The secret?

The art of creating spiritual malas. 

At a simple level, a mala is string of beads used for counting mantras.

But to the Tibetan monks, a mala meant much more.

Meditating with malas gave the monks the power to hack their brains and access almost ‘magical’ levels of memory and concentration. Some Buddhist monks could concentrate for up to 18 hours without food, water or sleep! Not only that, many Buddhist monks had memory recall comparable to  present day world champions in chess, like Magnus Carlsen.

Most of the time, malas were made using wood. However, a famous monastery known today as the Drepung Monastery had a secret to making the most powerful malas in the world. They imported a rare, blue-colored stone from which came on camel-back along the Silk Road, all the way from the Aswan region of Egypt.

According to ancient scrolls kept at the Drepung Monastery, the monks did this because because they believed the stone had a powerful connection to the Third Eye Chakra – the chakra responsible for accessing altered states of consciousness. By meditating using a special technique with malas made out of this rare stone, the monks of the Drepung Monastery achieved powers which went well beyond what other monks could achieve. They found out that they could access altered states of consciousness at will and gain access to powerful psychic abilities like clairvoyancy (the ability to see things in distant places) and prophecy (the ability to see glimpses of the future).

This stone has a name which you may or may not have heard of – Lapis Lazuli.