The Infinite Last Moment Hypothesis: Temporal Phenomenology, Neurochemistry, and Eschatological Choice at the Threshold of Death

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel framework for understanding the phenomenology of dying and its relationship to religious conceptions of salvation and damnation. Drawing on evidence from altered states research, near-death experience literature, and endogenous neurochemistry, I argue that the final moments of life may be characterized by profound subjective time dilation such that a single thought or mental state could be experienced as effectively eternal from the first-person perspective of the dying individual, even as objective biological death proceeds normally for external observers. This “infinite last moment” creates what may be understood as the neurophysiological substrate for traditional religious concepts of heaven and hell. I further argue that diverse spiritual and literary traditions, from Goethe’s Faust to the Tibetan Bardo Thodol to contemporary fiction, encode practical wisdom about navigating this critical juncture. The hypothesis suggests that salvation may depend not on hedonistic satisfaction but on achieving a state of selfless awareness, free from worldly attachment, at the moment of death. While necessarily speculative, this framework offers a potential reconciliation between neurobiological reductionism and religious phenomenology without requiring any metaphysical claims about post-mortem consciousness.