Four aspects necessary to be known about ‘third eye’
We still lack a complete scientific understanding of the pineal gland –
however, spiritual traditions can give us valuable knowledge about it.
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 on 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 ‘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.
“We still lack a complete understanding of the pineal gland,”
said University of Michigan professor of physiology and neurology Jimo Borjigin, a pioneer in medical visualization of
the pineal gland’s melatonin secretion. “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. So here’s a handy shortlist of aspects necessary to be known 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 to Cyclops. In ancient Hindu spiritual tradition, SAHASARA is
explained as 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.”
While Homo sapiens’ subtle third eyes may have formed the physical pineal
glands in time, today we can still find animals with photoreceptive so-called ‘third eyes’, 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 said. “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 soon.”
3. Artificial Light = Dark Future
What has been recently published about melatonin is already 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” 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. “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. “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 malefic 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 a gift in my teenage years by providing me with an understanding of cerebral anatomy, I
figured I’d pay the favor forward as many times as possible.”
This shows us once again that development of brain and human’s paranormal
abilities can cause immense harm if it is not accompanied by a proper spiritual understanding and conscious
transformation.
yogaesoteric
September 8, 2019