Three Times

from Orage's "Psychological Exercises and Essays," pp. 85-88

Time seems long or short to us according as it is filled or empty. We may compare time to a string on which beads are threaded. When the beads are very close together we are not aware of the string. The farther they are apart the more the string shows.

...

Have you ever considered the possibilities of doubling or trebling or even multiplying the string without reducing its length? On the analogy of the string and the beads, it is obvious that you cannot thread more beads than the string will hold; you cannot fill life in time fuller than time will allow. But it is possible--in the illustration, at least--to put a new string side by side with the first string and to thread that; and afterwards, perhaps, to add still another and another, making in the end an area where at first was only a single line.

What is Time, as we ordinarily understand it? A single track succession of events. At every given moment we are called upon to make a choice among a number of possibilities and at every such choice the unchosen possibilities are, as it were, sacrificed. Time as succession is simply the actualization of one possibility out of many in each successive moment. Could we actualize two possibilities, or three or four at once, we should be living in two or three or four different streams of time. Our life, though no longer than before, would nevertheless contain more time. We should be living several ordinary lives at once.

But how to do it? It is no use trying to crowd more in to the single track. By feverish haste and hurry it is possible, at best, only to fill one string, and usually with events of a very brittle and common composition. On the other hand, it seems at first sight equally impossible to multiply one's strings and to choose to actualize several possibilities at once, especially when they appear to exclude each other.

The chief difficulty, however, is our present-day training, which has prejudiced us in favour of time as a mere single sequence; and naturally we think that only a single sequence is possible. The first thing to do is to think simultaneously, and to be aware simultaneously of happenings which at present we perceive singly and successively and not all at once.

For instance, nothing is more certain than the fact that at every moment of our waking life we receive hundreds of sense-impressions, perform hundreds of more or less obvious movements, and are subject to hundreds of inner sensations, such as muscular contractions, breathing, changes of temperature, and of blood-pressure. Given any particular motive for observing and becoming conscious of any of these, we can isolate it from the rest and give our attention to it. But ordinarily we do not even do this. For all the consciousness we have of the marvellous sensational life of our body, we might as well have no body at all, or be asleep. Except upon special occasions, when our body insists upon attracting our attention to itself, we treat it as a mere machine of no real conscious value.

It might be supposed that the case is different with our other strings--our life of feeling and our life of thought. But on analysis it turns out that we are just as asleep to the rich current of our emotional and intellectual life as we are to our physical life. It is true that some people are more aware, and others less, of one than of the other two. Intellectual people are more aware of their thinking than of their feeling and physical life. Emotional people are more aware of their emotions. Common sensual people are more aware of their physical life. But in the first place, none of these specialists, as it were, is aware of more than a fraction of the life in which he specializes. The intellectual is conscious of only a few processes of his thoughts; the artist is conscious of only a few of his emotional streams; the sensualist is conscious of only a few of his physical sensations. And, in the second place, very, very few people can be conscious simultaneously of two of these streams, even intermittently and partially; and still fewer ever arrive at simultaneous consciousness of all three.

Now if we assume that each of these three modes or kinds of experience is a thread of time, and that each thread is always being filled with beads, it is evident that we can, at least, treble our time and consequently our life by becoming simultaneously conscious of all three successions of events. In other words, by becoming simultaneously conscious of our physical movements and sensations, our feelings, and our thoughts we should be leading in reality three lives at once, actualizing three possibilities at every moment.

Naturally it is not easy; begin by trying to be aware of your movements and physical sensations while they are actually occurring. Try to realize more and more what your body is doing. Later try to notice your changing currents of feelings without, however, ceasing to be aware of your physical manifestations. Finally, try to become conscious of your streams of thinking; and include these observations with the previous observations or awareness of your physical and emotional life.

By this means, if you persist in it, you will treble your time and enrich your life. The method is not introspective nor is it analysis. You are not required to think about it but only to be aware; and to be fully aware is to be fully conscious.