strings: Therefore, our problem is this, is it not? There is in fact only one state, not two states .such as the conscious and the unconscious; there is only a state of being, which is consciousness, though you may divide it as the conscious and the unconscious. But that consciousness is always of the past, never of the present; you are conscious only of things that are over. You are conscious of what I am trying to convey the second afterwards, are you not? ; you understand it a moment later. You are never conscious or aware of the now. Watch your own hearts and minds and you will see that consciousness is functioning between the past and the future and that 'the present is merely a passage of the past to the future. Consciousness is therefore a movement of the past to the future.