Pineal Gland

The pineal gland is located in the brain, adjacent to and described as sitting right next to the pituitary gland. Aajonus gave its size as approximately a grain of rice. Like the pituitary, it belongs to the endocrine gland system, which he defined as those glands that manufacture hormones and release them directly into the blood rather than into a duct or secondary organ. The endocrine glands he listed as a complete set were: pituitary, pineal, thyroid, parathyroids, thymus, adrenal glands, and gonads.

He also noted that endocrine glands, as a class, are designed for emergency use rather than constant activity. In a healthy organism eating raw foods, the endocrine glands are not supposed to be in constant operation. A healthy animal, by his account, shows only trace amounts of pituitary hormone in the blood, and he extended this reasoning to imply that the pineal gland, like the others in that system, was not meant to be chronically stimulated under normal conditions. He said directly: "It's an endocrine gland. It's only supposed to function in an emergency. You shouldn't have to stimulate that gland for normal thought, healthy, logical thought processes."

Aajonus acknowledged that the pineal gland produces something, but expressed significant uncertainty about what that something is and what it does. In one passage he said it "does create some plastic glands, which are intracellular hormones," though he immediately qualified this by saying there is nothing that can be detected in the pineal gland to confirm a physiological environment producing something observable. In other passages he stated flatly that the gland's hormones are unknown and their effects are unknown. He said at one workshop: "We don't know what kind of hormones it produces. We don't know what they do. Except they create experiences that are more of a metaphysical, psychological nature."

The absence of detectable hormonal output led him to compare the situation to that of the appendix, which he said nobody had examined the way he had examined it, implying that deeper investigation of the pineal might eventually reveal function. But he stopped well short of claiming that investigation for himself.

The claim that the pineal gland is the seat of consciousness is the one piece of content Aajonus associated with the gland in every single discussion. He attributed this claim to mystics, yogis, gurus, and spiritual practitioners across traditions, and he repeated the claim faithfully while marking it clearly as unproven. The specific formulations he used varied: the seat of consciousness, the bridge between the unconscious and the conscious, the bridge between the spiritual world and this world, the key to the imagination, the vehicle to the dream state, and the thing that allows us to have another reality.

He also described the proposed mechanism in some detail, based on what these traditions say. According to these accounts, the pineal gland is most active during sleep and the dream state. It is the gland that allows a person to enter the dream state, to experience other realities while dreaming, and then to convert those experiences into something that can be remembered and interpreted upon waking, even when the dream content is completely outside of normal physical experience on this plane. He said: "It helps create the chemicals that turn a dream into something that we can remember. That is identified even though it can be completely bizarre and outside of this physical experience on this plane."

He also noted that the pineal gland seems to be more active during sleep than at any other time, and he acknowledged this as the only evidence he personally had for any of its proposed functions, while adding that he could not prove even that. He said the pineal gland "seems to be more active during sleep than any other time. That's the only evidence I have of it, but I can't prove it."

In one workshop he framed the dreaming function this way: the pineal gland, according to these traditions, is the vehicle by which a person transfers from the conscious state to the dream state, and from the dream state to other states that transcend the ordinary boundaries of physical experience. These other realities are described as phenomenal, and the pineal gland's hormones are said to be what make those experiences accessible. He said these transitions can cross extremely strange territory, noting that "you can dream some bizarre stuff," and that this transcendence of normal boundaries is itself the only behavioral evidence suggesting the pineal might be doing something real.

Aajonus's consistent position was that neither he nor anyone he had encountered could validate the seat of consciousness claim through any means he would accept as proof. He applied this skepticism equally to himself, saying he was not conscious enough to evaluate whether the claim was true, and that someday he might be. He never said the claim was false. He also never said he believed it. He maintained the gap between what tradition says and what can be demonstrated.

One specific instance he mentioned was the removal of the pineal gland from primates. He said: "The pineal, you remove it from primates, nothing happens." This was offered as a parallel to his own experiments with the pituitary, where removal from animals fed raw food produced no measurable harm. The implication was that the gland's absence produces no detectable physiological change, at least by conventional measurement, which neither proves nor disproves the consciousness-related functions claimed by mystical traditions.

He grouped the pineal gland with the pituitary when discussing the mental or psychological glands, in contrast to the physical glands. In one early training session, when asked about mental versus physical glands, he identified the pituitary and pineal as the mental glands. He linked the pituitary to the nervous system activity that continues even during sleep, and placed the pineal in an adjacent but less defined category connected to psychological and neurological activity.

Aajonus frequently discussed the pineal and pituitary together as the two brain-based endocrine glands, and in doing so he consistently gave far more time to the pituitary because its functions, particularly growth and nervous system regulation, were something he could observe and test. He would move through the pineal quickly after acknowledging the consciousness claim and his inability to verify it, and then turn to the thyroid, which he found far more verifiable and far more important to address in depth.

He was careful not to confuse the two glands' proposed functions. The pituitary regulates growth, speeds healing, helps cells divide rapidly after mass destruction, and keeps the nervous system active during sleep. The pineal sits beside it and is claimed to regulate consciousness, dream states, and access to other realities. These are presented as distinct territories, with the pituitary operating in the physiologically measurable world and the pineal operating in something less accessible.

A recurring minor theme across multiple workshops was Aajonus's uncertainty about how to pronounce the gland's name. He mentioned this uncertainty directly and repeatedly, comparing it to the tomato/tomato distinction. He used both "pineal" and "pineal" across different sessions and explicitly declined to settle on one pronunciation, treating it as irrelevant to understanding the gland itself.