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.
Changing Earth and People- Gina Lee's Archive on Global Change 