Striking similarities exist between childhood experience and adult altered states of consciousness.

Shared features include vivid imagery, blurred self-boundaries, a sense of timelessness, and intense emotion.

Children’s transcendent ways of knowing resemble states adults seek through altered states of consciousness.

Systematic developmental and neuro-phenomenological research is needed to understand childhood consciousness.

Anyone who has spent time with young children knows they have a way of saying things that make you pause and reconsider what you thought you understood. Many report non-ordinary experiences—moments of “just knowing,” feeling outside their bodies, or sensing a deep unity with the world around them. These accounts suggest a form of consciousness that is relational, pre-linguistic, and not yet organized around a solid, separate self.

Research by Donna M. Thomas at the University of Lancashire, which I discussed in a previous Psychology Today post, found that children ages 4 to 5 often describe consciousness as something holistic and love-infused—a connective force linking them to family, nature, and even a purposeful universe (Thomas & O’Riordan, 2024). Notably, they do not equate consciousness with an individual “me.” By ages 10 or 11, however, this shifts. Children begin to define consciousness as “I-ness”—an inner presence distinct from roles, relationships, or passing thoughts (Thomas, 2022).

In a recent preprint, Donna Thomas and I teamed up to explore the striking parallels between these early exceptional experiences and adults’ pursuit of altered states of consciousness (ASCs). While children may slip naturally into states of self-transcendence or extrasensory sensitivity, adults often rely on “gateway tools” to revisit similar territory—meditation, prayer, breathwork, psychedelics, or other consciousness-altering practices.

ASCs can arise in many ways. Physiologically, they may be triggered by extreme temperatures, high altitude, fasting, sexual climax, intense sports, or controlled breathing. Psychologically, they emerge through meditation, music, hypnosis, or sensory deprivation. Pharmacologically, they can follow the use of alcohol, psychedelics, or other drugs. A recent clustering analysis by Larry Fort and colleagues (2025) identified eight core dimensions of altered states: changes in perception and imagery, bodily sense, self-boundary, mystical meaning, arousal, time perception, emotion, and cognitive control. In our paper, we apply these adult-derived dimensions to children’s reports. Here, I want to highlight two in particular: self-boundary and time sense.

1. Self-boundary: In adult ASC research, the softening or dissolution of self-boundaries—sometimes called ego-dissolution or ego-loss—refers to a felt sense of unity with the world (Wittmann, 2018). People describe merging with nature, with others, or with a larger whole. Similar experiences are reported after the intake of psychedelics, in deep meditation, or during Floatation-REST, where individuals float in body-temperature salt water in sensory-deprived conditions.

Children, too, describe what we might call a “transpersonal I.” They speak of being deeply connected to others, of sharing feelings or thoughts, or of experiencing empathy so intense it feels like merging. In infants, this boundary-light sense of self may be especially visible in the intimate attunement between baby and caregiver. Rather than a rigid, isolated ego, the young child’s self can feel permeable, extended, and fundamentally relational (Thomas, 2023).

2. Time sense: Writers have long tried to capture what happens to time in altered states. Aldous Huxley described mescaline as dissolving any sense that subjective time may have. Walter Benjamin wrote of hashish extending temporal duration. Thomas De Quincey portrayed opium as massively stretching the ordinary duration of hours (Wittmann, 2018).

Modern research confirms that time distortion is not limited to drugs. Whether through meditation, endurance running, or Floatation-REST, people frequently report that time slows, stops, or collapses altogether. In peak states—often accompanied by a softening of bodily boundaries and feelings of unity—past and future can seem to disappear, leaving only an intensified present. Interestingly, this immersion in the “now” is close to a young child’s default mode of being.

Children and adolescents reporting near-death experiences (NDEs) often describe profound timelessness (Thomas & O'Connor, 2023)—echoing adult accounts of NDEs. When young children try to put extraordinary experiences into words, their language can become strikingly non-linear. They are less likely to anchor events with “before,” “after,” or “later.” Instead, their narratives suggest that events unfolded outside ordinary chronological order (Thomas, 2022).

In our preprint, we brought together two research traditions that rarely intersect: studies of children’s exceptional and transpersonal experiences, and adult ASCs. Using the eight core ASC dimensions identified by Larry Fort and colleagues (2025), we found compelling phenomenological overlaps. Children’s reports of expanded awareness, boundary dissolution, and timelessness look surprisingly similar to adult descriptions of altered states.

Why does this matter? Experiences of timelessness and dissolved boundaries may help explain reports of phenomena that appear to transcend ordinary limits of space and time—such as premonitions or telepathic moments. Subjectively, consciousness in these states no longer feels localized in the body or confined to linear time. Instead, it can seem expansive, even “non-local.” Sadly, these experiences can be misunderstood as mental health issues by professionals.

To be clear, the idea of non-local consciousness sits outside mainstream scientific consensus. Yet as a phenomenological description—as a way of capturing how these states are experienced—it offers a useful lens. From this perspective, consciousness is not felt as sealed within an individual organism, but as part of a wider, interconnected field of experience (Thomas, 2023).

Whether we interpret these reports metaphorically or metaphysically, one thing is striking: The altered states many adults work hard to induce may share deep roots with the natural modes of awareness that characterize early childhood.

Thomas, D. (2022). Rethinking methodologies in parapsychology research with children. Journal of Anomalistics, 22(2), 400–426.

Thomas, D. M. (2023). Children's Unexplained Experiences in a Post Materialist World: What Children Can Teach Us about the Mystery of Being Human, Alresford, UK: John Hunt Publishing.

Thomas, D., & O'Connor, G. (2023). Exploring near death experiences with children post intensive care: A case series, Explore, 20 (3), 443–449.

Thomas, D. M., & O’Riordan, Z. (2024). “My mind is not in my brain”: exploring consciousness with children using creative research methods, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 22 (2), 346–377.

Wittmann, M. (2018). Altered states of consciousness: Experiences out of time and self. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Fort, L. D., Costines, C., Wittmann, M., Demertzi, A., & Schmidt, T. T. (2025). Classification schemes of altered states of consciousness. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 175, 106178.

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