STEVE TAYLOR PhD
Time Expansion Experiences – The Psychology of Time Perception and the Illusion of Linear Time.
(Watkins)
Intriguingly sub titled ‘The Psychology of Time Perception and the Illusion of Linear Time’, Dr Steve Taylor’s book is based around the premise that many of us will have experienced what he terms a ‘time expansion experience’, or TEE for short, an experience of time slowing down in an extreme situation. Like your life flashing before you in moments of peril. Psychologist Dr Taylor has spent the past several years analysing these TEEs, collecting together hundreds of reports. He has also found many examples of time cessation experiences’ (or TCEs), in which time appears to stand still. There is a common psychology and features present in all of these case studies, leading Taylor to conclude that TEEs are a genuinely altered state of consciousness, and both TEEs and TCEs are almost always positive, bringing with them a sense of calm, well-being, clarity, and heightened awareness. What do unusual states of consciousness such as mystical experiences, psychedelic experiences, and near-death experiences tell us about time and consciousness?
Those questions lead Taylor to explore what the phenomena of people viewing a whole lifetime of events and experiences within a few seconds can tell us about the past, present and the future, what modern physics has to say about the idea that linear time is illusory, and whether our perception of time is actually an illusion, and is it possible to speed up and slow down time at will, including inducing TEEs? It’s a fascinating topic and once you begin to question the linear nature of time, that depressing countdown to the grave that begins the instant we are born, a whole new view of consciousness, existence, and our relationship to it begins to open up.
There is a lot contained in these pages, way too much to cover in any detail here, but let me pick out just two statements, either of which set off a whole train of thought in themselves. The first is the experience of a woman who witnessed an explosion, and in that split second experienced “Extreme attention to detail, sound, movement. I was everywhere all at once, aware of internal and external processes, as if I had a massive Self, witnessing all, watching people respond with incredible speed, strength, and agility, but in slow motion at the same time. Sound was loudly silent, if that makes sense?”. That hyper awareness is something often tested in court where witnesses are asked to recall dramatic events in Columbo like detail. Rarely is it questioned when they state that time appeared to slow down. What these experiences also show us is that the passage of time is not fixed, or moves at a predictable and consistent speed. Astro Physics has a lot to say about the nature of time, and Taylor does explore that, but it is so genuinely mind bending, there just isn’t space to scratch the surface of it here.
The second quote from the book refers to ‘life reviews’, where people experience and re-live key events in their life during moment of extreme stress or danger, seeing their life laid out before them in a sort of panorama. “People don't just remember events, but re-live them. They don't just recall them from the vantage point of the present, they experience them in the present, as if the events are still happening". That one statement could spark a lengthy debate in itself. If we can re-experience events from the past in the present, so they become current experiences as well as past ones, that call into question our perception of time as a one way street where you can never go back, replacing it with a time stream you can access at any time. We experience time as an external factor, something that is ‘out there’ and we have no control over. Time simply happens to us, like it or not. The idea that we are far more integrated with time as individuals and are able to experience it in difference ways, at different times, is revelatory.
Suffice to say, there is a lot here to take in, even an account of the US Military’s Star Gate programme (yes, it really was called that!), yet this isn’t written in an overly academic way, is accessible, and is eminently dippable. If you want to stretch your view of the world, and also feel quite a bit better about the process of ageing and the passage of time, then this is definitely the book for you.
Essential information:
‘Time Expansion Experiences – The Psychology of Time Perception and the Illusion of Linear Time’ by Steve Taylor PhD is Pre-order from bookshops and the Watkins store prior to publication 12th November.
