Page 104 - The Evil Called Mockery

102 THE EVIL CALLED MOCKERY

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 memory. 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 informa-
tion stored in the brain. If man had no memory, his brain could not
make such interpretations and therefore, he would never form any
perception of time. One determines himself to be thirty years old,
only because he has accumulated in his mind information pertain-
ing 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 "moment" in which he was living.

The Scientific Explanation of Timelessness

We can clarify this subject by quoting various scientists' and
scholars' explanations. Regarding the idea of time flowing back-