward.
As you focus on this point and your thoughts are stilled, you may begin to see the visible form of it. Whether or not you see the spiritual eye, by meditating at that point your consciousness will gradually rise until it passes beyond human awareness and enters a state of ecstasy and joy, or collective, unity or superconsciousness.
You can also focus on the spiritual eye while going about your daily life, to help keep your mind uplifted throughout the day. To do this, just focus a part of your attention at this point, while letting your eyes focus on the task at hand. You can also look at another person’s spiritual eye while talking to them, to help remind you that God or Spirit is in that person as well as yourself.
Lahiri Mahasaya, the guru of Paramahansa Yogananda said to focus on it as if you were looking up at it from the medulla oblongata (the indentation at the base of the skull), which is where our ego, or sense of self, is located. Because most people’s sense of self is vaguely their whole body, it is easier to direct our attention at the spiritual eye when we focus our sense of self at the point where it truly lies, the medulla.
Paramhansa Yogananda’s book Whispers from Eternity contains several prayers, affirmations and requests to the Divine to ask for help in opening the spiritual eye.
When we become absorbed in this point and our sense of self dissolves into superconsciousness, the centre of our consciousness becomes the heart rather than our egos, and from there our hearts show us the way to lift ourselves up through the spiritual eye into Infinity.
Spiritual Eye Meditation Technique
To begin this spiritual eye meditation technique, concentrate at the point between the eyebrows. Visualize there a tunnel of golden light. Mentally enter that tunnel. Feel yourself surrounded by a glorious sense of happiness and freedom. As you move through the tunnel, feel yourself bathed by the light until all worldly thoughts disappear.
After soaring through the tunnel as long as you feel to do so, visualize before you a curtain of deep violet-blue light. Pass through that curtain into another tunnel of deep, violet-blue light. Feel the light surrounding you. Slowly, the tunnel walls disappear in blue light. Expand your consciousness into that light–into infinite freedom and bliss. Now there is no tunnel. There is only the all-encompassing blueness and bliss of infinity.
At last, visualize before you a silvery-white, five-pointed star of light. Surrender every thought, every feeling into this star of absolute, ever-existing bliss.
Mentally affirm at the end of this spiritual eye meditation: “I awake in Thy Light, I awake in Thy Light, I am joyful, I am free, I awake in Thy Light!”