Do We Time Travel When We Die?

<h4>Do We Time Travel When We Die?</h4>

What comes after we die? How closely linked are we to the rest of the universe? And could it ever be possible that not only is there life beyond, but that it’s fundamentally different to this life, as well?

This is Unveiled, and today we're answering the extraordinary question; do we time travel when we die?

Death is perhaps the greatest mystery known to humanity. It’s a threshold that all of us will cross but that none have definitively returned from. There are multiple claims of near death experiences, with the numbers of people reporting NDEs increasing in recent times. But we still have nothing by way of concrete, incontestable evidence of what lies beyond. Many cultures speak of an afterlife, a continuation of consciousness in some form or another. There are some theories grounded in science that perhaps some part of our fundamental makeup does (and can) live on. And, of course, there are a growing number of richly promised routes to immortality via technology - from digital Heavens to artificial resurrections.

But, one lesser spoken about possibility also manages to tie in another of humankind’s greatest theoretical ambitions; time travel. A small number have asked; could the experience of death also involve a move backwards or forwards (or even sideways) in time?

First, let's look at the most solid, physical theories surrounding time travel. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, time is relative. It can stretch or shrink depending on how fast one is moving compared to something else. Apply the theory far enough and, eventually, we can say that if you were able to travel at speeds approaching light speed (or through a wormhole connecting two different points in spacetime) then you might (even should) experience time very differently compared to those who remain stationary. And, we have a basis from which to work.

What’s interesting from the point of view of dying, is that it’s generally held to be the human body (or indeed anything with mass) that holds us back when contemplating lightspeed travel, and therefore time travel. Light can move so quickly because it has no mass. Move anything with mass at close to lightspeed, and the science says that time travel might become possible, especially into the future. But, what would really make it possible is if we were to achieve negative mass. This is a hypothetical form of matter. It has never been knowingly observed or generated in real life, so far. But, in theory, if something did have negative mass, then time travel should actually be quite simple for it.

Now’s when death comes into the fold. Clearly, there is so much about death that we just don’t understand. Like the event horizon in a black hole, there’s a line between life and death that - once crossed - is impossible to return from, which is why we can never, truly know. However, there are those who claim to have trodden extremely close to that line, and come back. Near-death experiences often feature accounts where individuals perceive themselves outside their bodies. There are also reports of an NDE-er experiencing events out-of-sequence, as part of a sort of temporal dislocation. There is no firm scientific explanation for this. Among the leading theories is that any of the inexplicable things that appear to happen during an NDE are purely the result of a brain in trauma, desperately trying (and failing) to deal with the danger it’s in. However, some have interpreted all the out-of-body weirdness as a possible hint to death being a state that’s unbound by linear time. There are then further claims that NDEs may be the first stages in human consciousness detaching itself from the body that had hosted it; ridding itself of the mass that had, until then, weighed it down.

At this point, we’ve stepped into the murky fields of life energy, essence, consciousness, and the soul. The stories that humankind tells itself are more often that not grounded along this particular line of thinking. Countless spiritual traditions posit that life after death generally involves the soul's ascension into higher realms; indescribable places that are beyond our earthly conceptions of the space-time continuum altogether. No mass, no time, no limits. Hinduism speaks about moksha; Buddhism talks about nirvana; many Abrahamic faiths refer to Heaven and Hell. All are post-mortem existences that operate outside conventional physical and temporal frameworks. In themselves, even to simply believe in these places or scenarios could be deemed to believe in time-travel.

However, according to some models, we don’t actually need religion or faith to match similar concepts together. Quantum mechanics, among other things, introduces entanglement as another, physical means to truly beat the confines of time. In short, this is the known phenomenon that subatomic particles remain intrinsically connected across infinite distances, meaning that some actions upon those particles can happen as though outside of time. This doesn’t immediately offer a route toward post-death time travel, as we know that eventually our lifeless bodies break down and disappear forever. But, again, there are suggestions that some kind of transcendental being could live on. And then, if this transcendentalism is in any way connected to quantum phenomena such as entanglement, then it figures that time is no longer guiding whatever it is of us that’s left behind. From the point of view of humans, as we are, we may as well be traveling in time; although, really, it’s more like we’d simply be existing away from it.

Orchestrated objective reduction (or, Orch OR) is perhaps the most famous (or infamous) contemporary scientific theory which appears to lead us along paths such as these. Proposed by Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, it suggests that consciousness is an entirely quantum creation. It isn’t made via any kind of neural setup within our brains, but is actually the product of unknown forces firing away within infinitely tiny microtubules. Humans have developed to understand consciousness as we have, but it’s a much wider condition than just what’s inside our heads. Orch OR is considered highly controversial, although it does also link back to some of the greatest and most widely debated philosophies on the matter - such as the “I think therefore I am” argument, devised by René Descartes in the 1600s. Nevertheless, one interpretation of Orch OR is seemingly that some part of us could continue to exist after we’ve died. A fundamental aspect of humankind (or life in general) is immortal. And, therefore, purely by the infinite nature of the universe… and the physical possibility of time travel… it figures that whatever that aspect is might move through time without any border at all. Time travel as we currently think of it, in our lowly, lumbering, comparatively massive physical selves? No. But time travel along a higher plain, beyond even the general concepts of life and death entirely? Perhaps.

Naturally, there’s a bridge that could be taken here between the possibilities for time travel… and the likelihood of parallel universes. Talk of ascension to higher planes rings close to, say, the Many Worlds Interpretation - which says that endless quantum splits are forever fuelling a multiverse where every possible outcome of every imaginable event is realized. It’s another route toward some kind of extension to our current understanding of life. But, that said, Orch OR doesn’t need a multiverse to work. Neither does Biocentrism, a separate but partly comparable approach, which argues that the universe is created by us, rather than that we’re created by the universe.

Ultimately, as with so many more problems in science, the biggest puzzle remains the understanding of consciousness itself. Is it physical, metaphysical, or something else? Does it die with our bodies, or does it somehow persist? If the latter, then does it know that it survives… or is that just an irrelevant dream of humankind? Importantly, Orch OR does not claim that life after death exists. It’s been suggested that its founders (particularly Hameroff) have suggested that it does provide proof… but it is very far from confirmed.

For now, traditional and conventional science just doesn’t support the idea that we time travel when we die. Broadly, more scientists are most likely to arrive at nothingness rather than somethingness, whenever they attempt to explain what happens after death. However, the likes of Penrose and Hameroff aren’t entirely alone either. Alternate thinkers abound. The numbers of reported NDEs are going up. And the crossover between life and death might always represent an unknowable journey. And so, for those reasons, it’s a sure bet that our humble species will continue to suspect (or hope for) something else in the great beyond.