Śivasaṃhitā 5.65

The technique of fixing the gaze on the tip of the nose (nāsāgra dṛṣṭi) while simultaneously contemplating Śiva’s third eye (tṛtīya netra) in the forehead is one of the khecarī-siddhi practices most described in tantric texts. Convergent gaze at the nose tip withdraws prāṇa from its outward dispersion and concentrates it in the central channel. This concentration produces the perception of inner light—described here as fire brilliant as lightning (vidyut)—in the ājñācakra.

Nirāśīraparigraha—“free from desires and possessions”—describes the indispensable internal state for the technique to function fully: aparigraha (non-possessiveness) and absence of āśā (hope/desire) create the inner transparency needed to perceive the third eye’s light. The yogin who practices this technique while internally longing for results blocks his own progress: the yogic paradox is that only genuine detachment enables the experience that desire seeks.

Śiva’s third eye (Śivanetra or tṛtīya netra) in the forehead corresponds anatomically to ājñācakra and to the pineal gland point in the Western tradition. That in Śaiva iconography it is the eye with which Śiva destroys all that is illusory when he opens it—including Kāma, the god of desire—is no coincidence: activating ājñācakra implies precisely the destruction of illusions that maintain the practitioner in the cycle of saṃsāra.