ABSTRACT
Another type of sudden self-insight concerns the realization of time past, of becoming older, such as the realization that the world already existed before you and that it will end. Here is an example of a memory of a 48-year-old woman:
“I was six years old. We were sitting at the table: my father, my mother, my two brothers, and me. My six-month-old sister was lying in her crib. We were eating and talking. I cannot remember what we were talking about. I suddenly realized that I had not always been there, that I had not always existed. I had not always been somebody with a father, a mother, and two brothers. That was shocking. I had simply always been there up to that moment. And this was suddenly no longer the case. I suddenly had to have had a beginning somewhere, had to have come from somewhere.”
The awareness of passing time leads to an awareness of the ‘self’ in that time.