Ajna and the Seat of Inner Sight

The term "third eye" translates most directly the Hindu tantric ajna chakra, positioned at the brow between the physical eyes and associated in the Sanskrit sources with intuition, insight and the faculty that perceives beyond ordinary sense data. The Serpent Power and related tantric literature describe ajna as the point where the dualities the lower chakras still carry are said to resolve, making it, in that system, less a location on the body than a threshold the practitioner's awareness passes through on its way toward the crown.

Shiva's third eye is the most famous image built on this same idea outside the chakra system specifically: a literal eye at the center of the god's forehead, ordinarily closed, whose opening in myth releases a fire capable of destroying what it looks upon, most famously the god of desire, Kama. The location is the same brow point tantric physiology names, but the two traditions, Shaiva myth and tantric yogic anatomy, developed the association from different starting points rather than one deriving cleanly from the other.