Meditation or prayer also may elicit deeply altered states of consciousness. Pineal DMT production could underlie these mystical or spiritual experiences. All spiritual disciplines describe quite psychedelic accounts of the transformative experiences, whose attainment motivate their practice.
Blinding white light, encounters with demonic and angelic entities, ecstatic emotions, timelessness, heavenly sounds, feelings of having died and being reborn, contacting a powerful and loving presence underlying all of reality–these experiences cut across all denominations.
They also are characteristic of a fully psychedelic DMT experience. How might meditation evoke the pineal DMT response? Several meditative disciplines bring about an intense fine-tuning of attention and awareness; for example, one-pointed focus on the breath.
The brain's electrical activity, as measured by the electroencephalogram, reflects this synchronization, or bringing together, of brain activity. Many studies have reported that experienced meditators produce brain wave patterns that are slower and better organized than those found in everyday
awareness.
The "deeper" the meditation, the slower and stronger the waves. Other techniques supplement these attentional practices with methods like chanting. Chants, using words from ancient languages with supposedly unique spiritual properties, may cause profound psychological effects.
Visualization practices, in which one builds up increasingly complex and dynamic images in the mind's eye, also can lead to blissful and sublime states of mind. In these conditions there is a dynamic yet unmoving quality to the experience, like a standing wave in a river. It looks as if the wave is not moving at all, while water rushes along on all sides of it. In fact, it is the rushing water that produces the wave.
And those waves create a unique note, or sound. Such wave phenomena, by their production of a particular note or sound associated with their frequency, establish wide-ranging and diffuse fields of influence. Objects within those fields vibrate sympathetically, or with the same frequency, a phenomenon called resonance. An example of the powerful effects of resonance is when a particular note shatters a glass, even though the sound is not especially loud.
The glass vibrates sympathetically, or resonates, at the same frequency as that of surrounding sound. Certain notes can create intolerable stress within the unique structure of the glass, and it bursts. In a similar way, meditative techniques using sound, sight, or the mind may generate particular wave patterns whose fields induce resonance in the brain. Millennia of human trial and error have determined that certain "sacred" words, visual images, and mental exercises exert uniquely desired effects.
Such effects may occur because of the specific fields they generate within the brain. These fields cause multiple systems to vibrate and pulse at certain frequencies. We can feel our minds and bodies resonate with these spiritual exercises. Of course, the pineal gland also is buzzing at these same frequencies.
A resonance process may occur in the pineal similar to that of the shattering glass, although not quite as destructive. The pineal begins to "vibrate" at frequencies that weaken its multiple barriers to DMT formation: the pineal cellular shield, enzyme levels, and quantities of anti-DMT. The end result is a psychedelic surge of the pineal spirit molecule, resulting in the subjective states of mystical consciousness.
