42. Past

When a person thinks of the past, he sees time as completed, that is, stopped; or, as I have said, as included. There are various pasts.

A person may think of the past as having stopped, say, six months ago. Or, he may say, with a great personal flourish and great personal intensity: “All my life up to this moment is the past.” This is done often, and if done with care, can be useful.

We all of us have a sense of pastness which is like the sense of pastness had by historians, or associated with history.

A year ago, for example, is just as much over as the period of Alexander the Great; in fact, the last moment is. There are really no gradations of pastness.

The past is what, seen as over, is not included in a “now” feeling. This “now” feeling is flexible. If we say, “People don’t write nowadays as the Victorians did,” the “now” feeling can take in years. “Nowadays” can be seen as having thousands of days in it. In the sentence, “I ate late this morning, and I don’t feel hungry now,” the now is less extensive, but has the same “form feeling” about it that the earlier statement had. It can be “now in this century” or in even a longer period, and “then” in, say, the Renaissance; and it can be “now at 3:30 P.M.” and “then at 2:15 P.M.” This means that I can say “then at 2:15 P.M. today” and “now in the Post-Renaissance period”; just as I can say “there in the next room” and “here in the Western Hemisphere.”

43. Future

Now includes the future, too; for now is flexible in terms of the future, as it is in terms of the past. The sentence “I go to school now,” has now taking in the future.

It is interesting that the word then is used both for past and future, as in the possible sentence, “I did it then, and should he tell me at some time in an honest way that I should do good by once more doing it, I would do it then, too.”

Now and then have the same variability as to the future as they have as to the past. In the sentence: “If he calls me in fifteen minutes, I will do it then”—the future is nearer than the present is in the sentence: “Nearly all the world uses machinery now”; for now, as to the future, takes in much more time than the previous then of fifteen minutes.

44. Present

The present, one way, can be seen as, and is, no time at all; another way, it can be seen as all time, including all the past and all the future.

The present for every living being, is the world come to a point in space, time, event. This point can be of varying dimensions, or scope. The present seen as pointed, near, having to be thought of and dealt with, is the immediate. Life is always the immediate and a sense of more.