The Peepal tree and the third eye

It is through this feeling of gratitude that one received the divine grace. So when some people, full of awe, bowed down to the sun with folded hands, there was more to it than just the fact that it is an enormous fireball. These people had begun to recognise and knew the truth well that bowing down gives nothing to the sun, but he who is bowing down receives much. As the sensitivity of gratitude is born it creates simplicity, and the mind becomes innocent.

And this does not only apply to the sun, it is a far greater phenomenon. Hence, those who bowed down to the sun also bowed down to the rivers and the trees.

Sometimes amazing incidents happen. Buddhists have been worshipping the bodhi tree for two thousand five hundred years. Anyone can say that this is nonsense: it was just a coincidence that Buddha sat under that tree. What is there to worship? He could have sat anywhere! But during the past fifty years, science has discovered a very startling fact. The fact is that the third eye, in the middle of the forehead, had always been thought to be just imagination by scientists and thinkers, and they laughed at it and denied its existence. But during these fifty years, science has found a gland between the two eyes which is the most important gland in the human body. Whatever consciousness has grown in man, it is due to the secretion from that gland. And this gland is the same as that which has been called the third eye by the wise men of the East. The secretion that comes from that gland – and without which consciousness cannot evolve in man, intelligence cannot grow in man – surprisingly is found in large quantities in the peepal tree, the bodhi tree. When compared to all other vegetation in the world it is a very large amount.

Colin Wilson has written in his new book, The Occult, “It would not be surprising if the tree might have had an influence on Buddha’s sitting under it and attaining to enlightenment. The tree may have influenced it, it was not just accidental; the tree may have helped it.”

India has always worshipped the peepal tree. In that sense, the peepal is a unique tree among all the vegetation on earth; all other trees are quite different. It is dangerous to sit or to sleep under any other tree in the night, except the peepal. Trees exhale oxygen during the day – it is beneficial to be near them – and during the night they exhale carbon dioxide. It is only the peepal tree which exhales oxygen for all of the twenty-four hours. You can be near it any time; it is beneficial to life.

Those people who chose the peepal tree to worship from among all the others were full of gratitude. It is not just a coincidence that Buddha attained enlightenment sitting under this tree, it was a conscious choice. To sit and meditate under this tree is a part of a scientific process.

Osho, The Way Beyond Any Way, Ch 4 (excerpt, translation from Hindi)

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The occult science of the third eye – Osho speaks also about the meaning of the ’tilak’ or ‘tika’, Edgar Cayce, and that atomic energy was known and used already by the ancients
The third eye – “With the third eye you become capable of seeing things which are there, but which cannot be seen with ordinary eyes,” says Osho