We now know what happens at death:
Resting comfortably in the recessed center of your brain, encased snugly within the corpus colossum, wrapped tightly between the dual-hemispheres of spongy nerve bundles, encased in the quarter-inch-thick armor-plating of skull, finally surrounded by your main and expressive organs with which you face the world, exists a tiny gland, long considered vestigial (serving little to no function), that holds the key to our interpretation of existence as we know it. I’m speaking of the pineal gland. This minute spec, roughly the size of a grain of rice, is more heavily protected than even the heart with its literal cage of protection, because if something happens to your heart you die, but if something happens to your pineal, you can’t go to heaven.
Never heard of it?
This pineal gland has influences on both melatonin and pinoline, but our interest is in the gland’s role in the creation of dimethyltriptamine, or DMT. This chemical, DMT, may well be the reason we, as a species, are capable of sentience itself.
I’m not a chemist; break it down.
First, DMT is a narcotic, schedule 1. It’s scheduled as a highly illegal substance all over the planet, largely because DMT is one of the most potent psychedelics known to man. Intensely powerful. Yet, every day your pineal produces this stuff.
Secondly, DMT is the chemical that elicits dreams. That’s right. Each night as you drift to slumber-land, not only are you tripping on a psychedelic, but you’re also premeditatedly committing a federal offence; possession or consumption of DMT could land you a felony charge.
And third, this illegal gateway to dreamland is released in massive amounts at the moment of death. When I say massive, if a water glass of DMT evokes a dream, at death, an equivalent river excretes into your system. Any druggies reading this?
How have I not heard of this before?
Well, the pineal’s significance is neither a new idea, nor an unfounded one. Spanning the expanse of human civilization runs an undercurrent of worshipful adoration to the almighty pineal, more widely known as the inner eye, all-seeing eye, or the like – considered the body’s gateway to the soul.
Egypt had its Eye of Horus (now emblazoned on the US dollar bill). Hindu culture has its bottu (the familiar forehead dot). Even the ancient art of yoga recognizes the brow chakra, or ajna, as blossoming at the pineal, or third eye. That’s only to name a few.
The hell you say! The truth behind the cult of the pineal has gone largely unnoticed collectively, though the symbols themselves have been downright ubiquitous. Tibetan Buddhists, as well, have long carried a belief that the soul enters the fetus precisely 49 days after conception. Likely, reading this, you are not a Tibetan Buddhist – their numbers fall less than 20 million – and whether you subscribe to an eternal soul or not isn’t the point, because day 49 is the moment the pineal is formed in a fledgling brain.
Great, so what does all this have to do with death?
Well, on an experiential level, shrooms distort perception, coke smacks you with raw energy, ecstasy grants superpower orgasms (ladies), and most notably, weed slows time – time distortion seems to go hand in hand with most psychedelics as well – so time passage then is totally subjective. Ask Einstein.
Meanwhile, among DMT smokers, out of the macrocosm of potential experiences, two major themes emerge nearly universally:
1) A stretching of time – they experience the hectic 6 or 7 minutes as a near eternity or lifetime. Imagine Cobb’s 50 year night in Inception.
2) They experience religious incarnations with a tilt toward whatever sect the subject is affiliated with.
Here’s the clincher: after death, while this massive psychedelic dose courses through the brain, there is this mysterious several minutes where the brain still functions. With our new perspective, however, we at last understand what these minutes are…
These few minutes after death, subjectively, are experienced as an eternity, engrossed in the DMT universe. Also, the trip itself is a highly personal experience dictated by the deepest realms of the subconscious.
Therefore, whatever at your deepest core you expect to happen when you die… Congratulations, that’s what’ll happen… Every religion was right.
Mystery solved. Peace on earth.
If you’re resourceful, you can find this stuff and try it. The bigger question now is: do you really want to know where you’ll be spending eternity?
Sources:
University of Wisconsin: Creation of DMT
Medical Hypothesis: Endogenous Hallucinogenics Central to Nervous System
Medical Hypothesis: Visions of Dream Sleep
Third Eye Images and Symbols Around the World
Erowid: DMT Experience Reports
PopSci: The First Few Minutes After Death
Baseline of Health Foundation: Brain Functions Even After Death
Wondergressive 