Biological Basis of "The Third Eye"?

Richard Alan Miller

From the time of Dionysius to the time of Plato, the cultures of the Mediterranean consented to the doctrine that claimed the existence of an order of ultimate reality which lies beyond apparent reality. This "paranormal" reality was accessible to the consciousness only when the "normal" routines of mental data processing were dislocated. It was Plato's pupil Aristotle who changed his teacher's game, separating physics from metaphysics. The philosophical temper of our present civilization, being scientifically and technically oriented, is basically Aristotelian.

No such rational figure as Aristotle arose in the Orient to a position of equal eminence. Because of this and other reasons, Indian anatomists and zoologists, who where no doubt just as curious as the Greeks about the origins of life, and as skilled in dissection, did not feel compelled to set their disciplines up in opposition to metaphysics. Physical and metaphysical philosophy remained joined like Siamese twins. As a result, the discipline which became medicine in the West evolved into a system known as Kundalini Yoga in the Hindu culture.

In Western terms, Kundalini Yoga can be best understood as a biological statement contained within the language of the poetic metaphor. The system makes the attempt of joining the seeming disparate entities of body and mind. It is a very complicated doctrine; in oversimplified terms, the system encourages the practitioner to progress through the control of a number of stages, called Chakras or mind-body coordination. A sixth, associated with clairvoyance and telepathy, is called the Ajna.

The physiological site of this sixth Chakra, the Ajna, is located in the center of the forehead. It is symbolized by an eye - the so-called third eye, the inner eye, or the eye of the mind. When this eye is opened, a new and completely different dimension of reality is revealed to the practitioner of yoga. Western scholars when they first encountered this literature, took the third eye to be an appropriately poetic metaphor and nothing else.

It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century, as the subcontinent of Australia and its surrounding territory came to be explored, that a flurry of interest centered upon a lizard native to the area, the tuatara (Sphenodon punctatum). This animal possessed, in addition to two perfectly ordinary eyes located on either side of its head, a third eye buried in the skull which was revealed through an aperture in the bone, covered by a transparent membrane, and surrounded by a rosette of scales. It was unmistakably a third eye but upon dissection it proved to be non-functional.

Though this eye still possessed the structure of a lens and a retina, these were found to be no longer in good working order: also lacking were the appropriate neural connections to the brain. The presence of this eye in the tuatara still posses a puzzle to present-day evolutionists, for almost all vertebrates possess a homologous structure in the center of their skull. It is present in many fish, all reptiles, birds, and mammals (including man). This structure is known in literature today as the pineal gland.

The gland is shaped like a tine pine cone situated deep in the middle of the brain between the two hemispheres. Studies then began to determine whether this organ was a true functioning gland or merely a vestigial sight organ, a relic from our reptilian past. In 1959 Dr. Aaron Lerner and his associates at Yale University found that meletonin (1), a hormone manufactured by the pineal gland, was created through the action of certain enzymes on a precursor chemical which must pre-exist in the pineal in order for it to be transformed into melatonin. This precursor chemical turned out to be serotonin (2).

It was E.J. Gaddum, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Edinburgh, who was the first to note a connection between serotonin and mental states of being. In a paper published in 1953, he pointed out the fact that LSD-25 was a potent antagonist to serotonin. Serotonin is not an unusual chemical in nature; it is found in many places - some of them odd, like the salivary glands of octopuses, others ordinary; it abounds in plants such as bananas, figs, and plums. What then is its function in the human brain?

The task of exploring the role played by melatonin, and its precursor serotonin, was undertaken by a biochemist, Julius Axelrod. He found that melatonin suppressed physiological sexuality in mammals. If test animals were stimulated to manufacture excessive amounts of melatonin, their gonads and ovaries tended to become reduced in size, to shrink, to atrophy. The estrous or fertility cycle in females could likewise be altered experimentally by doses of melatonin.

Now two most curious functions had been attributed to the pineal gland, the third eye of the mind:

(1) It has now been established that this organ produced a chemical which had, indirectly at least, been associated with psychedelic states, and

(2) It also produced a chemical which suppressed functional sexuality.

The literature of religious mysticism in all ages and all societies has viewed the mystical passion of ecstasy as being somehow antagonistic to, or in competition with, carnal passion.

Axelrod and his co-workers also discovered another incredible fact: the pineal gland produces its chemical according to a regular oscillating beat, the basis of this beat being the so-called circadian rhythm. They found that the pineal responded somehow to light conditions, that by altering light conditions they could extend, contract, or even stabilize the chemical production rhythms of the pineal.

The fact that the pineal responds to light, even if this response is indirect via the central nervous system, has some fascinating and far-reaching conceptual applications. There are many behavioral changes which overtake animals as the seasons change, and which can be produced out of season in the laboratory by simulating the appropriate span of artificial daylight. Do such seasonal changes in mood and behavior persist in humans?

The great religious holy days of all faiths tend to cluster around the times of the solstices and equinoxes. Is it possible that the human pineal gland responds to these alterations in length of daylight? Changing the balance of neurohumors in the brain may perhaps effect a greater incidence of psychedelic states in certain susceptible individuals just at these crucial times. This possibility provides an entirely new potential dimension to our secular understanding of the religious experience.

The pineal gland has thus been referred to as a kind of biological clock, one which acts as a kind of coupling system; perhaps maintaining phase relations within a multi-oscillator system; a phase coordinator for multiple bio-rhythms. The pineal is a "cosmic eye;" it is aware of celestial rhythm. It "tunes" our biochemistry to those subtle rhythms not observed by the normal eye, like seasonal and lunar changes rather than daily ones. Serotonin can be seen as the "intensity knob" of the brain. As the level of serotonin increases, so does the level of activation of the cortex.

Strong suspicion has fallen now on serotonin as being one of the principle agents of the psychedelic experience. Studies now reveal that LSD-25 strikes like a chemical guerrilla, entering into receptor granules in the brain cells swiftly, and then leaving after a very short time, perhaps ten to twenty minutes (in animals). When the bulk of LSD-25 has left the receptor granules, it is replaced by what seems to be excessive, or super-normal amounts of serotonin. The LSD-25 creates what is called a "bouncing effect," like a spring pushed too tight. When the LSD-25 leaves the system, the serotonin springs back and overcompensates.

For most of us, most of the time, our world is a Darwinian environment. We must manipulate ourselves within it, or attempt to manipulate it in order to survive. These survival needs tend to color our appreciation of this world, and we are continually making judgments about it. Some of these judgments are based on prior personal experience, others are provide by the culture. This "recognition system" is one of the elements disrupted by the psychedelic state.

The principle question concerning psychedelic states remains: How much disruption can the system tolerate? The problem of how to maintain a certain madness while at the same time functioning at peak efficiency has now captured the attention of many psychiatrists. There seems to be a point at which Edgar Allen Poe's "creative madness" becomes degenerative, impeding function rather than stimulating it.

In light of this analysis, a shaman can be seen to be uncoupling his internal bio-sensor from the universal inputs. He gets "drift" where he is rushed toward new signal-to-noise ratios. The particular rituals are set up to disconnect the shaman from his social and cosmic environment. This is done through the ritual use of hallucinogens; they de-synchronize his internal rhythms. This de-synchronization produces more noise in his awareness. It also expands that awareness. The rituals are so designed as to contain elements which focus or tune that "noise" and direct the expanded awareness.

Man is unique by virtue of being possessed by intuitions concerning the scope of the mysterious universe he inhabits. He has devised for himself all manner of instruments to prove the nature of this universe. The beginnings of scientific understanding of shamanistic ritual and the function of the third eye provide man with powerful new techniques for exploration. This will allow him to penetrate the vast interior spaces where the history of millions of years of memories lies entangled among the roots of the primordial self.

(1) The chemical substance melanin is the pigment which darkens skin color. It is located in specialized cells scattered through the topmost layer of skin. Melatonin was found to be the substance responsible for causing the contraction of melanin-producing cells.

(2) Serotonin is of the same chemical series of indole alkaloids which include psychedelic drugs such as LSD-25, psilocybin, D.M.T. and bufotenine. The hormone serotonin is also known as 5-hydroxtryptamine.

Thanks for all these excellent posts.

As readers of my work will know - the pygmy race of SE Asia had a lot to teach the DNN about chanting and the spiritual. Here is further support from Genetics.




XtraMSN
Did The First Americans Come From Oz?
07/09/2004 02:04 PM
Reuters

Anthropologists have stepped into a hornets' nest, revealing research that suggests the original inhabitants of America may in fact have come from what is now known as Australia.

The claim will be extremely unwelcome to today's native Americans who came overland from Siberia and say they were there first.

But Silvia Gonzalez from John Moores University in Liverpool said skeletal evidence pointed strongly to this unpalatable truth and hinted that recovered DNA would corroborate it.

"This is very contentious," Gonzalez, a Mexican, said with a smile at the annual meeting of the British association for the Advancement of Science. "They (native Americans) cannot claim to have been the first people there."

She said there was very strong evidence that the first migration came from Australia via Japan and Polynesia and down the Pacific Coast of America.

Skulls of a people with distinctively long and narrow heads discovered in Mexico and California predated by several thousand years the more rounded features of the skulls of native Americans.

One particularly well preserved skull of a long-face woman had been carbon dated to 12,700 years ago, whereas the oldest accurately dated native American skull was only about 9,000 years old.

"We have extracted her DNA. It is going to be a bomb," she said, declining to give details but adding that the tests carried out so far were being replicated to make sure they were accurate.

She said there were tales from Spanish missionaries of an isolated coastal community of long-face people in Baja California of a completely different race and rituals from other communities in America at the time.

These last survivors were wiped out by diseases imported by the Spanish conquerors, Gonzalez said.

The research is one of 11 different projects in America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East being funded over a four-year period by Britain's Natural Environment Research Council.

The projects, focusing on diet, dating and dispersal of people down the millennia in the face of climate change, aim to rewrite anthropology.

"We want to make headlines from heads," said Professor Clive Gamble of Southampton university. "DNA will give us a completely new map of the world and how we peopled it."

http://xtramsn.co.nz/news/0,,3782-3671423,00.html

Dear J

Actually the first Americans is not proven by this at all. The fact is it happened long before this and there is a good possibility that South America developed its own indigenous hominids that include Goliath.

This is just a small piece in the larger puzzle. It goes to show that man was traveling the oceans long enough ago to have done the Hadji Ahemd map that details things we did not learn until 1958.

This new history that I have done - puts the boots to the whole paradigm and all the myths and lies meant to enslave people including Native American Indians who scuffle for table scraps rather than tell the truth or allow it to become known by examination of the artifacts like Kennewick Man. The Paradise that was in the Americas before bioweapons became advanced enough to mount an attack was indeed something we should know today. Our nations and laws are based on Manifest Destiny and lies at least the equal of what Hitler told about a Third Reich - which actually is what the US is part of.

On that point I had head to head battles with one of the Council seeking to bury Kennewick Man. This person spread lies and rumors including that I was a spokesperson for a Catholic agenda and she found my books selling at some site they are behind (I wish).

I got to this page through Google via keywords "Piaget" and "third eye". I don't get where "Piaget" went. Nonetheless, I've been studying the possibility that the "third eye" corresponds to the "third stage" (or you might say "substage") of Piaget's theory. He locates the genesis of the "self" in his fourth stage, but as an observational psychologist, he was looking for the mastery and use of the concept, rather than the child's preoccupation with the mystery.

The "third eye" is only one term that represents this numbering. There is also the "third station" described in the "Futuhat" in the Islam faith, the "first sefirah" following two "proto-sefirot" in the Jewish writings of Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, the "third heaven" in the modern Bible (II Corinthians 12:3), and the "third gate" of the early Christians ("Refutation of all Heresies" by Hippolyt;us).

Serotonin exists in two significantly different domains. There is interstitial serotonin, and there is intercellular serotonin. The spring-back that you mention is probably of interstitial, because of some chemical signal that the intercellular serotonin is weak. Serotonin, I believe, is used intercellularly to speed up the transmission. At birth, interstitial serotonin, and hence intercellular serotonin, is zero, and it increases during the rapid growth of the infant brain. This serves to retain the timing of neural firing patterns that would otherwise be destroyed by the rapid growth. Soon, there is a difference in the rates of parietal vs. prefrontal cortices. This develops into an "addressability" of the cortex. As people meditate or pray, spect scans have revealed that the point of maximum brain activity moves rostrally. The religious experience occurs when the definition of the "self", composed by a seven month-old infant, is recomposed by an adult.

I'm at a loss to prove anything that I've said, but I am continuously finding insights on the web that correspond to bits of my own understanding, so I'm sure that it's just a matter of time until religion is addressed in a big way by scientists.

This topic ought to be move to biology - I'll think about that. For now see:

http://brainmeta.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12868