How We Perceive the Passage of Time

I have a novel theory about what happens when we die. I've never heard this before, but maybe somebody else came up with the same theory, I don't know. I say theory because like all the other theories about death, there is no way to prove it. Anyway, here goes.

We perceive time as being linear. It flows from one second to the next. But in reality, all that ever happened, all that's happening now, and all that will happen in the future exists now. The only way that we can move in time faster is by getting up to the speed of light or dropping into a wormhole, or at least that's one theory that also can't be proven.

So, my theory is that at the moment of death we lose our perception of linear time. It no longer flows forward. So if we are thinking pleasant thoughts like seeing our family again or being with Jesus, then that moment will SEEM like an eternity even though we are dead and gone. On the other hand, if we are terrified and in a lot of pain, then that being in Hades will seem like an eternity as well.

But just how do we perceive that time when we are alive anyway? According to Medical News Today:

"Humans use their senses to help keep track of short intervals of time according to new research, which suggests that our perception of time is not maintained by an internal body clock alone. Scientists from UCL (University College London) set out to answer the question "Where does our sense of time come from?"

The answer seems to lie in a couple of different areas. It partly comes from our observing the changes in the world and partly from our expectations of those changes. So far no one has been able to find a specific part of the brain that keeps track of time. So this function may be spread through the entire brain.

Participants in the experiment were asked to look at circles of light that were flashed on a screen. Then they were asked how many seconds elapsed between the flashes of light. When a mottled pattern that changed randomly was put in the background, the participants guessed more accurately, suggesting that they used the rate of change in the patterns to judge the passing of time.

The bottom line is that we use the rate of change of outside stimuli to help us rate the passage of time and this is highly mutable. What that does for my theory, I'm not quite sure.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/214440.php