When i first heared about the pineal gland theory i wad a bit skeptical.. but, as it turns out research is beginning to take hold!

www.cottonwoodresearch.org/dmt-pineal-2013/

not sure if its been discussed here before but any thoughts?

Somehow this doesn't seem legitimate. :/

Care to elaborate?

BTW, this is being discussed here.

Woww this looks like a beautiful find! It is legitimate cubeananda. Rick is indeed the founder of Cottonwood working alongside Steven A. Barker and Andrew Stone. Thank god for them, some real psychedelic research, with this breakthrough I now see the possiblity of dmt in the pineal of humans being more than just a hypothesis verrry real

Although the manuscript has not yet been published, it does appears that DMT was found in the rat pineal gland. We still do not know the details (experimental procedures etc). One issue I can foresee for example, is the possible addition of MAOI's as MAOI inhibition may elevate DMT in several regions of the brain where it is not normally produced/present.

Furthermore the presence of DMT in the pineal gland does NOT support any of Strassman's theories. They will still need to be experimentally validated. It is also likely that DMT will be found in other CNS regions and is not specific to the pineal gland (this is suggested by previous work).

This is an exciting report and I eagerly await the publication.

does anyone know what is thought to have caused the evolution of the pineal glad to carry dmt ?

The pineal gland has not officially been shown to carry DMT. So, speaking to its evolution is premature.

Don't put the cart before the horse.

Its good to not get too ahead of ourselves...But lets not act like we're incapable of engaging in logical, theoretical discussions (if even mostly speculative at this point) without our brains falling out of our heads

The question of why it would contain DMT in an evolutionary sense, and why the molecule is so prevalent in nature in general, are valid and interesting...regardless of whatever the answer is

And if this study showing the pineal contains/produces DMT is sound- and so far we have no reason to think otherwise, especially since the presence of INMT has been previously confirmed- then questions like this would be even more interesting to discuss instead of dismiss. Sure there is no "Official Confirmation" yet...but that doesn't mean we can't discuss the possibilities without coming to conclusions and admitting that more research is necessary

This is an internet forum, not a peer reviewed journal

This is an internet forum which upholds the pillars of science and reason.

Speculation about these things is fine, of course, as it is in science, as long as logical connections are made. If x then y speculations based on facts and evidence are wonderful to discuss and a good form of mental masturbation. Let's just be sure to state things correctly, such as:

Valid: "If DMT is shown in the pineal then what evolutionary purpose would it serve?"
False: "What caused the evolution of DMT in the pineal?"

The latter statement assumes DMT has already been shown in the pineal.

a1pha is right here.

Making educated guesses is highly encouraged. But never, ever, should speculation be presented as fact on the DMT-Nexus.

It is important that people known what is speculation and what is fact. With facts you can work on the next step using those facts, while with speculation you have to keep in mind that you might be using a flawed base.

Showing that something is still speculation also shows respect to other people, by letting them know that anything they might build on that speculation can be flawed by having that speculation as a base to begin with.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

One hypothesis I've toyed around with in my head is that in actuality DMT is only EVER a trace neurotransmitter and that endogenous DMT may very well never produce the kinds of full hyperspace experiences we all know and love. We already know DMT is produced in the CNS in the spinal coord and the lungs and several other places.

I'd guess it's probably involved in dreaming. On the tail end of DMT journeys if you don't rush getting up you can extend the very dream like sequences 10-15 minutes longer than what most people report as their typical duration. It's these later dream like visions that lead me to believe if it has a serious role in consciousness then it is quite likely dreaming.

I'm not so sure of Rick's NDE hypothesis because I'm mean what evolutionary advantage is there to seeing fancy visions at death? Speaking purely from a materialistic stand point. I mean your dying...all the fancy visions in the world aren't gonna help you spread your seed....

Of course there is still the chicken and egg question which is far more interesting to me than the DMT pineal connection.

Is the brain a:

1. receiver of consciousness
2. generator of consciousness.
3. both a receiver and a generator of consciousness.

Right now materialism is only seeing it as a generator of consciousness. However I believe we can indeed show that even with materialism as our grounding rod that our brains are BOTH receivers and generators of consciousness. You are in fact receiving my stream of consciousness as you read this.

Which leads to:

Do our neurotransmitter levels change based on our emotions?
Or do our emotions change based on our neurotransmitter levels?

It should be obvious to everyone that a flood dose of DMT does in fact cause a psychedelic state of mind.
Is it possible that the 'emotion' of death (think the thoughts/mind aspect) causes endogenous DMT release?

Who knows, but it is fun to speculate.

This community took a very tragic turn a few years back when almost any form of Speculation, Postulation or Hypothesis became frowned upon, banned and/or relegated to the "Looking Glass" forum.

I received a message from a Hyperspace Entity who is NOT an crafty Archon to pass along here:

This Community would be light years ahead if the rigid Type-A folks who enforce the rules around here relaxed their need to control the flow of information and let it exist as a truly democratic forum with minimal intrusion, rebuke or censorship from the Mods.

I can't wait to see the final confirmation of proof that DMT is produced in the Pineal Gland ~ Any intuitive person already "knows" that it is.

This is really off-topic from the discussion of DMT and the pineal gland. Joedirt made a nice post above and I hate to distract from it. So to nip it in the bud, I redirect your entity friend to the following (please make sure discussion of this topic goes in the appropriate thread):

[IMPORTANT] New policy!

I would think it should be pretty trivial to confirm the presence of DMT in the pineal gland.

Just go to any slaughterhouse, collect a few kilos of pineals, then extract and run with your favorite analytical method.

I'd always assumed that DMT had been found in the pineal, so it never occurred to me to look into it.

In the next few months I do plan to run some TLC's on some plants... If someone can propose a decent extraction method and figure out how much starting material would be expected to be needed I could probably collect the pineals and do the extractions.

If I can get a spot, I'll do a semi-quant TLC and somebody here can probably confirm on a GC/MS.


-FF

P.S. I'm new here, so hopefully there's not a lot of intrusive mods busy rebuking and censoring people, unless it's for violations of the rules.

Well obviously i never said nor meant to imply that presenting speculation as fact is OK. And i don't think thewhitekingtut ever meant to imply any speculation as fact either.



IMO something like this would have been a better original response to thewhitekingtut than just dismissing the question entirely as "premature speculation" and closing the door to any discussion on it. Sure, he could have worded his question better (more along the lines of your first example, which is probably what he meant anyways)- which would have been better to point out. But IMO it was obvious he didn't mean to imply that its 100% certain the pineal contains DMT.

It seemed more like he was merely wondering what the author/peoples thoughts on this question are if this study were true, since afterall this is a thread about a study which will supposedly confirm the presence of DMT and its production in the pineal. Hence his "what is thought to be the cause of this?"

Again my only point was that its not unreasonable whatsoever nor is it speculation to ask "if this study holds up, then what would the evolutionary basis for pineal dmt be?"...which seems to me all that he meant to say, and something worthy of discussion.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to why this would be the case?
Maybe it is a last hurrah before we shuffle of the mortal coil. Perhaps it is a way of creating a doorway for our spirit/consciousness to cross over from the physical to other realms.
If it is the latter the thing that worries me is that maybe i could get blown to smithereens by a bomb and i have no time to think about death in order to produce my swansong dose.
Or whatever produces the point of death DMT dose could get damaged during a violent death, maybe a gunshot to the head, and not have a chance to create endegenous DMT. What would happen to my spirit then? What about all those poor buggers at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

I think some people are diverting the whole talk into two artificial camps of 'the ones who speculate', and 'the ones who dont want speculation to happen'. This is completely false, and has never happened in the DMT Nexus.

The only thing mods have been always very clear about is that we don't want something that is only speculation (at least for the moment) to be passed on as if it was truth, but it can still be discussed if it's clear it is speculation.

If this speculation is later shown to be a fact, great, we didn't lose anything, we still alowed it to be discussed, and we are conscious about when this speculation became shown to be a fact. So we're not losing anything by enforcing this, we're only winning, because we at the same time can prevent misinformation to be spread when the speculation is shown NOT to be truth (or if it's never shown either way)

Now, back to pineal glands, and feel free to speculate

In Buddhism they talk of the mind stream and I really have grown to this analogy. You ever notice how your thoughts just sort of pop in and out of your mind own their own? Is it your thoughts causing the neurotransmitters to be released? Or is it the neurotransmitters being released causing the (mind stream) thoughts? To me it seems pretty obvious that it's both.

To me this means there must be a component that isn't related to this body alone. I call it awareness. Base level consciousness.

My guess is that IF DMT is part of death then it's probably nothing more than your brain playing it's last part in your human experience, but as soon as your body is gone your consciousness goes on to what ever it goes on to. That way if you get hit by a truck and die immediately you skip the fancy Brain/DMT visuals and end up directly on the other side.

Finally we are moving forward again!

Lets keep this train rolling forwards people!

Joedirt that comment makes me feel a bit better .
I think i agree with you about the thoughts/neurotransmitter relationship. I saw a program the other day where a man was having his brain activity observed while being asked questions with yes or no answers. Certain parts of his brain would light up for the answer no and other parts would light up for the answer yes. The mindblowing part was that the observers could tell what answer was going to be given up to 6 seconds before the guy answering the questions consciously knew what he was going to say.
As for being hit by trucks i think endegonous DMT production would be possible , unless the truck was going so fast that it vapourised you when it made contact.
All this is pure speculation.