What is “now”? Past moment is no longer here and future did not arrive yet. It appears that now is located between two non-existents. How can this possibly be?! ‘Now’ is an idea that physics treats as a mere illusion, yet it is something we are all familiar with. We tend to think of it as this current instant, a moment with no duration. But if ‘nows’ were timeless, we wouldn’t experience a succession of ‘nows’ as time passing. Neither would we be able to perceive things like motion. We couldn’t operate in the world if the present had no duration. So how long is it?

That sounds like a metaphysical question, but neuroscientists and psychologists have an answer. In recent years, they have amassed evidence indicating that now lasts on average between 2 and 4 seconds. This is the ‘now’ you are aware of; the window within which your mind-brain fuses what you are experiencing into a “psychological present”. It is surprisingly long. But that’s just the beginning of the weirdness. There is also evidence that the ‘now’ you experience is made up of a mix of mini subconscious ‘nows’, and that your subconscious mind is choosy about what events it admits into your ‘nows’. Different parts of the brain-mind measure ‘now’ in different ways. What’s more, the window of perceived ‘now’ can expand in some circumstances and contract in others. Now is not a point in time, just like here is not a point in space.

100% of all decisions are made by a subconscious mind 2/100s of a second to 14 seconds prior to us executing them, and then believing we have made them. In this sense we can say our future is predetermined. However, each time we make a decision CONSCIOUSLY the path changes, and we are now facing slightly different scenario. I am talking about an ordinary person, not the one constantly practicing conscious reflection. Our consciousness should not be a subject of the subconscious. Now -time is in ‘here’; everything from subconscious is in the past. The way we are normally set up, all we know is the past; while everything that can take place happens in the present. Our body functions in the present, our life-force works in the present, but our mind is rambling in the past or the future.

The average person can be self-aware for a maximum of 2-4 seconds, even after introduced to the concept; before thoughts and emotions creep in, and the bubble of consciousness sinks down. With constant practice of double-arrow (pure conscious of consciousness) these bubbles appear more often and eventually become a stream, on the way to the ocean. This practice is fundamental to Dreamworks, or any meditative technique or method, and should be to the daily living also. The reason for that is now-time which is infinitely small, but in that ‘span’ nothing could take place. Psychological duration of now-time is also 2-4 seconds which takes care of that problem. To make it functional, our mind hooks up last fifteen seconds of memories into a loop, otherwise we would not be able to function.