A Bit More about the Pineal

I have resumed my research into the pineal organ, which is more than just a gland. In birds it is known to e sensitive to the earth’s magnetic fields, and it also responds to light. It was theorised in the 1980s that pineal is sensitive to magnetic fields in humans too (by Robert Becker).

Birds use their pineals for navigation and it is involved in their migratory behaviour. In birds and reptiles the pineal is located at the surface of the brain but in mammals it is located deep within the brain, located at the roof of the third ventricle, the fluid-filled
chamber between the thalami.

The principal hormone secreted by the pineal is melatonin, which is synthesised at night (during sleep) from the indole amine serotonin. Serotonin and melatonin both have effects on mood and serotonin, mainly produced in the Raphe Nuclei of the brainstem, also acts as a neurotransmitter in other parts of the brain. Prozac and the other SSRI antidepressants are known to lower melatonin levels.

The synthesis of melatonin from serotonin is modulated by the autonomic nervous system, especially the sympathetic nervous system, whose neurotransmitter noradrenaline stimulates the activity of the relevant enzymes in the pineal. The sympathetic innervation of the pineal is not direct – it was discovered in the 1960s that the sympathetic information arrives at the pineal via the sympathetic chain in the neck and loops back up to the pineal. The circadian and diurnal rhythms that the pineal is known to be involved in are modulated by the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus, which has been described as our “circadian clock” and receives input from the retinae of the eyes.

The pineal also has a parasympathetic (rest and digest) innervation involving the neurotransmitter acetyl choline. In addition to the autonomic innervation the pineal receives inputs from diverse parts of the brain through the pineal nerve. This part of its physiology is poorly understood and has not been researched much. Most of the research has been on its influence on the endocrine (hormonal) system, sleep cycles, circadian rhythms and the immune system.

Scientists have known about the pineal for a very long time. The ancient Greeks thought it functioned as a valve that controlled the flow of the “humours” in the 5th century BC. The ancient Indians thought it was the ‘third eye’, remarkable because Western science in the 20th century confirmed that it is phylogenically derived from the parietal eye of fish and amphibians and remains a light-sensitive organ in birds and mammals (including primates). In the Hindu tradition it is regarded as the Third Eye of Shiva; in the Buddhist tradition it has been called the third eye for seeing truth.

Descartes is famous for his seventeenth century statement that the pineal is the “seat of the soul”. However despite the discovery in the 1890s that tumours damaging the pineal cause precocious puberty (by the German physician Huebner), through most of the 20th century Western science declared that the pineal had no function in humans. They argued that the development of calcification in the gland (which they called ‘brain sand’) was proof that the pineal is a “primitive” vestige of no significance other than its function as an indicator of the midline on x-rays of the brain. A displaced pineal, called “midline shift” could indicate a tumour or haemorrhage displacing the brain.

In 1958 the vestigial theory was disproven with the discovery of melatonin by the dermatologist Aaron Lerner at Yale University. Lerner was looking for a skin-lightening compound, and it had been known since 1911 that frog skin lightened on exposure to pineal extracts. This is due to melatonin causing clumping of melanophores (pigment granules in amphibian skin). It was said that melatonin has no effect on human skin pigmentation though there reports in the 1970s that melanocyte stimulating hormone (MSH) is one of several pituitary hormones that are modulated by melatonin from the pineal.

The explanation for Huebner’s nineteenth century observation that pineal tumours in children cause precocious puberty is that melatonin inhibits the pituitary gonadotrophins FSH and LH (which regulate oestrogen and testosterone production). In fact in the nineteenth century pineal extracts were used a contraceptive in Germany. Studies in the 1960s indicated that the pineal also affects other pituitary hormones, including thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) that regulates metabolic rate by modulating secretion of thyroxin by the thyroid gland in the neck.

Melatonin is an ancient molecule found in single-celled organisms as well as plants. It is found in both invertebrates and vertebrates. This may relate to its known role as a free radical scavenger and anti-oxidant. This activity has led to the ingestion of melatonin as an anti-ageing hormone. However, this may not be a good idea, since taking exogenous hormones can suppress endogenous production.

Though most of the melatonin in mammals is produced by the pineal, small amounts are also synthesised in the eyes, skin and gut. Many parts of the eye produce melatonin and also have melatonin receptors, including the retina, lens, iris, ciliary body and lacrimal gland. It is thought that the melatonin production in the eyes is related to circadian rhythmicity and the detection of day length, as well as the regulation of sleep cycles.

There is very little melatonin produced in the brain of neonates. Production increases during the first few months of life with peak concentrations at 1 to 3 years. Production of melatonin decreases with age and this correlates with calcification of the gland, though there have been studies indicating that the reduction of melatonin is unrelated to the degree of calcification. There is considerable variation between the degree of calcification between individuals and there are also geographical and racial differences. Studies in the 1970s and 1980s indicated that the incidence of calcification (detected on skull x-ray) is much lower in Africa than the USA and also lower in African-Americans in the USA. It has also been reported to be lower in India and Japan than in the West.

Since the 1990s melatonin has been promoted for jet lag and as a mild sleeping tablet. It is said to “reset the body clock”. Questions about the body clock, circadian and diurnal rhythms, chronobiology and the role of the pineal cross interdisciplinary boundaries as do questions about the pineal generally. Does the pineal also have a role in our sense of time, timing and musical rhythm? What is the function of the neurones in the organ and do they sense magnetic fields? What structures in the brain are connected to the pineal through the pineal nerve? Is there a connection with the auditory system as well as the visual system?

What is the truth about the “third eye for seeing truth”?

Holistic Multidirectional Learning – strategies for preventing dementia
©2019-12-02 Dr Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam
romeshsenewiratne@gmail.com
It has been said that the brain is a use it or lose it organ. Could active learning in many different areas can be used to prevent and treat depression and dementia?
Keeping the mind active requires exertion of will – the will to keep learning throughout life. And there are many things to learn, for all of us.
The Internet provides a valuable tool for learning. Unlike the established university system the tendency of the Net is to integrate, establish links and break down barriers between disciplines. However knowledge – true knowledge – is more than information. It needs to be factually accurate knowledge. It requires analytical ability on the part of the reader/learner to sort fact from fiction.
In my analysis, these are some of the social and psychological factors that impede active learning:
1. Negative preconceptions
2. Poverty
3. Lack of education
4. Narrow interests
5. Limitations in taste
6. Unhealthy distractions
7. Information overload
8. Brainwashing and indoctrination
9. Deficient senses
10. Anxiety
11. Lack of aesthetic development
Negative preconceptions

The beliefs that one is too old to learn or too old to change are deeply embedded in society. Such beliefs impede possible learning of new skills and knowledge. It is true, however, that children learn faster and with more ease than adults, especially when it comes to languages. However our educational system tends to be both splintered and anti-creative as well as discouraging original thinking and arguments from first principles.
Poverty

Poverty makes technology such as computers unaffordable, and also limits opportunities for learning basic literacy. Poor nutrition impedes learning – hungry children are distracted by their hunger. They cannot afford musical instruments, books, paper and pens which are essential tools for continued learning throughout life.

Lack of education

Both lack of education and bad education are problems in the modern world. You can only teach what you know and teachers are often not as knowledgeable about the subjects that they teach as they need to be. There are good and bad teachers, and the students of bad teachers suffer from boredom. These bored children are liable to labels of ADHD and learning disorders. This is not to say that some students are not slower learners than others and their abilities and interests differ. Good teachers strive to make their lessons interesting and are not afraid to admit that they don’t know or are wrong. This is the case in all levels of the educational system. The focus of Holistic Multidirectional Learning® is on self-directed, self-motivated learning using the Internet, books and Nature, with an emphasis on Nature. We are part of the natural world and can play a key role in nourishing and enriching Nature as well as human society.

Narrow interests

The Western educational system has long tended to favour people with narrow fields of interest and expertise. This is seen in the adages “Jack of all trades, master of none” and “a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing”. Many people are multi-skilled and a little bit of knowledge is only a dangerous thing if you think it to be a lot of knowledge. A little bit of knowledge can be expanded and is better than no knowledge at all.
The divisions of academia have led to a plethora of disciplines, sub-disciplines and specialities that defended their territory and communicated in jargon understandable only to other members of the specialty. Specialists were honoured and promoted more than generalists, though it was recognised that there was a need to break down interdisciplinary boundaries. This has become easier with the Internet and tools such as Wikipedia, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Limitations in taste

It has been said since the 1880s in Britain, that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” meaning that perception of beauty is subjective. However, there are universal aspects of taste in all the senses. Holistic Multidirectional Learning® focuses on the auditory and visual senses and the development of aesthetic appreciation in art, architecture, literature and music.
Taste, or aesthetic appreciation, develops with exposure to variety. The broader ones taste, the more pleasure can be derived from the senses, and this pleasure provides a motivational drive – we seek pleasurable experiences which have the effect of making us happy and improving our mood. Improving the mood by paying attention to what comes into our brains through our eyes and ears is a cost-free, risk-free strategy for the treatment of depression and also may play a role in preventing dementia.
Many people suffer from limitations in appreciation of unfamiliar music, art and literature. It is common for taste in music to fossilise in adolescence, when music is felt particularly powerfully. YouTube provides a free antidote to this narrowness and also allows one to explore music that one already has developed an appreciation of.
It has been shown that learning a musical instrument and learning a new language can provide protection against the development of dementia. This makes sense, since new connections in the brain are being formed with these activities.

Unhealthy distractions

Effective learning requires attention, focus and concentration. There are many factors, both intrinsic and extrinsic, that affect concentration and divert the attention. Intrinsic factors include physical and mental discomfort. This requires a holistic approach to movement, rest, ergonomics and posture as well as learning how to physically and mentally relax while also concentrating the mind. Extrinsic distractions vary considerably with the environment in which one is learning. Learning from screens is valuable, but it has its dangers, including damage to the eyes from not focusing on objects in the distance. Watching naturally moving animals (including butterflies and insects in flight) and birds helps develop visual acuity and so does looking at the sun (while taking care to blink when you feel like it). It helps to appreciate the beauty of Nature and have interest in it.

Information overload

We are subjected to information overload in the modern world. Much of the information we are inundated with through the media seeks our attention in order to sell something or “entertain” us. When advertisers are trying to sell a product they maximise their benefits and show them in a good light (literally) and make the small print so small you can’t read it without glasses. They use techniques developed over decades by hypnotists and psychologists to create an impression and implant suggestions in the mind of the viewer. People are induced to gamble away their savings and become consumers rather than creators and producers.

Brainwashing and indoctrination

Doctrine, or what is taught, is not a problem unless what is taught is false and incorrect. In brainwashing there is a systematic, calculated effort to remove previous beliefs and implant new ones. There are many techniques for doing this which were studied under the MK Programs of the 1950s and 1960s.
The term ‘propaganda’ initially meant the doctrines that were propagated by the Catholic Church and the term did not have the negative connotations it has today. Different religions and denominations as well as corporations and political parties produce propaganda that is not the objective truth. Governments around the world sponsor and produce propaganda, some more influentially than others. Wikipedia, though more trustworthy than the Encyclopaedia Britannica, has incorrect information too. However, it remains a valuable tool for finding out about things and events.

Deficient senses

Learning through the senses requires functional sense organs and respective areas of the brain. Blind people cannot learn through vision, but their auditory acuity and discrimination is often heightened. Likewise deaf people cannot learn from what they hear. Most people, though, are neither blind nor deaf but many do not fully appreciate the visual and auditory stimuli they experience.
You can train yourself to appreciate music and art and do it though self-directed learning. There are many people all over the world and of all ages that can inspire and educate through their art.
Focusing too much on screens, books and objects close to you can lead to short-sightedness requiring corrective lenses. These corrective lenses put distant objects out of focus. To correct this they used to make ‘bifocal lenses’ but the problem has been rectified by contact lenses.
There are two fundamentally different types of eye movements – searching and following. Television tends to favour following movements with a fixed focal length (the distance from the eyes to the screen). Watching the birds in your neighbourhood exercises both searching and following movements and also gives an opportunity for counting and numeracy as well as identification and zoological (ornithological) study. Learning about the local birds is a valuable exercise for children to be introduced to biology. Learning the names of birds and animals in different languages is fun and interesting and tools like Wikipedia and Google translate are invaluable for this.

Anxiety

Anxiety makes it difficult to concentrate and learn. It impedes both concentration and memory and has many causes. I have developed strategies to alleviate anxiety under Holistic Psychological Counselling®.

Lack of aesthetic development

Aesthetic appreciation develops throughout life, given adequate stimulation. One can develop appreciation of the elements of harmony, tone (timbre), melody and rhythm in music from completely different cultures pointing to cross-cultural aspects of music appreciation. It is common for change to occur in musical preferences with age and experience. YouTube provides a wonderful opportunity to revisit the favourite music of ones past and build on it. Listening to pleasurable music has the benefit of elevating the mood and distracting from worries and anxieties, allowing the subconscious to work on solutions.
In art cultures around the world appreciate line, form, colour and composition despite a plethora of styles and traditions. By looking at good art from different cultures one can develop an appreciation of them and get ideas that stimulate ones own creativity.

What is Holistic Multidirectional Learning?

Holistic education aims to look at the whole rather than just the parts. It does not preclude from studying things in great detail, but aims to maintain a perspective on the ‘big picture’. There is truth in the adage of not seeing the forest for the trees.
Some suggestions are:
1. Identify biases and vested interests
2. Reinforce memories by writing things down and going over them in your mind
3. Read the small print
4. Be aware of hypnosis
5. Learn to direct and control ones attention and focus
6. Seek to integrate information
7. Analyse for the ‘ring of truth’
8. Trust in commonsense
9. Be logical
10. Make your home an interesting place
11. Appreciate beauty
12. Seek truth and facts
13. Look for the Big Picture
14. Aim for self-improvement rather than beating others
15. Moderate competitive instincts
16. Develop healthy curiosity
17. Develop listening ability, aesthetic and discrimination
18. Develop observational skills
19. Break down barriers between disciplines and areas of knowledge
20. Identify areas to improve in
21. Value a well-rounded, balanced education
22. Be creative
23. Think deeply and contemplate
24. Acknowledge mistakes
25. Correct mistakes
26. Develop wisdom
More details can be found on the HUB Psychology and Wise Owl Learning (WOL) Facebook pages:
https://www.facebook.com/WiseOwlUniversity

Dear Drs Mkhize and Phaahla,

I am relieved to find medical doctors at the head of the health ministry in South Africa. I have conducted independent research in Australia since 1996 into Australia’s covert biological warfare programs and gathered convincing evidence that HIV was developed as a biological weapon at a time that Africa was being blamed for “global overpopulation”, a concern in the West since the 1950s. South-East Asians were also blamed for breeding too fast and there were efforts to promote condoms some years before the AIDS epidemic.

In the 1960s there were calls to achieve ZPG (zero population growth) by 2000 and in the 1950s Sir Charles Galton Darwin (the physicist grandson of the famous biologist), at the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH) urged his audience to work on a “tremendous” solution, “more brutal then warfare and even nuclear warfare” to the supposed problem of “overpopulation”. In the 1960s the Stanford professor Paul Erlich published ‘The Population Bomb’ which blamed catastrophic population increases on Africa, in particular. In the 1950s (during the White Australia Policy) the famous Australian immunologist Frank Macfarlane Burnet secretly recommended to the Australian military top brass that Australia should develop its biological warfare programs and use them offensively against the civilian populations of Indonesia, writing that “poverty and disease alone have kept numbers of our coloured neighbours in check”. Burnet collaborated with the US NIH and British Porton Down biological warfare HQ.

There have been layers of disinformation in both the mainstream and ‘alternative’ media about AIDS These include the claim made by Professor Peter Duesberg that HIV does not cause AIDS. President Thabo Mbeki was mislead by this disinformation but he has also been misrepresented – his actual statement was that HIV causes immunosuppression, but there are many other causes of immunosuppression including poor nutrition, which is true. His belief that a virus cannot cause a syndrome is mistaken. However he was not privy to the information I was trying, with limited means, to get out of Australia to Africa. This information related to my investigations of eugenics, biological warfare and the Burnet and Hall Institutes in Melbourne.

The Hall Institute (previously the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute is part of the University of Melbourne and is a premier immunology research institute that was run by Sir Gustav Nossal who was in charge of the WHO smallpox eradication program that was named by Drs Stecker, Seale and Cantwell as probable source of AIDS. Prior to Nossal, the Hall Institute was headed by Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet after whom the Burnet Institute is named.

The Burnet Institute is affiliated with Monash University and located at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne and has been the subject of my investigations since 1997, when I read a brochure by the institute (then called the Macfarlane Burnet Centre) based on a lecture by the Institute’s director, Professor John Mills.

I completed a 600-paged thesis detailing my investigations in 2001, but the work was suppressed and I was locked up as a mental patient with the claim that I was “paranoid” and deluded to believe that HIV is man-made. I have recently published an electronic version of this book on Scribd (though the statistics on views and likes are not registering).

I have also published a shorter edit (and update) in 2010.

I would be thankful of you could read these books and watch the documentaries I have made on YouTube:

This is a recent update on my AIDS investigations:

Please feel free to contact me if you need more evidence that HIV is being used for genocide in Africa.

Yours truly

Dr Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam