Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from How Stuff
Speaker 1: Weren't dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and
Speaker 1: today we're rolling out an older episode we did Pennel
Speaker 1: Optics My Third Eye. We think it's a really fascinating one.
Speaker 1: We think you might enjoy it for the first time
Speaker 1: or for the second time if you listened to it
Speaker 1: during its initial errands. Yeah. And another reason why you
Speaker 1: wanted to bring it out today is because Robert's third
Speaker 1: eye has been winking all day at people, and so
Speaker 1: we thought, yeah, this is it's time. This is what
Speaker 1: the eye wants. Yeah, yeah, my my flash opened up.
Speaker 1: It's it keeps making weird, awkward eye contact with people.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm gonna do. I guess an
Speaker 1: eye patches in order. We'll see how it goes. It
Speaker 1: doesn't help that you put a smalllse eyelashes on it
Speaker 1: as well. You know, I wanted to look pretty because
Speaker 1: that's one of them. You know, you wanted to lend
Speaker 1: in with the other eyes. You don't want it to
Speaker 1: feel left out. That's true, all right. We hope that
Speaker 1: you guys, enjoy this all right, So obviously we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about the pennel gland and also called the third eye. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so the third eye for for those of you who
Speaker 1: have not been exposed to it. Where we're gonna start
Speaker 1: out with just a brief discussion about the non scientific
Speaker 1: idea of the third eye, that being that there is this, uh,
Speaker 1: we have the two eyes with which we see the world,
Speaker 1: but that buried inside us, there's this third eye that
Speaker 1: if we are too if we open it, we can
Speaker 1: see something that isn't there, or something that is hidden
Speaker 1: from our normal perceptions of the world, that we will
Speaker 1: be able to see, uh, the spiritual aspects of the
Speaker 1: world around us. Sour see into the future or see
Speaker 1: into the now. Um. It really depends on who's doing
Speaker 1: the talking as to what a third eye actually only
Speaker 1: consists of. You see, you see various takes on this
Speaker 1: in Hinduism. Um, if you've ever looked at any Hindu iconography,
Speaker 1: then you've you've no doubt seen like the flaming eye
Speaker 1: of Um of of Shiva, that that burns and shoots
Speaker 1: out flames. You if you're familiar with with with the dyoga,
Speaker 1: for instance, you probably know of the ana chakra. This
Speaker 1: is a positioned supposedly position in the brain right behind
Speaker 1: the eyebrows center. And this involves you know, future site
Speaker 1: clear sight, presence, or even occult powers depending on who
Speaker 1: again is doing the talking. You see, uh, you see
Speaker 1: the third eye in Kabbala, in Taoism, in various New
Speaker 1: Age ideas and uh and you know even in heavy
Speaker 1: metal lyrics from time to time as well. Also Gwen Stefani,
Speaker 1: well you know she used to, Yeah, the bindy is
Speaker 1: a reference to to the third eye, into the into
Speaker 1: the chakra and all that. Um. So, yeah, anytime someone's
Speaker 1: wearing a bindy, they may not know it. They might
Speaker 1: just be wearing it for purely uh you know, ornamental reasons.
Speaker 1: But but there is this idea of the third eye
Speaker 1: buried in that. What I think is so fascinating about
Speaker 1: this topic is that the third eye has been something
Speaker 1: that has been subolic symbolic to us, right, this idea
Speaker 1: of seeing and seeing all. But really it does have
Speaker 1: roots envision and we will talk about that via the
Speaker 1: pineal gland. Um. So, what is cool about this is
Speaker 1: that somehow humans had sort of an inkling that this
Speaker 1: third eye um might have actually been something within their
Speaker 1: own brains that was giving them some sort of insight
Speaker 1: or sensorial experience. And we'll talk more about that a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So first, let's let's back up just a little bit
Speaker 1: about about the pineal gland and its history and its
Speaker 1: connotations and associations with the idea of a third eye
Speaker 1: and spiritual insight and all of this. If you go
Speaker 1: back in time to around two thousand, you had this
Speaker 1: man by the name of Galen Uh Greek medical doctor philosopher,
Speaker 1: spent most of his time in Rome, and Uh he
Speaker 1: wrote on a number of things, but he his writings
Speaker 1: dominated medical thinking like on up until the seventeenth century.
Speaker 1: And he did discuss the pineal gland in his eighth book,
Speaker 1: uh of his anatomical work on the usefulness of the
Speaker 1: parts of the body. And he was really more interested
Speaker 1: in the pineal gland than than anyone at that time
Speaker 1: or for you know, for years and years afterwards. Now,
Speaker 1: this was a time when when there there was this
Speaker 1: idea that the ventricles in the brain flowed with something
Speaker 1: called psychic numa, and numa is supposedly the breath of
Speaker 1: life in Stoic philosophy. It's this uh fine vaporous substance
Speaker 1: that Galen described as the first instrument of the soul. Okay,
Speaker 1: so imagine these these these old thinkers and philosophers, and
Speaker 1: you know they're they're trying to understand how the world works,
Speaker 1: how the human body works. Um there working with limited
Speaker 1: tool though at their disposal, and they have only the
Speaker 1: knowledge that came before them, with which you understand it. Right.
Speaker 1: So there they have this idea of psychic numa in
Speaker 1: their mind and they're poking around in um the brain
Speaker 1: of of a corpse to see what they can find
Speaker 1: and see what seems to do what. So when when
Speaker 1: Galen looked at the pennel and uh, and he in
Speaker 1: his book he describes the penel and talks about its
Speaker 1: resemblance in shape and size to nuts found in the
Speaker 1: cones of the stone pine. And that's where we get
Speaker 1: the name peneal pine. Uh that next time you have
Speaker 1: pine nuts about. Yeah. So he's poking around in the brain,
Speaker 1: finds the pineal gland, but he doesn't see it as
Speaker 1: really involving any of this numa, any of this spiritual stuff,
Speaker 1: because he notices that it is outside that's something outside
Speaker 1: of the brain, and he thinks that the part of
Speaker 1: the brain that's gonna be involved in regulating psychic numa
Speaker 1: is gonna be uh something that we call the vermis
Speaker 1: Supper of Sarah Belli uh in the cerebellum. And he
Speaker 1: figured that was much more proper to play, to play
Speaker 1: that role. But uh okay, So after his death again,
Speaker 1: his his work continues to remain important. Uh. In medieval texts,
Speaker 1: it is misinterpreted a few times, and it eventually the
Speaker 1: idea that the peneal gland is involved with the human
Speaker 1: spirit um and in our spiritual essence resurfaces. And that's
Speaker 1: a long run, by the way, right up to the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century. Yeah, indeed, I mean, you know, incertainly, these
Speaker 1: classical thinkers, I mean many of them are still we
Speaker 1: still hold them up high today. They were, they were groundbreakers.
Speaker 1: So the seventeenth century rolls around and we have a
Speaker 1: guy named reneed to Carts, who most people are familiar with, right,
Speaker 1: because what's his famous quote? I think therefore I am yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: easy to remember for me, because it was there was
Speaker 1: a money python song about philosophers. The Australian Philosopher's Song.
Speaker 1: There's a really bad joke too about how a way
Speaker 1: to ask him if if he would like dessert and
Speaker 1: he says, I think not, and then he keels over.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. Um. So reneed to Carts is, you know,
Speaker 1: primarily known for his contributions to mathematics and philosophy, but
Speaker 1: he was also really interested in anatomy and psychic and
Speaker 1: in psychology as well. So he ends up doing a
Speaker 1: lot of thinking about what it is to be human
Speaker 1: and then the biological aspect of that. And in this book,
Speaker 1: The Treaties of Man, he describes a conceptual model of
Speaker 1: a human which consists of two parts, body and soul.
Speaker 1: So the Cards works up this theory that the pineal
Speaker 1: gland is the seat of the census communists. In other words,
Speaker 1: it's the input. It's where the input of the senses
Speaker 1: are bound into an understanding of the world. So we
Speaker 1: see it involved according to the Deck hearts and sensation, imagination, memory,
Speaker 1: and uh and bodily movement. Now Deckart's theory would would
Speaker 1: go on to be very important. A lot of people
Speaker 1: would really take this and run with it, because he's
Speaker 1: an important man, saying some really awesome things about this
Speaker 1: little tiny pine nut in our in our heads. However,
Speaker 1: it's important to note that he was not really he
Speaker 1: wasn't even really working with the best anatomical and physiological
Speaker 1: asumptions of the time. So he's he's really kind of
Speaker 1: going off in his own direction on this, but it
Speaker 1: continues to be important. Towards the end of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: You see Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, and she
Speaker 1: really gets into the idea of the third eye um
Speaker 1: and in the pennel and compares it to the eye
Speaker 1: of Shiva, and she really argues that the penneal gland
Speaker 1: is an atrophied organ of spiritual vision. Switch Again, as
Speaker 1: we've discussed, there's this idea of this third eye hidden
Speaker 1: inside as that allows us some sort of sight that
Speaker 1: we have forgotten and that can on some level be
Speaker 1: attained again. Okay, so again what I find really interesting
Speaker 1: about that is that there are seeds of truth to
Speaker 1: that in terms of the tissues of the pineal gland.
Speaker 1: And again we'll talk about that more and more scientific terms,
Speaker 1: but this inkling that this there's this uh sensory perception
Speaker 1: center in the pineal gland is correct. Yeah, And you
Speaker 1: can also get behind the idea that there is an
Speaker 1: ancient form of sight involved in the pineal gland. Some
Speaker 1: of the theories back that up as well, but it's
Speaker 1: not attuned with the spirit per se. By the end
Speaker 1: of the podcast, will come back around to an inkling
Speaker 1: of some of those ideas. But but for the most part,
Speaker 1: from here on in, put the spiritual world behind you,
Speaker 1: because it's all going to be about seeing an evolution.
Speaker 1: So if we crack open the skull as uh as
Speaker 1: Galen did, uh and we take a look at the penial,
Speaker 1: what are we gonna see? We're gonna see a small
Speaker 1: organ to shave like a pine nut. And it's located
Speaker 1: on the midline, attached to the posterior end of the
Speaker 1: roof of the third ventricle in the brain. Now, in
Speaker 1: a human it's roughly a centimeter in length, varies and
Speaker 1: it is composed of penniless sites and glial cells, and
Speaker 1: in older animals the o pennial often contains brain sand,
Speaker 1: which are just calcium deposits. But I do love the
Speaker 1: idea of brain sand. Um, yeah, it is essentially an
Speaker 1: endocrine organ, right, But I did want to mention that
Speaker 1: when the human embryo is in the earliest stage of development,
Speaker 1: cells that will form the penel gland have the potential
Speaker 1: known as the differential excuse me to Frenchian potential to
Speaker 1: become I cells such as lens, epiphilial layer or retina
Speaker 1: neuron cells. So in other words, it has all the
Speaker 1: ingredients to make a brand new eye, but it forms
Speaker 1: into this endocrine organ which produces the hormone melotonin. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: and at a cellular level, it is astonishingly similar to
Speaker 1: the eye um, particularly to the cellular structure of the retina.
Speaker 1: So it's not just a thing where someone founded they're like,
Speaker 1: it kind of looks like an eye, because it really
Speaker 1: doesn't really look like an eye. But but at at
Speaker 1: a cellular level, and again in early and it's in development,
Speaker 1: we see the connections to our actual eyes. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's a great connection to as you say, evolution when
Speaker 1: we look at the reason for this why this penel
Speaker 1: gland exists. But before we do that, let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the melotonin um and its role,
Speaker 1: because what we have found is that the human peneal
Speaker 1: gland regulates the rhythm that beats out of the biological
Speaker 1: clocks of ourselves by secreting melotonin according to light stimulus
Speaker 1: received through the eyes and from the skin as well
Speaker 1: as other cells. So in the morning, the level of
Speaker 1: melotonin secreted is low, in the evening it's high. And
Speaker 1: then the benefit of exposure to natural light in the
Speaker 1: morning is that the secretion of melotonin is curbed, enabling
Speaker 1: the body to keep its daily rhythm on track. Now,
Speaker 1: that seems kind of straightforward and so what, but that's
Speaker 1: kind of a big uh, that's a big deal production
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, And we've talked before about the importance
Speaker 1: of melotonin and serotonin in the human mind and the
Speaker 1: human body. I mean, it's it has everything to do
Speaker 1: with our our biological patterns. It had with our our
Speaker 1: our level of contentment with the world and uh, and
Speaker 1: certainly has come up in our discussions of various um
Speaker 1: psychedelic properties as well. Yeah, And if you think about
Speaker 1: the peneal gland too, it's kind of like the control
Speaker 1: tower of the body trying to really sense to what
Speaker 1: degree it needs to secrete the melotona. Remember that it's
Speaker 1: getting these cues from skin cells, other cells in the
Speaker 1: body um as well as the eye. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: think of it as a transducer, Okay. The pinnel transduces
Speaker 1: signals from the sympathetic nerve system into a hormonal signal.
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, if you're assembling the human body,
Speaker 1: you say, out of an IKEA kit, and you might
Speaker 1: see the pennel in its own little little plastic bag there,
Speaker 1: and you might well leave it out during the confusing
Speaker 1: assembly process, but you would definitely notice that result. That
Speaker 1: is a that is an important little nut to screw
Speaker 1: into the finished works. That's right, even with that tiny, little,
Speaker 1: tiny little uh what is that supposed to be? I
Speaker 1: guess like a screwdriver, Alan rinch, the Alan rich That's
Speaker 1: the thing is crazy? Um that that has got to
Speaker 1: be the most frustrating tool in existence. UM. I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention that in the animals, the pineal gland is
Speaker 1: really paramount to reproductive functions since the detection of increased light,
Speaker 1: let's say in this spring, by the peneal gland adjust
Speaker 1: the secretion of melotonin and then that sends this whole
Speaker 1: symphony of cues to the animal's body to begin preparing
Speaker 1: for the breeding season. So if you look at horses
Speaker 1: and sheep, This involves a hypothalamus secreting the anterior pituitary
Speaker 1: hormones which then essentially said nowt yep, I'm gonna say it,
Speaker 1: go now a tropin. And this is a hormone aimed
Speaker 1: at bolstering the animals go now ads and getting them
Speaker 1: ready for breeding. Yeah, yeah, I was. I read a
Speaker 1: bit which said that and when you're breeding sheep, um,
Speaker 1: sheep that normally breed only once a year can be
Speaker 1: induced to into two breeding seasons if you dose them
Speaker 1: up with melatonin. Yep, exactly. And we've seen this in
Speaker 1: the examples with other animals too as well. Um. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention this because I think this is
Speaker 1: really interesting. Um this role of melotonin. Again, we just
Speaker 1: think of it as well that helps us to sleep
Speaker 1: and um, you know, have this wakefulness and not have wakefulness.
Speaker 1: But I read this really very interesting study about how
Speaker 1: malfunctioning circadian rhythm genes could be the basis for bipolar
Speaker 1: disorder in children, many of whom are plagued with the
Speaker 1: onset of sleep disorders at an early age. Um. And
Speaker 1: this is really a big detail that sets bipolar disorder
Speaker 1: apart from a d h D and kids um this
Speaker 1: sort of messed up sleep cycle or sleep disorders. R
Speaker 1: O r N genes are expressed in the eye, brain,
Speaker 1: and peneal gland, and in a study of one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty two bipolar children and one hundred forty children
Speaker 1: as a control these children, obviously we're not bipolar or
Speaker 1: thought to be, Psychiatrist Alexander Nicolausku of Indiana University found
Speaker 1: four alterations to the r O r B jene that
Speaker 1: were positively associated with being bipolar. So r O r
Speaker 1: B expression is known to change as a function of
Speaker 1: the circadian rhythm in some tissues, and mice without the
Speaker 1: gene exhibit circadian rhythm abnormalities. So what they began to
Speaker 1: see is that this this correlation with mal a tone
Speaker 1: in and with disorders like this are hand in hand,
Speaker 1: and Nicolaski says that every time we investigate some abnormality
Speaker 1: of molecular machinery linked to the clock genes, we find
Speaker 1: an association with bipolar disorder. So obviously there needs to
Speaker 1: be more research, but it shows promise in the treatment
Speaker 1: and that researchers have been on the right path and
Speaker 1: strictly regulating a bipolar patients sleep schedule to improve extreme
Speaker 1: mood cycles that you see in bipolar disorder. Again, here's
Speaker 1: this pineal gland, the controlled tower, but you know, trying
Speaker 1: to give out the signals to the body. And it
Speaker 1: shows that something like this can really sort of go
Speaker 1: awry if if it's not all regulated. So, I know
Speaker 1: what you're wondering, where does it come from the pineal gland?
Speaker 1: How do how do we end up with this this
Speaker 1: thing that is in many ways, in many interpretations, a
Speaker 1: kind of primitive eye buried in the center of our
Speaker 1: skull without any actual um chance to glimpse the light.
Speaker 1: It ends up being this is mere transducer. Well, it's
Speaker 1: a good question, and I'm glad you asked it because
Speaker 1: because that's what we're going to talk about you. So
Speaker 1: this really gets down to questions of the evolution of
Speaker 1: the human high and the evolution of sight and um.
Speaker 1: And when you start thinking about ocular evolution, we're talking
Speaker 1: about really old business here, like really important like when
Speaker 1: you're starting a business, like what are some of the
Speaker 1: first things you have to have, right, You've got to
Speaker 1: have you gotta have the building you had at the bathroom,
Speaker 1: and the first people you hire, maybe you know, you
Speaker 1: you've gotta have the key people on staff before you
Speaker 1: staff up from there. So when we're talking about the
Speaker 1: development of the eye, we're talking about some very old
Speaker 1: business and a lot of stuff ends up built up
Speaker 1: around it. So it it makes sense when we start
Speaker 1: talking about the ramifications of of melotonin levels on all
Speaker 1: these varying levels of of of animal activity, because it's
Speaker 1: it's route down to the to some of the earliest development.
Speaker 1: So the eye has been around for a while and
Speaker 1: if you look at the eye of a human the
Speaker 1: eye of a fish, they're not all that different. So
Speaker 1: it goes back a long ways in evolution. But if
Speaker 1: you go back far enough in our development, you find
Speaker 1: a cyclops, or more specifically, you find something called a lanceolate,
Speaker 1: and these are primitive creatures. They're still around to day,
Speaker 1: and they have just one eye. Now, a couple of
Speaker 1: the main theories about the pennial evolution come down to
Speaker 1: this idea of developing two eyes from one. All right,
Speaker 1: so back in the day simple organisms one eye, and
Speaker 1: then his evolution progresses. This ide divides into left and right.
Speaker 1: Now this is all predicated on the primordial brain. Like
Speaker 1: this primitive brain that's just the solid mass, that's a
Speaker 1: big ball. It hasn't divided yet into the right and
Speaker 1: left heap sphere. So the brain divides into two and
Speaker 1: then from one eye we get two eyes now and
Speaker 1: then there there you can the various takes on which
Speaker 1: came first, chicken or egg? Does the brain split because
Speaker 1: the eye splits? Or does does the eye split because
Speaker 1: the brain splits? Um? You can sort of go either
Speaker 1: ways on that too. Particularly interesting theories that stem from that.
Speaker 1: First of all, there's one here from Professor Masusuki Iraqi
Speaker 1: of nar Women's University, and Professor Araki believes that the
Speaker 1: third eye comes into being during the transition from one
Speaker 1: eye to two. The position that Iraqi is describing is
Speaker 1: that this the single eye pulls to the left and
Speaker 1: right and uh and divided. Uh, an eye remains in
Speaker 1: the spot where the single eye had originally been. So
Speaker 1: the third eye then is not the third to be created,
Speaker 1: but the first, the original. So it's uh so we
Speaker 1: what we think of as the third eye is essentially
Speaker 1: the tissue, the prime big primordial tissue, primordial eye, really
Speaker 1: very simple I right, that had that was able to
Speaker 1: then sort of secrete itself back into our brains a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we've discussed with the way the human body works.
Speaker 1: It's something doesn't just become useless overnight and fall off
Speaker 1: of us, you know. It's that gets sometimes sometimes well
Speaker 1: sometimes but but but but for for the most part,
Speaker 1: things get tucked away, Things get to get to get
Speaker 1: hidden in case they're used later. Our body can be
Speaker 1: sort of a hoarder in that example. Another theory comes
Speaker 1: to us from David Klein, PhD. And he and he
Speaker 1: works for the National Suit of Help UM. He has
Speaker 1: this theory that it all comes down to UM to
Speaker 1: melatonin again and in the head, in the brain, and
Speaker 1: then the idea here is that roughly five million years ago,
Speaker 1: the ancestors of today's animals became dependent on melatonin as
Speaker 1: a signal of darkness, and as the need for more
Speaker 1: and more melatonin grows, the pineal gland develops as a
Speaker 1: structure separate from the eyes to keep the toxic substances
Speaker 1: UM needed to make melotonin away from sensitive eye tissue.
Speaker 1: That's because this whole process of adoption and all other
Speaker 1: chemicals sort of interacting with one another, right, and the
Speaker 1: more distance you have, the better UM. In this making
Speaker 1: of melatonin so if you have that distance, then you
Speaker 1: are making sure that your eyes are not going to
Speaker 1: be effective the chemical that's sort of like the really
Speaker 1: very shallow dive on that. But I kind of feel
Speaker 1: like both of them are correct because if you have this,
Speaker 1: you know, primitive brain, that's just a ball, but then
Speaker 1: uh evolved into this right and left hemisphere, and then
Speaker 1: you've got the tissue. Well, as you say, the body
Speaker 1: is really good at saying okay, hey, you're sitting around,
Speaker 1: why don't you do something? You jumping some some toxic
Speaker 1: stuff in there and end up some allotron and we're
Speaker 1: not using that room for anything. And so we see
Speaker 1: the same thing with our office here. We only have
Speaker 1: so much room to work with, and in an office
Speaker 1: goes empty for too long, the video department will move
Speaker 1: some stuff in there and start filming some some skits
Speaker 1: and segments. The void gets filled. Yeah, um, and then
Speaker 1: they all that you know. Of course, then someone is
Speaker 1: the control tower of the light source and all the offices,
Speaker 1: much like the pineal gland, controlling the to what degree
Speaker 1: we are exposed to them. Um. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that is our earth. I think it's so fascinating to
Speaker 1: to see how the human body can adapt like that. Um,
Speaker 1: and not just human body, but if you look at
Speaker 1: the lancelet, this is really primitive creature. How the beginnings
Speaker 1: of that show, how this this evolvement of our eye
Speaker 1: systems and our penny all gland also it came together. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: when I was describing Iraqi's theory and you're imagining this
Speaker 1: one eye in the middle of a head, I ended
Speaker 1: up imagining a human face. Um, well actually your face
Speaker 1: since it's the one I'm looking at, imagining an eye
Speaker 1: in the center of your head, and then the two
Speaker 1: eyes coming out and then this uh, this primordial eye receding.
Speaker 1: So you're you may be wondering, was there ever a
Speaker 1: time when you have three eyes? Three or at least
Speaker 1: three ocular units on the face. And yes, we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss. We're glad you asked, because we're going to
Speaker 1: discuss after this quick break. There are plenty of animals
Speaker 1: around today which which do have there two highly evolved
Speaker 1: eyes and then also this remnant eye, this uh, parietal eye,
Speaker 1: which is very closely connected. Do everything we're talking about.
Speaker 1: All right, We're gonna take a quick breaking when we
Speaker 1: come back more pinny a lotrips. Okay, we're back the
Speaker 1: parietal I. Now, if we look to some examples in nature,
Speaker 1: we can get a fine, fine feeling for what this
Speaker 1: parietal eye does. Yes, now we're not again, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about you look at the face and you see
Speaker 1: three distinct eyeballs. But if you look at the certain
Speaker 1: lower vertebrates such as fish and lizards, um, you'll actually
Speaker 1: see this kind of you could almost mistake it for
Speaker 1: some sort of like gray pimple. Uh. This this kind
Speaker 1: of gray little dot, gray little slit um around the forehead,
Speaker 1: and that is this parietal i. Um. They typically it's
Speaker 1: like I said, it's a gray oval. And the animals
Speaker 1: don't actually see out of this structure like they can't.
Speaker 1: They can't look out of it like they're they're not.
Speaker 1: You don't see an eyeball in it, right then, since
Speaker 1: data is not going in it and then forming a picture,
Speaker 1: that's what the other eyes are doing. This uhi. The
Speaker 1: throat all is more. It's a it's photosensitive and it
Speaker 1: does influence circadian rhythm, but it's unable to capture images.
Speaker 1: And it's believed that its sense it's light and regulates
Speaker 1: body temperature and hormonal balance. So in a way you
Speaker 1: can think of it. And we'll discuss this a little
Speaker 1: more here. It is an eye that sees only one thing,
Speaker 1: and it sees what time it is. It sees where
Speaker 1: if you can even applies a concept like time to
Speaker 1: to an animal, but it can see where it is
Speaker 1: in the cycle of night and day. Yeah, And what
Speaker 1: I think it's really cool about it is that it
Speaker 1: does have this sense of passing of time through its
Speaker 1: pridal eye and these two kinds of neurons. So unlike
Speaker 1: the human eye, which makes use of five different kinds
Speaker 1: of neurons called photo receptors to analyze light, the parietal
Speaker 1: eye has only two, as I said, but these two
Speaker 1: neurons help frogs, fish and lizards figure out what time
Speaker 1: it is. Um. This is from Seed Magazine, the article
Speaker 1: the Secrets in the third Eye. The comparison of the
Speaker 1: color signals now begin at the photo receptor rather than
Speaker 1: in the retinal neurons as in the regular human eye.
Speaker 1: So when this happens, the photoreceptors in the parietal I
Speaker 1: are able to give information about the passage of time because,
Speaker 1: and this is key, the color spectrum changes over time
Speaker 1: during the day so the signal that comes out of
Speaker 1: the photo receptor is sort of a readout of what
Speaker 1: time it is, which very cool. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: sort of a superpower that we don't possess, even if
Speaker 1: we do have pocket watches, pocket watches when it's like
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century now yea. And this tridle is often
Speaker 1: retained in burrowing lizards. Uh. And the idea here is
Speaker 1: that these are animals that are occasionally exposed to light,
Speaker 1: and the ridle eyes more suitable photo receptor for a burrower. Right.
Speaker 1: And um, that's what I think is really cool about
Speaker 1: these partial eyes is that they do differ. In a
Speaker 1: paper by Gundy and Works entitled Parietal Eye Peneial Morphology
Speaker 1: and Lizards and It's Physiological Implications, they looked at seventy
Speaker 1: five species of lizards in their parietal eyes and they
Speaker 1: found that there were seven different morphological types. Um. Some
Speaker 1: of these types were the lateral parietal eye, the borode
Speaker 1: eye as you mentioned, and this is my favorite, a
Speaker 1: fingerlike projection that extends towards the parietal eye, so from
Speaker 1: thee inside the head. Yeah yeah, and this actually allows
Speaker 1: for the maximum absorption of light. This sort of configuration Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's like the prietal eye and the pineal gland
Speaker 1: sort of reaching to touch each other, like like Adam
Speaker 1: and UH and God on the Sistine Chapel. Right, I
Speaker 1: hope someone, I really hope someone paints that. That would
Speaker 1: be a lovely Surely that's on the side of a
Speaker 1: van somewhere or Alex Gray has done it. This seems
Speaker 1: like a great Alex great topic right there. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of really cool study, especially in lizards are
Speaker 1: a great way to study the bridal eye, and they
Speaker 1: found a lot of interesting stuff about the the evolution
Speaker 1: of of the parietal eye and the evolutionary conjunction between
Speaker 1: invertebrate and vertebrate ways of seeing color UH pristance. John
Speaker 1: Hopkins University study found two pigments in the pridal eye
Speaker 1: of the side blotched lizard UH, two different structures of
Speaker 1: protein communication. One of these is a pigment communicated with
Speaker 1: transducent like protein called gustucin as vertebrates used and now
Speaker 1: there is a pigment that uses GO protein. It's an
Speaker 1: invertebrate way of of seeing. So the theory here is
Speaker 1: that early on this go protein this was the norm
Speaker 1: and then his evolution progresses, translucent pathway developed, and then
Speaker 1: as a and as it progresses even further, you move
Speaker 1: up to the lateral eyes, which are actually very highly
Speaker 1: specialized structures that allow us to have depth reception. And
Speaker 1: then the go pathway is dropped and we retain only
Speaker 1: the transducent pathway. So like in we see in the
Speaker 1: pridal eye, an ancient form of seeing, an ancient way
Speaker 1: of just barely peeking out from the darkness of consciousness
Speaker 1: into the light of the world. That's beautiful. Well alright,
Speaker 1: so we uh, we couldn't tidy up the rest of
Speaker 1: this podcast without making a mention of hallucinogens, right, because
Speaker 1: you feel really heavy into them as a topic lately. Um, So,
Speaker 1: what do hallucinogens have to do with the penel gland
Speaker 1: in the third eye other than people feeling like they
Speaker 1: have tapped into them when they're on hallucinogens. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: have a guy by the name of Rick Strassman, m
Speaker 1: D who researched the hypothetical energy yet unproven connection between
Speaker 1: the pineal gland and the production of d mt uh.
Speaker 1: The first he was very interested in the pineal gland.
Speaker 1: Then he got very interested in d MT. He actually
Speaker 1: performed the first new human studies with psychedelic drugs in
Speaker 1: the US, and over twenty years back in between when
Speaker 1: he was he does about sixty volunteers with d MT.
Speaker 1: Eventually ended up canceling the research because he grew too
Speaker 1: concerned about the pot of the negative effects that some
Speaker 1: of these individuals were having on these trips, seeing some
Speaker 1: frightening things, uh, lizardman, godlike beings freaking out as they
Speaker 1: dissolve into light, that kind of thing, which, as we
Speaker 1: discussed in our psychedelic episodes, can certainly happen. But he
Speaker 1: he did formulate a number of just kind of really
Speaker 1: out their ideas. I mean, from the time you you
Speaker 1: you read what the man has written, and he's not
Speaker 1: a complete lumin or anything. I don't want to paint
Speaker 1: him like that, but he has some very far reaching
Speaker 1: ideas about what the pineal gland might consist of in
Speaker 1: what it's doing, and and he gets into some some
Speaker 1: really interesting territory where he's entertaining the notion that d
Speaker 1: MT actually affects the brain's ability to receive information not
Speaker 1: just in turping and generated, and that it can potentially
Speaker 1: allow us to perceive dark matter in parallel universes. So it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's all very theoretical. Um, you know, don't take that
Speaker 1: to the bank. But but I do find it really
Speaker 1: really interesting. It is interesting. I mean, it's certainly in
Speaker 1: an extrapolation on what Nobel laureate Julius axel Rod found
Speaker 1: is that the brain does have naturally occurring trace amounts
Speaker 1: UM of d m T in the brain. And then
Speaker 1: some people have taken this to say the peneal brain
Speaker 1: is is um where it's made, and perhaps there's some
Speaker 1: sort of um connection connection between psychosis and even hallucinogens
Speaker 1: or I should say hallucinations. But again, a lot of
Speaker 1: this is all unproven at this point. We just all
Speaker 1: we know for sure is trace amounts that are naturally
Speaker 1: occurring in the brain of d MT, d MT being
Speaker 1: this hallucinogen substance. Yeah, to what extent are we coming
Speaker 1: back around to the same mistake of attributing spiritual and
Speaker 1: ordinance to this little nut in the brain, or are
Speaker 1: we coming around to some truth about it that it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it has something that it has. It
Speaker 1: has stuff to do with the way that we since
Speaker 1: and understand the world. But to what degree, so exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we we didn't talk about the third eye
Speaker 1: is being a Freemason symbol. Oh of course, yes, the
Speaker 1: what the the name for it at the top of
Speaker 1: the dollar, the triangle with the eye, Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's the third eye. But whatever we've we've seen
Speaker 1: that in It's in the US Great Seal on dollar bill.
Speaker 1: And of course there's a lot of conspiracy theorist who
Speaker 1: will point to that dollar bill and say that, you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's the work of freemasons. Um, But from
Speaker 1: what I understand, Ben Franklin, who was the only Freemason
Speaker 1: who worked on the currency at that time, proposed a
Speaker 1: design and it did not have that third eye in it.
Speaker 1: So also, um, that dollar bill third eye symbol was
Speaker 1: in you I think, uh far, maybe like a decade
Speaker 1: or more before the Freemason's even began to use it.
Speaker 1: The eye of Providence, that's right. Yeah, yeah. And actually,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about that, you should
Speaker 1: totally check out stuff they don't want you to know
Speaker 1: because they do some deep dives into that territory. And
Speaker 1: I really need to look it up because I was
Speaker 1: not familiar with the term. I have providence to like,
Speaker 1: just a couple of weeks ago, I was in yoga,
Speaker 1: and this is gonna sound hippie dippy, but during Shabasna,
Speaker 1: I saw this, uh that when you're in rest. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw this, this triangle, like a pulsating triangle. It
Speaker 1: seemed like it might be God or something, you know,
Speaker 1: like that was the kind of vibe I was getting
Speaker 1: off of it. So afterwards, like, hi, I wonder if
Speaker 1: there are any ideas out there of like that interpret
Speaker 1: God or a divine being as like a like a triangle,
Speaker 1: you know, like in a very geometric, like stripped down
Speaker 1: since and that was the closest thing I have to find.
Speaker 1: It was like Shiva's that call. Yeah, only the yogi's
Speaker 1: gonna laugh at that. Oh and I should also mention
Speaker 1: that one of the things that got me into this
Speaker 1: particular podcast, as I was thinking back to, the old
Speaker 1: horror movie From Beyond, was based on a Lovecraft story
Speaker 1: and that has a lot to do with monsters with
Speaker 1: pennil glands that end up poking out of their head
Speaker 1: and squirming around like worms, and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Do you have a great blog post on that? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can check it out. I do the Monster of
Speaker 1: the Week deal when I have when I have time.
Speaker 1: All right, So there you have it. We hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this classic episode. As always, be sure to check
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