Page 178 - The Truth of the Life of This World

therefore, completely relative. In reality, we never can know how time
flows - or even whether it flows or not! This is because time is not an
absolute fact, but only a form of perception.
That time is a perception is also verified by Albert Einstein in his Theory
of General Relativity. In his book The Universe and Dr. Einstein, Lincoln
Barnett writes:

Along with absolute space, Einstein discarded the concept of absolute time -
of a steady, unvarying inexorable universal time flow, streaming from the
infinite past to the infinite future. Much of the obscurity that has surrounded
the Theory of Relativity stems from man's reluctance to recognize that sense
of time, like sense of color, is a form of perception. Just as space is sim-
ply a possible order of material objects, so time is simply a possible order
of events. The subjectivity of time is best explained in Einstein's own words.
"The experiences of an individual," he says, "appear to us arranged in a series
of events; in this series the single events which we remember appear to be
o rdered according to the criterion of 'earlier' and 'later'. There exists,
therefore, for the individual, an I-time, or subjective time. This in itself is
not measurable. I can, indeed, associate numbers with the events, in such a
way that a greater number is associated with the later event than with an ear-
lier one. 30

As Barnett wrote, Einstein showed that, "space and time are forms of
intuition, which can no more be divorced from consciousness than
can our concepts of color, shape, or size." According to the Theory of
General Relativity: "time has no independent existence apart from the
o rder of events by which we measure it." 31
Since time consists of perception, it depends entirely on the perceiver -
and is therefore relative.
The speed at which time flows differs according to the references we
use to measure it, because the human body has no natural clock to indi-
cate precisely how fast time passes. As Barnett wrote, "Just as there is no
such thing as color without an eye to discern it, so an instant or an hour
or a day is nothing without an event to mark it.” 32
The relativity of time is plainly experienced in dreams. Although what
we perceive in a dream seems to last for hours, in fact, it only lasts for a
few minutes, and often even a few seconds.

176 Relativity of Time and the Reality of Fate