An experiment with time

Anyone can experience the linearity of time break down. This comes from the fact that our subconscious often leaves our physical dependency on linear time behind when our minds meander in a thoughtful way.

This simple experiment allows anyone with patience to experience how objective time can be momentarily replaced with subjective time.

You will need a clock with a second hand to try this for yourselves.

1/ Place the clock on a table in front of you so you can clearly see the second moving without any effort, through half closed eyes.

2/ Look at the clock and follow the movement and rhythm of the second hand in a thoughtful way. Continue this until you feel completely absorbed by this movement.

3/ Close your eyes and visualize yourself in a place you are familiar with and would like to be.
Fill this visualization with as much sensation as possible.
A good example would be lying on a familiar beach, the sun warming your skin, the sand soft beneath your back, the sound of the tide lapping the shore in the background.

4/ When you feel that you are fully immersed in this visualization, fully relaxed, slowly open your eyes halfway. Don't focus. Just let your eyes find the clock that you had placed on the table in front of you.

- This is the point where the second hand on the clock will appear to stick or hover. If you are used to meditating, you can see the second hand stop completely, especially during that instant before you break out of this semi-meditative state.

Paraphrased from
Stalking the Wild Pendulum by Itzhak Bentov. pages 60-61

If we were to ask the brain how it would like to be treated, whether shaken at a random, irregular rate, or in a rhythmic, harmonious fashion, we can be sure that the brain, or for that matter the whole body, would prefer the latter. -Bentov