Hi dude,

er... define "time distortion"...

no seriously, could you be more specific?

Hi,

right! perception distortion of time then...

(sorry but I'm in science-fiction reading/writing lately, so I needed to make sure

what I can say is that, in dream state (and I think close-to-dream states), a lot can happen to you in what takes a couple of seconds of our awaken state. So, indeed we could imagine taking advantage of that in order to accomplish extreme feats - by taking control of the dream's narrative and being able to find in there some kind of tool/solution for the situation at hand and use it. Though I'm afraid I don't see anything else than consistent practice to get there, if possible, before being able to write a tutorial...

Nighty night, btw...

Hi dude, a long time ago i read an article about (or at least i think) you are talking about.

Is called "lentation" for some people .. and is about "control" adrenaline release? but probably not a good thing because of cortisol?

This post talk about an article who a guy wrote about learning 'lentation' but now is offline i think .. but probably is anywhere if you take the time to look at google.

The worst thing about lentation was probably giving it a name.  When you give something a name, it can give it a mystical allure beyond its actual content.  So what is this "lentation"?  In short, it was an article from some time ago with a few reflex building exercises with a description of trying to boost adrenaline release.  Now every so often someone reads something on some other website about the super-powers of "lentation" and comes here trying to find them.  This post is for those people, and so people have something to point those people to.

First lets discuss adrenaline.  Adrenaline is simply a hormone released by your body when frightened or excited.  It's that feeling you get when somebody drops a book behind you, or you're on a date, nervous, and stumbling all over.  Now the premise of lentation is that adrenaline is great for fighting, and so you should try to get a lot of it.  To a certain extent adrenaline has been historically helpful for people, but only to an extent.  We have evolved to release adrenaline to trigger the so called fight-or-flight response.  It shifts our behavior and it shifts some of the blood flow in our body.  For one, adrenaline makes us alert to what's going on around us, and reduces higher brain function, causing people to want to either hit something or run away scared.  It increases blood flow to the legs for the purpose of fleeing, and shifts the balance of nervous system function (resulting in the nervous/alert/scared sensation).

Now we evolved adrenaline way before we evolved intelligence, and from its effect on the body you can see that it evolved to give an optimized lower-brain response to a threat.  The first problem that arises is when people suggest that more adrenaline than your body naturally releases is better.  Adrenaline is something that has existed for a very long time, and if it were advantageous to have more adrenaline, your ancestors would have already long ago evolved that higher amount.  The levels of adrenaline we produce when threatened are well-tuned to provide an effective animalistic response to danger.  Higher levels are in fact, less productive, because they imbalance the body too much to produce an effective response since they disrupt the nervous system too much, and alter blood flow too greatly.  If you have ever seen a war veteran with nervous system problems from adrenaline overdose, then you know precisely why you don't want higher than normal levels.  And if you have ever seen a war movie with one of the classic scenes where the soldier gets too much adrenaline and suddenly loses mental presence and just stands there looking around at everything while bullets go whizzing by his head, then you know that higher levels of adrenaline are not at all ideal for survival or winning a conflict.

The second problem that arises is when people suggest that adrenaline makes people into better fighters.  Adrenaline makes animals into better fighters, but not necessarilly people.  Adrenaline does raise the heart-rate, but then again, the heart-rate raises anyway as soon as you start moving just from the physical exertion.  Adrenaline also shifts the balance of the nervous system to try to make an animal focus on its danger and to reduce other thoughts in the animal.  This is great for animals, and terrible for martial artists.  We have higher order brain functions which, if used properly, are several orders of magnitude more useful for fighting and surviving conflicts than any hormonal release.  Neanderthals were a species of hominids that was enormously strong, tough, resistant to pain, and better suited to surviving the cold than humans, yet by 29,000 years ago, humans had completely wiped Neanderthals from the face of the Earth.  Our only advantage was the human mind, yet it was such a profound combat advantage that this far more physically capable species stood no chance.  The problem is that adrenaline disrupts this mental advantage, giving a fighter the equivalent mental advantage of someone on a first date.

So what then?  What's the alternative?  You need look no farther than the masters of the classic martial arts to discover the more effective approach.  Martial arts masters have for a long time described the most effective state for combat as a clear, calm, sharply alert mind in which awareness is high, but focus stops on no particular thing.  This way we can maximize our mental capacity by reacting to all things around us using trained nonconscious reflexes, and leaving the higher level brain functions operating for the purpose of thinking through tactics and strategy to direct the nonconscious portions of the brain that are executing maneuvers.  This state is often referred to as "the zone" by athletes, and is a state of calm confidence, which is the exact opposite of the nervous excited state caused by adrenaline.  Top athletes and their trainers will tell you that the zone is the condition under which performance is best and reactions are optimal, and this applies both to sports and combat.

Hi dude,

devon wrote:

I'm developing something to teach time distortion.

Do you have any input you could share?
For example, what networks are primary in processing time.

N4

What are some good ways to induce initial distortions?

LSD, hypnosis, sustained alpha rhythms, meditation, various attention practices, alcohol to some extent, developing the brain in general and practising these skills.

What needs to happen to sustain time distortion and create the internal architecture to deliberately turn distortion on and off?

Ah, “attack/decay/sustain/release”  :  )  On a surface (current experience) level, apparent time rate is adjustable by the sort of stuff above (sustained alpha etc). If you want to do more than slow down/speed up you have to look at attention switching (as in dream sleep) and that involves switching processing between N3 & N6. It is not something most people could do, not because they can't learn how to switch processing (“running the software” can be learned via biofeedback) but because they don't have sufficient development in N6 to run the processes (they don't have the hardware). The only way around that is to first develop N6, and the ability to develop that of course depends on whether the person has developed N1, N2...etc.


What I'm talking about occurs naturally all the time.
For example, waiting in line at the bank, time may seem to sloooowwww waaaaaay dooooowwwwwn.
On the other hand, having 'the time of your life' often seems to go by quite quickly.

It's because of what your attention is doing.

I've worked with several somnambulists who could experience a minute on the clock as half an hour in their subjective experience. They could go in and do math equations and various other tasks that would take five minutes to do but would come out having the answers within 60-90 seconds. Unfortunately it is a very small number of people that are capable of these feats quickly and easily. Nevertheless, it's that ability to subjectively slow down time that I'm talking about.

Unfortunately it is a very small number of people that have developed all their networks sufficiently to do this.

One of the ways I've found effective in stabilizing this experience for people is to add lots of 'pings' to their stream of awareness.

This weights memory and packs more data into less time. In the physical world, time slows down in the vicinity of massive objects relative to a distant reference frame. In the abstract world of mind, the experience of time in the 'distant reference frame' of N3 slows down in the vicinity of 'weighted' objects (that is to say objects or events given weighting by your own attention & emotion)
Einstein once suspected that the slowing down of time is what causes gravity, and amusingly, packing more information into a shorter relative time period gives it a higher weighting (the higher the compression, the longer the relative experience of time -as you say below- BUT this also increases as the information has stronger weighting.)

In other words, multiple things that they are aware of in a given time period, e.g. what Jason Bourne does in the first Bourne movie when he walks into the Diner; "there are eight people in the diner, three exits, the license plates outside read....etc." The more information per second, the more slow the experience of time. However, this is most powerful when the pings happen as a gestalt rather than a series. In this way the individual is aware of lots of specific bits of data simultaneously rather than one at a time in sequence.

Yes, spot on, but not because there are lots of bits of data. It's more because of where they are (that's why the shifting of attention N3/N6 comes in). If everything is all over the place as bits, it takes more time for the mind to 'see' the coherent picture; if someone has developed the N3/N6 'highway' it all arrives as a 'package' for PDP (parallel distributed processing) and time 'slows down' for the observer as data is shunted from RAM into LTM and back again. 
Sorry so long replying I am short of time LOL  :  )
Best
AR

One of the ways I've found effective in stabilizing this experience for people is to add lots of 'pings' to their stream of awareness.

This weights memory and packs more data into less time. In the physical world, time slows down in the vicinity of massive objects relative to a distant reference frame. In the abstract world of mind, the experience of time in the 'distant reference frame' of N3 slows down in the vicinity of 'weighted' objects (that is to say objects or events given weighting by your own attention & emotion)
Einstein once suspected that the slowing down of time is what causes gravity, and amusingly, packing more information into a shorter relative time period gives it a higher weighting (the higher the compression, the longer the relative experience of time -as you say below- BUT this also increases as the information has stronger weighting.)

<devon's response>
This makes total sense and jibes with my own experience. Without intending it to be so, the weighting of my memory palace obeys those exact rules you described above. Now that I'm aware of the variables as you described them, the speed of time and the weight of objects feels much more flexible than I was making it. Thanks for that.
<end devon's response>

<back to the original quoted text>
In other words, multiple things that they are aware of in a given time period, e.g. what Jason Bourne does in the first Bourne movie when he walks into the Diner; "there are eight people in the diner, three exits, the license plates outside read....etc." The more information per second, the more slow the experience of time. However, this is most powerful when the pings happen as a gestalt rather than a series. In this way the individual is aware of lots of specific bits of data simultaneously rather than one at a time in sequence.

Yes, spot on, but not because there are lots of bits of data. It's more because of where they are (that's why the shifting of attention N3/N6 comes in). If everything is all over the place as bits, it takes more time for the mind to 'see' the coherent picture; if someone has developed the N3/N6 'highway' it all arrives as a 'package' for PDP (parallel distributed processing) and time 'slows down' for the observer as data is shunted from RAM into LTM and back again. 

First off - thanks for your answers above. Makes sense.

How do I switch which network is processing? Specifically between N3 and N6?


Specifically between 3 & 6 should happen all by itself when you're sleeping and dreaming, but if you want to enhance the pathway (again, if all nets are balanced)

Yeah, this happens naturally for me. I've taken the functional analysis test several times. All my networks are in good working order.
My interest now is generative not remedial.

Currently I use a low GI diet, regular exercise (8-15 hours a week cycling through yoga, isometrics, resistance training, running, and gymnastics), between 15- 45 minutes of meditation a day, 15 minutes of memory palace development a day and a life rooted in my passion and purpose -  to continue in the direction I want to be headed.

What I'm interested in most right now are deep gains in stabilizing my ability to lucid dream while I'm awake. I can do a form of time distortion very easily when I do this. But I want to increase my skills and stabilize them.

Your suggestion on biofeedback seems in-line with that intention. That said, Do you have a particular program or tech you recommend to do what you mention below?


Biofeedback presets need to begin with Alpha—theta, then switch backwards & forwards between theta & gamma and finish with theta-->alpha. (Don't do more than 20 minute sessions or you may start weighting memories of dreams with equivalence to real life events and that can get really confusing.)
 
To get even stronger effects, you can build up the anterior commissure with all-network exercises such as playing a musical instrument, writing stories or playing the type of games that encourage creative decisions and strategy.


And where can I get more info about isolating the pathway? Even better, are there any experienced techs that can help me with it? I'll travel if that's what it takes.


This is not the same N3/N6 technique as “isolating the pathway” (which is done by turning off the other networks for a short time, for example with rTMS).
Best,
AR