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.