Neurotransmitters are a group of chemicals that bring about the transfer of information across the brain. These chemicals leap across the tiny gaps between brain cells and in doing so facilitate or inhibit chemical messages. The distances involved are so small that certain neurologists have argued that it is here that the strange world of quantum events breaks through into the world of classical physics. If this is the case then the process that makes us conscious beings is directly affected by the bizarre behaviour of these sub atomic particles.

The major neurotransmitter found in the temporal lobes is glutamate. It is this chemical that brings about the pre-seizure aura in which the perceptions of the Daemon are accessed by its Eidolon. For most non-epileptics this chemical behaves itself and does not bring about the transcendental awareness regularly experienced by those with TLE. However there are two events in everyone's life when the temporal lobe is flooded by glutamate - birth and death!

It has been argued that it is this glutamate flood that brings about the psychological state called Near Death Experience (NDE).

The NDE experience is very consistent in that it involves similar experiences reported by most of those experiencing the state. Regularly reported is that of a full past life review. Another common sensation is an encounter with an entity described as a 'being in white'. This being seems to be responsible for the past life review and seems to know all about the dying person. Others report that time slows down as death approaches, the slowing down increasing until time almost stops.

However these are 'near' death experiences, not the real thing. Could the real thing involve similar sensations with one major difference - the 'life review' is presented in a minute-by-minute re-living of the observer's life? Could it be that the glutamate flood slows time perception down to such an extent that the observer - in the final split second of their life - lives a whole lifetime again within a holographically generated facsimile of the original?

This is not a new idea, for centuries the concept termed The Eternal Return has fascinated philosophers and theologians. As nature is cyclical so is life itself. From Fredrick Nietzsche to Petyr Ouspensky and from Goethe to J B Priestley this is an idea that simply will not go away. In more recent times the idea has been interestingly updated by Harold Ramis in his film Groundhog Day.

If this is the case then we may all be existing in a first time life that is 'real', or else we are an observer within our own personal version of The Matrix re-living our life as Phil Conners re-lived his Groundhog Day!