Is time a prison camp?

[Irish]

Is it humanly possible to postulate sentient existence outside of the paradigm of time?

There are moments in our lives where time it self appears to speed up or even slows down.

Try double parking for just a minuet while the wife runs in to the shoe store for just a sec…..It becomes a seemingly eternity.

About 20 years ago I was a passenger in a car accident. I had allowed a friend of mine to take my new to me car out for a road test. And we set out on a back country road and were traveling at high speeds. I might add that it was not the brightest thing to do, and I am very lucky to be alive.

It was after midnight and raining we were traveling at around 120 mph. That is what the speedometer read after the accident. The road forked suddenly and my friend Mike was unable to make the turn left or right instead we went straight into the ditch the car flew for a bit landed nose first then flipped end over end a couple of times and than began to role sideways five times before stopping on its roof.

I mentioned the flipping and rolling because that was the odd thing I actually counted the roles as if it was happening in slow motion. Even today when I remember the accident it seemed to take place over a long period of time. I remember every little detail from leaving the road to climbing out the back window as if it were an hour in my life. The fact is it all probably happened in a split second. My friend could recall very little of the accident even a few days after.

Time, for me seemed to slow down during the role over I remember using my arm to block his head from the front window, I remember the windows breaking and wet grass and soil being tossed around with us inside. On the third role my seat back broke and I was thrown backward into the rear window frame were I was stuck for the final two roles It almost felt that I was being cushioned for safety by an invisible force.

After the car came to a stop we managed to climb out safely and stood in the farmer’s field amazed that we were still alive from the condition of the car. I got away with few stitches in my back from going trough the rear window and Mike came away with a few bruises and an imprint of my watch on his forehead.

The incident left me with lots of questions to ponder

Could instances like this explain why some people have been known to have super human abilities during times of emergency crisis?

What about some forms of mental disorders like Alzheimer’s or autism? Could they merely be people out of sync or trapped outside the normal flow of time?

Could a haunting be the result of someone caught up in a loop of time?

A lifetime is an insignificant moment within eternity when we actually take a step outside of it!

Your thoughts?

Irish

[Thisisnotmyname]

That's a pretty intense story. I've never experienced anything quite like that (and I'm okay with that, at the moment). I have experienced the slowing-of-time feeling; just never in such a dramatic way.

There are some people who say Charlie Parker, the great alto saxophone player, actually perceived sounds in slow motion, which is why he was able to play so quickly and still develop his ideas so well, not to mention react so well to other players at the blinding speeds of his preferred musical style (bebop). I don't know if I believe that, personally, although frankly, the more you study his solos, the less bizarre it seems (take it from someone who has done so personally).

I don't know if I would credit autism or Alzheimer's to the patients' being out-of-sync with time...as much as I believe in many things beyond the realm of the simple physical, I think there is probably a reasonable explanation for them (though of course we don't know what causes them yet). However, many ancient civilizations believed that similar illnesses were caused by things pertaining to the spirit being partially out-of-touch with the physical body, etc.

Cool topic!

[Irish]

Within shamanism many pagans believe those who lose touch with reality as having been touched or taken by the fairies. Perhaps this could also explain alien abductions and such?

If it is possible to speed up or slow down our personal perception of time it could conceivably be possible to step in and out of the dimension of time, therefore making time travel possible?

Irish

Edited May 22, 2008 by Irish

[1.618]

I think that the brain can sometimes alter it's and therefore your perception of time in unusual experiences. I have been on many 'spiritual journeys' where six hours seemed like living half a lifetime although not in a negative way.

[Belle.]

My mother was in a car accident and said that time slowed down heaps as well. But I think it is just the way the brain processes in that type of situation:

http://www.physorg.com/news116655680.html

"During a frightening event, a brain area called the amygdala becomes more active, laying down a secondary set of memories that go along with those normally taken care of by other parts of the brain.

“In this way, frightening events are associated with richer and denser memories. And the more memory you have of an event, the longer you believe it took,” Eagleman explained."

Ooh another part in the article rang true as well:

“This is related to the phenomenon that time seems to speed up as you grow older. When you’re a child, you lay down rich memories for all your experiences; when your older, you’ve seen it all before and lay down fewer memories. Therefore, when a child looks back at the end of a summer, it seems to have lasted forever; adults think it zoomed by.”

Boo hoo life is going fast for me now

[mysticart1987]

My mother was in a car accident and said that time slowed down heaps as well. But I think it is just the way the brain processes in that type of situation:

http://www.physorg.com/news116655680.html

"During a frightening event, a brain area called the amygdala becomes more active, laying down a secondary set of memories that go along with those normally taken care of by other parts of the brain.

“In this way, frightening events are associated with richer and denser memories. And the more memory you have of an event, the longer you believe it took,” Eagleman explained."

Ooh another part in the article rang true as well:

“This is related to the phenomenon that time seems to speed up as you grow older. When you’re a child, you lay down rich memories for all your experiences; when your older, you’ve seen it all before and lay down fewer memories. Therefore, when a child looks back at the end of a summer, it seems to have lasted forever; adults think it zoomed by.”

Boo hoo life is going fast for me now

How can anyone who is older say that they have seen it all when there is much newer and more sophisticated technolgy always arising. When there is 100 of movies that comes out. There are many more cars and planes that take on a better frontier on towards new adventures to man-kind. Also when we barely know anything about the brain or about the other 10% of the genome. So basically this scientist is kinda and totally wrong on a lot.

Wait and how can you slow down time with previous fearful experiences that had no similiar event or experince. This would not make any sense.....................maybe i am misunderstanding it but it has never been brought foward by anyone else as something astounding....................wow...........!!!!

[Tiggs]

“This is related to the phenomenon that time seems to speed up as you grow older. When you’re a child, you lay down rich memories for all your experiences; when your older, you’ve seen it all before and lay down fewer memories. Therefore, when a child looks back at the end of a summer, it seems to have lasted forever; adults think it zoomed by.”

Boo hoo life is going fast for me now

My research concurs. Familiarity breeds less memories - ever driven somewhere down a familiar route and wondered part way through how you managed to get there?

I guess then, that the key to slowing down your perception of time, is to experience new things.

[S2F]

I know very little about time, except that 60 minutes=1 hour But our perception of time is only that, a perception, and has no bearing on time itself. If there had been a witness to your accident, then they would have seen it happen in real time, so to speak. And it seems that even God had to play by the rules of time, taking 6 "days" to create the earth. That doesn't mean that he couldn't do whatever he wanted with time, it just means he didn't. Thats just my input though, and may not mean much