Presence
The MIT Press eBooks February 6, 2024 DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/15196.003.0013 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that "presence" in pure awareness reports is ambiguous, often meaning full immersion in the present moment without fear, judgment, or thought. Contends that such clear, thought-free awareness remains a subtle temporal experience: "Nowness" differs from "timelessness," and both, like the experience of mere duration in Windt's minimal phenomenal experience theory, retain a thickness. Notes research indicating a subjective psychological moment has variable extension in objective time. |
Abstract
A constant still presence that cannot be touched by words, does not live in the realm of objects.[#789] I was very pre sent, but not there.[. ..]Pure existence.[#2943]The quality of "presence" is a central feature of what it feels like to abide in pure awareness.But we must be careful, because "presence" may actually mean slightly dif fer ent things to dif fer ent people.One reading of "presence" is "being fully in the pre sent moment."2901 A state free from fear and other negative feelings.Being only in the moment and no thoughts about future or past.No judgment, only the moment, free from judgments.Being fully pre sent as an embodied self while resting in choiceless awareness is a well-known form of contemplative experience.It can be very intense, stable, and crystal clear.However, abiding in a clear state of mind without thoughts, calmly resting in the pre sent moment, is nonetheless a subtle and highly refined form of temporal experience."Nowness" is not the same as "timelessness."The same is true of the experience of mere duration, as in Jennifer Windt's original theory 1 of what minimal phenomenal experience (MPE) might be (see chapter 22 for more on the experience of duration and "pure temporality"), because both forms of time experience still have a thickness to them."Nowness" means that you locate yourself in a temporal order, as existing at some point in time, but in ordinary states of consciousness, this point is never really extensionless, as some kind of mathematical abstraction might suggest.Research has long shown that what we subjectively experience as a single psychological moment actually has extension in objective time, and that extension can vary greatly 10