Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior (Power vs. Force, #1)

by David R. Hawkins

The ladder of success seems to have three main steps. Initially, it is what we “have” that counts; status depends upon visible signs of material wealth. As one progresses, status is afforded by what one “does,” rather than what one has. At this level on the ladder, one’s position and activities bring significant social status, but the attraction of social roles loses glamour as one achieves mastery and matures; it is what one has accomplished that is important. Finally, one is concerned only with what one has become as a result of life’s experiences. Such people have a charismatic “presence” that is the outer manifestation of the grace of their inner power.

The effect of alignment with principle is nowhere more striking than in its physiologic consequences. Alignment with high-energy attractor patterns results in health; alignment with weak ones results in disease. This syndrome is specific and predictable. That high energy patterns can be proven to strengthen and low energy patterns to weaken through a demonstration meeting the scientific criterion of one-hundred-percent replicability is a fact with which the reader by now is thoroughly familiar. The human central nervous system clearly has an exquisitely sensitive capacity to differentiate between life-supportive and life-destructive patterns.

Generally speaking, physical and mental health are attendant upon positive attitudes, whereas ill health, both physical and mental, is associated with such negative attitudes as resentment, jealousy, hostility, self-pity, fear, anxiety, etc. In the field of psychoanalysis, positive attitudes are called welfare emotions, and the negative ones are called emergency emotions. Chronic immersion in emergency emotions results in physical or mental ill health and a gross weakening of one’s personal power. How does one overcome negative attitudes so as to avoid this atrophy of power and health? Clinical observation indicates that the patient must reach a decision point. A sincere desire for change allows one to seek higher attractor energy patterns in their various expressions.

It is generally held by traditional medicine that stress is the cause of many human disorders and illnesses. The problem with this diagnosis is that it does not accurately address the source of the stress. It looks to blame external circumstances, without realizing that all stress is internally generated by one’s attitudes. It is not life’s events, but one’s reaction to them, that activates the symptoms of stress. A divorce, as we have said, can bring agony or relief. Challenges on the job can result in stimulation or anxiety, depending on whether one’s supervisor is seen as a teacher or an ogre.

If we experiment with vitamin C, for example, we find that organic vitamin C is superior to chemically produced ascorbic acid; the former makes you go strong and the latter does not. Eggs from organically fed free-range chickens have much more intrinsic power than eggs from caged and chemically fed chickens. The health-food movement seems to have been right all along.

How we react depends upon the world we seem to be reacting to. Who we become, as well as what we see, are both determined by perception, which can be said, simply, to create the perceptual, experiential world. It is interesting to note that the further down the scale of consciousness a person is, the harder it is for them to maintain eye contact. At the low end, visual contact is avoided altogether. In contrast, as we go up the scale, the ability to hold a prolonged, and finally almost endless, gaze at great depth becomes characteristic. We are all familiar with the guarded glance of guilt, the glare of hostility, and, in contrast, the unblinking open-eyed-ness of innocence. Power and perception go hand in hand.

One characteristic of the experience of pure consciousness is a perception of timelessness (or timelessness of perception). Consciousness is experienced as beyond all form and time and seen as everywhere equally present. It is described as “Is-ness” or “Beingness” and, in the spiritual literature, “I-am-ness.”5 Consciousness does not recognize separation, which is the consequence of a limitation of perception. The enlightened state is of a “Oneness” in which there is no division into separate parts. Such division is only apparent from a localized perception; it is really only incidental to a fixed point of view. Similar descriptions throughout the history of thought are in accord with the studies of William James, as reported in the Gifford lectures and the famous book Varieties of Religious Experience. The experience of consciousness itself has been described as rare, unique, ineffable, and “beyond mind;” as a thought-free state of Knowingness that is complete, all-inclusive, with neither need nor want, and beyond the limitation of experiencing a merely personalized, individual self.6 Another attribute of pure consciousness is cessation of the ordinary flow of thought or feeling. There is also a condition of the presence of infinite power, infinite compassion, gentleness, and love. In this state, the personal self becomes the Infinite Self. There is an accompanying recognition of the very origin of the capacity to experience self as Self. This awareness of self as Self is...

The classical chakra system recognized by many spiritual disciplines correlates almost exactly with the Map of Consciousness that has emerged from our studies. The level of 600 corresponds to the crown chakra, level 525 to the third eye chakra, level 505 to the heart chakra, level 350 to the throat chakra, level 275 to the solar plexus and the spleen or sacral chakras, and level 200 to the base or root chakra (calibrations in 2010).

Christianity The level of truth originally expounded by Jesus Christ calibrates at 1,000, the highest attainable on this plane. By the second century though, the level of truth of the practice of his teachings had dropped to 930, and by the sixth century, had dropped to 540. By the time of the crusades, at the beginning of the eleventh century, it had fallen to its current level of 498. A major decline in the year 325 A.D. was apparently due to the spread of misinterpretations of the teachings originating from the Council of Nicaea. Students of religious history will find it interesting to calibrate the level of truth of Christianity as practiced before and after Paul, Constantine, Augustine, etc.1 It should be noted that the Lamsa translation, from the Aramaic, of the New Testament calibrates at 750, whereas the King James version, from the Greek, is 500. Just as there is a wide range in the level of truth of various translations, so there is a wide variation between different Christian practices.