10 Pineal Gland and Post-Modernity

In this blog, I am planning to post my (and sometimes other’s if necessary) writings in such diverse categories as food, health, earth system change, childbirth & child care, education, art, history, etc. All these will be presented for us to share visions and efforts on the desirable ways to live through this time of rapid global change, as I put very briefly at <About>.

Such is not a simple task, which I don’t think I can do alone, at least to any meaningful degree. I am groping my way out, and I will feel the more supported with the more people going together.

One thing that I am pretty much sure is that we must take a fundamental turn from the so-called ‘modern knowledge’. It had grown to be popular since the 19th century in Europe and the late 20th century all over the world, and we, as mankind, were so proud of it. One of the most conspicuous traits of this kind of knowledge is that it gives absolute priority to ‘thinking’ and ‘human being’ as the subject of thinking.

However, anyone with meaningful life experiences will agree that human thinking is very arbitrary- “Earring, if you wear it on your ear; Nose ring, if you wear it on your nose”, as the East Asian saying goes. We know many historical cases in which the Truth, so called in a certain time and society, would make a fundamental change as things changed. At times, most absurd thinking would sway the whole society into turmoil.

One of the now-undisputed examples is the social Darwinism, which prevailed in the late 19th and early 20th century Europe. It argues that mankind evolves from the primitive state to the enlightened state, the former being represented by the indigenous peoples of Africa and Oceania and the latter by the Europeans at that time; that the latter has the noblesse oblige to lead the former. Perhaps God only knows how much atrocity has been done justified by such argument, and this is the part still blemishing recent human history.

No less absurd is the anthropocentric developmentalism, arguing that men are entitled to, or even recommended of, the exploitation of nature for their own affluence and convenience.  Now the world is getting more and more aware of its negative effects: earth sickened life of future generation threatened, etc.

Still, such way of thinking and acting survives, even thrives, in our everyday life. Fortunately, increasing numbers of us began to realize the problem and make efforts to overcome it. Such efforts, taken together, are called ‘postmodernism’ or ‘postmodernity’.

Plenty of things we should we keep in mind to make such efforts more fruitful, but I want to focus on one thing here: not to get trapped in our ‘thought’- not to be swayed anymore by such kinds of sophistry as modified social Darwinism or short-sighted developmentalism.

Of course, ‘thinking’ is one of the most valuable assets of human capacity. But it should be balanced by other ways of perceiving and interpreting the outside world, for example, through our heart or the third eye. Together, they should be followed by our healthy habit of making decisions for all of us on the earth without being limited to narrower circle and shorter sight.

This is why I have tried to focus on what is yet to be introduced and to be identified about the pineal gland and the somatic marker. Such will be mentioned further in the contexts of  postings to come, being expected to help us get a new insight to get over this “fine mesh of the net of modernity,” as Deleuze put it.

9 Although I do not think, I am

Brain science has become one of the hottest fields since the end of the last century, making popular many of the brilliant scientists in the field. One of them is Dr. Antonio Damasio, an American brain neurologist. His concern is yet to be related to the function of the pineal gland, focusing mostly on the prefrontal cortex, which can be regarded as the army headquarters implementing the order from the commander-in-chief, the pineal gland.

When a stimulus, a signal, comes from outside, our body perceives and translates it and make a decision to respond to it. For example, a sign noticing a very dangerous animal approaching will make our body ready to fight or flight.

What occurs in our brain in such process? Had René Descartes been asked so, he would have probably answered, “All the experiences and knowledge were combined by our reason in our brain to make the best decision. He was the one who begin to persuade us that we think, therefore we are.

However, 350 years since, Dr. Damasio puts out different story. He says, if we are to ‘think’ all of the factors related to making the best decision, that it, to process all the information from our direct and indirect experiences, we will need too much energy and time. He adds that, for this reason, our body chooses an alternative shortcut process.

This shortcut bypasses the reason, the thinking process of our brain, connecting directly to our emotion, being closer to the so-called ‘instinct’. Damasio’s way of explaining our brain response is called ‘somatic marker hypothesis.’

Suppose you have been bitten badly by a dog in your childhood, but you do not remember it. And now you, as a grown-up, see a big dog across the street. You will make an instant turn to avoid the dog, instead of calculating the chance of that dog biting and injuring you and comparing it to the loss you will have by making a turnaround there. That is because our brain produces a kind of a somatic marker, instantly arousing fear in us and changing our bodily states fit for fight or flight, Damasio explains.

Somatic marker is produced and acts at the area called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, VMPFC, as is shown in the above picture. This is a part of our so-called primitive brain, which had existed since the time when the earth knew only very simple kind of animal organisms, well before we became evolved into human beings. In other words, all the living creatures, from a very simple living organism to a much complicated animal like a human being, shares such a method of information-processing. It will enable a much faster and more efficient way of decision making.

Therefore, we can be even if we do not think. Thinking can even hamper our instant response to a stimulus in a rapidly changing environment.

Somatic marker hypothesis is one of the most widely accepted explanations of the way our body responds to numerous stimuli from outside. It is one of the rare research outcomes providing insights to the invisible process of decision making within our brain. Can the pineal gland be the next candidate for an object of such a persuasive research?

8 Pineal Gland for Our Well-Being

Without our being conscious, our immune system works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to make sure the working of our body/mind unhampered. Our daily life is secured by its regular round-up, but in time of crisis, when some hazard factors sway our body, most of our bodily energy is concentrated to the immune system, to keep our body safe.

If, as we have inferred thus far, the pineal gland is in charge of the function of judging the outside factors and coordinate appropriate responses, there also must be dimensions of the ordinary maintenance and of critical decisions.

Suppose you are moving to another place. What do you do? First, there will be area priority, and then you will need a reliable real estate agent to show you some options. After taking one or more rounds over the options, you need to make the final decision. What makes you to make it?

I don’t think there will be many persons who can articulate what is in his/her mind when making that kind of final, final decision. Most of them will answer, if asked, in vague words like “I like it”, “somehow I feel comfortable”, or “it just fits me.”

However, this kind of vagueness often makes great difference in your life. In the following, you see two pictures which can test your ‘vagueness’. If you had to live in one of these two places, which one would you choose?

Number 1 is a view of a village counted as one of the most prominent Myoengdangs (It is a key word in the East Asian geomancy, meaning a good place for your life in this world or after death.) Number 2 shows the area notorious through the media publication for the misfortune it has brought to its dwellers. The former has a very stable pattern of terrestrial electricity typical of old alluvium. The latter, with its protruding rocks containing metallic components, is very likely to have disrupted pattern of terrestrial electricity.

If you feel the difference between these 2 pictures clearly, and, better, prefer No.1, you can be safely said to have the ability to judge over the invisible factors intact.

In many societies, throughout ages, the importance of ‘good place’ has been emphasized.  From the bible to more recent documents, we can find scenes in which heroes are trying to find out ‘good places’ for new and large-scale projects‘.

It is very wise of them to do so. As our body/mind is a complicated and delicate structure with constant exchange of electrical and chemical signals, it is very likely to be affected by the wave patterns coming from the outside environment, thereby being reinforced or disrupted and weakened.

The popular word of ‘well-being’ literally means being well. If our body/mind is to be well, one of the things with top priority should be to find a good place where we can be well. And all of us can be assumed to have the ability to find such places, which the pineal gland in our brain is assumed to take charge of.

Expressions like ‘be assumed to’ may fail to deliver enough confidence in talking about this ‘unseen’ ‘workings of the pineal gland’ things. But this is not a matter of confidence but of consensus. Most of the experts on the related field do not seem to know or care about this apparently very important topic. Performance of the current life science does not seem to be very grand in this regard.

Still, I expect more and more attentions to be drawn here, because people in the 21^st century will need it. They will need to reach out to domains hitherto practically closed to serious researches, because these will turn out to be meaningful sources of information necessary for our ‘well-being’. State-of-the art technology in such field of dealing with the unseen as ‘brain science’ will help us in this exploration.

7 Pineal Gland in Everyday Life

An episode from the famous Romance of the Three Kingdoms attributed to Luo Guanzhong of the 14^th century China. The ambitious general-in-chief Cao Cao(曹操) led his mighty soldiers towards the fortress of Liu Bei(劉備), lying in ambush there. Liu Bei’s historically renowned military advisor Zhuge Liang(諸葛亮), overlooking from the highest spot, nevertheless recognized their hidden presence. “The air over the western part of the forest out there is filled with the killer spirit, which is sure to come from Cao Cao’s soldiers lying in ambush.” Thus saying, he had Liu Bei and his soldiers quietly move away along the paths on the opposite side.

How can you recognize the ‘killer spirit’? Certainly, it is not a thing to be identified visually. Perhaps the capacity of recognizing such unseen things might have helped Zhuge Liang hand down his fame as one of the most prominent brains.

We can safely guess that he may have had a good structure of collaboration between his pineal gland and the related organs, so as to perceive the unseen wave from the outside and to connect it to the other parts of body and mind. He may have been that kind of person with a good ‘Third Eye’ which was respected in some cultures. Maybe such is the context in which pineal gland becomes a symbol of worldly power and success.

Pineal gland is also a symbol of spirituality. Many of greatest minds including Descartes of 17^th century regarded the pineal gland as the site of our soul.  Well, it is highly probable, considering the mass of discourses in that vein. But, at least at the moment, it is still very difficult to discuss on it in solid scientific terms. Perhaps that is one of the major causes of the mystic atmosphere of the discourses with pineal gland as their key concepts- still we do not have enough words and consensus to talk about spirituality.

However, if pineal gland is an organ in charge of the judgment on the outside object, as we have seen in the above, its function will hardly be limited to such special and grandiose things as worldly success and spirituality. It is very probable that pineal gland is working 24 hours and 365 days for our body to be run optimally, thereby enabling us to lead a life going smoothly—just like all the components of our immune system.

How is such working represented in our daily lives?

We can take the example of the so-called ‘social perceptiveness’. It is a capacity in social animals like human beings to perceive the emotion of others to respond appropriately. It does have personal variation, but without it, social life would become impossible. It is a very important capacity required all the time in everyday life.

Numerous test forms of measuring social perceptiveness has been developed, one of which is shown in the following.

The 4 pictures have only slightly different visual indicators. The shapes of eyes and eyebrows or the way it was made-up with cosmetics can tell us that these are pictures of different persons, two of them being women, and another two of them being men. Otherwise, there is little we can tell with our visual system.

But the moment we see these pictures, we can tell the owners of these eyes are in different emotional states. Can you guess it out? The answers provided by the tester are: 1 is for ‘interested’, 2 for ‘friendly’, 3 for ‘fantasizing’ and 4 for ‘thoughtful’. Highly probable.

But how do we get such distinct and diverse answers from images that show such little difference? There hardly seems to be any way to explain it ‘scientifically.’

However, if we, as we have tried to reason out, have the capacity to make a judge on the outside object, by capturing and reading the wave patterns emitting from it, it will be possible.  Different patterns of the wave are emitted from our brain according to our different emotional states.

If such diverse patterns will be captured and interpreted by a certain system in our body, then we can expect our body and mind will be adjusted, to make fit responses. And as we have seen in the above, if there is an organ majorly in charge of it, pineal gland will be one of the most plausible candidates.

6 A Moderate Guess about the Pineal Gland

The immune activity of our body starts from the point where sensor cells judge suspicious matter found in the capillary. However, if we are to judge an object outside our body, we must apprehend it before we get into direct materialistic touch with it.  In that case, the media must be in the form of wave, not in the form of matter. Matters can hardly overcome the distance between me and the object, but most of the waves can cover it instantaneously, and even get through the materialistic barriers.

If such can be regarded as essential function to our successful survival in this world, there should be an organ in our body in charge of such judgment on the outside object. If then, what can it be? Isn’t it that the pineal gland is doing what sensor cells do within our body, for the objects existing outside the body and influencing it? The location of pineal gland seems to support such assumption, being located deeply and centrally within the most fundamental part of our brain.

Then we can safely suppose that waves are transmitted from the mouth or from the 3^rd eye, the spot between our eyebrows, directly to the pineal gland who judges about their possible benefit or harm. It sounds very reasonable if we consider the fact that the moment food enters our mouth, or when a new environmental factor stimulates us, the pineal gland is shown activated.

If so, pineal gland will need one or more collaborator organs to implement its judgment, just as sensor cells need other immune cells to help them deal with the invaders. One of the most plausible candidates is the hypothalamus. As seen before, the hypothalamus is located a little farther front of the pineal gland, at the nexus of the brain and the other parts of nerve system. You know, commanders sit back, common soldiers run on the field.

That seems to be support the messages from the past, emphasizing the importance of the pineal gland capable of seeing the unseen. Of course, the function of the pineal gland becomes meaningful only when it has the collaboration with the hypothalamus and other related parts. Perhaps that is why the old teachings respected the part in which these two organs belong together.

The upper dantian(丹田), or the upper  energy center of the oriental medicine, the Eye of Horus symbolizing Power and Competence in the Egyptian wall painting, and many other ancient images deliver us such a message. The Eye of Horus looks very close to the real anatomical appearance, which implies the Egyptian expertise on the anatomy formed through their experiences of making mummies.

If you are the person with efficient collaboration between your pineal gland and your hypothalamus, you are very likely to make the right decision throughout your life, without falling into serious mistakes, thereby leading a fairly successful life. That can be the reason why the icon of the 3^rd eye, or pineal gland, or pineal gland and hypothalamus put together, has been used as a symbol to represent the power of the mundane as well as the spiritual.

I am not a mystic. I believe that things about humans and the world can be explained in reasonable terms. If only we have enough information on facts and an open mind to embrace a new paradigm.

I am not a professional scientist, either. I do not mean to assert that this is my new finding. But I have had at least the basic scientific training to think in scientific ways. That can help me put the known things together, to draw a conclusion that might or might not seem new.

And I find it very interesting to view the function of the pineal gland in this way, which seems to be compatible with much of the traditional knowledge.

5 Pineal Gland and Hypothalamus

The immune system works without rest in order to protect our body from numberless stimuli from the constantly changing environment. And now we know that the bottom line there is to judge whether a certain stimuli will do good or harm to us. But the operation of the immune system starts from the instance certain matter comes into our body, flow along our capillary, to be found by our sensor cells there.

Is this enough? Is it not necessary for us to judge matters outside our body?

Certainly, it should be. Number one, there is our consciousness working here. If we think that something seems to be wrong, we get alert and try to avoid the possible source of problems. On the contrary, if we find something in our favor, we approach it or let it approach us. A person, a place, or a thing—no matter what it is.

However, there are more occasions of making distinction and decision towards a specific object, without thinking. For instance, food choice. We have times to spit something out the moment we put it in the mouth, without thinking that it is bad or not and that we should not swallow it. Or there are times when we go to some new place, we want to stay there longer or no longer, without actively thinking that the place has something favorable or appalling to us.

Evidently there is the visual dimension in such distinction. We humans have a tendency to get inclined to something visually good. But there is also another dimension that has nothing to do with visuality.

Think about food. Good appearance may invite us to have a bite, which nevertheless can provoke instant spitting out. Or when you find a newly open tea house walking down the street with some of your friends, its chic appearance can seduce you to have a seat inside. But before long, the still strongly remaining chemicals used for its decoration can throw your body into the tension of ‘fight-or-flight’, and you will probably want to leave the place, without actively thinking that something is wrong with it.

What helps you to make such distinction and the following decision? Brain science has already identified the spot where most of the hormones and other chemicals working in such activities are produced— in knowing the taste of food, in feeling happy or pleasant, in feeling uncomfortable or threatened, etc. That spot is called ‘hypothalamus’.

Hypothalamus, like pineal gland, is part of the primitive brain, being located to the front of the latter. It produces pleasure hormones such as dopamine and oxytocin, and regulates the secretion of adrenalin, the fight-or-flight hormone. It lies at the nexus of brain and other part of the nerve system, to have the vital function of transmitting the brain decision to all the other parts of our body. That makes it involved in most of the basic functions of our body, including food intake, sexual desire and activity, body temperature maintenance, feelings and actions of sleep and rest, and regulating our biorhythm.

However, little has known about the function of pineal gland, except that it produces melatonin, another of the pleasure hormone, and a few other kinds of neurotransmitters. You might think that pineal gland should have more important mission than hypothalamus, judging from its location being more to the center and more conserved seemingly. Why is this paucity?

Can it be from the fact that pineal gland might work in ways not that eloquently shown in terms of materiality? If pineal gland identifies an object by the wave it emits, the medical science of today, basically having been rooted from the materialistic anatomy, may not be apt to grasp its working mechanism. Like that was the case with the meridian system, one of the most important structure of our body that had long been ignored by the western medical science as purely ideological, but that has been re-illuminated scientifically only recently.

(We need another series of postings for that.)

4 Immunity and Pineal Gland

Although there is little research outcome to focus on the function of pineal gland per se in today’s physiology, still we can infer its function from ways inherent in our body to connect  its inner part and the environment. Science of today explains it in terms of nerve system, endocrine system, and immune system.

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We are living in the environment which changes constantly. Our body/mind must keep equilibrium in such changing environment. For this, our body/mind must constantly buffer from and adjust to changes from outside so as to keep our inner part from being disrupted.

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In this process, nerve system transmits outside changes and stimuli to the inside, endocrine system gets our body/mind prepared for the adjustment, and immune system keeps hazardous impacts from such stimuli damage our body/mind and takes charge of the damage control.

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Among these, the function of immune system is drawing more and more attention. Etymologically, ‘immunity’ means ‘being exempted from something not good’. A word in Chinese letters, 免疫, has been used in East Asia as its equivalence since earlier modern days.

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Immunity starts with distinguishing between ‘what helps me’ and ‘what harms me’. Numerous substances exist within our body. Among them, what is and is made within our body for our life process and what helps such process as something from outside do not incur immune response.

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However, the moment something hazardous to our life process is found within our body, immune process is kicked to start.

For example, if a sensor cell patrolling within the capillary found some suspicious protein matters, instantly it sends a piece of it to the identifier cells, to have it judged whether these are hazardous organisms, or parts of such organisms, invading from outside. If so, if they are identified to be some kinds of pathogens that deprive us of our life energy, instantly immune response unfolds to fight them away: Killer cells shower them with cyto-toxins, making our body temperature raised so as to make pathogens inert and easily captivated. After fierce battle is over, the cleaner cells, the macrophages, wrap up the dead body of pathogens to have it dissolved.

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Similar processes occur in responding to the hazardous chemicals. It starts with sensing and identifying the hazardousness of certain chemical found in the capillary. In the case of biological toxins from snake- and insect-biting, neurotransmitters are busy making the capillary narrow to prevent the toxin from going farther in the blood and concentrate the toxin to the injured spot. If the chemical does not seem that toxic, immune proteins like IgB work to send neurotransmitters such as histamine, to adjust nearby muscles to let it out from our body.

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In this way, the starting point of immunity to protect us in the changing environment is to identify something as good or bad for our living.

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However, does the target of this identifying and responding process necessarily exist within our body? If something suspicious exists not inside our body, but close enough to intimidate our life, can we go safe without operating such system of judging and responding?

3 Rethinking the Pineal Gland

Such abundance of contents from the cyberspace is helping us to know more of the pineal gland. But most of them seem to put on tinges of mystification. The current images related to this organ depicted as the Third Eye that we have seen above are vividly showing such tendency.

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However, pineal gland is an organ of our body, tangible and existent within our brain. Then, we can safely say that it must have identifiable function for our life. Yes, some kind of hormone production is identified in it, but I think its location alone, so deep, central and preserved, tells us that it has most central and fundamental function besides. What is it?

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.Recently, with the advance of the technology to scan our brain in terms of the energy wave, more and more scientific facts have been found about human brain and its work in the context of our life. One of them tells us that, when we eat or meet with a stranger, the pineal gland gets more activated. We can combine this finding with the existing knowledge about our body, to have more of the facts on this pineal gland.

The pineal gland belongs to the part of our brain called ‘primitive brain’. This is the part that had been formed during the earliest stages of the evolutionary process of the living creatures with brain. (There are out-weighing numbers of species without brain in this earth eco-system. In this case, the gut is doing what brain does, additionally.) As a certain species gets more complicated and sophisticated, layers are added to the brain as if layers of pearl substance are added to the nucleus stuck on the inner surface of a pearl shell.

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Primitive brain takes charge of the most basic part of the life process of the brain animal, such as biorhythm of waking up in the morning (or evening) and sleeping at night (or dawn), breathing, mating, and giving birth. What else is as much basic and important as these things?

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How about the function of judging whether a certain object or condition is good for oneself or not? If there is such function in our body, it will be very important to us as a biological entity living through this earthly environment changing constantly. Wittingly and unwittingly, human mind/body is responding to new food, new faces, new environmental factors, etc.  But before responding, it must judge the object in question and choose appropriate way of responding.

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If we need an organ to take charge of such judging process, pineal gland is sure to be one of the most plausible candidates. Its central location and the fact that many traditional societies known to be aware of pineal gland gave it supremacy over most of the other organs seem to back it up. Limited as my knowledge is, I can count at least one research outcome as evidencing this contention. A research paper, published in Russia, reported that, the moment food stuff enters human mouth, the pineal gland is activated and neurotransmitters stimulate the appestat.

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Sadly, the report was in Russian and unavailable on-line, with only a few lines of English description, a very rough sketch of the research outcome provided. But through its analogy to other similar reactions within our body, we may have closer understanding of what is happening in this process.

2 Pineal Gland and the Third Eye

Browsing through the internet, you can see that the words most frequently related to ‘pineal gland’ is ‘the Third Eye.’ As we have seen in the last posting, the location of the pineal gland can be identified as being in the middle of the two eyebrows, seen from the front, and a bit backward from the center of the bottom of brain, seen from the side.

From times long, long ago and in almost all known cultures, numerous images have been used to represent this third eye, usually depicted as a shining spot in the middle of the eyebrows, or a little higher on the forehead. And many of the current discourses on the pineal gland also use the image of the Third Eye to represent its attribute.

This has much to do with the contention that the pineal gland is an organ to recognize the unseen. As a matter of fact, the capacity of human vision is extremely limited. The universe is full of the energy in diverse patterns, of which human vision can perceive and identify only a teeny tiny bit, namely, those with wave length from 380 to 780 nanometers. “A dust particle out of the Gigantic Mountain”, as a Chinese saying goes. So there are other sensory organs to connect human consciousness with the surrounding environment: the auditory, the olfactory, the gustatory, and the tactile organs. Together, they are called as ‘five senses’.

These are the senses that enable us to live through our days. And there is the sixth sense, frequently referred to, but without any socially agreed explanation of how and through what organ it works. Recently there is increasing volume of documents, contending that the pineal gland, or the Third Eye, is the organ for the sixth sense.

Another noticeable contention about the pineal gland is that this is deeply related to the spiritual part of the human existence, being an organ connecting the body, the earthly part of our being, with the sky, or the spiritual dimension of our being.

As we have seen, in the Eastern philosophy (and, at the same time, medicine), pineal gland is equivalent to the Upper Dantian(丹田). This is the site for the ‘神’(shin), the most spiritual dimension of 3 dimensions of human energy, namely, ‘精’(cheong), 氣(ki), and 神(shin).

In ancient Indian philosophy (and medicine), the sixth among 7 chakras, the Anja chakra, is equivalent to the pineal gland. This is the chakra dealing with spiritual foresight.

Descartes, who showed noticeable interest to this pineal gland, said that pineal gland is the Seat of the Soul.

Such are teachings from the past, to make the key concept in many of the current discourses, in trying to explain how our body and mind work.

In the biology today, pineal gland is known to produce a hormone named as melatonin, with the stimuli from the light. More recently, a neural substance with the name of dimethyltryptamine is identified to be produced in pineal gland. This substance is known as the one and only hallucinogen to be produce in the human body, to date, at least. It is related to various surreal experiences including hallucination of strange creatures and sense of one-ness with the universe.

Such surreal experiences are often related to ‘wisdom’ and ‘power’. If you have the Third Eye open, you can see much, much more than what you can see with only two ordinary eyes, consequently becoming more powerful than ordinary people. This is the message, hidden in the image of the eye on top of a pyramid on the back side of the USA one-dollar bill, they say.

1 The Past and Present of Pineal Gland

In the Chinese letter system, the pineal gland is referred to as ‘松果体’, literally meaning ‘pine cone organ’. We can see the unwitting East-West consensus about the metaphor of its appearance.

What is most special to pineal gland is that it is located right in the middle of the left and the right brain hemispheres, while every other organ in the brain is located in one of the hemispheres, doing something for the respective part of the brain. If you look at the location of the pineal gland, which is the very center right under the most archaic part of our brain, the deepest inner sanctum, you can fairly guess that this small organ is sure to have a very important function.

Indeed it was the way pineal gland was regarded in the past. Icons representing the pineal gland are frequently found in ancient wall paintings, sculptures, building ornaments, etc. throughout the world. Such symbols shows images of this organ as regarded the center of men and the world. In Egypt, where mummy-making experiences must have taught the ancient people a lot about the anatomy of human being, pineal glands are found depicted very close to the real anatomical image. Such icon was called as ‘the Eye of Horus’, one of the most ancient and most significant deities in the ancient time, representing protection, supreme power and good health.

Throughout ages, numerous inspired minds had taught us of the significance of the pineal gland. In the West, from the Ionian philosophers to eminent scholars of modern times, including Descartes and Spinoza, we can find numerous research documents describing that pineal gland is the most important organ in our whole body. That was the way until the time just before the modern Western medical science took its root throughout the world,

In the East, it has been long taught and is still regarded as one of the 3 energy operation centers of our body, depicted as ‘dantian(丹田)’, literally meaning the ‘glowing red field’. The part where pineal gland is located is called the ‘upper dantian(上丹田), being regarded as the spot where one’s soul meets the energy of this world.

However, we, humans living in the 21^st century when the level of concern on our body is said to be more heightened than ever, do not know much about this pineal gland. Even if someone of us with higher level of anatomical knowledge know it by the name, he/she is very unlikely to know that it has such critical function.

Of course, this is the case with the mainstream medical discourses. If you google with the keyword of ‘pineal gland’, you will meet with thousands of postings telling what pineal gland is about.