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Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior

Power vs Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior

by David R. Hawkins

Published by Hay House, Inc., original copyright 1995 (and subsequent editions)

ISBN 1561709336

Review by Mary-Sue Haliburton, Sept. 24, 2006

Book Proposes Comprehensive Method to Evaluating Information

Hawkins, a psychiatrist and former associate of Linus Pauling, with whom he co-authored Orthmolecular Psychology, sets out with great exactitude to explain an overarching framework for understanding all aspects of psychology, science, business, culture, religion, and just about any other field of human awareness you would care to name or explore. Moreover, from the beginning, his purpose is to make this as easy to follow for a general reader as possible, building up in steady increments on foundations laid in previous chapters the brickwork of his thought system.

Moreover, he claims that this system is scientifically verified and has been tested by doing millions of calibrations. By the end of the book, many readers come away convinced that this author has indeed handed them a key with which they could cut through a lot of Gordion Knots of complex issues and come away sure that they have figured out the truth. The author encourages learning to practise this calibrating, and describes workshops he held to introduce people to doing it.

Is there a trick? Can any such system provide a shortcut through conflicting information and claims, and help us to determine which ones have superior merit?

While reading any book making such claims, it is well to keep the word "caveat" in mind.

What is "CALIBRATING"?

What Hawkins is presenting is a system based on the idea of a "binary code" as an interface between the conscious mind and a broader level or field human awareness accessed through the body. If the body is a computer, and DNA capable of unimaginably fast and vast amounts of number-crunching, then a simple interface that enables us to access "the universal database of knowledge" might be useful.

Some others teach this practice too. Under the rubric of "applied kinesiology", a practitioner uses a "muscle test" it to ask the body questions about its state of health. Obtaining an answer is based on the expectation that the response will be either "yes" (strong) or "no" (weak). Most testing is done by pressing down against the anterior deltoid muscle - the one that holds your arm out straight - to find out whether the body's intelligent system agrees with a given statement. One example of such a system is John Thie's "Touch for Health(TM)" ([1]). Having gone through a Touch for Health(TM) seminar myself, and finding that (with practice) it could be effective, I approached Hawkins with an open mind.

The system Hawkins is presenting goes a step further than a simple yes-no answer. Instead, it's based on a logarithmic scale, in which the answer sought is a number on this "scale of consciousness" -- a number between zero (bottom) and 1000 (the top). As he goes along, Hawkins helpfully calibrates each chapter for you, so that you can see at what level the content of this chapter falls in the scale. He states that he used kinesiology to verify the content. If the reading was low, he checked facts until he found the error.

It's easy to understand a book that's explained in a carefully-structured sequence. It's also a highly manipulated reading experience. If you are lulled into acceptance by the appearance of thoroughness, you may not notice what is missing from this book, and would therefore not start analyzing why this omission is so crucial.

WHAT'S THE CATCH?

The instinct or courage to question received wisdom is necessary in order to challenge an author who seems so wise and insightful (according to his own account of himself, at any rate). In this foundational book David R. Hawkins has led readers down a garden path and locked the gate behind them, so that by the time they encounter his later works, they are not meant to be able to challenge the highly-flawed conclusions due to the preconceptions that were implanted in us by means of this first book.

If the underlying thought framework within which kinesiological calibration methods are being used is flawed, so will the results be. Since the earlest days of computing, it's been recognized that the software is the weak spot. It's only as good as the thinking that went into it. In the simplest terms: "garbage in, garbage out".

CAVEAT #1: Not Exclusive or Original

The late Ian Xel Lundgold had spent thousands of dollars to study the training courses of Scientology, and disclosed that their teachings are virtually the same as the system Hawkins is presenting here. This anecdote came in an email from an author who is known online as Zuerrnnovahh-Starr Livingstone. He writes regularly on the subject of how focussed human consciousness can be used to affect the health of planet and the unfolding of events. (For a sample of his writing, see his hope-inspiring recent piece "The United States of a Miracle" [2]).

That leaves unanswered the question of whether Hawkins learned about this hierarchy of values from Scientology, or whether he arrived at a similar system through a process of independent discovery. If Lundgold and Livingstone are giving accurate testimony, the fact that the two systems exhibit the same significant omission suggests that they drew from a common source.

CAVEAT #2: Abdication of the Mind

Even when bedazzled by such an entrancingly elaborate latticework of thought, we must not abdicate completely from using our own minds, nor from heeding a niggling sense of discomfort that tries to surface past the superstructure of the System.

There is a more subtle danger in setting aside logic and analysis in favour of biofeedback of any kind. It can lead to inattention and mental sloppiness. Various factors induce error, not least, the inability or refusal at the outset to analyse thoroughly the issues that confront us in order to come up with a valid set of questions on which to obtain calibrated readings.

If for some predetermined reason part of the evidence is dismissed or ruled out, the readings taken will be distorted by this omission, and will then reflect only the prejudged conclusions.

CAVEAT #3: Incomplete Parallel to Ancient Wisdom

The thesis that there is a positive and negative implication in each word is expanded as part of the system to rank ideas according to this hierarchical framework in which some are superior to others. The fact that he calibrates Jesus Christ at 1000 may seem reassuring to Christians. However, there could be a pitfall in the fact that personal illumination is placed in the hierarchy above Love, which is rated at 500. There could be a temptation to feel "more enlightened than thou", which leads to arrogance.

Looking at POWER VS FORCE, we are lulled into acceptance because many of the "calibrations" seem to fit our experience. In rating the various emotional and spiritual states of mind, he places those we associate with virtue and being more spiritual in a higher numerical ranking. The words identified as being low on the scale of consciousness are those we all recognize to have negative connotations. The emotions that are destructive to self and others all fall below 200 on this scale. Also, they happen neatly to coincide with some that have traditionally been called "sin": envy, anger, despair, pride, and so on.

However, even when I first read that book, one major omission nagged at me while studying this list. It seemed anomalous that "bearing false witness" -- also known as "lying" -- was absent from the "low-consciousness" list of destructive actions and emotions.

Also missing from the calibration scale is "telling the truth" in any explicit sense.

Although I noticed these omissions and had this uncomfortable feeling that something was amiss, I could not quite put my finger on it at the time. Overall, I was impressed with the book. Due to the welter of claims and counter-claims, and the sheer volume of conflicting data, anything that might help sort through it could be useful, I thought. I even bought extra copies and gave them as gifts.

I wouldn't do so now.

Destruction of Definitions

In his later book, TRUTH VS FALSEHOOD: How to Tell the Difference. In my review of that book, this lie of omission emerges as the key factor in a truly twisted theory.

In the whole thought-edifice Hawkins has constructed, the missing foundation-stones -- calibrating "telling truth" and assigning a consciousness-rating to the act of "lying" -- cause the entire structure to collapse. Keeping these key items out of his hierarchical scale of consciousness enables the author to destroy the known meanings of these words, "truth" and "lie", thus cleverly removing the foundation on which we normally stand to detect deception in those who pretend to more knowledge.

I am proposing to repair that foundation.

Applying "Calibration" to Science: an Example

In POWER VS FORCE, Hawkins rated Louis Pasteur 499, which in his framework was as high as reason can go -- without Love, that is.

On that basis I suppose Hawkins would claim that Pasteur was living and telling the truth. However, such a conclusion can be applied to that result only by omitting consideration of the suppressed story of Pasteur's plagiarism. He committed this intellectual crime against his contemporary Antoine Béchamp, whose career Pasteur set out to destroy when Béchamp objected to his behaviour. Plagiarism is the theft of someone else's ideas without naming the source, i.e. an attempt to pass the information off as original to oneself. In other words, Pasteur was so desirous of being lionized that he was willing to base his career on a lie, and then out of injured pride and vengefulness, compounded his crime by attacking the injured party.

Based on original sources such as the official transcripts and records of the French Academy of Science recorded at the time the two men were actually debating the issues, E.D. Hume recounted this important watershed of science in detail in a must-read book, Pasteur Exposed. (Republished by Bookreal, Australia, June 1989. Originally published by C.W. Daniel Co. in 1923 as "Béchamp or Pasteur?" and subsequent editions until 1988). <[3]>

Based on the actual minutes of meetings of the French Academy of Science and other first-hand data, E.D. Hume outlines the false foundations of modern medicine. In contrast to Pasteur's passion for self-promotion, Béchamp emerges as primarily dedicated to truth, and motivated love for humanity. Which man had the "higher" consciousness? Hawkins not only doesn't compare them; he never mentions Pasteur's rival. On the basis of Pasteur's amateurish decision that classified living and dead as being the same, it became OK to use poisons as medical treatment, and in the food chain. And that is supposed to represent higher consciousness?

Pasteur can be held up for admiration in this way only by the omission of significant historical facts, and without the comparison between him and his rival Antoine Béchamp.

It was Béchamp who discovered and taught that even the soil is alive, and that the microscopic active particles he christened "microzymas" that live within the body serve the organism as long as it lives. Then when the spirit leaves it or, in other terms, the organizing intelligence ceases to control it, these active particles change over to their other role of dismantling the complex organism. Scientists working with sophisticated microscopes able to videotape living cells down to the molecular level have periodically re-discovered the tiny particles Béchamp found. Most recently, Dr. Philippa Uwins of Queensland University in Australia, named them nanobes. [4] Her work confirms the powers of observation and brilliance of the nineteenth-century scientist Béchamp who was working with more primitive equipment and at the limits of perception. More evidence is being found to confirm the existence of nanobes ([www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artdec99/nanonew.html]).

If science had followed the insightful Béchamp instead of the mendacious Pasteur, we would never have seen either pesticides or toxic drugs. As we all know, science didn't follow that path, and that was due to political and social manipulation by the self-important Pasteur. We remain under the sway of his personality's stamp upon history.

The above example is offered to show the limitations of calibrating as a tool for consciousness research, let alone for determining truth. A numerical ranking is meaningless without context, and calibration is only as good as the completeness of thought governing its use. Omission of key data can invalidate the results.

Forewarned is Forearmed

If you wish to take on the challenge, read this book anyway, and exercise your own critical abilities. It's important to remember that no one modality of determining truth should ever be considered capable of replacing all others. It is still vital to use normal and scientific means of gathering data and analysing it to arrive at as near to a valid understanding as can be achieved, based on the unfortunate fact that we can never claim to be omniscient.

It's up to each reader to decide whether he or she can still make use of a theory even if there's a significant flaw in it. Perhaps by undertaking to calibrate the human acts of telling the truth, and of knowingly telling lies, and inserting them into the scale of consciousness where they belong, the gap in the theory could be repaired, and it could become a more accurate research tool.

It is also perfectly valid to conceive of reality without a numerical hierarchy.

Alternative Conceptual Framework

I am not opposed to calibrating in principle, just to Hawkins' incomplete and distorted scale. As the New Testament letters recommend, "Test Everything, and hold fast to what is good." ( 1 Thessalonians 5:21) Basing everything on a hierarchy of numbers does not seem to me to be in the right spirit. Therefore, attempting to be conceptually more in accord with the understanding that LOVE is the power source of all life, we might throw out the linear and hierarchical scale altogether. It seems to lend itself too much to a sense of superiority. Pride can be mistaken as the much-vaunted illumination.

The concept of a sphere of energy, which radiates outward in all directions much as the sun does, could be a useful framework. One might conceive of this as light fading outward to darkness, or as warmth fading outward to cold. Working with this analogy, people might find it easier to keep central the concept that Love created and sustains the universe, and the calibration or assessment would therefore seek to determine whether a given thought or action is tending toward strengthening this life-sustaining closeness to the Source, or whether it tends to devolve into cold or darkness. That is the main decision we have to make.

Obtaining the Book

• Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior (Amazon.com)

See also

- Reviews - index
- PESWiki home page