Page 276 - For Men of Understanding

RELATIVITY OF TIME

AND REALITY OF FATE

E verything related so far demonstrates that we never have direct con-
tact with the "three-dimensional space" of reality, and that we lead our
whole lives within our minds. Asserting the contrary would be to pro-
fess a superstitious belief removed from reason and scientific truth, for by no
means can we achieve direct contact with the original of the external world.
This refutes the primary assumption of the materialist philosophy underly-
ing evolutionary theory-the assumption that matter is absolute and eternal. The
materialistic philosophy's second assumption is that time is also absolute and
eternal-a supposition just as superstitious as the first.

The Perception of Time
What we call "time" is in fact a method by which one moment is compared
to another. For example, when a person taps an object, he hears a particular
sound. If he taps the same object five minutes later, he hears another sound.
Thinking there is an interval between the two sounds, he calls this interval
"time." Yet when he hears the second sound, the first one he heard is no more
than a memory in his mind, merely a bit of information in his imagination. A
person formulates his perception of time by comparing the moment in which
he lives with what he holds in memory. If he doesn't make this comparison, he
can have no perception of time either.
Similarly, a person makes a comparison when he sees someone enter
through a door and sit in an armchair in the middle of the room. By the time
this person sits in the armchair, the images of the moment he opened the door
and made his way to the armchair are compiled as bits of information in mem-
ory. The perception of time takes place when one compares the man sitting on
the armchair with those bits of recalled information.
Briefly, time comes about as a result of comparisons of information stored
in the brain. If man had no memory, his brain could not make such interpre-
tations and therefore, he would never form any perception of time. One deter-
mines himself to be thirty years old, only because 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 experi-
encing only the single "moment" in which he was living.

274 For Men of Understanding