Hubby and I were having our usual post-Lost debrief (I could wish the show was on earlier, so we'd get to bed before midnight! But I digress), and I wondered why Desmond didn't have any ill effects from his post-explosion flashes, and why he remembered the island, plus his flips into the future, and why no nosebleed, compared to this one, where he didn't remember, and it made his brain twitchy.

What we came up with is this.

In the post-blast flash, Desmond's conciousness, his Real Time Brain (hereafter called the RTB) was pulled back into the past, giving him complete knowledge of the Island, and memory of the events he was reliving. No neuro strain there, because he's not trying to live two seperate times at once, he's reliving something with full awareness.

In all his Island flashes, his RTB is being pulled into the future, where he doesn't exist yet, so his brain has no conflict there, either.

But in these flashes, his Past-Time Brain is being pulled into the present, with no awareness, and that's where the brain can't handle it. It's like having two real worlds that the brain is trying to live in, at once. Too much mental conflict, and the brain goes zap.

So what we have in Desmond is someone who's conciousness has shown the ability not only to travel from present to past and future, but be drawn from the past to the present.

Which makes you wonder... did the fact that his past-brain came forward for a time, mean that he was more susceptable to the EMP, and that's what made him hop backwards and forwards now, cause he'd already *done* it?