Hello Everyone,
This song is not about drugs. It is an insult to this great band to imply that MJK is only speaking about drugs, drug use, and drug effects. This song is really about Quantum Physics. At the begining of the song MJK quotes Bill Hicks. He says
"Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather."
This one paragraph is what the whole song is about. He is talking about the Big Bang. When all atoms in the universe where ONE atom. Then the big bang happened and created the universe. That is why we are one consciousness, because we are all one (originated from the same thing). By the way the man that realized this theory did not do acid, it was Albert Einstein. (Theory of Relativity)
"Prying open my third eye" is not a reference to MJK's penis or his Peyote eye. The third eye in Buddhism is your consciousness. Your third eye allows you to see reality as it is, not the reality that we think exist, which is the reality we create in our minds that we see, taste, touch, etc.
We have all heard MJK refer to life as an illusion. Life is what our brain tells us what we are experiencing. When the Big Bang happened it not only created you, me, this planet, our universe, but it created all the parallel universes. Which means that if we are all one because we originated from the BIG Bang. Then that means that we all exist in everywhere, including other dimensions and so on. So, right now at this very moment you exist multiple times throughout space. That is why life is an illusion.
"So good to see you I've missed you so much So glad it's over I've missed you so much Came out to watch you play Why are you running?"
This is also related to Buddhist philosophy. The principle of Reincarnation. He says the statement above several times throughout the song. The first, he is talking about visiting himself as a child. The second is him visiting himself from another life time. According to Buddhist Philosophy, when you die you do not take with you anything but your Karma. This means your physical appearance, your knowledge, your car, all of these thing do not come with you to your next life. That is why MJK says this,"
I stick my hand into his shadow To pull the pieces from the sand Which I attempt to reassemble To see just who I might have been I do not recognize the vessel, But the eyes seem so familiar Like phosphorescent desert buttons Singing one familiar song."
You can see who you were in past lives, who you will be, and even who others were. If you just open your third eye.
If you have time go to youtube.com and type in "what the bleep do we know part 1." Watch the whole movie. It will thoroughly explain all of these concepts. We all see what we want to see. Just read through the comments, and see how people distorted MJK's lyrics because they wanted MJK to say what they wanted to hear.
If you are an avid TOOL fan, or if you know anything about TOOL. You know that they don't clearly state the point. Not because they are trying to be tricky. They want you to think for yourself. All of our lives we have been fed distorted information. We have been given answers to all our problems with the click of the search button on Google. TOOL doesn't want to give you the answers. They want you to find them on your own. Be pro-active learn the truth because you won't in school. Our governments, our dogmatic religions ( such as christianity, Islam, Jeudaism), and our teachers don't want you to know the truth because you begin to question. When you begin to question you begin to ask. When you ask then you act. This leads to revolution.
I hope this comment helped open your third eye.
"Liberate yourself and you will liberate the world"
"By the way the man that realized this theory did not do acid, it was Albert Einstein." - and what makes you think Einstein didn't do acid?
"By the way the man that realized this theory did not do acid, it was Albert Einstein." - and what makes you think Einstein didn't do acid?
"By the way the man that realized this theory did not do acid, it was Albert Einstein." - and what makes you think Einstein didn't do acid?
"By the way the man that realized this theory did not do acid, it was Albert Einstein." - and what makes you think Einstein didn't do acid?
i was going to post a comment like this..... its good that someone had alresady explined it
i was going to post a comment like this..... its good that someone had alresady explined it
the theory that we are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively has been the part of eastern religions and philosophy from so long ago
the theory that we are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively has been the part of eastern religions and philosophy from so long ago
the world is maya or illusion we projeect it as we want
the world is maya or illusion we projeect it as we want
but the truth never changes
but the truth never changes
I think that this song is about someone(loved one maybe child) who has passed away. And the narrator is dreaming of their "face again" and In the beginning Bill Hicks is talking about how drugs can help. So this person has turned into a drug addict and is trying to stop but is brought back "Down that hole and back again" This person is high to feel better and believes that he sees the loved one "playing" so he "came out to watch you play" but him/her starts running away and the addict starts to cry and screams "why are you running away!" Third eye is a metaphor for finally realizing what is true/reality so the addict is "Prying open my third eye" so see reality and that he/she Is gone but thanks the drugs for letting the addict see the loved one once again. And realizes that this entire time he's been "Chasing a trail of smoke" meaning the loved one was never there but he did it for "reason." The reason is because he loved him/her.
The entire Aenima album is about Carl Jung's theory of Analytical Psychology. This song is about the final layer, the center of it all: The Self. Just like "Forty-six & 2" was about crossing through layer 3, the Shadow. And you'll hear Maynard mention "Crucifying the ego" in a few songs. Eulogy was about "Ego death" which must happen to progress forward. Ego is layer 2. Look it up, I promise you it's true. Maynard formed the word "Aenima" by combining "anima" (layer 4, the feminine soul within a man, and oppositely animus is the masculine soul within a woman, and it's said that the qualities of one's one anima/animus reflect that of the lover they should have. It's kind of the basis for the concept of soul mates) and enema. Aenima is meant to mean "A cleansing of the soul."
glad someone is paying attention.
glad someone is paying attention.
Good comment, but I wouldn't limit the psychology references to just this album. Lateralus is so full of it too, especially the song "Reflection". You're definitely right though!
Good comment, but I wouldn't limit the psychology references to just this album. Lateralus is so full of it too, especially the song "Reflection". You're definitely right though!
@IAmTheAntihero i like this, I heard something about Jung and Tool
@IAmTheAntihero i like this, I heard something about Jung and Tool
row row row your boat, gently down a stream. merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream
Like phosphorescent desert buttons Singing one familiar song...
When he sings these two lines he is refering to the use of the halucinagenic peyote cactus that grows in parts of northern Mexico and the SW United States. After eating between 4 and 8 "buttons" from the inside of the peyote cactus, one can experience visions including animals who speak.
@OceanOfChaos cool, can someone send me some of that shit to philly? Only thing we see here are rats boxing cats for little debbie cakes, and thats most likely from smoking crack.
@OceanOfChaos cool, can someone send me some of that shit to philly? Only thing we see here are rats boxing cats for little debbie cakes, and thats most likely from smoking crack.
@OceanOfChaos "Including animals that speak." WTF? Maybe you are referring to the Native concept of a "vision quest" to find their animal "spirit guide," but although peyote may have you engaging in conversations with animals and inanimate objects, that's only because it's an extremely potent psychedelic, and there is no limit to what your mind may imagine or "places it might take you." In actuality, it is all in your head, but very much extremely subject to suggestion in that state.
@OceanOfChaos "Including animals that speak." WTF? Maybe you are referring to the Native concept of a "vision quest" to find their animal "spirit guide," but although peyote may have you engaging in conversations with animals and inanimate objects, that's only because it's an extremely potent psychedelic, and there is no limit to what your mind may imagine or "places it might take you." In actuality, it is all in your head, but very much extremely subject to suggestion in that state.
Hmm.. I posted a comment on this song a long time ago, it seems to have been deleted. This song is the grand finale of Ænema. This collaberation of every meaning behind the other songs in Ænema is a metaphoric sea of beauty. It reminds us to keep an omnispective view of everything, to question and contemplate existance, to not believe blindly, amongst other things.
This song is a record of Maynard's own experiences with the third eye. The third eye follows a theory that there are subtleties that can't be seen with our normal eyes. It's suggested in the lyrics that Maynard follows this path like a religion, and that he induces his visions with drugs.
Wow Aragorn, your pretty dumb huh? Rappo was intelligently making clear the connection of the nursery rhyme "Row Row Row Your Boat" to the line "A child's rhyme stuck in my head, it said life is but a dream" before you take shots at people, think of what you're saying.
this one ain't all that hard... prying open my third eye. that phrase is heavily emphasized in the song. assuming you understand the third eye reference and that the song has obvious references to both lsd and mescaline, try looking at the song as being less about the drugs and more about the rather unpleasant image of someone trying to pry their own eyes open with the drugs being the crowbar. hope someone finds this useful. peace.
This song is about finding yourself through the use of your "third eye"
we all have the outer and inner consciousness's that exist simultaneously, your inner conscious commonly referred to as an inner child or the subconscious or the dreaming personality is older than your outer consciousness, Your outer consciousness is the one we activly think with otherwise known as "the stream of consciousness"
As we grow up in social restrictions our higher or outer conscious trains itself and becomes conditioned to ignore refute dispute or otherwise render invalid MANY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of possibilities. For instance one must not even consider talking back to your parents in certain manners when we are young, otherwise your gonna suffer severe consequences that result in pain. In our teenage years we begin to rebel against this specific type of conditioning, but subtler conditioning remains for the most part for us to function adequetly in society. A good exmple of those who loose or never develop the subtler conditionings are people with social dis-functions, people who are hard to get along with, are strange, or have neroutic tendencies...
i know that seems a bit deep, but its to illustrate that there is a subconscious existence that continualy thinks about ALL possibilities that we shut off from ourselves in the intrest of effeciently handling our buisness and day to day survival, a human cannot afford to debate the meritts of EVERY footfall in intrest of actualy getting to his destination. What eventualy happens is we atrophy great portions of our links into our subconsciousness, many of them are no longer needed and may even hinder our abilities to function well, and many others are inadvertantly disabled that may very well be powerfull or fulfilling aspects of our innate inteligence.
This song is about the process of reuniting ourselves with our inner and subconscious layers that have been "put in the closet" for so long. At birth we are fully united with our subconscious, and only after years of training and social conditioning do we become seperated from our more primal urges and understandings... the second being more important.
Urges are for the most part counter-productive or in-effeficient, however our subconscious understandings are beyond ingenious, the human subconscious s able to calculate the trajectories of hundreds of objects simultaneously just by seeing them, think about a kid playing football, most of his reactions are not higher thought, they are instant calculations done by "instinct", but its trained instinct isnt it? the kid manages for the most part to adhere to the rules of the game and to calculate the positions of 24 players and those players sizes weights speeds and physical stances, hes able to simultaneously tragect potential avenues of acomplishment, potential avenues of failure, the weight speed size and trajectory of the ball, and to carry out his mission in the best way possible, as in fighting for every inch.
Now even if this kid sucks at football and gets sacked, his mind still does more advanced calculations from inherent understandings in less than a second than a trained physicist could calculate in several years of paperwork.
Now imagine if you could tap into and unify your conscious and trained higher thoughts with that kind of instinctual comprehension?
this is the gateway represented by the third eye, the attempt to understand that which we already inherently understand, and to learn about things we already know, but to know them consciously. It is the ultimate unification of thought, and those who are able to do it can bend a huge amount of thought towards the world, hence the reference to all matter being nothing more than energy coalasced into a slow wave. Which by the way is pretty much true, matter and energy are the same thing in different states.
The process of opening up your mind to your inner mind is difficult to do, hence the "Prying open my third eye", ever try to remember something that was on the tip of your tounge? something you should just know of the top of your mind but your stuck? imagine that feeling but even more distinct, that is PRYING open your third eye, attempting to rip the shroud that clouds your ability to tap into that which you already have. This is also why there are so many references to dream like states and images, getting in to that true level of awareness is forcing ourseleves to awake from a sleep we arent aware were in, or should i say daze?
Drugs have a long history in both recreational and medicinal (psychiatric) uses as being capable of spanning the divide between sub conscious and higher thought for limited amounts of time, although artificialy. The ability of tapping into that same connection without drugs is an even greater accomplishment, which i think this song is something of an attempt to discribe.
Remember even the smartest of human beings only use 10% of their brain throughout their ENTIRE lives, and only a small portion of that is actualy your thought stream, if you could use all of your brain, well, youd be able to comprehend the depths of the universe MUCH more adeptly. This song is kind of an instruction guide for finding a true and lasting connection to your inner inteligence that cant be substituted by the briefs connections provided by drugs.
The references to rebuilding himself and to finding his hiding self all go back to the same connection... and if you look at many other tool songs, they are about the same tapping into yourself, lateralus and schism come to mind.... but those are less explicit and subject to opinion... this one is almost blatant.
look at this bit closely
"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 "
His higher thought is of course greatly happy to find the lost connection to his inner mind, eespecialy after searching for so long for what seemed to be hidden, and in finding it, he realizes its always been there, and that he had left it, hence the subconscious's feeling that he had run away.
in leteralus this topic comes up again "over thinking, over analyzing, seperates the body from the mind"...
An incredibly powerfull song that taps some deeper spots in me... maynard is certainly a genius, if only for his ability to reach through all the crap and try to tap into how and what we realy are beneath all the bullshit (training).
My Third eye is on the way to being open, I have meditated many times with Doaism and many types of Yoga. I can weigh out all of the possibliites very very very fast, I have driven for hours at a time before and I forgot that I was driving...
My Third eye is on the way to being open, I have meditated many times with Doaism and many types of Yoga. I can weigh out all of the possibliites very very very fast, I have driven for hours at a time before and I forgot that I was driving...
Its using everything this body gives you, I hate this cage, Remember what is holding you in this body, our souls are capable of so much more outside of the skin and bone. Pain is an Illusion.
Its using everything this body gives you, I hate this cage, Remember what is holding you in this body, our souls are capable of so much more outside of the skin and bone. Pain is an Illusion.