1. Zen and “Now” as time
In his famous book Alan Watts said that time is a hallucination, and there is only today, and there will never be anything except today. In the so-called "awakening to the instant" in Zen, one can see that past and future cannot be infinite but that the reverse is the truth - "it is rather the past and future which are the fleeting illusions, and the present which is eternally real". In the following pages, we will unveil, on a step by step approach, the genuine truth of this Zen intuition with arguments taken from the scientific literature about time perception.
2. Levels of time perception
From a modern science perspective, we can dissociate psychological time as linked but essentially different from physical time.
The psychological time or time perception is “…a field of study within psychology and neuroscience. It refers to the sense of time, which differs from other senses since time cannot be directly perceived but must be reconstructed by the brain. Humans can perceive relatively short periods, in the order of milliseconds, and also durations that are a significant fraction of a lifetime. Human perception of duration is subjective and variable”. The physical time of everyday life or physical science is the clockwork time measured by mechanisms moving in circles or repeating the same regular movements.
Psychological time is linked to physical time but might be disjointed from it in certain situations. There are thresholds where this separation is more important: time perception related to age, time perception in extreme emotions associated with sudden dangers, time perception in inner states (such as dreams), near-death experience, trance, or 'mystical states.'
A) At the first level, the time perception is linked to the lifelong pathway (aging)
A child's day from 09h0 to 15h30 is like a 20-hour day for an adult, according to Steve Taylor, the author of the book Making Time. He developed an idea based on the perceptual theory of the American psychologist William James. The psychological time would relate to how much "information" one is taking from the world around. "Children are experiencing everything for the first time. All their experiences are new. They also have an amazingly intense vision of the world, an amazing fresh perception. Children are incredibly awake to the world around us, so time passes slowly for them."
“One day to an eleven-year-old would be approximately 1/4,000 of their life, while one day to a 55-year-old would be approximately 1/20,000 of their life. This is perhaps why a day would appear much longer to a young child than to an adult. In an experiment comparing a group of subjects aged between 19 and 24 and a group between 60 and 80 asked to estimate when they thought 3 minutes had passed, it was found that the younger group's estimate was on average 3 minutes and 3 seconds. In comparison, the older group averaged 3 minutes and 40 seconds, indicating a change in the perception of time with age”.
B) There is another level where the split between the two realms of time, physical and psychological, is even more apparent.
One can shift out of ordinary consciousness during accidents, and people who experienced them often say that time slowed down (a slow-motion perception). This “slow-motion
perception” is a feeling of things seen as moving slowly, in some dangerous situations. To a bystander watching the case (an accident, for example), the time is moving at average speed, but for the individual concerned, time seems to slow down, making them able to think and act faster. I have personal experience of this kind. Some 20 years ago, a friend of mine and I were being followed by a group of hooligans. They have approached us from behind. I turned my head, and I just saw a punch
coming to my face. In that fraction of a second, I had time to think about my next reaction. I was wondering whether I should take or eschew the hit. I decided to take it and lessen in this way, the angry mood of the aggressor. I also had time to choose not to lie down and avoid being hit with the feet. Everything happened in less than a second. From that moment on, I become aware of the psychological time dilatation linked to dangerous situations. A traditional model is trying to explain this mechanism of time perception. When there is an accident or an unexpected event, the brain concentrates more on information processing, and the rate at which it works will go up. Since this rate is increased, the brain perceives a longer time due to full information in the interval.
But are we really processing more information in these seconds when time seems to stretch? Is this like a slow-motion camera in sports that can identify more details of high-speed actions?
A recent experiment by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, investigated this by making participants free fall onto a net to mimic a frightening situation. Eagleman wanted to find for how long the subjects thought they were experiencing it. He used a hand-held device to measure the speed of visual perception. He found no evidence of increased temporal resolution, in apparent conflict with the fact that participants retrospectively estimated their own fall to last 36% longer than others' falls. Therefore Eagleman considers that time-slowing is a function of recollection, not perception: a richer encoding of memory may cause a salient event to appear retrospectively as if it lasted longer.
One can criticize this arrangement since the clock was not essential in the falling experimenters. On the other hand, one can question the relevance of the experiment for our investigation. The perception rate did not change in the condition of stress, but the brain activity did, and the inner time also. The internal perception time slowed considerably to allow the subjects to react.
We will try by the end of the paper to give a hit of our own interpretation.
C) A step further on the investigation: the world of dreaming and the time perception
I remember a significant experience I had during my military service in a night and day shift watch. There were 4 hours watch, 4 hours of pause, and 4 hours of sleep. After some days of following this cycle, I was utterly exhausted. When I was able to reach the bed, I fall asleep instantly.
I remember that once I was examining my thoughts while I started laying my head on the pillow (for less than a second). There was an incredible kaleidoscope of images flowing through my mind. And then, the dream came like a speed train (with no passing period from the wake-up state to sleep). For me, it was evident that the brain is working 'inside' at an incredible speed.
Exciting elements are linked to time perception in dreams. When our body sleeps, the time in dreams can last longer than the duration of sleep. That can even create an inner perception of time that lasts weeks or even months.
Some time ago, Schjelderup studied hypnotically induced dreams. He acknowledged in a series of experiences that long spans of real-time may be represented in dreams of a concise duration. Anthony Peake wrote in his book, "Is there life after death?" about "Maury's Dream," where a student entered a 2-hour trance and relived in minute-by-minute detail 20 years of memories from 6 to 26. The best way to analyze the phenomenon directly is by introspection (which needs the subject's conscious activity). Therefore the time perception in dreams might be accessible within lucid dreams (when the sleeping person is aware that he is dreaming).
A subject tells us about his experience: ”The longest period of time I remember experiencing during a dream occurred within a 30-minute nap wherein the dream state I was consciously aware I was dreaming and just allowed the dream to continue. The passage of time spanned into what felt like two weeks of conscious dreaming. I have had others spanning what seemed like a week and some spanning days”.
Another way for investigating time perception in lucid dreaming is by experimental method (external experience).
For example, Stephen LaBerge studied the time differences between the dream and the real world. Since in REM sleep, the subject's eyes are moving the same way that the dream eyes are moving, he gave the dreamers an eye movement pattern that they had to do once they became lucid. After that, they had to count to 10 and then make the pattern again. After reviewing the eye movements, the pattern showed up and then showed up again 10 seconds later, so the dream time was equal to that of the real world. He explained that the dreams seem very long because there are many time skips that we overlook . There is an apparent collision between the interpretation according to the introspection method and the external experiment.
I have a critical position regarding the interpretation provided by LaBerge. He measured a slow lucid dream –a slowing down produced by the experience of moving the eyes in the real world and in the inner dream state (hence the real world was inevitably present). According to our interpretation, when the brain is linked to the outer world, it will slow down to the speed of the processes in the physical world (the inner time is not purely internal, and the brain adapts to constraints and pace of real word).
A rough analogy with computers might be useful. While controlling a natural process, a super-computer must slow down to its external driver (a printer, for example). The brain is doing that regularly because it should be in phase with sensory organs and the world. There is a speed limit of organs, nervous flux, etc. The brain will process with high priority the most important (for survival) process. However, that does not mean that the brain has the same inner ‘speed.’
D) Another threshold: the near-death experiences
A typical near-death experience (NDE) occurs if a person is exposed suddenly to death's threat but then survives. There are reports of four consecutive phases, such as floating out of his/her body, hurrying through dark, empty space, having a life review, and encountering a brilliant white light. Among these phases, the third one, the life review, is the most interesting here. For obvious ethical reasons, the only way to investigate time perception in these situations is by using introspection or 'anamnesis' (remembrance).
3. An interpretation and a tentative explanation
The slowing down, more and more, of inner time in the experiences mentioned above should be linked to brain activity.
The problem should be contextualized. As a matter of fact, the brain knows much more than it is aware of (its conscious activity is reduced compared to the unconscious one). For example, we memorize without being aware of almost anything that happens in our life. The best proof is the photographic memory of patients who sort out from long comas and remember everything that happened around them during these comas. Also, we know a lot today about the same photographic memory of ‘idiot savants.’ In reality, these phenomena seem to happen under the threshold of conscience. The brain is building-up (based on this exhaustive memory) its own world.
The speed of the biological process is limited, and there is a limitation linked to the pace of happenings in the outer, physical world. When focusing on the external world, the brain functions (at least at the conscious level) at a low speed.
When the brain focuses, more and more, on its own inner world (slow motion, for example-in dangerous situations), there is no (or a reduced) control of the body or motility. Therefore more energy and brainpower are accessible. There is also a reduced connection to the outer world (which generally would lower its speed).
In the next highest states (dreaming, near-death, and/or mystical states), the brain is in a purely private mode and can function at its full ‘complexity’ and ‘connectivity’ or ‘speed.’
The organisms, the living beings, are part of a ‘middle world’ of infinite complexities in between two other infinities: small infinity-the word of elementary particles and the great infinity-the world of astronomy (galaxies, stars, planets, etc.). In this sense, any life form is an infinity that can reflect both the small and the vast infinity.
Any living cell is of infinite complexity, and the neuron more than any other living cell. A multi-cellular organism, an organ, and especially the human brain are ‘square infinitely’ complex systems.
The brain is an infinitely complex (hyper-connected) system of infinitely complex cells (the neurons). It acts at the physical level, with inherent biophysical limitations (there are limits for the nervous influx speed, etc.). Still, its infinite complexity and connectivity build upon another complexity (a single neuron can interact with 10.0000 other neurons) make this ‘engine‘ miraculous. The brain's hyper-connectivity allows it to attain something that can be qualified as a gigantic (sometimes nearly infinite) ‘processing speed.’
When it is functioning in a straight inner mode, with almost no connection to the outer world (as in the terminal states, in meditation, in deep dreams, in a trance, and 'mystical states'), the brain is in its own realm and may speed up mental processes. In a second of clockwork time, the mind will ‘process’ trillions of images, states, feelings, ideas. Within the real world, what might take a second will take in the inner world (the realm of Spirit)-an Eternity.
