Hello my followers and friends!

@shayne here with another bit of personal proselytization.

I wonder if it might surprise many of you, based on what I've shown you here on Steemit, that I've deeply practiced and studied Zen meditation?

For about a year I attended a local Zendo and spent several hours every day meditating.

I was so devoted to the practice that I used to meditate at work on my breaks, much to the bemusement of my coworkers at the warehouse.

Well, I'd like to share an experience I've had while meditating, and offer up some theories as to what I think happened and what this potentially could mean on a broader level.

The experience

As I mentioned, I used to meditate while at work.

One night (I worked nights... it sucked lol) I was meditating and a most peculiar thing happened: I began to see the shape of an upside-down teardrop just above the center of my field of vision.

It was a yellow-white color and was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before.

I held this for about a minute before I decided to test this out a bit. I opened my eyes and looked around and, to my astonishment, the teardrop remained there, just above the center of my field of vision.

The sensation of this was very strange. It felt similar to how it feels when you have one eye closed for a long time, and then open it... except this was with a whole new eye, and instead of actually seeing anything, this eye just saw light, which it interpreted in my brain as a light just above the center of my field of vision.

As I walked around the room, looking at things with this light in front of my face, I noticed that it began to dissipate and eventually vanished completely. At which point I had to clock back in and go back to work.

It was certainly a strange experience, and I've actually been able to recreate it since then.

What do I think happened?

Well, to put it simply, my "third eye" opened up.

There is gland located in epithalamus, near the center of the brain, called the pineal gland. The gland itself resembles a pine cone, hence the name.

Now, I could and probably will make another post about the pineal gland and its history in human culture -- because it is soooo interesting -- but the most important thing to note as it pertains to this particular experience is that the pineal gland is a kind of atrophied photoreceptor.

What this means is that, beyond what other amazing things this little organ does for you, the pineal gland is literally a "simple eye" inside your brain. It is photoreceptive. It has a lense. It can see light.

What I think happened was that I saw light with my pineal gland, which was interpreted in my brain as a bright, yellow-white, upside-down teardrop just above the center of my field of vision.

But how could that be possible??

My pineal gland is smack-dab in the MIDDLE of my brain.

If I'm supposedly seeing light with it, that would mean that photons had to have passed through my skin, skull, and surrounding brain tissue to reach my pineal gland, which it then received through its lense.

But that makes even less sense!

Here's where it gets interesting

Photons are unique particles.

We are about to get into quantum mechanical phenomena, so I hope you're ready.

The Double-Slit Experiment

This is an experiment where, in the basic version, a coherent light source, such as a laser beam, illuminates a plate pierced by two parallel slits, and the light passing through the slits is observed on a screen behind the plate.

The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through the two slits to interfere, producing bright and dark bands on the screen -- a result that would not be expected if light consisted of classical particles.

Wiki

I know what you're thinking: "That's interesting and all, @shayne, but what's that got to do with your third eye?"

Well, read on...

... versions of the experiment that include detectors at the slits find that each detected photon passes through one slit (as would a classical particle), and not through both slits (as would a wave). However, such experiments demonstrate that particles do not form the interference pattern if one detects which slit they pass through. These results demonstrate the principle of wave-particle duality

What this means is that when a photon is observed with a detector, it behaves as a particle and passes through just one slit, whereas if it's not observed, it behaves as a wave and creates an interference pattern.

Here's the big idea...

I think that by using mindfulness meditation techniques, I was able to activate my third eye to act as a light detector -- similar to the detectors in the double-slit experiment that made photons behave as a particle rather than a wave -- and by the nature of the wave-particle duality principle, the waves of light behaved as particles of light which were capable of passing through the gaps of matter in between my skull and brain tissue, allowing the lense of my pineal gland to receive the light and interpret it as a drop of light in my field of vision.

You see, the very nature of Zen meditation is to become hyper-aware yet objectively observant. You are not supposed to ignore things that you experience with the sense, such as pain or noises or smells, nor are you supposed to ignore thoughts that spring up in your mind. Rather, you are trained to cultivate an objective non-ego that recognizes the impersonal character of these happenings, and simply observes them in the same way that your ego observes a monitor.

So by practicing this meditation I was able to switch on my pineal gland to act as an actual eye, and when in states of heightened concentration, my pineal gland was being so observant that it caused the lightwaves around my head to act as particles which passed through my head and into my pineal gland.

Pretty wild, huh?!

I know it sounds nuts, but how would you explain it?

This phenomenon is something that I've been able to reproduce at an even greater rate since I've developed this theory. In other words: the fact that I'm aware that I'm aware actually helps.

Now, I can basically illuminate a point of light in my field of vision at any time just by taking a second to breath deeply and be mindful of my pineal gland.

Pretty cool!

Tell me what you think

Obviously, I have my own theory as to what's happening, but I'm really curious to know what you guys think.

The community here on Steemit has been shockingly insightful to me, so I would really appreciate hearing what you think about this.

Follow me @shayne