Time & the Technosphere

In Time and the Technosphere, Jose Arguelles presents a groundbreaking study that distinguishes the natural time of the cosmos from the artificial mechanistic time under which we currently live. Arguelles defines the actual nature of time as the frequency of synchronization. Applying this Law of Time to an understanding of the entire system of life on Earth, he shows that in order to not destroy Earth's ability to sustain life, we must change our definition of time and adopt a natural harmonic calendar based on the 13-moon 28-day cycle. Until the creation of the Gregorian calendar and the 60-minute hour, most of humanity lived by the 28-day cycle of natural time. The adoption of artificial time has subjected us to a 12:60 time frequency that governs the entire global industrialized civilization-the technosphere. With the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, a fissure was created in this artificial technosphere, opening up the nosphere (Earth's mental envelope).

Humanity has a golden opportunity to leave the strife of the past and enter a time of peace by adopting a harmonious natural calendar that will repair the damages caused by the irregular tempo of technospheric time. Our last best chance to adopt this natural time and step into the bright new future promised by the galactic shift of 2012 is the Great Calendar Change of 2004, a new discovery based on the author's mathematical research into the Mayan calendar first begun in his landmark work The Mayan Factor. In Time and the Technosphere, Arguelles reveals the clear distinction between third-dimensional astronomical time and the fourth-dimensional synchronic order of the Law of Time, which holds enormous potential for the future of humanity. José Argüelles, Ph.D. works full time on behalf of the World Thirteen Moon Calendar Change Peace Movement and is president of the Foundation for the Law of Time. He is the author of numerous works, including The Mayan Factor, Earth Ascending, and Surfers of the Zuvuya.

First Excerpt:
A science or any scientist that unquestioningly follows the Gregorian calendar is, in reality, not worthy of the name. What is science? A concern for logic and precision of measure, we might answer, as well as standards of measure which utilize uniform units of measure in accord with what is being measured. Yes, the year is calculated as being 365.241299 days in length, but if the annual standard of measure that is used is irregular and unscientific, then it avails nothing, and indeed deforms the mind leading it down byways that may only end in self-destruction. Thus, the pursuit of a true and accurate year in itself may be an illusory pursuit, blinding us to the actual nature of time, and leading us away from a genuine understanding of ourselves, and our role and purpose on this Earth.

To change and replace the calendar with the thirteen moon standard is to return us to our original purpose, leading us back to pathways of harmony and natural health. According to the Law of Time, the damage already inflicted in the time humanity last hesitated and lost the chance to alter its timing frequency, 40 years ago, has been incalculable. The final opportunity to change the calendar and the timing frequency is now upon us. Because of this we must be very clear and unshakable in our understanding and determination to expose and eliminate the current civil calendar for once and for all. Even apologist David Duncan's unabashedly pro-Gregorian book Calendar (1999) concludes with its time line on the date 2012, "Current Mayan Great Cycle will end." But will we also end? By 2012, it will be too late to change. We must begin to change now.

In reviewing the quirks and twists of history that constitute the Gregorian calendar, we must ask: why do we continue to use such an instrument, and what are its effects? Is a calendar something more than a tool for scheduling the payment of debts (calends), or is it an instrument of synchronization? The harmony or disharmony of time is a profound matter rooted in the instrument of time reckoning that we use. There can be little question that we live more in a time of chaos than of harmony. We may also say in regard to the effect of standards of measure on the mind, that the chaos of the time is embedded in the calendar we use. If we are to leave this time of chaos and enter a time of harmony, then we must exchange the instrument in which the chaos is embedded for an instrument that is the very model of harmony - the Thirteen Moon/28-day count. This is the choice humankind must now make.



The issue of the nature of time, or of the times in which we are living, cannot be separated from the issue of the calendar. The very nature of the calendar that the world follows has stunted the mind and warped the body's innate timing sensibility, reducing the understanding of time to being merely a matter of chronology. "Chronology is a register or reckoning of successive years, a time scale. It may also be described as a system of registering time massively." Virtually all time reckoning has proceeded from astronomical indicators, the major exception being the Maya, who actuated from a solely mathematical outlook. Yet, with this mathematical outlook, the Maya devised a chronological method that has never been surpassed, a fact attested to by many, including the architects of the Kitt Peak Observatory, Tucson, Arizona, where a mosaic mural depicting the civilization of the Maya asserts the superiority of their calendar over that of the Europeans.

It is significant that the earlier calendar reform movement, while occasionally acknowledging the brilliance of the Maya, made no use of the Mayan knowledge. But this was because the time sensibility was restricted to thinking of time solely in terms of chronology, or at best as a schedule for keeping good accounts, with little comprehension at all of the synchronic nature or order of time. And since the system of chronology was synonymous with the system of control embedded in the Gregorian calendar system, the earlier reform movement failed altogether to make any impact on the Vatican, much less on the global power structure itself.

All of the thought, action, and good intention put into the years of calendar reform notwithstanding, the Gregorian calendar prevailed, and tragically, not one of the proposals or recommendations was ever even considered for adoption by the papal authorities who maintain control over the calendar. In the 1930s, the propaganda of the Church was aimed at limiting any possibility of reform, for it would not give up the succession of the seven day week. In any perpetual calendar, such as the Thirteen Moon/28-day calendar, the observance of the Day Out of Time is necessary for maintaining the harmony of the 52 weeks which completes itself in 364 days. The continuous succession of the week does not stand in a constant relation with the other elements of the calendar and is one of the main causes of confusion in the Gregorian calendar. Arguing that such a break as a Day Out of Time, no day of the week at all, would plunge the world more deeply into chaos, barbarism and war, the Vatican effectively blocked all effort at reform. The completion of the century of total war, capped by the Inevitable Event, roundly refutes this point. It may just as easily be argued that because we did not change the calendar, we are now plunged into the final barbarism and unholy war.



Second Excerpt:
Communication is the fifth component that unifies the technosphere into one whole system in touch with itself everywhere. From telegraph to telephone, radio, television, and then finally fax, cell phone, and the Internet, the industrial-era technologies, with their electronic instantaneity, have created the vast communication networks and media empires that keep the world humming and promote globalization above all. When considering modern communication we must also bring into focus the chief method of globalization, which is marketing-propaganda on behalf of consumerism. Marketing is the use of means of mass communication to control the mind of the consumer. In the final stage of globalization, marketing replaces consciousness, or rather, marketing is the manipulation of consciousness-the latter already having been reduced to a stunted level-for purposes of consumerism, or for ideological needs such as patriotism and fear campaigns. The Internet, the marriage of computer and telephone technologies, represents the final state of the Tower of Babel, and the completion of the process of globalization. The only place to go after the Internet is technology-free telepathy.



From the biospheric perspective, this five-tiered complex of the technosphere is a whole unit. All the subsystems evolved together to establish the structure and operating procedures of the technosphere. When the technosphere goes, the entire system folds. This is what is now beginning to occur. Following the Inevitable Event, the whole technospheric system will be coming down slowly over the next few years, like a giant circus tent that has lost its central prop. How gracefully or gracelessly this happens is dependent on the response of the Pentagon-or the will of humanity to rouse itself in the face of even worse barbarisms.

Because it consists of five interactive components, the technosphere can be graphically depicted as a pentagon, a five-sided figure. At the center of this pentagon of the technosphere are the World Trade Center Twin Towers. The actual Pentagon, which was attacked along with the Twin Towers, was designed in the late 1930s to house the U.S. Department of War. Its construction occurred in the years 1941-1943, in an old neighborhood of pawnshops and bars called Hell's Bottom.2 When it was built it was the world's largest office building in terms of actual space. Of course, when they were built, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were the world's tallest office buildings. The structure of the Pentagon is the prototypical morphology of the structure of the five systems that constitute the technosphere. The Pentagon was the impregnable fortress of the American war machine, protecting American interests and globalization around the world. If there were two central points-actual and symbolic-to what is known as the military-industrial complex, it was the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and this is undoubtedly the reason why they were both targets of the Inevitable Event.

What is architecturally noteworthy about the Pentagon is that it is designed with five inner pentagonal corridors and office slabs, and that it is constructed with its odd point to the south. Since a pentagon is actually a pentagram, a five-pointed star with its points connected, the Pentagon represents an inverted pentagram, as its odd point faces south rather than north. In the traditional Tarot deck it is interesting that the Fifteenth Major Arcana, The Devil, contains an inverted pentagram between the horns of the Beast. Paul Foster Case writes, "This is a key to the whole meaning of the figure [of the devil]. For the Pentagram is the symbol of man, and an inverted Pentagram suggests the reversal of true understanding of man's place in the cosmos"3 While the Fifteenth Major Arcana contains the pentagon as the inverted pentagram, the next card, the Sixteenth Arcana, is The Tower, which shows the tower being struck and broken apart by lightning (fire of heaven), with humans falling or jumping out of the windows to their death-as accurate a symbolic depiction of the collapse of the Twin Towers as could be found.

End Excerpt.

Praise for Time and the Technosphere...
"José Argüelles' timely work Time and the Technosphere makes a vital contribution to the great paradigm shift in human cultures that is now accelerating. There is a higher dimension of natural time inscribed in the cosmos and a natural calendar that would help humanity mature into the awakening global consciousness that is now essential for future sustainability and well being. This book is an important contribution to the awakening event that is now emerging on a planetary scale."

Ashok Gangadean, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy, Haverford College



Thanks to Shekinah Radha