On the idea of forms existing only through our perception of time, I came across the following in the Qur’án (27:90):
Thou seest the mountains and thinkest them firmly fixed: but they shall pass away as the clouds pass away…
In picturing this, I realized that if time were accelerated quickly enough, the formation, change, and disappearance of mountains would seem very similar to the way clouds behave. They too drift, grow and shrink, appear from nowhere and fade away again. Mountains are only durable and permanent because we see things on a relatively slow time-scale – one in which mountains are mountains. Yet if our perception of time were much slower, clouds would be like mountains in the sky, equally as constant. The world as we know it exists in our perception of it, even if the raw materials do not.