The psychological ego as the pilot on the bridge between past and future is a creature of the punctilious now, the directed and ever-moving tip of the arrow of time. It belongs to a certain interpretation of time, what might be called the utilitarian present in which values are deemed measurable. The soul, the spirit, the self, interpret presence differently and involve durations incompatible with such measures but which in their own ways open the now. You cannot find these more eminent durations simply by searching the past and the future but through all that is hidden in the now before time.