I'm not sure if anyone else has mentioned this, so... sorry in advance. Anyway, I was looking around this opinion thing and noticed that there is a huge thread of people discussing this song's possible asscociation with drug use. Has anyone considered the possibility that opening a third eye is just as simple as opening the two eyes your mother gave you? This, of course, is only my opinion but it is what i think when I hear the words:
On my back and tumbling
Down that hole and back again
Rising up
And wiping the webs and the dew from my withered eye.
In... Out... In... Out... In... Out...
* * *
I've spent so many years in question
to find I've known this all along.
With this, it seems obvious to me that Maynard is singing for one of those people who "just don't get it," if you know what i mean. This person (or group of people) is, according to what I read in the biography section of this website, a tool. He is stuck in a desolete hole and he has only realized now that he has always been. He is the cave dweller for Plato, sticking his head in and out of the cave, only to frightened by his own shadow. It makes sense to listen to the intro to the Salival version, rather than the album one. Near the end of the song, Maynard sings to the embicile; "So good to see you once again/I thought that you were hiding from me/And you thought that I had run away/Chasing a trail of smoke and reason." It seems like this tops it off.
I think you are about half right. You just haven't followed your idea through it's complete conclusion. It seems you either omitted or ignored obvious parts of the song "Third Eye".
The Bill Hicks samples speak directly of drug use, and Bill adds in his rant, (paraphrased) "It's not a want of drugs , it's a want of personal freedoms..."
So possibly this song is about the limitations and benefits of using drugs to gain enlightenment. Sure drugs like Lsd , Pot, etc, can produce a state of altered conciousness, but it's artificial. The Enlightenment is external. I.E not pure and forced. Hence, "Prying open my third Eye". But this does not mean that the entire song is only about drugs. It seems to me that the song is about trying too hard to reach Enlightenment.
Most eastern religions (Budhism, Taoism, Zen), are less about dogma, civic duty, and morality , (then their western counterparts), and are more concerned with attaining a personal relationship with God, (in whatever form).
[Bill Hicks again can be referanced here, again, though this does not appear in 'Third Eye' , he has mentioned in his stand up how he has a personal relationship with god and dosen't need things like the bible or ministers etc in order to communicate with him/her/it (god). ]
And from many of these great eastern philiosophers we have come to understand that a state of enlightenment can not be forced. Many of you might notice you actually perform better at tasks when you let yourself go and stop trying.
I'll avoid any cheezy Star Wars referances here.
Ok this is a bit long, Sorry, but this is my first Post and my first visit to this Forum. I'm looking forward to any feedback.
I don't know how relevant this is, but, just a side note I suppose. I have recently been getting into the books written by Lobsang Rampa (from my Dad, by the way), Specifically the title "Third Eye". Tuesday Lobsang Rampa was a young Buddhist boy growing up in Tibet, and the story is his biography of the life and journey of becoming a Lama. The thing I found interesting is that, when he was 9 years old, he underwent a religious "surgery" to re-open his third eye. His mentor literally cut open a flap in his forehead and inserted a sharp probe into his skin, through the bone, until he felt the third eye. Instantly, Tuesday Lobsang Rampa could see the aura glowing around the surrounding monks.
I had always wondered why it was always "PRYING open my third eye!!". I had always related it to the way drugs are a way of forcing the "third eye" to open, even for a brief moment. But, this operation could also be described as PRYING, couldn't it?
Kind regards,
Andy
__________________ Chasing the Trail of smoke and reason
yeah, i just threw that comment out there just for something different, you know? i guess you could say there is a set of allegorical levels for the song. my first comment concerned the first (most simplistic) level. maybe that's why tool is so great, you know? i listened to my crappy recording of aenima over and over again when i was junior high. back then, i always felt like i could relate to songs like third eye and pushit because i always thought they were simply saying that everyone should just wake up. of course, at the time I was a minority (a non-popular person, or simply a freak) so I was desperate for music to tell me that because i didn't care about pissing other people off, i was cool. now that i have discovered this wbesite, however, i have discovered that Freudian and Jungian theory can easily be observed in pushit. wow. not the tool that i thought about in younger years. whatever happened to those kids who thought tool was cool because they performed songs about transvestites and people getting fists shoved up their butts? idiots.
I once again point back to the faq section of this website where it says, there is a stem in our brain known as the pineal body that is thought to be extremely sensitive to light and is knicknamed our 3rd eye. And I think TooL's reference to this is that if we use our brain and "think for ourselves" then we will see the light and have a new perspective of things, almost like having a 3rd eye.
__________________ Our farthers are models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God? --Tyler Durden--
