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THE PSYCHEDELIC PINEAL + 79 affect our inner experience. We would see, hear, feel, and think things in a way unimaginable to consider for melatonin. Because of its extraordinarily short life span of just a few minutes, DMT would also benefit from the small distances, only millimeters wide, between the pineal and important brain structures. It could diffuse di- rectly onto these brain sites by way of the cerebrospinal fluid, without first having to enter the blood circulation. If DMT first entered the blood, MAO enzymes would destroy it long before it returned to the brain to exert its profound mental effects. These considerations also effectively dispense with one of the major objections to the DMT theory of psychosis: the lack of differences be- tween DMT blood levels in normal volunteers and in patients with psychosis. We now see that DMT concentrations in forearm vein blood may have little to do with its effects at discrete brain sites, sites at which DMT is broken down nearly as quickly as it is produced. This reasoning further develops the idea that decomposing pineal tis- sue affects residual awareness after death. If this postmortem DMT emptied directly into the spinal fluid, simple diffusion is all it would take for it to attach to those sensory and emotional centers. A pumping heart would not be necessary. Now that we've discussed two theories of pineal gland function in hu- mans, the melatonin model and the DMT model, it is time to venture into analyzing the implications of these opposing paradigms. In the last chapter, I described how the pineal gland, by way of mela- tonin, inhibits reproductive function. In this chapter, I hypothesize that pineal DMT opens our senses to profound psychedelic experiences. It is as if within the pineal gland there is a powerful dynamic or tension be- tween the two roles it may play—one spiritual and the other sexual. It's fascinating to note that many religious disciplines believe celi- bacy is necessary to attain the highest spiritual states. The explanation for this idea is that sexual activity diverts the energy required for full spiritual development. One chooses either the life of the flesh or the life of the spirit. Nevertheless, celibacy isn't consistent with reproduction,