Get yourself into a relaxed position and place a clock with a sweep second hand in your line of sight so that you gaze naturally on it without any effort.  Gaze at the clock for a while, absorbing the rhythm of the second hand.  Then close your eyes and imagine yourself in a relaxed position somewhere else, such as lying on a familiar, quiet beach.  Imagine as many details as you can to make the imagined scene as realistic as possible.  Pretend you are really there listening to the waves.  Now, very slowly, open your eyes and just let them gaze straight ahead.  Do not attempt to focus on the clock.  Just let it be unfocused in your line of sight.  If you do it right, you may have the experience that the second hand seems to skip a beat or even seems to stand still for a second or two.  Do not think about it or focus your eyes on the clock.  That will destroy the desired effect.  Whether or not you succeed in reproducing this effect, the experience as described seems plausible enough that we may suppose that some people should sometimes have had this experience.  Assuming, then, that the above phenomenon exists, consider the following explanation of why it happens.

    A person's psyche, sometimes called the "observer," can, at least briefly, leave the body and travel at the speed of light to distant places.  So, if you imagine the scene realistically enough, your psyche is thought actually to be there observing the scene at the beach.  While it is gone, your body remains home functioning normally except that there is no "consciousness" receiving the signals from your senses.  The reason the second hand seems to stand still, on this account, is that your consciousness has momentarily left your body, and when it returns, it picks up where it left off.  Your body, meanwhile, continues to follow the physical rhythm of the second hand.  This produces the anomalous experience of seeming to see the second hand stand still while feeling that it should have moved forward.  If one accepts this account, it could also help to explain the possibility of such things as clairvoyance, out-of-body experiences, and reincarnation.