Page 773 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

Because our brain works by arranging things in a sequence, we do not believe that the world works
as described above; we think that time always moves forward. However, this is a decision our brain
makes and is therefore totally relative. If the information in our brains were arranged like a film being
projected backwards, time would be for us like a film being projected backwards. In this situation, we

would start to perceive that the past was the future and the future was the past and we would experience
life in a way totally opposite than we do now.
In fact, we cannot know how time moves or, indeed, if it moves at all. This demonstrates that time is
not an absolute reality but only a kind of perception.

The fact that time is a perception was proved by the greatest physicist of the 20th century, Albert
Einstein, in his "General Theory of Relativity". In his book, The Universe and Dr. Einstein, Lincoln Barnett
says this:

Along with absolute space, Einstein discarded the concept of absolute time – of a steady, unvarying inex-
orable 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 colour, is a form of perception. Just as space is simply 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 ex-

periences 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 ordered 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, asso-
ciate numbers with the events, in such a way that a greater number is associated with the later event than with
an earlier one. 43

From these words of Einstein, we can understand that the idea that time moves forward is totally a

conditioned response.
Einstein himself pointed out, as quoted in Barnett's book: "Space and time are forms of intuition,
which can no more be divorced from consciousness than can our concepts of colour, shape, or size." 44
According to the "General Theory of Relativity", time is not absolute; apart from the series of events

according to which we measure it, it has no independent existence.
Our dreams are very important in understanding the relativity of time. In our sleep we experience
events that we believe go on for days but actually, we are having a dream which lasts for only a few min-
utes or even a few seconds.

In order to make this clearer, let us think of an
example. Let us think of a specially designed
room with one window and that we spend a cer-
tain amount of time in it. In the room there is a

clock by which we will be able to see the passage
of time. Through the window we can see the sun
coming up and going down at regular intervals.
After a few days we are asked how long we have

stayed in the room. Our answer will be calculated
by information we have received based on look-
ing at the clock from time to time and on how
many times the sun rose and set. For example, we

calculate that we have spent three days in the
room. But if the person who put us in the room
comes and says that we were actually in the room
for two days, that the sun we saw in the window

was actually artificially produced, and that the
clock in the room was fast, then our calculations
would make no sense.

Adnan Oktar 771