Pineal Optics: My Third Eye

during its initial errands. Yeah. And another reason why you wanted to bring it out today is because Robert's third eye has been winking all day at people, and so we thought, yeah, this is it's time. This is what the eye wants. Yeah, yeah, my my flash opened up. It's it keeps making weird, awkward eye contact with people. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I guess an eye patches in order. We'll see how it goes. It doesn't help that you put a smalllse eyelashes on it

as well. You know, I wanted to look pretty because that's one of them. You know, you wanted to lend in with the other eyes. You don't want it to feel left out. That's true, all right. We hope that you guys, enjoy this all right, So obviously we're gonna talk about the pennel gland and also called the third eye. Yes, yeah, so the third eye for for those of you who

have not been exposed to it. Where we're gonna start out with just a brief discussion about the non scientific idea of the third eye, that being that there is this, uh, we have the two eyes with which we see the world, but that buried inside us, there's this third eye that if we are too if we open it, we can see something that isn't there, or something that is hidden from our normal perceptions of the world, that we will be able to see, uh, the spiritual aspects of the

world around us. Sour see into the future or see into the now. Um. It really depends on who's doing the talking as to what a third eye actually only consists of. You see, you see various takes on this in Hinduism. Um, if you've ever looked at any Hindu iconography, then you've you've no doubt seen like the flaming eye of Um of of Shiva, that that burns and shoots out flames. You if you're familiar with with with the dyoga,

for instance, you probably know of the ana chakra. This is a positioned supposedly position in the brain right behind the eyebrows center. And this involves you know, future site clear sight, presence, or even occult powers depending on who again is doing the talking. You see, uh, you see the third eye in Kabbala, in Taoism, in various New Age ideas and uh and you know even in heavy

metal lyrics from time to time as well. Also Gwen Stefani, well you know she used to, Yeah, the bindy is a reference to to the third eye, into the into the chakra and all that. Um. So, yeah, anytime someone's wearing a bindy, they may not know it. They might just be wearing it for purely uh you know, ornamental reasons. But but there is this idea of the third eye

buried in that. What I think is so fascinating about this topic is that the third eye has been something that has been subolic symbolic to us, right, this idea of seeing and seeing all. But really it does have roots envision and we will talk about that via the pineal gland. Um. So, what is cool about this is that somehow humans had sort of an inkling that this third eye um might have actually been something within their own brains that was giving them some sort of insight

or sensorial experience. And we'll talk more about that a bit. Yeah, So first, let's let's back up just a little bit about about the pineal gland and its history and its connotations and associations with the idea of a third eye

and spiritual insight and all of this. If you go back in time to around two thousand, you had this man by the name of Galen Uh Greek medical doctor philosopher, spent most of his time in Rome, and Uh he wrote on a number of things, but he his writings dominated medical thinking like on up until the seventeenth century. And he did discuss the pineal gland in his eighth book, uh of his anatomical work on the usefulness of the

parts of the body. And he was really more interested in the pineal gland than than anyone at that time or for you know, for years and years afterwards. Now, this was a time when when there there was this idea that the ventricles in the brain flowed with something called psychic numa, and numa is supposedly the breath of life in Stoic philosophy. It's this uh fine vaporous substance

that Galen described as the first instrument of the soul. Okay, so imagine these these these old thinkers and philosophers, and you know they're they're trying to understand how the world works, how the human body works. Um there working with limited tool though at their disposal, and they have only the knowledge that came before them, with which you understand it. Right.

So there they have this idea of psychic numa in their mind and they're poking around in um the brain of of a corpse to see what they can find and see what seems to do what. So when when Galen looked at the pennel and uh, and he in his book he describes the penel and talks about its resemblance in shape and size to nuts found in the cones of the stone pine. And that's where we get the name peneal pine. Uh that next time you have

pine nuts about. Yeah. So he's poking around in the brain, finds the pineal gland, but he doesn't see it as really involving any of this numa, any of this spiritual stuff, because he notices that it is outside that's something outside of the brain, and he thinks that the part of the brain that's gonna be involved in regulating psychic numa is gonna be uh something that we call the vermis Supper of Sarah Belli uh in the cerebellum. And he figured that was much more proper to play, to play

that role. But uh okay, So after his death again, his his work continues to remain important. Uh. In medieval texts, it is misinterpreted a few times, and it eventually the idea that the peneal gland is involved with the human spirit um and in our spiritual essence resurfaces. And that's a long run, by the way, right up to the seventeenth century. Yeah, indeed, I mean, you know, incertainly, these classical thinkers, I mean many of them are still we

still hold them up high today. They were, they were groundbreakers. So the seventeenth century rolls around and we have a guy named reneed to Carts, who most people are familiar with, right, because what's his famous quote? I think therefore I am yes, yeah, easy to remember for me, because it was there was a money python song about philosophers. The Australian Philosopher's Song.

There's a really bad joke too about how a way to ask him if if he would like dessert and he says, I think not, and then he keels over. That's pretty good. Um. So reneed to Carts is, you know, primarily known for his contributions to mathematics and philosophy, but he was also really interested in anatomy and psychic and in psychology as well. So he ends up doing a lot of thinking about what it is to be human

and then the biological aspect of that. And in this book, The Treaties of Man, he describes a conceptual model of a human which consists of two parts, body and soul. So the Cards works up this theory that the pineal gland is the seat of the census communists. In other words, it's the input. It's where the input of the senses are bound into an understanding of the world. So we see it involved according to the Deck hearts and sensation, imagination, memory,

and uh and bodily movement. Now Deckart's theory would would go on to be very important. A lot of people would really take this and run with it, because he's an important man, saying some really awesome things about this little tiny pine nut in our in our heads. However, it's important to note that he was not really he wasn't even really working with the best anatomical and physiological asumptions of the time. So he's he's really kind of going off in his own direction on this, but it

continues to be important. Towards the end of the nineteenth century. You see Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, and she really gets into the idea of the third eye um and in the pennel and compares it to the eye of Shiva, and she really argues that the penneal gland is an atrophied organ of spiritual vision. Switch Again, as we've discussed, there's this idea of this third eye hidden inside as that allows us some sort of sight that we have forgotten and that can on some level be

attained again. Okay, so again what I find really interesting about that is that there are seeds of truth to that in terms of the tissues of the pineal gland. And again we'll talk about that more and more scientific terms, but this inkling that this there's this uh sensory perception center in the pineal gland is correct. Yeah, And you can also get behind the idea that there is an ancient form of sight involved in the pineal gland. Some of the theories back that up as well, but it's

not attuned with the spirit per se. By the end of the podcast, will come back around to an inkling of some of those ideas. But but for the most part, from here on in, put the spiritual world behind you, because it's all going to be about seeing an evolution. So if we crack open the skull as uh as Galen did, uh and we take a look at the penial, what are we gonna see? We're gonna see a small organ to shave like a pine nut. And it's located on the midline, attached to the posterior end of the

roof of the third ventricle in the brain. Now, in a human it's roughly a centimeter in length, varies and it is composed of penniless sites and glial cells, and in older animals the o pennial often contains brain sand, which are just calcium deposits. But I do love the

idea of brain sand. Um, yeah, it is essentially an endocrine organ, right, But I did want to mention that when the human embryo is in the earliest stage of development, cells that will form the penel gland have the potential known as the differential excuse me to Frenchian potential to become I cells such as lens, epiphilial layer or retina neuron cells. So in other words, it has all the ingredients to make a brand new eye, but it forms

into this endocrine organ which produces the hormone melotonin. Yeah. Again, and at a cellular level, it is astonishingly similar to the eye um, particularly to the cellular structure of the retina. So it's not just a thing where someone founded they're like, it kind of looks like an eye, because it really doesn't really look like an eye. But but at at a cellular level, and again in early and it's in development,

we see the connections to our actual eyes. Yeah, and there's a great connection to as you say, evolution when we look at the reason for this why this penel gland exists. But before we do that, let's talk a little bit more about the melotonin um and its role, because what we have found is that the human peneal gland regulates the rhythm that beats out of the biological clocks of ourselves by secreting melotonin according to light stimulus received through the eyes and from the skin as well

as other cells. So in the morning, the level of melotonin secreted is low, in the evening it's high. And then the benefit of exposure to natural light in the morning is that the secretion of melotonin is curbed, enabling the body to keep its daily rhythm on track. Now, that seems kind of straightforward and so what, but that's kind of a big uh, that's a big deal production going on. Yeah, And we've talked before about the importance of melotonin and serotonin in the human mind and the

human body. I mean, it's it has everything to do with our our biological patterns. It had with our our our level of contentment with the world and uh, and certainly has come up in our discussions of various um psychedelic properties as well. Yeah, And if you think about the peneal gland too, it's kind of like the control tower of the body trying to really sense to what degree it needs to secrete the melotona. Remember that it's getting these cues from skin cells, other cells in the

body um as well as the eye. Yeah, you can think of it as a transducer, Okay. The pinnel transduces signals from the sympathetic nerve system into a hormonal signal. So it's like, you know, if you're assembling the human body, you say, out of an IKEA kit, and you might see the pennel in its own little little plastic bag there, and you might well leave it out during the confusing assembly process, but you would definitely notice that result. That is a that is an important little nut to screw

into the finished works. That's right, even with that tiny, little, tiny little uh what is that supposed to be? I guess like a screwdriver, Alan rinch, the Alan rich That's the thing is crazy? Um that that has got to

be the most frustrating tool in existence. UM. I wanted to mention that in the animals, the pineal gland is really paramount to reproductive functions since the detection of increased light, let's say in this spring, by the peneal gland adjust the secretion of melotonin and then that sends this whole symphony of cues to the animal's body to begin preparing

for the breeding season. So if you look at horses and sheep, This involves a hypothalamus secreting the anterior pituitary hormones which then essentially said nowt yep, I'm gonna say it, go now a tropin. And this is a hormone aimed at bolstering the animals go now ads and getting them ready for breeding. Yeah, yeah, I was. I read a bit which said that and when you're breeding sheep, um, sheep that normally breed only once a year can be induced to into two breeding seasons if you dose them

up with melatonin. Yep, exactly. And we've seen this in the examples with other animals too as well. Um. So I wanted to mention this because I think this is really interesting. Um this role of melotonin. Again, we just think of it as well that helps us to sleep and um, you know, have this wakefulness and not have wakefulness.

But I read this really very interesting study about how malfunctioning circadian rhythm genes could be the basis for bipolar disorder in children, many of whom are plagued with the onset of sleep disorders at an early age. Um. And this is really a big detail that sets bipolar disorder apart from a d h D and kids um this

sort of messed up sleep cycle or sleep disorders. R O r N genes are expressed in the eye, brain, and peneal gland, and in a study of one hundred and fifty two bipolar children and one hundred forty children as a control these children, obviously we're not bipolar or thought to be, Psychiatrist Alexander Nicolausku of Indiana University found four alterations to the r O r B jene that

were positively associated with being bipolar. So r O r B expression is known to change as a function of the circadian rhythm in some tissues, and mice without the gene exhibit circadian rhythm abnormalities. So what they began to see is that this this correlation with mal a tone in and with disorders like this are hand in hand, and Nicolaski says that every time we investigate some abnormality of molecular machinery linked to the clock genes, we find

an association with bipolar disorder. So obviously there needs to be more research, but it shows promise in the treatment and that researchers have been on the right path and strictly regulating a bipolar patients sleep schedule to improve extreme mood cycles that you see in bipolar disorder. Again, here's this pineal gland, the controlled tower, but you know, trying to give out the signals to the body. And it shows that something like this can really sort of go

awry if if it's not all regulated. So, I know what you're wondering, where does it come from the pineal gland? How do how do we end up with this this thing that is in many ways, in many interpretations, a kind of primitive eye buried in the center of our skull without any actual um chance to glimpse the light. It ends up being this is mere transducer. Well, it's a good question, and I'm glad you asked it because

because that's what we're going to talk about you. So this really gets down to questions of the evolution of the human high and the evolution of sight and um.

And when you start thinking about ocular evolution, we're talking about really old business here, like really important like when you're starting a business, like what are some of the first things you have to have, right, You've got to have you gotta have the building you had at the bathroom, and the first people you hire, maybe you know, you you've gotta have the key people on staff before you

staff up from there. So when we're talking about the development of the eye, we're talking about some very old business and a lot of stuff ends up built up around it. So it it makes sense when we start talking about the ramifications of of melotonin levels on all these varying levels of of of animal activity, because it's it's route down to the to some of the earliest development. So the eye has been around for a while and if you look at the eye of a human the

eye of a fish, they're not all that different. So it goes back a long ways in evolution. But if you go back far enough in our development, you find a cyclops, or more specifically, you find something called a lanceolate, and these are primitive creatures. They're still around to day, and they have just one eye. Now, a couple of the main theories about the pennial evolution come down to this idea of developing two eyes from one. All right, so back in the day simple organisms one eye, and

then his evolution progresses. This ide divides into left and right. Now this is all predicated on the primordial brain. Like this primitive brain that's just the solid mass, that's a big ball. It hasn't divided yet into the right and left heap sphere. So the brain divides into two and then from one eye we get two eyes now and then there there you can the various takes on which came first, chicken or egg? Does the brain split because the eye splits? Or does does the eye split because

the brain splits? Um? You can sort of go either ways on that too. Particularly interesting theories that stem from that. First of all, there's one here from Professor Masusuki Iraqi of nar Women's University, and Professor Araki believes that the third eye comes into being during the transition from one eye to two. The position that Iraqi is describing is that this the single eye pulls to the left and right and uh and divided. Uh, an eye remains in

the spot where the single eye had originally been. So the third eye then is not the third to be created, but the first, the original. So it's uh so we what we think of as the third eye is essentially the tissue, the prime big primordial tissue, primordial eye, really very simple I right, that had that was able to then sort of secrete itself back into our brains a bit. Yeah, because we've discussed with the way the human body works.

It's something doesn't just become useless overnight and fall off of us, you know. It's that gets sometimes sometimes well sometimes but but but but for for the most part, things get tucked away, Things get to get to get hidden in case they're used later. Our body can be sort of a hoarder in that example. Another theory comes to us from David Klein, PhD. And he and he

works for the National Suit of Help UM. He has this theory that it all comes down to UM to melatonin again and in the head, in the brain, and then the idea here is that roughly five million years ago, the ancestors of today's animals became dependent on melatonin as a signal of darkness, and as the need for more and more melatonin grows, the pineal gland develops as a structure separate from the eyes to keep the toxic substances UM needed to make melotonin away from sensitive eye tissue.

That's because this whole process of adoption and all other chemicals sort of interacting with one another, right, and the more distance you have, the better UM. In this making of melatonin so if you have that distance, then you are making sure that your eyes are not going to be effective the chemical that's sort of like the really

very shallow dive on that. But I kind of feel like both of them are correct because if you have this, you know, primitive brain, that's just a ball, but then uh evolved into this right and left hemisphere, and then you've got the tissue. Well, as you say, the body is really good at saying okay, hey, you're sitting around, why don't you do something? You jumping some some toxic stuff in there and end up some allotron and we're not using that room for anything. And so we see

the same thing with our office here. We only have so much room to work with, and in an office goes empty for too long, the video department will move some stuff in there and start filming some some skits and segments. The void gets filled. Yeah, um, and then they all that you know. Of course, then someone is the control tower of the light source and all the offices, much like the pineal gland, controlling the to what degree we are exposed to them. Um. So yeah, I think

that is our earth. I think it's so fascinating to to see how the human body can adapt like that. Um, and not just human body, but if you look at the lancelet, this is really primitive creature. How the beginnings of that show, how this this evolvement of our eye systems and our penny all gland also it came together. Yeah. Now, when I was describing Iraqi's theory and you're imagining this one eye in the middle of a head, I ended

up imagining a human face. Um, well actually your face since it's the one I'm looking at, imagining an eye in the center of your head, and then the two eyes coming out and then this uh, this primordial eye receding. So you're you may be wondering, was there ever a time when you have three eyes? Three or at least three ocular units on the face. And yes, we're going to discuss. We're glad you asked, because we're going to

discuss after this quick break. There are plenty of animals around today which which do have there two highly evolved eyes and then also this remnant eye, this uh, parietal eye, which is very closely connected. Do everything we're talking about. All right, We're gonna take a quick breaking when we come back more pinny a lotrips. Okay, we're back the parietal I. Now, if we look to some examples in nature, we can get a fine, fine feeling for what this

parietal eye does. Yes, now we're not again, we're not talking about you look at the face and you see three distinct eyeballs. But if you look at the certain lower vertebrates such as fish and lizards, um, you'll actually see this kind of you could almost mistake it for some sort of like gray pimple. Uh. This this kind of gray little dot, gray little slit um around the forehead, and that is this parietal i. Um. They typically it's

like I said, it's a gray oval. And the animals don't actually see out of this structure like they can't. They can't look out of it like they're they're not. You don't see an eyeball in it, right then, since data is not going in it and then forming a picture, that's what the other eyes are doing. This uhi. The throat all is more. It's a it's photosensitive and it does influence circadian rhythm, but it's unable to capture images. And it's believed that its sense it's light and regulates

body temperature and hormonal balance. So in a way you can think of it. And we'll discuss this a little more here. It is an eye that sees only one thing, and it sees what time it is. It sees where if you can even applies a concept like time to to an animal, but it can see where it is in the cycle of night and day. Yeah, And what I think it's really cool about it is that it does have this sense of passing of time through its

pridal eye and these two kinds of neurons. So unlike the human eye, which makes use of five different kinds of neurons called photo receptors to analyze light, the parietal eye has only two, as I said, but these two neurons help frogs, fish and lizards figure out what time it is. Um. This is from Seed Magazine, the article the Secrets in the third Eye. The comparison of the color signals now begin at the photo receptor rather than in the retinal neurons as in the regular human eye.

So when this happens, the photoreceptors in the parietal I are able to give information about the passage of time because, and this is key, the color spectrum changes over time during the day so the signal that comes out of the photo receptor is sort of a readout of what time it is, which very cool. I mean, this is sort of a superpower that we don't possess, even if we do have pocket watches, pocket watches when it's like the nineteenth century now yea. And this tridle is often

retained in burrowing lizards. Uh. And the idea here is that these are animals that are occasionally exposed to light, and the ridle eyes more suitable photo receptor for a burrower. Right. And um, that's what I think is really cool about these partial eyes is that they do differ. In a paper by Gundy and Works entitled Parietal Eye Peneial Morphology and Lizards and It's Physiological Implications, they looked at seventy five species of lizards in their parietal eyes and they

found that there were seven different morphological types. Um. Some of these types were the lateral parietal eye, the borode eye as you mentioned, and this is my favorite, a fingerlike projection that extends towards the parietal eye, so from thee inside the head. Yeah yeah, and this actually allows for the maximum absorption of light. This sort of configuration Yeah, so it's like the prietal eye and the pineal gland sort of reaching to touch each other, like like Adam

and UH and God on the Sistine Chapel. Right, I hope someone, I really hope someone paints that. That would be a lovely Surely that's on the side of a van somewhere or Alex Gray has done it. This seems like a great Alex great topic right there. So there's a lot of really cool study, especially in lizards are a great way to study the bridal eye, and they found a lot of interesting stuff about the the evolution of of the parietal eye and the evolutionary conjunction between

invertebrate and vertebrate ways of seeing color UH pristance. John Hopkins University study found two pigments in the pridal eye of the side blotched lizard UH, two different structures of protein communication. One of these is a pigment communicated with transducent like protein called gustucin as vertebrates used and now there is a pigment that uses GO protein. It's an

invertebrate way of of seeing. So the theory here is that early on this go protein this was the norm and then his evolution progresses, translucent pathway developed, and then as a and as it progresses even further, you move up to the lateral eyes, which are actually very highly specialized structures that allow us to have depth reception. And then the go pathway is dropped and we retain only

the transducent pathway. So like in we see in the pridal eye, an ancient form of seeing, an ancient way of just barely peeking out from the darkness of consciousness into the light of the world. That's beautiful. Well alright, so we uh, we couldn't tidy up the rest of this podcast without making a mention of hallucinogens, right, because

you feel really heavy into them as a topic lately. Um, So, what do hallucinogens have to do with the penel gland in the third eye other than people feeling like they have tapped into them when they're on hallucinogens. Yeah. We have a guy by the name of Rick Strassman, m D who researched the hypothetical energy yet unproven connection between the pineal gland and the production of d mt uh. The first he was very interested in the pineal gland.

Then he got very interested in d MT. He actually performed the first new human studies with psychedelic drugs in the US, and over twenty years back in between when he was he does about sixty volunteers with d MT.

Eventually ended up canceling the research because he grew too concerned about the pot of the negative effects that some of these individuals were having on these trips, seeing some frightening things, uh, lizardman, godlike beings freaking out as they dissolve into light, that kind of thing, which, as we discussed in our psychedelic episodes, can certainly happen. But he he did formulate a number of just kind of really

out their ideas. I mean, from the time you you you read what the man has written, and he's not a complete lumin or anything. I don't want to paint him like that, but he has some very far reaching ideas about what the pineal gland might consist of in what it's doing, and and he gets into some some really interesting territory where he's entertaining the notion that d MT actually affects the brain's ability to receive information not just in turping and generated, and that it can potentially

allow us to perceive dark matter in parallel universes. So it's, uh, it's all very theoretical. Um, you know, don't take that to the bank. But but I do find it really really interesting. It is interesting. I mean, it's certainly in an extrapolation on what Nobel laureate Julius axel Rod found is that the brain does have naturally occurring trace amounts

UM of d m T in the brain. And then some people have taken this to say the peneal brain is is um where it's made, and perhaps there's some sort of um connection connection between psychosis and even hallucinogens or I should say hallucinations. But again, a lot of this is all unproven at this point. We just all we know for sure is trace amounts that are naturally occurring in the brain of d MT, d MT being

this hallucinogen substance. Yeah, to what extent are we coming back around to the same mistake of attributing spiritual and ordinance to this little nut in the brain, or are we coming around to some truth about it that it is. I mean, obviously it has something that it has. It has stuff to do with the way that we since and understand the world. But to what degree, so exactly. Yeah, you know, we we didn't talk about the third eye

is being a Freemason symbol. Oh of course, yes, the what the the name for it at the top of the dollar, the triangle with the eye, Yeah, yeah, I mean that's the third eye. But whatever we've we've seen that in It's in the US Great Seal on dollar bill. And of course there's a lot of conspiracy theorist who will point to that dollar bill and say that, you know,

that's that's that's the work of freemasons. Um, But from what I understand, Ben Franklin, who was the only Freemason who worked on the currency at that time, proposed a design and it did not have that third eye in it. So also, um, that dollar bill third eye symbol was in you I think, uh far, maybe like a decade or more before the Freemason's even began to use it.

The eye of Providence, that's right. Yeah, yeah. And actually, if you want to know more about that, you should totally check out stuff they don't want you to know because they do some deep dives into that territory. And I really need to look it up because I was not familiar with the term. I have providence to like, just a couple of weeks ago, I was in yoga, and this is gonna sound hippie dippy, but during Shabasna, I saw this, uh that when you're in rest. Yeah, yeah,

I saw this, this triangle, like a pulsating triangle. It seemed like it might be God or something, you know, like that was the kind of vibe I was getting off of it. So afterwards, like, hi, I wonder if there are any ideas out there of like that interpret God or a divine being as like a like a triangle, you know, like in a very geometric, like stripped down since and that was the closest thing I have to find. It was like Shiva's that call. Yeah, only the yogi's

gonna laugh at that. Oh and I should also mention that one of the things that got me into this particular podcast, as I was thinking back to, the old horror movie From Beyond, was based on a Lovecraft story and that has a lot to do with monsters with pennil glands that end up poking out of their head and squirming around like worms, and it's a lot of fun. Do you have a great blog post on that? Yeah? Yeah, you can check it out. I do the Monster of the Week deal when I have when I have time.

All right, So there you have it. We hope you enjoyed this classic episode. As always, be sure to check out stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all the past episodes, all the blog posts, all the videos, and links out to our various social media accounts, and if you have thoughts, send them our way. You can do that by emailing us that Blow the Mind how Stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Work dot com.