Thanks for emailing Strassman, Banko -


Argh, what a teaser, since this alone doesn't really tell much.

Well played Infundibulum,

You nailed it on the head. The major distinction between whether it's produced or simply present in the pineal is at the heart of the debate and iit's often overlooked or inored. That or simply people are un or misinformed and miss a major point in the debate.

Anyway, nicely said Infundibulum!

*O

Still following this research with a keen eye, it's pretty exciting.

I had a thought regarding the talk of dmt fueling dreams, and dmt being produced by the lungs. Before going on I should point out I'm aware these are both suggestions and nothing more.

But, as anyone who has tried to quit smoking can tell you, dreams come back in a crazy way when you come off the cigs. So I was just thinking, maybe that has to do with the lungs working better and therefore producing dmt more effeciently.

Just a thought I had, for all I know the dmt - dream theory has been debunked and that there's a perfectly normal reason dreams come back when quitting fags.

I see this old thread has been bumped.

I find it all rather fascinating, but I think perhaps people are making this too narrow. Some of my esteemed colleagues here will only be satisfied if DMT is proven to be produced in human pineal glands.

My interest was always more about how to produce tryptamines and beta carbolines endogenously. The metabolic pathways are somewhat academic when the goal is the ability to make it.

I am surprised none of the people here have jumped on the thread about Mantak Chia's take on Endogenous DMT Production... as he lays out a clear theory on the pathways between Tryptophan, Melatonin, Pinoline, DMT and 5 MEO DMT, as well as detailed methods of stimulating this process (again the main deal in all of this, no?).

He speculates that all 4 major glands in the center of the head are involved... not just the pineal, but the pituitary, the thalamus and the hypothalamus. If he is correct, the over focus on the pineal is just getting in the way. And, even if it turns out that the body's tryptamines and beta-carbolines are made primarily in the lung or gut... who cares? The key is still getting them to the brain and using them to make endohuasca.

In the thread I linked to, there is a link to his free ebook. It is all of 50 or 60 pages of large text and lots of diagrams, so people can plow through it in no time... and the DMT talk begins right away on pg 2 and 3 and continues through most of the book.

So... anyone interested in discussing practical endohuasca production rather than just stake claims about minor points in what is already a moot issue (re: the human body does produce DMT, 5 MEO DMT and Pinoline... somewhere, and likely in many somewheres), please pop over and chime in.

Note: Even if you want to chime in just to ridicule Mantak and his neo-Taoist endohuasca woo... you are still heartily invited.

HF

honestly, I am not all that concerned with where DMT is being made in my body anymore. It is there either way. I often find that this whole thing is debated based on very heady and linear rather rational ideas people have around some kind of ascention or enlightenment that never seems practical.

I like mantak chia a lot, and it is all interesting..but for me I dunno how much difference it all makes..what makes me the most happy and gets me the closest to anything like that is just eating a DMT plant out in the forest. I find the more I try to focus on these other very heady ideas the more unbalanced I feel like I get stuck in this linear thought mode that can make me crazy. I have had this line of thought often lately..wondering why so many deep esoteric mystery schools seem to bread just totally heady crazy psychopaths. I really wonder if it is just that these people focus on entirely heady ideas..like its some kind of mystical rational science. I am starting to really think that these ideas of enlightenment or ascention are just crazy the way they are depicted, though rooted in some (much more grounded) truth. Maybe I am just too pisces and need the grounding of earth spirituality to balance. My gf is constantly telling me I am way to much centered in my third eye and need to ground other centers.

Im ranting..however..

DMT is all over the planet as well as inside of us. That is enough for me to take notice. It does what it does reguardless..and it does it well.

I already know endogenous tryptamine like states happen. This is just a reality for me. The plant experiences have been somewhat more profound for me however, having a grater impact in my life. I don't know why. Weather or not anyone proves DMT is secreted by the pineal is not of huge concern to me. It is of interest but only due to being a mechanism for, not a proof of, an experience I know to exist.

I think that darkrooming hints at something..that is deeper and more simple and natural than advanced yogic paths and trancendant meditations..it speaks to our past..a time when for various reasons we had higher melatonin/pinoline levels..when we ate far more plant maoi flavonoids, neuroactive alkaloids etc..our wild and incredibly dynamic ancestral diets and long nights spent in darkness with complete absence of artificial lighting..I think these kind of states were just part of human consciousness. It is only now, in our modern times where it seems pssible that we are too "intelligent"(loose term) for our good good, that we resort to very linear, complex thought out ideas, programs and regimes we adhere to etc to achieve a glimpse of what we are capable of experiencing.

I see the power plants as another very simple and rather grounded path. What is more simple than eating a mushroom in a field?

I do yoga every single day, and I enjoy it. I spent a lot of time in the past doing yoga and weird meditations with the desire to supercharge my pineal gland and ascend etc, and inevitably what happens is simply dancing through the forrest after eating a mushroom or drinking some tree bark brings me into the most bliss charged energetic ascended states I can imagine..without really doing anything other than just being with nature. I no longer really do yoga for any other reason than doing it-it feels good.

In the Andes the Quechua people have a pretty advanced "pranic" system very similar to the system in the east, though for me much more grounded in the pachamama energy. they refer to bands of energy called chumpi's that correspond pretty well to chakra centers in the body, and they also extend this heavily to energy centers of pachamamma as well. In this system however the energy flows from the higher center down to the root into the earth. These ideas are pretty common. I really resonate with the idea of the earths energy system, and view the whole thing as one whole..for me it bring the whole idea of "endogenous" and "exogenous" into question.

When you walk through nature, if you have the eyes to see, you will see hyperspace everywhere..it is imprinted into the structre of everything..just look lengthwise down the branch of a monkey tree..or up at a pinecone, a sunflower..listen to the resonance of a bee hive, or thousands of crickets at night in a phalaris field. Nature IS hyerpspace.

What I suggest is that to focus on pineal secretions of DMT is not even necessary, although it is most definatly interesting. I find that often we can get a little bit too far with this new age headiness and focus on single ideas, and miss what we have already and always been grounded within. For me the plant secretions are simply glandular gaian secretions..gaian interspecies neuro-electric chemical resonators. That alone is awesome, and awe-inspiring enough. Instead of trying to prove or disprove some spiritual ideas based on a single human glandular secretion, for me at least there is a larger experience available right now resonating in the present all around us..and there is nowhere we need to ascend to besides that realization.

Perhaps this itself is the ultimate realization of all paths..each of us walking different ones respectively.

is Fig. 2 a joke? the KEGG mapped out pathway would show a side arrow from tryptophan to tryptamine, then nmt and dmt.
there's no known enzymatic method to demethoxylate the 5-position of melatonin. what's the proposed intermediate between melatonin and dmt anyway?

frankly at this point, I don't care much where it's made either. I'd just like to see less restrictive scheduling, as low doses of it could be highly therapeutic.

I'm with you benz...

And, clearly Mr. Chia is not the O Chem student you are/were. His oversimplifications are sure to annoy anyone who has studied these things for real... but this is to be expected. After all, he is famous for being a chi kung master and not for being a chemist.

I anticipated that his conjectures would be risible because most of his footnotes and citations harken back to ol' Rick Strassman, and he is already controversial enough.

All of that being said, Mantak's techniques do get a nice little buzzing going in the center of your head, and if you go with his darkrooming stuff, you have a very high chance of hallucinating. Hypnogogia is automatic for me... and Hyperspace is def. achievable. For me anyway.

His conceptions of levels and chemical pathways are naive, but again... the proof is in the pudding.

;-)
HF

Ive no reason at all to doubt HFs subjective experiences -lucky sod that he his! - but Chia is incorrect when asserting that the thalamus is a gland. The pineal gland (and habernular nuclei) are also known as the epithalamus but functionally these areas are distinct from the thalamus itself.

Honestly I am surprised to find how many people here don't ever wake up in the middle of the night in the middle of a tryptamine experience, and then proceed to lay there "tripping" for a while. I figured everyone experiences this. I often get mild DMT visuals on my eyelids when I go lay down in the daytime to sleep for an hour if I am tired.

Also, the first time I ever smoked DMT, which came from chaliponga(very different from mimosa) I instantly recognized it as identical in every single way to experiences I had as a child in bed at night that used to frighten me because I would loose all sense of boundries.

I wonder though, if this also has something to do with my experiences of some kind of repeated abduction as a child.

I have also lucid dreamed and had OBE's naturally for my entire life as far back as I can remember. It just comes naturally. Maybe there is some kind of overlap there.

I have also(and still do) have very very very powerful DMT experiences that manifest out of the tail end of lucid dreams sometimes. I don't know how else to describe it other than a very powerful DMT breakthrough equal in strength of vaping like 30mg. It is however, my conscious psychedelic experiences(while awake, eating plants etc) that seem to have the most bleed through into my daily consciousness to the point where they inspire cognitive changes in my baseline state.

I did have one experience though about 6 hours after an ayahuasca session where I entered a lucid dream and left earth and had an extremely psycho-spiritual experience that changed the way I view things. That was less like DMT though and more like some kind of super spirit journey.

I have also experienced pretty full on tryptamine visions while taking a couple mg's of melatonin at night before I finally pass out. Melatonin is not sopposed to do that, so I assume it is turning into something else.

I made a thread about that here..
https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=39508

What I am most interested in around this is the connection between internal DMT levels and the collective consciousness / vibrations.

I feel that as we move forward collectively, spearheaded by some people doing good, bringing elements of hyperspace back to ground level, and generally exploring, the average level of DMT will rise amoung people across the world. Our collective vibration will be raised up through its production, and visa versa.

Of course that is a pretty loose new age sort of perspective, while there is a lot of real science being discussed. But it seems to me that this will be a very important 3 dimensional action that will be a part of our evolution.

As you already state this is pretty new age and that is something that is more suited for the Spirituality & Mysticism subforum.

In the rest of the forum we try to have a more scientific approach and unfortunately scientifically seen we cannot do much with "collective consciousness / vibrations".

So I would like to keep this thread scientific and not get any things we cannot prove injected into it.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

A bit relevant, but the Barker/Strassman study has been out for some time, discussed here:

For those who don't know yet, this may be the most important find ever.



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


Just now on to humans....

I thought the presence of DMT in the pineal was already established and the dispute was, in the absence of supporting evidence, whether or not it was produced there. Am I getting this wrong?

JBArk

This is my understanding as well.

Here is the paper itself. (attached)

I guess I am behind...haha

My question to Dr. Barker:

"But does the paper mean that DMT is also being synthesized or produced by the pineal?..."


His response:

"Yep."