Page 64 - Eternity Has Already Begun

ETERNITY HAS ALREADY BEGUN

such interpretations and therefore, he would never form any percep-
tion of time. One determines himself to be thirty years old, only be-
cause he has accumulated in his mind information pertaining to those
thirty years. If his memory did not exist, then he could not think of any
such preceding period and would be experiencing only the single "mo-
ment" in which he was living. And this point is very important.

The Scientific Explanation of Timelessness

We can clarify this subject by quoting various scientists' and
scholars' explanations. Regarding the idea of time flowing back-
wards, François Jacob, a famous intellectual and Nobel laureate pro-
fessor of genetics, states the following in his book Le Jeu des Possibles
(The Play of Possibilities):
Films played backwards let us imagine a world in which time flows
backwards. A world in which cream separates itself from the coffee
and jumps out of the cup to reach the creamer; in which the walls
emit light rays that are collected in a light source instead of radiat-
ing out from it; a world in which a stone leaps up to a man's hand
from the water where it was thrown by the astonishing cooperation
of innumerable drops of water surging together. Yet, in such a time-
reversed world with such opposite features, our brain processes,
and the way our memory compiles information, would similarly
function backwards. The same is true for the past and future,
though the world will appear to us exactly as it does currently. 11
But since our brain is accustomed to a certain sequence of events,
the world does not operate as related above. We assume that time
always flows forward. However, this is a decision reached in the
brain and is, therefore, completely relative. If the information in our
memories were set out like a reel of film being played backward,
then for us the passage of time would be like it is in films. In that
event, we would start perceiving the past as the future, and the fu-
ture as the past, and living in a state that is the exact opposite of
what life is now.

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