Definitely agreed that on average, DMT plays a very small role in daily/average dreaming, if any. JC Calloway was probably the main researcher that popularized that idea and the role for pinoline as possibly mediating REM sleep etc.

But where I DO think it is possibly involved is in what I would call higher states of dreaming, i.e. OBEs and Dream/Sleep Yoga. Some of these experiences can get hyper geometrical and have fractal/mandala visuals, etc.

There is the famous story about the Tibetan Buddhist monk supposedly being talked into smoking DMT and then reporting back that it was as far as you can go in the Bardo without dying. And the reason they know about such things is that they meditate in their dreamstates. What is taught in Tibetan Dream Yoga is that a spiritual practice done in a dream state is "9 times more powerful than those done in the waking state".

Though the number 9 is arbitrary, this has been the experience of this Dreamer that something powerful is happening when one meditates consciously while in a dream state already. Simply meditating or saying OM with intent while in a lucid dream or OBE quickly renders normal scenery non existent and usually dissolves even the body as well as the surroundings, leaving only a fractal/mandala world in its wake. This state is difficult to maintain or fully remember, but as mentioned above it is often 4D/5D. Also, the OBE state has many somatic effects that are exactly like what Strassman wrote about in DMT: Soul of Prophecy when he reported in more depth on his IV injection studies from the 1990s. So what I wonder is if things like meditating in an OBE somehow kicks into gear a powerful cascade of chemicals, not necessarily limited to DMT but seemingly likely to include it.

I believe that the strongest evidence for DMT production in the body is from the lungs and Strassman has stated as much on Reddit recently. So it interesting to note those respiration changes in REM sleep. And if the pineal is involved even in just producing say pinoline to help keep the DMT around longer, a possible mechanism is that meditating while in a dream state causes higher pinoline production.

While we don't know for sure if DMT is produced in the pineal (I tend to think it is more like to produce 5MEO DMT than DMT if it does), it is still interesting to note the original thought experiments Strassman outlined that could lead to overproduction:

•  Override the cellular security system  around the pineal gland;
•  Lower/remove the presence of an anti-DMT compound  in the pineal gland;
•  Induce lower activity of the methyltransferase enzymes that produce DMT; 
•  Lower or disable The efficiency of the monoamine oxidase enzymes that breakdown DMT

Whether it is in the pineal or elsewhere, it seems that yogis and Tibetan monks are finding a way to cascade endogenous production of tryptamines and/or other endogenous entheogens to levels that are quite substantial.

Will check out those papers you suggest in the meantime, thanks! It seems one cannot read too many papers in trying to understand this field, time is the main limiter...

WRT to the WHEN/HOW MUCH question... So it appears the rabbit hole with day and night genetic expression goes even deeper. Perhaps some here are familiar with this already, but I was blown away to find out that essentially *every* cell in our bodies has a genetic clock for tracking day/night changes.

http://www.sciencealert....-of-clocks-in-its-cells

And the action of these clocks has a strong effect on protien folding and syntheses and cellular respiration, etc.

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*kbN73GCJHRzMZbHsVzI3xA.png

And now with "chronopharmacology" they are discovering that much scientific research done on rats may have given incorrect results if the time of day the experiments and samples were taken was not factored in.

For example, whether a rat lives or dies from an E Coli injection depends on the time of day that injection occurs.

Here is a great article that talks more about all of this:

https://medium.com/@jasonlauritzen/blue-light-and-health-plus-how-to-make-your-own-blue-blocking-glasses-1a3d2694ad60#.xx9mzee8e

All of this again reinforces my sense that while samples taken from humans during the day from humans do contain DMT, it is likely much less than it would be had they been taken at say 4 am after waking up subjects, and especially if said subjects had just had an exotic OBE, etc.

And again it is important to note that even in daytime studies of patients injected w/ DMT, within an hour the DMT detected is 1/50th the amount originally injected, so the fact that endogenous DMT is found at all randomly in humans is still indicative of larger amounts than what is measured by a fair multiple, despite the fact most if not all of these are done during the day.

On the WHEN and HOW MUCH side of the question we already looked at genetic circadian variations in humans.

Not sure if this image will show up, but it shows a 2X variation in DMT in Psychotria Viridis leaves depending on time of day sampled, with the higher levels apparently happening at night.

Again, most human blood sampling to test for endogenous DMT likely happens during waking hours, not at 4 AM when it would likely be highest.

https://scontent-sea1-1....06eaece&oe=58A6F357