Spiritual Forum

There are a lot of other qigong masters who’ve talked about some things that are related to the Third Eye. But the Law manifests in different forms at different levels. Whatever level a person has cultivated to, that’s the level’s scenes he can see. He can’t see the truth of things beyond that level, and he doesn’t believe in them. So he just thinks that what he sees at his level is right. Until he cultivates to a higher level he’ll think that those things don’t exist and he won’t believe in them. That’s the result of his level, and his thinking can’t elevate. So in other words, when it comes to the question of the Third Eye, people describe it every which way, they’ve made it into a big mess, and when all’s said and done nobody has explained it well. The truth is, the Third Eye isn’t something you can explain from a low level. The Third Eye’s structure used to be the secret of secrets, and ordinary people weren’t allowed to know about it. That’s why nobody ever revealed it. But what we’re going to talk about here doesn’t revolve around those theories from the past. We’re going to explain it with modern science and in the plainest modern terms, and we’ll explain what it’s really about.

The Third Eye we’re talking about is actually located slightly above the spot that’s between your eyebrows, and it’s connected to the pineal gland. That’s the main passageway, at least. The body has lots and lots of other eyes, and Daoists say that every bodily aperture is an eye. Daoists call the acupuncture points in the body "apertures," while in traditional Chinese medicine they’re called "acupuncture points." Buddhists say that every bodily pore is an eye. And that’s why some people can read with their ears, some can see with their hands or the backs of their heads, and there are other people who can see with their feet or their bellies. They can all be used.

Now that we’re talking about the Third Eye, let’s start with a few words about this pair of eyes that we human beings have. Nowadays some people think that this pair of eyes can see all matter, or all material things in our world. So some people have formed a rigid concept, and think that only the things they see through their eyes are tangible and real, and they don’t believe in what they don’t see. In the past people always took these people to have poor comprehension. Some people can’t explain why that’s poor comprehension. "He doesn’t believe in what he doesn’t see. That’s perfectly reasonable." But, when you look at it from a slightly higher level, it’s not reasonable. Every space-time is made of matter, and of course, different space-times have different material structures, just as they have different beings that take on different forms.

I’ll give you an example. In Buddhism they say that everything in the world is an illusion, that it’s not real. But how’s it an illusion? Who’d say those real, material things right there in front of you are fake, right? The form that material things exist in is one way, while the form they manifest in, it turns out, is different. And our eyes have an ability: they can fix the material things in our material dimension so that they appear to be in the state we now see. But actually, that’s not their state. That’s not even their state in our dimension. For example, what does a human being look like under a microscope? His whole body is loose and made up of little molecules, just like grains of sand, and they’re granular and in motion, electrons are orbiting nuclei, the whole body is wriggling and in motion, and the surface of the body isn’t smooth, it’s irregular. The same goes for every material thing in the universe, be it steel, iron, stone, or whatever, all the molecular elements inside them are in motion. You really can’t see the overall form of it, and the truth is, none of those things are static. This table is wriggling too, but your eyes can’t see the reality of it. So this pair of eyes can give you a false image.

It’s not that we can’t see microcosmic things, it’s not that people don’t have the ability. People do have it when they’re born—they’re able to see things down to a certain microcosmic level. But once we human beings get this pair of eyes of this material dimension, exactly for this reason, we might get a false picture. They obstruct people’s vision. That’s why in the past, people believed that those who don’t acknowledge the things they can’t see have poor comprehension, and cultivation circles have always thought that those people have been deluded by the false picture of things and gotten lost in the midst of ordinary people. This is something religions have taught over the ages, and in fact, we too think there’s some truth to it.

This pair of eyes can fix the things in this material dimension so that they’re in this state, but other than that they can’t do much. When people see things the images don’t form directly in their eyes. Their eyes are like the lens of a camera, and they only serve as a tool. A lens will extend when it looks at distant things, and our eyes do something like that, too. When looking in the dark the pupils need to enlarge, and when a camera takes a picture in the dark, its aperture has to enlarge, too, or the exposure won’t be good and the picture will turn out too dark. When you walk outside and it’s really bright, your pupils contract tightly right away, or else your eyes would be dazzled and you wouldn’t be able to see anything clearly. A camera works the same way, and its aperture has to contract, too. All they can do is capture the object, they’re just a tool. Actually, when we see the form that something exists in, or maybe of a person, or an object, it’s in the brain that the image really forms. What this means, then, is that we look through the human eyes, and what we see is transmitted through the optic nerves to the pineal gland, which is in the rear of the brain, and then the image appears in that area. So when we see things, it’s in our brain’s pineal gland area that the image really appears. And this is something modern medicine now understands.

When we talk about "opening the Third Eye" it’s about bypassing your optic nerves and opening a passageway between your eyebrows, which makes it possible for your pineal gland to see outside directly. And this is what opening the Third Eye means. Now some of you are thinking, "That’s not realistic. These eyes can still serve as a tool at least, and they can capture objects’ images. How could we get by without them." Modern medical studies in anatomy have found that at the front part of the pineal gland there’s the complete structure of a human eye and all of the components of an eye. Since it’s inside the skull they say it’s a vestigial eye. We in the cultivation world have reservations about it being a vestigial eye. But all the same, today’s medical sciences have acknowledged that there’s an eye in the middle of the head. The passageway we open points exactly at that spot, and this is perfectly in line with the understanding of today’s medical sciences. That eye doesn’t produce a false picture of things like our regular eyes do. It can see the essence of any thing or any kind of matter. So, people with a high-level Third Eye can penetrate our dimension to see other space-times, and they can see scenes that ordinary people can’t. People who aren’t at a high level might have the ability to see through things, they might be able to see through walls to look at things, or see inside the human body. It’s able to do that.

Buddhists talk about the five powers: Flesh Vision, Divine Vision, Wisdom Vision, Law Vision, and Buddha Vision. These are five major levels of the Third Eye, and each level is subdivided into upper, middle, and lower levels. Daoists talk about nine times nine, 81 levels of Law Eye. We open the Third Eye for you here, but we don’t open it at or below Divine Vision. And why not? Even though you are sitting here and you’ve started to cultivate, you’re still just starting from the level of ordinary people after all, and you still have a lot of ordinary people’s attachments that you haven’t gotten rid of. If your Third Eye were opened at Divine Vision or below, you’d have what ordinary people think of as supernatural abilities—you’d be able to look through walls to see things, and look inside the human body. If we passed on this ability on a large scale, and opened the Third Eye that far for everybody, we’d be seriously interfering with the ordinary world and upsetting the way of things in the ordinary world. State secrets couldn’t be kept, it’d make no difference if people wore clothes or not, you’d be able to see people in their rooms from outside, and when you saw lottery tickets while you’re out and about you’d pick the top winners. That’d be awful! Think about it, if everybody had their Third Eyes opened at Divine Vision, would this still be a human world? Any phenomenon that seriously disrupts the world absolutely isn’t allowed to exist. If I really did open your Third Eye at that level, you might dub yourself a qigong master right on the spot. Some people have always dreamed of becoming qigong masters, and now that their Third Eyes are open, at last!—they can see patients. Wouldn’t I be guiding you wrong?

So, what level will I open your Third Eye at? I’ll open it for you straight to the Wisdom Vision level. If I opened it at a higher level your character wouldn’t be good enough, and if I opened it at a lower level it would seriously upset the way of things in the ordinary world. When it’s opened at Wisdom Vision you don’t have the ability to look through walls to see things or to look inside a human body, but you are able to see scenes in other dimensions. And what’s good about that? It can boost your confidence in practicing. When you really do see things that ordinary people can’t see, you’ll have the sense that they actually do exist. Right now it’s alright if you can see clearly, that’s fine, just as it’s alright to not see too clearly, because I’ll still open it up to this level all the same, since it’s good for your practice. People who truly cultivate Dafa and who are disciplined about improving their character will get the same results by reading the book.

So what determines the level of a person’s Third Eye? It’s not like you can just see everything after your Third Eye is opened for you, that’s not how it works. There’s a classification of levels. Then what determines the level? There are three factors. The first factor is that there has to be a field running from the inside to the outside of a person’s Third Eye. We call it "vital essence." And what’s its function? It’s just like the fluorescent screen of a TV: if it doesn’t have fluorescent powder in it, after you turn the TV on it’ll just be a bulb, it’ll only have light but no pictures. It’s the fluorescent powder that allows it to display pictures. Of course, this example isn’t too precise, because we see directly, while it displays pictures through the fluorescent screen. But that’s basically the idea. That bit of vital essence is extremely precious, and it’s made up of something extracted from virtue that’s even more refined. Usually each person’s vital essence is different, and maybe you’d only find two out of 10,000 people who are at the same level.

The Third Eye’s level is a direct manifestation of our universe’s Law. It’s something higher, and it’s closely related to a person’s character. If a person’s character is low, his level is low. And because his character is low, he’ll have lost more of this vital essence. But if somebody’s character is high, then he’s gone through life not worrying much about his reputation, profit, problems with others, his own gain, or about different emotions and desires, and his vital essence will probably be retained better. And so after his Third Eye is open he’ll be able to see more clearly. Kids who are under six can see really clearly after their Third Eyes open. And it’s easy to open them—just one sentence can open them.

People have been contaminated by the strong torrent of the ordinary world and its huge dye vat, so a lot of the things that people think are right, in fact, turn out to be wrong. Doesn’t everybody want a happy life? Since they want a happy life, they might hurt other people, they might fuel their own selfishness, they might benefit at other people’s expense, and they might take advantage of other people or harm them. And just to benefit themselves, they’ll go and fight and compete with ordinary people. Aren’t they violating the nature of the universe? So chances are, what people think is right isn’t actually right. When a lot of adults teach their kids, right from the time they’re little they tell them, "You have to learn to be clever," so that they’ll be able to hold their own out in the ordinary world. But this "clever," when you look at it from the universe, is just wrong. That’s because we believe in letting things happen naturally, and that we shouldn’t care much about our own gain. This guy’s so clever, and he just looks out for himself. "If someone bullies you, go find his teacher, go find his parents," "When you see money on the ground, pocket it…"—that’s how they teach them. And as this kid grows up and takes in more of these things, slowly but surely, his selfishness gets stronger and stronger out in the ordinary world, and he gains at other people’s expense, so he ends up losing virtue.

Virtue is a type of matter and it doesn’t vanish after you lose it, it’s transformed over to other people, but vital essence does vanish. If someone is shrewd from his childhood right on up and he puts a lot of stock in his own gain, and all he cares about is getting ahead, then that kind of person won’t be able to see well after his Third Eye opens. But it’s not like he’ll never be able to. And why is that? It’s because in the process of cultivating, what we’re doing is returning to our original, true selves, and as we keep practicing it’ll keep being replenished, and it’ll be restored. That’s why we have to stress character, and make a point of improving your whole self, of elevating your whole self. When your character improves, other things rise along with it, but if your character doesn’t improve, then that small amount of vital essence you have at your Third Eye won’t be replenished. That’s how it works.

The second factor is that when a person practices on his own, if his base is good, he too can open his Third Eye with cultivation exercises. A lot of times some people get startled when their Third Eyes first open. And why are they startled? Because people usually choose to do their exercises around midnight, when the night is still. They’re exercising away there and then all of a sudden there’s this big eye right in front of them, and they get startled. That’s one serious scare, and they won’t dare to do the exercises again. It’s so scary!—such a big eye was looking at them and blinking, and it was so vivid. So, some people call it the "demon eye," while there are also people who call it the "Buddha eye," and so on. But it’s actually your own eye. Of course, cultivation is up to you, gong is up to the master. The whole process of evolving a cultivator’s gong is a really complex process in another dimension, and it’s not just in one dimension, your body in all dimensions, in every dimension, is changing. Could you do that yourself? No, you can’t. The master is the one who arranges these things, it’s the master who does it. That’s why we say, "Cultivation is up to you, gong is up to the master." All that you have is that goal, that thought, but it’s really the master who takes care of it.

Some people open their Third Eyes on their own by practicing. We say that it’s your eye, but it’s not something you can evolve yourself. Some people have a master, and when the master sees that your Third Eye is open, he’ll evolve an eye for you. It’s called the True Eye. Of course, some people don’t have a master, but they do have a passerby master. Buddhists say, "Buddhas are present everywhere," meaning they’re everywhere, there’s that many of them. And some other people say, "There are deities a yard above your head." Meaning, there’s tons of them. When a passerby master sees that you are doing pretty well in your practice, and that your Third Eye is open but you don’t have an Eye, he’ll evolve one for you, and it’ll still count as something you’ve developed through your own practice. That’s because saving people has no conditions attached, there’s no asking a price, and there’s no wanting rewards, there’s no taking credit. They are way above ordinary people’s good Samaritans, and it’s done completely out of compassion.

Now there’s something that happens when your Third Eye is opened. It’s that your eyes are badly dazzled, and they feel irritated. Actually, it’s not your eyes that are dazzled, it’s your pineal gland that’s dazzled. But to you it feels like your eyes are dazzled. And that’s because you don’t have that Eye yet. After that Eye is put in you won’t feel like your eyes are dazzled. Some of us will sense or see that Eye. It has the same nature the universe has, so it’s innocent, and it’s curious. It looks in to see if your Third Eye has been opened and to check out if you can see, and it looks in at you. By then your Third Eye will have been opened, so you’ll be startled when you suddenly see it looking at you. It’s actually your Eye, and from then on you’ll see things with that Eye. There’s no way you can see without that Eye, even if your Third Eye is open.

The third factor has to do with the differences that show in each dimension when a breakthrough is made in cultivation level. And it turns out, that’s really what determines the level. A person sees not only through the main passageway, but also through a lot of sub-passageways. Buddhists say that every pore is an eye, while Daoists say that all apertures in the body are eyes, or in other words, all the acupuncture points are eyes. Of course, what they’re talking about is just one form of the Law’s transformation in the body, where you can see from anywhere in your body.

But the level we’re talking about is actually different from that. There’s not only the main passageway, but also several major sub-passageways which are at the eyebrows, above the eyelids, beneath the eyelids, and at the Shangen acupuncture point at the root of the nose. They determine the level you break through to. Now of course, if an ordinary cultivator can see things from those areas then he’s broken through a pretty high level. Some people can also see with their eyes, they’ve fully cultivated their eyes, and they have different forms of abilities. But if they can’t use their eyes well, they’ll always just see one thing without seeing others, and that’s still not so great. That’s why there are people who usually have one eye look at one side and the other eye look at another side. But below this eye (the right eye), there’s no sub-passageway, and this is directly related to the Law, since people tend to use their right eye when they do bad things, so there aren’t any sub-passageways below the right eye. These are several of the major sub-passageways that come about in Triple-World-Law cultivation.

When a person gets to an extremely high level, after he’s gone beyond Triple-World-Law cultivation, an eye that’s like a compound eye appears. To be more specific, a large eye develops over the whole top half of his face, and there are countless small eyes in it. Some Great Enlightened Beings at really high levels have cultivated an incredible number of eyes, and they’re all over their faces. All of their eyes see out of that one large eye, they can see whatever they want to, and when they look they see all levels at once. Nowadays zoologists and entomologists study flies. They’ve seen that a fly’s eyes are big, and that under a microscope they have countless small eyes in them. They call that a compound eye. When you get to a really high level that cultivation state might appear, but you have to be way higher than a Tathagata to have that happen. An ordinary person won’t be able to see it, though, and somebody who’s at an average level won’t be able to see that it’s there. To them the person looks the same as a normal person since it’s in another dimension. This is about breakthroughs in levels, or to put it another way, it’s about being able to break through different dimensions.

I’ve pretty much revealed the structure of the Third Eye to you. We open your Third Eye by external force, so that’s quicker and easier. When I’m talking about the Third Eye, every one of us feels his forehead become tight, with the flesh gathering and drilling inward. Isn’t that right? You bet. You’ll all feel it as long as you really leave your attachments behind and have come here to learn Falun Dafa, and it presses inward with a lot of force. We open your Third Eye by shooting out gong that’s specifically for opening the Third Eye. While that’s happening, we also shoot out Law Wheels to repair it for you. While we talk about the Third Eye, we’re opening it for everybody as long as they cultivate Falun Dafa. But there’s no guarantee everybody can see things clearly, or even see at all. That has to do directly with you. But don’t worry if you can’t see much, just keep going steadily in your cultivation. As you keep on raising your level you will gradually be able to see, and your clouded vision will gradually turn clear. As long as you cultivate, and when you steel your will to cultivate, whatever you’ve lost will be replenished.

It’s harder for a person to open his Third Eye on his own. Let me talk a little about the different ways people open their Third Eye. Here’s an example. We have some people who look at their foreheads, at their Third Eye, when they meditate, and they discover that it’s dark at their foreheads, and nothing’s there. As time goes by they sense that it gets lighter at their foreheads. And after a period of cultivation, they discover that it’s gradually getting brighter at their foreheads, and after it becomes bright it turns red. At that time it blossoms, just like a bud opening its petals instantly, like you see on TV or in the movies. This is the scene that appears. That red color was flat before, and then it suddenly bulges in the center, and then blossoms and blossoms. If you want it to fully blossom, it could even take more than eight or ten years, because the whole Third Eye was blocked.

Some people’s Third Eyes aren’t blocked, though. They have a passageway, but they haven’t practiced qigong before and didn’t have any energy before. So when they start to practice, a black, round thing suddenly shows up in front of their eyes. After they’ve been practicing a while it gradually starts to turn white, and from white it gradually brightens, getting brighter and brighter, and the person’s eyes get a little dazzled from it. So some people say, "I see the sun" or "I see the moon." Actually, that wasn’t the sun you saw, and that wasn’t the moon. So then what was it you saw? It was that passageway of yours. Some people make breakthroughs in level more quickly, and after the Eye is put into them they can see things directly. It’s really hard for some other people, though, and whenever they do the exercises they run outward along this passageway, which is like a tunnel or in some cases a well. They even feel like they’re running outward when they’re asleep. Some people feel like they’re riding a horse fast, some like they’re flying, some like they’re running, and some like they’re rushing outward in a car. But they always feel that they can’t rush to the end of it. That’s because it’s really hard for a person to open his Third Eye on his own. Daoists consider the human body a small universe. Then if it’s a small universe, let’s think about it, it’s got to be thousands of miles from the forehead to the pineal gland. That’s why they always feel like they’re rushing outward but can’t ever reach the end.

So Daoists consider the human body a small universe, and that makes a lot of sense. They’re not saying that its compositional structure is like the universe’s, they’re not talking about the form our body takes in this material dimension. We want to ask this: what’s the material body’s state below the level of cells as today’s science understands it? There are all kinds of molecular particles, and below molecules there are atoms, protons, nuclei, electrons, quarks, and the smallest microscopic particle that’s been researched so far is the neutrino. So what’s the absolute smallest microscopic particle? It’s just too hard to research. In his later years Shakyamuni said, "It is so large that it has no exterior, and so small that it has no interior." And what’s that mean? It means that at the Tathagata level, in terms of largeness, you can’t see the edge of the universe, and in terms of smallness, you can’t see the smallest microscopic particle of matter. That’s why he said, "It is so large that it has no exterior, and so small that it has no interior."

Shakyamuni also put forth the theory of 3,000 boundless universes. He said that in the Milky Way galaxy of our universe there are 3,000 planets that have beings with carnal bodies on them, just like the human race. He also said that a grain of sand has 3,000 boundless universes like this one in it, so a grain of sand is like a universe, with intelligent human beings like us in it, and there are planets like this one, and mountains and rivers. Sounds hard to believe, right?! If it’s true, then let’s think, isn’t there sand in those universes? And in each of those grains of sand, aren’t there 3,000 boundless universes there, too? Then isn’t there sand in those 3,000 boundless universes? And in each of those grains of sand, aren’t there again 3,000 boundless universes? So at the Tathagata level you can’t see the end of it all.

The same goes for human molecular cells. People wonder how large the universe is. I can tell you that this universe does have boundaries, but even at the Tathagata level it still seems like it’s boundless and infinite. But the inside of the human body, going from its molecules down to its microscopic particles in the microcosm, it’s as large as this universe. I know it sounds hard to believe. In the extreme microcosm of what makes up a human being, or any being, his nature and the unique elements of his being have been formed. So our modern science’s research on this is still miles away. The level of our human race’s science and technology is pretty low when you compare it to that of the beings of higher wisdom on other planets in the greater universe. We don’t even have the ability to break through dimensions that exist at the same time and in the same place, while the flying saucers from other planets can just go and travel in other dimensions, even the concept of space-time changes, so they come and go in the blink of an eye, and it’s so fast nobody can explain it.

That was something we had to discuss in talking about the Third Eye, because when you’re running outward in your passageway you’ll feel like it’s boundless and endless. Some people might see another situation, where they’ll feel like they aren’t running along a tunnel, but like they’re running along a broad and endless road, and on both sides of the road there are mountains, there’s water, and cities, and they keep running outward. Sounds even harder to believe, right? I remember something one qigong master used to say: he’d say that even in one single pore of yours there’s a city, and there are trains and cars running in it. People who heard that were really surprised, and they thought it was a little far-fetched. Now, we know that material things are composed of molecules, atoms, and protons at their microscopic level, and you can trace it all the way down. If at each level you’re able to see the plane of that level instead of a single point—if you can see the plane of molecules’ level, the plane of atoms’ level, the plane of protons’ level, the plane of nuclei’s level—you’ll see the forms in which different dimensions exist. All material things, and this includes the human body, they all exist simultaneously with, and are connected to, the dimensional levels of the universe’s dimensions. In modern physics when they study the microscopic particles of matter, they only study one microscopic particle at a time, and do that through sectional analysis and fission, and they just study its post-fission composition after the nucleus undergoes fission. Now if we had an instrument that could unfold its whole plane and let you see a complete display of all the atomic elements or molecular elements at that level, if you could view that, you would have broken through this dimension and seen the reality of another dimension. Human bodies correspond to external dimensions, and they all have forms of being like that.

There are some other cultivation states that have to do with opening the Third Eye on your own. We’ve mainly just talked about some of the more common things. There are also people who see that their Third Eye is turning, for example. People who practice Daoist qigong often see that there’s turning inside their Third Eye, and then the Tai-ji plate splits open—"Snap!" and they see some things. But it’s not like that happens because there was a Tai-ji in your head. It’s that your master put a set of things in you right at the outset, and one of those things was a Tai-ji. He sealed up your Third Eye, but when it’s time for your Third Eye to open it splits open. So this is something that he purposely arranged for you. It’s not something that was originally in your head.

And there are some people who really want to get their Third Eyes opened, but the more they practice, the less likely they are going to open. What’s the reason? They’re clueless about it. The main reason is that you can’t seek the Third Eye—the more you seek it, the more you won’t have it. The more you seek it, not only won’t it open, but worse yet, something will actually flow out from inside your Third Eye, it’s something you can’t quite call black or white, and it’ll cover up your Third Eye. After a while it’ll form a big field and more and more of it will flow out. The more the Third Eye doesn’t open and the more you want it, the more that stuff will flow out, and the result is that it’ll envelop your whole body. It can even be thick and have a big field. Even if your Third Eye were really open, you wouldn’t be able to see with it because you’ve been sealed up by that attachment of yours. But if you don’t think about it that much later on, and you completely get rid of that attachment, it’ll gradually go away. But you’ll have to go through a really long stretch of grueling cultivation to get rid of it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Some people don’t get it. Their teachers tell them, "Don’t go seek it, don’t go seek it," but they just don’t believe it and they keep on seeking after it so stubbornly, and they get the exact opposite of what they wanted.

MASTER LI HONGZHI 

ZHUAN FALUN _ THE SECOND TALK