Experience takes place in the present moment only. The moment is the immediate connection to reality; I always have inner and external experiences only now.
The moment is the only reality, the essential reality in intellectual life. The lived moment is the last, blood-warm, immediate, living, the present incarnate, the totality of the real, the only concrete thing. Instead of losing themselves in the past and future, away from the present, the individual finds existence and the absolute only in the moment. Past and future are dark, uncertain abysses, they are endless time, while the moment can be the sublation of time, the present of the eternal.
Karl Jaspers wrote this in 1919 in his Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (Psychology of worldviews).1 In fact, the moment might be as powerful as described here. But, as Jaspers continues, the moment is only too often used as a mere tool for attaining a future goal. Then the moment disappears among the goal-oriented business of the everyday or as the mind wanders into the sometime and someplace. But the self disappears here, too, because only in becoming conscious of my self in the relevant moment can I experience myself unmediated.
And with this we are already immersed in the contemporary discussion and cultural criticism of the industrialized individual, who, in their future-oriented relationship with clock-watching appointments, is said to have forgotten how to experience the present and thus forces the felt acceleration of their life.2 As the philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes:
If the goal is the sole point of orientation, then the spatial interval to be crossed before reaching it is simply an obstacle to be overcome as quickly as possible. Pure orientation towards the goal deprives the in-between space of all meaning, emptying it to become a corridor without any value of its own. Acceleration is the attempt to make the temporal interval that is needed for bridging the spatial interval disappear altogether.3
In the dominant, functional orientation toward a goal, the present loses its value. We no longer live intensively in the moment, and so life as a whole is lost. Life, both now and in memory, is made up of consciously lived moments. I am present in the moment, meaning I live consciously and intensively, if I give my attention to lived experience. But in retrospect too, life as a whole expands, since it is then full of memories of lived moments. The full life in each felt moment also expands the time intervals in hindsight.
In Jaspers’s words, the point is also that “the moment can be the sublation of time, the present of the eternal.” This is the mystical conception of the moment as the sublation of time in the dissolution of the self into the whole, into the “surrounding world.”4 This idea can also be found in such an approach to life as formulated by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his famous proposition 6.4311 of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”5 This expresses an attitude that is oriented not toward the prospect of life in the future but toward the present in the experience of now. If only we would concentrate on the experience of the present alone, then there would be no death. Ultimately, death is a future event that one cannot experience oneself, since (to echo Epicurus): “While we exist, death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.”6
Of course this is an attitude that cannot be sustained in everyday life. An excessive orientation toward the present can even attract the suspicion of being merely an insistent, impulsive demand for short-term wish fulfillment. The hedonistic orientation toward stimuli is thus to be distinguished from the individual’s personal ability to concentrate completely on the moment and not allow themselves to be distracted by outside stimuli.7 It seems that it is indeed the individual who is not predominantly oriented toward the past (unable to let go), toward the present (impulsively reward-oriented), or toward the future (purely deadline-oriented), but rather who can switch freely between time orientations, who can exercise temporal freedom. We’ll discuss this again later.
Of course, time orientations are interrelated. As the existentialist philosophers, for example, have shown, engagement with one’s individual finitude and the acceptance of one’s future death form the very starting point for being able to conceive one’s life goals more consciously.8 This consciousness of one’s own destiny is the motivation not to just live unthinkingly for the moment, but to live such moments consciously. We are also the people we are now based on our past. I am conscious of myself as a person, nourished by the memories and stories I associate with myself. As someone experiencing in the present, I am characterized by my memory, by my life as a whole as a felt duration of time. As Peter Handke says in his poem, To Duration:
Over the course of millennia in the history of philosophy, people have debated how to conceive of the present moment: as a mathematically describable point in the flow of time, as a simple intersection between the future and the past, or as an extended period of time.10 The philosophical debate begun by Saint Augustine around the year 400 can be summarized as follows: if the present moment has a temporal extension then we can in turn determine a series of points in time on this notional temporal line. However, each of these points in time has other points in time that lie in front of and behind it. From the position of any desired point in time the other points in time represent what is past and what is future, as they lie temporally before or after.11 In this case, however, this temporal line cannot represent the present moment, as it contains all three temporal dimensions. Accordingly, the moment must be without extension.
On the other hand, it can be argued that we still perceive movement and change, the experience of the temporal ordering of two events, as present. A shooting star burning up as a bright movement in the night sky, is experienced by us as a duration of time, albeit short. This lived moment of the shooting star is expanded; only because it is expanded can I perceive any movement at all. Experiencing music does not happen as a series of incoherent sounds. A melody is perceived as an extended unity. Even if the individual sounds in the melody have a temporal sequence, a Before and an After, they are integrated into an audible musical phrase, a whole. The musical experience depends on the perception of the extended gestalt of a melody.
This means, in physics and as an abstract philosophical idea, that the moment is a point in time without extension, but psychologically and phenomenologically it is an extended period of time in one’s present experience.12 Otherwise the perception of change and movement would not be possible. This is how we can interpret the proclamation of Goethe’s Faust: “When to the moment, then, I say: ‘Ah, stay a while! You are so lovely!’” “The moment” refers not to a point without extension in the continuum of time, but to an intensely lived moment in life that lasts. The lived moment is necessarily extended. Let us also remember that just saying the word “now” takes about a third of a second.
In these theoretical discussions, we must take account of two aspects of time consciousness:13 the feeling of time passing and the experience of the present moment. On the one hand, we sense the passing of time. The anticipation of an event now becomes an event which ultimately and irrevocably becomes the past. This is the flow of time. On the other hand, I sense the presentness of experience. The totality of my consciousness feeds on the present-time experience of all my senses, my body awareness (my inner sense) as well as the external senses (visual, olfactory, and auditory impressions). In addition there are my thoughts, my memories as well as the plans I’m making for this evening. This is the internal and external experience of the present. This is what I am now: lived presence that must necessarily be extended in time, so that conscious experience of the temporally developing processes of the internal and external world is possible.
In order to better understand the lived moment and to be able to make it accessible to research, we can operationalize the moment, that is make it “quantifiable.” In this we try to harmonize the subjective (first-person) perspective with the objective (third-person) perspective. This will become important for the further development of the ideas in this chapter. We are trying to record the phenomenon of the moment using the objective measurements of psychology and the neurosciences. This is a question of identifying and quantifying the processes that underlie the feeling of presence. One fundamental question is how long the felt, present moment persists—what is its duration. To do this, we can distinguish at least three different levels of the moment of experience, each of varying durations: (1) mental presence, (2) the experienced moment, (3) the functional moment. It will become apparent that the colloquial words that have so far been used synonymously, namely moment, instant, now, present, and presence, can probably be assigned to varying levels. The first two concepts, moment and instant, are better suited to the description of shorter durations of time, and the last two, present and presence, to longer durations of time.
An upper temporal limit applies to the duration of mental presence—the longest possible duration of our sense of being present. I can only describe as present what is now available to me as an internal or external experience. Anything that has just been experienced and thought and has not yet been forgotten is still present. In other words, all thoughts that can be operated mentally within the span of working memory are present. This span is essential for the narrative understanding of self, the stories I tell about myself when I activate my memories: who I am, how I have developed, and what I intend to do in the future.14 Using experiments, psychologists can assess the span of working memory—the temporal window for the short-term retention of things such as numbers, words, and visual symbols. In this regard, independent of the situation or the nature and quantity of the stimulus, we talk about a short-term memory capacity of between several seconds and perhaps half a minute. But these are only rough guidelines. In the lived presence, feelings, thoughts, and sense impressions are integrated into a whole, forming me as active agent of a physical and mental self. The consciousness of the totality of the whole here and now—my experience of self physically and temporally extended—is mental presence.15
This account corresponds with the analyses of internal time consciousness developed by the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl (1859–1938).16 All experience has an underlying temporal structure that consists of the components of Urimpression, retention, and protention. While the Urimpression is what has been perceived just now (let’s say the now-heard sound in a melody), this current impression nevertheless remains simultaneously linked to the only just heard elements of perception, which slowly slide into the past as retentions but are still co-presently experienced as remembered components. In this way the now-heard sound is linked to the sounds heard earlier to form a melody. Protention, by contrast, is the anticipation of an event that is about to begin. If I am familiar with the piece of music, there is a powerful anticipation of what is about to be heard. The rules of musical harmony also co-determine what we think we’re about to hear. We might define protention as openness to what is coming.
The fact that protention is not merely a mental phenomenon but is “embodied” in us is shown, for example, in the backward jolt we feel when stepping onto a stationary escalator. Our attitude of anticipation is geared toward the stairs moving upward. Although we can clearly see that the escalator is stationary, the surprising effect of the felt backward movement occurs because we anticipated the opposite movement both bodily and motorically. In recent conceptualizations in neuroscience, perception has been described as a predictive, goal-oriented process directed toward the very near future. Perception as “predictive coding” means that based on prior experience the brain constantly makes predictions about what might happen. The goal thereby is to minimize surprise, defined as the discrepancy between prediction (what might happen) and actual sensory input (what then actually happens). This discrepancy essentially amounts to more or less “prediction error,” which the organism aims to minimize in order to reduce energy consumption. If we are correct in our prediction, we don’t have to adjust our behavior. Accordingly, normal waking consciousness can be associated with constant short-term predictions.17 Intrinsically, the moment always consists of the three modes of time, which cannot be considered each on its own but form a mutually defining lived presence (see table 2.1). The musical note we are hearing now is influenced by what has already been played and by what is expected.18 Through these three complementary components, time consciousness of the lived moment forms a temporal field.19
Table 2.1 Three forms of present-time experience, their temporal duration, and the related phenomena and processes
Forms of present-time experience
Temporal duration
Phenomena, processes
Functional moment
Milliseconds:About 30 ms to 300 ms
Link between two or more events without perception of temporal order
Experienced moment
A few seconds:Between 300 ms and 3 or more seconds, approximately
Rhythmic units in the case of the metronome; frequency in the case of bistable images; synchronization of action and event
Mental presence
Between several seconds and a few minutes
Short-term memoryWorking memoryNarrative self
In the language of experimental psychologists, mental presence means that events that are initially anticipated, then perceived now, are eventually lost as memory traces, as the seconds are passing and new experiences are continually happening. Only a certain quantity of experiences can be kept present at any one time; very important experiences remain, but with time most disappear, as they can no longer be retained in the working memory.
Research also suggests another, shorter temporal moment. It seems to be the case that perception and action function optimally in units of up to around 3 seconds in duration (with some variation across phenomena). Perception is accumulated into units of this approximate duration, with the consequence that individual events are experienced as belonging to one moment in time. Acoustic temporal units, such as in the case of the metronome, where the individual beats are automatically assembled in groups of “one-two” or “one-two-three,” exemplify this process of integration. If the intervals between two metronome beats are longer than approximately 2 seconds, the ability to integrate fails, and only individual, disconnected beats are heard. If the task is to accompany the metronome beats using one’s own movements, the ability to accurately accompany the stimuli fails if the intervals between the beats are longer than 2 seconds.
In the case of visual bistable images such as the Necker cube (in which one can view a cube from two different perspectives; see figure 2.1) or the Rubin vase (in which one sees either a vase or two faces), the visual aspect alternates approximately every 2 or 3 seconds (now I see the vase, now I see the faces, etc).
Figure 2.1 The Necker cube is a bistable image, which can be viewed “from above” and also “from below” and which can be used to investigate changes in the present-time experience.
As research carried out by the neuroscientist Ernst Pöppel has shown, a great deal of empirical data demonstrates how human perception and action are automatically grouped into units of this duration, and are thus associated with the feeling of present-time consciousness.20 This temporal structure can also be found in language and music. Commonly repeated actions, such as people shaking hands in an everyday encounter or athletes and trainers hugging each other at sporting events, demonstrate cross-culturally an approximate duration of up to 3 seconds. Perception and action are integrated into a whole within a temporal window of this duration; they take place in these present-time moments. Both verbal and nonverbal interactions also take place in interpersonal, shared present-time units that have this temporal duration: shared experience is made possible by the synchronization of two or more people who are anchored in time and interact on this shared temporal platform of an experienced moment.21
In the 1950s, the artist Karl Otto Götz (who died in 2017 at the age of 103) developed a painting technique in which paintings could be created in an average of 3 to 4 seconds. Götz broke down his painting movements into three subunits of approximately 2, 1.5, and 1 seconds. Each of the three movements stands for a part of the creative process; all three are, however, connected in the larger unit of 3 to 4 seconds. Götz himself suggested that behavioral scientists and psychologists should research the processes that underlie painting. According to what we have already seen here, Götz’s painting processes comprise the creation of present moments that form our experience and action. Karl Otto Götz devoted himself to his internal impulses toward movement in the “now” (see figure 2.2).
There also exists a lower temporal limit for the conscious perception of individual present-time moments, a limit that is defined by perception’s capacity for temporal resolution. For example, metronome beats can only be grouped into rhythmic units if the individual beats are presented as not significantly faster than a frequency of 3 Hz; otherwise only a fast sequence of beats without emphasis is heard.
To the human ear, therefore, rhythmic units occur only in temporal intervals of between a third of a second and 3 seconds. Equally, it is no longer possible to synchronize finger movements with the metronome if the frequency exceeds 3 Hz and is therefore too fast. If people are instructed to press repeatedly on a key in their own personal tempo that is comfortable for them, what results is a “tapping” tempo of approximately 2 to 3 Hz. In the case of a maximum “tapping” tempo, carried out by people with a movement frequency of between 5 and 7 Hz, one does not experience a temporally individual key-pressing, as these movements happen too quickly.
This lower limit for conscious present-time experience in a series of events indicates that in the case of shorter intervals the temporal sequence can no longer be perceived. As experimental research shows, there are certain interval limits below which the temporal order of events cannot be detected. For two short stimuli, temporal order thresholds in the region of 20 to 60 milliseconds seem to exist across modalities. If two auditory or visual events take place at an interval below this threshold, a test subject cannot recognize the temporal sequence—the two events are blurred and cannot be placed in a temporal order.22 In order to be able to detect a sequence of three or more acoustic or visual stimuli in their correct sequence, the individual events must take place at intervals of at least 300 milliseconds.23 These thresholds provide clear proof of the temporal windows of perception, which integrate events in the environment into functional moments. Within these windows no temporal order can be detected. The stimuli are combined into present-time moments without the perception of a temporal sequence.
If we talk about an experienced or a lived moment, then we mean the moment of just a few seconds that structures our perception. This is the moment of the “present-time” experience. This experienced moment is embedded in the mental presence of my self, as a narrating, commentating self. It is the consciousness of my self as a perceiving self.
Mindfulness and Time
What impact does heightened attention have on the moments of experience? Does subjective time actually expand through intensified present experience? In the aforementioned sense, a higher degree of mindfulness in experience would on the one hand influence the felt moment, and on the other hand lead retrospectively to time expansion. When I experience more intensively now, I also have more memory content. From research in experimental psychology we know that a greater concentration of memory content stretches experienced periods of time. By contrast, temporal intervals that are less filled with memory, because of the monotony of always experiencing the same things, appear much shorter—simply not lived.24
Being “mindful” in everyday language means taking care in what is happening, a particular kind of attention—the opposite of carelessness or inattention. The concept has gained a further meaning in the last few decades through the emergence of notions associated with “mindfulness.” The medical professor and teacher of mindfulness meditation Jon Kabat-Zinn describes the altered experience of time through the attainment of mindfulness in daily life as follows:25 “The … way to slow down the felt sense of time passing is to make more of your ordinary moments notable and noteworthy by taking note of them.” In relation to the passing of time in the moment: “The tiniest moments can become veritable milestones.” And in retrospect: “Your experience of time would slow time down.” The notion of mindfulness, as Kabat-Zinn uses it, has its origin in Theravada Buddhism. In Pali, the Central Indian literary language, the corresponding concept meaning “mindfulness” is sati, which means “awareness of the moment.” The word is derived from the verb sarati, which means “to remember.”26 As we can see, this derivation of mindfulness, on the one hand from the experienced moment and on the other from memory, corresponds with our temporal concepts of lived, present time and retrospective, remembered time. If I am more intensely aware of the moment, then I also can remember better. This is how time expands.
Mindfulness can be exercised using forms of meditative practice. In the context of Buddhist traditions, meditation is embedded in wide-ranging spiritual teachings and practices. Due to cultural transfer and secularized usage, mindfulness meditation in the West concentrates on the method of experiencing the present moment consciously without judging or making value judgments.27 Accordingly, the two central elements of mindfulness practice are (a) presence (the awareness of the present moment) and (b) acceptance (refraining from judgment). These two aspects are inextricably linked in the practice of mindfulness exercises. While the meditator opens up to the present moment and concentrates, for example, on his or her breathing, thoughts and feelings come and go. If one were to attend to them, one would lose the experience of presence. The world of thought keeps us separate from the present experience. Ultimately, through these exercises, one learns how to deal with one’s emotions, as one gets to know them better and no longer pushes them away. One is no longer helplessly at the mercy of emotions when overcome by anger or embarrassment, for example, because the accepting distance from one’s emotions helps to disrupt the automatic emotional reaction.
The acceptance of one’s own thoughts and emotions also underpins the ability to focus on the present moment; with time, control over mind wandering increases. The process as a whole can be called the self-regulation of attention. This ability lies in not being distracted by emotionally freighted thoughts—“that was a great evening with friends yesterday”; “tomorrow I must get round to doing that darned tax return”—but rather returning to the fixed anchor of the present moment in the event of mind wandering.28
In this context, the choice of the anchor in the present is in no way random. Directing attention to the body and physical processes (such as breathing) supports the novice as they maintain their orientation toward the present. Through the sensation of one’s immediate physicality, the feeling of presence is heightened. Ultimately, we are always anchored in the here and now by our embodiment. In focusing on the body, the conscious self is inseparably linked to the feeling of present temporality as embodiment extended over time.29 Over the course of time and with increasing practice, if the act of focusing takes place more and more effortlessly, other kinds of attention regulation can also be chosen, culminating in free-floating attention paid to perceived moments without focusing on an explicit object.30
Mindfulness is an individual capacity, but the ability to practice it can be acquired through meditation techniques. For the science of consciousness, both aspects are of great interest, as they allow us to understand the conditions for measuring the experience of time and the present moment. As research into mindfulness meditation shows, various components of attention improve through the regular and persistent practice of meditation. While many effects can be attained only though continuous practice over a period of years, some of the positive changes appear even after just a few days, as scientific studies show: the capacity (a) for sustained attention, that is, to react quickly and precisely to different visual stimuli over an extended period of time of approximately half an hour,31 and (b) for focused attention, that is, not being distracted by disruptive stimuli.32 Standardized computer tests showed that attention regulation—a central element in the mindfulness method—is improved after intensive meditation training. In this case, the working memory span is of particular interest, since it provides a metric for mental presence. Standardized tests are used to assess the ability to operate using abstract symbols for a duration of more than a few seconds—that is, not immediately forgetting them. Studies using such tests have shown that working memory performance can be improved through mindfulness meditation.33 On the whole, the research results consistently indicate that as a result of meditation training focused attention ability is heightened, mind wandering during assigned tasks is reduced, and working memory capacity is increased.34 To this end, mental presence is increased through meditation techniques.
Systematic research into mindfulness meditation and time perception is still in its infancy. Just twenty years ago research into consciousness was generally frowned upon. Systematic scientific research into the effect of meditation on consciousness has existed for just over ten years; since then studies have been published even in mainstream scientific journals. Regarding effects on the experienced moment, an important first step was made by a group of researchers whose results were published in 2012. The question was formulated in the title of the study:35 “How Long is Now for Mindfulness Meditators?” Thirty-eight experienced meditators from various schools, all working with a focus on mindfulness, were compared with 38 people who had no experience of meditation techniques. The minimum experience required was regular meditation over a period of five years. Under relaxed conditions, while looking at a Necker cube that can in principle be seen from two aspects, each person was asked to press a button every time the perspective changed.
On average, a change in perspective happened every 4 to 5 seconds. In this respect the two groups did not differ significantly from each other. In a second round, the test subjects were asked to “hold” the perspective for as long as possible before it changed “of its own accord.” In this case, a clear and statistically significant group effect occurred. The meditation group could hold the perspective of the Necker cube for almost 8 seconds on average, while the control group could only hold it for 6.2 seconds. This research was an initial study, which clearly leaves many unanswered questions that must be explored further. If the length of time of seeing one perspective of a bistable image is linked to the experienced moment—as presumed in theory—then these results suggest that experienced meditators can expand their experience of the moment at will.36
Further proof of the thesis that focusing on the moment leads to subjective time expansion was provided by a research group at the University of Kent in England. In this study, a group of people without any specific experience of meditation was played a 10-minute CD recording of a meditation induction through concentrating on the breath, while a control group listened to a 10-minute extract from an audio recording of The Hobbit.37 In each case, before and after the relevant intervention (meditation versus audio recording), the test subjects estimated durations of time in the range between 400 milliseconds and 1.6 seconds. A relative subjective time expansion effect was shown in the meditation group but not in the Hobbit group. This is a very surprising effect. The test subjects were students without evident experience of meditation, and a 10-minute meditation was enough to achieve a relative subjective lengthening of duration. Evidently, for a short time after the meditation the students entered into a more mindful state, leading to subjective time expansion.
In a study of 63 students carried out in Munich and Freiburg from 2012 to 2013, the link between mindfulness and the experience of time was surveyed.38 Questionnaires—tools for self-assessing everyday mindfulness—were used to measure individual mindfulness in everyday life.39 The questions concerned the awareness of external events, of consciousness of the body, and of emotions. As discussed before, mindfulness addresses conscious presence in the here and now with an attentive, accepting attitude toward events, that is without immediately judging events as “good” or “bad.” One of the two questionnaires used in the study was the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI) created and validated by Harald Walach, Stefan Schmidt, and their colleagues.40 The questions in the FMI can be organized according to the two main components of mindfulness, “presence” and “acceptance.” Those with a high degree of “presence” are “open to the experience of the moment,” “perceive how emotions are expressed in their body,” or “feel in their body when eating, cooking, cleaning or talking”—that is they have a lived, physically conscious experience of the moment. A high degree of “acceptance” is demonstrated by those who are “in contact with unpleasant, painful sensations and emotions” or who are “conscious of the fleeting nature and transience of their experiences.” As a second questionnaire on the understanding of mindfulness the Comprehensive Inventory of Mindfulness Experience (CHIME), developed by Claudia Bergomi, Wolfgang Tschacher, and Zeno Kupper, researchers at the University of Berne, was used.41 Using simple, everyday questions, the inventory identifies eight dimensions of mindfulness, which are related to internal and external experiences, to the openness to experience, and to acceptance and being nonjudgmental.
The results of the study indicate that students who consider themselves more mindful are more accurate and emotionally stable in the temporal organization of their behavior. The students who describe themselves as more mindful are less impulsive and more concerned with the future.42 These results are only contradictory at first glance. Shouldn’t more mindful people be more focused on the present moment and thus less oriented toward the future? These results can, however, be interpreted in terms of greater temporal freedom. Those people who consider themselves more mindful are more conscious of their perception in the moment and of their emotions. Accordingly, they are more strongly oriented toward the present. This is the ability to experience the moment intensively. But they do not “cling” impulsively to the now, expressed as a drive for immediate gratification. More mindful people are less oriented toward stimuli, that is, they can alternate between controlled attention to present experiences and necessary planning for important future events, as required.43 This is precisely the difference between stimuli-oriented attachment to presence with a lack of freedom, and the ability to focus and give stable attention to present experience.
Interestingly, in time estimation tests the students who describe themselves as more mindful are also more accurate when judging duration in the temporal range of milliseconds and several seconds than those who identify as less mindful. They identify smaller differences in temporal duration between two acoustic stimuli and more accurately reproduce temporal intervals by pressing a button, doing so with smaller deviations from the specified duration. This ability can be attributed to stronger control of attention given to the external stimuli to be estimated. Mindfulness training improves performance not just in time perception tasks, but also generally in many perceptual and intellectual tasks.44
These research results account for the changes in the experienced present moment that occurs in people with heightened mindfulness. From these initial results we can infer that heightened mindfulness and presence leads to an expansion of subjective time. Subjective time is modulated by functional states of mindfulness. These states can be described as (1) attention regulation (remaining in the here and now; no mind wandering), (2) consciousness of the body (awareness of bodily self), and (3) emotion regulation (nonavoidance and acceptance of emotions).45 These three functional states are also causally linked to the modulation of temporal experience:46 (1) A heightened attention to time leads to an expansion of subjective duration. We often become painfully aware of this during periods of waiting, when we are watching the time, which passes so very slowly toward the longed-for arrival of the event. (2) Body awareness: When searching for the mechanisms of time perception, physical processes were identified as a possible factor in the subjective feeling of time. For example, under sensory deprivation in the floating tank, where one floats in body-temperature salt water, one neither sees nor hears anything. Even under such circumstances the immediate consciousness of the passing of time remains intact. Indeed one’s own physicality cannot be turned off, and the experience of one’s own time becomes more intensive. (3) Through the admission of emotions the sense of presence of the felt moment increases, resulting in a heightened consciousness (of self).
If a heightened presence results in moments that are experienced more intensively, then time should expand retrospectively as well. If I look back over my life as a whole, the experiences create a feeling of duration. According to the observations discussed here, more mindful people should experience a lengthening of previous periods of time. Accordingly, life as a whole would expand. The first empirical proof of this to the extent of minutes was provided by Romanian psychologists in 2013.47 A group of students underwent 30 minutes of mindfulness training every day for a week. In a test situation, this group estimated the subjective duration of two entertaining BBC documentary films lasting exactly five minutes, and the waiting time preceding them. Only after the film ended were the test subjects asked about their felt time. The group of students with mindfulness training estimated both periods of time as passing subjectively slower than the control group of students who had not undergone the training. Thus the period of time expanded retrospectively for the meditators by contrast with the nonmeditators.
But what happens in the case of really long periods of time that I experience as my lifetime? In this case too, a study completed in 2014 and conducted in Freiburg and Munich by Stefan Schmidt, Karin Meissner, and me showed clear results.48 Involved in the study were 40 women and men with many years of experience in mindfulness meditation. On average they had been meditating for 10 years, and in the last eight weeks they had regularly meditated for seven hours every week. The selected control subjects without experience of meditation were of the same gender and the same age (on average 40 years old) and had a comparable education. Through simple questions, they were asked about their sense of the course of time in general (how time passes), and about the previous periods of a week, a month, a year, and the last 10 years. In addition, several questions also elicited information on the everyday experience of time pressure and the feeling of time expansion.
The results can be summarized as follows: experienced meditators experience less time pressure and feel more time expansion. These findings correspond with the general sense of time passing more slowly for the meditators. When asked about temporal intervals in the past, they gave evidence of time expansion in the relevant periods of their lives—in particular during the last week and the last month—by comparison with the nonmeditating people we surveyed. According to these results, life as a whole passes more slowly and past periods of time expand for people who live mindfully.
Beyond the Moment to Timelessness
People who have experienced extreme manifestations of extraordinary states of consciousness often report a radical alteration in their sense of time. As we saw in chapter 1, this can occur under the influence of hallucinogens—mescaline, LSD, or psilocybin. People with near-death experiences recount afterward that time and space had lost all meaning. In rare moments of mystical experience this event can overcome an individual—the feeling of being at one with the world while at the same time space and time dissolve. These experiences are very important for understanding the formation of consciousness of self, for they show how closely related our consciousness is to the perception of time, space, and body. The science of consciousness can learn a lot through controlled studies of these aspects of extraordinary states of consciousness.
To this end we can also interview and test experienced meditators. As a result of years spent practicing contemplation, their self-perception is particularly heightened. This ability makes it possible for scientists to combine their introspection with behavioral data metrics and the related brain activity—in the truest sense of the word, neurophenomenology.49 In other situations, introspection is considered an unreliable method because test subjects often have difficulty verbalizing their experiences. By contrast, in this context people with decades of experience in meditation techniques, and, consequently, heightened attention and self-perception, can provide valuable insights.
In one study, the Israeli researchers Aviva Berkovich-Ohana and colleagues looked at twelve experienced mindfulness meditators (with an average of 16.5 years’ experience), examining them while they were in a meditative state and measuring their brain activity using MEG (magnetoencephalography).50 Brain activity in particular within the theta band (with a frequency of between 4 and 7 Hz) was affected by various states of consciousness. During meditative states, activity in areas of the brain that are linked to the processing of the sense of body increased. The respective states of consciousness were described phenomenologically in retrospect by the meditators as, for example: “the sense of time and space became hazy,” “time lost its linear form,” or “time didn’t exist.” As these and other descriptions show, the sense of time and timelessness varied among the meditators. Perhaps only a few will have had a “real” feeling of timelessness (see our discussion below). But this study is a further building block in the research and demonstrates how activity in areas of the brain that play a role in the sense of body is modulated by the conscious alteration of time.
Meditation instructors teach that progress toward the sense of timelessness is made by concentrating on the present moment. An aptitude for contemplative meditation that has been obtained through training over many years leads to states that are hardly ever accessible to people without such training. In everyday life we experience our body situated in space and moving through time. In this context, are space and time, the two basic experiences of “pure intuition”—as Immanuel Kant called them in his Critique of Pure Reason—supposed to simply dissolve? We asked the meditation teacher Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt, who can look back on 35 years’ experience of spiritual meditation.51
Together with Stefan Schmidt, who is engaged in the scientific study of mindfulness meditation at the University of Freiburg, I met him to discuss this. For 21 years Lhündrup Borghardt has lived the life of a Buddhist monk in a monastery in France, during which time he has meditated for 12 hours every day for 10 years.52 During the other years as well, Lhündrup Borghardt meditated for several hours every day. Thus, over the years, he has accrued a total of approximately 50,000 hours’ experience of meditation. Today he teaches meditation in several countries. In our conversation we talked about understanding the altered experiences that a master of meditation such as he can consciously induce, in relation to the sense of time and the experience of self. In particular our topic was timelessness and the dissolution of self. Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt’s ideas (TLB) are reproduced below in italics. The state of “awakening” describes the highest stage in the spiritual experience of meditation that one can attain. In these discussions we touched upon many aspects, which cannot all be described here exhaustively. The focus is on the self and its time.
TLB: Timeless awareness during meditation is an awakening. It has neither beginning nor end. This timeless time is plunging into a being in which no comparison takes place. In comparing there are always relationships between before and after. It is timeless presence without a sense of self, without observers. Perception and perceiver are one. It is about merging into the visual or auditory impression. You lose yourself in hearing and seeing, as the experience of hearing and seeing needs no observer, no self.
TLB: But how do we know that this state has been attained? If this experience is described as a process, then that is not the state of absolute presence, as time exists in it. For example, there is the mystical experience, being at one with the world, that approaches the state of awakening. It is a liberating feeling of spiritual peace. But an observer is present (a self), who perceives the migration of the sun or the movements of animals (time). This peaceful and relaxed experience still contains the dual consciousness (subject-object split). Ultimately a “self” experiences that they are at one with the world. Thus this sense of unity still has an observer. This kind of mystical feeling can also be produced by drugs. In the preliminary stages of meditation, too, one is astonished by the mutability of time, which can however still be experienced.
According to this, the mystical experience with a subject (self) is a preliminary stage of timeless awakening. In the mystical experience the observer is still located in space and time. However, he or she has the feeling of merging, of being at one with the world. By contrast, in the state of being completely at one with the world, the self and time disappear completely. There is only perception, not the perceiving individual.
TLB: In awakening observers forget themselves, as they merge into perception and the duality of subject and object disappears. The knowledge of selflessness and timelessness only happens in retrospect; it is accessible subsequently. The timeless state cannot be described better than through the concept of “timelessness.” Being at one with space is equally difficult to describe; it is being without a middle and borders. If we integrate this experience into everyday consciousness, a “vibrating basic awareness” is perceived, a feeling of living presence arises, a preparedness for sensual experience without entering the empirical world. The awareness lies in itself. There is no seeing, although our eyes are open. It is as if perception is transparent, all is the space of awareness, all is pure consciousness.
This description recalls Immanuel Kant’s epistemological concept of “pure intuition.” The pure intuition of time and space exists before any experience (empirical world), and it structures sensual experience both temporally and spatially (see figure 2.3). To a certain extent pure sense data are embedded in a temporal system and in the three dimensions of space.
Figure 2.3 This picture of a sunset over the sea recalls paintings by Mark Rothko. In his paintings, Rothko tried to visualize meditative experiences in which time and space dissolved.
Essentially our experience contains both components, the empirical and pure intuition, content and form. As TLB describes it, the pure spatial experience in the state of contemplative “awakening” is possible without reference to the empirical contents of sensory experience. Yet this pure experience is neither temporal nor spatial.
TLB: The orientation of seeing and hearing is there, without a substantive visual or auditory impression being present. In addition the feeling of self is missing; it’s an experience without a center. It is immediate perception without emotional and cognitive filters. Normally, there’s an experience of self that absorbs a lot of energy, the wishes, ideas, and hopes that we cherish (the filters of perception). In the state of awakening one is in harmony with the situation without being related to the center (without self). One can imagine this in stages, being a bit like the experience of flow, when one merges completely immersed in one’s activity.
In the experience of flow, when one is completely given over to an activity, whether writing, playing music, or sport, the experience of self is greatly reduced. In the flow one also forgets the time and is surprised afterward how much time has passed.
TLB: What we learn from awakening it that there is no self-center in perception and action. Anyone who has ever had this experience can no longer go back to the old belief in a self as the center. In this context we should perhaps make a distinction between the individual “center-self” and the “networked self.” In the notion of the center-self we proceed from an essence of being which is “self.” This “self” wants, hopes, and desires. This is the personal self, which makes emotional and cognitive assumptions about the world and interprets it. In this, people are very different. The networked self, in which people are very similar, is not a self in the individual sense. This is about the self-functions of responsiveness and empathetic behavior, of the capacity for love. These capacities are in us all; we are not so very different from one another in this regard. There are parallel qualities of a networked self without a self-center which allow us to do the right thing in harmony with the world. These qualities can have an increasingly free and strong effect, when not so many blockages exist anymore. The fixing sense of self dissolves in the flowing functioning of the interplay of innate qualities. The individual then becomes more free from anxiety, more concentrated, more related to reality, and more empathetic. Very importantly, it is not a self that exists in reality but the idea of a concrete self that dissolves.
TLB’s accounts with regard to notions of self complement ideas put forward by the philosopher Thomas Metzinger, who proposes the thesis that there is no center-self, as his book title explains: Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity.53 Metzinger’s view is that there is no static “self” as a permanent entity or substance. Rather, he says, mental processes continually create a self-model, the illusion of a “center-self.” Driven by bodily signals, this is a physical and spatial anchor for the phenomenal self. Brain research shows that alongside a sequential processing of bodily and environmental stimuli there exist many parallel lines of processing without any localizable integration center. Rather, the parallel, spatially distributed neuronal processing modules are linked together to form a whole, in which they are coded as operating “simultaneously.” This present-time linking of the processes might be the mechanism that ensures the conscious experience of a self in the present moment. Through this we have an idea of a self, a self-model of the “I.”
TLB: The way to awakening is via presence in the moment. It is the open awareness without controlling entities that evaluate and judge and thereby create distance once again. My experience with meditation groups is that people find access to this open awareness relatively quickly. It is an atmosphere, which enables you to experience trust and to loosen the inhibiting control mechanisms. When that happens, the way to presence is via the six senses. But in presence something else takes place. It is a change from “what happens” to “how it happens.” The “what” orientation refers to the object. The “how” orientation refers to the quality. How does what I experience have an effect on me? A question I often put to students is: “What is being like?” Not, “how is it for you?” but “how is it now?” Through the presence of the “how” orientation without an observer the presumed self is suffused with awareness. The perceiving individual and what is perceived become one. Being is then clear and present. It is nothing that I might grasp. It is inconceivable. Being. It is the emptiness of which Buddhists often speak. This constitutes the timeless quality. In every experience there lies the timeless dimension, the quality of awareness—even now as we speak and hear. That is the mystery of life. But it can’t be conceived in words. When the spirit dissolves in this inconceivable quality—that is awakening.
In our conversation, Stefan Schmidt brought up the following idea: experience is primarily timeless. Only the introduction of an observer introduces time. This is the ability to distance oneself from the now, to be mentally elsewhere, to compare. This leads to the creation of time consciousness. TLB added: We need the sense of time, because we want to communicate, because we make plans; it is something meaningful, but it is not already part of experience.
Certain species of animal also have a time consciousness. These are the species to which we also attribute self-consciousness and a theory of mind. Theory of mind is the ability to adopt the subjective perspective of a fellow member of your species. Crows, great apes, elephants, dolphins, and whales have a consciousness of themselves and they also plan for the future.54 They are able to disengage themselves mentally from the present situation and wait for an event, if it brings them advantages. The self-conscious observer compares the present situation with one imagined in the future. Research proves the close link between consciousness of self and time consciousness. Phenomenologically oriented philosophers also argue that the self is created in reference to the future and the past. I am conscious of my self through my memories of my self and through my plans.55
When we begin meditating, we become particularly conscious of time. We have no distractions; we are completely concentrated on ourselves and the present situation. Bodily presence becomes particularly clear to us when we adopt the posture of meditation. We are completely body and self. In this situation, time passes quite slowly for the beginner—also because we perceive ourselves in reference to the future, knowing that we must remain in this position for 15 more minutes.
TLB: The more one gives up the need for control and orientation, the more intensively one enters a region where time no longer plays a role. Time plays an important role for people, as it is concerned with control. If I no longer pay attention to time, then I no longer pay attention to the self in time. If I am completely relaxed, if I really don’t care how long the meditation lasts, this is the best requirement for entering deep contemplation.
Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological analyses employ the term Urimpression, or primordial impression, introduced early in this chapter. The Urimpression of the present-time experience is always embedded in retention (awareness or immediate memory of what has just happened) and in protention (the expectation of what might be about to happen). In this notion, we cannot understand the Urimpression separately from retention and protention. What we experience “now” is always already dynamically interwoven with the two other modes of time. The sound that resounds now is influenced by previously heard sounds, and these units of sound influence my anticipation of sounds to come. The perception now is characterized by this expanded temporal field. According to phenomenology, I am not in a position to disengage myself from this temporal field; the flow of time of what is about to happen and what has just happened are part of my present perception.56
Against this backdrop, meditative awakening can be described as immediate contact with the Urimpression, in which the flow of time doesn’t occur. It is the direct contact with the now of perception. Perception is completely in the now and without an observer, without a self.
A dissolution of body boundaries during meditation actually can lead to greater happiness, as a recent study by the French psychologist Michael Dambrun has shown.57 The study participants were not experienced meditators but regular students at the university. In the study, they either followed a 21-minute audio tape with a body-scan meditation instruction or just spent the same time resting. In comparing the two groups it became clear that those students who had meditated felt their body boundaries to a lesser degree and they felt happier afterward than the control group. During a body-scan meditation one is guided to focus successively on different parts of the body. Initially, one feels a stronger sense of the body—and of the passage of time. But after a while one loses the sense of bodily self and of time, entering a meditative flow where the feeling of a self is less dominant and happiness increases.
How can one understand the link between less selflessness and happiness? In our pursuit of happiness, we are often self-centered. I want this, I want that. This hedonistic principle can lead to pleasurable states when I am able to consume. But it can also lead to unpleasant situations when I do not get what I want. The striving for personal pleasure therefore leads to fluctuating states of happiness depending on the contingencies of life—factors I may not be able to control. Relying too strongly on these self-related but not necessarily controllable external rewards can easily lead to unhappiness. In their recent happiness model, which they call the Self-centeredness/Selflessness Happiness Model,58 Michael Dambrun and Matthieu Ricard argue that self-centeredness develops when we take our own condition to be more important than the condition of others; the self is experienced with sharp boundaries and as separate from the others and the world. A more selfless existence, in contrast, is based on the feeling of a weaker separation of oneself from the surrounding world and a greater connection with other people. Selflessness also comes with beneficial emotions such as compassion and love. The self-centered individual is a static self with rigid desires and regularly occurring disappointments. The “selfless self” is engaged with others and results from a dynamic state of acceptance of what comes and goes in life—resulting in more happiness.
Daydreams and Mind Wandering
One major difficulty for beginners and advanced practitioners of meditation are thoughts that appear and persist, disappear again and are replaced by new ones. Thoughts about yesterday and tomorrow interrupt our attention on the here and now, on spatial and temporal presence, as does losing oneself in potential worlds and fantasies. Just as we were completely focused on our breath, the very next moment thoughts about tomorrow’s meeting can start to unsettle us. Then other thoughts intrude, and suddenly we’re lost in entire trains of thought. Only many seconds later do we become aware that we have wandered off, and we return to concentrating on our breath.
By comparison, the art of meditation is about maintaining presence. For example, some kinds of meditation use a mantra, a syllable, or a word that is repeated out loud incessantly. This functions in a similar way to praying with a rosary: by reciting the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be to the Father in the sequence of the prayer beads, one heightens the capacity for absorption in meditative prayer, ensuring that disruptive thoughts do not even reach consciousness.
In everyday life, too, mind wandering at the wrong moment can be disruptive. Those who cannot concentrate on an important task are slower to accomplish it and sometimes don’t reach their goal. The ability to direct one’s attention to the point is just as essential for housework as it is for repairing cars, for example, and for any kind of observation, whether its object is a work of art in a museum or a sunset. Heightened mindfulness in life, with the accompanying patience, has a quite mundane utility, whether it’s a question of perception or of problem solving.
This does not in any way mean that daydreams and mind wandering are not essential for our lives. On the contrary, they are a cognitive mechanism that leads to creative ideas, namely relinquishing focused attention. Many of the ground-breaking ideas of scientists, artists, engineers, and product developers appeared in moments of mind wandering and daydreaming, that is precisely when they were dealing with the particular problem while they were not concentrating.59 Experimental studies by the American psychologist Jonathan W. Schooler and his colleagues revealed60 that the contents of daydreams are indeed predominantly linked to goal orientation and future planning. Furthermore, if, having been set a very difficult task, test subjects were subjected to a monotonous activity in between, they were subsequently able to go back and solve the difficult task more often than if they had been asked to pursue another focused activity in between. That means that during the monotonous activity, the right ideas for subsequent problem solving were developing “beneath the surface.” Unfocused mind wandering is a mode that sorts through one’s thoughts and produces solutions. If we can’t find the solution to a problem, a stroll often helps. A walk around the block or in the woods is at the same time a way of giving our thoughts a walk. Often the answer comes to us suddenly, like divine inspiration (as was thought in earlier times) or as a manifestation of unconscious processing (as we interpret it today). As is clear from these examples, mindfulness and mind wandering or daydreams do not play off against each other. It is a question of balancing both factors, in each particular situation: being mindfully focused here and now; and letting the imagination take its course in daydreams and surprising ourselves with ideas.
