Part of the Casswiki article series New Age, Cassiopaean Experiment and Fourth Way
We find the notion of being present in much discourse on esoteric matters. We will explore different approaches and twists on this theme.
The simplest form of the idea is that it is only possible to act in the now. The past is not modifiable and the future has not happened, hence the only window of action is now. The now is a result of the past but the future is a result of the present.
However, the above idea only makes sense if one is actually present in the now, as it objectively exists. Imagination about the now for example does not qualify as presence. Presence in the above sense is predicated on more or less objective being, both in terms of self-remembering and in terms of cognizance of the situation.
Being present should not be confused with the idea of opportunistically “living for today” or carpe diem. Living in the present and being present does not mean ignoring consequences. Rather, the present is seen as expanded to encompass all that is organically connected to it. Consequences of actions and responsibility are connected to the action in the present. Daydreaming about what might be, what might come to be from things not connected to the present moment on the other hand is a mental flight from the present and does not constitute living in the present.
Some New Age culture takes the valid idea of being present in the moment and twists it to mean that one will maximize one’s immediate profit or pleasure, as in getting a quick fix because after all only the present matters and nothing else exists. In fact such an idea simply advocates self-servingly and subjectively denying the organically connected consequence of action or inaction.
If man were truly conscious of the present and were not buffered from it by denial, complacency and daydreaming, the catalyst of experience would be more efficiently used and could be converted into work. For example, George Gurdjieff speaks of the disease of ‘tomorrow,’ which even further decreases man’s already deficient capacity to do. The illusion of being able to do, specially if this is projected into the future, is a self-calming agent that prevents man from seeing to what degree he is a slave of habit and circumstance. Denying this near-universal state of matters in itself is a barrier to being objectively in touch with the present. In other words, lying to self is an obstacle to being in the present.
Other cases of not being present involve negative imagination or needless and unproductive worrying about the future or dwelling on past glory or shame. Again, we have to distinguish between objective cognizance of facts and imaginings. We could say that the only reality is the present and both past and future are representations. Still, such representations are necessary for day to day functioning and representations that are compatible with the present are more conducive to action than representations that are divorced from the present.
In a more abstract sense, ‘present’ and ‘presence’ lead to considering the nature of time. Time cannot be separated from the idea of event or measurement. Gurdjieff phrases this in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson by saying that time is co-arising with creation itself yet is uniquely subjective in how it is perceived. Any objective definition of time relies on processes following causally sequential steps corresponding to the octave as represented in the Law of Seven. In other words, time is composed of discrete units corresponding to discrete steps in observed processes. In this sense time is linear and discrete.
The Cassiopaeans have said that the “true measure of time is the expanded presence”:
Q: (L) Can we say that all that exists in the material universe is, say, “x” number of years old?
A: No. It is the eternal now. Not only did happen, is happening and going to happen. The expanded presence.
The expanded presence may be understood as a bird’s eye view of all possible timelines. Each timeline is a sequence of discrete processes composed of discrete steps conforming to the Law of Seven. The processes are not strictly deterministic, hence timelines branch into different possible tracks. These tracks collectively form the plane of eternity, as P. D. Ouspensky and Boris Mouravieff call it. Seeing this from above, as it were, offers a view of expanded presence, where all that was, is and will be is simultaneous, if we can use such a word. Also, using the word presence instead of present suggests that that which is is not independent of the presence of the observer.
Much New Age material oversimplifies this idea by claiming that linear time is an illusion that simply can or should be ignored. This is simply unrealistic from the human perspective even if this were a sensory reality from a higher dimensional perspective.
Becoming free of time, in the measure such a concept is even meaningful in human language, entails consciousness and knowledge of time and of events in time. A simple example is the dictum that those who do not know history are bound to repeat it. Only contents accessible to consciousness can be objects of choice. Carlos Castaneda’s idea of recapitulation is a sort of freeing the self from time in the sense that the person doing the recapitulation seeks to make an increasing span of time available to consciousness, bringing it all into the present, so to say. Self-remembering, in the 4th Way sense is an attempt at gaining freedom from time by not investing energy in items outside the scope of the present. These ideas may at first seem opposite but are not fundamentally so.
The human ‘machine’ organizes time into a linear mode of perception so as to make sense of it. In this sense, we could say that linear time is the result of the fall of man and of the ‘corrupted’ state of humanity’s DNA, as the Cassiopaeans suggest. Another type of being, such as a higher density being, may have mental capacity that does not require time to be projected into a linear sequence in order to be comprehensible. Thus, even though the universe may be one and the same, the perception may be radically different depending on the nature and capacities of the perceiver.
At any rate, experience of the expanded presence, in the broadest sense of the word, with all that this entails in term of antecedents and consequences and alternatives, is a step towards objective consciousness and freedom from illusion. In the sense of Green Language, the very word ‘present’ has the dual meaning of “now” and of a received gift. Perceiving the expanded present as it is, not merely as an idea, is a “gift from the higher”.