We all know about death as well as the relativistic time dilation more or less, but I am not going to give a crackpot theory of relativistic death or something like that but I am going to use the idea of the relative nature of the perception of time to explain what death and after-death may look like and how science and religion fit together!
(The Persistence of Memory - Painting by Salvador Dalí)
The theory of relativity has made us familiar with the idea that time is not a universally fixed quantity, perception of time is different for different observers! For example, if you are standing near a railway track and you see a train passing by, you will see all the watches and the clocks on that train running a bit slower than yours and that doesn't mean the speed of the train is somehow only effecting the tiny mechanical machines inside those clocks, it actually slows down the time itself, in fact, those passengers on that train will age a bit less than you !! It's not just a theory it's an experimental fact! The GPS that you use in your smartphones is working because of the adjustments in the satellites made using this time dilation effect. The amount of slowing down of the time is related to the speed if that train was moving at ridiculously high speed (close to the speed of light), 100 years in your watch could be just a few hours on that train, and as the speed approaches closer and closer to the speed of light this difference in the rate of passage of time increases unimaginably, so much so that at one point when the speed is exactly the speed of light that is almost three hundred thousand kilometers per second, time stops inside that train for an observer at rest, meaning, when only a second passes for any passenger on that train it will be an eternity for you (outside the train on the ground), from Big Bang to the end of the universe and more !!
But I am not really going to use this relativistic time dilation, what I need is the perception of time in a dream-like state of mind. Let us take the example of the movie Inception, I guess most of us have watched this movie but those who haven't (you should) let me explain the idea briefly: the idea is that time runs faster in a dream than it does in reality, so if you were in a dream and according to you the dream lasted for a few hours it might actually be a few moments in reality, and again that difference increases as you go deeper, that is a dream inside a dream and maybe even deeper. This is the kind of time dilation that I am interested in.
Now that we know what time dilation is, I can proceed to explain what this has to do with death or even after death so to speak.
To define death let me use the doctors' definition that is the "brain death", where all electrical activities in the brain cease. When death arrives there's a window of 30 to 180 seconds, the brain is filled with neural activities all over, the whole brain wires up and a burst of neuro-chemicals in the occurs, it gives a "more real than real" experience because of heightened alertness and warmth and other emotions because of those fun chemicals like dopamine, etc. I can go on describing what scientists have learned about death but it's better if you have a quick look at this Discovery News video that explains pretty much everything that you need to know about death. I am interested in that 30-180 seconds time window.
(The Creation of Adam - painting by Michelangelo)
So here's the idea, what if when we are dying and in that time window we actually spend almost an eternity in a dream-like state, a fast flashback of one's whole life and then more.. more experiences which will, of course, feel real because of the burst of neuro-chemicals as I said "more real than real", you may see angels, gods, monsters and even God and a whole new world of unimaginable beauty and beings and experiences. You have the memory of all your favorite people who were dead, so you meet your loved ones and spend an eternity with them and because of all the good chemicals every experience is warm, you feel positive about everything ... You live an eternity and you feel like "this is THE heaven" the promised land the salvation!
But in reality, that is for the people who watched you die, it was just a few seconds ! just an idea but I think this is possible and if this is the case then the infamous death won't be that bad after all!
