Consciousness, Reality, and the Illusion of Linear Time with Steve Taylor

Air Date - 16 January 2025

Sandie and Dr. Steve Taylor explore the fascinating concept of time perception, particularly focusing on time expansion experiences (TEEs) and time cessation experiences (TCEs) and the psychological implications of these experiences, including their impact on individuals’ views of life and death, as well as the connection between altered states of consciousness and precognition. The conversation delves into the nature of reality and consciousness, suggesting that time may not be as linear as we perceive it. Topics include:

* The nature of consciousness, the perception of time, and how modern distractions affect our experiences.

* The concept of time expansion and how spiritual practices can help individuals reconnect with a more profound sense of reality.

* The psychological implications of altered states of consciousness,

* The relationship between information processing and time perception

* The potential for personal transformation through understanding time as an illusion

* How to slow down time… and more

STEVE TAYLOR, PhD, is a senior lecturer and researcher in psychology at Leeds Beckett University and the author of many best-selling books on psychology and spirituality, including The Adventure, The Leap, and Spiritual Science. A past Chair of the Transpersonal Psychology section of the British Psychological Society, his books have been published in more than 20 languages, and he writes the popular ‘Out of the Darkness’ blog for Psychology Today. Dr. Steve Taylor joins Sandie to discuss his latest book, Time Expansion Experiences: The Psychology of Time Perception and the Illusion of Linear Time, in which he unravels the fascinating mysteries of time: its elasticity, its illusions, & how we experience its flow in our everyday lives.

http://.stevenmtaylor.com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to What is going on for New Thought from
the Edge of Arm. Each week on home Time's flagship
radio show, veteran broadcaster, author and media consultant Sandy sedge
Beer conducts thought provoking interviews with inspirational authors, artists, musicians, scientists,
speakers and filmmakers who are working at the point where

(00:31):
spirituality and science meet consciousness, at the very edge of Arm.
Here is your host, Sandy sedge Beer.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hello. Have you ever noticed how time flies when you're
fully absorbed in something you love doing? Ye drags endlessly
when you're anxiously waiting. Why did school years seem to
stretch forever as a child, while now the months race
by in a blurs time foully speed up and slow down?

(01:02):
Or is it all a matter of perception, an illusion
shaped by our minds and experiences. Steve Taylor, PhD is
a senior lecturer and researcher in psychology at leeds Beckett
University and the author of many best selling books on
psychology and spirituality, including The Adventure, The Leap and Spiritual Science.

(01:23):
A past chair of the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the
British Psychological Society, his books have been published in more
than twenty languages, and he writes the popular Out of
the Darkness blog for Psychology Today, Dr Steve Taylor joins
me today to discuss his latest book, Time Expansion Experiences,

(01:44):
The Psychology of Time, perception and the Illusion of Linear Time,
in which he unravels the fascinating mysteries of time, its elasticity,
its illusions, and how we experience its flow in our
everyday lives. Dr Steve Taylor.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Welcome, Hello, Sindy. Great to be with you.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
So ten years ago you had a car accident. During
that you entered a state of being where you felt
time was suspended and witnessed other cars moving extremely slowly.
This inspired you to conduct a qualitative study of what
you call Teaes time expansion experiences, ranging across accidents, altered

(02:27):
states of consciousness, and spiritual states, as well as professional sport.
Tell us a little bit first about your experience in
that accident.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
We were driving in the middle lane of a motorway
just outside Manchester, where I lived in England, and there
was a truck on the inside lane that didn't see us,
so he tried to move out into the entire lane.
He clipped the back of our car. So our car
started to spin round in the middle lane of the motorway.
And that's as soon as we actually clipped us twice.

(02:57):
But as soon as the first the first crash, as
soon as we heard the first crashing sound, everything went
into slow motion. I remember hearing the sound and then
there was a long it felt like a very long pause,
and I said to my wife, what was that noise?
And then all of a sudden, our cars started to
spin round, but quite slowly. It felt like it was
spinning very slowly. And as you say, I looked behind

(03:18):
and I saw the frightened faces of the other drivers
behind us. I saw the long lines of cars stretching
back down the motorway. It was a very, very busy
afternoon on the motorway, and yeah, everything was It was
almost as if time stopped. And also my perception became
very clear and very detailed, and I felt like I

(03:38):
had a lot of time to contemplate the situation and
to try to work out, you know, if I could
take any preventative action. I remember I tried to jolt
the stirring wheel to the left so we could turn
to the hard shoulder. I tried to handbrake, and I
was I was thinking very clearly. Also I was incredibly
calm as well. I never expected to feel so calm
in a life threatening situation, but I was thinking very calmly. Hm,

(04:02):
this is very dangerous. You know, we could probably get
serious injuries, maybe even die in this crash. All very
very calm. It was even a state of peaceful well being.
And also sounds became very blurred and indistinct outside the car.
But all of this, you know, in real time, I
should say, but we did manage to Maybe it was

(04:23):
because I managed to jolt the car to the left,
We managed to spin in the direction of the hard shoulder,
and we crashed into a barrier. And I remember looking
at the first of all, I looked at my wife
and thought, oh, she's not injured. She looks fine. Then
I looked at my own body and I thought, wow,
I seem to be fine too. So yeah, miraculously we
were completely unharmed, although the car was completely destroyed. And

(04:46):
then everything went back into normal. You know, time seemed
to go back to its normal speed. I seemed to
switch to a normal state of consciousness. But the whole incident,
in real time, it was probably only maybe three or
four seconds, but in my mind it was much much longer,
maybe something like forty seconds forty five seconds. So it

(05:06):
really made me aware of, you know, how elastic, how
flexible time is.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
What kind of experience did your wife have?

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Strangely, she didn't have the type of experience I had.
She was very frightened. Time didn't slow down for her,
and I remember watching her as the car span round,
feeling very concerned because she was, you know, she was
screaming in terror. So she didn't have that experience.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Strangely enough, it would be interesting to know if you
know a shared experience. I know you write about shared
experiences in the book. I don't think they're that common.
But is it because the person who is in control
of the situation supposedly is more likely to have that experience.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
That's an interesting question. I mean, I have found many
cases where passengers of cars had time expansion experiences, but
I think, yeah, it does tend to be more common
when a person is driving a car for example, As
you say, there are some cases where people share time
expansion experiences. It all really depends on their state of consciousness,

(06:16):
because in these experiences, they work through altered states of consciousness.
An accident or an emergency jolts into an altered state
of consciousness, but maybe a person is not in the
right frame of mind to switch into an older state
of consciousness. So it probably depends on a person's state
of mind or maybe how generally how susceptible they are
to altered states.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, it's interesting because as I'm reading the book, I'm thinking,
I wonder if people's emotions have something to do with this.
You know, if somebody is an anxious person, you know,
would they switch into a calm or you know, does
that make a difference to the possibility of them having
such an experience?

Speaker 3 (06:58):
I think it does, you know, So I think in general,
some people are more susceptible to different states of consciousness.
Some people are closer to spiritual experiences or psychic experiences
because you know, the ego boundaries seem to be a
bit softer or a bit thinner. So I think those
people are probably more likely to have time expansion experiences.

(07:20):
People with a softer ego boundary, and that probably equates with,
you know, a general state of calmness too, so.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
You know, they seem to be typical, you know, what's
going on for people. What they report is fairly typical
across the board, heightened awareness of everything, distortion in sound,
sometimes lights being brighter, more vivid, nature looking more beautiful
in some of them.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yeah, why is that? That's very strange because there are
you know, I found in my research at about fifty
percent of time expansion experiences occur in accidents, not just
car accidents, but also falls and other kinds of accidents.
But there are people in very kind of brutal or
violent situations like car crushes. They describe it as if

(08:09):
it's a very beautiful experiences. They describe the shards of
glass when a windscreen, when a windshield breaks, sort of
floating through the air and reflecting in the sun and
looking incredibly beautiful. And I think it comes from an
aesthetic consciousness, our normal, our normal human state. You know,
in our normal static consciousness, we're not really prime to

(08:32):
see beauty. We're prime to be in a practical mode
to focus on our day to day activities, you know,
to do our jobs and to you know, deal with
the business of day to day life. So and we
live in familiar surroundings that we don't normally pay that
much attention to so we don't you know, we're not

(08:52):
really prime for beauty. But when we switch into an
attic consciousness, it's as if a veil falls away from
the familiar world. Everything around us looks new and fresh
and also beautiful.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
You know, I mean what you're describing someone being right
in the now. You know, we have a shock, maybe
we trip, you know, we have a car accident. We
are present, We are fully present, you know, is right here.
And I wonder whether that it's been in that now
moment where people say quite often that time doesn't exist.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
That's definitely a factor. Yeah, I think that's related to
what you could call the normal chattering mind. We have
this sort of association associational chatter that runs through our
minds a lot of the time that makes us think
about the future, that makes us recall the past or
daydream about things that may not happen, or just sort

(09:55):
of snippets of conversation or songs, and we we get
lost in that associational chatter a lot of the time.
So when we and that makes us absent, you know,
as opposed to present, Because if you caught up in
this kind of fog of mental chatter, you're not really
in the now when you have an accident, or it
could be any kind of emergency situation when you're told

(10:18):
some dramatic news, or it could even be a powerful
spiritual experience of communion with nature or communion with another person.
You know, it takes you out of that that fog
of mental chatter and suddenly you're right here. You know,
you're right, You're part of your surroundings, and everything looks

(10:39):
beautiful and real, and it's a you know, a beautiful
experience of presence.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
And these are real experiences. You know, they're not you know, illusions,
they're not, you know, false memories, they're not.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
If they are real, definitely. I mean that there is
a theory which I speak about in the book, that
these experiences are caused by memory, and that there are
kind of an illusion of recollection, and that the theory
is that when we're in dramatic situations, we're full of adrenaline,
we become our brains become very alert and process a

(11:15):
lot of information so that when we look back at
those experiences from the next day or maybe a few
weeks later, we have a lot of memories. All of
that information creates a lot of memories, so we have
the impression that all of those memories of stretched time,
so it seems like the experience lasted for a long time.
But I think that's nonsense, because I mean I did

(11:36):
a survey a while ago of three hundred people who'd
had tees and I asked them whether they felt it
was a real experience in the now or whether it
could be an illusion of memory looking back from the future,
and only three percent of them said it could have
been an illusion of memory. Everybody was. Everybody else apart
from they were about ten percent of people who weren't sure,

(11:58):
but everybody else was convinced that it was a real
experience in the now. Part of the part of the
reason for that is that so many people feel that
they they are able to take preventative action during the
during the experience that would be impossible if time was
running at a normal speed. Just like me in the
car Crosh, I felt as I was able to try

(12:18):
out a lot of things and to think very methodically
and in a very detailed way about the situation, and
it wouldn't have been possible if time had been going
at its normal speed. So a lot of people actually
say that they felt that they save their lives. You know,
they were able to save their lives because of this
time expansion.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Do you know people who have indes and I know
you've researched those two often say it's changed them. It's
changed them in so many ways, their emotions, psychologically, possibly
even their personality. Do you know whether these kinds of
you know, tes cause changes in people.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
They do, to degree, maybe not as ramatically as near
death experiences, although you know time expansion and time cessation
also occurs in near death experiences. We're in the kind
of accident related tes. People do say that they, you know,
they have a different view of themselves. I mean mine
was a bit like that because, as I said before,

(13:18):
I never expected to feel so calm in a life
threatening situation. It made me think that, you know, if
you know, when bad things happen, when I am in danger,
I will be able to cope. Something inside me will
rise and deal with the danger.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
You know.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
So I always secretly suspected that I might sort of
cave in in dangerous situations, But in reality, I'm sure
now that I would deal with those situations quite competently
and confidently, and a lot of people said the same thing.
They said that they had a more positive view of themselves,
but also they had a more positive view of life

(13:55):
in general because they, you know, they were a lot
of them felt that they were on the of death,
even that they had glimpsed death, and they were sure
that there was nothing to be afraid of. You know,
they felt this amazing sense of well being, this amazing
sense of calm positivity, and you know, it took away
their fear of death. They were sure that, you know,

(14:19):
when they face death again, they will returned to that
state of calm, well beeing.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
So that's an interesting point there because if somebody has
you know, which in a way is like a near
death experience. You know, I've just forgotten what I was
going to say there, something about comparing the near death
experience with your experience. It'll come back to me. Tell

(14:46):
me about I think I had a momentary loss of time.

Speaker 3 (14:50):
Yeah, a moment of timelessness.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Tell me about TCEEs. What is the difference there.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
Well, time expansion experiences are really common. I found in
my research that about seventy five percent of people have
had at least one te whether it was in an
accident or while playing sports or well, you know, after
ingesting a psychedelic substance of some form, or spiritual experience
of some form. But TCS, as I call them, time

(15:20):
cessational experiences are much more rare. They only really occur
in two different states. One is in new death experiences.
So a lot of people when they have a near
death experience a near death experience, not just in the
sense of coming close to death, but in the sense
of actually dying for a short time before being resuscitated

(15:42):
and having the you know, the archetypal out of body experience,
and the journey through darkness to a place of light,
meeting deceased relatives or beings of light, and so forth,
that kind of near death experence. People often say that.
Some people say that time expanded radically, you know, so
that they went through an incredibly complex series of experiences

(16:04):
in a few seconds, you know, they went through hours
and hours or days of experiences in the matter of
a few seconds. For other people say that time just
didn't exist, there was no time in some way the
past and the future. We're here now in the present,
as if time had become a kind of panorama with

(16:26):
no distinction between the past and present.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, I know what I was going to say about
the near death experience. It was the life review. You know. Yeah,
having this accident, you don't know if you're going to survive.
How many people in that situation have a life review?

Speaker 3 (16:45):
Well, life reviews they do only tend to happen when
a person is really close to death, when they really
skirt the edges of life and death. And also if
they have a near death experience and they do die
for a short time before being resustated. About a third
of near death experiences feature life reviews, and I would

(17:07):
say that a similar figure for you know, in life
threatening situations, maybe between the third and a half of
people of life reviews. And often a good example is
mountaineers who fall off the side of a mountain, for example.
They it's very common for them to have life reviews
because in their at least in their minds, it's almost

(17:29):
certain that they're going to die, you know, but fortuitoless
lead they managed to survive, and in that space of
a few seconds before they hit the ground, they recall
or relive sometimes every experience of their whole lives from
birth to the present moment. So that's in some ways,
that's the most radical time expansion of all, you know,

(17:50):
living through a whole lifetime of experiences in the matter
of a few seconds.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
So you've said that, you know, sometimes it's possible to
glimpse past and future experiences. Do you think this is
an explanation for precognition or you know there are other
ways that people fall into those pre cognitive.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well, I mean, I'm you know, I'm certain that precognition exists.
I've had precognitive experiences myself, as I mentioned in the book,
And there are so many, you know, really strange and
miraculous experiences of precondition which were very very well documented,
certain people who are able to glimpse disasters and describe

(18:40):
them and draw them in intricate detail before they happen.
And also that there are lots of scientific experiments in
laboratory environments which show that precognition exists. So yeah, if
precognition exists, we need to consider what it tells us
about reality and if the life of you is a

(19:00):
real phenomenon. If some scientists obviously are skeptical and they
try to explain the life review in some sort of
unusual brain activity, they sometimes say that there's an unloading
of memories where we're in situations of great stress or
close to death, but that those experiences don't work because
partly because the life review is not just about memories.

(19:22):
It's really nothing to do with memory. It's an actual
reliving of experiences. People often say that they, you know,
they relive these experiences in extraordinary detail. They notice things
that they weren't aware of at the time when they
originally when they originally experienced these things, they see events
from multiple perspectives in a kind of telepathic In a

(19:42):
telepathic way, they can sense other people's responses to events
that happened thirty years ago originally. So these things are
real and we need to consider what they tell us
about time. So obviously they suggest that in some way
the future or exists because you know, we're able to

(20:03):
glimpse it, and the past still exists because we're able
to re experience it. So that suggests that time is
like a panorama, that really there is no division between
the past, person and future.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
Was that fascinating story about the guy with the the
jazz play musician?

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Oh yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Saw him a future in which he was a jazz musician,
and so he became one.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, that's right. There was a guy called Tony Coffee
who is a really successful jazz musician here in the UK. Yeah,
but he wasn't from a musical family and he was
working as an apprentice rufer at the age of sixteen
when he fell off the roof of a three story
building and then those two or three seconds before he

(20:53):
hit the ground, he had visions of himself playing this instrument.
He didn't even know what he was. It was a
saxophone he'd never seen when he didn't know what it was,
and he had visions of his well, he didn't know
it was his future, but he had visions of himself
in different places, with different people, with children, with a woman.
But he was obviously very seriously. He was in the

(21:14):
hospital for a few weeks, but this image of himself
playing the instrument kept coming back into his mind and
he felt impelled to get hold of to find out
more about it, and to get hold of this instrument,
which he found out was a saxophone, and he felt
impelled to play it. You know, he couldn't get a
place at music school music college here in the UK
because he had no qualifications in music, so he had

(21:35):
to go to He did a sort of crowdfunding campaign
to go to America to study at the Berkeley College
of Music, and he became, you know, a really successful
and prominent jazz musician. And later he realized that he
was visiting the place that he had seen in his vision,
and he married the woman and he had the children

(21:56):
that he saw in his vision.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Have you read Pere Macha Walter's book Future Memory? No,
I haven't had three near death experiences, and she was
told she had to write one book for each of them.
One of those books was Future Memory, and I mean
just astonishing experiences she met. You know, she'd be at
work and suddenly her hands would look different, and she'd

(22:21):
go into these I guess altered states she would be
seeing the future. Now, is that something that we would
put in the same category as this, Maybe maybe not.
Who knows what happened, you know, as a result of
those three near death experiences. What may have opened up
within her that yeah closed before?

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Yeah? I think so, yeah. I think it's you know,
these experiences are They're obviously not so common because not
so many people have near death experiences. But when people
do have no death experiences. They often do have visits
of the future. Yeah, you know the story of Elizabeth,
which I mentioned in the book, Yes, which she was
struck by lightning and had a near death experience. She felt,

(23:07):
like a lot of people who have NDEs. She was
told that she had a choice about whether to return
or whether to remain in this place of peace. And
she she had young children, so she obviously decided to
go back. But she was told that if she go
if she went back, her marriage would not survive, and
she would, but she would have another child and everything,

(23:29):
you know. And she always had visions of future world
events too. So yeah, and like many people, she also
retained her precommitive powers, so she continued to have visions
of disasters and other world events.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
One story that intrigued me, and I've actually seen this
woman in a Netflix Videos documentary series, the American Mary
Neil Oh, Yeah, you know, the American orthopedic spin spinesone
and her experience of being trapped in that waterfall for
twelve minutes. I mean, there's more than just one thing

(24:07):
going on there, you know, there's more than a te
because yeah, body responded physically, anyone else would have died amazing.

Speaker 3 (24:15):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's another thing. I mean,
this relates to another of my books called Extraordinary Awakenings,
when I write about people who've gone through real, real
extremes of deprivation, like, for example, people there was a
study of people who were to survive the goolegs in
Soviet Russia, where they were living in really brutal circumstances

(24:37):
temperatures of minus thirty starvation, diets, torture, and brutality. But
a lot of people, you know, when they were just
completely broken down, seemingly completely broken down, they would find this,
they would discover they called it soul power. They would
discover this kind of radiance inside them that kept them
alive and it gave them physical warmth, It gave them energy,

(24:59):
you know, to to sustain them. And yeah, there's something
miraculous about it. But I think we do have these
miraculous abilities inside us. Often they only showed themselves in
really extreme situations.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Yeah. Yeah, you wrote quite a bit about you know, sporkespeople, athletes,
et cetera. There was the story about Edward Hall, you
know that. I think Edward Hall wrote a book about
somebody the pilot who did all these amazing things in
a few seconds to save the plane. And there was

(25:30):
a tennis player that you wrote about. Yeah, focus became
so incredibly sharp. But you talk about certain sports people
and you mentioned Messi and how they seem to have
an ability to fall into that kind of state quite easily,

(25:54):
and almost as if their boundaries between this state and
whatever that state is a very thin. It reminded me
you mentioned that they seem to have other problems. You know,
there's addiction, you know, or some of these people like
Messi seem to have a big you know, new diversity

(26:18):
of some kind is a lot of I've noticed with
autistic children, and I've been around a few, that their
perception is very precise. I was walking along with my
grandson once and he was telling me something about what
he saw in the wind, you know, through the window
of a building that we'd passed, and I didn't even

(26:40):
notice the building, but he was telling me in exact detail.
So I wonder whether there is something to be explored there.
You know, people have this what did you call it,
this limit liminal? Yeah, transliminal transliminal. Yeah, it sounds like

(27:01):
there might be I wonder if there's a connection there
and with that, you know, their brains and their ability
to fall very easily into that state of focus.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Definitely. Yeah. These people, you know, the high level sports people,
and we're talking about that, you know, the most you know,
the very best and the very highest level beyond what
we normally consider great you know, great feats of ethics,
ethacicity and sport, and the most elite of the elite

(27:34):
sports people. They do seem to be what you could
say neuro atypical. You know, they're not normal people. And
I think the key to it is they have the
ability to shift into an odd state of consciousness in
which time goes very slowly and their perception does become
very acute. And if you look at Lila Messi, you know,

(27:56):
you know, other people have put forward the theory that
time goes slowly for him because he seems so graceful.
He does very complex athletic feats very quickly, and all
of these other players are kind of lunging at him
but unable to touch him. He's so graceful and he
avoids all their lunging feet and he has this ability
to sort of you know, guide the ball so perfect

(28:18):
with perfect accuracy. It all seems very slow and graceful,
and you know, he is definitely an unusual person. Some
people have suggested that he is autistic, and yeah, I
think somebody like him. You know, he does have very
very soft boundaries, very soft ego boundaries, So I think

(28:38):
he finds it very easy to shift into that altered
states of altered state of consciousness. Yeah, and that perhaps
that does explain why not just sports people, but a
lot of geniuses can be quite troubled people and they
have very soft ego boundaries. Which is great. It's the
key to spiritual experiences, it's key to psychic experiences. But

(29:02):
if you're not careful, it leads to it also brings
vulnerability to you know, disturbances or instability. So what are.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
These you know, these stories, these experiences tell us about
consciousness in the human mind.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
They tell us that what we assume to be normal
consciousness is actually subnormal. You know, we kind of take
the the state that we experience most of the time.
We assume that it's kind of objective and normal and real,
and we assume that the view it gives us of

(29:42):
reality is real. And you know, it's the common sense
the so called common sense view of reality that tells
us that unusual phenomena can kind of exist. Everything is
very orderly and very boring. But but when when when
we shift into time exp actual experiences or other unusual
states of consciousness like spiritual experiences, then we know it's

(30:06):
like sort of you know, slipping into a more real reality.
You know, it's like a veil falls away and suddenly
it's like, ah, this is the way things really are.
You know, we don't normally live, you know, the world
is not really as we normally perceive it. There's actually
a more real world behind it, and it's a pleasant world.

(30:30):
It's as a world that feels more comfortable, more harmonious,
looks more beautiful, and you know, once we've had these experiences,
we know that that is the more real place. We strongly,
we feel very strongly that normal reality and normal consciousness
are subnormal. And sometimes occasionally that brings a sense of

(30:51):
frustration because we're stuck in this kind of dull, this dull,
badly furnished room where we could be outside in the beautiful, spacious, harmonious,
you know, landscape. But usually it brings a more optimistic
and trusting view of reality and a desire to return
to that place. So a lot of people start to

(31:13):
meditate or follow other spiritual practices because they want to
get back there, and then they know intuitively that it
is there and they can get back there.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Yeah, and also you know people who goodness having problems
with time. Here break, you're listening to what is going on?
I'm Sandy said, and my guest today is senior lecturer
and researcher in psychology at Leeds Beckett University and best

(31:44):
selling author Steve Taylor, PhD. And we're discussing his latest book,
Time Expansion Experiences, the psychology of time perception and the
illusion of linear time Still to come? Can we consciously
control our experience of time? And is it possible to
live our lives on the basis that linear time is

(32:06):
an illusion? Stay tuned. Hello, I'm Sandy Sedigbier, host a
moon Time's flagship radio show, What is going On? And
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Speaker 3 (34:16):
Everything that we do, we can do in a contemplative manner.

Speaker 4 (34:20):
Through the art of contemplation, you can use the gene
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the codebook of life in the gen Keys. The book
is made up of these three levels shadows, gifts, and cities,
and the journey is from is through those three levels
kind of unpicking of the shadow states, the releasing of

(34:40):
the gifts, and then the embodying of this higher consciousness
called the city.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
And the cities are very exalted words, and it's not like.

Speaker 4 (34:48):
We we kind of suddenly are all these exalted christ
like beings. But we have flashes and illuminations along the journey.
And the more we get stuck into the journey, the
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the light from in these codes inside our DNA, so
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(35:12):
is the inner way.

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Speaker 2 (35:53):
Welcome back, Steve Taylor. In your section on beyond linear Time,
you explore negative transliminal states like schizophrenia and dementia, which
involved disrupted time perception. Tell me a little bit about that.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
One of the you know well. Nowadays, schizophrenia is often
described as a temporal disorder. So, in other words, the
essential you know issue in schizophrenia is a lack of
awareness of time and a lack of control of time.
And usually for people with schizophrenia, time goes incredibly slowly

(36:35):
because they're in a state of distress or anxiety in
negative states of mind can really stretch time, and that
happens a lot in schizophrenia. And also because people don't
have control of time, they feel overwhelmed by it. They
can't really judge how long events last, they can't estimate time,

(36:56):
they can't really plan for the future, so that they're
lost in a world of timelessness, if you like. So,
in a way that is paradoxically similar to the timelessness
which which spiritual development can bring the sense of transcending time,
but it's a very negative experience because you know, people whiskizophrenia,

(37:17):
they don't have a sense of stability within their own psyche,
so they're completely overwhelmed by this world of timelessness, whereas
if a person is in a spiritual state, they're very stable,
you know, and they feel very comfortable, So they feel
very peaceful, they feel very at home in this world
of timelessness. And it's similar with dementia and dementia. I

(37:42):
quote from one psychologist who says that the essential issue
with dementia is similar. It's about not living in the present,
not being able to be in the present, because your
mind is pulling you back into the past, usually back
into the past. And if you if you meet people
with dementia, they often it seems almost as if as
they're reliving past experiences, they seem to be back in

(38:03):
their child or talking to their mother again. And I
don't think that's just memy. I think maybe in a
sense they are. They are actually there again, but again
because they're in a state of distress and instability and disturbance.
You know, it's a very negative, very negative experience, completely
different to the sense of timelessness that we may have

(38:25):
in you know, a live review or when we have
precognitive experiences.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
So what about time jumping? I mean there are books
written about people who literally or say they literally jumped
from one space and time into something else.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
You mean, like time slips when when we go back.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
To a post slips. I don't know if you've read
any of Cynthia Sue Larson's books. I mean, she's written
one on time jumping. She has a website called Something Realities,
Reality Shifts, and she's got a newsletter that she's been
running for years and it's full of people's stories. They

(39:12):
send her all these stories, these experiences they had with
alternate realities through things like top time.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
Yeah, have you come across that. I've come across time
slips in which people return to previous events in their lives,
and I think they're actually quite common. But I think
in some cases people confuse them with normal memory. They think, oh,
that must be just a memory, but they did actually
return to an earlier part of their lives. I think,

(39:41):
you know, these experiences don't surprise me, because I do
think that linear time is an illusion. I think the
past does still exist, in the future already exists, and
the same applies to well. Time is basically like space.
In the same way that we can move to different
places in the world, we can move to different places
in time, but only usually in certain states of consciousness,

(40:05):
in altered states of consciousness. One of the features of
our normal state of consciousness is that it imprisons us.
In linear time, it shields us from the past and
the future. But as soon as we shift into an
altered state, then you know, well, often we have access
to these different times.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Well, you know, I remember somebody talking about time travel
and they said, you know, every time you remember something,
you're time traveling. Now, I make a point, if I'm
having a wonderful experience I make a point of reminding myself,
I'm going to remember this snapshot of it, and I
can go back and revisit that, and for those moments,

(40:48):
I'm there.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
Yeah, yeah, me too. I often ever, I mean, people
sometimes refer to this as retrocognition. Precognition goes into the future,
retrocognition returns to the past. I often have an experience
when I'm floating between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes in the afternoon,
if I'm feeling a bit lazy, I'll go for a
doze for an hour or two and I just hover

(41:13):
between sleep and wakefulness, and I sometimes, well often return
to earlier periods of my life. And it's not just
a memory. I feel like I'm there, you know, I'm
back in the flat I lived in twenty years ago
in Singapore. I'm back in you know, the flat I
lived in London thirty years ago. I'm really there. I
can really feel the atmosphere of those times. I can

(41:36):
feel the places where I used to live. I got
the sense of smell and feeling, you know, of how
it was where it was in my life at that time.
So I feel like I do actually return there. And yeah,
and as I say, I think those experiences are quite common.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
So let's talk about how some of this actually works.
I mean, if we really really interesting, how talking about time?

Speaker 3 (42:03):
You're slipping out of linear time, slipping.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
In andt of it all the time. So one of
the things that I really love you gave an answer to.
This is a question that's bothered me all my life.
Why is it that when I go on holiday that
first week is wonderfully slow and the second week or
the third if it's a three week trip, goes by

(42:26):
in a flash? And you answered that, So tell us
what is happening when we are having these You know,
we think that time is speeding up, we think it's
slowing down.

Speaker 3 (42:37):
This is because of the relationship between information processing and
time perception. Basically, the more information we process in our
minds and our awareness, the slower time goes. And information
processing is a bit of a fancy word, but it
basically means perceptions and impressions and experiences. So the more perceptions,

(42:58):
the more experiences we have, the more information we take in,
the more time is stretched. So that's why that's one
of the main reasons why time goes so slowly for children,
because children live in a world of newness. Everything is fresh,
they're experiencing everything or a lot of things for the
first time. And then you know, and there's children have
this amazingly vivid perception to everything is sort of hyper

(43:21):
real to them. So all of that stretches time. So
when we go on holiday, it's a bit like returning
to the childhood state, at least for the first week,
because it's also fresh and new and interesting and exciting.
But in the second by the second week, you're you're
already getting used to it. It's already becoming a bit familiar,
and so you're not processing much as much information, which

(43:44):
is why it seems to go faster.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
So then, you know, you think about children, for example,
and they are always in the now, the little ones
that always to know anything else. So if I want
to change, if I want time to slow down, then
instead of doing the things that I'm always doing, I

(44:08):
should go out seeking new experiences.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
That's definitely one method. Yeah, it works really well. You know,
travel is a great way of expanding time. I use
this analogy in the Book of Two Twins. Imagine there's
one twin who leaves school at the age of let's
say sixteen, gets a job in an office and spends
a whole life working in the same job in the

(44:31):
same town where she was born. But there's another twin
who is more kind of adventurous, and she leaves school
and starts to go traveling around the world, spends a
couple of years in Australia and a few years in
other countries and doing lots of different jobs, having loads
of experiences. So, assuming those two twins died on this
passed away in the same day, in the future, the

(44:53):
second twin would actually live through a lot more time.
Her life would actually be longer. You know, she would
act experienced a lot more time in her life, whereas
a first twin, you know, her life is full of
repetition and routine familiarity, all of which you know constricts time,
makes time fast very quickly. So yeah, so we can

(45:15):
do that. We can try to not just travel, but
also new ideas, new hobbies, new people, being curious and
open to our experience, making sure that you know, even
something as simple as you don't have to go to
the you don't have to take the same route to
work every day. You can travel a different way, you
don't have to go to the same place on holiday

(45:38):
every year, you can go somewhere else, you know, you
don't have to do the same things at the weekend.
But I mean, even more fundamentally, it's about our perception.
There's actually research showing that mindfulness and meditation generally can
slow down time. And I think that's mainly because meditation
opens our awareness. It makes us present, makes us consciously

(46:00):
aware of what we're doing and of our surroundings, so
our minds are always taking in newness. Even if we
were in familiar places, our awareness is so fresh that
we're taking in newness, so that stretches time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
You referenced a guy called Mike Hall, a sports coach
who could enter, you know, this kind of place where
time doesn't exist for him at will after twelve years
of tai chi practice.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Yeah, amazing, And that's amazing. But I think in Eastern
martial arts, Asian martial arts, you know, there are some
martial arts like aikido or karate, where people do try
to cultivate what they call it machine, a state of
empty mind or no mind in which time slows down.

(46:54):
They try to consciously cultivate time expansion as an aid,
you know, for their martial art, and many people comment that,
you know, they are able to do this, so it's
really about meditation. They get themselves into a state of
deep meditation in which their minds are empty, and as

(47:15):
a result, they can slow down time.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
So you can do that with an empty mind, and
you can also slow down time and use it to
accomplish so much more. You know, like the guy who
you know did all of those the pilot who did
all of those maneuvers which took him forty five minutes
to describe, but he did them in seconds.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
That's right. It would be wonderful if we know. This
is one of the things I suggest in the book,
if emergency workers could cultivate time expansion. Well, yes, but
it's not impossible. As I said before as we were
discussing before, athletes can do this. You know, they do unconsciously.
They just learn the habit of switching into a lot

(47:57):
of state of consciousness in which time slows down. People
in martial arts do it generally. It's you know, it
seems to be the result of meditation, so it is possible.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
I mean, I've always wondered how surgeons you know, who
are doing like sixteen hour surgery, how on earth? Are they?
You know, what is happening there? They must be in
some kind of zone. I mean, I know, you know,
when I write, if I'm writing anything extensive and you
probably know this too, you can sit there and you
can turn out, you know, ten thousand words and it

(48:30):
feels like you've only been sitting there for an hour.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
That's right. Yeah, It's like a kind of timehole, you know,
a wormhole, so sort of passing through a gateway. I mean,
I do experience that, and it's usually when my mind
is it starts off very, very focused, and then it
switches into this state of ease, a state of calm ease,
in which I'm very I continue to be very focused,
but in a very calm and very calm way. It

(48:56):
is it is almost as if I slip into this
place where time go slowly and am able to accomplish
a lot in the short space of time. The musicians
experience it too. The last sorry, I think musicians sometimes
experience it. There are some classical piano pieces, for example,
which are so complex, you know, this kind of endless

(49:18):
cascade of notes flowing by at one hundred miles an hour.
And I've heard from pianists who say that the only
way to play these pieces is to slow down time,
otherwise it would be impossible.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Yeah, so this tells us that there's a lot more
research that needs to be done, you know, because there
are so many questions that we can't answer at the moment,
haven't been able to answer.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
Yeah, are you going to do it? Hopefully? But I mean,
I think there are some things that human beings can't understand.
We can't really understand near death experiences, at least in
our present state. We can't really understand them. You know,
maybe we will understand them when we pass over into

(50:02):
a different realm. But I'm quite comfortable with the fact
that there are so many things we can't explain. It's
a bit like quantum physics. I talk about quantum physics
in the book, and you know, there are so many
things in quantu physics you don't make any sense at all,
which are really impossible to understand. There was one well
known physicist I think, I think it's a guy called

(50:22):
Richard Feynman, an American physicist, and he said, if you
think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics.
It doesn't make any sense. But I think that's you know,
our normal consciousness is limited, our awareness is limited, our
intellect is limited. You know, there are some things that
are beyond our awareness and beyond our understanding, and that's great.

(50:46):
It brings mystery and magic to life.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
Absolutely. You know the Richard Bartlett who used to do
matrix energetics, he used to teach people how they can
two point somehow they are connecting two points and they're
skipping in time. I tried that and it never worked
for me. But I do remember once driving from Las

(51:09):
Vegas to Phoenix, and I knew how long that journey
took because I've done it several times, and getting caught
on a narrow road because there was an accident and
they had to bring in a helicopter. And I remember
sitting on that narrow road for about an hour and
a half, and yet I still made it back in

(51:29):
the same time that I always did, and I could
never have work how I'd done that.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
Yeah, that's amazing. Maybe similar to formerly one drivers who
they report, you know, time expansion and usual that there's
quite a strong connection between motor racing and alter states
of consciousness. You know, it's such an extreme.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
I thought it was just boredom or something.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
I don't know, Abe, but you probably shifted into a
different state of consciousness, very likely.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
So let me ask you before we close. Is it
possible to live our lives? This is a question that
you pose in the book on the basis that linear
time is an illusion. What will life be like? What
will we do?

Speaker 3 (52:17):
Well? We have to live in time in order to
function in the world, in order to deal with day
to day life, to deal with the practical stuff and
bring up our families and drive our cars and do
our jobs. So you know, it wouldn't be helpful to
live completely out of time. There needs to be a
part of us which is functioning in the world. But

(52:38):
at the same time as focusing on the practical stuff,
we can sense timelessness. I use the analogy in the
book of It's as if we're walking in a straight
line along the beach and we can see the ocean
to our side, but we can actually step into the

(52:59):
ocean as well. We can walk along the beach at
the same time stepping in the ocean, So we can
live in a straight line at the same time as
being aware of this ocean of timelessness. Around us, And
it's about really having control. You know, when we have
moments of quietness, when we have moments of relaxation, we

(53:20):
can turn our attention to, you know, the essential timelessness
of the world. We can experience it, and we can
to a certain degree, control our experience of time. We
can slow down time if we like, we can even
speed up time if we like, and in certain states
of consciousness we can glimpse the future or re experience

(53:41):
the past. So all of this makes life much more interesting,
much richer. To be imprisoned in linear time is very frustrating.
It brings a lot of suffering. You know, there are
so many pessimistic philosophers, so many pessimistic poets who complaining
of time eating us away and leading us to death.

(54:02):
And there's no escape from this arrow of time which
is eating up our lives and leading us to eternal darkness.
And this is it's all the kind of suffering that
comes from that straight line of linear time. But as
soon as you realize that that's not the whole story.
There is this ocean of timelessness all around us. It

(54:23):
makes us, It makes life richer but also much easier.
It means that we can relax. We don't feel oppressed
by time, and you know, it makes living in the
present a beautiful experience.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
So how has all this research changed you?

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Partly in that way because I used to feel oppressed
by time. I used to feel that life was short
and time was running out. The clock was continually running down.
So I felt this kind of anxiety. I've got to
got to do everything I need to do, whether it's
still time, you know. And in a more general way,

(55:07):
I felt that there wasn't enough time in my life,
that I wasn't meeting my deadlines. I needed to accomplish more.
But now I don't feel like that. I think this
is probably a general effect of my years of meditation
as well and my sort of spiritual development. But I
don't feel oppressed by time. I feel that there is
more than enough time around in my life. I don't

(55:28):
tend to worry about deadlines. I don't worry about not
meeting deadlines, which makes my publishers quite angry. But yeah, generally,
I do feel that there is this ocean of timelessness
around me, and it gives me a feeling of comfort
and trust.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Well, thank you for this book. It's been a real
eye opener for me, and it's answered so many questions
that I've been pondering for years. So thank you, Steve,
thank you for joining this day. Tell us what people
will find at your website. It's I know it's Stephen
Mtaylor dot com and it's Stephen.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
With a V, but we find there yep, it's Stephen
Mtaylor dot com. People will find information about my online
events and talks and my latest writings I've written. I
think I've written sixteen books now, so you'll find out
about all the books on my website. And I also
have poems and various articles there too, and my social

(56:28):
links to my social media accounts.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
Yeah, and people can also catch up with your blog
posts on psychology today.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
That's right. And also people can write to me. I'm
always interested in collecting people's time expansion or time cessation experiency,
So if people want to write to me to share
their experiences, there's a link on my website and I'll
be really grateful to receive them.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Wonderful. Thank you very much. Thanks today, We're out of time.
It's an illusion, and I'll be back at the same
time next week with another edition of What is going
On till then it's goodbye from me and thank you
to thank you