LIVING IN THE MOMENT: CONSCIOUSNESS ACROSS TIME, SPACE, AND OTHER LIVES
By Richard Knight
What does it truly mean to live in the present moment? For most people, the phrase suggests mindfulness, attention to immediate surroundings, and freedom from excessive concern about the past or future. My experiences have led me to a broader understanding, one in which the present moment may serve as a point of access to distant places, other periods of history, alternate expressions of self, and forms of consciousness that seem to exist beyond the boundaries of ordinary physical perception.
Over time, I have experienced what seemed to be the reception of information from remote locations, the ability to perceive through other eyes, the sharing of emotions that did not appear to originate within my present body, and the direct experience of other lives as though they were unfolding in the same eternal present. These encounters have caused me to question whether consciousness is truly confined to one body, one lifetime, or one fixed location along the space-time continuum. Instead, I suspect that what we call the present may be far more expansive than we ordinarily imagine, perhaps encompassing layers of experience that remain available when conscious attention becomes sufficiently focused.
One form of this expanded perception involves what I call far seeing, a process that resembles what others have described as remote viewing. Similar practices have attracted the interest of intelligence agencies and government programs because they appear to involve perceiving distant locations or events without an observer’s physical presence. In my experience, the process begins by quieting the body and settling the ordinary flow of thought until conscious attention can shift away from immediate surroundings and toward another level of awareness. Because the observer does not physically enter the distant location, no footsteps, voices, vehicles, cameras, or visible human intruders reveal that the observation is taking place.
One of my most extensive experiences of this kind involved what I perceived as the catacombs beneath the Great Sphinx of Giza in Egypt. I undertook this exploration with two women, one older than I was and one younger. The older woman functioned as our guardian, while the younger woman served as a transcriber who recorded the events we perceived during the sessions. At first, our efforts remained brief because we needed time to become accustomed to one another’s conscious presence and to develop the trust required for such unusual work. Our earliest sessions lasted only fifteen or twenty minutes, but as familiarity and confidence grew, those periods gradually expanded to half an hour, then an hour, and eventually to sessions lasting six hours or longer.
What I perceived beneath the Sphinx appeared to be preserved records of humanity’s history, including both the public history familiar to civilization and another body of knowledge that seemed esoteric, hidden, or preserved outside the usual historical record. These materials appeared in several forms and represented events from many parts of the world. Our task, as I understood it at the time, was to present this accumulated material back to Source, or to the Creator or Creators of Creation, as though we were providing an extensive review of the human journey from both conventional and concealed perspectives. The process continued for several weeks until we believed we had examined and submitted every record available to us. I intend to describe those sessions in greater detail in a future book, but their importance here lies in what they suggested to me about consciousness itself: awareness appeared capable of directing itself toward a location far removed from the physical body while the individual remained fully conscious of the experience.
An even more intense category of experience has involved what seems to be a shift of present consciousness into another life or another expression of self. These episodes do not feel like ordinary memories, dreams, or stories observed from a distance. Instead, I seem to occupy the consciousness of another person whom I recognize as myself in a different time, place, or reality, while simultaneously retaining some awareness of my present identity. In these experiences, I may perceive the other person’s emotions, physical sensations, relationships, surroundings, responsibilities, and convictions from inside that life rather than observing the individual from the outside.
Such experiences have led me to consider the possibility that consciousness may extend through numerous timelines, dimensions, frequencies, cultures, planets, universes, and forms of life, while the identity we recognize in the present lifetime represents only one localized expression of a much greater field of awareness. Whether these lives belong strictly to the past, continue simultaneously on another level, or exist through some structure of time that we do not yet understand remains an open question for me. What matters most is how immediately they can be experienced, because when they occur, they do not feel distant or historical. They feel present.
One of the most vivid examples involved a life I understood to have taken place during the American Civil War. In that life, I perceived myself as a physician living in the region that is now West Virginia, where I practiced as a general or country doctor and treated whatever illnesses, wounds, injuries, and emergencies appeared among the people around me. As the war intensified, a Southern general approached me and urged me to join the Confederate cause, and within the consciousness of that earlier self I understood the approaching Northern forces as invaders who intended to regulate and control the Southern way of life. Whether I would interpret the politics of that period in the same manner today is not the point; during the experience, I felt the convictions of that man from within, and they formed the reality through which he understood his world.
I accepted military service, received the rank of captain, and took command of approximately thirty soldiers, including lieutenants, sergeants, scouts, snipers, and infantrymen. Our equipment included a horse-drawn cannon and a wagon carrying cannonballs, explosives, musket ammunition, sidearm cartridges, and long-rifle rounds. Word eventually reached us that Union forces were advancing toward an important location in the region and would need to cross a broad river, several hills, a low mountain, and a large valley bordered by woods before reaching their objective.
Because accurate information could determine whether my men survived, I sent six scouts ahead to determine the Union Army’s position and movements. Only four returned the following morning, leaving us to assume that the remaining two had either been discovered and killed or had been captured, interrogated, and then executed. Their disappearance troubled me not only because of what might have happened to them, but also because their missing intelligence reports left serious gaps in my understanding of the enemy’s position.
When we reached the broad valley, I studied the terrain and believed the woods on the opposite side would provide the protection we needed. Between our position and those trees lay a wide field covered with deep grass and a slight incline that had to be crossed before we could reach shelter. I had no way of knowing that Union troops had already occupied the tree line, concealed themselves among the woods, and observed our approach before we entered the exposed ground.
