How The Mind Warps Time

What is time; is it real or an illusion? Does it even exist, or is it a construct of intelligent awareness? Physicists define time differently than philosophers, and mystics perceive time a completely different way. Einstein thought time relative, while Jung saw it as something else entirely. Does time, if it does exist, have a beginning and an end? Does it bridge the cosmos, every reality, every dimension? Or is time actually a dimension itself? New evidence now suggests that time may actually exist, is embedded in the reality of the quanta and can be warped by the mind. Much of time is a perception, and that perception is shaped by circumstance, emotion, experience, culture, and age…

Cronos: the all-powerful Greek god of time

The time gods

Before physics, before the modern instruments of time, there were the time gods. The Greeks had Cronos; the Romans, Saturn; and the Norsemen paid homage to mighty Rynkar.

These gods held the power of time in their omnipotent hands and ruled the destinies of humans and nations with frequent emotional outbursts and sometimes schoolboy petulance.

They were revered and feared, as time affects everything a human does down to the next beat of the heart.

But as the human race progressed, the time gods faded in importance to be replaced with new concepts of time and how its nature does and does not govern the actions of Man.

Time out of time

Since the mind perceives time through a limited number of senses, time and the recognition of its passing is often distorted.

Awareness of time can be affected by quite a number of things including fear, pleasure, boredom, attentiveness, drowsiness, emotional states, life-and-death situations, natural eye movements…even the state of hypnosis.

Time can also be affected by illusion.

One of the most famous time illusions studied by psychologists is called the ‘stopped clock illusion.’ Many people have experienced it one or more times in their life.

When looking at the sweeping second hand of an analog watch, the observer notices that the second hand seems to stop or hesitate causing a second of time to last longer than a second.

How can this be?

The observer’s mind is warping time unconsciously.

The phenomenon also occurs because of the physiology of the eye. When the human eye travels from one focal point to another the mind’s perception of time becomes slightly skewed. The brain backtracks and the mind interprets the reset point as being longer than a second.

It can be an eerie feeling and happens regularly whenever the eyes shifts from one point to another. It only becomes noticeable, however, when looking at the second hand of a watch.

Timeless time

Over the past half century several experiments tested the subjective nature of time. Most involved a test subject or subjects sealed in soundproof, windowless rooms with no way to determine the passage of time or when it was light or dark outside. A few experiments were conducted deep under the earth in specially furnished caverns.

Siffre’s home away from home: a timeless cave

One such experiment was conducted in 1962 by the Frenchman, Michel Siffre an expert spelunker, had him live inside a deep cavern devoid of any contact with the outside world. With no access to any cues that could give him a hint of time his perception of time underwent a massive change.

He conducted many small tests during his time in the cave and later the results were analyzed. In one test, Siffre attempted to accurately count out two minutes of time by counting out 120 seconds into a recorder.

Upon later analysis topside, he discovered his 120-second countdown took five minutes. His perception of time was warping the longer he stayed in the cavern.

Michel Siffre, expert spelunker and cave dweller

After he emerged, the research team asked him how long he thought he’d been in the cave. Siffre confidently answered 34 days. The veteran spelunker was shocked when they informed him the actual time that had passed was 59 days—almost two months.

Although observers from the outside measure Siffre’s psychological time slowing down towards a veritable crawl, Siffre himself reported that he felt time for him was actually speeding up.

The quickening

As people age, many report the feeling that time is passing more quickly. It’s a perception that affects all races and all cultures. People often report that when they were young, time seemed to pass very slowly and their youth felt like it would never end. Yet as people pass their middle-aged years and they approach old age, the feel that time has sped up and the weeks and months race by faster and faster.

The popular explanation for this phenomenon is the belief that when very young, people are more aware of time and therefore feel its passage more accutely. On the other hand, as people age (the explanation goes), their new experiences contract, life seems to be mostly more of the same, their awareness of the incremental passge of time becomes less focused, and time seems to zoom by more quickly.

Does time really pass faster as people age?

A study done in 1997 by psychologists Mangan and Bolinsky, determined that a test group in their twenties accurately computed internally the passge of three minutes, while another group in their 60s regularly believed that almost three minutes and forty seconds were actually only three minutes. Time for the sextegenarians passed about 20 percent faster than for those in their 20s.

If time itself is elastic, then it seems that elasticity extends into the dimension of the mind where it can be warped.

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.

Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”

~ Albert Einstein

Physical effects on time

Illness, especially high fevers, appear to uproot the anchor of the human mind to time: it warps time perception.

A representation of the time dilation effect

A famous experiment by Wearden and Pento-Voak in 1995 proved the connection between a rise in body temperature and a significant change in temporal perception.

Such accelerations and dececerations of time is called the time dilation effect: subjects suffering fevers consistently sensed time accelerating. The higher the fever, the faster that time speeds up. When the body cools, however, time abruptly slows and begins to feel sluggish and plodding.

Auditory effects such as musical tempo can change the perception of time, as can certain drugs, lighting, sexual intimacy, environmental factors and life-threatening situations. Many factors that cause altered states of awareness also significantly tend to warp time.

Warped time

How many times have people who experienced life-threatening situations reported that time seemed to kick into slow-motion, even virtually stop, while they themselves seemed to operate at superspeed?

People don’t turn into a Superman or The Flash

News stories over the years have reported such incidents regularly and the phenomenon has happened to people from all walks of life: firefighters, police officers, accident victims, survivors of natural disasters, race car drivers…the list is almost endless.

But does time actually shift into ultra-slow motion when a person experiences a life-or-death situation?

An amazing study using volunteers had people jump off a platform and plunge about 165 feet towards the earth far below (they were caught by a net).

The volunteers were instructed to stare at a chronometer that was adapted for the experiment.

The experiment revealed that the perception of time does not elongate, but the memory of that time is warped—many more details are compressed into the brain about the experience than everyday incidents that do not threaten the experiencer’s life.

As information continues to build the foundation of human knowledge, the mind is known to operate holographically and it interacts with the quanta upstreaming and downstreaming data.

A wormhole warping time in space

Time too is affected by intelligent awareness. Time shapes the mind and the mind shapes time. It’s a two-way street and the basis for many experiences people consider paranormal. Nature can warp time, and the mind can warp time.

Considering the ability all humans have to shape the flow of time and the nature of reality, perhpas the real masters of time were not Cronos, Saturn, or Rynkar.

Perhaps the real masters of time were—and always have been—ourselves.