Having practiced meditation in a variety of ways for most of my life, and had a significaat number of amazing experiences that in many ways resemble the things discussed on this site, I am ingrigued by the biochemical connections - whatever they may be - between meditation and psychadelics.
Learning about Dr. Strassman's concept of endogenous DMT production is actually what led me to this site, but from what I gather, it is still unproven and perhaps even unlikely that DMT is produced in the pineal gland. Some modern interpreations of meditative/yogic traditions suggest the pineal is or is realted to the "seventh chakra"...and who wouldn't be surprised if a flood of DMT or a similar cocktail of chemicals into it is connected to samadhi or whatever one chooses to call it.
But learning about this INMT/lung connection is really fascinating me: if there really does develop one day a purely biochemical explanation of "enlightenment", then its most likely going to involve multiple body processes.
Controlled breathing is not only a yogic-type exercise on its own (called pranayama in some traditions, and the instructions for doing it can get rather complex), but also part of many meditative practices. Many of these traditions postulate a mind-breath link. On the most basic level, many people have experienced the calming-down effects of taking a few slow, deep breaths ("take a deep breath and count to 10" before you say or do something stupid...). But it does go much deeper than that.
Just an example: a number of years ago, at least a year removed from any psychadelic ingestion on my part, I had just gone to bed and decided to do a little deep breathing exercise before dropping off to sleep. So I began to practice a watered-down verison of pranayama breathing, while at the same time making a semi-successful effort to "turn off my thinking" (a tricky part of meditating for many people). I did this with eyes open. Within a few minutes, everything in my bedroom field of vision, including the space, looked as if it were made of shimmering, self-illuminated blue dots...I thought, wow, this is interesting...it stayed with me for another minute or two....then within the span of a few seconds my mind/consciousness felt like it were tied on to a rocket and quickly pulled into outer space where it expanded with infinite speed...I knew that I could know anything there was to know since...well, I WAS everything...and then of course, I just barely managed to tell myself , like whoa, how are you going to go to class tomorrow?, etc etc...and with some effort I was able to pull myself out of it. But the next night, the same exact thing happened.
You can poke around this Forum and find some very similar DMT experiences. For me, the most important question is not how one can use DMT or meditation - or both - to get experiences like this, but how to get experiences like this and still "get to class the next morning". I think the body is designed to do that, if we can just figure out what our particular body and mind demand from us to get there. Or perhaps someone will come up with DMT-2 one day that does the same thing. Something tells me, however, that would be cheating.
