@TickTockMan,
Without a being having conscious thought and having a limited perception focused on the now, time becomes irrelevant. Energy and the matter it makes up will continue flowing onward toward its next level of change.
Take the tree falling in the forest question. The energy and matter that is the tree has reached a point in which there is change occurring. This change will continue with the breakdown of the tree back into the environment, or by someone finally coming along and cutting the tree up for firewood. Either way the energy momentum of the tree has stopped "growing" the tree and is now being converted into other forms of energy and redistributed.
The interesting question I see that has popped up from what I first said, Is the human mind fundamental to shaping of the universe? is an interesting subject in and of itself.
Not to range to broadly here at the moment, but saying yes to that could certainly validate how observation shows change in quantum level analysis, it also validates the ideal of faith and positive thinking.
Last note on this before I head to work and even further removed from the main subject. The movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", or the myth of Merlin and how he aged could easily be tied to having a mental faculty that worked similarly to most with a flawed reasoning of how it sees energy flow unfold. This of course would suggest that those humans who we deem mentally unstable or mentally unfit, those who see hallucinations, experience a different reality, may in fact just being experience reality on a level that the rest of us do not. (Not that it should convince you to go along with what they say or do, merely understand that nobody sees themselves as truly insane, or even as the bad guy, everyone does what they do feeling it is in the best interest of at least themselves, and that their way of thinking is to them superior to others reasoning.)
