Special Relativity was postulated by the young A. Einstein in 1905.
In Special Relativity, which obviously develops in Our Virtual Reality, we do not use the separate concepts of space and time (Visible Virtual Reality) but instead speak of the space-time dimension: a superfluous concept for the purposes of this text, but necessary for this annotation.
Another key concept of Special Relativity is that the speed of light in a vacuum (3x105 Km/s), called “c” is the speed limit in any reference frame of Our Virtual Reality, which is always the same regardless of the point of observation within Our Virtual Reality.
This speed limit "c" may seem absurd to Newtonian physics: imagine one reference frame in uniform motion compared to another; for example, a person on a train and another person sitting at home watching that same train pass by. If the person on the train fires a projectile in the direction of the train's motion, the person sitting at home perceives the speed of such a projectile as the sum of the speed of the train plus the speed of the projectile as perceived by the shooter. However, if the person travelling on the train turns a flashlight on and off alternately, sending a light which has a speed approximately similar to "c", both people, the one sitting at home and the one on the train, perceive this light at the speed "c". That situation would have been considered as absurd for the classical Newtonian physics, as in according to classical Newtonian physics, the person sitting at home would have had to perceive a light that travels at a speed equal to the sum of the speed “c” and the speed of the train.
In Special Relativity, the difficult concept of the "extended present" is introduced: the concept of "same instant" is lost between two separate observers.[47] Specifically, if the two observers observe a given event, the more spatially distant the two observers are and the more temporally distant what they perceive as the same instant is, the wider the "extended present" is [48]. For Special Relativity the present is no longer an instant, but a timeframe.
In the previous example, where the event is a message of light sent by a person on a train that is perceived by another person sitting at home, an "extended present" of the perceived event by person sitting at home is generated. This "extended present" is appreciable only mathematically because of the limitations of the senses of the observer sitting at home, as the space-time distance between the event source and the observer is minimal.
In another example, typical of Special Relativity, an individual's clock is supposed to go off at the same time as a solar event generates a red light for a second. In this hypothetical example, the space-time distance between the event source and the observer is remarkable; in fact, the individual would see the red light about 8 minutes after turning off their clock: this timeframe is the "extended present" of the observation of such a solar event (8 minutes is about the time it takes for light in a vacuum to travel the distance from the earth to the sun). Thus, the solar event would not take place in the past, but in the present, while its perception would take place in the "extended present".
All of what has just been said is true within Our Virtual Reality, whether it is seen with spatial dimensions and the temporal dimension, or with the space-time dimension.
As mentioned in the chapter Death in Brief (⇒), when an individual dies, Our Virtual Reality for Mens dissolves; that is, the manifestations of Mens in the mind cease to exist[49]. This “ceasing to exist” is short-lived event from an observer's perspective in Our Virtual Reality, while it lasts an eternity from the perspective of Mens, whose spiritual structure does not possess space-time dimensions.
Suppose that, with a hypothetical measuring instrument, one could measure the space-time distance between an observation point joint to Mens and the mind of the dying individual.
As mentioned previously, Mens, as a spiritual entity with its own structure outside of Our Virtual Reality, is somehow linked to Our Virtual Reality through its manifestations, through which Mens develops its own consciousness by experiencing life through perception of the individual's mind. During death, the events of Mens cease to exist, which is experienced from the point of view of Mens as a gradual, albeit rapid, dissolution of Our Virtual Reality.
Il. 11: hypothetical measuring instrument between Mens and mind.
Regardless of what measurement the observer would obtain at the moments before death with the hypothetical measuring instrument mentioned earlier, at the moment after death, namely at the moment of the disappearance of the manifestation of Mens, the measurement of the space-time distance of Mens would be infinite. To summarise, one would obtain a finite measure of the space-time distance before death and a (fictitious) infinite measure of the space-time distance after death; during the process of the individual's death, the hypothetical instrument would show an increasing measurement. Bear in mind that the dissolution of Our Virtual Reality for Mens happens gradually rather than immediately, however fast it may be.
Now let's take a look at a particular moment during the death of the individual: when Our Virtual Reality is "almost" dissolved for Mens, just as the last manifestations of Mens in the mind are about to end; that is, when the hypothetical instrument measures the almost infinity between the mind and Mens. We'll call this moment Near-death.
Considering an individual's life as experienced through the mind as an immense succession of events for Mens; Mens features an "extended present" with the memories of those events as the space-time distance between the mind and Mens grows during death; this "extended present" quickly becomes more and more extended and important with the approach of the moment of Near-death.
At the moment of Near-death, the "extended present" of Mens is considerable, and the situation of the Mens is decidedly complex: Mens finds itself in a large "extended present" in which, however, Mens has almost lost any form of "contact" with Our Virtual Reality, as Our Virtual Reality now being almost dissolved from its point of view; at the same time Mens, more than ever, accesses the memories of the now-extinguished life in the Universal Knowledge. Keep in mind in during this Near-death state, Mens still manifests in the mind of the individual, however weakly, meaning the individual's mind can still access its memories.
When death takes over, Mens no longer has manifestations in Our Virtual Reality and in the individual's lifeless mind.
From the perspective of a dead individual's Mens, Our Virtual Reality, which Mens previously experienced through its own manifestations, has now become a space-time infinity (from the point of view of Mens), where Mens will be able to relive for eternity all of the now-ended life's memories stored in the Universal Knowledge... and each of those memories is also expanded to infinity.
There is no scientific proof or even evidence of what has been stated on the dynamics of Mens during an individual's death, as the dead do not report their experiences; on the other hand, we have many testimonies from people who have lived through a Near-death experience.
We must add that it is probable that the whole process of death experienced by Mens explored in this annotation and in chapter Death in Brief (⇒) is not triggered by some biological event of the individual's death, but by some other event independent of the individual's body, although it is not yet clear what this event is or how, why, when, or by what it is triggered. This is evident from the fact that from the moment of Near-death does not always death occurs: in some cases, Mens can return from the nearly infinite space-time of the moment of Near-death, back to its ordinary state of life manifesting in the individual's mind, which is no longer dying. This situation can only be explained by the hypothesised existence of a body-independent phenomenon that triggers the process of Mens death that we examined earlier, without the individual actually being in a state of dying.
Many who have risked their lives in an accident or a similar episode claim to have seen their entire life's memories pass before their eyes, all within the blink of an eye.
Outside of the extravagance of this statement, even these people themselves have probably never dwelled on the fact that recalling the memories of an entire life, however short and monotonous that life may be, takes much longer than a blink of an eye.
An explanation for these experiences can be found in what has just been described: for some inexplicable reason, Mens enters a state of death, reaching the moment of Near-death, and then returns to a state of life. At the moment of Near-death, the "extended present" that Mens experiences when accessing to information from its latest contact with Our Virtual Reality in the final phase of dissolution is not perceived by other individuals in Our Virtual Reality. As mentioned in the chapter Death in Brief, the dissolution (and subsequent regeneration) of Our Virtual Reality for Mens, from the perspective of an observer in Our Virtual Reality, is an event with an infinitesimal duration equal to Planck Time, so short that the individual cannot even notice it.
Then, during the "extended present", Mens accesses its memories, which are stored in the Universal Knowledge, and relives them; that huge sequence of memories is compressed and reduced to a duration of an instant (or the blink of an eye) in the manifestation of Mens in the individual's mind. This causes people who have had a Near-death experience to relive many past memories in the blink of an eye; while for Mens, during that blink of an eye, an "extended present" took place, during it appeared to be in an almost infinite space-time in which Mens started to enjoy the memories of the life that was in the process of ending, but did not finish in the end.
Now people who have survived a Near-Death experience will be able to understand how they could retrace so many memories in a very short time.