You probably know the summer solstice (June 23rd this year) kicked off the long days of sunshine that characterize summer in Earth’s northern hemisphere. What you may not know, however, are several festivals such as Lughnasadh celebrate the beginning of the harvest season. Traditionally held around August 1st, it along with with Samhain, Imbolc, and Beltane.mark halfway points between a solstice and an equinox in the Gaelic calendar.
Moreover, you may not be aware that as fanciful or outmoded as these pagan celebrations seem in the twenty-first century, they signify a time when our culture and thinking were closely tied to the warming and nuturing rays of the sun. In fact, the movements and worship of the sun formed the centerpiece of many cultures in human history. The ancient Germans had their Sol, the Greeks their Helios, the Hindu their Surya–the list goes on and on. Even some early Christians paired Jesus with Sol Invictus.
Link to a Third Eye
OK. So, what does any of this have to do with a third eye? What does it matter when none of us even have one?
That’s where you’re mistaken. Many religions, ancient and modern, venerated the third eye. Usually situated in the forehead between the other two, its capabilities provided perception beyond ordinary sight. The Hindus recognized it as the seat of knowledge for detecting evil. Buddhists celebrate its ability to perceive phenomena beyond sensory limits, divine realms, and the karmic destinies of sentient beings. Taoists regard it as one of the main energy centers of the body separating it into left and right hemispheres. Even Norse mythology’s legend of Odin sacrificing his left eye celebrated the notion of special knowledge and internal divination.
Third Eye Physicality
To this point, you may have indulged my line of thought as so much religious symbolism or speculation. Humans clearly have no physcial third eye between the other two. That much is true, at least one that’s not readily apparent. However, new research by George Kafetzis and Michael J. Bok indicates that humans and other vertebrate species repurposed the third eye over millions of years. Originally a monocular instrument to detect light and dark, it became in humans what medical anatomy calls the pineal gland. Embedded in the brain, it still distinguishes light and dark to match the circadian rhythms of our bodies and release melatonin to regulate the human sleep cycle.
Third Eye’s Relationship to the Sun
Granted the Third Eye has a physical counterpart in the human body, the relationship between it and the pineal gland is purely symbolic or metaphysical, isn’t it? Many doctors and scientists wish to keep the two concepts separate, but are they? Ancient theologians considered the Third Eye represented spiritual insight, higher consciousness, and the ability to perceive beyond ordinary sight. Rene Descartes, mathemitician and key figure in the scientific revolution, felt that “the third eye was the key to the soul.”
Building upon this premise, some commentators with a metaphysical bent take a bolder approach. They suggest that the Third Eye represents “a forgotten bridge between the physical and metaphysical.” For example, the realm of sleep, activated by melatonin, provides the doorway between our sense of self, our ego, to interact with the archetypal forces of the unconscious. Much as the physical release of sexual hormones stimulates the experience of passion, so can melatonin release experiencing other realms of thought and consciousness.
Third Eye and Rick Strassman
One of these realms is the psychedelic. Professor of psychiatry, Rick Strassman, became the first American medical researcher to investigate the impact of entheologic or hallucinogenic drugs on the human psyche, most specifically dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Terming it the Spirit Molecule, his research shows that the human body produces DMT much as it does seratonin and melatonon. Unlike those chemcals, however, DMT activates brain functions that resemble those of ecstatic or religious experiences such as visions, voices, disembodied consciousness, powerful emotions, novel insights, and feelings of overwhelming significance. Moreover, his volunteer test subjects reported profound interactions with non-human beings while in a state approximating dream-like or near-death experience.
Third Eye Conundrum: What to Make of It
If Strassman’s research is valld, it appears the pineal gland or third eye does produce compounds that produce experiences which resemble moments of religious ecstasy. Whether that means they provide a connection to spiritual or other-worldly knowledge remains problematic, however. Little or no proof exists which correlates bodily-produced DMT activity to non-drug-related altered states of consciousness. In fact, other DMT test-subjects claim of seeing bugs or rodents left Strassman “feeling confused and concerned about where the spirit molecule was leading us.”
That reservation occurred over 20 years ago. In the meantime, biological researchers and neuroscientists have broadened our conceptions of consciousness, brain activity, and ecstatic experience. Most people, scientists in particular, remain unconvinced of the validity of research such as Strassman’s.
Yet, they are also less likely to dismiss his findings out of hand. Like the progression of the seasons, it appears we’ve come full circle. The ancients may not have been scientifically rigorous, but they were keen observers of events and experiences. Whether the Third Eye’x capture of sunlight provides a gateway to different forms of knowledge and reality remains open to conjecture. For that reason, research and experimentation should continue until the true nature of the sun’s interrelationship with human existence can be definitively determined.
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