[Megan]

Like so many things I read, at first blush, I dug it.

Then the niggling little thoughts started bubbling up from below the "Gee Whiz, Isn't This Cool!" surface of my mind.

When a person self-rates his own books in the spiritual stratosphere, I have to ask, "What's wrong with this picture?"

Worse, when a person rates his detractors in the lowest strata, I have to ask, "How self-serving is that?" Also, "How self-referential is that?"

Then there are the pseudoscience claims (which I can neither verify nor disprove):

Numerous people have pointed out to me that Hawkins completely abuses the mathematics and physics in his book. He consistently refers to his calibration scale as "logarithmic" when it is in fact "exponential"; he uses the term "critical point" when referring to his exponential scales, when an exponential graph by definition cannot have a critical or "flat" point; and he uses leading-edge scientific terminology such as "chaos theory" and "attractors" in contexts that only demonstrate undeniable scientific and mathematical ignorance… which is rather strange considering that he calibrates his own books as the most "truthful" ever published.

David Hawkins - Power vs Force - A Critique

Amazon.com reader: The mathematics in this book is a joke

If a doctor were to tell you that your backache was caused by "halitosis of the femural artery located in the sternum", you would know that he doesn't know what he is talking about. This is exactly what Dr. Hawkins does with mathematical terms.

Dr. Hawkins rates everything in the universe on a scale of 1 to 1000 based on how good or bad it is. To explain this scale he uses a lot of technical-sounding mathematical terms, but he uses those terms incorrectly- to the point of being gibberish. Since he knows his discussion would be above most readers' heads Dr. Hawkins can get away with it.

He claims that the scale is "logarithmic" and base 10, but in his explanation of what a logarithm is, he confuses logarithmic functions with exponential functions and repeats this mistake throughout the book. Essentially, someone at level 201 has ten times the power of someone at 200, someone at 202 has 10 times the power of someone at 201 and so on.

This "logarithmic progression" is then completely contradicted by his chart which states how many people at one level counterbalance someone at another level.

One of the statements on this chart is that "12 people at level 700 equals one avatar at 1000". On his "logarithmic" (actually exponential) scale it would take 10^300 people at level 700 (that's a one with 300 zeros in front of it) to equal the power of one person at level 1000. Since when does 12= 10^300?

He uses the calculus term "critical point" and claims that his scale has a critical point at 200. In mathematics a critical point is the point where the derivative of a function equals zero. On a graph, it is the point where the tangent line is flat-the point where you are neither rising nor falling. What Dr. Hawkins didn't realize was that neither logarithmic functions nor exponential functions have critical points. Their derivatives are always positive. In this case, he just threw in a mathematical term without bothering to find out what it means.

He discusses chaos theory, because it is new and trendy, but he misses the point entirely. He seems to think that chaos theory implies that the world is more orderly and easily explained than previously thought, when in fact chaos theory implies just the opposite. He does this because he likes the word "attractor" which he overuses throughout the rest of the book.

In other cases, bad math like this could be overlooked. He is after all a psychiatrist, not a mathematician. In this book, however, the technical terms are used to impress the readers with how scientific the system is, and the claim is that it is based on research.

If you can understand what these mathematical terms actually mean, it becomes clear by the gibberish that he is just making this stuff up.

If his "mathematical" system was revealed to him through muscle-testing (as opposed to outright fiction), then it shows just how unreliable this system is.

Perhaps the most blatently incompetent statement he makes is that a loving thought has the energy of " 10^-35 million megawatts" (I'm using the symbol ^ because this this font won't allow superscripts) and claims that the quantity is "so enormous as to be beyond the capacity of the human imagination to comprehend."

The truth is that this quantity is so miniscule as to be beyond our capacity to comprehend.

10^35 million is a one with 35 million zeros in front of it- a huge number indeed, but 10^-35 million is 1/10^35 million -- a mind-bogglingly tiny fraction.

If you were to multiply the mass of the entire galaxy by a fraction that tiny, you wouldn't even have enough mass for a single electron. If the minus sign was a typo, without it the energy level described would be great indeed--probably be along the order of the big bang and our heads would have exploded (and caused a supernova) a long time ago.

In this case, he just threw together the most confusing notation he could think of, without a clue as to what it meant. He did this to make it appear scientific. He figured that his readers would be too dumb to know the difference. I don't think this can be written off as a mere honest mistake

Other laughable statements are that organically grown tobacco is actually healthy, and that taking one gram of vitamin C per day will counter all of the harmful effects of smoking.

He also states that adrenaline causes the muscles to go weak. Adrenaline is the stimulant hormone associated with the fight/flight response and its entire purpose is to give you EXTRA strength and energy in an emergency. As a doctor, he should know this

Amazon.ca: Power Versus Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior: Books: David R. Hawkins

Dr. Hawkins refers to the "absolute replicability of test results," yet makes no mention that kinesiology has never been verified by double-blind studies....

I tried his kinesiological method, but did not have consistant results. Perhaps I'm at some moronic level of consciousness....

David Hawkins

I don't doubt that there are levels of consciousness, but I object to spiritual teachers trying to validate their personal beliefs with pseudoscientific claims (if such they truly are), and blowing smoke in our faces for dubious reasons of their own, while hoping we don't notice.

Any mathematicians out there?

Megan