User:Cat the Colourful/HowTo:Open Your Third Eye

"Why am I strapped to this hospital bed?"

You regain your consciousness in an unfamiliar room. Your vision still blurry, you look around the soiled, filthy surfaces of the room, searching for clues to solving the mystery of your present circumstances. The worn-out placard on the wall stating "This Is A Torture Chamber Specialized In All Sorts of Mean And Nasty Human Experiments At The Hands Of Deranged Sickos" seems quite definitive, yet you have your doubts. How could someone as privileged and crazy rich as you get abducted and potentially tortured to death by some lunatic? Shouldn't your insurance cover accidents like this? Your mind is racing so fast that you feel like fainting. But then again, that could also be because you now sense this nauseating, almost suffocating odor pervading your nostrils. It's like... As if... Wait... God damn, have you shit the bed?

The sequel to Joker is already looking promising.

But your train of thought is abruptly cut short when you notice a dark figure in your peripheral vision, squatting in the corner of the room. The figure is sporting a pair of platform-shoes, a shiny leather jacket and the most ridiculous mohawk haircut you've ever had the displeasure of seeing. Upon some closer inspection, however, you realize that this figure is none other than Maynard James Keenan - the front man and leading vocalist of the Grammy-awarded progressive metal act Tool.

"So good to see you! I've missed you so much," Keenan cries out as he approaches you. He's carrying a dark rectangular object in his hands - a vinyl record, sporting a Tool logo on its cover. He pops the vinyl from its case and inserts it into a record player. "What we will now be listening to is Fear Inoculum, our latest masterpiece. It is a spiritual journey into the depths of the human psyche, accompanied with like really complex guitar riffs and like really clever double entendres and stuff. See, the lyrics contain several hilarious allusions to anal sex if you just think about them deep enough," he chuckles self-contently. But then he suddenly hunches down and grabs a rusty iron bar from the floor. All blood drains out of your face as he starts hovering the bar above you. "However, the thing is - you probably won't get it. Our artistic output is way too deep and sophisticated for you ignorant sheeple. You lack the insight, the spirituality necessary to understand Fear Inoculum. You will never get anything listening to us just with your ears - and so I must awaken your inner self! I must pry open your third eye."

Keenan swings the iron bar over you a few times, readying for the decisive strike. This is it. "Enumerate all that I'm to do." You're done. "Calculating steps away from y-" But mere centimetres above your forehead the iron bar halts in mid-air, as if colliding with some invisible obstacle in its path. Keenan sharply raises his head, breathing in deep before breaking into a frantic barrage of words. "Oh my fucking God dude, have you really shit the bed?!"

You suddenly wake up from your own bed. Drenched in cold sweat, you realize it was all but a nightmare. But you can't quite shake away the feeling that there was something more to the dream, something deeply profound. You feel as if your whole world has been turned upside down. Could it be that the vocalist for one of the most successful metal acts is actually the Rasputin of our time, and, using his powers of telepathy traversed through the dream world to advertise his new album? And you, as the chosen one, have been tasked with evaluating it! Yet, it is as he said; you still lack the insight, and the album all sounds like boring ambient wank. You truly lack the perception. You need to open your third eye, man. But how to do it? Throwing your shit-stained bed sheets into the laundry basket, you begin your research.

Wiping the Webs and Dew of the Withered Eye

In the medical world of the '40s and the '50s, the process of "opening one's third eye" referred to a neurosurgical operation for treating visually impaired and blind patients by surgically removing chunks of the frontal brain lobe and then pushing a thin needle through one's eye socket and into the occipital lobe. This opened a new cosmic pathway between the universe and the visual cortex of the patient, a "mind's eye" of sorts, and while the procedure did leave the patient incapacitated for life it also permanently cured one of vision loss - at least in theory.

The procedure met its untimely end by the late '50s when the SJWs of their time began raising public questions about the surgery's so-called "ethics" and "morals". A ban was eventually put on the eye-opening practices and the scientific world moved on to even more heinous violations of human rights. However, certain different religious sects, cults and other counter-cultural movements adapted the practice into their teachings, putting their own fun little spins into it. The procedure became particularly popular in some of the more radical circles of Hinduism and Buddhism, where it was not only used as an effective method of eliminating practitioners from opposing schools of thought, but also as an initiation rite for novice practitioners of their own: the idea being that only after lobotomizing oneself into a drooling vegetable one could truly fathom the mystic religious texts and thus reach enlightenment.

In the 21st century, the idea of some sort of "inner third eye" has once again resurfaced in the Western scientific world, thanks to the thinking-man's butt rock outfit Tool finally uploading their albums to publicly available streaming services in 2019. This inconsiderate deed has launched many innocent music fans into the dual paths of spiritual self-discovery and lifelong institutionalization as they have attempted to understand the band's music and deep thematics. Indeed, opening one's third eye doesn't come without its risks, and many have burned their parietal retinas in the sun while listening to Lateralus, never to figure out why would a band so dull and pretentious be so critically acclaimed. One must therefore not force themselves open, but to instead approach enlightenment with caution and care, as if gently unfolding the petals of a lotus flower dipped in sarin. So grab yourself a set of tweezers and some lubricant; we're about to embark on a quest to gaping open your inner self.

Scraping of the Eye Socket

To summarize, opening one's third eye means to intentionally cause oneself enough brain damage until such secular concepts as "logic" and "reason" are eliminated from the way of deeper understanding. Then, and only then, one becomes a truly enlightened fan of Tool, free of the the intellectual self-deception that of a self-serious music critic.

The process begins with creating the groundwork for the new eye socket - in literal terms, this means the fracturing of the skull. Now there are various means to achieve this, and the endless options may easily baffle an entry-level eye-opener. The Hindi, for example, have developed a system for this known as the bindi - likely named so because of them sick rhymes, dawg - in which highly corrosive paint is poured into the forehead of a pupil, penetrating flesh and bone with ease and leaving behind a brightly colored spot. The downside to this, however, is that due to the high toxicity of the paint it sometimes erodes the very soul of the pupil itself, deteriorating one's ethics to the level of a technical support scam caller. Conspiracy theorists however believe that this is fully intentional, and that the bindi-system is actually a secret government-funded operation to transform devoted Hindus into tools of global cyber warfare.

A slightly safer alternative to this is found in Buddhism, most prominently in Zen. Skull fractures are indeed an important aspect in a Zen monk's training and a recurring motif in many old koans, wherein a young monk's failure to grasp a senile Zen Master's incomprehensible ramblings is immediately followed with a smack to the head; this going on for so long until they either actually crack their skulls and drop dead at the feet of their masters, or until a natural survival instinct is developed and they learn to lie convincingly about their enlightedness. A somewhat comfortable midpoint between these is a state known as anattā, roughly translated as 'no thoughts, head empty', or 'a mild concussion', depending on the extent of the translator's spiritual ascension. This is the state you want to reach, being the difficult centrist you are.

First, you must determine the location of the third eye. While the visual processing center of the brain resides at the back of the head, you don't want to just poke through from the rear and end up looking like some ridiculous backwards cyclops. No, you want to confront the world directly, without fear of colliding with door frames and other such pestilences of the physical world in front of you. That is why you must go through the forehead. When you've confirmed the location of your forehead, grab whatever blunt instrument you can find and whack like you've never whacked before. Keep on hammering your head until you hear a slight crunching sound;

• if you're still conscious, and merely experience some dizziness and visual blur - then good, you have succeeded in your first rite. Lay down and wait for further instructions.
• if you wake up weeks later in an operation room with an IV drip in your arm, then I'm afraid that science has won this round. They are now aware of what you're attempting to do, have covered your fracture points with impenetrable steel plates and planted mind-numbing nanobots into your blood circulation. You will never again be interested in the spiritual, and will never find joy in prog-rock more complex than that of Muse's The 2nd Law. The meddling, corny sellout bastards.

Draining of the Eye Fluids

Once you have successfully produced a concussion, both your inner and exterior worlds should have already gone through some slight alterations. You see your surroundings in double, and sounds you hear keep warping and reverberating in a twirly manner, as if everything is put through Justin Chancellor's bass pedals. The distortions of your senses mean that the secular world has begun crumbling down before you, and through the debris you see that everything you've ever held true has been a mere fabrication of the ego. Already a selected few of Tool songs don't sound that unbearable anymore - namely the grungier material of their debut album - although you still can't get through Ænima without abruptly blacking out and falling asleep by the time the second song rolls in. But just to make it absolutely clear; your severely bleeding forehead has nothing to do with the constant blackouts, those are just the brain's self-defense mechanism for repelling the brilliancy of Tool. Which is why, for your next step, you must sever all your brain circuits and set your mind free!

The hippie movement has developed various different techniques for restructuring the mind, collectively known as mindfulness exercises in the Western world. The definition of mindfulness is that "if it sounds cool and mystic and Eastern it is now a mindfulness exercise", which is why mindfulness covers a wide range of different ideas and philosophies that often contradict each other. However, the common determining factor of all things mindful is the liberal use of various psychoactive drugs, with the idea of exhausting one's brain synapses until circuits and sections of the brain just refuse to co-operate any further, causing the excess brain matter to ultimately shrink and rot away. With this the head has - quite literally - more space to receive and analyze new information with, creating the identical working conditions for building the optic nerves of your third eye later-on.

Now, a word of warning; it is a common misconception that various psychedelics - namely the chemical substance known as dimethyltryptamine, or DMT - would lead to enlightenment and the freeing of the mind. But if "dimethyltryptamine" sounds like some sort of dangerous chemical weapon produced in an experimental Middle Eastern military industrial plant - like diphosgene or diphenylchlorarsine - you'd be absolutely right in your assumption. Dimethyltryptamine, and all other psychedelics alike, are in fact nerve agents produced and spread by the government to effectively assassinate truth-seekers and eye-openers. Some would argue that DMT is a naturally occurring chemical, and that even the pineal gland of the human brain produces it, but that is a lie as well - the pineal gland is actually a biochemical self-destruction mechanism planted into our heads by the CIA, instantly activated when coming into contact with psychedelic compounds. Do not trust random bearded hobo men offering you sugar cubes any more than you would generally trust the lies of government officials.

No, to properly open your third eye you have to do stimulants instead. Only by abusing shitloads of coke and amphetamines will you truly wreck your neurochemistry to the point of reaching inner redemption. So - grab your wallet, pay a visit to the meth-head dealer next door and buy his entire stash of everything. It is time to tune into the astral.

Re-Routing of the Eye

It has now been three long and strenuous days since your visit to the neighborhood dealer. Coincidentally, it has also been three days since you have last slept, because some asshole keeps stuffing your nose with cocaine each time you black out - something which has now started occurring at an increasingly short intervals. That is, however, a sign that the operation has so far been successful, as that the brain rot has already spread wide enough to affect your short time memory. Excellent.

As your physical embodiment no longer repels the Puncturing of Truth, you can now move on to forming an optic nerve for your third eye.

aaaaand here would be demented stuff about ajna, kundalini, nadi yoga and the like. but something goes wrong, oh, so terribly wrong, and everything fades to black

The Eye Prolapse

here the protagonist would wake up again in an isolated room and the events would mirror that of the article's introduction, except that this time keenan would market the new album of 'a perfect circle' (which is his other band) and would urge the protagonist to open their fourth eye. cosmic horror and much hilarity ensues!

See also

• HowTo:Join a New Age Cult
• HowTo:Become Stupid in 21 days
• HowTo:Be Happy