Third Eye can be defined as the Centre-of-Willpower. Let us understand what its function is:

People whose agya chakra is not activated, will remain slaves in thousands of ways. Without this centre, there is no freedom. We know about political and economic freedom, but these freedoms are not real – because a person who has no willpower, whose agya chakra is not activated, will always remain a slave in one way or another. He may become free from one slavery but will become a slave to something else. He does not have a centre-of-will to make him an owner of anything, he does not have anything like will. He does not have the power to command himself; his body and senses command him. If his stomach says it is hungry, he is hungry. If his body says it is sick, he becomes sick. If his sex centre says he needs sex, the sexual desire arises. If his body says it has become old, he becomes old. The body commands and he obeys!

YOG has maintained for twenty thousand years that if you want to know anything about the absolute, that which is beyond matter will have to be activated. The door to that part of the brain is the place of the agya chakra. That spot is the outward location and it corresponds to the inner centre, which is about one and a half inches deep inside the forehead. That deep point, that centre, gives an insight which is beyond the world of matter and of desire.

Though hard to believe, but the principle is that the nature wants the chakras to remain blocked to meet the goals of those chakras which are designed by the very Nature itself so that the natural-expansion of every species continues. It takes a lot to gain victory over these chakras. When you reach the level of agya-chakra, you are able to observe the play-of-senses without judgement. The multi-coloured world of name and forms belonging to the lower minds is replaced by formless state as homogenous white light.

The Agya Chakra inter-alia holds the key to understanding things beyond apparent time-space-fabric. With due regards and gratitude, the excerpts from Osho on this subject are narrated to have a better understanding of the things:

I would like to tell you about two events. It will make things easier for you to understand. Both of them are historical facts. In the 1888 a person named Ramanujan was born in a poor Brahmin family in South India. He became a very famous mathematician. He could not study much, but still his genius in mathematics was unique. Many well educated mathematicians have earned a name because of their training and guidance from others for a number of years. But Ramanujan was not even a matriculate and had no training or guidance from anyone.

With great difficulty he got a clerical job, but very soon news spread that he had an amazing talent in mathematics. Someone suggested that he write a letter to the famous mathematician, Professor Hardy, of Cambridge University – he was the most eminent mathematician of those days. He didn’t write a letter, but solved two theorems of geometry and sent them to Professor Hardy. Hardy was astonished to receive them and could not believe that someone so young could solve such theorems. He immediately wrote back to Ramanujan and invited him to England. When Hardy met him for the first time, he felt that he was like a child before Ramanujan in the field of mathematics. The genius and capabilities of Ramanujan were such that they could not be due to mental powers, because the intellect moves very slowly, thinking takes time, but Ramanujan didn’t take any time in responding to Hardy’s questions. No sooner was the problem written down on the blackboard or put to him verbally than Ramanujan began to reply, without any time gap for thinking. It was very difficult for great mathematicians to understand how it happened. A problem which would take about six hours for an eminent mathematician to solve – and then too, he was not sure about being right – Ramanujan solved instantaneously, unerringly. It proved that Ramanujan was not replying through the medium-of-the-mind. He was not very learned, he had actually failed in matriculation; there was no other sign of intellectual ability, but in connection with mathematics he was superhuman. Something happened that was beyond the human mind. He died when he was thirty-six because of tuberculosis.

When he was in hospital, Hardy, along with two or three other mathematician friends, went to see him. As it happened, he parked his car in such a place so that Ramanujan could see its number plate. When Hardy went into Ramanujan’s room, he told Hardy that his number plate was unique: it had four special aspects to it. After that, Ramanujan died. Hardy took six months to understand what Ramanujan meant, but he could only discover three of the four aspects. On his death he left a will that research work on that number should continue, to find out the fourth aspect. Because Ramanujan had said there was a fourth, there had to be. Twenty-two years after Hardy’s death, the fourth was discovered. Ramanujan WAS right!

Whenever he began to look into any mathematical problem something began to happen in the middle space between his two eyebrows. Both his eyeballs turned upwards, centering on that middle space. In Yoga, that space is described as the third-eye-spot. It is called the third eye because if that eye becomes activated it is possible to see events and scenes of some different world in their entirety. It is like looking out of your house through a small hole in the door, and suddenly, when the door opens, you see the whole sky. There is a space between the two eyebrows where there is a small aperture which sometimes opens – as in the case of Ramanujan. His eyes rose to his third eye while solving a problem. Neither Hardy could understand this phenomenon nor would other Western mathematicians ever understand it in the future. I will tell you about another event in connection with the vermillion mark, so that you will be able to understand its relationship to the third eye.

Edgar Cayce died in 1945. Forty years before that, in 1905, he fell sick, became unconscious and remained in a coma for three days. The doctors had lost all hope and said that they could not find any way to bring him back to consciousness. They thought that his unconsciousness was so deep that perhaps he would never come out of it. All medicines were tried, but there were no signs of his regaining consciousness.

On the evening of the third day, the doctors said that they could not do anything more and that within four to six hours he would die, or if he lived, he would be mad – which would be worse than death – because as time passed the delicate veins and cells of his brain were disintegrating. But Cayce suddenly started speaking even though he was in a coma. The doctors couldn’t believe it: Cayce’s body was unconscious, but he was speaking. He said that he had fallen from a tree, that his backbone was injured, and that was why he was unconscious. He also said that if he was not treated within six hours, his brain would be affected and he would die. He suggested some herbal medicine which he should be given to drink and said that he then should recover within twelve hours.

The names of the herbs which he requested were not likely to have been known to Edgar Cayce, and at first the doctors thought what he was saying was just part of his madness because the substances he had suggested were not known to cure a condition such as his. But because Cayce had specifically mentioned them they thought they should try them. Those substances were searched for, and given to Cayce: he fully recovered within twelve hours. After he became conscious and when the incident was related to him, Cayce could not remember suggesting any such medicine; he neither knew the names of the medicines nor recognized them. But this event in Edgar Cayce’s life was the beginning of a rare happening. Edgar Cayce became an expert in suggesting medicines for incurable diseases; he cured about thirty thousand people during his life. Whatever prescription he gave was always right; without exception, every patient who tried his medicine was cured. But Cayce himself was not able to explain it. He could only say that whenever he closed his eyes to look for some treatment, both his eyes turned upwards as if pulled towards the middle of his two eyebrows. His eyes became fixed there and he forgot everything; he only remembered that after a certain point he forgot everything about this life, and until that point, the treatment would not come to him. He suggested some wonderful remedies, two of which are worth understanding.

The Rothschilds were a very rich family in America. A woman from that family had been sick for a long time and no treatment had helped. Then she was brought to Edgar Cayce, and in his unconscious state he suggested a medicine. We have to call his state unconscious, but those who know about this mysterious happening would say he was fully conscious at that time. In fact, unconsciousness continues until our knowledge reaches the third eye! Rothschild was a millionaire, so he could afford to search the whole of America for that medicine, but he couldn’t find it. No one could even say whether such a medicine existed. Advertisements were placed in international newspapers requesting information about the medicine. After almost three weeks a man from Sweden wrote, saying that there was no medicine of that name in existence, although twenty years earlier his father had patented a medicine of that name but never had it manufactured. He wrote that his father had died but he could send the formula. The medicine was then made up and given to the woman, who then recovered. How could Cayce have known of a drug that had not even been available on the market?

In another incident, he again suggested a particular medicine to someone; a search was made for it but it could not be found. A year later an advertisement appeared in a newspaper announcing the availability of that medicine. For that previous year it had been being tested in the laboratories; it had not even been given a name but Cayce knew of it. The medicine was given to the patient who soon recovered.

Cayce had suggested medicines which could not be found, and so the patients died. When he was told about this, he said that he was helpless, there was nothing he could do. He said, “I do not know who is seeing the patient and is speaking when I am unconscious – I have no relationship with that person.” But one thing was certain, whenever he was speaking in that state his eyes were drawn upwards.

When we are in deep sleep, then our eyes are drawn upwards in proportion to the depth of sleep. Now, psychologists are doing much experimentation on sleep. The deeper you are in sleep, the higher are your eyes; the lower the eyes, the greater is their movement. If your eyes are moving very rapidly under their eyelids you are having a very eventful dream. Now this has been scientifically proved by through experiments – that “rapid eye movement, REM,” indicates a fast-moving dream. The lower the eyes, the greater the REM; as the eyes go higher, the REM is reduced. When the REM is zero, sleep is at its deepest. Then the eyes remain steady between the two eyebrows.

Yoga says that in deep sleep we reach the same state that we reach in samadhi. The place where the eyes become fixed is the same in deep sleep and in samadhi.

I have told you about these two historical events ONLY TO INDICATE that between your two eyebrows there is a point where this worldly life ceases, and the life of the other world begins. That point is a door. On this side of the door this world flourishes, and inside it there is an unknown world, supernatural.“Unquote.