Time perception

Different people may judge identical lengths of time quite differently. Time can "fly"; that is, a long period of time can seem to go by very quickly. Likewise, time can seem to "drag," as in when one performs a boring task. The psychologist Jean Piaget called this form of time perception "lived time."

Time also appears to pass more quickly as one gets older. For example, a year for a five-year-old child is 20% of his entire life so far, however for a 50 year old adult a year is only 2% of his entire life so far; so with increasing age, each segment of time is a decreasing percentage of the person's total experience.

Altered states of consciousness are sometimes characterised by a different estimation of time. Some psychoactive substances--such as entheogens--may also dramatically alter a person's temporal judgement. When viewed under the influence of such substances as LSD, magic mushrooms and peyote, a clock may appear to be a strange reference point and a useless tool for measuring the passage of events as it does not correlate with the user's experience. At higher doses, time may appear to slow down, stop, speed up and even go backward when under the influence of these agents. A typical thought might be "I can't believe it's only 8 o'clock, but then again, what does 8 o'clock mean?" As the boundaries for experiencing time are removed, so is it's relevance. Many users claim this unbounded timelessness feels like a glimpse into spiritual infinity. To imagine that one exists somewhere "outside" of time is one of the hallmark experiences of a psychedelic voyage. Marijuana may also distort the perception of time, although, to a lesser degree than psychedelics.

The practice of meditation, central to all Buddhist traditions, takes as its goal the reflection of the mind back upon itself, thus altering the subjective experience of time; the so called, 'entering the now', or 'the moment'.

In explaining his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying that although sitting next to a pretty girl for an hour feels like a minute, placing one's hand on a hot stove for a minute feels like an hour. This is intended to introduce the listener to the concept of the interval between two events being perceived differently by different observers.

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