This is the third in a series of posts showing the crazy-ass 2012 books I read last year.  I recommend starting at the beginning.  Part 1.  Part 2.  This particular post is crazy long, so you don’t have to read the whole thing.  But if you don’t read it all, you won’t be able to appreciate the lunacy of it all.

The Galactic Synchronization Beam

In my search for the big names of the 2012 crazy club, one name comes up quite a bit: Jose Arguelles, Ph.D. (Art History and Aesthetics).  It’s truly unfortunate that he died early in 2011.  I wish that he could be able to see December 21, 2012.  He would see that nothing would be inherently different than any other day.  I can’t fault him for being a proponent of world peace.  That’s a noble goal.  The energy spent organizing and promoting a worldwide movement to literally wish world peace to happen could have been better spent.

But I’m tangenting, and I’ve barely even started this chapter.  Back on track:  Jose wrote an article in which he describes the “Galactic Synchronization Beam”.  According to Aruelles, this is a time wave that is now triggering a new phase of galactic evolution.  If you’re not sure what that means, keep reading.  All will be explained.  So, what in the world does this have to do with the Maya?  Oh, plenty!

The Mayans were from space.  Wait, come back!  This is serious.  Jose Arguelles has first hand evidence that they were a space faring civilization.  You see, he interviewed an actual Mayan man named Hunbatz Men.  During this interview, he discovered that the Mayans had mapped, charted, and navigated many star systems.  Ours was the seventh.  Jose likes to think of the Maya as galactic surfers.

He took a look at the Mayan calendar, and noticed that the mathematics of the calendar had amazing harmonics, and he naturally assumed that it was measuring some type of harmonic wave or beam.  The Mayans must have come from space, made their observations, and left.  We have been passing through the Galactic Synchronization Beam since 3113 BCE, and we will be leaving the Beam in 2012 CE.

Thank goodness the Mayans left behind such clear messages for us.

So what is the purpose of this beam?  And why did Arguelles call it a time wave?  Where does it come from?

He says that it comes from the galactic core.  The core is sending out a continuous transmission of a vast variety of radio waves.  Here, Arguelles is correct.  The galactic center does emit many radio waves.  His explanation is less than correct.  He calls these radio waves “information beams” that are coming from the galactic core.  He asks if the information from these beams is the information that generates life, and if our DNA code is part of the information in these beams.

Hold your horses, hoss.  Before we start wondering if something in the center of the galaxy is writing the code of our DNA, let’s see if it’s even reasonable to think that there’s information of any kind being transmitted.

There is a large source of radio signals coming from an area in the sky called Saggitarius A.  There are a few things in that direction that are very noisy in the radio spectrum, and one of them is believed to be a supermassive black hole.  The radio noise coming from around the black hole is thought to be gigantic explosions of stars caught by the black hole.

Far from being the transmission of the base code of life, it’s the tortured screams of devoured stars being broadcast across the universe.  It’s static, and there’s no reason for it.  It just exists. And it’s not aimed at the Earth.  It’s not aimed anywhere.  If there were something intelligent transmitting from a black hole, it probably wouldn’t be sending out random transmissions of how to get DNA to work on a planet 26,000 light years away.  That makes no sense.  If I were stuck in a black hole, I would be transmitting, “Help I’m stuck in a black hole oh god it hurts stay away.”  It doesn’t even make sense if they weren’t stuck in a black hole.  What would the transmission even do?  There’s no reason to tell us how to get DNA to work.  In case you slept through all of biology class, I should tell you that we already have DNA, and it already codes perfectly fine without a radio signal.  Our response to the alien intelligence should be, “Yup, we know.”

No point in arguing, though.  There’s more to all of this than just Space Mayans and DNA information beams from the galactic core.  There’s vibrations.  Cycles and waves and the resonance that comes along with all of that.

Many things in nature work in cycles.  A single event rarely happens just once.  Summer comes and goes and comes back again.  The moon goes through its phases.  Animals are born, grow older, and give birth to a new set of animals.  A politician will lie and get elected and lie again and get elected again.  Nature’s cycles are like clockwork.  This is all quite true.

But Arguelles, again, goes one step further.  He argues that the underlying nature of reality is vibration and resonance, and that vibrations condense into atoms and particles.  String Theory is probably the word he’s searching for, there.  Amazingly, he could be right.  I’m supersimplifying the explanation, but String Theory states that there are ultratiny, ultraminiscule 1-dimensional strings that make up every bit of force and mass and energy in the universe, and that the frequency of the vibration determines the characteristics of the bits.  Also, there has to be 11 dimensions for it to work at all.

I’m sure I’m leaving out other critical things, but that’s a flavor of it.  Look it up if you’re so interested.  String Theory is far from proven, but unlike Auguelles, there are actual scientists doing actual experiments to see if it’s true.  They’ve designed and built gigantic, powerful supercolliders to look into the depths of these tiny bits, and using mathematics, logic, and deduction, they’re slowly figuring out what makes the universe tick.

Arguelles, doesn’t mention any experiments that he may have conducted, or any measurements that he may have taken.  He is partially correct when he says that some type of medium allows signals to pass from a transmitter to a receiver.  (Sound waves, yes.  Electromagnetic waves are self-propagating)  He goes on to describe that “The vibrational signal is a frequency of some kind.”  The vibrational signal is a frequency of some kind.  Someone should contact the Nobel Committee.

Fortunately, he avoids getting too deep on the details, and he begins attacking “modern science” for assuming that we can only know the world of matter that we experience through our senses.  He says that scientists do not admit that there could be other realities coexisting with this reality.

I argue that if you can’t experience these other realities through your senses, how do you even know they exist?  Senses are quite literally the only way to experience something.  And I don’t think that scientists bother themselves with things that cannot be experienced with senses or instrumentation.  If they exist and are real, but we can’t sense or observe them at all, there is no difference between them and something that doesn’t even exist.  I am reminded of a quote by Delos McKown, a Philosophy professor from Auburn University, “The invisible and the nonexistent look very much alike.”

This must not have entered Arguelles’ thoughts.  He claims that our visible, known reality has overtones and resonances that make up all of the invisible realities, just like a single note can cause nearby strings vibrate at different overtones and different octaves.  He claims all of this, right out of the blue, without anything to back it up.  He just says that it’s true, and then he moves on to the next thing.  I’m beginning to see a pattern here.

We’re not done with resonance and beams yet, either.  He found something else to fling out there, hoping it would stick.  Like spaghetti flung at the wall.  I don’t know why people would fling spaghetti at a wall, but I heard about it somewhere, and it’s the first thing that comes to mind.

Arguelles says that we are in resonance with the Earth.  We, as in our bodies and minds.  The alpha frequency of our brain waves correspond with the basic resonance of the planet, 7.5 hertz.  Because of this, we should be in harmony with our planet.  He questions why we’re the only animal with outhouses, clothes and insulation.

I want to get this out of the way right from the start:  I like my clothes.  I like my outhouses (or indoor plumbing, as it were).  I like having houses with insulation.  Why?  Because, frankly, I don’t want to have to squat in the woods and wipe my ass with a pine cone.  Nobody wants to see that.  There are many other things that nobody wants to see, and that’s why I wear clothes.  Also, I live in the Northern Plains of the U.S.  It gets cold in the winter; so cold that without clothes or insulation, I would literally die within minutes.  Of course, I and everyone else could move to the tropical latitudes.  We would be cramped and crowded and hot and sweaty and naked.  Yay, harmony with the planet.

Let’s get back to what he said about our alpha brain wave frequency corresponding to the resonance of the planet, 7.5 hertz.  Though that number seemed to be pulled out of thin air, it turns out that he is referring to what is called the Schumann Resonance.  It’s a real thing, and it’s pretty interesting.

Here’s how I’m going to explain Schumann Resonance: Imagine a flute, where you blow across the mouthpiece, and the flute resonates with a specific tone, or frequency.  The frequency changes according to the length of the resonance chamber.  A shorter length is a higher frequency, a longer length is a lower frequency (that’s why a flute sounds higher than a tuba).  Each different length has a different corresponding resonance.

Now, imagine that resonance chamber is no longer a flute, but the space between the surface of the Earth and the ionosphere.  If you consider the speed of light and the distance of the circumference of the Earth, you have a resonance chamber of around 7.83 hertz.  The two surfaces reflect photons that are given off by lightning strikes.  The lightning shoots out at tons of different frequencies, but the ones at 7.83 hertz continue resonating around the Earth.  That is Schumann Resonance.

I’m not sure what Arguelles is trying to imply by stating that our alpha brain waves correlate to the Earth’s resonance.  Does our thinking become compromised or aligned whenever lightning strikes in the world?  Alpha brain waves are really only measured in a situation when the brain is partly shut down.  For example, a blank, cleared mind while awake, a brain preparing for sleep, or a brain watching American Idol are all times when we expect to see alpha waves from the brain.  He just throws out that the alpha waves correlate to the Earth’s resonance, without going into any further explanation.

The funny thing is, all of the research I’ve seen says that the typical range for the brain’s alpha wave frequencies is between 8 and 13 hertz.  I’m sure there’s a population of outliers who find their alpha waves a bit lower.  And if so, so what?  What does that even imply?  Are we antennas?  Is the lightning trying to transmit something to us?  It can’t be the DNA code, because the giant black hole has that covered.

Oh, here we go.  Arguelles says, “We are not utilizing the full resonant receptive capacity of our being to establish the proper kind of environmental harmony.”  So we really are antennas.  But because we don’t know how to get the best reception, we end up doing stupid things like building shelter and wearing clothes.  Maybe if we hold out our arms and wiggle them around a bit, the station will come in better.

By the way, if you’ve never heard of the Galactic Synchronization Beam before, don’t worry.  It is made up.  That should make you feel better.  And remember earlier, when I said that all would be explained?  That was a lie.  Nothing that Jose Arguelles said about the Galactic Synchronization Beam, time waves, etc., is even remotely backed up with actual observation.  He supplies zero citations for his claims, except suggestions to read some of his other books.  Making things up and then pretending that they are true is not science.  It is fiction.  Fiction is fun, but only when you know it’s fake.

The Mayans did not come from space.  They didn’t even have the wheel.

Arguelles continues by describing how our time in the beam is about to end.  The Galactic Synchronization Beam is divided into 13 sub-cycles.  Human beings have been receiving knowledge and wisdom from the beam for a very long time, even though we may not have been conscious of it.  Through us, the beam has been extruding the civilization we see around us.  (“Extruding” is his word, not mine, though I will try to include it more regularly in everyday conversation.)  Since our time in the beam is almost over, we’ve reached total technology saturation.

Imagine the beam as an ocean wave.  The beam wave broke once before, on August 16 and 17, 1987.  Most of you were alive then.  I was seven years old.  On those days, Arguelles gathered a bunch of hippies and organized other gatherings all around the world to signify the crashing of that wave, and it was called the Harmonic Convergence.  We all remember that date, right?  When the Galactic Synchronization Beam did something significant.  It made national news and everyone totally noticed it.  No?  I could have sworn that something transcendent happened that day.  Maybe it was when I went out to ride bikes.  That’s probably it.  I went out to enjoy reality, and a bunch of New Age blockheads played make-believe.

Keep that thought in your head.  Arguelles says that exact same thing will happen again for some reason, except it will be on December 21, 2012.  That is the date another of those extremely noticeable waves will wash over us, and we will “be prepared to enter into galactic or interplanetary civilization.”  Don’t get me wrong, I think that would be really quite awesome.  I would love to be proven wrong on this.  I want to have a big, friendly alien civilization show up and give me rocket rides to other stars.  It’s just that I plan on keeping my day job.

Arguelles says that higher intelligences are waiting for us to realize that our technology can’t help us.  Bullshit.  Yes it can.  It’s just not a cure-all.  Technology has done and will continue to do wonders.  We still have to grow up and be decent human beings, which is something we each do on our own.  Let’s not count on some made-up cosmic or celestial intervention.

Speaking of made-up celestial ideas, Arguelles keeps the ball rolling.  The Mayans were not the only ones who were able to decipher the information from the Galactic Synchronization Beam.  The ancient Chinese took that information and used it to create their famous I Ching.  Apparently we know this because the I Ching’s mathematical code is exactly the same as the mathematical code of DNA, and is the same as the mathematical code of he harmonic number progression of the Mayan code, which is a binary progression.

Amazing!  The I Ching is DNA code!  And DNA is binary!  I can’t believe we haven’t been taught this at school!  My microbiology textbooks must have been old, because they didn’t say anything about binary coding.  I always thought that there were four bases in DNA, but we must have been wrong this whole time.  And if the I Ching codes for DNA, I wonder what it codes for?  Is it an animal?  A plant?  A microbe?  I hope it codes for ragweed.

He says that before technology, human receivers tended to be more operative, but right now people are more shut down.  You see, if you go out into the street and ask people if they’re receiving information from the Galactic Synchronization Beam, most of them would have no idea what you’re talking about.

I know, I know.  That’s not fair.  People might be receiving information right now and it might not be registering in their conscious mind.  Or they might consciously know about it but call it by a different name, like drugs.  Drugs can create many different experiences in the mind.  Perhaps that’s why Arguelles means when he says, “from the point of view of the code, being awake means opening up our receivers.”  But that brings us back to my earlier question, that if we open up our minds and all we’re receiving is DNA code, what do we do with that?  Perhaps the galactic intelligence is sending us the code for their DNA, and maybe they’re hoping we’ll synthesize it into a living being.  That way they can come to us via radio waves and then once they’re born in our labs they can take over the world!  Don’t do it, scientists!  You’re falling into the intergalactic invasion conspiracy trap!

Just kidding, I just did that for all of my tin-foil hat readers.  Though if it were true, our response should be to beam back the DNA of a mosquito, so when they synthesize it, it’ll get loose in their lab and then they’ll stop bugging us with that damn Beam.  That, or the DNA of a yappy dog.  Or maybe we should just launch a yappy dog toward the heart of the galaxy.  God, I hate yappy dogs.

Sorry, I got a bit off track.  Let’s bring ourselves back to reality.  So Arguelles continues with mentioning that the Maya visited from another world and left behind a civilization that looked primitive but really wasn’t.  I guess I can’t argue against that.  The Mayans did have a civilization that looked more primitive than ours.  That proves his point.

I’m getting tired of even pretending that Arguelles had any ideas about the Mayans that was even remotely plausible.  It’s perfectly fine to have implausible ideas, but make sure that facts and evidence back it up!  This is an example of a fairy tale gone wild.  This probably started out as an idea that sounded correct, so it was immediately accepted as correct.  It’s hard, as a skeptic, to read things like this.  So many red flags go up so frequently that I run out of red flags.

Fortunately, Arguelles makes it easy to spot blatant bullshit.  How about this:  “The next evolutionary shift will occur in 2012.”  As if evolution is planned, or that it happens in one massive leap.  I would venture a guess that maybe Arguelles might not have any idea how evolution works or what it even is, but that’s just my opinion.  What does he even mean?  It’s all mystical and deep and vague, and that should immediately trigger any one’s bullshit detector.  First, ask yourself “what, specifically, does this mean?”  And then you should ask yourself, “how the hell does he even know this?”  If your answer is, “he knows it because of prophecy and alien radio beams,” you might be a bit crazy.

I’m not saying that there aren’t any aliens sending radio beams to us.  It’s possible, but Arguelles hasn’t even proven it yet!  He needs to prove that there’s an alien radio beam.  Then he needs to prove that the beam is being directed to us.  Then he needs to prove that we can read it with our brains.  He has made all of those claims, but not a single one has a shred of proof!  As a skeptic, I will follow the evidence.  If I pointed a radio antenna to the center of the galaxy, and I heard, “hello, we’re aliens,” I would start to believe what Arguelles is saying.  But that hasn’t happened.

Here’s another one.  “There are other dimensions of reality, and there are more evolved stages of being and intelligence than ours.”  Like what?  Again, how does he know this?  He doesn’t give any data, like he’s the sole distributor of ideas.  He doesn’t city any sources so people can go and do their own research.  If he showed how he found that information, I could try to do it too.  If I could do it, then I would believe him, and I would be much more likely to believe what he said in the future.  That’s how science works, and that how science protects us from lunatics and charlatans.

I’m done dealing with Arguelles, but I can’t resist bringing up one more thing.  “The universe is benign and compassionate.”  Tell that to the dinosaurs as the universe sent an asteroid to obliterate the vast majority of them.  Tell that to anything in the path of a Gamma Ray Burst.  Tell that to anyone currently circling the drain of a black hole.  All of us are clinging to the rocky crust of a pebble with a thin veil of air between us and the emptiness of infinite space.  If you were to exist for whatever reason in 99.999% of the rest of the universe, you would instantly die, probably of asphyxiation and freezing, but maybe you’d be one of the lucky few to get an exciting death like burning or being irradiated or liquefied by intense gravity wells.  No, the universe is not benign, nor is it compassionate.  It is merely unconcerned with our existence.