Felt Time

Feeling presence means being self-aware at every moment. We can increase our mindfulness of the present moment through simple exercises, which lead to a more intense feeling of presence. The underlying mechanism in the brain connects elements of perception to temporal units that last between two and three seconds. One can have such an experience through great works of art such as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Alternatively, one can simply relax and focus on one’s breath.

Things were not always better in the “good old days.” On the contrary, time brings with it many improvements. Consider the claims advanced by the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, who draws on statistics to demonstrate that violence between human beings—both in war and individual actions—has progressively decreased over the course of history.¹ Pinker argues that, in addition to the obvious technological advancement of civilization, a less conspicuous kind of improvement has occurred in terms of how we interact with each other. The probability of dying at another’s hands has decreased on the whole over time. Also, human beings today display greater concern about the suffering of other human beings (and animals).²

Another issue, which is significantly less dramatic, also has implications for our purposes: the subject of consciousness has entered the mainstream of research in the natural sciences; the pursuit no longer counts as avant-garde (chapter 6 will offer a theory of consciousness). Leading neuroscientists and psychologists researching the topic at top universities report, with a hint of irony, that one could not come “out of the closet” a mere twenty years ago. In those days, the rule was to hold off on researching consciousness until after tenure. The endeavor counted as esoteric and unsuitable for proper scientific study. Now, in contrast, we have a consciousness boom: every brain researcher who enjoys even moderate renown has an opinion on the issue—or a theory of his or her own.

At first glance, it might not seem to matter much if natural scientists take up the subject of consciousness and work in earnest to understand it. But one should bear in mind the overall history of science and medicine. During the early phase of modern times, dogs were subjected to vivisection without anesthetization; the practice was justified by the belief that animals are soulless automatons. Today, consciousness is generally considered to represent a gradual phenomenon, or a matter of degree; it is acknowledged that many highly developed species of animals possess forms of consciousness and therefore the capacity to suffer. In the 1960s—only fifty years ago—the prevailing view of human beings in scientific psychology was still shaped, along the lines of behaviorism, by the stimulus-response approach. This conception did not grant consciousness a place.

Other positive developments have occurred. For example, cancer clinics oriented on Western medicine diagnose and treat people according to the most up-to-date knowledge in the field. Medical advances are still being charted, and the prospects of surviving cancer are improving. In large part, such success comes from quicker diagnosis, earlier on; at the same time, methods of treatment are becoming more and more precise. As a rule, patients at oncological clinics had been left to confront their fears alone even in the 1990s. Hardly any professional care was given to patients in this regard, and they often experienced an existential crisis. When the possibility of dying becomes the focus of awareness, it can be brutal; fear, depression, rage, and (deluded) hopes may result.³ For such patients, everything changes. Plans for the future, which were made before diagnosis in anticipation of years and decades to come, suddenly shrink to days and weeks. Over the last decade, everyday clinical practice has begun to incorporate psycho-oncological and psychotherapeutic care. People no longer count simply as patients with bodies to be treated; their spiritual needs and desires are taken seriously.

In fact, it should be routine to focus on emotional matters in medical diagnosis and treatment. One need only consider the manifold problems that family doctors face day in and day out: situations of excessive burden at home and the workplace, which lead to “burnout” or chronic pain. It is also necessary to respond—cognitively, emotionally, and motivationally—to physical illness and the adjustments it requires. Serious bodily indisposition is often accompanied by fear, depression, states of disappointment, and feelings of disorientation. Some people manage to deal with the new situation very well and receive emotional support from family and friends. However, this does not occur automatically. In consequence, clinics and rehabilitation facilities should employ methods of psychological therapy as a matter of course. In recent years, one particular way of dealing with difficult and taxing situations has been adopted at training centers and university research institutes: mindfulness meditation.

Mindfulness means concentrating on the present moment—that is, focusing and maintaining attention on experience as it is given, accepting and curious observation of one’s thoughts and feelings without trying to evaluate them. As easy as it may seem at first glance, concentration on the moment is not easy to maintain. Concentrating on the moment, now, means feeling one’s body as well as hearing, seeing, and smelling what is happening in the surrounding world. In the process, thoughts present themselves over and over; we are confronted by memories or, alternately, think about what we want to do next. The mind begins to wander. Impressions from the past as well as plans for the immediate future distract us from the present. As I am sitting here, now, in this room, on a chair, I feel my body; I am concentrating on the here and now, nothing else. If one has not practiced doing so, this condition proves difficult to maintain. Boredom soon arises, unrest seizes the body, or one experiences the wish to scratch or move. Thoughts come and go; one must steer attention back by an act of will time and again. Concentrating on the now becomes taxing. Over and over, it is a matter of freeing oneself from thoughts that surface, however banal they may be (“Do I still have enough milk in the refrigerator?”) and getting back to oneself.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts, has developed the method of “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction” on the basis of Buddhist meditation techniques.⁴ By means of concentration exercises, patients learn to manage their symptoms by accepting them; in the process, they also learn how to alleviate them. Indeed, meta-analysis of many studies has confirmed that patients succeed in learning to deal with pain after mindfulness training.⁵

Mindfulness training involves, on the one hand, strengthening the ability to direct attention to the present moment, to experience both oneself and one’s surroundings more consciously. On the other hand, one’s acceptance of the situation is enhanced; what has been and what is now given is more fully acknowledged, and concern about the future diminishes. Heightened capacity for directing attention reinforces control over one’s thoughts and affects. Likewise, it is possible to learn to view, attentively and from a detached standpoint, the feelings and beliefs that can be overwhelming and take over entirely (e.g., anger at a colleague who has been annoying yet again). With the sources’ underlying affects exposed, one no longer stands at the mercy of reactions that are disproportionate to their cause (as must often be admitted after the fact). A cyclist who has been cut off no longer needs to shout obscenities at the driver. Automatic responses may be overcome. Enhanced readiness to accept one’s own feelings lessens anxiety and stress and produces a greater sense of inner calm. Focus falls on perceiving what is happening with full awareness. Neither what once was nor what might still occur represents an event that is concretely given in the present. All that counts at this precise moment is what is happening now: conscious experience.

The above may strike some readers as rather esoteric. Nevertheless, research on the subject is nothing if not sober and pragmatic. After all, medicine ultimately seeks to treat illness and alleviate symptoms in a verifiable manner (that is, on the basis of what admits empirical-scientific proof). Many studies in medical psychology demonstrate how mindfulness meditation makes it easier to accept pain, prevent stress, reduce the effects of aging on intellectual performance, and decrease withdrawal symptoms in smoking cessation—to list only four fields of application where positive effects have been charted. People trained in mindfulness display improved perception, thinking, and concentration; fear and depression decrease, and the brain exhibits verifiable changes.⁶

But what does it mean to concentrate on the moment? What do we mean when we speak of the “present moment,” the “instant,” or the “now”? Experience has presence. When we see, hear, and feel something, we do so at this very moment: right now. What was only just present belongs to the past in the next moment. In this way, a flow of felt time emerges: we anticipate an event, then we experience it, and shortly thereafter it lies in the past. We experience duration. Conversely, one can also say that we are constantly living in the moment—always exactly now. To be sure, events and our experience of them change in status: first they are expected in the future, then they are experienced fleetingly, and finally they remain only in our memory. All the same, our experiences are tied to the moment. A familiar saying holds that we live from one moment to the next—that we move from one instant to the following one, as it were. However, it might be more appropriate to say that our conscious experience is determined by a constant being-present through which events pass: from futurity, which is not yet fixed, to what is experienced in the moment, and then onward, into the past. Planning for the future as anticipation and recollection as memory always occur now; this is a further reason to grant the time of presence a special status.⁷ Around 400 AD, St. Augustine put the matter as follows: “Perhaps it would be exact to say: there are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things to come.”⁸

Analyzing our experience reveals the extent to which perception is tied to aspects of time: our recognition of temporal succession, rhythm, and movement. What we experience necessarily involves basic temporal qualities that display a certain duration; otherwise we could not grasp them at all. What I am aware of right now is a dynamic image of the world; all that occurs in the moment has a duration.⁹ A melody contains a group of notes, composed according to musical rules. Spoken language can only be recognized as a series of words that are joined together. Individual notes and phonemes also have an allotted span; that is, the components of perception display a certain duration—if they did not, we wouldn’t be able to register them.

Some contemporary philosophers affirm that presence not only has temporal extension, but also that, in keeping with the conception of consciousness advanced by the philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the temporality of “now” includes elements of what has just passed as well as what is about to occur. The American philosopher Dan Lloyd offers the following example: anyone familiar with the Beatles will already expect “Jude” as soon as Paul McCartney’s voice intones “Hey” in the song “Hey Jude.” Even though the word has not yet been voiced, somehow it is already present. Likewise, when “Jude” is heard, the “Hey” remains present, even if vibrations in the air are no longer verifiable.¹⁰ The line “Hey Jude” is perceived as a whole. Even if one concentrates on “Jude,” the word remains inseparably connected to “Hey.” The integration of sonic phenomena is not arbitrarily extended: the components “Hey” and “Jude” are more closely connected than the words “Hey Jude, don’t make it bad.” Moreover, this first line is certainly not copresent with the last lines of the song, which come minutes later. That is, the integration of elements has a natural temporal limit.

Analyses performed by Ernst Pöppel have determined that temporal units lasting approximately three seconds occur in music and poetry across cultures. This is the maximum duration of spoken units comprising a verse in a poem or a song.¹¹ One also finds numerous examples of Pöppel’s three-second-thesis in complex musical motifs. Consider the well-known motif that occurs in the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (G—G—G—E flat). Verses and motifs constitute natural units within works as a whole. In contrast, modern composers who employ drawn-out soundscapes—for example, Luigi Nono—generate particular aesthetic impressions because sounds extend beyond the three-second horizon.¹² According to Pöppel, the three-second rhythm that occurs in art expresses a fundamental cerebral mechanism that structures perception and action into discrete units of “now.”¹³ Needless to say, this does not mean that poets and composers have explicit knowledge that information is processed in durations lasting for three seconds. Rather, on the basis of implicit neurophysiological parameters, it has proven fitting for artists’ aesthetic sensibility to divide lyrical texts and songs into temporal segments of this duration.

It might be objected that such strict temporal division does not mark our standard experience—that these examples, drawn from art, are special. This is true insofar as subtle methods of analysis are required to determine empirically that many instances of behavior and perception are structured in units of three seconds.¹⁴ All the same, we can garner a great deal of evidence from everyday experience that points to a three-second meter for perception; indeed, one can observe as much in oneself.

Most strikingly, perhaps, the metronome—the mechanical device musicians use to keep time by producing a regular series of beats—suggests the way time is integrated in our perception. Viewed in physical terms, the individual beats occur at fixed intervals, and a regular series of events occur for the hearer. However, the hearer automatically groups this sequence (tick—tick—tick—tick …) into auditory units (tick—tock, tick—tock …). Based on the frequency of beats, subjective units emerge: 1–2, 1–2, or 1–2–3, 1–2–3, and so on. From a physical viewpoint, these rhythmic shapes do not exist. By varying the rate at which beats occur, it is possible to determine the upper temporal limit at which a hearer can still hear the pattern of, say, 1–2, 1–2, 1–2. This limit is reached somewhere between two to three seconds. When temporal intervals occur just below this limit, one is still able to hear a grouping of beats. If the interval between beats exceeds three seconds, one registers a series of individual events (1–1–1 …). In other words, the brain’s capacity for temporal integration, which is what combines stimuli from the environment into units, has a maximum duration of three seconds. Likewise, a lower limit exists: if the beats are too fast, a series of events is perceived, but it does not yield accentuation or distinct groupings. When individual beats with an intermediary interval under 250 ms (a quarter-second) occur, one’s capacity for grouping them—say, into patterns of four or five beats—collapses. It follows that the borders for integrating auditory events into perceptible patterns lie between a quarter of a second and somewhere from two to three seconds.

The same order of magnitude holds for the temporal segmentation of vision. One may confirm as much by employing a particular kind of visual object: reversible figures (see figure 3). These are drawings that admit opposing interpretations. A well-known example is the Necker cube, which can be viewed from two perspectives—the upper right or the lower left. Another is the Rubin vase, which can be interpreted either as a vase or as two faces looking at each other. The rabbit-duck illusion provides a further example of a reversible figure.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein used these figures to demonstrate, among other things, that we rely on perspective to understand the world: no single, universally valid description holds; rather, one must consider different viewpoints when describing the world. Varying accounts follow from varying perspectives. Psychologists investigating the processes underlying the reversal of perception have experimental subjects push a button whenever a change in perspective occurs in the course of looking at a figure. As it turns out, temporal segmentation takes place here, too: the switch between different aspects occurs approximately every three seconds.¹⁵ First a duck, then a rabbit, then a duck, and so on.

Figure 3

Examples of ambiguous figures that can be viewed in two different ways (from top to bottom): the Rubin vase, the Necker cube, and the rabbit-duck illusion.

These and other findings point to a mechanism of temporal integration in perception and motor operations that lasts from two to three seconds. This mechanism combines individual events into mental temporal units. The “now,” the moment, has duration. Many experiments have demonstrated that perception occurs in temporal segments. This has also been observed in behavior: units of three seconds occur in verbal and nonverbal communication such as spontaneous discourse, how long a handshake lasts, or, as noted, cultural works such as songs. Our experience of our surroundings does not involve temporally fragmented splinters of perception; instead, it consists of temporally coherent patterns of a certain duration. Our purposeful movements tend to have the same duration. Human communication takes place in a series of segments: the speaker bundles linguistic information into units, and the hearer registers them in the same way. Accordingly, verbal communication unfolds in a constant rhythm of three-second intervals. Because both partners in an exchange interact by means of these segments—that is, share a rhythm with each other—communication can be effortless. Moreover, analyses of interaction between mothers and babies have shown that phonetic units are regularly exchanged, each lasting approximately two seconds.¹⁶ Communication is possible because of the common temporal structure through which human beings synchronize their interaction. One might also say that when communicating with each other, people share the time of the present: a shared temporal platform of presentness is operative in communication.¹⁷

The temporality of the present, which lasts up to a maximum of three seconds, represents the building block of our experience of time. When we say we are living from one moment to the next, we are referring to short intervals of life: now, now, now. In other words, we sense that our life and experience occur in a moving frame of “nowness” that has a particular duration. For all that, this moment, as the temporal building block of perception and action, does not last long enough for us to understand ourselves as agents in a complex world. This feeling of presence—that we are beings acting in the world—cannot be reduced to a span of three seconds. This is where short-term or working memory comes into play, linking several of these moments identified on an elementary level into a greater whole. When writers try to depict stream of consciousness linguistically—say, a character’s impressions, memories, and wishes—the matter cannot be treated fully in windows lasting only three seconds. The stream of consciousness is composed of elementary units of the feeling of now; however, the unity of our experience as actors in the world stretches beyond this limit.

We are endowed with linguistic capabilities and possess a narrative self. To experience and understand who we are, we have stories about ourselves at the ready: who we are, what we do, and what we want. But these stories take time. On a level higher than our experience of the moment, we constantly experience duration, which includes a point of origin and the potential for actions in the future. The feeling of an enduring self with a personal history and the capacity to influence the future defines us as persons.¹⁸

In terms of underlying cognitive processes, working memory forms the temporal bridge between individual moments of lived experience and gives rise to the feeling that one’s own ego exists continuously in the world.¹⁹ Beyond the integration of what has been experienced now, it involves processing experiences and thoughts that are somewhat removed, which range from what happened a few seconds ago up to a few minutes back at most. Thus, it is possible to take up again—and develop—a train of thought that was interrupted by a colleague who came into your office with a “quick” question. Notwithstanding an interruption of, say, thirty seconds, the thought does not disappear. The individual moment occurs now, and it lasts only a short time. All the same, we also experience a form of mental presence containing several moments that have recently occurred and lie within the span of short-term memory.

The patients suffering from anterograde amnesia we encountered in chapter 2 live on a temporal island of mental presence—a realm that extends for only a few minutes. Their short-term memory is not impaired, but they can no longer store in long-term memory the information that was collected in working memory. Normally, such patients do not attract notice in cognitive tests when tasks can be solved within the span of the mental present. However, because certain brain structures have been destroyed, they prove incapable of transferring conscious experiences into long-term memory. A doctor can explain the brutal reality of the neurological disturbance, but the bad mood that seizes the patient as a result goes away after a few minutes: the condition that has been communicated has not been stored in memory. These patients function perfectly well within the temporal framework available to them, even if they cannot store new data in their long-term memory. Working memory constitutes a temporal horizon of mental presence within which the conscious experience of the narrative self is maintained over time, as a continuum. However, the narrative self is composed of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves; it draws from autobiographical long-term memory.²⁰

To be sure, the common desire for a “more aware” life stems from the feeling of being unable to enjoy the moment.²¹ A corollary of the thought that one is not living “in the now” is the feeling that one’s experience lacks intensity. The feeling arises that life is passing us by and we are not “really” living: experiences come and go, yet they lack meaning. We often look forward to a special occasion, but afterward it seems to have occurred without genuine emotional involvement on our part. We did not take in the events as consciously as we had hoped. The intensity of lived experience proves lacking. Only too late do we lament: If only I had lived more fully when I was with someone dear to me (that is, more intensely, savoring the moment). Frequently, it takes a blow of fate to realize just how thoughtless and unaware one’s life has been.

What if I were not to die! What if life were given back to me—what infinity! And it would all be mine! Then I’d turn each minute into a whole age, I’d lose nothing, I’d reckon up every minute separately, I’d let nothing be wasted!²²

In The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky puts these words in the mouth of a prisoner who thinks he has been condemned to death and believes he has only a few minutes left to live. This had actually happened to Dostoevsky himself: he was condemned to death and lived through the apparently final moments of his own life before being pardoned. He was thus writing from personal experience about the last moments of existence: they had passed with “extraordinary clarity” and were marked by attentiveness, even to insignificant details. His perception of time changed in a particular way, too: “He said those five minutes seemed like an endless time to him, an enormous wealth.” Each moment is experienced intensively and time expands—typical signs of an altered state of consciousness. Under different circumstances, one might actually wish for such an experience. States of consciousness like this most often occur in extreme situations of danger (“fight or flight”), but they also happen during moments of intense happiness. Under conditions of the greatest excitement, or when insight occurs in a flash, our attention achieves a maximal degree of keenness.

Situations of this kind are difficult to navigate. “Extreme” athletes such as climbers and parachutists seek out dangerous situations in order to experience such moments of intensity, when time expands. Bungee-jumping can trigger, for a few seconds, a similar physical state. Many people take drugs because they produce, without requiring any additional effort, heightened feelings and perceptions that otherwise do not occur at all—or only approximately—in isolated and highly infrequent situations of life. In contrast, ordinary, everyday existence unfolds between work and domestic activity; under these conditions, it is rather taxing to devote oneself to matters with full awareness. It requires concentration, and one has to maintain attention without being distracted by impulses arising from within or without. In The Idiot, the man who has been condemned to death only to be pardoned cannot keep his informal vow to savor every moment if only he be allowed to live. Despite his near-death experience—which involved utmost lucidity on his part—he did not go on to “live that way at all” but “wasted many, many minutes.” Mindfulness is a capacity that must be learned. It is not unlike playing the piano or speaking a foreign language; every day, at least a little, one must practice.

All the same, the framework of everyday experience provides opportunities to perceive more fully, to live in the moment more intensely. The way that greater mindfulness affects the feeling of presence may be pictured, in part, by considering what it is like to come back home after an extended vacation. Familiar objects, which otherwise do not receive our full attention, acquire an almost magical presence. It seems they are new, even though we know they were always there. After a lengthy absence, the first day back is always special, and we experience daily routines and our surroundings with a particular intensity. The café on the corner or the rain-soaked streets of the city “back home” initially acquire a special significance—until the following day, when everything returns to normal. If only it were possible always to focus like that on life—how much richer and more colorful it would be!

This is the place for the standard cultural critique: noise interfering with a mindful life in the present comes from the growing number of communications and entertainment media: information is not the only thing accessible everywhere and any time—we are, too. Sitting at the computer and simply working on a text, I have access to the World Wide Web and receive email at regular intervals; calls come in on the cell phone and the landline (predictably, the fax machine is silent). The latest news beckons over the Internet (“Who’s winning?”); occasionally, the music playing in the background makes work seem effortless. Then a “must-see” television show comes on. Today, people in industrialized countries are accustomed to eating while watching TV; they also listen to music while jogging. A given activity (say, writing) is always being interrupted. Alternatively, we intentionally pursue several things at the same time—even if none of them receives our full attention. It is understandable, then, that experiences seem less intense: our attention must be divided (or, more precisely, it shifts back and forth quickly) between tasks. Moreover, activities prove increasingly subject to error because focused attention is wanting (it might not have been a good idea to write an email to one’s boss or girlfriend during the show, but now it’s too late). Also, talking on the phone seems hollow when we detect typing sounds at the other end of the line: my conversation partner is chatting on the Internet instead of just speaking with me. (See chapter 6 for a full account of the cultural criticism connected with observations of this kind.)

Where full attention is lacking, intensive experience is impossible. The Stanford literary theorist Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht expresses it as follows: what is missing is presence. Gumbrecht’s account of watching four young people—two couples—sitting together at a restaurant, each of them busy with his or her cell phone, provides an almost comical example of the absence of presence.²³ The attention of these individuals has been thoroughly detached from their bodily presence. Presence is not simply a matter of mental focus; it also concerns the corporeality of the moment. The experience of presence occurs when body and mind, space and time, constitute a unity: here and now. According to Gumbrecht, our fascination with sports derives from the possibility—whether actively, as an athlete, or simply as a spectator—of participating in events that promote becoming “lost in focused intensity.” The twenty-two soccer players on the field are not the only ones following the ball in a state of utmost concentration; when they’re in the world championship, hundreds of millions of human beings are simultaneously spellbound by a decisive penalty kick. Athletic training involves the maximal presence of temporally coordinated movements. Sports, which entail immediate proximity to one’s own body, can give rise to moments of presence. What is more, the athletes who prove most successful are those who manage to let go of past failure and disregard the possibility of similar failures in the future in order to concentrate on the “now” of their movements. Sports psychologists train athletes’ awareness of the present in particular.

Figure 4

Franz von Lenbach, Shepherd Boy (Schack-Galerie, Munich). At least for the moment, the shepherd boy is fully and completely present. He is basking in the warm sun and air, and he feels the soft ground beneath him. All the same, he is alert—as shown by his hand blocking the sun. He can breathe calmly, in three-second intervals. Only occasionally does he lose touch with the here and now, when thoughts of his beloved take him away from sensations of the moment.

Presence that is more comprehensive—incorporating the body, senses, thought, and emotions—may also arise when one is quiet. The Carthusian monk Hugh of Balma (who probably died in 1305) offered advice on how to achieve a beatific vision by means of meditation:²⁴

V.46: Si quaeritur: Quid ergo cogitabo, cum de Deo cogitare non debeam, nec de angelis? dicendum quod solum aspirabit, non cogitabit.

If someone asks: What, then, should I think if I am not allowed to think about God or the angels? He should be told just to breathe, not to think.

Simply by concentrating on our breathing, we can achieve states that are receptive to mystical experiences. Hugh sought to show that keenly refined intellectuality and knowledge—as afforded by theological study, for example—are not enough for the experience of God. Simply paying attention to breathing in and out, on the other hand, opens the way to experience of a higher order. Attentively sinking into the rhythm of breathing, quiet concentration on this physical process, is also a method used in mindfulness meditation. Breathing necessarily involves feeling the presence of the body, for its rhythm unfolds as one moment passes to the next. It is no accident that a period of a single relaxed breath lasts for about three seconds. The span of a breath lasts for the precise duration of a moment of lived experience.