{"id":31661,"date":"2021-06-15T07:29:37","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T03:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=31661"},"modified":"2021-06-15T07:29:37","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T03:29:37","slug":"my-life-flashed-before-my-eyes-a-psychologists-take-on-what-might-be-happening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/my-life-flashed-before-my-eyes-a-psychologists-take-on-what-might-be-happening\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018My life flashed before my eyes\u2019: a psychologist\u2019s take on what might be happening"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A different interpretation of time might explain why people see their whole lives replayed to them in a split second<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/span>photoJS\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/p>\n

At the age of 16, when Tony Kofi was an apprentice builder living in Nottingham, he fell from the third storey of a building. Time seemed to slow down massively, and he saw a complex series of images flash before his eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

As he described it, \u201cIn my mind\u2019s eye I saw many, many things: children that I hadn\u2019t even had yet, friends that I had never seen but are now my friends. The thing that really stuck in my mind was playing an instrument\u201d. Then Tony landed on his head and lost consciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

When he came to at the hospital, he felt like a different person and didn\u2019t want to return to his previous life. Over the following weeks, the images kept flashing back into his mind. He felt that he was \u201cbeing shown something\u201d and that the images represented his future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Later, Tony saw a picture of a saxophone and recognised it as the instrument he\u2019d seen himself playing. He used his compensation money from the accident to buy one. Now, Tony Kofi is one of the UK\u2019s most successful jazz musicians, having won the BBC Jazz awards twice, in 2005 and 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though Tony\u2019s belief that he saw into his future is uncommon, it\u2019s by no means uncommon for people to report witnessing multiple scenes from their past during split-second emergency situations. After all, this is where the phrase \u201cmy life flashed before my eyes\u201d comes from.<\/span><\/p>\n

But what explains this phenomenon? Psychologists have proposed a number of explanations, but I\u2019d argue the key to understanding Tony\u2019s experience lies in a different interpretation of time itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

When life flashes before our eyes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The experience of life flashing before one\u2019s eyes has been reported for well over a century. In 1892, a Swiss geologist named Albert Heim fell from a precipice while mountain climbing. In his account of the fall, he wrote is was \u201cas if on a distant stage, my whole past life [was] playing itself out in numerous scenes\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

More recently, in July 2005, a young woman called Gill Hicks was sitting near one of the bombs that exploded on the London Underground. In the minutes after the accident, she hovered on the brink of death where, as she describes it: \u201cmy life was flashing before my eyes, flickering through every scene, every happy and sad moment, everything I have ever done, said, experienced\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

In some cases, people don\u2019t see a review of their whole lives, but a series of past experiences and events that have special significance to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Explaining life reviews<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps surprisingly, given how common it is, the \u201clife review experience\u201d has been studied very little. A handful of theories have been put forward, but they\u2019re understandably tentative and rather vague.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, a group of Israeli researchers suggested in 2017 that our life events may exist as a continuum in our minds, and may come to the forefront in extreme conditions of psychological and physiological stress.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another theory is that, when we\u2019re close to death, our memories suddenly \u201cunload\u201d themselves, like the contents of a skip being dumped. This could be related to \u201ccortical disinhibition\u201d \u2013 a breaking down of the normal regulatory processes of the brain \u2013 in highly stressful or dangerous situations, causing a \u201ccascade\u201d of mental impressions.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the life review is usually reported as a serene and ordered experience, completely unlike the kind of chaotic cascade of experiences associated with cortical disinhibition. And none of these theories explain how it\u2019s possible for such a vast amount of information \u2013 in many cases, all the events of a person\u2019s life \u2013 to manifest themselves in a period of a few seconds, and often far less.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thinking in \u2018spatial\u2019 time<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

An alternative explanation is to think of time in a \u201cspatial\u201d sense. Our commonsense view of time is as an arrow that moves from the past through the present towards the future, in which we only have direct access to the present. But modern physics has cast doubt on this simple linear view of time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, since Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity, some physicists have adopted a \u201cspatial\u201d view of time. They argue we live in a static \u201cblock universe\u201d in which time is spread out in a kind of panorama where the past, the present and the future co-exist simultaneously.<\/span><\/p>\n

The modern physicist Carlo Rovelli \u2013 author of the best-selling The Order of Time \u2013 also holds the view that linear time doesn\u2019t exist as a universal fact. This idea reflects the view of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who argued that time is not an objectively real phenomenon, but a construct of the human mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

This could explain why some people are able to review the events of their whole lives in an instant. A good deal of previous research \u2013 including my own \u2013 has suggested that our normal perception of time is simply a product of our normal state of consciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

In many altered states of consciousness, time slows down so dramatically that seconds seem to stretch out into minutes. This is a common feature of emergency situations, as well as states of deep meditation, experiences on psychedelic drugs and when athletes are \u201cin the zone\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

The limits of understanding<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But what about Tony Kofi\u2019s apparent visions of his future? Did he really glimpse scenes from his future life? Did he see himself playing the saxophone because somehow his future as a musician was already established?<\/span><\/p>\n

There are obviously some mundane interpretations of Tony\u2019s experience. Perhaps, for instance, he became a saxophone player simply because he saw himself playing it in his vision. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s impossible that Tony did glimpse future events.<\/span><\/p>\n

If time really does exist in a spatial sense \u2013 and if it\u2019s true that time is a construct of the human mind \u2013 then perhaps in some way future events may already be present, just as past events are still present.<\/span><\/p>\n

Admittedly, this is very difficult to make sense of. But why should everything make sense to us? As I have suggested in a recent book, there must be some aspects of reality that are beyond our comprehension. After all, we\u2019re just animals, with a limited awareness of reality. And perhaps more than any other phenomenon, this is especially true of time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Steve Taylor<\/strong><\/span>
\nSenior Lecturer in Psychology, <\/span>
\nLeeds Beckett University<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

* Published in print edition on 15 June 2021<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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