Transcending Time in Egoless States of Consciousness

The key to these experiences is the ego – or rather, the absence of the ego -during them. Our sense of time passing is a function of the ego. Young babies have no sense of ego, and therefore no sense of time passing. Young children only have a weak “ego structure” and so only have a vague sense of time. It’s only at the age of 16 or so – when the ego is fully developed as a structure – that we have a clear sense of the past or future and are able to accurately estimate periods of time. This suggests that if the normal sense of ego was absent, we wouldn’t have a sense of time passing – or at least that if our sense of ego was weaker, our sense of time passing would be less pronounced, so that it would pass more slowly to us. And this is exactly what happens in these experiences: for a short period, we lose our sense of ego, our sense of being an “I” trapped inside our heads – or at least this becomes much weaker than normal – and so we lose our normal sense of time passing. Our normal conscious mind is immobilised, and we cease to be subject to time (at least to the same extent)...read more>>>...