What Happens to Time in a Near-death Experience?

Robert Greene says that in the death process the brain is dying too, and constructions such as time, vision, and the self start to dissolve, so time is much more plastic than people think. Near-death experiencers sometimes feel ecstasy as they die. About 85 percent of studied near-death experiences are positive, a number he is just throwing out, and some experiences are hellish. Many people who are dying feel the ego dissolve, feel abstract time dissolve, and feel the social pressures of life dissolve. They are ecstatic and elated, like a liberation.

Albert Heim, a Swiss alpine climber, was the first person to study near-death experiences, back in the 19th century. When Heim was about 21 he fell while climbing, a drop of about 100 feet, and he was going to die. As he fell he suddenly remembered his whole life and started revisiting it. Later he analyzed the fall: in 15 seconds he had experienced years of things happening, and the condensation was insane. Heim wrote an article about it, and hundreds of other articles arrived from people who fell in climbing accidents and had the same experience.

The few people who survive a jump off the Golden Gate Bridge speak of the same change. Their experience of time while falling and about to die is completely altered. In just 10 seconds it is as if they lived five years.