Other techniques supplement these attentional practices with methods like chanting. Chants, using words from ancient languages with supposedly unique spiritual properties, may cause profound psychological effects. Visualization practices, in which one builds up increasingly complex and dynamic images in the mind’s eye, also can lead to blissful and sublime states of mind.
In these conditions there is a dynamic yet unmoving quality to the experience, like a standing wave in a river. It looks as if the wave is not moving at all, while water rushes along on all sides of it. In fact, it is the rushing water that produces the wave. And those waves create a unique note, or sound.
Such wave phenomena, by their production of a particular note or sound associated with their frequency, establish wide-ranging and diffuse fields of influence. Objects within those fields vibrate sympathetically, or with the same frequency, a phenomenon called resonance.
An example of the powerful effects of resonance is when a particular note shatters a glass, even though the sound is not especially loud. The glass vibrates sympathetically, or resonates, at the same frequency as that of surrounding sound. Certain notes can create intolerable stress within the unique structure of the glass, and it bursts.
In a similar way, meditative techniques using sound, sight, or the mind may generate particular wave patterns whose fields induce resonance in the brain. Millennia of human trial and error have determined that certain “sacred” words, visual images, and mental exercises exert uniquely desired effects. Such effects may occur because of the specific fields they generate within the brain. These fields cause multiple systems to vibrate and pulse at certain frequencies. We can feel our minds and bodies resonate with these spiritual exercises. Of course, the pineal gland also is buzzing at these same frequencies.
A resonance process may occur in the pineal similar to that of the shattering glass, although not quite as destructive. The pineal begins to “vibrate” at frequencies that weaken its multiple barriers to DMT formation: the pineal cellular shield, enzyme levels, and quantities of anti-DMT. The end result is a psychedelic surge of the pineal spirit molecule, resulting in the subjective states of mystical consciousness.7
So far, we have looked at non-life-threatening situations: psychosis and spiritual experiences. Now we may turn to more dramatic instances that also are nearly always accompanied by psychedelic subjective realities: birth, near-death, and death experiences.
It is no exaggeration to say that birth, near-death, and death are extraordinarily “stressful” events. The life-force is doing all it can to sustain its struggling residence. Tremendous outpourings of stress-related hormones occur at these times, including the pineal-stimulating catecholamines adrenaline and noradrenaline.
Let’s start with the birth process. The birth experience is highly psychedelic for the unanesthetized mother. How much more so for the newborn! We know that DMT is present in newborn laboratory animals. There’s no reason to believe it’s not also present in newborn humans. However, no one has yet looked for DMT in human newborns or their mothers during delivery.
Normal vaginal delivery produces an enormous outpouring of catecholamine release. The massive flooding of these stress hormones over the mother’s and fetus’s pineal glands may be enough to override the pineal defense system and set in motion DMT release. If the mother is anesthetized, catecholamine production is less, and the least occurs when the baby is delivered by Cesarean section. Therefore, these latter two situations may result in less robust, if any, DMT release by mother’s and baby’s pineals.
High levels of DMT at birth provide an explanation for a particular piece of conventional wisdom from psychedelic psychotherapy. According to Stanislav Grof, M.D., an LSD psychotherapist with unparalleled experience, much of what takes place during psychedelic therapy sessions is a reenactment of the birth process. He has found that those born by Cesarean section are less able to “let go” in psychedelic therapy than those born vaginally. The presence of psychedelic levels of DMT at normal birth, and inadequate levels during Cesarean births due to too little stress-hormone-induced DMT output, may explain this finding.8
Perhaps in order to fully “let go” into any powerful emotional experience as adults we need a baseline of a safe and secure resolution to our first naturally occurring “high-dose DMT session,” which accompanies the birth process. Otherwise, later, as an adult, exposure to such unusual and unexpected states throws us into a completely unfamiliar set of experiences, disorienting and frightening us. We lack a reliable history of such experiences ending successfully.
Massive surges of stress hormones also mark the near-death experience, or NDE. Much of the literature on the NDE describes this as a mystical, psychedelic, overwhelming psychological experience. It also may be a time when the protective mechanisms of the pineal are flooded and otherwise inactive pathways to DMT production turn on.
We know very little about the physiology of death itself. What happens to our bodies, our brains, and our minds when we die? How long is the process? Does it end when we stop breathing? Or is there a reason many traditions counsel us about when to move or bury the dead? Why are they concerned about not wanting to disturb residual consciousness? Thus, we also must consider decomposing pineal tissue’s effects upon our consciousness, both near and after death.
Pineal tissue in the dying or recently dead may produce DMT for a few hours, and perhaps longer, and could affect our lingering consciousness. While our “dead” brain wave readings are “flat,” who knows about our inner mental state at this time?
To begin testing the hypothesis that decomposing pineal tissue produces psychedelic compounds, many years ago I collected pineal glands from about ten human cadavers to which I had access at a local morgue. I sent them to another laboratory to measure DMT. Unfortunately, the brains were not “fresh frozen,” or removed immediately at the time of death and placed into liquid nitrogen. This instant deep freeze stops all breakdown of tissues from that point onward. We found no DMT in these pineal glands. If there were any, it is possible the long delay in processing the tissue, several days in some cases, resulted in its loss before analysis.
Finally, psychedelic drugs may affect the pineal gland, and thereby use it and DMT formation as an intermediary in their action.
There are LSD receptors on the pineal gland, and mescaline raises serotonin levels in the pineal. Beta-carbolines accelerate melatonin formation, in addition to their previously described property of magnifying and prolonging DMT effects. And DMT is the most potent of several psychedelics that stimulate pineal melatonin production.
DMT promoting the formation of its own possible building blocks is similar to the kindling process, in which a tiny match can start a huge bonfire. The match begins by burning paper, which then lights larger twigs. Burning twigs ignite branches until ultimately, a raging blaze ensues. Similarly, the various circumstances we’ve discussed that are conducive to endogenous DMT production may begin with just a little bit of newly formed material. These conditions could begin a process of making even more by raising levels of necessary precursors. Finally, there is a “flash point” for a full psychedelic burst of pineal DMT. The psychedelic “fire” burns itself out after it has run its course and exhausted the supply of raw materials.
This “DMT hypothesis of pineal function” allows us to tie up several loose ends left by the melatonin hypothesis of pineal function.
One of these questions I have already discussed is why the pineal gland possesses such a potent defense system against stress. The melatonin hypothesis does not adequately answer this. The DMT hypothesis, however, provides a much more satisfactory explanation. That is, the body so ruthlessly defends the pineal gland so that we are not disabled by everyday levels of stress releasing psychedelic levels of DMT.
Another mystery unsolved by the melatonin hypothesis relates to the pineal gland’s unique location. The pineal gland is not even made of brain tissue. Rather, it comes from specialized cells originatin
g in the roof of the fetal mouth. Why does it migrate in every one of us to the middle of the brain?
From its unique perch, the pineal nearly touches visual and auditory sensory relay stations. The emotional centers of the limbic system surround it, and its position allows for instant delivery of its products directly into the cerebrospinal fluid.
Traditionally, we believe that the placement of the pineal is such that it can respond best to lighting conditions. However, the route from the eyes to the pineal is curiously tortuous. Nerves from the eyes to the pineal actually exit the head and detour through the neck before returning to the pineal deep within the skull. It would be just as efficient for the gland to stay in the neck or upper spinal cord and release melatonin directly into the bloodstream as a way of notifying its host animal of lighting conditions.
It may be the pineal’s placement is necessary so that melatonin may best affect nearby important brain centers, such as the pituitary gland, which regulates reproductive function. But this requirement really does not demand a deep brain location for the pineal. Melatonin carried by the blood from somewhere else could do just as good a job, as is the case with ovary and adrenal gland hormones.
Perhaps melatonin needs immediate access to cerebrospinal fluid, and that’s why it hangs from the roof of a fluid-containing ventricle. However, the pineal gland releases melatonin in a steady stream lasting for many hours, and its effects develop over days and weeks. A hormone with melatonin’s characteristics has no need for access to cerebrospinal fluid.
Finally, melatonin’s psychological properties are rather insignificant. These minor mind-altering effects do not justify immediate access to the colliculi and limbic system, the deep brain structures that regulate perceptions and emotions.
Thus, the pineal does not need to be in the middle of the brain if this location were to support melatonin’s role in our lives.
If the pineal gland were producing DMT, however, that would certainly warrant its strategic location. A DMT release directly onto the visual, auditory, and emotional centers the pineal nearly touches would profoundly affect our inner experience. We would see, hear, feel, and think things in a way unimaginable to consider for melatonin.
Because of its extraordinarily short life span of just a few minutes, DMT would also benefit from the small distances, only millimeters wide, between the pineal and important brain structures. It could diffuse directly onto these brain sites by way of the cerebrospinal fluid, without first having to enter the blood circulation. If DMT first entered the blood, MAO enzymes would destroy it long before it returned to the brain to exert its profound mental effects.
These considerations also effectively dispense with one of the major objections to the DMT theory of psychosis: the lack of differences between DMT blood levels in normal volunteers and in patients with psychosis. We now see that DMT concentrations in forearm vein blood may have little to do with its effects at discrete brain sites, sites at which DMT is broken down nearly as quickly as it is produced.
This reasoning further develops the idea that decomposing pineal tissue affects residual awareness after death. If this postmortem DMT emptied directly into the spinal fluid, simple diffusion is all it would take for it to attach to those sensory and emotional centers. A pumping heart would not be necessary.
Now that we’ve discussed two theories of pineal gland function in humans, the melatonin model and the DMT model, it is time to venture into analyzing the implications of these opposing paradigms.
In the last chapter, I described how the pineal gland, by way of melatonin, inhibits reproductive function. In this chapter, I hypothesize that pineal DMT opens our senses to profound psychedelic experiences. It is as if within the pineal gland there is a powerful dynamic or tension between the two roles it may play—one spiritual and the other sexual.
It’s fascinating to note that many religious disciplines believe celibacy is necessary to attain the highest spiritual states. The explanation for this idea is that sexual activity diverts the energy required for full spiritual development. One chooses either the life of the flesh or the life of the spirit. Nevertheless, celibacy isn’t consistent with reproduction, and there is a conflict between the continuity of the species and the antisexual attainment of reaching the greatest flowering of the individual spirit.
This conflict may be played out biologically in the pineal gland. Valuable resources may go to the formation of either the reproductively important melatonin or the spiritually indispensable DMT, the hormone of darkness or the chemical of inner light.
However, this opposition may be more apparent than real. Consider the possibility that pineal DMT release mediates sexual ecstasy, resulting from the strenuous exertion, hyperventilation, and intense emotions of the sex act. Psychedelic features do emerge at orgasm. In fact, the highly pleasurable effects of sexually activated DMT production may be one of the major factors motivating reproductive behavior.
Practitioners of Tantra attempt to achieve the best of both these worlds. This spiritual discipline recognizes that sexual excitation and orgasm produce highly ecstatic states, and therefore uses sexual intercourse as a meditative technique. By combining sex and meditation, Tantric practitioners access states of consciousness not available with either practice alone. Pineal DMT release, stimulated by both deep meditation and intense sexual activity, may then result in especially pronounced psychedelic effects.
There is a third element that ties together reproduction and higher consciousness, the energetic matrix within which is played out these competing pineal priorities. This is spirit, or life-force.
It is difficult to introduce the concept of “spirit” into any discussion of science in general, or biology in particular. However, it is even more difficult not to do so when the phenomena beg for it. In order to deal directly and deeply with the issues raised by the material I have presented, we must address this issue.
How do we define the spirit?
Compare life and death: the state of being alive to that of being dead. One moment we are thinking, moving, and feeling. Cells are dividing, replacing dying ones with fresh recruits for the liver, lung, skin, and heart. The next moment we are no longer breathing; our heart has pumped its last beat. What is the difference? What’s gone that was just there?
There is something that “enlivens” us when joined with our body. When present in matter, it shows itself by way of movement and heat. In the brain, it provides the power to receive, and transform into awareness, our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. When it is gone, the light is extinguished and the engine stops. Whatever it is, the presence of this enlivening force provides us the opportunity to interact with this time and place.
While not “personal,” this spirit or life-force has a “history” associated with our particular collection of animated matter. It has experienced things with us, while being essentially unchanged by those events. Its movements have created unique fields of influence by the notes or sounds it has generated by our body’s mental and physical activities. When the body is too weak to contain it, it leaves. Some goes to other matter, and some joins the ambient background of fields. The unique fields produced by its cleaving to our body, however, remain for a while before dissipating. The stronger the field, or the louder the note, the more time it takes to fade.
One of the most powerful reasons for my fascination with the pineal gland relates to its function in the life of the spirit. The importance and potential of this was brought home to me when, as a medical student in the mid-1970s, I learned of a startling coincidence involving the pineal gland and Buddhist beliefs about reincarnation. I cannot overemphasize how strong an impression this discovery made on me, and how it strengthened my search for a spiritual role for the pineal gland and, within it, the spirit molecule.
I already knew that the Tibetan Buddhist Book of the Dead teaches that it takes forty-nine days for the soul of the recently dead to “reincarnate.” That is, seven weeks from the time of death of one pers
on elapses until the life-force’s “rebirth” into its next body. I remember very clearly, several years later, feeling the chill along my spine when, reading my textbook of human fetal development, I discovered this same forty-nine-day interval marking two landmark events in human embryo formation. It takes forty-nine days from conception for the first signs of the human pineal to appear. Forty-nine days is also when the fetus differentiates into male or female gender. Thus the soul’s rebirth, the pineal, and the sexual organs all require forty-nine days before they manifest.
I unearthed this synchronicity when I was in my early twenties. I didn’t know exactly how to make sense of it at the time. I still do not. In fact, conjectures relating far-flung phenomena based upon similarities in time may be as much wishful thinking as the old herbal “doctrine of signatures,” which suggested that an herb’s properties depended upon how it looked. If a plant looked like a heart, it must be good for heart disease.
What I’m proposing is almost a “doctrine of elapsed time.” If Buddhist texts and human embryology reveal that different developments require forty-nine days, the events must be related. This association is perhaps logically shaky, but also intuitively appealing.
How might the anatomical emergence of the pineal and the reproductive organs forty-nine days after conception involve the spiritual or life force?
As we die, if near-death experiences are any indication, there is a profound shift in consciousness away from identification with the body. Pineal DMT makes available those particular non-embodied contents of consciousness. All the factors previously described combine for one final burst of DMT production: catecholamine release; decreased breakdown and increased formation of DMT; reduced anti-DMT; and decomposing pineal tissue. Therefore, it may be that the pineal is the most active organ in the body at the time of death. Might we say that the life-force therefore exits the body through the pineal?
DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences Page 9