Is the Third Eye Just a Figment of The Imagination?

May the blessings of the Triple Gem be with you all!

Welcome. In our ongoing exploration of the spiritual path, we have shared many teachings to help you cultivate and deepen your inner life. Many of you, from all ages and backgrounds, have shared the results you’ve experienced, applying these principles and coming to your own conclusions.

Recently, questions such as “Is the Third Eye Just a Figment of the Imagination?” have also arisen, reminding us that genuine understanding comes only through personal experience.

Your ability to do this depends on one crucial quality: practicality. A spiritual life is not a theory; it is a lived, practical journey. The more you engage with it practically, the more you will see its fruits.

If we do not apply these teachings, we cannot truly understand the Buddha, His profound philosophy, or the path He laid out for us. Without this practical engagement, the essence of the teaching remains inaccessible. Therefore, the very first thing to recognize is that a spiritual life is a practical one. Progress comes only through consistent, personal application.

Figment of The Imagination: When Critics Dismiss Your Spiritual Experience

About a year and a half ago, we introduced our first practical meditation program on the Third Eye. The purpose was to provide a direct method for you to gain your own spiritual experience and understand for yourself who you are, who the teacher is, and the truth within these teachings.

However, there are those who get lost, who do not engage practically, and instead criticize and reject these methods without any investigation. This is a common pattern in society.

There is a force that seeks to keep the world in its grip, a force the Buddha called Māra. This isn’t a demon with horns, but a personification of the internal and external forces of confusion, doubt, and attachment that prevent our spiritual awakening. When people begin to wake up, Māra’s world begins to crumble. And so, agents of this force appear to sow discord.

They attack any genuine spiritual experience, whether it is related to the Third Eye, Kundalinī energy, universal energy, or even the core Buddhist practices of mindfulness (sati), insight meditation (Vipassanā), or tranquility meditation (Samatha). They label it all as psychological delusion or outright falsehood.

Inner Light or Mental Trick? Understanding the Signs of Meditation

For instance, we have explained that when you practice the Third Eye meditation, focusing on the point between your eyebrows, you may eventually see an inner light. This is a sign, an ālōka saññā, that can appear in various colors, (blue, yellow, white) or as a single, steady color. It might take different shapes, like a circle or a square. We have discussed these signs in detail.

If you have engaged in the practice and witnessed this for yourself, you know with certainty that it is not a lie or something you merely imagined. Yet, this is precisely where the critics, the agents of Māra, will attack. They will say, ‘You’re just making up a ball of light in your head. That’s not meditation; it’s a delusion.‘ They will try to undermine you psychologically.

This criticism comes from all corners. It can come from people with academic degrees, those considered ‘intellectuals‘ in society, as well as from ordinary people. It can even come from those in monastic robes or from psychiatrists who, without any personal spiritual experience, dismiss these phenomena as mental illness requiring medication. But anyone who has genuinely cultivated a deep spiritual life knows these experiences are not delusions.

A true practitioner would never make such a dismissive claim.

Trusting Yourself When the World Calls You a Fool

These attacks are orchestrated by the party of Māra to confuse and disrupt the spiritual potential of people, especially in a land with a deep spiritual heritage like Sri Lanka. Their goal is to destroy this inner development. But if a person is one hundred percent honest with their heart, they know that in a spiritual life, one can see, feel, and perceive many things as they progress to different levels.

Whether following a method taught by the Buddha or a path like that of the Himalayan sages, a person genuinely living a spiritual life knows that these things light signals, visions, the opening of the Third Eye (or what we call the Divine Eye, dibba cakkhu), psychic abilities, meditative states (jhāna), Kundalinī energy, universal energy are not lies or hallucinations. They are real.

The only ones who launch these counterattacks are those who have not dedicated even five minutes to sincere practice. You may have seen them in comments online, or you may know them in your own life friends, family, colleagues, or neighbors who say, ‘You’re just daydreaming, creating a fantasy. That’s not a real meditation method.‘

These people are, to put it plainly, fools who are spiritually blind. Ask yourself: are they people who meditate? A person who has experienced meditation, even for just six months or a year, knows from direct experience that the sensations the pressure on the forehead, the bliss of deep meditative states, the energy moving along the spine are not imaginary.

Your Experience is Your Proof: A Call to Radical Self-Trust

So now you can understand who calls the Third Eye a delusion. It is not my goal to prove whether the Third Eye is real or not you who follow these teachings already know from your own journey that it is a genuine spiritual experience. My goal is to show you who the critics are they are the ones with no practical experience, the ones doing Māra’s work.

Think for yourself. When you practice, you feel a tangible pressure on your forehead or a cooling sensation. Are these feelings delusions? They are physical sensations in your body. If you pinch your skin, you feel it. In the same way, you feel these things on your forehead. How can that be a delusion?

When you progress to the next stage and see light signals with your eyes closed as clearly as you see the moon at night or the sun by day is that a delusion? These lights can appear like a torch flashed in your face or a steady, clear light like a lamp in your room. If you perceive this visually, how can it be a fantasy? Will you allow the discouraging words of others to make you fall and destroy your spiritual life? Or will you, with wisdom, follow the path shown by the Buddha, strengthen your resolve, and continue your journey?

The choice is yours. Will you listen to the agents of Māra’s project and seek mental medication for a profound spiritual experience, or will you trust your own wisdom and walk your path?

Reflect on this wisely.

Question Everything, Especially Your Doubts

This is why I say: do not listen to the fools who have no practical experience. It could be your parents, your spouse, or even someone in a monk’s robes or another religious leader. Anyone without direct, practical experience who calls your spiritual life a delusion or meditation a madness is simply an agent of Māra’s project, assigned to stop you.

Understand this and use your wisdom to disengage from their claims. Do not believe them. Instead, believe in yourself. Trust your journey. Trust your spiritual life. When you walk this path with self-belief, you will gain immense understanding through your own practical experience.

I have stated clearly in previous teachings that this is not a delusion. But I wanted to address this topic directly because it is a common point of confusion. We have guided you to use your inner vision to observe sacred places like the Ruwanwelisaya stupa, Sigiriya, Sri Pada, or Bodhi Gaya, to witness the life of the Buddha from birth to enlightenment, and even to connect with the sun.

Are all these aspects of the spiritual life delusions? If so, how did the Buddha foretell future events or describe the decline of his teachings? Question this. Question yourself. When you do, your wisdom will open up, and you will find the answers from within. The agents of Māra will retreat, realizing you cannot be swayed.

The Boundless Path: Why Everyone’s Spiritual Experience is Different

When we speak of seeing inside the Ruwanwelisaya or Sigiriya with the Third Eye, some dismiss it as madness because not everyone awakens this ability. I have always said that the Third Eye does not open for everyone. For those on a different path, I have introduced other practices, like the meditation to reach the Brahma realm.

Even those for whom the Third Eye has not yet opened have had other spiritual experiences. They hold no disbelief. They do not think it is a delusion or a lie because they understand their own journey. They know, ‘It hasn’t opened for me yet because I lack past practice or my merit is not sufficient in this area.‘ They have recognized their own state through our teachings.

So, the only people who hold these negative thoughts and spread them in society are those who want to destroy the spiritual world and eradicate spirituality from this land, because a nation’s spiritual power is its strength. Therefore, never mock or disbelieve someone who speaks of their spiritual experience.

The spiritual life is limitless, boundless. Within that infinite space, various abilities and phenomena can arise, unique to each person’s journey and accumulated merits over lifetimes.

There is another group of people who measure everything by their own limited understanding. They may know things up to a level of, say, 100. But the world contains countless things beyond that level. Because these things are incomprehensible to them, they try to dismiss everything beyond their small frame of reference as a lie. Never fall into that trap. This is a topic I will explain in more detail in a future teaching.

Conclusion: Your Path is Real, Your Experience is True

So, understand this: the Third Eye is not a delusion, and this becomes clearer the more you practice. It is not a psychosis; this becomes evident as you gain your own spiritual experience. Whether it is our meditation for the Brahma worlds or a method taught by another teacher, no practice is a mental illness when you engage with it and receive its fruits. You now have the wisdom to recognize what kind of person would make such a claim.

There are no lies in the spiritual life. These are truths you can experience for yourself, practically. The experience may differ from person to person based on their past actions (kamma) and accumulated merit, but the vast majority have the capacity to see and feel these truths. I trust you now have a deep understanding of this topic and see clearly that your spiritual experience is not a delusion.

May the power and blessings of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha the Triple Gem be with you, giving you the wisdom to understand this truth for yourself and to explain it wisely to others. This is enough for you to grasp. With this blessing, I conclude today’s teaching.

We invite you to walk this path with us. Read our teachings, and most importantly, apply them practically in your own life. as you practice, questions will naturally arise. Please feel free to share your experiences and questions in the comments below, via email or contact form. I will do my best to offer guidance in future talks based on your progress. For now, begin this practice with an open heart and a mind free from expectation. Cultivate it correctly, and may you find the clarity and peace you seek.

Thank you for joining us. We hope this blog will be of great benefit to your spiritual journey.

May you all be well and happy.
May the blessings of the Triple Gem be with you all!