In just the first six pages, Desmarquet makes several fallacious comments and un-testable, but pseudoscientific, appeals to the reader's intellect. He might as well state that there exists in his garage a dragon and that it cannot be disproved because he can give a reason for every test conceived: invisible, weightless, non-corporeal, etc. To those that have read it, I'm borrowing Dr. Sagan's analogy in
Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
Desmarquet relies heavily on pseudoscience to make his point right from the beginning. There's a dialog between he and Thao where she points out that Desmarquet arrived at a "parallel universe" through a "warp" such as that which exists at the Bermuda Triangle.
It should be noted that the so-called Bermuda Triangle has
never been demonstrated to be anything more than a region of
increased ship/airplane traffic due to its geography: warm climate, high population among the Caribbean islands, historically important agricultural center, tourism, etc. Statistically, there is no more significance of catastrophic loss of ships, planes, and people than any other region of the world when the level of traffic is considered. This, however, is lost to significance junkies who only see a large number of "unexplained" losses and cling to the stories told by those who love a good mystery.
The Bermuda Triangle anecdote is Desmarquet's first fallacious statement.
But his convenient use of "parallel universes" and "warps" to them is a pseudoscientific attempt at appealing to the
un-testable. This is the dragon in his garage.
The Parallel Universe anecdote is Desmarquet's first pseudoscientific appeal to the un-testable.
Before even arriving at page 6, Desmarquet says that Thao informs him that he is in a world where "time has stopped" and the people there (some for as long as 15,000 years) don't age and their bodies don't rot. Moreover, the people that Thao has to kill who are approaching he and Desmarquet, and are have been there 15,000 years, apparently don't have language facilities but utter "guttural sounds." Perhaps Desmarquet is under the impression that 15,000 years ago, people on Earth were cave men and without language or culture and were "stuck" this way upon entering the "warp" to the "parallel universe."
This is a fallacious assumption since we have an archaeological record that demonstrates that not only were
H. sapiens capable of language, they apparently lived in villages and some creative abilities. In addition, these people had art. Moreover, one would not be presumptuous to assume that they would have
developed this culture and technology in the 15,000 years that they were away from their home universe.
The a priori assumption that people didn't have enough culture to speak 15,000 years ago is Desmarquet's second fallacious statement.
The notion that time can simply "stop" is Desmarquet's second pseudoscientific appeal to the un-testable.
And that is only before page 6! The rest of the book continues on the same grain. They travel "several times faster than the speed of light," etc.
But not a shred of
evidence to any of it. That leaves only a few possibilities:
1) Desmarquet is telling the truth and the events did occur as he retold them.
2) Desmarquet is telling the truth as he believes it, and the events did not occur at all.
3) Desmarquet is telling the truth as he believes it, and
some of the events occurred.
4) Desmarquet is lying.
I think we can rule out number 1 based solely on the Bermuda Triangle statement. The Bermuda Triangle is not a mystery and there is nothing more mysterious about it than most other places ships go. But I can see where there would be an argument
against my position on that, since it's human nature to be a 'significance junkie' and be impressed with numbers. Otherwise, politicians wouldn't attempt to appeal to voters with them, ad agencies wouldn't live and breath them, and baseball would be boring.
I also think we can dismiss number 4, though not quite as readily as number 1. To tell a story this detailed and say it's true, you have to believe
some part of it. If not, you must really think the rest of the world is more gullible than even P.T. Barnum did.
That leaves 2 and 3. If it's 3, then perhaps Desmarquet had an experience that
seemed mystical to him, but occurred right her on solid Earth. There are numerous recorded instances in both contemporary times as well as in ancient history in which people were duped into believing that they "passed into another world." These types of events usually occur after the participant partakes in rituals of repetition, physical stress, and/or ingestion of chemical agent. For some, these events have been so real, so vivid, and so "enlightening," they believed them to be religious experiences. And they probably
were religious. If not with some actual deity, then by some stimulation of the alleged "god module" of the brain.
But number 2 is my bet. I think Desmarquet started his fantasy as a fiction but then "went native." He came to believe that he was a part of something "bigger than himself." Something grandiose. This is where he satisfies that need for fulfillment and achievement of status that is present in us all, particularly in those that claim not to covet it. In short, he's delusional.
Consider this passage (p. 148):
Thiaoouba Prophecy said:
‘Man, like a piece of rock, is made of matter, but, by neutralising the cold magnetic force by raising certain high frequency vibrations, we become ‘weightless’. Then, in order to move and direct our movement, we introduce vibrations of a different frequency. As you can see, the apparatus that accomplishes this is for us quite simple. This same principle was used by the builders of the pyramids of Mu, Atlantis and Egypt.
Pure bunk. "Neutralising the cold magnetic force by raising certain high frequency vibrations" is nothing but pseudoscientific gibberish. It
sounds scientific, but only to the undereducated. Vibrations are present in matter, but their frequency doesn't affect their "weight." Raising vibrations to higher frequencies doesn't negate the attraction that the mass of the given bit of matter has on the mass of other matter. Indeed, the methods by which monumental architecture was built in Mesoamerica or Northern Africa (several thousand years and even more thousand miles apart, I might add) are relatively well known and understood. There was no "levitation" as Desmarquet suggests. It wasn't needed.
But the most significant bit of information that Desmarquet cites in that passage is the mythical city of Atlantis and the fictional city of Mu. The former is
mostly a
modern myth, not even an ancient one. Plato invented it for his dialogs
Critias and
Timaeus when he criticized the state of Athens for its incursions against the Persians. It was not until Ignatius Donnelly wrote
Atlantis: the Antediluvian World in1882 that Atlantis actually gained any popularity.
Mu, however, is an entirely
fictional city that was created in the mind of “Colonel” James Churchward. He stated that Mu was a highly advanced civilization that existed on a continent in the Pacific Ocean, which sank after the "explosion" of "gas pockets," leaving only Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti, and Easter Island. When Mu sank, massive worldwide earthquakes caused all civilization to collapse into savagery. Not surprisingly, the good "colonel" provides not a shred of evidence, only his "word" that he translated correctly the stone tablets that told the tale; the same tablets that have never been seen by anyone except the good "colonel."
His word from 1924 doesn't stand up to even the most rudimentary of scientific examinations today. The islands he mentioned are created by well-understood volcanic process that involves "hot spots" under the crust and plate tectonics. If a continent ever existed in the region, it would be extremely obvious and quite visible to magnetometer examinations of the sort that have occurred extensively in the region he suggested.
So Desmarquet is piggybacking the fictions of at least two sources independent of him: Plato and Churchwood. That alone, validates numbers 2 and 3 above.
And we haven't even discussed the nonsense about the world exploding due to man's poor stewardship of the planet. Such grandiose delusions have been associated with UFO nutters for over 50 years. Indeed, Heaven's Gate and the Raelians adapted this theme within their own "manifestos."
It seems clear that Desmarquet is simply a cult of personality. It is no accident that there is a cottage industry around his book.