Thursday July 3, 2008, 7:34 pm

Hemp Seed- Ultimate Food Comparative chart (source www.nal.usda.gov)
Characteristics of the perfect foundation food for humans:
1. a good source of enzymes, especially lipase and protease for the digesting of fats and proteins; and having no enzyme inhibitors to block this function.
2. a balanced and concentrated source of at least 20% protein (highest quality is Edistin). About 50% of the total protein in the form of the essential amino acids (EAAs that the body doesn’t make), especially Lysine, the foremost amino acid to penetrate the cells.
3. Contains the ideal 1:4 ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 essential fatty acids (EFAs that the body doesn’t make) with GLA and Steriodonic Acid, balanced Vitamin E and low in saturated fats. Total fat should be about 30%.
4. carbohydrates totaling about 40% and are especially high in soluble fiber. Low in sucrose type sugars that are high glycemic and stress the bodies sugar levels.
5. Food must not be a Genetically Modified Organism (GMO). This corrupts the body’s ability to recognize and utilize the food and turns it into “Franken-Food.”
6. 1,000 or Christ Consciousness is the highest level, by the arbitrary scale of measuring Consciousness used by David Hawkins, author of the book “Power VS Force.” The closest thing to God in food form would muscle test (kinesiology) at 999 for its ability to energize, rejuvenate and return the body to perfect homeostasis or balance. The testing done on all these foods was based on whole raw organic sources. Any food that is GMO tests at less than 150 on the scale of Consciousness for its ability to nourish the body.

Thursday July 3, 2008, 7:35 pm

- Help Save Our Earth !

Friday July 4, 2008, 9:41 am
Christ Consciousness? Hemp sounds great but that seems like a strange scale to use when judging a food's nutritional value. And as great as it is that people say grace before eating, how is blessing a food going to make your body absorb the nutrients more successfully? Sounds a bit like propaganda to me. Other than that, though, good info!

Saturday July 5, 2008, 5:29 am
Noted, thanks Scott.

Saturday July 5, 2008, 3:25 pm
Great article, thanks Scott God knows what all these artificial chemicals and such are doing to the human species and to the planet.

Sunday July 6, 2008, 9:27 am
Dowsing for God
— Critique of Power vs Force by David Hawkins
Andrew Paterson—02/2005

With the recent popularity of books like Power vs Force by Dr. David Hawkins, it is timely to examine dowsing and the objectivism being claimed for it.

There is a lot of good info at the end of this article, so if you don't read it, it might be worth scrolling down to check it out.

For an in-depth investigation into Hawkins and his philosophy visit www.energygrid.com/spirit/2007/09ap-davidhawkins.html

HETHER WE ARE SEEKING water, ley-lines, health or the answers to specific questions, dowsing has proved invaluable through the ages for connecting ourselves to a huge source of information — our own subconscious. Dowsing allows our conscious minds to draw on the greater perspective and wisdom of the unconscious; it presents a communication channel by which our subconscious can express itself to our conscious minds in as clear and unambiguous a way as possible.

We learn to dowse by teaching our subconscious a simple language — for example, move the little pendulum suspended from the right hand up and down for yes, sideways for no, and in circles for maybe. There is nothing objective about this language; we could equally well teach our subconscious to move the pendulum sideways for yes and up and down for no. The important aspect is to practice so that the subconscious learns the language that we want to use. With enough practice, this process becomes easier and easier, and in some people, they become so sensitive to the whispers of the subconscious, that they can "feel" its answers without the use of paraphernalia such as pendulums.

Another form of dowsing is muscle testing, which forms the diagnostic foundation of applied or therapeutic kinesiology. In this case, the subconscious expresses itself, not via a pendulum, but by the strength of a particular muscle group, usually the shoulder of an outstretched arm. (Kinesiology is more complicated than this and involves many energetic circuits in the body which can be directly manipulated to restore optimum function, but muscle testing remains its diagnostic foundation.)

In a standard muscle test, the person or "patient" being tested or dowsed holds out an arm parallel to the ground and resists a gentle push downwards by a second person (the tester or kinesiologist) with two fingers on the wrist area. This gives the latter a good idea of the base strength of the patient's shoulder muscles and allows any changes in muscle strength to be noted. The tester will then change the state of the patient mentally and/or physically — by asking a question out loud or having the patient hold a particular product or food — and then test the muscle again. The basic theory goes that if the muscle weakens during the second test, then that particular change of state is not vital to the person being tested. If, on the other hand, the arm remains strong or becomes even stronger than usual, then that change of state is a beneficial one.

I remember years ago as a teenager going to the English kinesiologist, Brian Butler. He told me that I had a particular food allergy, something that no doctor had been able to tell me, and with this information I quickly returned to full health. Muscle testing not only works, it can be adequately performed by anybody with almost no training, although a fuller understanding of all the principles of kinesiology can take many years to learn. There is no doubt that kinesiology is of huge therapeutic benefit.

What muscle testing, pendulum work and other forms of dowsing do is to allow us to "interview" our own or another's subconscious mind. The more we trust, practice and let go to these methods, the clearer and more consistent the communication. We become adepts at the language of the subconscious, and the information we learn greater and greater trust in the information that we receive. (I know of water dowsers in Ireland that are spot on every time when looking for where to sink a well, which is just as well as a mistake in location would be very costly in time and money.)

Some people, however, claim that these whisperings of the subconscious can potentially give us a method to determine absolute or objective truth to questions relating to matter beyond the health and vitality of the body. Recently, a book called Power vs Force has appeared on the New Age book shelves, and its author, ex-psychiatrist Dr. David Hawkins, has begun a whole program to calibrate "truth" on a scale of 1 to 1000. So for example, he and his team of muscle testers claims that Jesus calibrates at 1000, Mahayana Buddhism at 960, the Koran at 720, love at 500, reason at 400, fear at 100 and shame at 20. 85% of the world's population, according to Hawkins, calibrates at under 200 — the threshold of integrity.

In a post modern world of relativism and uncertainty, the ordered and simple objectivism that this book promotes is refreshing and reassuring. We all love to feel that there is an absolute scale on which to measure things because it takes out much of life's constant guess work and gives us a strong element of safety. The meaning we assign to things is pre-packaged and we can live our lives within a framework of quantification. (The left brain loves calibration!)

Whilst Hawkins' work is interesting and raises some challenging questions, what is concerning is that few in the "New Age" and progressive communities seem to question it. For example, a recent article published on Dr. Hawkins and his work in Kindred Spirit magazine does not challenge any of Hawkins' assertions. The author appears to have swallowed Hawkins's work hook, line and sinker. And yet, the paradigm that Hawkins is promoting is not as healthy as it seems, and could even be a huge step-back in our spiritual development. (Part of the reason nobody criticises his work may well be fear of judgment — criticism may get them calibrated below 200.)

The first clue to the shortcomings of Hawkins' calibration theory is his intellectualism: Force vs Power is a very dry read. Whenever something relatively simple is presented in an intellectual and scientific manner way beyond what is necessary or justifiable, you know that you may well be staring at a nude emperor. Gregg Braden did it with his new work the God Code, and Hawkins does it with his simple muscle testing implications. What happens is that the overly intellectual and scientific context in which a theory is presented ends up giving it a high standing in the eyes of ordinary people, because it is so easy for the authority of the scientific context to bleed into the unsubstantiated nature of the content. So you get a situation whereby the only criticism for works like these comes from those conversant in science — which is mostly the scientific establishment. And "they" would criticise such cutting-edge alternative research, wouldn't they!

The irony here is that Richard Beaumont, in his Kindred Spirit article, uses Hawkins' smokescreen of intellectualism as an indication that his work must have value because, "all truth, it seems to me, is protected from the uninitiated. Barriers are erected that can only be overcome by years of dedicated spiritual practice." So by implication, Richard can get past Hawkins' intellectual barriers and recognize the value of his work because of his years of dedicated spiritual practice. Well, I am sorry Richard, but you could just as well be someone scolding the little boy because he is so deluded as to think the emperor might have no clothes on. (Throughout history spiritual truths were often hidden because you could get killed for your beliefs, but more often than not these days they are lying on a deckchair getting a tan, whilst a distracted world passes them by.)

If you strip down Hawkins' work to its bare essentials, you have a man that is basically dowsing for God. He is taking the whisperings of the subconscious as absolute measure of all things, even something as abstract as "truth". But surely, to understand whether this is justified, we need to understand what the subconscious is and what truth is. Without examining these terms, we end up making meaningless assertions, such as Hawkins' "a cat's purr calibrates at 500".

The subconscious mind (sometimes called collectively the unconscious), by definition, is that part of ourselves that we are not consciously aware of. It keeps all our bodily functions working smoothly, heals us when we are sick, makes us ill when we are unhappy, etc. It is the part that paints our dreams, speaks to us in myths and symbols, and gives meaning to our thoughts. To become whole, wise and mature human beings, we have to acknowledge all of ourselves, and as most of who we are is below the conscious threshold, that means we have to embrace our subconscious. There is no other way. This is why love and acceptance for ourselves is so important, without it we end up rejecting or denying parts of ourselves that we do not like, which subsequently become unconscious. (They are unconscious precisely because we disown them!)

The subconscious holds a lot of information about us that the conscious mind is unaware of. From a purely physical perspective, the bandwidth of our senses far exceeds that which our conscious minds can cope with, so there is a massive filtering and approximating process going on. Actual studies of perception show that our conscious minds can only be aware of 2000 bits of the 400,000 bits of information that impinge on our senses per second. This means that we are filtering out about 99.5% or more of our experience, and if we can get in touch with our subconscious, then we have access to a lot more information. There is nothing necessarily magical or psychic here — the subconscious mind picks up so much information that it is often aware of subtle clues that our conscious minds are not. So, for example, a water dowser may unconsciously be picking up certain environmental features that indicate sub-surface water, features that he is not conscious of. (That said, the subconscious is also the channel through which we receive psychic impressions so we can never be certain of the source of its information.)

The subconscious is also where you find all the disowned parts of ourselves. The "good" person will therefore find many qualities that he or she would label as "bad" in the subconscious. That is why many people don't like looking below the surface of their conscious minds — they are afraid as to what they might find.

Because many diverse cultures and civilisations have and continue to share similar symbols and myths, some believe that at some level all our subconscious minds are connected in some way — that there is a universal human mind. The great psychologist, Carl Jung, was a proponent of this "collective unconscious", and he used its wisdom to great effect in dream work and other analysis that he did with his patients. He knew that working with the subconscious is instrumental to our mental and spiritual growth, and once wrote, "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." However, working with the subconscious and acknowledging the universality of many of its symbols and myths is very different from stating that it has an rigid or objective landscape. Jung himself would have baulked at such a suggestion.

When we work with the subconscious, we do so in full understanding that we are dealing with the subjective landscape, one in which the meaning we give things changes with different perspective, and in which we learn the humility of realizing that our "truth" may not be the truth of others. The primary rule in dealing with subconscious material is not to take it literally but creatively. This is why dreams, for example, take a little interpreting — we know that it is speaking to us in symbols and that any attempt of understanding dreams requires that we creatively explore what the symbols mean to us. The value of our interactions with the subconscious is precisely because it is a subjective experience: we are learning to interact with ourselves and our own energies.

Hawkins, however, uses the simple dowsing technique of muscle testing to cajole the subconscious into manufacturing an objective reality (an anathema to its nature), complete with a calibrated frame of reference. His work is based on the following five assumptions:

1. Muscle testing of certain individuals (those with calibrations over 200) is infallible, or at least infallible enough to absolutely calibrate "subjective" comparisons such as the level of truth in various statements. In other words, the whisperings of our subconscious, provided we have integrity, can be taken as gospel. (Any method of absolute calibration must, by definition, itself be absolute.)

2. Any disagreement in calibration by different individuals is either due to one or more of those individuals not have integrity (ie. calibrate below 200) or to the fact that we can only calibrate in the "now" and things have changed. (Or, the right questions are not being asked.)

3. Any consensus in calibration by different individuals is due to the objective and absolute nature of the calibrations themselves. It is not due to cultural similarities, physical, mental or spiritual entrainment, telepathy and/or shared delusion.

4. Dr. David Hawkins and his books calibrate extremely highly… and so they are as close to truth as you are going to get. (Power vs Force, according to Hawkins, calibrates at 850, which is higher than the Bible or the Koran, or indeed almost anything else ever written by a human being.)

5. We intuitively know what is meant by a particular calibration, even though it is sometimes used as a measure of truth, sometimes as a measure of energy, sometimes as a measure of safety and sometimes as a measure of spirituality.


These five assumptions are never directly stated. That would be too punishing to the theory because they are actually very difficult to justify. Rather, they are quietly assumed whilst focus is concentrated almost entirely on their implications.

Most leading medical kinesiologists would actually disagree with Hawkins' first assumption. Muscle testing is not infallible in anybody. At best, it accurately shows what the particular patient being testing believes, although kinesiologists are well aware of the presence of false positives and reversed patients. When you deal with the subconscious, nothing is straightforward. Hawkins' framework allows him to basically select only those people for his calibration program that are likely to agree with him. After all, any disagreements in calibration can be explained away by the second assumption.

The third assumption is an interesting one. Just because there is agreement amongst a group of people does not mean that what they are agreeing must necessarily be objective. For example, many of the symbols in our dreams are shared because of our shared cultural heritage, or perhaps even because of our collective unconscious. We all intuitively know that love must be a higher vibration than hate, or that the Bible is a higher vibration than Peanuts (although some might disagree with that!). But that is very different from assigning to symbols and meanings fixed calibrated values. It is similar to the difference from using absolute dream interpretations written in a dream dictionary, and doing the deeper work to interpret what the symbols and images mean for us. The first may show us some of the way, but to actually walk the path to greater consciousness we have to do the subjective work of individualising these symbols and integrating them into our unique mosaic of being. There is nothing objective about this. In fact, those people stuck in left-brain thinking are notoriously unproductive with dream work because their rigidity precludes the process of subjective flow and free association that is needed.

Also, whenever a group of people work closely together (we are not necessarily talking about distance here but mindset), there is a natural tendency to corroborate each other's work, especially in this case whereby corroboration is itself integral to the work. That is why, when scientific researchers get stuck on a problem, they will often call in someone from outside their group to give a whole new perspective. Otherwise, there is a strong possibility of collective delusion, where each person's emotional stake in belonging to the group can cloud objectivity. This is not necessarily dishonesty, just the strong and usually unconscious desire to maintain the group and its raison d'etre above any evidence that damages it. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Hawkins's group can appear consistent and "objective" in their calibrations.

The forth assumption is an absolute necessity. Hawkins' own work must itself calibrate extremely highly, otherwise the theory collapses. But not too highly so that it becomes unbelievable. 850 out of 1000, which is what Power vs Force calibrates at, seems about right from a credibility point of view, allowing him the authority to comment on the veracity of almost all other works. (As happens with most fundamentalists, his self-delusion and hubris is increasing as he collects followers, and this has given him the confidence to calibrate his subsequent books higher and higher. In fact, he calibrates his third book I: Reality and Subjectivity at 999.8! Where do you go from there?)

The fifth assumption results from the process of calibration itself. Calibration is a one dimensional measurement of a system — reality — that is at least three dimensional (most would say multi-dimensional). Whenever you calibrate a system with a model which has less dimensions than the system itself, then you automatically get huge distortions and losses of information. Physicists today need at least 13 dimensions to calibrate physical reality, and yet, Hawkins believes he can calibrate the more complicated abstract concept of truth with just one. The result is that he ends up interchanging terms and meanings because this single calibration scale is so hard to fit with the complexity of real experience.

Truth is central to Hawkins' motivation for developing his system. In his world view, he sees humankind's inability to distinguish between truth and falsehood as its basic defect — a defect that he believes muscle testing will compensate for. He believes that by returning to a "Newtonian" framework of absolute objectivity, which is in essence what he has done, he can get rid of the modern relativism and postmodernism that many of us in modern societies have to reluctantly face.

But the level of truth of a statement depends entirely on whether we can verify it for ourselves, or how much we accept the authority of the person making the statement. If for example, our government tells us that a particular country has weapons of mass destruction, and we are unable to verify this for ourselves, we have to decide whether the government is believable — and considering its track record for poor intelligence, spin and outright lies, we would probably rate the truth level of its claim very low. But what does it mean to say that, for example, a cat's purr has a higher level of truth than the average person? It is only true for us if we fully accept all five of Hawkins' assumptions and the integrity of his work. I have little doubt that Hawkins believes he has integrity, and that his motivation is for the greater good, but that of course does not mean that I accept what he proposes.

Another point that has to be made is that the level of truth of something is different for us at different times. If we suppress a lot of anger, then anger for us is not necessarily a low vibration, but a doorway that, when expressed harmlessly, will lead us to greater integration and wholeness. As Jung once stated, "I would rather be a whole person than a good person." Hawkins, on the other hand, would probably rather be a good person (good = a high vibratory rate) than a whole person (containing all vibrations). He has forgotten the power of perspective and context, and in his drive to set up an objective calibration of truth he closes the door to true soul work.

Hawkins wants to unite humankind in an absolute framework of truth. He wants to convince the world that HIS truth is THE objective truth, and he does this by presenting simple muscle-testing as the arbiter of all things. This makes him, by definition, a fundamentalist, and one that is driven by that same fundamentalist drive to convince all people of his reality — a one dimensional calibration of truth from 1 to 1000. (The calibration of God and the Angels goes much higher than this in his cosmology, but 1000 is the highest vibrational rate for this world.)

Fundamentalists often do have more energy or zeal than relativists because they are so driven to justify their reality above all others'. Hawkins confuses this fundamentalist zeal with "high spiritual energy", and uses it to further justify the "positive" impact of his work on the world. It is standard mid-West "bible thumping" — the call of the proselytizer. He mixes his calibration theory with standard motivational psychology (using the vernacular borrowed from chaos theory — the attractor) to flesh out a whole psychological system — after all, pure calibration and the diagnosis of all things would never quite be enough to hold its weight in a society obsessed by self-help books and workshops.

Hawkins makes a revealing statement in the Kindred Spirit article when he describes individuals of low consciousness saying, "People at this level love to be right and make everyone else wrong." But that is exactly what he is doing with his calibration. For someone to be right and another wrong, truth has to be absolute, not relative. Once again, that is the position of the religious fundamentalist — truth is always on his or her side. And from this perspective, because we know THE truth, we are no longer interested in finding the truths of others so we can build a bridge with them. We are sure of our position and the position of others because we hold the absolute rule by which all things are measured.

There are so many inconsistencies in Hawkins' work, words and conclusions that I am very surprised so few have brought them up (a couple are mentioned in the addendum to this article). Hawkins is no mystic, master or seer, but a spiritual fundamentalist, in every sense of the word, who has hijacked the therapeutic process of muscle testing as a means to justify his rigid beliefs. And his disguised fundamentalism seems to be evoking little resistance from the spiritual and New Age communities that now seem largely to champion him.

What happened to the wisdom of relativism? It should be fairly obvious for those who have looked below the surface of things that the future peace, integrity and spiritual evolution of humanity does not lie in fundamentalist positions but in relativism, for when we realize that there are no absolute scales and measures of things (such as Hawkins' contrived calibration system), we have no alternative but to listen to and respect each others' truth. And we no longer need to defend our own truth by trying to convince another because we understand that truth is relative. In this way we learn to open our hearts to others because we are not being blinded by certainty or ideology. (Nobody can be as short-sighted or as cruel as the fundamentalist, because he or she always puts ideology before people.)

Hawkins' view of reality is not only dependent upon several unjustified assumptions, even from a pragmatic point of view, it actually offers us very little, deluding us into thinking that an individual's level of truth and integrity is objectively measured, and has little to do with our interaction with that person. We all know that how we treat a person often determines their behaviour, so that even from a pragmatic point of view it is better not to calibrate — for calibration unequivocally leads to judgment. (An absolute calibration of truth, after all, is a judgment of truth by definition.)

A better understanding of the subconscious and the limits to its "truth" can be gleaned from the Huna spiritual philosophy of the Hawaiians. From their perspective, each of us is comprised of three parts: the lower, subconscious self or unihipili; the middle, conscious self or uhane; and the higher, superconscious self or Aumakua. Although the lower self is like a child, paradoxically it is generally better connected with the higher self than the conscious mind, which is why we can potentially find such wisdom and opportunity by examining the subconscious. But we can also find delusion and darkness in the subconscious too, which is also an integral part of ourselves. In the Huna philosophy, the idea is to ultimately make a direct connection between the conscious self and the higher self, rather than having to pick up scraps of truth through the subconscious. When that happens, we give up all conceptual frameworks like calibration and live entirely in the present.

So dowsing certainly has its place and is invaluable as a diagnostic tool. But anyone who tries to use it as an infallible method to determine absolute truth will quickly find himself mired in a world of delusion. And this is exactly where Dr. David Hawkins has put himself and his followers, as have other dowsers through the ages. The temptation to interpret the whisperings of the subconscious as the whisperings of God can be all too irresistible for many, especially those with a tendency for fundamentalism.

Of course, Hawkins is not alone in his dowsing delusions: there are many people out there claiming objective truth on the back of a dowsing technique. For example, recently I spoke to a healer called Dez who uses the pendulum to diagnose his patients. Dez classifies his patients as to how many lifetimes they have so far lived — he believes that each of us need 21 lives before we gain enough wisdom and understanding to leave this plane of existence. If you ask him how he knows this he will tell you that he discovered it through his pendulum. Dez himself is, of course, on his final lifetime, just as Hawkins' work calibrates above that of almost every other human being: both have to have inflated opinions of their own spiritual development because they are setting themselves up as arbiters of truth. Dez will cure you of "a serious illness" without you even knowing that you had it in the first place, just as Hawkins will determine your level of truth without even needing to consult you. Is this fact or delusion? There is no way for us to tell… we either believe it and accept their opinions, or we don't.

What is most disconcerting about men like Hawkins and Dez is that to interact with them you are forced to acquiesce in their delusional reality. If you are a fundamentalist too, then you either share their belief systems or reject them and walk away. If, however, you are a relativist or peacemaker, then you reluctantly share their belief system for the purposes of trying to connect with them, all the while feeling more and more uncomfortable as they push you further into their closed world view. Dez, for example, interprets any event and any illness according to his world view corroborated by his pendulum, completely taking away his patients' power to define their own illness and what it means to them. Dez knows because Dez dowses for God. (Ultimately of course, we are responsible to not give our power to these sorts of people in the first place, although it is difficult if you are a "people person" and accept their delusion as a means of connection.)

Interestingly, Dez has not always been consistent with his world view because he does not write things down. So I have a friend who rang him on two different occasions during which he told her that she was on different life numbers, and to me he has given conflicting information on several occasions. However, as relativists, neither of us pointed out these inconsistencies for the purpose of maintaining a good relationship. (Relativists are instinctively aware of the conditional nature of a fundamentalist's acceptance of another.)

And that is the irony of Hawkins' Power vs Force: if you subscribe to his calibrated world then you give away your power to define your own reality and to determine your own meanings in life — a prerequisite on our journey to wholeness and integration. You end up polarizing experience into high and low calibrations, forgetting that both the light and the dark are needed for true integration and individuation. Nobody else can do this for us; nobody else can supply us with the symbols and meaning that we need, whether it is with their intuition, a pendulum or a muscle test. We have to have the courage to walk our own path.

Fundamentalists like Hawkins and Dez actually scupper our spiritual growth and our journey to wholeness because we allow them to take away our opportunity to learn that we create our own realities and that we assign all meaning to that reality. Instead, the gold of subjectivity is swapped for the base-metal of pseudo-objectivity, and in the process we unwittingly become accomplices in perpetrating fundamentalist delusions.

So we have a choice. We either take full responsibility for the reality we create, our relationship to that reality, and our interpretation of that reality… or we pussyfoot around in someone else's objective delusion — a delusion propped up merely by a dowsing technique. Only the first leads to true wisdom and wholeness. And only the first gives us the opportunity to reach spiritual maturity.


For an in-depth investigation into Hawkins and his philosophy visit www.energygrid.com/spirit/2007/09ap-davidhawkins.html




SELECTED FEEDBACK & ADDENDUM

Link updates April 2007 - (thank you PP)

http://neirr.org/David_R_Hawkins_Quotes.htm

http://neirr.org/Hawkins_Biography.htm

What to submit a report on your own experience? Visit: www.freedomofmind.com/forms/submitgroupinfo.htm


19 Mar 06: This article still gets more feedback than almost any other article on EnergyGrid. Most of the emails are from Hawkins' supporters, incensed that someone should be so dismissive of their teacher and his philosophy. I firmly believe that Hawkins' calibration worldview is religious fundamentalism disguised as science, and the nature of the criticisms I receive bear this out: specific points and objections are not discussed, but rather the disciple, in the spirit of his teacher, rants on about my ignorance and my low calibration… all classic fundamentalism.

Having learned the hard way that it is a complete waste of time trying to talk reason with a fundamentalist, I no longer bother to reply to emails from Hawkins' supporters, for their authors are almost invariably not after mutual understanding but symbolic annihilation of anything and anyone that opposes their ideology. Only one single Hawkins supporter has shown me any level of politeness, but by the time I received his email (just a month ago, thanks Jon) I had had so much time wasted that I declined the invitation for yet another "debate".
http://www.energygrid.com/spirit/2005/02ap-dowsinggod.html

Sunday July 6, 2008, 9:35 am
More on Dr David Hawkins
David Hawkins has attracted a great deal of attention in spiritual circles in the last few years, first for his books, which have been fairly well received, but then less positively for his "Map of Consciousness" and his right-wing politics. He has a list of honours and such longer than most people's arms which can be seen at his site but one of his principal degrees, the PhD, is from Columbia Pacific University, an unaccredited diploma mill that was shut down by court order.

Hawkins has made a life study, according to his site, of "the transition from the normal ego state of mind to its elimination by the Presence." Sounds interesting. This study is the focus of his trilogy, Power vs Force (1995), The Eye of the I (2001) and I: Reality and Subjectivity (2003).

His site continues, "The trilogy was preceded by research on the Nature of Consciousness and published as the doctoral dissertation, Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis and Calibration of the Levels of Consciousness (1995), which correlated the seemingly disparate domains of science and spirituality. This was accomplished by the major discovery of a technique that, for the first time in human history, demonstrated a means to discern truth from falsehood."

"Major discovery," for the "first time in human history." Heady stuff. Unfortunately, he has leaned rather too heavily on what turns out to be a thin stick, and it cannot support all the weight he wants it to.

Hawkins' so-called Map of Consciousness is an attempt to quantify different states of consciousness, among a myriad of other things, using one supposedly infallible method for discerning the truth about anything, Applied Kinesiology. (AK debunked, more below)

He purports, via his truth-dowsing AK, to assign a numerical value from 1 to 1000, or "calibration," to people, concepts, ideologies, corporations, countries, states of (no-)mind and more. Moreover, this scale is not linear but logarithmic. The mathematical details of all this are debunked in the Rick Ross Forum, but even the basic premise is over the top. "Logarithmic" means that every level: 200, 201, 202, etc is not just a tick higher than the last but ten times higher – more powerful, more godly, whatever – making the ordinary shmuck with integrity at 200 ten to the power of 800 less worthy than the one who has made it to 1000. (That's a one with 800 zeroes. Such orders of magnitude are used neither by atomic scientists nor astrophysicists, who use up to 40 at most.) As such, the scale is mind-bogglingly wide to the point of uselessness or bogosity (your choice).

Hawkins' Map has been put up on the net many times but the litigious arm of his publisher has forced sites to take it down (below). There is a detailed Map in German extant at last search. Even for those who do not understand German – and there's always Babelfish – you can get an idea of the elaborateness of the system. Some interesting "anomalies" lurk therein, not the least being George W Bush's weighing in at the rarefied level of 460, just above fellow intellectual giants Homer, Kurt Gödel, Enrico Fermi and Galileo. Wowser!

Some other samples (all over 200, the supposed minimum level of "integrous"):
211 – Coca Cola
220 – Motels
375 – Time Magazine
390 – Santa Claus / Father Xmas
505 – Barry Manilow
520 – Patriotism
745 – St Paul

Worse, there is said to be a cult-like element to Hawkins' scale whereby it is impervious to challenge: anyone who questions his results, or whose own results differ significantly, is by definition coming in below 200, the level of integrity, and therefore not worth listening to. This is a classic cult invalidation tactic, a circular logic catch-22 that skewers all deviation from the Official Line.

Some anti-cult links about Hawkins:
New England Institute of Religious Research (friends of Steven Hassan), also hosted (but not well-linked) Hawkins bio and Quotes About Hawkins. Note: These pages have been removed, reportedly because of threatened legal action (see the second EnergyGrid link below).

Rick Ross Forum, referenced above, has five pages of discussions and lots of info

Cults.NZ has added Dr H to its large collection of weird-to-unsavouries around the world

Guilt by Association Dept:
Interviews and talks on BeyondTheOrdinary , a "radio magazine"-type format put out by followers of JZ Knight, creator / channeler of Ramtha

Endorsements of the work of Ilchi Lee, creator of "Brain Respiration" and Dahnhak . . . "This is indeed an important and praiseworthy book for it helps us get close to the truth and actual experience of our own reality as the Self which transcends all of time, which always was, always will be, before and after all worlds or universe." – Dr. David R. Hawkins, Author of Power vs. Force

A few more misc links:
Dowsers.info: a site forced to take down its Map (having intended it to be a positive reference to Hawkins)
SpiritualTeachers.org: another "neutral" or unaffiliated spiritual survey and rating site
EnergyGrid.com: this page from a big new-age and spiritual site has a thorough critique of AK to debunk how "Hawkins uses the simple dowsing technique of muscle testing [intended as a bio-feedback window into bodily and psychic processes] to cajole the subconscious into manufacturing an objective reality (an anathema to its nature)"
EnergyGrid again: The above page focuses on debunking the technique of AK. This one deals with Hawkins' legal and other moves in silencing critics. The Hawkins Wikipedia page is gone, the NEIRR pages mentioned above are gone, etc. Goes deeply into particular criticisms and the philosophy of criticism.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hawkinazi (self-explanatory)

http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Yhawkins.htm

Sunday July 6, 2008, 9:38 am
The Emperor's New Clothes
— David Hawkins' absolute calibration of truth
Andrew Paterson—09/2007

David Hawkins is a controversial spiritual teacher who claims that consciousness/truth can be objectively calibrated by the muscle test. This is an in-depth investigation into this claim.

F YOU VISIT WIKIPEDIA and look up Dr. David Hawkins, the American psychiatrist who has over the last decade been putting out a lot of scientific-sounding New Age / New Consciousness philosophy in a series of books, magazines and lectures, you will be surprised to see that his entry in that online encyclopedia is almost blank. This is in stark contrast to the same entry just a couple of months earlier, an entry which was substantial due to Hawkins' controversial nature. As someone who naively believes in free speech, I could not understand how a Wikipedia entry could just disappear.
For those unaware of who Dr. David Hawkins is, here is a summary: Hawkins is an American psychiatrist who has become a high profile spiritual author and lecturer. He received his medical degree (M.D.) from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1953, and also received a PhD in Health and Human Services from Columbia Pacific University (now closed). Hawkins currently lives in Sedona, Arizona, where he runs from home the Institute for Advanced Spiritual Research Inc.

Central to Hawkins' philosophy is a simple arm muscle testing technique, borrowed from an alternative therapy called Applied Kinesiology, which he uses to absolutely and objectively test the truth of any statement, calibrating it on an arbitrary logarithmic scale of 0 to 1000 (and sometimes higher), with different states of consciousness — shame (20), apathy (50), fear (100), anger (150), courage (200), reason (400), love (500), peace (600), enlightenment (700-1000) — located on different points on this scale, forming a linear and fixed one-dimensional "map of consciousness". This model of consciousness has metaphorical parallels to science's map of the electromagnetic spectrum, and it is not dissimilar to Ron Hubbard's Scientology emotional tone scale and The Sedona Method's hierarchy of emotions formulated by Lester Levenson, whom Hawkins worked with quite closely for a while (although he now classifies Levenson as a "fallen teacher" - link.)

This muscle test itself involves two people, one lightly pushing down the outstretched arm of the other to determine the muscle resistance whilst the particular statement is being said. If the muscle resistance to the downward push is strong in comparison to the baseline resistance when no statement is being said, then the statement in question is believed to be objectively true. If, however, the arm resistance feels weaker than the baseline resistance during the push down, then the statement is objectively false. In this way, it is possible to get a yes-or-no answer to any question you can formulate, or determine, for example, a person's or book's truth calibration by repeatedly stating that it is above or below a particular value and then testing whether this statement is true or false, and then repeating the process a number of times to zero in on an actual value. And Hawkins will claim, although nobody has ever scientifically verified this, that this number is as objective as a weight or height measurement, and that others testing for the same truth calibration, provided the testers and their motivation calibrate over the level of basic integrity (which is 200), will come up with exactly the same value. (In reality, Hawkins' students disagree on these "objective" values and usually have to resort to having Hawkins find the "correct" value.)

The physiological effect of a particular statement on the strength of the shoulder muscle that supports the arm is chosen for its ease to test, for the kinesiology reaction is actually seen throughout the body, including changes in brain waves, pupil dilation and gastrointestinal mobility. In fact, several different forms of alternative therapy use it as a feedback mechanism to the unconscious. (By definition the effect is unconscious otherwise you would not need another person to push down on the arm… you would feel your muscles weaken and the other physiological responses.) For example, if you go to a biodynamic psychotherapist (a system of psychotherapy developed by Gerda Boyesen), he or she will use feedback from your gastrointestinal track, usually placing a stethoscope on the abdomen to hear the gurglings in the stomach during the psychotherapy which is claimed signify emotional release, giving the practitioner access to the patient's autonomic nervous system and unconscious.

Hawkins, however, has settled on the two-person arm-pressing technique because it is the easiest to do. (There is a single-person muscle strength test used by some kinesiologists which involves making an an "o" with the thumb and index finger of one hand and then testing the muscle strength of those digits by inserting the thumb and index finger of his other hand and then pulling them apart to try to break the "o". I remember meeting a kinesiologist a few years back who was constantly fiddling with his hands in this way to test every decision that he was making.)

Hawkins' philosophy and teachings, which are presented scientifically using a lot of technical jargon (primarily from chaos and quantum theory), revolve around this muscle testing means to objectively calibrate truth, and the implications of this absolute certainty or absolutism in our lives. He claims to have personally transformed from an alcoholic atheist who felt that he was about to die (link) to an enlightened master back in 1965, and which he became a spiritual teacher, first teaching a few classes on Ramana/Advaita and A Course in Miracles before formulating his own teachings and presenting himself as an enlightened master in his book Power vs Force, which was published in 1995.

Although most would classify him as a New Age teacher, he opposes some aspects of New Age spirituality such as channeling, fortune telling and Wicca. He also confusingly interchanges the terms truth, consciousness, vibration, frequency and energy on his 0 to 1000 calibration scale or map of consciousness, bringing absolute objectivity into perspectives generally considered subjective and relative. According to Hawkins, there is no place in his cosmology for relativism — the idea that truth is not absolute but relative to some particular frame of reverence, so even a painting, sculpture, novel or movie has a single calibrated objective level of truth or vibration (muscle testing measurements are completely immune to the influence of the beliefs and values of those doing the tests — provided they have integrity). [link]

Although Hawkins' students can be forgiven for coming up with the "wrong" calibration, many of Hawkins' own calibrations, which of course are "true" because they have been done by the master himself, are a little mystifying and some are inconsistent. This is exactly what one would expect for a process that is more subjective than objective. His calibration, for example, for the percentage of the world's population over the integrity level of 200 fluctuations wildly — it is currently around 20%. (Hawkins would claim that this is because the calibration level IS fluctuating, but a much more obvious explanation would be that he is using a different reading to make a different point — in other words, the process is subjective.) Hawkins calibrates US President Bush relatively high at 460 (with only 20% of the world's population over 200 that is quite a compliment), whereas most people without a strong Republican political bias and certainly the majority of the world's population regard Bush as having compromised integrity. But the evidence of the eyes is obviously deceiving, and the muscle test in the right hands (aka Hawkins' hands) is infallible because Hawkins decrees it so, and in an impressive display of circular logic, Hawkins even uses the muscle test to verify the objective accuracy of the muscle test.

As for his own books and teachings, Hawkins calibrates them as the very highest in truth of anything ever produced by anyone in the history of our planet, and that includes all the latest scientific journals and ancient religious texts/bibles. He calibrated his own book I: Reality and Subjectivity at 999.8 on the scale of 0 to 1000, just a fraction of a vibration point off the personal calibrations of Jesus, Buddha and Krishna. And for someone to be able to produce a teaching of such an elevated calibration they would certainly have to have have a similar personal truth calibration, so it is most likely that Hawkins calibrates himself somewhere up there at the end of his calibration scale with these avatars, although he has wisely, apart from a few hints, kept quiet about his own rating.

This makes his teachings enormously appealing to people looking for certainty in an uncertain world as they provide a means to justify absolute beliefs and values. And because Hawkins places himself at or near the top of his absolute calibration scale, some of his students even sleep with his book under their pillow because of its high vibration, and people have moved to Sedona to be near the master. But unlike other teachers and teachings whose validity rests on the faith or beliefs of those following them, no faith is actually needed to accept what Hawkins says because, according to him, it is as all scientifically proven with his arm-pressing technique.

As you can imagine, by presenting himself as a scientist able to objectively and absolutely test and calibrate truth by pushing down on another person's arm, Hawkins is one of the most controversial teachers on the New Age circuit. For his supporters (and for Hawkins himself), he is a brilliant academic, scientific genius and enlightened spiritual master who has discovered something of immense importance to humanity — a means to objectively test truth and calibrate consciousness for the first time in history. But to his detractors, he is an ignorant, self-serving, egotistical and right-wing cult-leader masquerading as a scientist and playing God, who has based his entire philosophy or "work" on a simple muscle technique misappropriated from Applied Kinesiology, an alternative and controversial therapy that itself regards the muscle test as neither objective nor conclusive on matters of truth.

This controversy surrounding Hawkins was naturally reflected on his Wikipedia online encyclopedia entry, and as Wikipedia can be edited by the general public, his page was hot with controversy value judgments. This was obviously a bone of contention for Hawkins, and so his private publishing company set up to exclusively publish his books, Veritas Publishing, started sending emails to those critical to his work to find out whether they were responsible for the negative entries on his Wikipedia entry and, if they were, to remove them.

Having written a critical article on Hawkins' calibration methods myself called Dowsing for God back in Feb 2005, I too received an email from Veritas Publishing last June asking me whether I was responsible for the Wikipedia critical posting "which contains false implications in reference to Dr. David Hawkins" being a cult leader, and, if I was responsible, "we would like to request that you ask Wikipedia [to] remove that paragraph." I wrote back saying that I was not responsible for this entry but that Hawkins was certainly acting like a cult leader in trying to silence legitimate criticism (calling someone a cult leader is a legitimate value judgment that fits the evidence in this case rather well). I heard nothing more from Veritas. Then I was informed by a Hawkins critic that I had been in touch with by email that Hawkins was starting to use the threat of legal action to silence his critics, claiming that what has been put out on the web was fallacious and therefore should be removed. For example, if you visit the website of The New England Institute of Religious Research (NEIRR), a non-profit educational organisation run by cult expert and academic, Rev. Robert Pardon, you will no longer find a single reference to Dr. Hawkins because he was threatened with legal action for publishing "libellous" comments on Hawkins. Running the Meadow Haven project concerned with helping victims of cults, Rev. Pardon did not want to divert money from this project to defending his right to free speech and so pulled the Hawkins material. (Instead, you will shortly see the information posted on the Apologetics Index in Europe.) [Most of NEIRR's allegations against Hawkins also appear on other websites such as Rick A. Ross and The Skeptic's Dictionary. However, these sites appear to have the resources to defend free speech so it appears that Hawkin's lawyers went after a weak target. When we put this to them we got no response.]

With litigation in the air, Hawkins' Wikipedia entry was promptly removed. The official reason, entered by administrator Zscout370 on the 19th July 2007 was: "BLP issues, OTRS actions, emails of copyvios and litigation between parties. Had enough of Wikipedia being the pissing place for this pissing match." He also wrote, "you know what, no matter what everyone does or says, I am always getting emails about this being a BLP violation or some copyvio. Take your matches elsewhere, I am done with this." Wikipedia has a strict policy on Biographies of living persons (BLPs), and when entries get too heated — involving litigation, claimed copyright violations (copyvios) and official complaints through their Open Ticket Request System (OTRS) — then entries can be deleted or "blanked".

For me, It was a chilling development in a society based on the principles of free speech when anyone, let alone a spiritual teacher, appears to be using legal muscle to sanitize online references and biographies, so I felt it was time to investigate these matters more thoroughly and write this follow-up article on Hawkins. Of course, litigation is entirely justified for bona fide libel and copyright infringements, so my first port of call was to email David Hawkins' publishing company, Veritas Publishing, to ask them about their use of litigation to silence their critics, giving them an opportunity to justify their actions. I wrote, "I am very interested to know Veritas Publishing's official position on these matters and also the name and contact info for Hawkins' lawyer as I will be wanting to get statements from him regarding his legal threats. I am personally very interested in libel and issues of free speech, and want to understand your side of the story too and Veritas' position on free speech." An hour later, I received the following curt reply: "Hi Please contact our law firm at cking@dubofflaw.com".

So I then sent a polite email to Veritas' lawyer, Christy O. King of the DuBoff Law Group in Portland Oregon, to get an official statement regarding these matters. "In the interests of hearing both sides of the debate and writing a fair article," I wrote, "I was hoping that you might be able to let me know specifically what your legal concerns with regards to Hawkins' critics revolve around." The response was as curt as Veritas': "Thank you for your email; however, I have no comment."

I was not asking his lawyers on the specifics of a particular legal case, only to generally comment on the type of criticism they are targeting, so that, if anything, I could write an article that did not land me in a similar legal dispute! However, as Hawkins' lawyers DuBoff specialize in copyright, publishing and trademark issues, it is unlikely that the litigation is of a libelous nature. Rather, what Veritas is probably doing is effectively discouraging criticism by censoring the use of Hawkins' material in critiques. Although US Copyright Law does make provisions for "fair use" of copyrighted work, there are factors such as the use, nature of the work, quantity and effect on its value that complicate the matter, giving copyright law firms the ability to hassle anyone unable or unwilling to defend that fair use in legitimate criticism. This is not to say that this is what DuBoff is doing, only that it is a possibility to consider in light of their reticence to comment openly.

Attacking copyright issues involved in critiques is probably the easiest way to stifle them provided they contain substantial quotes of copyrighted material, but if Hawkins or his lawyers feel that he has been defamed in any way, libel litigation can also be pursued. In this case, success in the courts would depend upon the type of criticism. If, for example, Hawkins' critics present false facts regarding Hawkins, such as claiming that he does not have a PhD, then the statement is clearly libelous and he has every justification to defend his academic qualifications through the legal system. If, however, the claim is made that he received his PhD through an unaccredited distance-learning "diploma mill" university with such questionable academic standards that it was legally forced to close, then this is a statement of corroborated fact and cannot be classified as libel — a defamatory statement that is true is not libel! [There was initially some doubt that Hawkins completed his PhD because he apparently only got 59 out of the 60 required units — see link — but in California only 54 modules are actually needed so he did complete the diploma mill course.]

There is another very important category of criticism called value judgments. These are in the realm of personal opinion and often reveal as much about the person making the judgment as about the object of that judgment. For example, if someone was to claim that Hawkins is a cult leader, this is called a value judgment because there is no way to absolutely objectively determine whether a person is a cult leader or not — one person's cult leader is another person's spiritual teacher. However, value judgments are not completely relative, with some carrying much more weight or probability by fact of the amount of corroborating evidence upon which they are based and the accepted means by which that evidence is evaluated.

For example, cults and cult leaders can be identified fairly accurately (although never absolutely) by applying the means of Lifton's criteria to judge the evidence. Hawkins' arm-pushing organisation certainly seems to have most of these criteria, so it is likely, if you accept the Lifton model and use it to assess the accepted facts regarding Hawkins and his organisation, that Hawkins' organisation is a cult and that Hawkins is a cult leader. But again, this will always be somewhat speculative as subjective elements are involved (although in a court of law such criteria are often applied because the conclusion does not have to be absolutely true — just beyond reasonable doubt). There are also other sets of criteria that indicate the likely presence of a cult, such as the ones listed on the Rick A. Ross online cult database. But Hawkins' cult status remains, at least for me, a value judgment, although I would consider it highly probable, given the evidence and how it fits accepted cult criteria, that he is a cult leader. (Other critics believe that because he crosses the "beyond reasonable doubt" line Hawkins can "factually" be labeled a cult leader).

Value judgments are dependent upon the values of the person making them, even though those values can be almost universal in a society (and therefore almost regarded as fact). In terms of a legal point of view, value judgments are generally recognized as valid criticism in any free and open democratic society, and libel law cannot generally be used to stop this type of criticism. To quote Liberty's guide to human rights over here in Europe: The European Court has repeatedly emphasised the distinction between facts and value judgments and has held that a defendant cannot be required to prove the truth of a value judgment. The law takes a similar stance in the US and other democratic nations that support free speech, and so you will not be able to successfully prosecute someone for libel for merely expressing a value judgment. If you could, free speech would go out the window. (This does not appear to be something that Hawkins would be particularly concerned about as he is quoted on the SpiritualWiki as saying: We don't need freedom of speech; we need freedom from speech.)

Interestingly, it seems to be value judgments that Hawkins is most eager to stifle. When I was approached by Veritas back in June, the email centred around the criticism of him being a cult leader and gave justifications why he should not be categorized in that way. What is most surprising is that it totally ignored the infinitely more damaging criticism regarding the invalidity of objective calibration itself which is the corner-stone of his entire work. Why should Hawkins seem to care so much about value judgments — about what others think of him? (Possible reasons are covered later in this article.)

So to summarize, we have three primary categories of criticism:

Criticism presented as verifiably true facts
Criticism presented as verifiably false facts
Value judgments (including criticism presented as unverifiable facts)
In terms of the verifiability of criticism, this is usually based in modern courts of law on objective evidence and reason (certainly not via a kinesiology technique), and the categorization is usually, but not always, clear-cut.

If Hawkins was to knowingly threaten legal action against criticism that falls into the first or third categories, then he would be abusing the legal system by using it as a tool to censor legitimate criticism and stifle free speech. However, there is another intriguing possibility: because Hawkins verifies truth in a completely different way to reasoning human beings — basically with a muscle test — his categorization of criticisms is likely to be somewhat perverted. For him, muscle testing is the primary means of verifying both factual criticism and value judgments, and therefore any criticism that is rejected by arm-pressing could be fair game, from his perspective, to legal action, regardless of whether it can be classified as a value judgment or not. And there is a third possibility (these possibilities are not necessarily exclusive) that Hawkins is a pathological narcissist who has lost touch with reality and become completely intolerant of criticism.

So let's look at some of the main criticism that has been leveled at Hawkins and see what criticism category it falls into:

Hawkins' use of Applied Kinesiology's (AK) muscle testing procedure is entirely misappropriated and an abuse of that diagnostic system. This is an indisputable fact — Category 1 criticism. Hawkins took up muscle testing after seeing a lecture given by fellow psychiatrist and Applied Kinesiology proponent, Dr John Diamond. According to Susan Diamond, Dr. Diamond's wife, "David Hawkins attended one seminar of my husband's way back in the mid 1970's and that is it… As far as we know, Hawkins had has no training in Applied Kinesiology which is a very intensive course of about 360 hours or so. If that is the case, then he should not be using muscle testing which he calls Applied Kinesiology." (link) Even the president of the International College of Applied Kinesiology has stated that, "It is unfortunate that Hawkins repeatedly uses the term applied kinesiology to describe his methodology because this could not be further from the truth. He uses a single muscle test which in itself, forms the fundamental basis of AK but is but one of very many aspects of AK procedure, practice and training." (Due to criticism from those involved with AK, Hawkins seems to be in the process of removing references to Applied Kinesiology from his books and lecture material, and using the term muscle testing instead, but rest assured that it is a standard applied kinesiology test he uses.)


There is absolutely no scientific evidence to suggest that muscle testing can be used in any way as a reliable truth detector, even by those proficient at it, despite Hawkins' false claim that "peer reviewed" evidence (in the usual academic sense of the expression) exists. This is an indisputable fact — Category 1 criticism. Double blind studies have been done on AK muscle testing and shows that it does not give reliable evidence, even when just used in its original and much more limited way as an alternative diagnostic tool. (Research references - spiritualteachers.org) And besides, muscle testing is so easy to do, involving absolutely no cost and little training, that if it was able to objectively assess aspects of our reality then you can be assured that this would quickly be confirmed by research and that this research would be written up and disseminated by Hawkins and his supporters, and Hawkins would be nominated for the Nobel prize and be considered the greatest thinker of the 21st century – rather than being nominated for the 2007 Bent Spoon Award! All, however, is suspiciously silent in the Hawkins camp except for wild testimonials and periodic assertions by Hawkins himself (rather unsurprisingly) that muscle testing's objective accuracy has confirmed many times in the hundreds of lecture demonstrations that he has given over the years, despite the fact that lectures are not the controlled environment needed to validate muscle testing (just as shows are not the place to evaluate David Copperfield's magic). And no one can claim that this lack of corroborating evidence and a controlled environment for such a simple technique is not due to a lack of incentive: magician James Randi is prepared to hand over a million-dollar prize money should its validity as a truth detector be proved. (Hawkins gets out of this one by stating that everyone who has ever researched muscle testing and found it to fall short of being an absolute truth detector has no integrity or was using the arm of a subject with no integrity.)


Hawkins presents some questionable academic qualifications and claims such as his PhD in Health and Human Services from a private unaccredited distance-learning university called Columbia Pacific University (CPU) which was closed by court order for failing to meet standards set for private universities. This is an indisputable fact — Category 1 criticism. In fact, the university was of such poor standard that The Associated Press reported that the State of California, where it was located, had been trying to close it down almost from the day it opened, saying that CPU "had virtually no academic standards." CPU was giving out PhDs to students who had been with them less than 12 months and for papers with little or no research, and one student even passed writing a paper in a language the examiner could not understand! California's Deputy Attorney General Asher Rubin called CPU "a diploma mill" as well as "a consumer fraud, a complete scam" and a "phony operation" which offered "totally worthless [degrees]… to enrich its unprincipled promoters." [link] But this has not stopped Hawkins using this questionable academic title on all his books and lecture materials, although he is always careful never to mention the awarding body. (Hawkins has also been linked with claims that he has studied at the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research at Columbia University, but Joan Jackson, representing that department, has stated that, "I do not have any record of a David Ramon Hawkins studying at our Institute." [email source and link] This misconception has arisen because Hawkins states that his training psychoanalyst was a professor at Columbia University, without clarifying that he did not himself attend Columbia University. He lists on his CV under "Awards and Recognitions": "Training Psychoanalysis by Prof. Lionel Oversey, M.D., at Columbia University Psychoanalytic Institute," This can be misleading in its ambiguity.)


Hawkins has some questionable honours and titles, questionable in that the awarding organisations can be difficult to identify, the honorary titles have been modified on his website, and some are self-styled or vanity awards. This is an indisputable fact — Category 1 criticism. For example, his website used to state that he had been "knighted by the Danish crown" but this was removed after Bjarne E. Pedersen, Deputy Private Secretary to Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark, declared that the order in question was not of Dutch origin. It is also claimed that he has been knighted by the Knight Brother of the Sovereign Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in the Americas (link), although this title has been modified on his website to Sovereign Order of the Hospitaliers of St. John of Jerusalem (link). He also has vanity entries in two editions of Who's Who. (This does not necessarily imply that he has bogus awards per se, only that it is not clear-cut where they have come from or what they actually mean. Of course, if one defines bogus in relation to awards as meaning self-serving rather than independently awarded, then they could most certainly be called bogus.)


Hawkins is obsessed with self-styled honours and titles. This is a value judgment — Category 3 criticism — although it is supported by the long string of such honours and titles that he has chosen to list on his website, something that is unusual for a spiritual teacher.


Hawkins misuses scientific terminology and concepts in his books and teachings, and in so doing demonstrates a lack of scientific and mathematical understanding. This is an indisputable fact — Category 1 criticism. From logarithmic scales, to absurd and meaningless numbers plucked out of thin air (such as the energy of a loving thought being 10 to the power of minus 35 million megawatts), to the use of chaos theory terminology, to the ubiquitous New Age quantum theory justifications… it is all there in black and white in his books. He also claims that it is the adrenaline hormone that makes the muscle go weak during the muscle test, a statement that must contradict his training as a medical doctor (adrenaline, as any high school student knows, makes muscles stronger, ready for fight or flight). Like many New Age teachers, Hawkins does not understand the difference between using a scientific theory as metaphor, and using it as an explanation. As a result, to those who are not scientifically trained (his target audience), his work comes across as scientific and therefore much more credible, and he rides on the back of this scientific respectability. However, when challenged by those with scientific understanding, Hawkins takes the position that his system of truth has a higher truth rating than science and so science cannot be used to determine the validity or invalidity of his work. In other words, he has is cake and eats it too. Hawkins also contradicts prevailing scientific evidence on issues of the dangers of tobacco and the imminence of anthropogenic global warming (he arm-presses that humans aren't responsible). He also advocates high-dosage vitamin therapy for psychiatric patients, a treatment that the psychiatric profession has long rejected (although this does not invalidate vitamin therapy per se, it does invalidate his claim that he "revolutionized psychiatry" or changed it in any lasting capacity).


Hawkins dismisses those who criticize his theories with the ad hominem argument, stating that they calibrate below 200, the basic level of integrity, and so are not in a position to criticize him. This is an indisputable fact — Category 1 criticism. Hawkins places himself and his philosophy beyond criticism because his vibration and that of his work is so much higher than that of everyone else on the planet. In this way, Hawkins does not need to face up to criticism — it is beneath him to do so. This also discourages his supporters from breaking rank because to do so would be indicative of their low vibration. So anybody who does not agree with Hawkins, by definition as he is a master, does not have integrity and so should be dismissed. (This is actually one widely accepted criterion for a cult leader.)


Hawkins is politically right-wing. This is a value judgment — Category 3 criticism. But there is a lot of evidence backing up this judgment. Hawkins has calibrated Republicans as higher than Democrats, President Bush as having a high vibration (460), supported the war in Iraq, and believes in the spiritual superiority of men over women (he has stated that women cannot reach full enlightenment because only the male body can handle the energy). In fact, he has used calibration to justify a whole array of right-wing political positions, making him the darling of the conservatives. Hawkins also states that America has the highest calibration of any country in the world (421) which is why it is so dominant, with 50% of its population calibrating over 200, the basic level of integrity. (That figure is only 20% over 200 calibration for the rest of the world.)


Hawkins is a cult leader and his organisation is a cult. This is a value judgment - Category 3 criticism — and has been covered earlier in this article.


Hawkins is a pathological narcissist / egotist. This is a value judgment - Category 3 criticism. Although looking at a list of criteria for narcissism Hawkins does seem to fit the bill. For example, Hawkins does seem to have a grandiose sense of self-importance (he claims to be enlightened and to having written the most truthful material in history), he does seem preoccupied with power (Power vs Force), he does believe he is special (listing honorary titles and his diploma mill PhD on his CV), and he does seem to be intolerant to criticism, defining its vibration below 200 and therefore not even worth addressing.


Hawkins is a dishonest man who is conning people into buying his books. This is a value judgment — Category 3 criticism — and one that I personally do not share. Hawkins seems to be deluded rather than dishonest, and probably believes a lot of the material that he puts out. But you can never be sure.


Hawkins can never have had a true mystical experience because any experience of oneness with the universe (which is what mysticism essentially is) could never result in the formulation of a system of philosophy or map of consciousness that rejects 80% of human beings on this planet as below basic integrity. This is a value judgment — Category 3 criticism. But it is true that his philosophy does seem to be highly judgmental, closing the door to compassion with his definitive calibration. Can you imagine the other spiritual teachers up there at the top of the calibration scale with Hawkins — Jesus, Buddha and Krishna — judging 80% of humanity this way? But this has to be a value judgment because mystical experiences translate notoriously badly into spiritual philosophies, so it is also quite possible that Hawkins had genuine mystical experiences that inspired him to formulate naive spiritual philosophies. [Hawkins also believes that the make-up of women's nervous systems means that they are unable to handle the very highest spiritual frequencies, which is why so far there are no women calibrating over 700. To many, including the author, this seems to be pure sexism disguised as spiritual philosophy, indicating that Hawkins may not be the spiritual sage he presents himself as. Again, this is a Category 3 criticism.]
This list above is in no way meant to be definitive — I have no doubt there are other criticisms of Hawkins (some of which are mentioned later in this article), but this list covers, as far as I am aware, the current main ones. The fact that so many are factual and verified, and that so many of the value judgments are highly probable, does not bode well for this "spiritual teacher".

The most damning are the first two which completely pull the rug out from under Hawkins' whole philosophy by invalidating the muscle test as an objective truth detector, taking away Hawkins' justification for absolutism. Without arm-pressing, Hawkins' whole objective calibration theory crumbles to the dogma it actually is, as does the authority he has mustered by writing the highest calibrated book in history (and by implication being one of the highest calibrated beings of all time). Take away muscle testing and suddenly Hawkins stands before us as the naked Emperor he actually is — a right-wing, opinionated and contradictory New Age teacher trying in vain to objectively justify an assortment of personal dogmatic beliefs and opinions. Hawkins is well aware of this fact, which is why he is now distancing himself from applied kinesiology as his position is being weakened further by proponents of that alternative diagnostic system because they too reject and invalidate his use (or rather misuse) of their muscle testing technique.

As long as Hawkins' retains an absolute objective view of calibration, he knows he is on shaky ground, and so he has started to refer to his use of muscle testing and calibration as "right brain exploration", a far cry to his original left brain arithmetic description outlined in his book Power versus Force. In fact, we may see calibration itself played down in the future as Hawkins knows that it is his Achilles heel, being so amenable to scientific validation, validation it consistently fails. And using the excuse that those who cannot validate it calibrate under 200 is disingenuous: after all, if 50% of US citizens (according to Hawkins) calibrate over the necessary basic level of integrity, then a full 25% of any arm-pressing double act should have access to infallible truth testing, and this is clearly not the case even in his own organisation of followers (who I presume would calibrate higher than the national average).

Hawkins' position therefore would actually be more tenable if he moved back to a more overtly dogmatic worldview, relying on his perceived authority as an enlightened master with many impressive titles and qualifications, rather than giving it an easily dismissed pseudo-scientific justification. His one-dimensional map of consciousness, although not particularly original, is a valid hypothesis widely accepted by many (but not all) parts of the New Age community. What is original about Hawkins' map is the numerical detail — the pseudo-scientific veneer — he puts on this concept. However, as the pseudo-science is becoming too much of a liability, Hawkins may have to remove some of the numerical detail as it is clearly contrived given the fallibility of the muscle test. In the words of Sarlo, editor of Sarlo's Guru Rating Service, "Unfortunately, he has leaned rather too heavily on what turns out to be a thin stick, and it cannot support all the weight he wants it to."

It is also interesting that Hawkins writes in his book I: Reality & Subjectivity that "The human mind is incapable of discerning truth from falsehood," because, as the muscle test according to him is able to discern truth from falsehood, this implies that the mind is in no way involved in the kinesiological response. I presume he is referring to the conscious mind as the subconscious mind certainly has to be involved in the kinesiological response as he admits the response includes changes in the autonomic nervous system. But if the conscious mind has no influence over the autonomic nervous system, then autogenic-type training in which one can learn to consciously control the autonomic systems such as the heartbeat rate would be invalidated, as would many healing imagery techniques and therapies. So evidence would not support Hawkins' assertion that the mind is somehow completely uninvolved in his truth calibration process — in other words, it is not as objective as he would like it to be.

One question that does arise is why Hawkins seems to have used litigation and/or the threat of litigation only over the past few months. What could be triggering this sudden possible desire to silence his critics? Unless he is using it simply for copyright issues, one reason might be that, due to his recent interview on Oprah Winfrey's radio show, which will certainly generate huge interest for his work, Hawkins could be flexing his legal muscles in an attempt to sanitize the web as much as possible so that potential students are not put off by official encyclopedia entries like the one on Wikipedia. Another factor might be that Hawkins, unable to counter valid criticism, has resorted to trying to silence the source of criticism. (All this is conjecture until more is known of the types of litigation that have been involved.)

At the end of the day, however, the Hawkins phenomenon says more about society in general than about Hawkins himself, showing the seduction of absolute philosophies, no matter how inane. Some people will always champion anything and anyone who gives them the illusion of certainty, just as many did with Hitler in the 1930's and Bush in more recent times, suspending their critical facilities in order to satisfy the emotional need for security. Hawkins offers that security with his absolute map of consciousness, and for this reason, it is unlikely that Hawkins will disappear even if the New Consciousness communities start to accept that his arm-pressing truth detector is entirely contrived. Hawkins will no doubt continue to defend the indefensible with weak ad hoc explanations and ever-inflated claims of his personal authority and high spiritual development, and possibly litigation, to silence his critics and stamp out dissent. Fortunately, the power of free speech always prevails over the force of litigation, and what Hawkins and his followers has managed to get censored from Wikipedia and NEIRR will resurface elsewhere on the web.

The title of this article is "The Emperor's New Clothes" because this well-known fairy tale fits the facts about Hawkins and his claim to be an enlightened master with important and absolute teachings. Hawkins is the emperor presenting the finery of his absolutism to the world, justifying it by claiming the infallibility of a kinesiology arm-pressing technique. (The term "absolutism" which Hawkins uses to define his position can fittingly also refer to "a political theory holding that all power should be vested in one ruler" — Hawkins!) And anyone who dares to question the emperor's new clothes is a "low-cal" — a person too low on the calibration scale to appreciate the the emperor's fine weave and therefore someone who should be ignored if at all possible.

And this charade is playing out in front of us, with Hawkins holding his head high at the top of the calibration scale with the likes of Jesus, Buddha and Krishna. And the towns people in our fairy tale are the majority of the New Age / New Consciousness movements, as well as many of those from more traditional religions who regard Hawkins' "scientific" work as justification for their absolutist belief systems and spiritual hierarchies. Spiritual absolutists just love spiritual and truth hierarchies as this allows them not only to categorize (judge) without appearing judgemental (not generally considered spiritual in New Consciousness circles), but also to bolster the spiritual ego with an absolute and objective spiritual self-classification. And couple this with their fear of being calibrated below 200 and you have a recipe for mass delusion, such as what we see with regards to Hawkins and his calibrated worldview.

Whilst there are a few voices of dissent in the New Age / New Consciousness / spiritual movements, the majority of criticism for Hawkins' assertions and theories comes from those outside all spiritual movements — the scientific reductionists [eg] — who attack Hawkins' use of pseudo-science. These people are not afraid of calibrating below 200 as they reject calibration altogether.

Hawkins presents his work with a lot of scientific jargon in a move that impresses only non-scientific people (the majority of the population). Because of this, the criticism he faces is primarily from hard-headed skeptical materialists — those who tend to be outside the New Consciousness, New Age or modern spiritual movements (his target audience). The result is a polarization of debate, with spiritual people on the one hand feeling that they need to defend Hawkins from this onslaught from hard-headed reductionist scientists, and scientific people on the other hand who end up dismissing Hawkins as just another example of irrational and cultist spiritual philosophies. And this polarization is encouraged by Hawkins' dismissal of the often valid points his critics are making by calibrating these people themselves, in an ad hominem attack, as below the threshold of integrity and therefore not worth addressing. And the flip side of this is that if you accept Hawkins' authority and see the value of his work, you are probably of high spiritual calibration. (Ad hominem criticism is actually only valid on Hawkins himself because his main justification for his work rests on the authority of himself as an enlightened master genius who can write books with the very highest truth calibration. Were he to try to base it on the strength of his philosophy alone, he would not have the high profile he has today because it just would not bear the weight he places on it.)

This polarization of criticism, which I have no doubt Hawkins is encouraging, acts as a smoke-screen for the holes in his work by pushing debate into an us-and-them issue: of course those awful scientists who reject anything remotely spiritual would reject Hawkins' work. After all, they reject all spiritual beliefs and philosophies! And this is the reason why Hawkins is such a controversial character and why his Wikipedia entry was so heated — div