So far, we know that
the pineal gland produces a unique suite of molecules that mediate brain
function most notably when we are resting.
This has led to an internal state of heightened perception that we know
as dreaming, lucid dreaming and more specific forms of visualization.
Part of this visualization
suite appears to have a tangible reality and linkage to my conjecture of the
Ubermind. Our clear challenge is to enhance
and manage this phenomenon.
Even better we need to
set aside the New Age language that has grown up as it all terribly biased and
attached to misleading doctrines. It is
time to get objective about the very real results because they are repeatable.
I have deliberately
oriented my own biases to the conjecture of a humanity created Ubermind that is
with us as our servant to guide humanity as presently cut off from simple
access. Our real challenge is to regain
access as was provided up to 45,000 years ago.
With that in mind it is reasonable that the pineal gland has largely
atrophied and requires exercises of stimulation.
4 Things You Should
Know About Your 'Third Eye'
We
still lack a complete understanding of the pineal gland -- but that doesn't
stop us from speculating.
March
22, 2013 |
Located
in nearly the direct center of the brain, the tiny pinecone-shaped pineal
gland, which habitually secretes the wondrous
neurohormone melatonin while we sleep at night, was once thought to
be a vestigial leftover from a lower evolutionary state.
Indeed,
according to recent research, we could be increasing our chances of contracting
chronic illnesses like cancer by unnecessarily bathing its evenings in artificial light, working night shifts or staying up too late. By
disrupting the pineal gland and melatonin's chronobiological connection
to Earth's rotational 24-hour light and dark cycle, known as its circadian
rhythm, we're possibly opening the doors not to perception, but to disease and
disorder. A recently published study from Vanderbilt University has found
associations between circadian disruption and heart disease, diabetes and
obesity.
By
hacking what pinealophiles call our mind's third
eye with an always-on technoculture transmitting globally at
light-speed, we may have disadvantaged our genetic ability to ward off all
manner of complicated nightmares. No wonder the pineal gland is a pop-culture
staple for sci-fi, fantasy and horror fandom, as well as a mass attractor of
mystics and mentalists. Its powers to divide and merge our light and dark lives
only seems to grow the more we take it seriously.
"We
still lack a complete understanding of the pineal gland," University of
Michigan professor of physiology and neurology Jimo Borjigin, a pioneer in
medical visualization of the pineal gland's melatonin secretion, told me.
"Numerous molecules are found in the pineal, many of which are uniquely
found at night, and we do not have a good idea of what their functions are.
The only function that is established beyond doubt is the melatonin synthesis
and secretion at night, which is controlled by the central clock in the suprachiasmatic
nucleus and modulated by light. All else is speculative."
Discerning
between the science and speculation of the pineal gland hasn't been easy since
long before Rene Descartes called it the "principal seat of the soul"
after studying it at length nearly four centuries ago. (Although "no
evidence exists to support this," clarified Borjigin.) So here's a handy
shortlist of things you should know about the pineal gland.
1. Third Eyes and Theosophistry
The
current scientific understanding is that the pineal gland probably started out as an eye, and it
receives signals from light and our retinas. Whether it was our only eye which
shrunk into the brain once its perceptive tasks were taken care of by our two
newer eyes, or whether it was a third eye with a spiritual and physical
connection to previous spiritual and evolutionary states, or both, has
galvanized science and speculation for centuries.
Earth's
ancient cultural histories are filled with folklore featuring both one-eyed and
three-eyed beings of great power, from Shiva and Cyclops to that amiable fellow
in The Twilight Zone's classic episode, "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" and beyond. (From
Beyond even: See below.) Associations can be found in Hinduism, whose
seventh primary chakra Sahasara is a multilayered lotus that looks
like the pineal gland's pinecone, and whose primary function is to perceive
universal oneness, scientifically and spiritually speaking. Theosophists,
who have been studying what they perceive as hidden knowledge since the Greeks
and Romans ruled philosophical and scientific inquiry, have more recently
claimed that the pineal gland is the spiritual engine of our evolution into
"embryo gods, beings of consciousness and matter."
That
description seems apt, given the astronomical power we have achieved in a few
million yeas of evolution. While Homo sapiens' third eyes likely
transformed into pineal glands along the way, today we can still find animals
with photoreceptive third eyes, now called parietal eyes, like New
Zealand's endangered tuatara. Fossils from other ancient creatures feature
similar sockets in their skulls, making our pineal gland a candidate for an
ex-eye.
2.
What Was Once Hidden Is Now Hi-Res
Michigan
University professor Borjigin and his team are hard at work on how the pineal
gland and melatonin regulate our lives.
"The
central circadian clock controls timing of almost all aspects
of our life, including physiology and behavior, and melatonin is the best
marker to decode the fingerprints of circadian timing in both humans and
animals," he told me. "In the past, it was very difficult to study circadian
properties of melatonin in animals due to technical limitations. My lab
invented long-term pineal microdialysis, which permits automated,
computer-controlled and high-resolution analysis of melatonin secretion from
rodent pineal gland from four to 10 weeks in the same animal."
These
visualizations could go a long way toward understanding how to hack melatonin,
which the pineal gland secretes when we sleep and helps the brain repair and
sync our bodies to Earth's rotation. Melatonin is a stunning compound, found
naturally in plants, animals and microbes. A powerful antioxidant, its list of
its medicinal uses only seems to grow each year, as we learn more about its
ability to help with immune disorders, chronic illnesses, and
neurodegeneration.
"Pineal
microdialysis allows us to monitor melatonin secretion closely under various
conditions to simulate jet lag, shiftwork, light pollution, diet manipulation
and more to define the fingerprints of circadian response to environment, he
added. "It also allows us to discover animals with extreme chronotypes,
like early-birds or night-owls, to understand how individuals with different
chronotype respond to circadian challenges differently. These are still ongoing
studies, but hopefully some of the works will be published this year."
3.
Artificial Light = Dark Future
What has been
recently published about melatonin is already pretty significant, especially
for those looking to combat breast and prostate cancer. Harvard University
School of Public Health researcher Itai Kloog and his group published a series
of studies in the last few years explaining how our "modern urbanized
sleeping habitat" (PDF) is a massive hormone-based cancer risk. "We have blotted out the night sky" with artificial light,
wrote Earth Island Journal's Holly Hayworth," citing Kloog's research
and noting that half that light is wasted anyway.
"We've
proven beyond a doubt that it's a risk factor," Kloog told me. "Light
at night has been proven on many levels, by our group and many others, to
definitely contribute to higher risk of developing hormonal cancer."
Kloog's
team published five studies altogether, including analyses at local and global
levels, and all of them found firm correlations between circadian and melatonin
disruption and higher risks of cancer. Analyzing NASA's Defense
Meteorological Satellite Program archive (to illuminate Earth's
light-at-night coverage) and data from the World Health Organization, Kloog's
group "found clearly that as women were more exposed to light at
nighttime, their rates of breast cancer went up. Our Israel study found that
going from minimum exposure to average exposure to light at night resulted in a
36 percent higher standard rate of breast cancer, and going from average to
maximum was another 26 percent increase."
Using
kernel smoothing to create density maps showing light exposure and cancer
rates, Kloog's team found that another of its studies, which sourced more than
20,000 light sources by height and intensity, showed a clear association. For
their two worldwide studies, they developed an algorithm to assign population
weight average light exposure for every person in every city across the world,
using WHO data, and again they found a clear association between cancer and
light at night.
"For
average light exposure per person, if you take an underdeveloped country like
Nepal, we're talking about 0.02 nanowatts per centimeter squared," Kloog
explained. "Compare that to the United States, where the average light
exposure of a person is 57.5. Up until around 120 years ago, humans were
basically exposed to 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness on average,
seasons and latitudes permitting of course. But since the invention of the
lightbulb, we've artificially stretched the day. We go to sleep late at night,
we have lights on while we sleep, we have a shorter sleep duration. We have a
lot of factors stretching out our days, relative to the light period we
experienced during millions of years of previous evolution."
"It's
something that's easy to take out of the equation," Kloog told me.
"Go to sleep in a dark room. Use less light. Close the shutters. Circadian
disruption is carcinogenic to humans."
4.
Occult Classic
This
is not to say that late-night viewing itself isn't good for the mind,
especially when it comes to pineal glands and third eyes. Because pineal glands
and third eyes remain singular components of an otherwise binary brain with an
extraordinary past, they have stimulated some stranger explorations of their
spiritual and supernatural possibility. The pineal gland's circadian dualism
has achieved particular resonance with influential occultists like horror
influential H.P. Lovecraft. Who, in turn, have spawned new generations of
speculative talents that have used it as a quite flexible receptacle for
expansive meaning.
"My
first exposure to the pineal gland came from Stuart Gordon's movie adaptation
of Lovecraft's From Beyond," Javier Grillo-Marxuach, creator of the
cult sci-fi television classic The
Middleman, told AlterNet. "In truth, everything I know about that
particular endocrine body probably derives from that seminal experience, which
explains why I am a television writer and not a brain surgeon."
In From
Beyond, a supernaturally activated pineal gland turns mad scientists into
brain-eating zombies. The recently reissued 1957 exploitation film She Devil features a "female monster" whose
hyperstimulated pineal gland turns her into "a demon, a devil, a
creature with a warped soul!" In both films, and many other third-eye
head-trips, functions as a sexualized organ, rather than a circadian
regulator. Today, some use melatonin supplements, available since the '90s, to
aid with sexual dysfunction. But the pineal gland's expansive mythic and
scientific history has much broader applications when it comes to folklore and
entertainment.
"In The
Middleman, we quickly discovered that because this most mysterious of glands
is so misunderstood, even though its very name connotes a certain frisson of
scientific accuracy and technical understanding, it was a fantastic shorthand
for whatever otherworldly qualities we needed to justify," Grillo-Marxuach
added. "Over the course of 12 episodes, the pineal gland became the source
of psychic ability, communication between parallel dimensions, the magical
influence of succubi and incubi over the libidos of ordinary mortals and,
finally, the power source for our main supervillain's armageddon device. Since
Stuart Gordon and H.P. Lovecraft gave me such a gift in my teenage years by
providing me with so fanciful an understanding of cerebral anatomy, I figured
I'd pay the favor forward as many times as possible."
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