Is "now" really just an adverb of time? Or could it be something more — a portal between this world and the world of spirit?

In truth, it is both — and I will get straight to the point. As a preface, let me only say that I intend to devote another piece to uncovering the portal-like character of the now. In this article, I will be exploring its timeless aspects.

Consider this: if you had said, in the time of Christ, "the now is whatever hour, minute and second it happens to be," people surely would have thought me mad: Back then, there were no clocks. The present moment had no attachment to measured time. Would now have been timeless even then? A good question — and we'll come to it shortly.

For as long as human beings have lived on Earth, in theory, there has never been a moment when now did not exist. Yet our ability to attach the present moment to a specific time is tied to the spread of clockwork mechanisms a few hundred years ago. Of course, people have always been able to judge whether one event happened before or after another — no clock needed for that. And indeed, for the first few thousand years of human history, no clock existed. Then, a few centuries ago, the first clock mechanisms were built, and suddenly we could measure time, read time, pin down a moment. A remarkable development.

But what does all this matter in the lived experience of the now?

Well — not much.

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What makes the now truly special is its timelessness?

In every other moment, now is the event of our own human attention — experienced as átélés (lived through as pure experience without commenting it). Let me explain both, beginning with the case where now genuinely equals thinking the word "now."

A small task.

Think the word "now."

Thank you.

In that moment marked by • the word "now" was, for you, an actual thought. I assume so, at least, since you were thinking of the word now.

That is all.

And this “that is all” matters to me, because from this point onward I can finally roll up my sleeves and write out all those strange things I have observed, over hundreds of hours, about the present moment and the now.

I won't deny that events happen in time, or that they have a temporal dimension. But now is, first and foremost, átélés — lived experience. In the midst of átélés, there is, in a sense, no time to think about time, because lived experience has a certain autopilot quality to it, or the quality of flow.

Let me be more precise — there isn't really an autopilot quality to experiencing the now, but I'll start there for contrast and clarity.

Autopilot examples: Driving home while your mind is elsewhere. Brushing your teeth. Showering. The morning routine. Unlocking your phone. Automatic pleasantries in daily life. The unconscious movements of eating. Typing. Climbing stairs. Humming a familiar tune. Emotional autopilot.

Now I want to contrast all of that with flow.

Have you heard of the flow experience? Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's concept of flow — formulated as early as 1975 at the University of Chicago — describes the state in which a person becomes so absorbed in an activity that it seems to happen of its own accord: the sense of time fades, self-reflection disappears, and optimal engagement takes hold.

I believe the timelessness of now is better compared to flow than to the everyday autopilot of our routines.

I'll say it plainly: the first distinctive quality of now's timelessness is its flow-like character, which arises from the unavoidable átélés — the lived experience — of the present moment. In other words: now is always átélés, and always flow. Not only when something extraordinary is happening — art, music, sport, dance, play, or anything demanding concentration. Now is, in my view, practically always a flow experience.

In my observation, now is far more a duration than a single point in time.

Here is the thing.

If you'll allow it, let's invoke perhaps the most obvious example of now as duration: orgasm. Why not. Because orgasm is very rarely a single-point-in-time entity. It is much more a duration, isn't it? If you call to mind any orgasm — the most recent, or whichever comes to you now — you find that it lasts several seconds, not a single split second. Speaking in Aletheosophic terms, I would not claim that any orgasm is an exception to any other átélés in our lives, including whatever you are living right now. And yet I think nearly everyone, in nearly every case, experiences orgasm as a duration, not a pinpoint moment.

I have also observed an inseparable quality of now's flow-character and duration: its relationship to attention.

Here is the thing.

In a waking state, a person is free to attend to whatever they choose. And not only that — attention is unceasing. Constant. Whatever we are attending to, we are always attending to something. A sudden pain, appearing from nowhere, claims absolute priority. A beautiful sunset, on the other hand, is witnessed by the free will of the observer.

But whether it is pain or a freely chosen wonder of nature — whether it is any social event — the fact that "I am present to it" depends on attention.

Consider: have you ever wondered why you don't feel your clothes against your skin all day? The answer is simple and practical: you aren't attending to them. Of course. But if you wanted to, you could — you could attend to the touch of your clothes against your body. Why does this matter for the nature of now? Because for you, now is only what you are presently attending to. And what you attend to depends entirely on you. Pain may be an exception — if sudden pain arrives, you will attend to it without choosing to, and that pain will become the fact of your now.

In the title above, I invoke the timelessness of now. But if now were, in its paradoxical way, a timeless adverb of time — or were not — then what is it? I believe now is, in essence, an event.

Recall any situation from earlier today — say, your morning coffee. You lived through it. You drank your coffee. The fact of drinking it was, without question, a now-experience for you.

Here is what matters.

I believe átélés — lived experience — requires an event. And in fact, the word fact itself carries the quality of event. I feel that now is, at root, an átélés made possible by attention — but since it manifests in our earthly life, let's call now a fact.

A small etymological note: the English word fact comes from the Latin factum, meaning "a thing done," a deed, or an event.

This is another quality I consider essential, and it follows directly from the nature of átélés.

Briefly:

As you experience this present moment, you are reading this very sentence, yes?

Let's mark this present moment with a sign, say •

The question, then, is this: can I really add any commentary to the lived experience of the now itself?

And the answer is no, I cannot.

For if I add anything at all to the previously marked • experience of now — if I attach any thought or commentary to it — then that already belongs to another time and not to the time of the • itself, does it not?

And so I have found: now is, first and foremost, átélés — lived experience — and not knowledge, nor narration. From the átélés of something — say, watching a beautiful sunset — I can make a narration, in thought, but only after the sunset, in another moment. This matters.

Now is, first, lived experience. It can only become knowledge or narration afterward. The moment a person begins to comment on their now, that commentary is already a different now.

In closing: how does the experience of now connect to Aletheosophia?

If you are encountering the word for the first time: Aletheosophia is, as I describe it, a now-philosophy grounded in átélés — lived, embodied experience. The word came to me while writing my first book, because I saw the need to gather facts, ideas, and practical insights about the true truth and the real reality of the experienceable now. This platform gives space to the philosophy of Aletheosophia — creating an Agora where, in dialogue, we can ask what is genuinely, truly, actually real and true in our lives.

Gabor

If any of this resonates with you, I would be glad to meet you in a real conversation.