The Art of Manliness - Enter the Matrix — The Science of Slowing Down Time

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.040 people commonly think of time as a fixed linear objective structure but our own experiences belie

00:00:17.140 this belief we've all been in situations where time has seemed to drag on or speed up and there

00:00:22.300 are even whole periods of our lives that seem to have gone by slower or faster as my guest steve

00:00:26.600 taylor will explain time is a lot more fluid and moldable than we often recognize steve is a

00:00:31.500 psychologist and the author of time expansion experiences the psychology of time perception

00:00:36.040 and the illusion of linear time taylor the show he impacts the four laws of psychological time

00:00:41.120 he discusses the theories as to why time speeds up as we get older and what factors slow down and

00:00:45.980 speed up time we delve into the way time particularly expands in accidents and emergencies giving people

00:00:50.660 the ability to take life-saving measures and we discuss why some people are more likely to have

00:00:54.720 time expansion experiences than others what you can do to slow down time and make your life feel

00:00:58.840 longer as a result after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is time expansion

00:01:04.020 all right steve taylor welcome to the show hi brett great to be with you so you are a psychologist who

00:01:22.100 has spent his career studying time expansion experiences what is a time expansion experience

00:01:29.440 it's a moment when time stretches out way beyond its normal speed so a second or two could stretch

00:01:36.120 out into maybe half a minute or a minute or even longer they often happen in accidents or emergency

00:01:41.320 situations but also in other unusual states of consciousness so really it's a massive expansion of

00:01:47.240 one second or 10 seconds or any period of time which seems to be much longer than it really is

00:01:51.440 okay and we're going to dig deep into this because it's incredibly fascinating the research you've done

00:01:56.260 on this how did you get interested in researching time expansion well i actually wrote a book about

00:02:01.520 time maybe 15 years ago and i felt as though i kind of worked out time and i didn't really need to

00:02:06.280 focus on it anymore but then 10 years ago i had a car crash i was driving along the highway or the

00:02:12.420 motorways we call them here in the uk just outside my home city of manchester and it was quite a busy

00:02:17.800 afternoon lots of cars around me traveling at maybe 60 miles an hour and i was in the middle lane i was

00:02:23.340 preparing to overtake a truck on the inside lane but the truck didn't see me and he tried to move out

00:02:28.240 into the middle lane and he clipped the back of my car and i started to spin around he clipped the car

00:02:33.240 again so we were spinning around even faster and immediately as soon as the i heard the sound of his

00:02:38.340 truck hitting my car everything went into slow motion i remember saying to my wife who was in the

00:02:42.220 passenger seat what was that noise and then it seemed like there was a long long pause but then

00:02:47.360 the car started to spin it seemed like it was spinning slowly even though it probably wasn't

00:02:51.620 and i remember looking behind and i saw the frightened faces of the drivers behind me stretching way way back

00:02:57.960 along the the lines of cars and everything became very clear i had this very heightened perception

00:03:02.960 and i was also incredibly calm you know in my mind i knew this was a very dangerous situation i thought

00:03:07.880 well maybe we're going to be seriously injured maybe even killed in this situation but i started

00:03:12.140 to think very methodically you know is there anything i can do i tried to shunt the car to

00:03:16.760 the left towards the shoulder i tried to pull the handbrake and press down on the other brake

00:03:22.440 and maybe it was because of my actions but fortunately the car began to spin towards the left towards the

00:03:28.840 shoulder then we crashed into a barrier at the side of the road and then everything seemed to go back

00:03:34.040 to normal speed i seemed to go back into a normal state of consciousness so in reality this whole

00:03:39.320 incident probably lasted maybe three or four seconds but in my mind it seemed to last for much

00:03:44.840 much longer maybe half a minute or 45 seconds because i had so much time to perceive the situation

00:03:50.520 to think about what to do and it was my first personal experience what i called it a time expansion

00:03:56.120 experience so then i began to do research on them as a psychologist and i found out that they're

00:04:01.580 actually very common okay we're going to talk about some of these heightened time experiences

00:04:06.080 where time really slows down it's almost like bullet time in the matrix yeah but in the book

00:04:10.980 you not only talk about how time can slow down but how it can also speed up and you unpack four laws

00:04:18.540 of psychological time and the first one is time seems to speed up as we get older and i'm sure most

00:04:26.280 people listening to this probably agree that as they've gotten older time just seems to be going by

00:04:30.380 faster and faster in your research how common is that experience it seems to be a fairly universal

00:04:37.180 human phenomenon about 90 of people feel that time is getting faster as they get older and you know

00:04:42.500 research in different countries has shown the same that it doesn't matter whether you're living in the

00:04:46.620 middle east or asia everybody in the world seems to experience this phenomenon and um but you know

00:04:51.560 people try to take some measures against it you know everybody kind of regrets the fact that time is

00:04:56.080 moving quickly but it yeah it does seem to be a natural human phenomenon and this is something that

00:05:01.600 philosophers and psychologists have been grappling with for nearly two centuries what have been the

00:05:06.700 different theories put out there as to why time seems to go faster and faster as we get older

00:05:11.860 the first philosopher to to speculate about this was a french philosopher called paul janet

00:05:17.740 in the 19th century the mid-19th century and he was the first person who put forward a theory

00:05:23.320 and i i refer to it as the proportional theory it's the idea that as you get older each period of

00:05:28.820 your life is a smaller part of your life as a whole so that when you're five years old for example a year

00:05:33.460 is um 20 of your whole life therefore it seems like a massive period of time but when you're 50 a year is

00:05:40.540 only two percent of your whole life so it seems correspondingly insignificant that seems to work

00:05:45.320 quite well it explains why time seems to speed up in a kind of mathematical way you know the older you

00:05:49.720 get the faster it seems to go so that's one theory but there was a later psychologist called william

00:05:54.440 james an american psychologist who suggested that it was maybe related to new experiences as well that

00:06:00.020 when you're a child your life is so full of new experience and all of this new experience stretches

00:06:05.040 time so that's the theory that i lean towards that it's to do with new experience i think i am i

00:06:10.780 agree with william james and you on that one i've noticed i think other psychologists have studied this

00:06:15.780 but a lot of our memories most of our memories are from adolescence or young adulthood like i don't

00:06:20.960 remember too much about my childhood but i remember a lot about my high school years my college years

00:06:26.260 and it just seems like there's like this time out of time where it just seemed expansive and i think

00:06:31.800 it's because there's just so much going on during that time when you're a young adult because you're

00:06:35.700 making these big important decisions you're doing new things with friends you're going off to new places

00:06:40.800 and then once you hit you don't know your 30s life's for a lot of people kind of set you might

00:06:47.360 be married have kids have a career and it just it's the same thing over and over again so it just goes

00:06:52.340 by faster and faster yeah i think that's a lot to do with it when you're young you are literally

00:06:57.040 experiencing everything everything for the first time but as you get older your life becomes a

00:07:01.560 repetition of those experiences so there's corresponding less newness in your life and you know by the time

00:07:07.540 you're maybe 70 or 80 years old you're living in a world of familiarity every experience has been

00:07:13.580 you know experienced many times before so yeah there's there's less newness in your life i think

00:07:18.500 fundamentally it's about information processing there's a strong link between time perception and

00:07:22.860 information processing so that the more information you process the slower time goes so if you're having a

00:07:28.540 lot of new experiences there's so much new information going into your consciousness and that seems to stretch

00:07:33.140 time oh and that leads us to the second law which is time seems to go slowly when we're exposed to

00:07:38.940 new environments and experiences what's been the research on this law well it's it's anecdotally you

00:07:46.040 know it's a well-known human phenomenon that when you go to a new place if you go abroad for a few days

00:07:50.660 particularly to a place which is very different to your home environment it makes time stretch so that

00:07:55.720 when you come back you feel wow have i really just been away for a few days it feels more like a few weeks

00:08:00.380 i had that when i went to india for a few weeks uh many years ago i came home and i felt like i'd been

00:08:05.260 away for about six months rather than six weeks because i've had so much new experience and again

00:08:10.400 this seems to be to do with new information processing you know because when we were in a

00:08:14.120 new environment there's so much newness around us everything is unfamiliar and strange so our

00:08:19.180 consciousness just expands and time stretches and there have been some experiments where psychologists

00:08:25.980 have found that new information seems to stretch time people estimate longer time periods when

00:08:31.260 they're exposed to new information and also varied information if you repeat the same information

00:08:36.540 time contracts uh it can be for example auditory information in a laboratory noises unfamiliar noises

00:08:42.340 they seem to stretch time whereas familiar noises which are repeated again and again people

00:08:47.820 estimate shorter time periods with this law where time seems to go slowly when we're exposed to new

00:08:53.680 environments and experiences is this people remembering like it's a retrospective or does it

00:08:58.760 feel slower in the moment because i've heard this theory that part of the reason why time seems to go

00:09:05.200 more slowly when we experience new environments have different experiences is that your brain is like a

00:09:10.720 camera and when you do the same routine stuff your brain's like i don't need to turn on and film this

00:09:16.180 because i've i've already seen this a bunch of times but then when you do something new your brain

00:09:20.560 thinks i may need to remember this i'm going to remember this later so it takes a lot more

00:09:25.700 metaphorical footage so that later when you look back there's more footage to unspool which makes the

00:09:33.380 experience seem longer when we remember it i think that's a factor because new experiences do create more

00:09:39.500 memories so when we look back you know we have a lot of memories to draw on but i think it's also a

00:09:44.860 present tense phenomenon i mean all our experience takes place in the present tense so the information that we

00:09:50.420 process that happens right now you know our consciousness is open in that moment it's taking

00:09:55.620 in that information in the moment so i think it is a mainly a present tense phenomenon but obviously

00:10:01.780 you can only really measure time in retrospective so we're living through time in the moment so we

00:10:07.400 can't really get outside and measure it so usually our measurements of time take place retrospectively

00:10:13.120 when we get home from a journey or at the end of a brief period of time but i did that doesn't mean

00:10:18.860 that you know the actual time stretching doesn't take place in the moment i think it does take place

00:10:23.440 in the moment and maybe there is also an effect from memory but i think fundamentally it is a present

00:10:29.160 tense phenomenon okay the third law is about time speeding up and it says time seems to speed up in

00:10:35.780 states of absorption what do you mean by absorption absorption is when our attention is immersed in an

00:10:43.020 activity or it could be an entertainment it's when we we're so immersed in the activity that we forget

00:10:49.100 our surroundings we forget ourselves we kind of lose ourselves in whatever we're doing so it could be

00:10:54.640 when we're playing a sport it could be when we're watching a film it could be just when we're when we're in a

00:11:00.540 social situation with friends but all these situations tend to contract time because they they lend

00:11:07.000 themselves to absorption and i'm sure people have experienced that maybe they get involved in like a

00:11:11.980 really if they play video games there might be a video game that was just really enjoyable and then

00:11:17.200 they look back like oh my gosh it's been three hours it felt like 45 minutes that's right that's a very

00:11:22.400 common phenomenon actually video games because they they lend themselves to such intense absorption

00:11:27.060 generally there is a proportional effect the more absorbed you are the faster time seems to go

00:11:32.720 and i guess you know particularly for young people video games are incredibly absorbing but for other

00:11:39.080 people it could be an intense bout of work like something's going on in the office there's a lot

00:11:43.220 of action and you have to get into the zone you have to get locked in and in that moment it just seems

00:11:48.920 like time goes by really fast after you're all done that's right yeah in some ways that's a good

00:11:54.060 thing because people often report job satisfaction in relation to absorption the more absorbed you are in

00:11:59.840 your job the more effective you are in the job but also the faster the time goes you know whereas if

00:12:04.660 you have a a job which is kind of you know maybe it doesn't engage your attention maybe it's a bit

00:12:09.560 boring or maybe there are lots of different things that you have to do and you have to switch your

00:12:13.700 attention around so you can't get into a steady focus of absorption those kind of jobs are less

00:12:18.960 you know well they're less absorbing and also they tend to bring less job satisfaction and also they make

00:12:24.380 time pass very slowly which is a bad thing well and you also talk about this is connected to this

00:12:30.080 idea of boredom our moods and emotions can affect absorption and thus our perception of time that's

00:12:36.260 right yeah generally uh negative states of mind tend to slow down our time perception which is you know

00:12:42.340 it's quite quite weird in a way it's kind of as if a malevolent god is playing tricks on us because

00:12:46.520 time goes quickly when we're absorbed which usually means fun and enjoyment and time goes slowly when

00:12:51.380 we're bored so it's as if somebody's playing tricks on us and pain as well usually uh painful

00:12:56.680 situations or painful states of mind slow down time depression anxiety any negative state of mind

00:13:04.340 tends to slow down time and i think that is again because of absorption because when you're bored

00:13:09.320 you know it means by definition that your attention is not absorbed when you're in pain you can't focus

00:13:14.700 your mind your attention keeps being drawn back to the pain so you can't focus on a book or a film or a

00:13:20.680 conversation so time tends to drag and the you know the negativity of the situation tends to be

00:13:26.840 prolonged i imagine people who have had a family member or maybe themselves waiting for some sort of

00:13:33.380 health diagnosis they might have experienced that time slowing down and dragging because they're just

00:13:38.540 ruminating about oh my gosh what's going to happen is it could do i have cancer or something bad

00:13:44.160 going to happen that's right so again you know you're in such an anxious state state of mind that you

00:13:49.620 can't get absorbed in anything you can't focus your attention away from the situation there's a

00:13:54.800 similar situation if you're on a long call flight and you're a person who feels a bit anxious when

00:13:59.420 you're flying so you can't absorb your attention in a film or conversation you're constantly looking at

00:14:04.380 your watch or at the time to find out how long is left so you know your anxiety is prolonged because

00:14:09.380 you can't you can't absorb your attention and therefore the flight seems to last for much longer than

00:14:14.000 normal yeah that's what we do if you want to make the flight go by faster you bring something to get

00:14:18.120 yourself absorbed in whether it's a movie or a book or something like that that's right i mean we

00:14:23.280 subconsciously make use of these laws because we know that there are certain things we can do to slow

00:14:27.300 down or speed up our time perception and we know intuitively that absorption makes time pass faster

00:14:32.020 so yeah you're right that's exactly why we we watch films we try to get engaged in conversations

00:14:36.660 when we're on long flights okay so the fourth law and what the bulk of your book is about is this

00:14:41.360 time passes very slowly in intense altered states of consciousness when our normal psychological

00:14:47.680 structures and processes are significantly disrupted and our normal self system dissolves

00:14:53.040 there's a lot to unpack in this law and i think the best way to unpack it is to give examples

00:14:57.680 of times when people are put into intense altered states of consciousness and this goes back to your

00:15:03.780 experience with the car accident one area that you research this altered state of consciousness

00:15:08.940 happening is in emergencies and accidents in what types of emergencies and accidents do people

00:15:15.360 typically experience time expansion in my research around 50 percent of time expansion experiences happen

00:15:23.240 in accident situations and that that's mainly car crashes but also falls many reports from falls

00:15:30.100 but also other situations such as under the influence of psychedelic substances also in sports

00:15:35.760 um but also generally emergency situations when people are told bad news or when they undergo trauma

00:15:42.860 of some kind but yeah the most prevalent situation which occurs is accidents of one form or another

00:15:49.640 yeah and it says the action has to be unexpected sudden and dramatic that's right so you know you can't

00:15:56.900 recreate this situation there was a famous experiment where psychologists try to recreate an accident

00:16:01.720 situation or emergency situation where they ask people to do bungee jumps and they try to measure their

00:16:07.440 time perception while they were jumping while they were doing bungee jumps but the results weren't valid

00:16:11.820 they didn't find that people underwent time expansion i think that's because it wasn't a genuine emergency

00:16:16.820 situation it wasn't unexpected it wasn't dramatic or sudden people knew what was going to happen so it has

00:16:22.820 to be a completely unexpected situation in your research have you figured out like how much does time feel like

00:16:29.860 it slows down in an accident or an emergency it varies from person to person most people experience a time

00:16:38.520 dilation of maybe to the order of magnitude of 10 or 15 so that 10 seconds seems to be one and a half

00:16:45.120 minutes or maybe five seconds seems to be something like a minute that's quite common that's the kind of

00:16:50.300 time dilation which i experienced in my accident but there are some situations where it becomes even more

00:16:55.100 extreme for example there are some examples of falls and when mount when a mountaineer for example falls

00:17:00.680 off the side of a mountain and a two-second fall can seem to stretch out into what seems like many

00:17:05.560 minutes sometimes occasionally when people are close to death through drowning that can also make time

00:17:10.920 stretch in a very dramatic way and also there are situations like near-death experiences when a person

00:17:16.060 actually does clinically die for a short time where you know there's an even more dramatic time

00:17:21.580 expansion yeah what's interesting in regards to falls the first person to start kind of studying

00:17:27.720 time expansion in a fall this happened a long time ago this is like in the 1800s this guy named albert

00:17:33.380 heim he was a geologist and climber and he experienced a fall and he just he noticed that man time seemed

00:17:39.800 to slow down and so he started trying to figure out what was going on there that's right he was the

00:17:43.520 first person to study these experiences actually back in i think it was 1885 yeah as you say he was

00:17:48.460 climbing a mountain he fell off of the side of a mountain he fell about 20 meters or 60 feet and in reality

00:17:54.340 a fall of 20 meters takes two seconds but in his mind those two seconds seem more like minutes

00:17:59.380 and he did he described in incredible detail the thought processes which which went through his mind

00:18:04.300 in those two seconds now incredibly detailed thoughts about his friends and relatives and how they

00:18:09.580 would react to the news of his death and what was going to happen to his career at university

00:18:13.900 he pondered over where they should take his glasses off so that when he hit the ground you know he

00:18:18.720 wondered whether they would smash and hurt his eyes he wondered about his friends who he'd been

00:18:22.700 climbing with and you know all these incredibly detailed processes and he also had a life review when his

00:18:28.780 previous experiences flashed before his eyes and you know he also felt incredibly calm felt a strange

00:18:34.780 sense of well-being almost as if he was outside himself watching the situation unfortunately he survived

00:18:40.880 and afterwards you know began to ponder over the experience and he began to collect reports from

00:18:46.780 other mountaineers and and other people like builders or roofers who'd fallen off the roofs of

00:18:52.160 high buildings and i think he collected around 25 examples and he he studied them to work out you know

00:18:57.460 the most common factors in these experiences so you mentioned besides in these accidents or emergencies

00:19:03.660 where time expansion occurs there's other characteristics of it people feel calm they feel a sense of beauty

00:19:09.900 sometimes what are some other characteristics whenever people having these very extreme time

00:19:14.780 expansion experiences yeah as you say the most common characteristic is a strange sense of calmness

00:19:21.160 i experienced that and albert heim reported on it too and that's kind of paradoxical you know

00:19:25.700 in theory we're very close to death or very close to serious injury so it seems strange that in these

00:19:31.940 moments we feel a strange powerful sense of well-being a sense of detachment and calmness but also

00:19:38.300 sometimes people report heightened awareness and that leads to a sense of beauty so that you know

00:19:44.380 they could be in a very brutal or violent situation like a car crash but they describe it as if it's a

00:19:49.880 beautiful scenario a beautiful situation there was one person in my research he reported that the

00:19:55.940 windshield of his car smashed so he saw these tiny shards of glass floating in the sunshine and

00:20:01.240 he said that they were like diamonds or glinting in the sunshine it looked incredibly beautiful as

00:20:06.100 they floated by so that's quite common this heightened awareness that leads to an enhanced

00:20:10.940 perception of beauty people sometimes report a sense that noise has become muffled external sounds

00:20:18.180 seem to become silent so that nothing seems to exist outside the situation almost as if they're in a kind

00:20:23.660 of cocoon of awareness and another common feature is the ability to take preventative action you know

00:20:29.500 the feeling that they were able to to use the extra time that they had to take some measures that

00:20:34.960 would help to minimize the danger or would help to prevent injury yeah that last one you give lots

00:20:39.800 of examples of that i mean in your own case when you're in your car accident you started thinking

00:20:44.620 like what can i do to mitigate the damage here and so you started taking preventative action other

00:20:49.840 examples of people who fell you know just downstairs there's like a pregnant woman that fell downstairs and

00:20:54.720 the fall only took maybe a second but in her mind it felt like it was going on for a minute and so she

00:21:01.680 was thinking okay what do i need to do with my body during this fall to protect myself and my baby and

00:21:07.800 she was able to do it like she was fine yeah that's right in fact in my research in situations where it's

00:21:14.440 possible to take some kind of action because in some accidents it's not possible but in situations

00:21:18.620 where it is possible over 80 percent of people feel like they were able to take some kind of action

00:21:23.200 and often that means falling in such a way that they didn't damage their body maybe bringing their

00:21:28.160 knees up to their chest so they so that their organs were protected and yeah it's you know the

00:21:33.780 woman you mentioned is a good example she was able to fall in such a way that she didn't damage her baby 0.98

00:21:37.720 and there's also another interesting example i collected from a man he was waiting at a bus stop

00:21:43.600 and there was an old lady next to him who started to fall to the ground i think she had a stroke or a 0.96

00:21:48.780 heart attack and he immediately held out his arm to try to protect her but her weight pulled him to the

00:21:54.120 ground it probably takes less than half a second to fall to the ground but he described how that

00:21:59.180 half second opened up and he described as a strange slow motion choreography where he was able to fall

00:22:05.480 in front of the woman and twist his body around so that she fell on top of him and he was able to

00:22:10.340 twist his body around so that he felt relaxed and didn't damage his his uh his ribs so it was yeah in

00:22:16.100 half a second he was able to perform all these all of these actions that minimize the danger we're

00:22:21.580 going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors and now back to the show how have

00:22:28.400 researchers tried to explain time expansion during an accident there have been a few different theories

00:22:35.380 one popular theory is that uh it's related to a surge in noradrenaline to the brain obviously when

00:22:42.360 we're in dangerous situations our brains respond and one of those ways in which it responds is to

00:22:47.940 surge to to increase noradrenaline in the brain which creates a kind of flight or fight response

00:22:53.660 and that seems to make some sense especially in accident or emergency situations but it doesn't

00:22:59.240 explain why in these situations we feel such a sense of calmness such a sense of calm well-being

00:23:04.760 and that doesn't fit with a fight or flight response and also it's significant that time expansion

00:23:10.420 experiences don't just occur in dangerous situations they also occur in moments of intense calmness

00:23:16.380 such as in deep meditation or in moments of stillness or presence when we're in natural

00:23:21.420 surroundings for example so the fight or flight response or a surge in noradrenaline can't explain

00:23:26.320 that there's another theory which i'm quite fond of which i put forward myself and that it's it could

00:23:32.340 be a kind of evolutionary adaptation because if you think about it our ancestors were living in quite

00:23:36.860 difficult circumstances they had to protect themselves from wild animals and natural disasters so it would

00:23:43.380 have been quite useful for them to switch into a different state of consciousness in which time

00:23:47.540 slows down it would have definitely helped to help them to survive so maybe we inherited that from our

00:23:53.700 early ancestors as a kind of survival response but but again that doesn't really explain why time

00:23:59.420 expansion occurs in other situations such as moments of deep calmness or deep presence

00:24:04.440 okay so it's a mystery like we don't know exactly what's going on

00:24:07.980 we don't know exactly but but i think the key to understanding these experiences is that they always

00:24:13.780 occur in altered states of consciousness you know even we don't normally think of accidents or

00:24:18.160 emergencies as altered states of consciousness but they actually do put us into a different state of

00:24:21.960 consciousness the shock of the situation or the drama of the situation jolts us into a

00:24:26.840 different state of consciousness and we also know that psychedelics slow down time because they

00:24:31.960 dissolve our ego boundaries they heighten our awareness we also know that sports people

00:24:37.440 experience time expansion in the highest moments in the moments of peak performance and they also

00:24:43.140 experience altered states of consciousness so i think the key to understanding them is these altered

00:24:48.340 states of consciousness and it makes us realize that the kind of time that we normally perceive

00:24:52.960 our normal time perception is really just a product of our normal consciousness it's really just a

00:24:58.460 creation of our normal psychological processes and our normal psychological functions so as soon as we

00:25:04.240 change our state of consciousness and shift into different psychological processes and functions we

00:25:09.800 also enter a different time space and just to clarify again you think that based on all these antidotes

00:25:16.540 you've picked up over the years that people are actually experiencing slowed down time in real time it's not as if

00:25:23.400 people are just remembering later oh it seemed like it was a long time no they really did experience

00:25:28.500 slowed down time as they were falling or having an accident yeah i think if anybody listening to this

00:25:34.400 has had a time expansion experience in an accident or in another situation people are almost always

00:25:40.420 convinced that it was a real experience which happened in the now i did a survey of 200 time expansion

00:25:45.280 experiences and i asked people whether it was a real experience in the present or whether it could have been

00:25:50.600 an illusion due to an increased number of memories and only three percent of people felt it could have

00:25:55.920 been a memory illusion ten percent weren't sure but 87 percent of people were convinced it was a real

00:26:01.180 experience in the moment but also the fact that people are able to take preventative action people

00:26:07.900 are actually able to accomplish things which would normally be impossible they're able to perceive and to

00:26:13.200 think in much more detail than would normally be possible in such a period of time to me that does show

00:26:19.700 that it's a real experience in the present so you mentioned another area where people experience time

00:26:24.860 expansion is in sports when athletes experience time expansion while playing how do they describe it

00:26:30.740 what is the subjective feeling of time expansion while playing a sport they often describe having more

00:26:37.060 time to position themselves having more time to anticipate their opponent's actions sometimes there's a

00:26:44.460 there are sort of perceptual changes that the ball seems to grow in size just like accidents external

00:26:50.080 sounds become muffled so even if they're surrounded by thousands of spectators they don't hear anything

00:26:55.780 so they're usually moments of peak performance whether where they have a lot of time to you know

00:27:00.880 position themselves or to take action against their opponents and it gives them obviously it gives them a

00:27:05.500 massive advantage yeah one player you described having this time expansion experience was the great

00:27:11.520 baseball player ted williams the best hitter of all time and he described like yeah i could see the

00:27:16.520 stitches on the ball that's going 95 miles an hour the ball seemed to get bigger and you suggest that

00:27:23.680 maybe one of the reasons why he was such a great hitter is that he was able to like for some reason able

00:27:28.340 to slow down time when he's in the batter's box i think so i mean he was he described his experiences

00:27:33.720 quite eloquently i think he was actually the first person to coin the term in the zone which has become

00:27:38.600 quite common now for sports people and athletes yeah and he even said that when he was at home

00:27:42.720 listening to music in those days it was 78 rpm records so he said that in his perception the record

00:27:50.180 was moving so slowly that he could read the information on the label as it was playing so yeah if you think

00:27:55.540 about it if you're a baseball hitter to slow down time gives you such an amazing advantage you know

00:28:00.000 you have a lot of time to wait for the ball and to to put yourself in the right position so i think

00:28:04.560 that explains why he was the you know the best hitter of all time how does time expansion differ

00:28:09.960 between sports and emergencies i think it's essentially the same phenomenon you know i think

00:28:15.320 the state of consciousness which athletes experience is essentially the same state of consciousness which

00:28:19.800 people experience in accidents i think the only difference is how it arises i think in accidents it

00:28:26.320 occurs due to the shock and drama of the situation and obviously sports can involve shock and drama too so

00:28:32.060 maybe that's a factor but i think the important factor in sport is that people get into a very

00:28:38.600 incredibly intense state of absorption i know we said earlier that absorption tends to speed up time

00:28:44.300 but i have this concept which i call super absorption and it's when absorption becomes so intense it

00:28:50.860 becomes much more intense than normal over a long long period of time or maybe just during a very

00:28:56.520 intense period of a game you know when absorption becomes especially intense time seems to open up

00:29:02.660 we seem to enter a different space in which time suddenly becomes panoramic almost as if we pass

00:29:08.140 through a portal or a gateway and suddenly we're surrounded by this vast expanse of time so i think

00:29:14.020 that's what happens in in sports people get so intensely absorbed that they shift into this very

00:29:19.400 intense alter state of consciousness in which time opens up and they have a lot more time to to play the game

00:29:25.680 in your research i mean this is kind of a question with all these time expansion experiences is there

00:29:31.920 a type of person who's more likely to have them because not everyone has them you know most people

00:29:36.280 who play sports probably don't have time expansion experiences people even in accidents don't have

00:29:41.400 them i think you talked about in your accident you had a time expansion experience but i think your

00:29:46.280 wife didn't have one that's right yeah my wife didn't have a time expansion experience in fact she was 1.00

00:29:52.180 terrified she was in a state of panic well i was sort of you know quite calmly and serenely observing the

00:29:57.380 situation so no you're right certain people do not have time expansion experiences even in accidents

00:30:02.680 and most sports people no matter how good they are they don't experience these moments or at least

00:30:07.760 i think many sports people experience them very occasionally in the you know the greatest moments

00:30:12.560 of performance but i think there are a few very elite athletes who have this ability to switch

00:30:18.360 into a mode of time expansion quite easily and if you look at the great athletes who've been able

00:30:23.460 to do this over history like lionel messi the the soccer player for example ted williams there was

00:30:29.360 also an australian cricketer called don bradman who was by far the greatest cricketer who's ever

00:30:34.380 played cricket you know he's just at a level way above everybody else even somebody like diego

00:30:39.760 maradona the famous argentinian soccer player they are or were quite unusual people i mean many people

00:30:45.600 have suggested that messi may have traits of autism ted williams is quite an unusual guy kind of

00:30:50.820 neurologically diverse person so they tend to be quite unusual people and i think that's related

00:30:56.100 to altered states of consciousness i think there are certain people who live quite close to an

00:31:01.280 altered state of consciousness or maybe they're in an altered state of consciousness all the time as

00:31:04.460 their normal mode so these are the people who tend to be you know the the most elite athletes and

00:31:10.020 these are the people who are prone to time expansion so i think going back to accidents

00:31:14.380 whether you're prone to time expansion in an accident or emergency it probably depends on

00:31:20.100 how liable you are to shift into an altered state of consciousness some people you know their kind of

00:31:26.560 mental boundaries are quite solid or fixed and it's more difficult for them to switch into a

00:31:31.900 different state of consciousness so that's probably the the main factor so another area where time

00:31:37.960 expansion occurs and your research and you mentioned it earlier is near-death experiences before we talk

00:31:44.380 how do researchers define near-death experiences well usually it's used in two senses the term

00:31:51.060 near-death experience the first sense is just when a person comes close to death when they have a close

00:31:56.380 brush with death for example when they come close to drowning or when they fall off the side of a mountain

00:32:00.980 so that's one meaning but i think the more specific meaning which researchers use is when a person

00:32:06.980 does clinically die for a short time before they are resuscitated so a common situation when this

00:32:12.960 occurs there's a cardiac arrest you know it could be a few seconds or a few minutes few minutes before

00:32:17.580 somebody is resuscitated and in that space of a few seconds or a few minutes many people report

00:32:23.160 a conscious experience while they were apparently dead they report very detailed and complex conscious

00:32:28.980 experiences they report feeling that they left their body they were traveling through a very peaceful

00:32:34.520 darkness towards a light occasionally they they meet beings of some form even deceased relatives

00:32:41.180 and then you know they are resuscitated and they report back on these experiences so that's um you know

00:32:47.360 the most specific meaning of near-death experience okay and in near-death experiences time seems to slow

00:32:53.280 down a lot based on your research how much does time slow down for someone during the near-death

00:32:58.740 experience it seems to be the most dramatic kind of time expansion of all so that a person may be

00:33:05.380 clinically dead for maybe a few seconds but in that small space they may experience hours of conscious

00:33:11.380 experience they sometimes report incredibly detailed and complex series of events and experiences that

00:33:18.340 take them hours to to record now people have written whole books about near-death experiences

00:33:22.940 which lasted just a few seconds because there's such a an incredible time expansion sometimes they

00:33:28.600 have a life review in which the the events of their lives are replayed within the near-death experience

00:33:34.520 and sometimes people feel that time disappears altogether so that there is no time at all yeah this

00:33:39.840 is you call it time cessation that's what that is that's right yeah i also investigated what i call

00:33:44.780 time cessation experiences where time disappears or dissolves away entirely you also talk about people who had

00:33:51.760 near-death experiences they describe that not only does time slow down or just disappear entirely

00:33:57.240 but often sometimes they describe time as being spatial what do you mean by that this is quite a

00:34:04.020 common report from near-death experiences these experiences are quite hard to describe because our

00:34:08.760 whole language is built on time you know our language is based on different tenses and different verbs in

00:34:14.040 time so people find these they do find it quite difficult to describe these experiences but they often

00:34:19.860 say that somehow the past and the future became part of the present it was almost as if time became a

00:34:26.780 spatial landscape almost as if you're on top of a mountain overlooking a landscape all around you so

00:34:33.780 rather than time being linear somehow it became spatial as if it was all around them yeah when i read that

00:34:40.260 it reminded me have you seen interstellar i did i watched it recently actually yeah well that part

00:34:45.080 where the matthew mcconaughey character like goes to the fourth dimension and he's just kind of floating

00:34:49.420 in that weird area and he's able just to go to different places in time maybe it's like that i don't know

00:34:55.440 i think it is i mean that that film was solidly based on physics so i mean there are ideas in physics

00:35:01.340 which suggest that time is like that the time is spatial rather than linear okay so let's talk about some

00:35:06.780 practical takeaways from your research because a lot of this just this is just really interesting

00:35:09.980 it's this i love talking about this thinking about it i'm sure we've provided a lot of fodder for

00:35:14.400 people at their next get together with their friends let's talk about practical takeaways from

00:35:18.640 your research because you've done that how can we become in essence time wizards and speed up and

00:35:24.560 slow down time at will well we spoke a little earlier about how even on an unconscious level we

00:35:31.340 manipulate time you know we change our time perception by for example on a flight we get into a

00:35:36.200 state of absorption to make time pass quickly and i think this is one reason why we like vacations

00:35:40.440 is because when we go on vacation it slows down time all of the new experience stretches our

00:35:46.520 consciousness and stretches our time so we can do things like that we can mitigate the speeding up

00:35:52.460 of time that seems to take place as we get older by introducing new experience into our lives by making

00:35:57.920 sure that our lives never become too full of routine and repetition that we keep changing things around

00:36:03.040 you know we keep traveling and we keep investigating new hobbies and new challenges and meeting new

00:36:08.980 people so i think you know all of that will definitely slow down our time perception yeah i've

00:36:14.660 been really intrigued by this idea that doing new things can slow down time and make your life seem

00:36:19.440 longer and i actually find it really motivating planning activities or vacations whenever i'm feeling

00:36:25.700 that inertia it kind of just gets me up and going to start doing things and something we've done in our

00:36:30.540 families we've had periods where we've challenged ourselves to try to do at least one new thing

00:36:36.300 a week so like a new novel thing so it could be small stuff like just go to a new restaurant or go

00:36:40.860 to a new park in town and yeah hopefully hopefully it will kind of extend my life but i mean it's just

00:36:46.360 also just fun to do i'm also curious about this is it possible to deliberately induce those extreme

00:36:54.200 time expansion experiences that we talked about that people have during accidents or near-death

00:36:59.980 experiences to a degree i think it's definitely theoretically possible now we spoke about

00:37:05.620 sports people and you know they do this even if not consciously they do manage to shift into a

00:37:10.440 different state of consciousness in which time slows down but interestingly there are some martial arts

00:37:14.660 from china or japan or korea where people consciously cultivate a state of consciousness a kind of

00:37:21.220 meditative state they call it in japan mushin or no mind or empty mind and it's taken for granted

00:37:27.420 that when you're in that state of empty mind time will slow down so you'll have more time to anticipate

00:37:33.240 your opponent's actions or to take actions yourself and obviously it gives you a massive advantage in

00:37:39.080 combat so in theory you know we can cultivate a meditative state in which our minds are empty in

00:37:46.060 which the boundaries between us and our surroundings seem to fade away and that that would expand time

00:37:52.320 in fact there is research from from scientists which shows that people who regularly meditate

00:37:57.000 over a long period of time long-term meditators in other words that they do experience more

00:38:03.020 expansive time than other people interesting well steve this has been a great conversation where can

00:38:07.660 people go to learn more about the book in your work the best place is my website which is

00:38:11.880 www.stevenmtaylor.com that's steven with a v m for mark stevenmtaylor.com and there's lots of

00:38:20.120 information about my books and my activities and events and so forth fantastic well steve taylor

00:38:24.960 thanks for time it's been a pleasure it's been a pleasure brett thanks very much my guest today was

00:38:29.960 steve taylor he's the author of the book time expansion experiences it's available on amazon.com you

00:38:34.500 can find more information about his work at his website stevenmtaylor.com also check out our show

00:38:38.920 notes at aom.is time expansion where you find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:38:43.680 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:38:55.620 artofmanly.com where you find our podcast archives and sign up for a new newsletter it's called dying

00:39:00.140 breed and sign up at dyingbreed.net it's a great way to support the show directly and if you haven't

00:39:05.440 done this already i'd appreciate it if you take one minute to use reading up a podcast or spotify

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00:39:16.060 the continued support until next time it's brett mccabe remind time listening when podcasts

00:39:19.720 would put what you've heard into action

00:39:21.800 you

The Art of Manliness - March 04, 2025

Enter the Matrix — The Science of Slowing Down Time

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