Conceptual awareness is the only type of awareness capable of integrating past,
present and future. Sensations are merely an awareness of the present and
cannot be retained beyond the immediate moment; percepts are retained and,
through automatic memory, provide a certain rudimentary link to the past, but
cannot project the future. It is only conceptual awareness that can grasp and
hold the total of its experience—extrospectively, the continuity of existence;
introspectively, the continuity of consciousness—and thus enable its possessor
to project his course long-range.