So the first use of the tilak is to show you the right place on the body so that you remember it twenty-four hours a day. Another use of the tilak is to make it easier for the master to see the place without having to put his hand on your forehead to see your progress – because as the place moves downwards, you will put the tilak a little lower. Each day you have to feel the place and move the tilak to it, to where you feel the presence of the third eye.

The master may have thousands of disciples: while the disciple bows down to him, the master observes where his tilak is and does not need to ask anything about his progress. The tilak indicates whether the disciple is making progress, or whether he is obstructed by something and has become stuck. If the disciple cannot feel the downward movement of the spot, it means that he is not totally focusing his consciousness. And if he has put the tilak on the wrong place, it means he is not conscious of the exact point.

As the point goes on moving downwards, the methods of meditation will have to be changed. The tilak is to the master what a patient’s progress chart is to the doctor in a hospital. The nurse goes on recording the temperature, blood pressure, pulse and so on; the doctor just has to see the chart to know the patient’s condition. Similarly, the tilak was a great experiment to indicate the condition of the disciple; the master had no need to ask anything. He knew what help was needed or what needed to be changed. This was the value of the tilak – assessing the changes needed in meditation.

Another aspect of the third eye is that it is the center of willpower. In yoga it is called the agya chakra. We call it that because whatever discipline we have in our life is governed by it; whatever order and harmony there is in our life arises from this point.

Let us understand it this way…. All of us have a sex center, and it is easier to understand through the sex center because we are all aware of it; we are not very aware of the third-eye chakra. All our desires in life are born at the sex center. As long as the sex center is not activated, there is no sexual desire. However, every child is born with the capacity for sex and the entire mechanism for fulfilling sexual desire.

It is a strange fact that women are born with all the ova they could need for the entire length of their reproductive life. Not a single new ovum can be produced later. From the first day of her life the number of ova a woman has indicates the potential number of children she can give birth to. After she reaches puberty, every month one ovum will be released from her ovaries. If it meets and unites with a sperm from a man’s semen, a child is conceived. Then no more ova are released as long as that embryo is developing and until after the newborn child is a few months old.