Zoomed Vinay Special · First-person editorial
"The Third Eye Is the Pineal Gland" Is Not Ancient Indian Wisdom. The Record Traces the Idea to 1888.
In 1649 a French philosopher called a real gland in your brain "the principal seat of the soul". In 1888 a Western occultist welded that idea onto the third eye of Indian tradition, the "Eye of Shiva". Today the mashup is repeated as if ancient Indian tantra always said it. Let me pull the pieces apart for you: what the tradition actually describes, what the gland provably does, and what neuroscience has and has not found about the DMT story.
The point of view
Somewhere deep in the centre of your brain, roughly level with your ears, sits a gland the size of a pea. It weighs less than a fifth of a gram. Two people, roughly 240 years apart, looked at this same tiny gland and each built a theory of consciousness on top of it. One was a French philosopher. The other was a Western occultist writing about the East. Almost nobody today knows both names, or that their two separate ideas were later fused into one "ancient" truth. Let me show you where the third-eye-is-the-pineal-gland idea really comes from.
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Source Library
The Pineal Gland as the Seat of the Soul (René Descartes): History of Reception, Enlightenment, and Consequences of a Famous Error
PubMed
Original citation linked to this published story. Its downloadable Source record is still completing editorial publication.
Descartes Thought the Pineal Gland Was 'The Seat of the Soul' — And Some People Still Do
IFLScience
Original citation linked to this published story. Its downloadable Source record is still completing editorial publication.
The Pineal: Seat of the Soul
Hektoen International
Original citation linked to this published story. Its downloadable Source record is still completing editorial publication.
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine and the Pineal Gland: Separating Fact From Myth
PubMed
Original citation linked to this published story. Its downloadable Source record is still completing editorial publication.
Biosynthesis and Extracellular Concentrations of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in Mammalian Brain
PMC / Scientific Reports
Original citation linked to this published story. Its downloadable Source record is still completing editorial publication.