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volunteers. WHAT DMT Is * 55 scout on horseback, something to which we can hitch our consciousness. It pulls us into worlds known only to itself. We need to hold on tight, and we must be prepared, for spiritual realms include both heaven and hell, both fantasy and nightmare. While the spirit molecule's role may seem angelic, there is no guarantee it will not take us to the demonic. Why is DMT so attractive a candidate for being the spirit molecule? Its effects are extraordinarily and fully psychedelic. We have read some of the earliest reports of these properties from unprepared and un- suspecting research subjects who participated in the first clinical studies in the 1950s and 1960s. We will read much more about how truly mind- boggling are DMT's effects in our own very experienced and well-prepared Equally important is that DMT occurs in our bodies. We produce it naturally. Our brain seeks it out, pulls it in, and readily digests it. As an endogenous psychedelic, DMT may be involved in naturally occurring psychedelic states that have nothing to do with taking drugs, but whose similarities to drug-induced conditions are striking. While these states certainly can include psychosis, we must also include in our discussion conditions outside of mental illness. It may be upon endogenous DMT's wings that we experience other life-changing states of mind associated with birth, death, and near-death, entity or alien contact experiences, and mystical/spiritual consciousness. These we will explore in much greater detail later. In this chapter, we've learned the "What" about DMT. We now need to turn our attention to the "how" and "where." We have prepared the ground- work into which we may now introduce the mysterious pineal gland. In its role as a potential "spirit gland," or producer of endogenous DMT, the pineal is the topic of our next two chapters. We'll also start investigating the circumstances under which our bodies might make psychedelic amounts of DMT.