We all know that time it seems to flow at different speeds in different situations. For example, time seems to pass slowly after we travel to unknown places. Per week abroad seems for much longer than every week at home.
Time seems to pass slowly after we are bored or in pain. It seems to hurry up after we are absorbed, akin to after we are playing music, chess, painting, or dancing. More generally, most individuals say that as they age, time seems to hurry up.
However, these differences in time perception are quite mild. Our experience of time can change in far more radical ways. IN my latest bookI describe what I call “time expansion experiences” – where seconds can stretch into minutes.
The the explanation why time can speed up and slow down remain a mystery. Some researchers, including myself, consider that mild differences in time perception are related information processing. The general rule is that the more information – akin to perceptions, sensations, thoughts – we receive minds process, the slower time seems to pass. Time passes slowly for kids because they live in a world of latest things.
New environments take longer resulting from unfamiliarity. Absorption shortens time because our attention becomes narrowed and our mind becomes quiet, so few thoughts go through. Boredom, alternatively, increases time because our unfocused minds are crammed with so many thoughts.
Related: ‘Flow state’ discovered: we finally know what happens in the brain while you’re ‘in the zone’
Experiences related to the expansion of time
Time expansion experiences (or Tees) may occur in an accident or emergency situation, akin to a automotive accident, fall, or attack. In time expansion experiments, time appears to expand by many orders of magnitude. In my research I discovered that about 85% of people had not less than one t-shirt.
About half of tees occur in accidents and emergencies. In such situations, individuals are often surprised by the quantity of time they need to think and act. In fact, many individuals consider that the expansion of time has protected them from serious injury and even saved their lives – since it has enabled them to take preventive actions that will normally be not possible.
For example: the girl who reported Tee in which she dodged a metal barrier falling on her automotive, she told me how “slowing down the moment” allowed her to “decide how to escape the metal falling on us.”
Jerseys are also common in sports. For example, a participant described a T-shirt incident during an ice hockey game where “a game that seemed to last about ten minutes happened in about eight seconds.” Tees also appear in moments of stillness and presence, during meditation or in natural surroundings.
However, some of probably the most extreme Tee are linked to psychedelic substances akin to LSD or ayahuasca. In my T-shirt collection, about 10% are related to psychedelics. One man told me that in his LSD experience, he checked out the stopwatch on his phone and “the hundredths of a second passed as slowly as usual. It was really intense time dilation,” he said.
But why? One theory is that these experiences are linked to the release of norepinephrine (both a hormone and a neurotransmitter) in emergency situations, associated with “fight or flight“. However, this doesn’t match the peaceful feeling that people usually describe in Tees.
Even though their lives may be in danger, people usually feel strangely calm and relaxed. For example, the woman who had her shirt on when she fell off her horse he told me: “The whole experience seemed to last only a few minutes. I was extremely calm, not caring that the horse still hadn’t regained its balance and was quite likely to fall on me.” The norepinephrine theory also doesn’t fit with the undeniable fact that many Tees occur in peaceful situations, akin to deep meditation or oneness with nature.
Another theory I considered Tees to be an evolutionary adaptation. Perhaps our ancestors developed the ability to slow down time in emergency situations – such as encounters with deadly wild animals or natural disasters – to increase their chances of survival. However, the above argument applies here as well: it doesn’t fit non-emergency situations where Tees occur.
Third theory is that Tees are not real experiences, but illusions of memories. In emergency situations, this theory goes, our awareness becomes heightened so that we take in more perceptions than normal. These perceptions become encoded in our memory, so when we recall the emergency, the additional memories make it seem as if time passed slowly.
However, on many Tees, people feel confident that they have had extra time to think and act. The expansion of time made it possible to assemble a series of thoughts and actions that would not have been possible if time had flowed at normal speed. In a recent (yet unpublished) survey of 280 Tees, I found that less than 3% of participants believed the experience was an illusion. About 87% believed it was a real experience that took place in the present, and 10% were undecided.
Altered states of consciousness
In my opinion, the key to understanding Tees is altered states of consciousness. The sudden shock of an accident can disrupt our normal mental processes, causing a sudden change in consciousness. In sports, intense altered states occur as a result of what I call “superabsorption.”
Absorption usually makes time pass faster – as in the case of flow when we are absorbed in a task. However, when absorption becomes particularly intense, after a long period of continuous concentration, the opposite occurs and time slows down dramatically.
Altered states of consciousness can also affect our sense of identity and our normal sense of separation from the world. As a psychologist Mark Wittmann As he noted, our sense of time is closely linked to our sense of self.
We usually feel like we live in our mental space and the world is “on the market” on the other side. One of the main features of intense altered states is the disappearance of the sense of separation. We no longer feel locked in our minds, but we feel connected to our surroundings.
This means that the boundary between us and the world is disappearing. In the process, our sense of time expands. We slip beyond our normal consciousness and move into another world of time.
