When time goes very slowly. Why time runs too fast and how to slow it down

As a kid, three months of summer vacation feels like an eternity. And it is worth growing up, as whole years rush by, we do not even have time to blink an eye. However, time as such does not change, no matter how old we are. So why is its perception changing so much in our minds? Perhaps the fact is that we are subjective beings, and time for us flows non-linearly? It does not move from point A to point B at a constant speed, but exists in several dimensions and can slow down or speed up.

We live simultaneously in our biological time and in the time associated with an important event for us. Our brain is to blame, says neuroscientist Mark Schwob, and cites as an example the state of concentration when solving a complex intellectual problem. At such moments, time seems to stop: “Our limbic system, the center of emotions, sensitivity, is temporarily turned off. We do not perceive the world because the cerebral cortex only allows vital signals to pass through.”

But even strong emotions can “stop” time. While we are waiting for a loved one, minutes turn into hours, but as soon as he appears, the sense of time disappears. The "mechanism" in this case is different - it is the limbic system that is actively involved, which produces a huge amount of hormones that literally intoxicate us.

Perhaps the subjective change in the speed of the flow of time is also associated with a change in the rhythms of our lives. “We have swapped periods of rest and activity: now we work in winter and rest in summer. But such changes require adaptation, which means an increase in stress levels, says Mark Schwob. “Stress hormones, cortisol and catecholamines, are being produced by the body more and more, causing us to constantly rush and cause a feeling of lack of time.” In addition, time in our minds accelerates with age. The older we are, the more often we turn to memories and thoughts about the future - reducing the duration of the present.

Of course, neuroscience is not able to describe and explain the subjectivity of time perception, but it allows at least understand its complexity. Both from the point of view of biology and from the point of view of philosophy, the only way to slow down the passage of time is to be aware of it. By changing our attitude to each specific moment of time and our sense of self in it, we open eternity before us.

Psychoanalyst's opinion

"The speeding up of time is part of growing up"

Svetlana Fedorova, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, senior lecturer at National Research University " graduate School economy"

“The idea of ​​time is formed in the process of growing up. The child gradually learns that there is a past and a future, and the present is noticeably reduced in his mind. The most important leap occurs during adolescence - disappointment as a result of unfulfilled childhood expectations. The teenager realizes that he will never become a knight or a prince. From that moment on, the passage of time in his mind begins to accelerate.

In order to find our time, it is necessary to have internal boundaries that are laid down in childhood and allow us not to experience excessive anxiety that we cannot correlate our desires with the reality of life. In a sense, we enter into a dialogue with time, define ourselves in time, fill abstract chaotic time with our own meaning and content. It is important that impersonal time become personal, and then we will live consciously and with pleasure every minute of it.

Opinion of a neurophysiologist

"Information processing slows down time"

Alexander Kaplan, doctor biological sciences, Head of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Neurocomputer Interfaces, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov

“There is no brain structure that would be responsible for the sense of time. And the question of time perception is, of course, rather psychological. Man cannot objectively measure the passage of time. Neuroscientist David Eagleman conducted experiments by showing subjects various images. Some of them were familiar to the participants of the experiment, and some they saw for the first time. Eagleman then asked how long the subjects looked at the pictures. It turned out that according to subjective sensations, the subjects looked at unfamiliar pictures much longer. Meanwhile, the images were displayed with equal duration. Obviously, the more the brain is busy processing new information, the subjectively slower time flows. That is why 10 years of childhood are so stretched out, 10 years of adolescence and youth are so short, and the rest of the years are so fleeting, no matter how many there are!

Philosopher's opinion

"We trust the clock too much"

Oleg Aronson, philosopher, art historian, employee of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of the Russian Anthropological School of the Russian State Humanitarian University

“When we feel that time is running too fast or stretching endlessly, it is only because we have too much confidence in objective calculation - the clock, the calendar, and in general - the ordering of the world, where the past is followed by the present, and after it - the future. The experience of time and its understanding cannot be reconciled. For Augustine, time is somewhat like a divine presence: it is given outside the thought of it, but when you ask the question “what is it?” - it disappears. And according to Heidegger, we feel time only because we are mortal. It points us to our finitude, we experience it as a touch of being itself. For Bergson, on the contrary, time is expressed in the idea of ​​duration and connects us, cultured and technologized people, with the variability of life itself, which does not depend on us.

Every time you have to ask: where is the place of time? Where is it in mathematics? Where is it in psychoanalysis? Where - in everyday life? These are always different images created by the collision of memory and expectation, a forgotten and obsessive desire ... It can shrink, making our existence mechanistic, or it can stretch indefinitely, revealing in us the ability to madness and faith.

Anthropologist's opinion

"Time is culture"

Marina Butovskaya, anthropologist, doctor historical sciences, professor at the Center for Social Anthropology of the Russian State University for the Humanities

“Representatives of different cultures feel and structure time differently. The Datoga, the traditional pastoralists of Tanzania, with whom I have worked for many years, can find out exactly under what circumstances a person was born, but it is useless to ask the date of birth. They do not know their age either, only classifying themselves as a group: a child, a teenager, a young man, a parent, a grandfather.

They agree on the time of the meeting approximately: “at dawn”, “at noon”, “when it gets dark”. Important events(for example, weddings) are timed to coincide with the season - when the rains begin, at the beginning of the dry season ... The following is a clarification: the ceremony will take place on the full moon or "when the moon completely wanes." The day and hour are not specified, but the Datogi know unmistakably when the event is to take place. Time in the European sense is not important for them, and no one is annoyed that the event can start a few hours later. Everyone is waiting peacefully and does not understand why we Europeans are so impatient.

Ideas about accuracy, however, differ in industrial cultures, so the presence of a watch does not yet ensure compliance with agreements. AT Latin America, North Africa or in the Middle East an hour and a half late is acceptable. The person waiting is resting, drinking coffee, leafing through a book or listening to music. But in Germany, Sweden or Holland, being late for a few minutes is already a bad form.

No person is born with a "built-in" internal clock. Children learn to keep track of time thanks to their parents, daily routine, school. Sometimes the habit of synchronizing your behavior with the rest of the world takes months to develop, sometimes it takes several years. In the end, we all adapt. And now the standard time units are becoming our faithful companions. This system is perfect: minutes flow into hours, hours into days of the week, days of the week into months and years. But there is a big difference in how we perceive the passage of time.

Can time move at different speeds?

Sometimes it seems to us that time flies like a jet plane, and sometimes that it moves at the speed of a turtle. Suddenly comes the realization that another January has come, but now it has almost come to an end. It seems that the older we get, the faster the years follow each other. On the other hand, you're standing at a crosswalk at a red light and can't wait for those long 90 seconds to expire. It's like an eternity separates you from crossing to the other side of the road.

Study of the perception of the passage of time

Scientists have always been interested in this problem. Why do short periods of time seem to us infinitely long, while long ones follow each other at breakneck speed? Some of them are devoted to the study of the issue most own life. Let's try to figure out what is the reason for this distortion.

The main conditions under which time dilation is observed

If you collect numerous stories different people together, it can be seen that everyone's circumstances are different. But all of them entailed the feeling of slowly creeping hands on the dial. Conventionally, experts divided all these conditions into six main categories: intense suffering (danger), intense pleasure, expectation (boredom), an altered state of consciousness with the help of drugs, meditation, and novelty. Below are some illustrative examples.

Intensity of sensations and permanent boredom

Violence and danger are singled out in a separate category due to the intensity of mental and physical sensations. For example, it will always seem to a wounded soldier lying on the battlefield that help will never come. Also, the military often describe that the very picture of the battle is seen by them, as if in slow motion filming. But sometimes strong emotions can be associated with pleasure and ecstasy (here time really gives us the opportunity to enjoy the moment.) The state of permanent boredom is also singled out in a separate category: a queue for a doctor's appointment, an arrest for 15 days, a seller without an influx of customers. On the one hand, these situations are sharply limited in time, but when a person is placed in waiting conditions, it seems to him that the hands on the dial do not move at all.

Based on an altered state of consciousness or novelty

People often experience a distortion of time perception when they experience an altered state of consciousness. This is facilitated by the drug-induced experience of taking LSD or mescaline. high levels concentration or meditation can also affect the subjective perception of the passage of time. Athletes who are in the waiting area often talk about this. Finally, there is shock or novelty. This happens every time you start learning some difficult skill or are on vacation in an exotic area.

What is the paradox?

In all these categories, there is a clear pattern. All of them distort time at the moment when almost nothing happens to the observer, or too much happens. But you will never feel this in your ordinary activities. In other words, time slows down when the situation can be assessed as too easy or too difficult.

As for the dial or calendar, each time block has its own standards. They are no different from each other. Each minute is made up of 60 seconds, and a day is made up of 24 hours. Standard time units acquire a significant difference if they begin to be perceived from the point of view of the "density of human experience." Thus, perception can be influenced by objective and subjective information.

High experience density

The density of experience is high when there is a lot going on in a short space of time. War veterans know this firsthand. On the other hand, the density of experience can be equally high even when almost nothing happens hour after hour. People who are in solitary confinement will tell you about this. It would seem that this time is completely empty, but people with a stable psyche are able to completely change their worldview, and people with a weaker nervous system go crazy with obsession. All these circumstances place people in unusual conditions. The paradox is that people tend to focus their attention on strange circumstances, which only increase the density of experience that affects the perception of a standard time unit. Thus, distortion is formed.

When time flies by

We have found that time moves slowly when the density of experience is extremely high. It is logical to assume the opposite. Time will fly by unnoticed when the density of experience related to a standard time block is abnormally low. When you tend to look back (to the immediate or distant past), life periods seem to shrink. Time compression provides two general conditions. Let's take a closer look at them next.

Routine tasks

Adults in the workplace are surrounded by many daily responsibilities. All of them are repeated from day to day with only minor changes. But the implementation of each of them requires increased attention and concentration. The familiarization and training period has already passed, now you can perform many of the standard tasks and assignments without paying special attention to them. Experienced motorists who simultaneously perform several actions will tell you about this. A person who has had a busy day at work will tell you this. Despite the overall workload, there was no high density of unique experiences.

After all, the busy worker was pleasantly surprised when time at the office flew by so quickly. With a clear conscience, he goes home by the usual route. And along the way, he will do all his usual things: call relatives, go to the nearest supermarket for bread. In the evening there will be the usual dinner and the usual series. Every day is like another. That is why they replace each other so quickly.

"Erosion" of episodic memory

The second main condition for the rapid passage of time is the "erosion" of episodic memory. And this also applies to each of us. Our memories of routine events fade with time. Can you remember what you did on December 17th? If no significant events took place on that day, you are unlikely to remember the entire chain. But a little more than a month has passed since then! And memory is already trying to make room for more necessary information.

And the further back you begin to look back, the more "forgetfulness" you will demonstrate. One of scientific research revealed a striking pattern: people thought that last year flew by more imperceptibly than last month, and last month faster than yesterday. It doesn't make sense objectively, but our memory corrodes the density of experience within a standard time unit.

conclusions

All situations that we have described above can be considered anomalous. As a rule, under normal conditions, we perceive 10 minutes as 10 minutes. Perhaps this is due to the fact that we have learned to synchronize our experience with standard time units, and vice versa.

“How, has another year flown by??!!!” Those over 30 know that after 30, time begins to fly terribly fast! You start counting time in decades. You can't believe when you meet an old friend that you haven't seen each other for 5 or 10 years! How so?! Has it really been ten years? Here for the first time there are fears for the future and disappointment that such a distant and such an unimportant "pension" is actually not so far away, and you have not achieved anything yet!

I was wondering why this is happening and most importantly, Is there any way to slow down time?! And found the answers! As a result, it turned out not quite money, Manipapov, but rather about time-management and a little philosophical post :), but it seemed very interesting to me.

Why does time go faster with age?

There are many scientific experiments carried out on large groups people of different ages, on the subject of how they felt or feel time at different periods of their lives. And all these studies boil down to two main theories.

Slowdown of metabolism. As we age, our metabolism slows down, and with it our heartbeat, breathing, and sense of the passage of time.

New sensations. The second theory states that time lengthens in proportion to the amount of new experience in our lives. As children, everything is new to us and it seems to us that “sooooo much!” happened in a day. With age, our life becomes more routine and it seems to us that the days fly by one after another imperceptibly, because nothing new happens.

How to slow down time?

And if you can’t really do anything with the first theory - we get older and zaaa-meeeed-laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa🙂 and this is a fact, then the second theory opens up huge opportunities for us to slow down or lengthen time, and, consequently, to have time to do much more to do and, of course, enjoy the moment! And here's what I got.

Get more done in a day

The more things you do, the day seems longer and richer. But how to do this if the amount of time in a day is limited? Here Time Management comes to the rescue - techniques and practices effective use time. And hence the second way:

Make a plan for the week and every day

Personally, every Sunday I schedule my entire week for business - work, tasks, important meetings, trips, sports, shopping, etc. Then, every evening, I once again schedule my day “for tomorrow”. If I didn’t decide something the day before, the chance that I will do it is rapidly falling. But this is my story. I need to tune into the day on the evening of the previous day.

Routine fight!

Routine quickly disables and takes away energy. Diversifying your life isn't that hard - take different routes, take a walk at lunchtime, get started, watch an unusual movie, go to an unusual event - make your days of the week a little different from each other. It is difficult to change the prevailing way of life, but everyone can make a difference in small things.

Limit social media and TV

You can, for example, allocate 10-15 minutes a day, in certain time day, to view social networks and wean yourself from viewing the status every 5-10-30 minutes.

Learn to say "NO"

There are so many people and stupid things in the world that claim your attention and time that whole life, not like a day, it can fly by and you won’t notice! One of the easiest and most magical ways to lengthen time is to learn to say “no” to the things you don’t need or like, and “yes” to the things that really matter to you!

Delegate!

Delegating is hard! It always seems that it is easier, faster and better to do the job yourself than to explain it to someone (often not very smart and inexperienced) and then correct it after him. And you still have to answer. Is it easier to do it yourself? No, it's not easier. A person is not rubber, and if he wants to do at least something in his life, he will have to learn to trust. How to do it right is a whole science. But start with the basics, and then, when you trample uphill, throwing off the work that hinders your development, you will thank yourself every day for learning how to delegate.

Get up early

This method is not for everyone. Some people are most active at night. So I'll tell you about my example.

Personally, I get up from 4 to 5 in the morning, on weekends from 5 to 7 - when I wake up myself 🙂 In the morning I have peak activity of the brain, creativity, focus, strategic thinking, etc. I work through all the most important decisions and projects in my life in the morning . This time is also ideal, because. my family is still sleeping and I can work with focus)))) In the morning I also go in for sports. Atmorning exercises give a powerful tone and charge for the whole day, not only physical, but also moral. In the afternoon, if possible, I take a 30-40-minute break. And the evening is holy - no work, only family, cultural program and no brain activity. As a result, I manage to do some unrealistic number of things in a day and the day stretches like rubber))))

If time is short, take a break!

Sounds illogical, right?! But it actually works! Feel that in a hurry, there is not enough time for anything - stop, take a deep breath, exhale. Focus on your breathing and in a couple of minutes you will feel how the body has adjusted to the energy saving mode and time seems to have slowed down. Try it right now and see what I mean))).

Combine multiple tasks at the same time

I hate multitasking. But this is not about that. I'm talking about such a combination of cases that does not interfere with each other, but perfectly complements each other.

Personal example: in the gym I always listen to educational. On the way home (on foot) I also listen to lectures. Both body and mind benefit. And not boring! As a result, more than 300 hours of educational material per year!

Sometimes, on the way home, I make several important non-work calls (to parents, friends, on business) - thereby not taking this time from my family. There are many examples.

Be decisive!

I am a huge supporter "massive imperfect action"(powerful imperfect action)! This is my life motto, after 20 years of work in corporations, where time is often killed mercilessly for every ...! You can endlessly doubt, be afraid, prepare to take a step, collect information, analyze results, make meaningless tables and calculations, passing off all this as “actions”. But in more, all these actions are a pure waste of time and analysis paralysis .

Instead, you need to collect the minimum-sufficient amount of information to right decision and take this damn, most difficult, most terrible, first step! There will be many times more sense and experience, and less time lost.

Find yourself a new hobby

Fitness, modeling class, Spanish courses - any hobby disciplines, especially if you paid for it :). Here you want it, you don’t want it, but in order to be in time, you will have to draw up some kind of schedule. And where there is a schedule, there is more to do! Well, new again. The day seems more eventful, time does not fly in vain and slows down.

Use technology

Break big things into small steps

An elephant needs to be eaten in parts! The larger and more difficult the task, the longer you will do it and the less likely you are to complete it. The result is a loss of time, money, motivation, opportunities. Beat big things into "edible pieces" and so you will move towards the goal much faster, you will be in time more, thereby lengthening the time.

Fix your thoughts

When the day is over, even if you have done a whole bunch of things, it may seem to you that nothing much has been done and when you ask “how was your day?”, you really can’t remember what you did. Therefore, it is extremely useful at the end of the day to write down the things done. Having painted them, you will see that you actually managed a lot and you will feel how eventful and long the day was!

I do it a little differently. Every night before bed, I write down three unrealistically cool things that happened to me during the day (they can be small things), and write down what I want to do tomorrow so that my day is fantastically successful. It not only gives satisfaction from the past day, not only fills the day with meaning and lengthens it, but also sets you up for the next day!

Spend more time with loved ones

Over time, years of work-dinner-tel-sleep-on-weekend-shopping will merge into one day and all we will remember are priceless moments spent together with the most precious people in our lives. - children, parents, friends, loved one, etc. Therefore, include more of these moments in your very business schedule!

Conclusion

Time cannot be stopped. But it can be “slowed down” by combining or delegating tasks, saturating your life with variety and new experiences, planning and spending it more efficiently, saying “no” to unimportant people and deeds and making decisions without wasting your life on endless thoughts and doubts. After all, it does not matter how many years we live (quantity), it is important how we live them (quality)!

👋 And I wish you well-being in finances, family and in life!
Timur Mazaev was with you, aka MoneyPapa, an expert in family finance.

For a long time I was going to write on this topic, especially since I have experienced this phenomenon three times already, and recently I managed to comprehend and understand the very reason for this miracle.

Of course, before starting to "discover America" ​​for someone, I decided to ask, what has already been written on this topic? This is always done by people with an engineering mindset who do not want to "reinvent the wheel" a second time.

A Google search for the keyword "time dilation phenomenon" yielded several links to articles: "10 attempts to explain the phenomenon of time", "The phenomenon of time dilation in critical situations has been unraveled", "The Mystery of Stopping Time" and others. After reading them, I did not see any intelligible understanding of the stated topic by the authors.

In the article "The phenomenon of time dilation in critical situations has been unraveled" after the author retells the situations he did not experience, he concluded: "in extreme situations it seems to a person that everything around is moving very quickly, but he himself does everything slowly. This distortion is due to the fact that in borderline situations we quickly assimilate new and literally vital information. At this time, a special part of the brain is activated, which accumulates all the impressions that arise in a life-threatening situation. That is why memories of horrific events are deep and vivid. And the more details and impressions about the situation are stored in memory, the longer the experienced moment seems to us .... "

This, as you yourself understand, is not a "solution to the phenomenon" at all, but just another hypothesis, and without any clear specifics.

Article "10 attempts to explain the phenomenon of time" turned out to be on a completely different topic. An attempt has been made to explain what "time" is in general...

Article "The Mystery of Stopping Time" turned out to be the most informative on the stated topic, but it also does not give a clear answer to the question, what is the secret of time dilation in critical situations. However, I decided to take this article as the basis of my story in order to reveal the “time dilation phenomenon”, as I understood it, on an already prepared foundation.

Time dilation phenomenon

Science claims that time always flows at the same speed, and no one can change this - neither man nor nature. But there are times when a person's sense of the passage of time changes and it seems to him that time speeds up or slows down its run. Usually such a feeling appears when a lot of events occur in a matter of seconds and consciousness cannot “fit” them into ordinary time periods.

Many facts are known when a person in moments of mortal danger feels that time slows down, as if it stops. Many people, when describing dramatic events, say:“It feels like time has stopped.”The front-line soldiers claimed that they saw shells and bullets that flew at them. They survived only because they managed to evade them. At first glance, this seems impossible, because the human eye cannot perceive objects that move at such a speed. However, the words of the participants in the hostilities are confirmed - more than once the soldier suddenly dived to the bottom of the trench, and the next moment a fragment or a bullet plowed the parapet in the place where his head had been a second ago. Some people said they saw bricks fall on top of them or icicles fall from the roof. The objects seemed to be flying in slow motion, so they didn’t even have time to get scared. And there are many such examples.

So, once the car of cosmonaut Vladimir Aksenov stalled at the crossing railway. Fifty meters away from the bend at that moment a speeding train appeared. The driver would not even have had time to get out of the car - in a second the train would inevitably crash into it. Aksenov pulled the ignition key out of the socket, and then put it back in and slowly pressed the starter. Immediately the engine started up and the car, having moved off the rails, froze a couple of meters from the speeding train. The cosmonaut had the feeling that the cars were passing by like in slow motion. He even managed to make out the pale face of the driver, who did not even start braking.

Another case a few years ago occurred in an alpine camp. The Georgian instructor Vakhtang said that on that day he was walking in conjunction with his friend. He was the first to move, and his friend remained at the edge of the snowfield to insure him. When Vakhtang was almost halfway, he noticed how cracks began to appear in the snow on the sides and a little higher from him. Then huge layers of snow and ice slowly rushed down. The instructor did not feel fear and acted as if there was nowhere to rush - he looked out for a large frozen piece of snow and jumped over to it, then chose the next one, and so on. His friend couldn't believe his eyes when he got out of the avalanche - in fact, it all happened in a split second.

Statements of this kind - about slowing down the visual perception of fast processes - cannot yet be rationally interpreted. They are incomprehensible and amazing.

Chemists, physicists and philosophers agree that the course of time is constant and all events occur within a strictly defined time frame. Then what happens to a person when it seems to him that time is going very slowly or has stopped altogether? Maybe it's all about acceleration. biological processes in the body in critical situations - nerve impulses pass faster, muscle fibers contract more often, although a person does not feel and is not aware of this.

The researchers analyzed people's stories about their feelings and made the corresponding calculations. As a result, they concluded that the course of proper time can be accelerated by 130 times. Therefore, everything around is 130 times slower and it seems to a person that time has stopped. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that all the people who experienced the “stopping of time” claim that everything happened in a strange silence. This is quite simple to explain - when the individual time is accelerated by more than a hundred times, the sounds entering the ear turn into infrasounds that are not perceived by the human hearing aid.

Researchers from medical college conducted an experiment to check whether time for a person actually slows down in a moment of danger. Volunteers without insurance were dropped from a height of fifty meters backwards. They, of course, fell on a special net, but everyone still experienced a very strong fright. Each volunteer felt that their flight lasted much longer than it really was. They fell in a matter of seconds, but for them it seemed much longer. A person who experiences extreme fear falls into a kind of trance. At the same time, all body systems begin to work with acceleration. A person begins to think much faster.

Physicist and chemist Ilya Prigogine argued that each person constructs his own time at every moment of being. At critical moments, the brain manages its own time, i.e. can slow it down by almost a hundred times, or maybe speed it up. There is good example which proves it.

The Boers, who began in the 1780s to seize the lands of the Xhosa and Zulus, faced an amazing phenomenon - African healers could speak from the bullets of their warriors. As a result, they attacked the Europeans despite fierce fire. Some remained unharmed even when they were fired at point-blank range. The bullets didn't bounce off the Africans, but they didn't hit them either. Then the colonialists did not begin to deal with this riddle, because in the end all the charmed warriors were killed.

Today, the secret of their invulnerability can be explained - African warriors could arbitrarily accelerate the course of their individual time and, thus, dodge bullets. But they died, because this could not continue indefinitely.

Some yogis in the East are able, it would seem, to stop time. They know how to disappear right before the eyes of astonished spectators and end up behind them. This phenomenon has long been described. The rituals that helped to become invisible were described in the most ancient Indian manuscripts written in 2500-1400 BC. These manuscripts say that concentration of thought is necessary for the complete disappearance. Do yogis teleport or are they able to speed up their time as much as possible, which is why the audience does not see them? In contrast to critical situations, a subjective sense of time accelerates in a person experiencing positive emotions. A person simply does not notice how time passes.

So, we can say with confidence that the states of fear, mortal danger and stress transfer the body into the so-called "emergency mode", which is accompanied by an increase in the speed of perception of the surrounding reality and the speed of thinking. Perhaps this is done to reduce the loss of time in the implementation of protective actions against the onset of danger? The organism must fight to the end with the use of all available means and forces.

So, my vision of this phenomenon and understanding of its nature.

Idea, idea that "all the people who experienced the "stop time" claim that everything happened in a strange silence" , I confirm.

I was 14 years old or even younger when I experienced this phenomenon for the first time. Moreover, it is unique that I experienced it when nothing threatened my life. I was not in a critical situation!

I was walking near my house with the boys, we were walking somewhere, I turned my head to the right and this happened ... I saw about 70 meters away from me how a car hits a man at a pedestrian crossing. It's just that for some reason I turned my head to the right, looked into the distance, and everything happened before my eyes as in a slow motion movie and without sound ... I remember well that without sound. It really surprised me then. Silent films with Charlie Chaplin were still fresh in my memory ... During my youth, they were sometimes still shown on TV.

Here's what I saw then:

A man was walking confidently at a red traffic light, and a UAZ-loaf car with a rounded nose was moving across the intersection. Here it is:

I then saw everything in such detail that I was simply numb. The rounded nose of the car slowly hit the man on the right side, his body arched, in this bend of the body the man's head hit the windshield so that it broke ... I saw how each of its fragments flew ... Then, obviously, the elasticity worked human body. The car didn’t slow down, the driver didn’t even put pressure on the brake, and the man began to fly forward and upward relative to the car ... Having flown about 4 meters up, right up to the trolleybus wires, he then fell on the road ... The UAZ drove over his crossed legs and only After that, the driver braked the car and stopped...

When my numbness passed, I ran with the guys to the scene of the tragedy, while I was in a fever from what I saw ... I saw this for the first time in my life ... The man, apparently, remained alive then. At least the ambulance arrived and took him away from the scene alive...

The second time I experienced the phenomenon of time dilation somewhere in the year 1992, when I myself became a participant and culprit in an accident in a car of friends, in such a Moskvich.

The car was old, the rear drive wheels had "bald" tires, and I was just learning how to be a driver. Since it was out of town, friends entrusted me with driving. Besides, I already knew the road I was going to take.

To my misfortune, then it was autumn, that day it froze. Accordingly, the road was covered with ice... Ahead was a turn of almost 90 degrees to the right, and almost immediately a rather steep uphill began. For some reason, I thought then that I would go through the turn halfway and then sharply add gas so that the car could pick up acceleration and drive uphill without any problems. As I thought, I did so ... It was my strategic mistake, made by me due to my inexperience ...

When I stepped on the gas hard, the car spun on the turn, and it turned into an ice figure skater who began to rotate around its axis ...

A frozen moment.

The car I was driving began to spin in some kind of ellipsoidal spiral. I again saw "slow motion" and heard silence. I did not touch the steering wheel, the pedals too. I just didn't know what to do when the car is spinning?! I turned to a comrade sitting in the back seat, saw his frightened eyes and arms spread out to the sides (in case of a side impact). I asked myself aloud the question: "what to do?", and suddenly, against the background of silence in my mind, the answer clearly sounded in the form of the thought: "put on the brake!". Hearing this command mentally (not with my ears), I slammed the brake pedal to the stop, the trajectory of the car changed dramatically, it shook, and my friend and I safely and strictly backwards moved into a deep roadside ditch ...

When I got out of the cab, I saw huge boulders nearby, and the Moskvich, which I was driving, stuck its rear bumper and trunk into soft ground, falling from a height of almost two meters. All the damage to the car - from the impact flattened its wretched rear bumper. When I got up on the road, the tracks of the car were clearly visible on it. I saw where she circled, where I pressed the brake and how she left the road strictly perpendicular to the roadway.

The most important thing that I realized then was that the brake was pressed at exactly that hundredth of a second, which set the car on the safest trajectory. If I had braked a little earlier or a little later, then the car would have left the road diagonally and this would have been accompanied by a mandatory roll over through the roof, which could lead to the most sad consequences ...

The third phenomenal incident happened to me in 2010 at the 691th kilometer of the Moscow-Murmansk highway, when I was driving a used Volvo S80 car, freshly bought in the Moscow car dealership.

The engine of the car was with two turbines, which created a power of 250 l / s, 10 airbags: front, side, rear, roof airbag in case of a rollover ... Plus, several security systems that control the wheels: ABS, EBS and more ...

I was then going to overtake a bus, while I did not have much experience in driving a car of this class. And at a speed of about 100 km/h I lost control... Trying to avoid a side collision, I played the steering wheel as if it were a Zhiguli, completely forgetting about the brake. "Volvo S80" went skidding, the axial stabilization system crackled, the car at high speed ran into a roadside bumper, which, fortunately for me, started from the ground itself and separated the roadbed from a small ravine ... Then I saw the sky, as if a pilot on takeoff, and then the "silent movie" turned on again with a slowdown in the picture ...

It was the most phenomenal thing I have ever seen in my life. The flight of the car was like the flight of a flying skier who took off into the sky by means of a springboard. In my case, the role of a springboard was played by this very metal road bumper ...

I was wearing seat belts. Sleeping fastened next to me was my youngest son, who was then 18 years old. Speed forward movement the car was high ... Still, I went to overtake ...

When the Volvo S80 began to roll over in the air and I was in the "upside down" position, I remembered the airbag, which was located in the roof. While the car and I were passing through the vertical (“bottom dead center”) (and I felt it very clearly), I tensed up, expecting a blow to the head from a ceiling pillow shot ...

Tumbling of the car from the normal position "wheels down" to the position "wheels up" took, probably, some hundredths of a second. And during this time I managed to think, reason and somehow group ... Phenomenal! ..

The expected explosion of the overhead airbag then did not follow, which at that moment greatly surprised and even puzzled me ... Meanwhile, the rotation of the car in the air and its fall still continued ... Rotating around its axis like a bullet, the Volvo S80 finally touched , land ... The blow fell on the right corner of the roof and the edge of the right front wing ... (The heavy motor outweighed the rear). At that moment, I clearly saw how an electrostatic discharge lightning ran across the windshield (!) and at the same time the glass began to crack from the upper right corner to the bottom! Phenomenal! I saw the appearance in the windshield of each new fragment! Then some time passed, and the left edge of the roof and the left front fender took over the impact on the ground. An electrostatic discharge, exactly the same as I saw on the right, went inside the windshield already from the upper left corner to the bottom and to the middle. Simultaneously with the electrostatic discharge, there was the same cracking of the windshield as in the previous case ... Then another somersault followed and the car stood on wheels ...

When I got out of the cab, I realized that I myself was alive and my son was also alive, both without any damage ... Inspection of the car showed that the engine continued to work, no liquids had flowed ... This was at least a little pleased. All four wheels were also in place ... Only the plastic protection of the wheel arches was torn off ...

When kind people helped to pull the car out of the ditch with the help of a tug, it turned out that she was able to go further on her own. The remaining 700 km to Murmansk was driven by my son, he had a driver's license, but I was in shock and sorrow that it all happened ...

He was driving, and I looked around and paid attention to roadside graves (there are many of them on any highway in Russia), which indicate that a person died in such and such a place ...

Thinking my thoughts, I then came to the conclusion that for some reason I was still needed in this world, since I was not destined to die during this accident ...

And less than a year later, I returned to literature again ...

Before that, I had already written two books, "The Geometry of Life" (1998) and "The Crucified Sun" (2000), which were published in paper form, and another book was on physics, written by me in 2002, which I considered incomplete. These books did not bring me any money, and it took years to write them!

And when in 2002 I was accepted in Moscow as a member of the "Union of Writers of Russia", I decided that it was enough for me to be a writer already ...

And now, almost 8 years of my serene life have passed (from 2002 to 2010), and the incident that happened to me literally forced me to start writing articles and new books again.

What worried me then as a writer?— want to know?

This question has become interesting to me now! I did a Google search and found my earliest postings on the Mahpark website:

After I experienced the phenomenon of time dilation for the third time, I understood why in extreme situations a person begins to see and think 130 times faster (if scientists did not make a mistake with the calculation) than in a normal situation. We have two thought systems at once, and, accordingly, two souls operating at different clock frequencies!

The lower thought system runs at a low clock rate, the higher one at a high one! Moreover, our lower mental system always works, and the higher mental system is switched on only in special cases. Therefore, when it turns on, we may experience a "time dilation phenomenon."

If you switch to figurative language, which allows you to explain very complex things in simple words, then our higher thought system similar to an air turbine that is attached to a car engine to increase its power. Motorists know that this turbine does the work of an air compressor. When it is turned on, the power of the internal combustion engine increases immediately by 30-40% due to the fact that the air-fuel mixture is injected into the cylinders under high pressure.

So, in the article "ABOUT GOOD AND EVIL", which I wrote on March 7, 2011, I literally said the following:

People often enter into discussions, trying to find an answer in their course, WHAT is evil and WHAT is good in this world? At the end of these discussions, the thought is usually heard that evil is the absence of good. Formally, this is the correct conclusion, but this formulation does not explain much.

Any person can come to an understanding of GOOD and EVIL in full measure through understanding the following logical chain.

1. There is God, and there is his antipode. For convenience, I will call them: "Higher Mind" and "Lower Mind". Look inside yourself - comprehend your feelings and make sure that you exist in yourself both of these gods.

Everything low in human nature gives rise to the "lower mind". Its fruits: greed, stinginess, envy, lies, perjury, quarrelsomeness, anger, malice, hatred, deceit, deceit, cowardice, betrayal, etc.

The product of the "Higher Reason" in a person: selflessness, love in the highest sense, all talents, creativity, patriotism, readiness for self-sacrifice for the sake of saving other people and other virtues.

2. Every person is under the control of these two minds most of the time without even realizing it. When both of these minds are in balance with each other in their impact on the consciousness of a person, we have in ourselves what is called harmony.

3. The vector of a person's behavioral aspirations can be directed both to the "Higher Mind" and to the "Lower Mind".

4. If the first happens, a person from step to step makes himself a highly moral person. If the second happens, the person gradually turns himself into an animal.

5. If one day a person completely breaks the connection between consciousness and his "Higher Mind" (there is a loss of conscience, as people say), the human consciousness closes on the "lower mind", and then he turns not even into an animal, but into a monster. I don't think there's anything to prove here. Any crime chronicle shows us such monsters in abundance.

6. "Higher mind" and "lower mind" are capable of generating feelings and thoughts in the human mind. Regarding the "lower mind", which is tied to our instincts and bodily needs, I believe that nothing special needs to be explained. I am sure that what I said is unlikely to cause rejection in anyone. For some reason, many people have doubts about the “Higher Mind”: does He, the “Higher Mind”, exist in general, and is it given to us to hear Him, etc.

If at least once in your life you have heard the voice of conscience, when you were just thinking of doing something bad, then you have already heard the voice of the "Higher Reason", which all religions call the Almighty or God, or Allah. The word "Allah" just means "Almighty", giving us by default a hint that there is still SOMEONE "lower".

7. Being in us, the "Higher Mind", at the same time, is also outside of us. He is omnipresent and all-pervading like radio waves and light, and we always have only some part of Him.

So why is there so much evil around, if the "Supreme Mind" is omnipresent?- maybe someone wants to ask me?

First of all, everyone must understand that homo sapiens ("reasonable man") was brought into the world to live according to conscience. That is why it was given to him by the "Higher Reason". Moreover, the voice of conscience is always prohibitions (in contrast to the voice of the "lower mind", which always shouts: "I want!", "I want!", "I want!"). Conscience sounds in the mind every time a person really tries to do something bad (from the point of view of the "Higher Reason").

These prohibitions, as I understand it, are dictated solely so that the human community as a whole can develop harmoniously on a conflict-free and good-neighbourly basis, such as, for example, a family of bees or a family of ants.

If someone is confused by the definition of “lower mind” that I introduced, they say, in scriptures antipode God is Satan or devil I will answer this in the following way. For many people who read fairy tales about the Serpent Gorynych and Baba Yaga in childhood, when reading these two words "Satan" or "Devil", for some reason, images of fantastic creatures similar to the named fictional characters invariably appear in their minds. And this is very sad.

Our life is far from fairy tales. It's much scarier and more tragic. That is why I consider it possible, instead of the words "satan" and "devil", which cause so much misunderstanding, to use the definition "lower mind". And in order to eliminate all contradictions on this score, I want to add the following to everything that has been said.

The "lower mind", it is also the primary protein mind, (it is also "Satan" and it is also the "devil" in the religious lexicon, it is also "Lucifer" among the Satanists-sectarians), lives in our cells, in our genes, as well as in cells and in the genes of all biological objects of nature. Its functional task is to ensure that all earthly creatures are fruitful, multiply and devour each other in rivalry. It is the rivalry for life and death that forces the "lower mind" to be the father of disguise, the father of lies, the father of deceit and various other methods of survival in the wild.

A praying mantis predator disguised as a flower. Here is a visual work of the "devil mind".

Man is given not only a "lower mind", but also a "Higher mind". This is what distinguishes man from all other earthly creatures. The "higher mind" manifests itself in the human mind primarily as the voice of conscience and as the voice of intuition. And since every person is given the mind, will and the right to choose his life path, he himself chooses in which direction he should go, and what mind he should listen to, and whose commands to execute.

Unfortunately, there are many people among us who could completely stifle the voice of conscience in themselves. There are even people who have proclaimed the "lower mind" as their God!

Here is a good example:

Lucifer temple opened in Colombia:

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There are people among us who have not only consciously severed their connection with the "Higher Mind", having staked on their "Lower Mind", but also who want to rely solely on their "devilish mind", to seize power over all of humanity.

What are these people? you can ask me.

According to the Bible, two millennia ago he designated them in human history and someone Jesus Christ denounced, addressing these fighters with the "Higher Reason" the following words: "your father is the devil, and you want to do the lusts of your father" . (John 8:44).

I wrote this on March 7, 2011, and on August 19, 2011, I decided to arrange a survey in Mahpark, wanting to clarify for myself what percentage of people feel in themselves a connection with the "Higher Mind", and what percentage of people do not feel this connection in themselves .

Since the ability of a person to hear the voice of conscience in himself is a sure sign that both thought systems work in him at once: the Higher and the lower, I decided to arrange a survey on the topic, "what forDoes conscience mean you?" And I put the question this way: "Do you think that conscience is an innate feeling? Or do you think that conscience is instilled by education?"

The trickiness of my question was that the person answering it was 100% open.

Whoever had no conscience, who was not able to hear the voice of the "Higher Mind" coming from the depths of the soul, surely clung to the words proposed in my questionnaire, that "conscience is instilled by education". And whoever heard the voice of conscience at least once in his life answered without even thinking that "Conscience is an innate feeling".

The result of my survey is as follows:

Of course, these figures cannot be used to judge our entire society, because only two hundred people took part in my survey, but a rough picture can already be imagined.

The percentage of people in our society who live exclusively in the animal mind ("lower mind") is too high, hence we have high crime and all that!

And today, when I suddenly decided to highlight the topic "time dilation phenomenon", I remembered this work of 2011 in connection with the following thought: the phenomenon of time dilation occurs in critical situations, after all, not all people in a row, but only some!

You ask one "did you have that?"

"It was!"- they say, and tell what they felt then and what they experienced.

As a rule, those who have such a phenomenon get off in the same road accidents with a slight fright, because such protection is triggered, which is many times cooler than any airbags or seat belts!

I ask others: "did you have the effect of time dilation during an accident with your participation?" and they answer me: "it all happened very quickly! Bam - and that's it !!!"

I suspect that "Bam - that's all!" it turned out for those people who, at the time of the accident, for some reason, had no (was cut off) contact with their "Higher Mind".

What do you think about this, reader?

Think about it, it really was like that in childhood - the summer holidays seemed to have no end, and you had to wait forever for the New Year holidays. So why does time seem to pick up pace over the years: weeks or even months fly by unnoticed, and the seasons change at such a dizzying speed?

Isn't such an obvious acceleration of time the result of the duties and worries that have piled on us in our adult life? However, in fact, studies show that the perceived time does indeed move faster for adults, filling our lives with chores and fuss.

There are several theories that try to explain why our sense of time speeds up as we get older.

One of them points to a gradual change in our internal biological clock. The slowdown in our metabolism as we get older corresponds to the slowdown in our heart rate and breathing. Biological pacemakers in children pulse faster, which means that their biological parameters (heartbeat, breathing) are higher in a set period of time, so the time also feels longer.

Another theory suggests that the passage of time we experience is related to the amount of new information we take in. With a large number of new stimuli occurring, our brain takes longer to process the information - thus, this period of time is felt longer. This could also explain the "slow perception of reality" that is often reported to take place in the seconds before the accident. To face unusual circumstances means to receive an avalanche of new information that needs to be processed.

In fact, it may be that when faced with new situations, our brains capture more detailed memories, so that it is our memory of the event that appears more slowly, and not the event itself. That this is true was demonstrated in an experiment with people experiencing free fall.

But how does all this explain the constant shortening of perceived time as we age? The theory goes that the older we get, the more familiar our surroundings become. We do not notice the details of the environment around us at home and at work. For children, the world is often an unfamiliar place, where there are many new experiences that can be obtained. This means that children must use much more intellectual power to transform their mental representations of outside world. This theory suggests that in this way time passes more slowly for children than for adults who are stuck in the routine of everyday life.

Thus, the more familiar our daily life becomes, the faster it seems to us that time passes, and, as a rule, a habit is formed with age.

It has been suggested that the biochemical mechanism underlying this theory is nothing more than the release of a neurotransmitter hormone upon the perception of new stimuli that help us learn to measure time. After 20 to old age, the level of this happiness hormone drops, which is why it seems to us that time goes faster.

But still, it seems that none of these theories can quite accurately explain where the coefficient of time acceleration comes from, which increases almost with mathematical constancy.

The apparent shortening of a certain period as we grow older suggests the existence of a "logarithmic scale" with respect to time. Logarithmic scales are used instead of the traditional linear scales when measuring the strength of an earthquake or the loudness of a sound. Since the quantities we measure can vary and reach enormous powers, we need a scale with a wider range of measurements in order to really understand what is happening. The same can be said about time.

On the logarithmic Richter scale (for measuring the magnitude of earthquakes), an increase in magnitude from 10 to 11 is different from a 10% increase in ground wobble, which a linear scale would not show. Each increment point on the Richter scale corresponds to a tenfold increase in vibration.

Infancy

But why should our perception of time also be measured on a logarithmic scale? The fact is that we correlate any period of time with a part of the life that we have already lived. For two-year-olds, a year is half of their life, which is why when you are small, it seems that birthdays have to wait so long.

For 10-year-olds, a year is only 10% of their life (which makes the wait a little more bearable), and for 20-year-olds, it's only 5%. On a logarithmic scale, a 20-year-old would have to wait until he was 30 to experience the same proportional increase in time that a 2-year-old baby experiences in anticipating his next birthday. no wonder time seems to speed up as we get older.

We usually think of our lives in terms of decades - our 20s, our 30s, and so on - they are presented as equivalent periods. However, if we take a logarithmic scale, it turns out that we mistakenly perceive different periods of time as periods of the same duration. Within the framework of this theory, the following age periods will be perceived equally: from five to ten, from ten to 20, from 20 to 40 and from 40 to 80 years.

I don't want to end on a depressing note, but it turns out that five years of your experience, spanning the ages of five to ten, is perceived to be equivalent to a period of life spanning the ages of 40 to 80.

Well, mind your own business. Time flies, whether you enjoy life or not. And every day it flies faster and faster.

Here's a slightly related topic on why we don't remember being kids.

According to Freud

Sigmund Freud drew attention to children's forgetfulness. In his 1905 work Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, he reflected in particular on amnesia, which covers the first five years of a child's life. Freud was sure that childhood (infantile) amnesia is not a consequence of functional memory disorders, but stems from the desire to prevent early experiences from entering the child's mind - traumas that harm one's own "I". The father of psychoanalysis considered such traumas to be experiences associated with the knowledge of one's own body or based on sensory impressions from what one heard or saw. Fragments of memories that can still be observed in the child's mind, Freud called masking.

"Activation"

The results of a study by Emory University scientists Patricia Bayer and Marina Larkina, published in the journal Memory, support the theory of the birth time of childhood amnesia. According to scientists, its "activation" occurs in all, without exception, the inhabitants of the planet at the age of seven. The scientists conducted a series of experiments in which three-year-old children were asked to tell their parents about the most vivid impressions. Years later, the researchers returned to the tests: they invited the same children again and asked them to recall what they had been told. Five-seven-year-old participants in the experiment were able to recall 60% of what was happening to them at the age of three years, while eight-ten-year-olds - no more than 40%. Thus, scientists were able to put forward a hypothesis that childhood amnesia occurs at the age of 7 years.

Habitat

Canadian psychology professor Carol Peterson believes that, among other factors, the formation of childhood memories is influenced by the environment. He was able to confirm his hypothesis as a result of a large-scale experiment, in which Canadian and Chinese children became participants. They were asked to remember in four minutes the most vivid memories the first years of life. Twice as many events came to life in the memory of Canadian children as in the memory of Chinese children. It is also interesting that Canadians predominantly recalled personal stories, while the Chinese shared memories in which their family or peer group was an accomplice.

Guilty without guilt?

Specialists of the medical center at the state research university Ohio states believe that children cannot reconcile their memories with a specific place and time, so at a later age it becomes impossible to restore episodes from their own childhood. Discovering the world for himself, the child does not make it difficult to link what is happening to temporal or spatial criteria. According to one of the co-authors of the study, Simon Dennis, children do not feel the need to remember events along with "overlapping circumstances." A child may remember a merry clown at the circus, but is unlikely to say that the show started at 5:30 pm.

For a long time it was also believed that the reason for forgetting the memories of the first three years of life lies in the inability to associate them with specific words. The child cannot describe what happened due to the lack of speech skills, so his mind blocks "unnecessary" information. In 2002, in the magazine " psychological science» A study was published on the relationship between language and children's memory. Its authors Gabriel Simcock and Harleen Hein conducted a series of experiments in which they tried to prove that children who have not yet learned to speak are not able to "code" what is happening to them into memories.

Memory erasing cells

Canadian scientist Paul Frankland, who is actively studying the phenomenon of childhood amnesia, disagrees with his colleagues. He believes that the formation of childhood memories occurs in the zone of short-term memory. He insists that young children can remember their childhood, colorfully talk about ongoing events, in which they were recently involved. However, these memories fade over time. A group of scientists led by Frankland suggested that the loss of childhood memories may be associated with an active process of formation of new cells, which is called neurogenesis. According to Paul Frankland, it was previously thought that the formation of neurons leads to the formation of new memories, but recent studies have shown that neurogenesis is able to simultaneously erase information about the past. Why, then, do people not remember most often the first three years of life? The reason is that the most active period of neurogenesis falls on this time. The neurons then start reproducing at a slower rate and leave some of the childhood memories intact.

Experienced

To test their assumptions, Canadian scientists conducted an experiment on rodents. Mice were placed in a cage with a flooring, on which weak electrical discharges were fired. A repeated visit to the cage led adult mice to panic even after a month. But young rodents willingly visited the cage the very next day. Scientists have also been able to understand how neurogenesis affects memory. To do this, they artificially caused the acceleration of neurogenesis in the experimental subjects - the mice quickly forgot about the pain that arose when visiting the cage. According to Paul Frankland, neurogenesis is more of a blessing than a bad thing, because it helps protect the brain from an overabundance of information.