The premise behind the freediving story in this movie is based in part on the actual experiences of freediver Renden Sullivan. Renden trained for a summer in the Maltese Islands with champion and former national team member Chris Cardona.
During one of his deepest dives that summer, Renden encountered a life-changing experience (see Media> Documentary) that he dismissed as an anomaly. But over time, Renden discovered that a handful of other freedivers had also shared this rare experience during some of their dives.
It is fascinating to note that their descriptions closely match those of mystic and religious traditions that aim to profoundly alter their mental states through deep meditation. Each tradition gives a different name to this state, but all are virtually identical in meaning; an experience of unified space and infinite time.
It has been hypothesized that these experiences during diving were the result of a hypoxic brain (insufficient oxygen) or from nitrogen narcosis, but new research suggests that this is not the case. Because of the "dive reflex" that freedivers develop (and all humans possess), along with other unknown adaptations, the oxygen levels in the brain are preserved. Further, the chance of getting nitrogen narcosis, or "narked", is minimized with single-breath dives.
Could this be more than a mere hallucination?
Possibly these experiences are the psychological byproduct of the dive reflex working in full, designed to protect us by keeping the body calm and peaceful during deep dives. Or might they be triggered by deep-seated memories of our ocean origins?
In addition, might it be creating associative memories of our pre-natal existence? After all, we were brought into this world in liquid and during this time our psychology was in a very similar state.
This state was one of undifferentiated wholeness before the brain has made the conceptual distinctions of "inside" and "outside", and has parsed time into the mental categories of "past", "present", and "future".
Could freediving be creating a strong enough association with these prenatal memories or even ancient aquatic engrams to evoke a Zen-like state of mind by breaking down a lifetime of conceptual conditioning?
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