David R. Hawkins: life, works and verified quotes

Biography

5 min read

A boy in the blizzard

David Ramon Hawkins was born on 3 June 1927 in Milwaukee and grew up in rural Wisconsin during the Great Depression, in a family about which little is known beyond what he himself told. Almost everything we know of his childhood comes from a short autobiographical note that, with slight variations, closed the “About the Author” section of his books from 2001 onwards. There he places two founding episodes. The first at the age of three: sitting in a little wagon, he suddenly became aware that he existed, and with that awareness came the fear of not existing. The second in adolescence, while delivering newspapers by bicycle along a route of some seventeen miles: caught in a twenty-below-zero blizzard, the bicycle fell over on the ice and the boy dug a hollow in a high snow bank to shelter from the wind; there, he says, the cold gave way to a state of peace he could not name until decades later. These are single-witness accounts written half a century later by a man who already presented himself as enlightened, and they should be read as such.

The Long Island psychiatrist

He served in the United States Navy in the closing months of the Second World War, aboard a minesweeper, and graduated in medicine in 1953 from the Medical College of Wisconsin, formerly Marquette University's medical school. After his internship, in 1956 he received a psychiatric fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital. That same year he became medical director of the North Nassau Mental Health Center in Manhasset, which he led until 1980, and from 1968 to 1979 he was director of research at Brunswick Hospital, also on Long Island. His official biographies describe the practice as one of the largest in the country, with two thousand outpatients; the figure comes from his own publisher.

His name then entered the circle of so-called orthomolecular psychiatry, which advocated treating schizophrenia with high doses of vitamins and nutrients. In 1973 he co-edited with the chemist Linus Pauling, twice a Nobel laureate, the volume Orthomolecular Psychiatry: Treatment of Schizophrenia (W. H. Freeman); he was founding president of the Academy of Orthomolecular Psychiatry and sat on the editorial board of its journal. The movement never won the backing of academic psychiatry, and the American Psychiatric Association questioned it in a task-force report that same year; he nonetheless remained attached to it to the end, and in 2006 was inducted into the Orthomolecular Medicine Hall of Fame. As a young doctor he had also been drawn to Buddhism and attended the First Zen Institute in New York.

The night at thirty-eight

At the centre of his spiritual account lies an illness. According to the same autobiographical note, around 1965 he was suffering from a progressive, potentially fatal disease that responded to no treatment; at thirty-eight he knew he was close to death and, from an atheism he later read as the rejection of mankind's “false gods”, asked God for help. What followed, he writes, was the complete disappearance of the personal self and the irruption of a Presence that would thereafter govern his life. He himself stressed that he did not speak of it publicly for over three decades. There is no independent testimony of that experience: it is the autobiographical core on which he built his authority as a teacher.

Sedona and the map

In 1979 he moved to Sedona, Arizona, and the following year he gave up clinical practice. In 1983 he set up the Institute for Spiritual Research, a non-profit that today supports Veritas Publishing, the house he founded to publish his books. From the mid-1970s, by his own account, he had been experimenting with applied kinesiology, a muscle-testing procedure popularised by the chiropractor George Goodheart, convinced that a person's arm weakens before what is false and stays strong before what is true. From this came his logarithmic scale of levels of consciousness, from 1 to 1000, with a threshold at 200 — the passage from “force” to “power” — and which accompanied the doctorate in Health and Human Services he obtained in 1995, aged sixty-eight, from Columbia Pacific University, an unaccredited distance-learning school that a California court ordered closed in 2000.

A disputed bestseller

That same year he published Power vs. Force with Veritas. Hay House reissued it in 2002 and again in 2012 as the “author's official authoritative edition”, and the book, translated into more than twenty-five languages, became a classic of its genre. It was followed by The Eye of the I (2001) and I: Reality and Subjectivity (2003), which complete a trilogy on enlightenment, and a dozen further titles: Truth vs. Falsehood (2005), Transcending the Levels of Consciousness and Discovery of the Presence of God (2006), Reality, Spirituality and Modern Man (2008), Healing and Recovery (2009) and, in the last year of his life, Letting Go, the most practical of all, devoted to a technique of surrendering emotions.

The book attracted both fervent adherence and severe criticism. Reviews of the literature on applied kinesiology have found no evidence of diagnostic value; a double-blind trial published in 2014 obtained results equivalent to chance, and the studies that do record some accuracy in telling truths from lies are far from the infallibility he attributed to the method. Sceptical writers such as Robert Todd Carroll explained his public demonstrations through the ideomotor effect. His publisher replied that the technique works only if those who practise it “calibrate” above 200, a condition that places the theory beyond any refutation.

Devotional nonduality

In his last years Hawkins presented himself less as a researcher than as a teacher. In 2003 he founded what he called the pathway of devotional nonduality, which joins the surrender of the ego of the Advaita tradition to the Christian devotion to God, and he gave packed lectures in Arizona and California, as well as in South Korea, where in 2000 he received an honorary title as a teacher of enlightenment. He was an Episcopalian parishioner. His last great lecture, on love, drew some seventeen hundred people in September 2011.

He died at his home in Sedona on 19 September 2012, aged eighty-five. He was survived by his wife, Susan, who had accompanied him at every lecture. Since then Veritas and Hay House have continued to publish transcriptions of his talks, and in 2025 Susan Hawkins signed his authorised biography, The Man Who Mapped Consciousness. His legacy is twofold and hard to separate: a plain language for speaking of surrender, humility and devotion that many readers find useful, and a claim to measure truth with a person's arm that science has been unable to confirm.

Sources: Hawkins, David R. The Eye of the I: From Which Nothing Is Hidden. Sedona: Veritas Publishing, 2001, «About the Author» (nota autobiográfica, reproducida también en Truth vs. Falsehood, 2005; Transcending the Levels of Consciousness, 2006; Healing and Recovery, 2009; Letting Go, 2012). Consultado mediante la búsqueda de texto completo de Internet Archive (ejemplar eyeofi0000hawk). · Hawkins, David R. Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior. Sedona: Veritas Publishing, 1995; ed. revisada, Carlsbad: Hay House, 2002; «Author's Official Authoritative Edition», Hay House, 2012. · Hawkins, David R., y Linus Pauling (eds.). Orthomolecular Psychiatry: Treatment of Schizophrenia. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973. ISBN 0716708981. · Hawkins, Susan. The Man Who Mapped Consciousness: The Life and Legacy of Dr. David R. Hawkins, The Authorized Biography. Carlsbad: Hay House, 2025. ISBN 9781401979577. · American Psychiatric Association. Megavitamin and Orthomolecular Therapy in Psychiatry. Task Force Report 7. Washington, D. C.: APA, 1973.

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

19271948197019912012

June 3, 1927age 0Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Birth in Milwaukee

David Ramon Hawkins is born. He grows up in rural Wisconsin.

Documented«In Memoriam: David R. Hawkins, 1927–2012». Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine 27 (4), 2012, pp. 187–188 (International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine).

After their death

June 3, 2025Authorised biography

June 3, 1927 · age 0
Birth in Milwaukee
David Ramon Hawkins is born. He grows up in rural Wisconsin.
Documented
c. 1930 · age 3
The awareness of existing
According to his autobiographical note, at three, sitting in a little wagon, he suddenly becomes aware of his own existence and, with it, of the fear of nothingness.
Probable
1939 · age 12
The blizzard
Delivering newspapers by bicycle along a seventeen-mile route, he is caught at night in a twenty-below-zero blizzard; he shelters in a snow bank and recounts a state of deep peace from which his father rouses him. Date according to his autobiographical note.
Probable
c. 1945 · age 18
Navy service
Serves on a US Navy minesweeper at the end of the Second World War.
Documented
1953 · age 26
Medical degree
Graduates from the Medical College of Wisconsin (formerly Marquette University School of Medicine).
Documented
1956 – 1980 · age 29
Director of the North Nassau Mental Health Center
After a psychiatric fellowship at Mount Sinai, he becomes medical director of the centre, a post he holds until 1980.
Documented
c. 1965 · age 38
The experience of the Presence
Gravely ill and convinced he was about to die, he recounts praying and experiencing the disappearance of the personal self and a Presence that would guide the rest of his life. A single-witness account he made public thirty years later.
Probable
1968 – 1979 · age 41
Director of research at Brunswick Hospital
Directs the hospital's research until 1979.
Documented
1973 · age 46
Orthomolecular Psychiatry, with Linus Pauling
Co-edits with Pauling the volume Orthomolecular Psychiatry: Treatment of Schizophrenia (W. H. Freeman). That same year the American Psychiatric Association publishes a critical report on megavitamin therapies.
Documented
1975 · age 48
First experiments with kinesiology
According to Power vs. Force, he begins investigating the kinesiological muscle response as an indicator of truth and falsehood.
Probable
1979 · age 52
Move to Sedona
He settles in Sedona; in 1980 he gives up psychiatric practice and becomes director emeritus of the North Nassau centre.
Documented
1983 · age 56
Institute for Spiritual Research
Founds the Institute for Spiritual Research, Inc., a non-profit that supports Veritas Publishing.
Documented
1995 · age 68
Power vs. Force and doctorate
Publishes Power vs. Force with Veritas and obtains a doctorate from Columbia Pacific University, an unaccredited school closed by court order in 2000.
Documented
2000 · age 73
Honorary title in Korea
Receives in Seoul the title of “teacher of enlightenment” (Tae Ryoung Sun Kak Dosa).
Documented
2001 · age 74
The Eye of the I
Second volume of the trilogy, in which he narrates his states of consciousness in the first person.
Documented
2003 · age 76
I: Reality and Subjectivity and devotional nonduality
Completes the trilogy and founds the pathway of “devotional nonduality”.
Documented
2006 · age 79
Orthomolecular Medicine Hall of Fame
Inducted into the Orthomolecular Medicine Hall of Fame and named a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association for fifty years of membership.
Documented
September 2011 · age 84
Last major lecture, on love
Some 1,700 people attend his lecture on love, regarded by his publisher as the culmination of his work.
Documented
September 19, 2012 · age 85
Death in Sedona
Dies at home shortly after completing Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender.
Documented
June 3, 2025
Authorised biography
Hay House publishes The Man Who Mapped Consciousness by his widow, Susan Hawkins.
Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

Written work · 1995

Power vs. Force

Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior

His most widely read book and the foundation of all his later work. It sets out the 'map of consciousness', a logarithmic scale from 1 to 1000 on which every human attitude — from shame (20) through pride (175), courage (200) and love (500) to enlightenment (700–1000) — would have a 'calibratable' value, and argues that the muscle test of applied kinesiology can tell true from false. It distinguishes power, which arises from truth and need oppose nothing, from force, which imposes itself and breeds counter-force, and applies the distinction to politics, art, sport, business and health. These are the author's claims: controlled studies have not confirmed the validity of muscle testing as a truth detector, and the scale lacks independent verification. Translated into more than twenty-five languages, it is both a classic of its genre and one of its most disputed books.

Buy the book View the book

16 editions · amazon.com

Written work · 2001

The Eye of the I

The Eye of the I: From Which Nothing Is Hidden

The second book of the trilogy and the most personal: Hawkins describes in the first person the states he says he lived through from 1965 — the dissolution of the self, the Presence, years of being unable to function — and answers readers and audiences in question-and-answer form. It contains the autobiographical note that thereafter closed his books. It is a self-report: no one else can corroborate those states, and the author presents them as evidence of his authority.

Buy the book View the book

8 editions · amazon.com

Written work · 2006

Transcending the Levels of Consciousness

Transcending the Levels of Consciousness: The Stairway to Enlightenment

A systematic, level-by-level tour of the map of consciousness: for each stage — shame, guilt, apathy, fear, desire, anger, pride, courage, neutrality, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace — it describes how it is lived, what sustains it and how to move beyond it. It is the most didactic of his books and the one most used as a practical manual. The figures for each level and their supposed kinesiological verification remain the author's claims, without external validation.

Buy the book View the book

5 editions · amazon.com

Written work · 2012

Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender

Completed shortly before his death and published in 2012, it is his most practical book and probably the most recommended today. It proposes a simple technique: notice an emotion or impulse, let it be without resisting, judging or acting on it, and allow it to run its course. It applies the method to guilt, fear, anger, pride, relationships, health and work, drawing on examples from his clinical practice. Though it mentions the levels of consciousness, it can be read without accepting calibration, which is why it is also cited by readers sceptical of the rest of his work.

Buy the book View the book

10 editions · amazon.com

Complete works (36)

See all 36 works in the library

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

Force always moves against something, whereas power doesn't move against anything at all.

VerifiedPower vs. Force (Hay House, 2002); localizada en el texto completo del ejemplar powervsforcehidd00hawk (Internet Archive)

1 / 8

Essential ideas (editorial summary)

Out of respect for copyright, these ideas are summarised in our own words and are not presented as literal quotations.

Human consciousness could be ordered on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 1000; below 200 destructive attitudes prevail (shame, guilt, fear, anger, pride) and above it life-supporting ones (courage, acceptance, reason, love, peace). It is his central thesis and has not been independently validated.
Authentic power derives from true principles and need not impose itself; force, by contrast, demands justification, provokes resistance and eventually exhausts itself.
Emotions that are suppressed or expressed unconsciously accumulate; if they are observed and allowed to be without resistance, they discharge and lose their hold on the person.
The ego is not an enemy to be defeated but a structure inherited from animal evolution that is transcended through humility, surrender and devotion.
Personal transformation influences others more than any speech: what a person becomes has repercussions throughout their surroundings.
Recovery from addiction and many illnesses depends, in his view, on a change of inner attitude; hence his esteem for the twelve-step programmes of Alcoholics Anonymous as an effective spiritual path.
The most direct spiritual path would be devotion joined to nonduality: surrendering every thought, desire and position to God until the personal self no longer intervenes.

Last words

There are no verifiable records of their last words.

There is no reliable record of any last words. The obituary published by the International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine says only that he died “peacefully” at his home in Sedona on 19 September 2012, after completing a series of recorded dialogues and his book Letting Go. Neither Veritas Publishing nor the 2025 authorised biography (not consulted in full text) records, as far as verified, any attributed final words.

Source: «In Memoriam: David R. Hawkins, 1927–2012». Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine 27 (4), 2012, pp. 187–188 (International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine).

Ask

What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?
Divinity is immanent as the Self and transcendent as the Unmanifest
Both personal and impersonalStated explicitly
David R. Hawkins, a psychiatrist who reports having passed through states of enlightenment, speaks openly of God and describes Him in two registers. In The Eye of the I (2001) and I: Reality and Subjectivity (2003) he presents Divinity as the Unmanifest, the formless source of all existence, and at the same time as the Presence experienced as one's own Self when identification with the ego ceases: God transcendent and God immanent are the same Reality. He distinguishes this Divinity from images of a wrathful or judging God, which he attributes to low levels of consciousness and ego projections. His work keeps the vocabulary of devotion — grace, surrender, love of God — so that the divine has a face to which one surrenders and a formless ground in which the self dissolves.
Compare this question with other teachers
Who am I? Is there a true self?
The small self is the ego; the true Self is the divine Presence
The Self is the AbsoluteStated explicitly
David R. Hawkins distinguishes typographically between the self, identified with the body, the mind and its positions, and the capitalised Self, which he describes as the Presence of Divinity within. In The Eye of the I (2001) he recounts how, in his experience, the personal self vanished and a boundless awareness remained that belonged to no one. The ego, for him, is a set of programmes, attachments and positionalities that feeds on its own gratifications; it is not to be fought but surrendered. On his map of levels of consciousness, enlightenment corresponds to the dissolution of identification with the small self and the recognition of the Self as identical with Divinity. Unlike Buddhist non-self, he holds that behind the ego there is a real Self, and he unhesitatingly calls it God immanent.
Compare this question with other teachers
Why do we suffer?
The ego clings to positions and emotions; releasing them reveals the Self's peace
Ignorance of what we areStated explicitly
David R. Hawkins attributes suffering to identification with the ego and its contents. In Letting Go (2012) he describes how suppressed feelings accumulate — fear, guilt, anger, pride — which the ego holds on to and projects, and proposes a mechanism of surrender: allowing the feeling to be, without resisting or condemning it, until it is exhausted. In Power vs. Force (1995) he arranges emotions on a scale of levels of consciousness, from shame and guilt at the bottom to love, joy and peace at the top, and associates pain with levels dominated by contraction and positionality. The ego, he explains, even derives a secret gratification from its own suffering, which is why it clings to it. Release from pain coincides with the dissolution of that identification and the recognition of the Self.
Compare this question with other teachers
What happens after death?
The Self does not die; only identification with the body dies
What I am is never born and never diesStated explicitly
David R. Hawkins recounts in his books several near-death experiences and a state of enlightenment in which, he says, the fear of dying vanished because it became clear that life cannot be extinguished. He holds that what fears death is the ego, which identifies with the body and its linear continuity; the Presence or Self has neither beginning nor end and is not affected by the disappearance of the body. In The Eye of the I and in I: Reality and Subjectivity he describes physical death as the leaving of a vehicle and the fear of it as one of the last attachments the seeker must surrender. At the same time, Hawkins accepts the continuity of the spirit and of karma: the level of consciousness reached in a life determines, in his view, the soul's destiny after death.
Compare this question with other teachers
How is liberation or salvation attained?
Surrender the ego to God by letting go; the final step comes by grace
Through devotion and surrenderStated explicitly
David R. Hawkins describes enlightenment as the top of a scale of levels of consciousness he presented in Power vs. Force. Ascending it does not consist in accumulating knowledge but in letting go: surrendering, one after another, the ego's positions, desires and judgements. In Letting Go he sets out that mechanism of surrender as applied to emotions, and in his later works he speaks of a «devotional nonduality», in which humility, surrender to God and prayer are the driving force of progress. Hawkins holds that the final step, the dissolution of the sense of a separate self, is not carried out by the ego, which cannot abolish itself, and comes as grace when surrender is complete.
Compare this question with other teachers
Is a teacher necessary?
The teacher helps through presence and teaching; one must discern his truth
Helpful but not indispensableInferred from their doctrine
David R. Hawkins attributed to realised teachers a real effect on those who approach them: in his scheme, the field of consciousness of a high-level teacher favours the raising of others. That is why he considered valuable the teaching of history's great masters and of anyone who has walked the path. At the same time, he warned against false teachers and proposed discerning their degree of truth, using his calibration method, before following them. His later works, such as The Eye of the I, present his own experience as teaching, but insist that truth is only realised inwardly, through surrendering one's own ego, something no one can do for another.
Compare this question with other teachers
Is the world real?
The perceived world is the ego's projection; in its essence all is perfect
Appearance over the one realityInferred from their doctrine
David R. Hawkins distinguishes between the world as the egoic mind perceives it and what it is in its essence. The perceived world, with its conflicts, causes and evaluations, would largely be a projection of the ego's positionality: by labelling and judging, the mind builds a scene it takes for reality. When that positionality dissolves, as he describes in The Eye of the I on the basis of his own experience, the world is revealed as an expression of Divinity, in which everything is perfect as it is and nothing happens by linear causality. Ultimate reality is consciousness itself, and the world is its apparent content.
Compare this question with other teachers
What is love?
Love is a level of consciousness that arises when the ego is released
What appears when the self ceasesStated explicitly
In the map of consciousness he proposes in Power vs. Force, David R. Hawkins places love at a high level of his scale, above reason, and unconditional love somewhat higher, as the antechamber of joy and peace. He distinguishes this love from the romantic or dependent feeling that the culture calls love and which, in his view, belongs to lower levels, mixed with desire, pride or fear of loss. True love does not centre on an object: it is a way of being in the world that perceives what is essential and valuable in everything, forgives easily and does not judge. Hawkins holds that it is not reached by effort but by surrendering the ego's positions, judgements and attachments; what remains when they are released is love, which at higher levels is recognised as the very nature of Divinity.
Compare this question with other teachers
Are we free, or is everything determined?
Nothing causes anything: everything arises spontaneously and the deciding self is an assumption
There is no doerStated explicitly
In his mature works, *The Eye of the I* (2001) and *I: Reality and Subjectivity* (2003), Hawkins holds that linear causality is a construct of the mind and that, from enlightened consciousness, everything happens spontaneously as an expression of the whole. The personal self that believes it decides is an assumption of the ego, which claims authorship of what in fact emerges of itself. At the same time, in *Power vs. Force* (1995) he speaks of choosing between attractor fields of higher or lower consciousness, and encourages that choice as a path of growth. In his scheme both statements belong to different levels: choice holds for those who identify with the self; for the awakened, there is no one who chooses.
Compare this question with other teachers
Why meditate or pray?
Surrendering every feeling and thought until the Presence is revealed
Being presentStated explicitly
Hawkins proposes a path he called «devotional nonduality», set out in *Discovery of the Presence of God* (2006). Rather than a concentration technique, he recommends a contemplative attitude sustained throughout the day: observing the arising of each thought and feeling at the very edge of the present instant and surrendering it, neither resisting nor pursuing it. In *Letting Go* (2012) he systematises that mechanism of surrendering emotions as a practical method. When the mind stops clinging to its contents, he holds, the Presence is revealed, which is not something attained but what has always been there. Prayer, understood as humble surrender to God, is part of the same movement.
Compare this question with other teachers
Can reason know the ultimate?
Reason calibrates at 400: necessary, but a ceiling below love
The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly
In his *Map of Consciousness*, set out in *Power vs. Force* (1995), Hawkins places reason at level 400, above pride, fear or acceptance, and credits it with the great achievements of science, philosophy and medicine. But he also presents it as a limitation: reason works with concepts, linear causes and data, and cannot step beyond its own domain. The leap to love (500) and beyond, to peace and enlightenment (600 and upwards), requires giving up the primacy of the intellect. In *The Eye of the I* he adds that ultimate reality is subjective and cannot be proven, only known by being it. Thought points; realisation is a shift of context, not a conclusion.
Compare this question with other teachers
Withdraw from the world or transform it?
Raising one's own consciousness changes the world more than force does
The revolution is innerStated explicitly
David R. Hawkins holds that social and political problems are poorly solved from the level of consciousness that produced them. In Power vs. Force he distinguishes power, which springs from true principles and sustains itself, from force, which must impose itself and generates a counterforce; movements that fight something out of hatred or pride, even when pursuing just ends, reproduce the conflict. That is why the most effective service to the world is to raise one's own consciousness: according to his model, each person who moves towards love and truth counterbalances the weight of many others at lower levels, and humanity advances as a whole. Hawkins does not propose withdrawal: he values work, family and ordinary commitments as a field of surrender. But he distrusts militant activism and places inner transformation before any institutional change.
Compare this question with other teachers

Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

Thinks most like

Thinks most unlike

They clash onFundamental disagreement

David R. Hawkins · The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso)

Calibrating truth or letting science refute: two attitudes towards evidence

The Dalai Lama states in The Universe in a Single Atom that if scientific investigation conclusively showed a Buddhist claim to be false, it should be abandoned, and he recalls the traditional advice to examine the teaching as a goldsmith examines gold. David R. Hawkins builds in Power vs. Force a Map of Consciousness whose figures, from shame to enlightenment, he obtains through muscle testing, and he uses the same procedure to calibrate the degree of truth of teachings and teachers. Both hold that reason does not exhaust the real, that contemplative experience goes beyond the concept and that love or compassion occupy a higher place. But they differ over what counts as evidence: one submits doctrine to public examination; the other, to a method of his own that has not been validated.

Why: The contradiction is real and concerns method. The Dalai Lama speaks from the university tradition of Nalanda, with its developed logic and epistemology, and from decades of dialogue with scientists: he distinguishes what Buddhism says about the mind, which can be tested, from what it affirms about the path. Hawkins, a psychiatrist by training, presents kinesiology as a bridge between science and spirituality, but his procedure lacks independent experimental validation, and the library presents it as doctrine, not as a result. Both agree on the place of reason, necessary but not ultimate; they clash over whether a claim about truth can rest on a measurement no one else can replicate.

They clash onFundamental disagreement

David R. Hawkins · Jiddu Krishnamurti

A ladder of levels versus a pathless land

Hawkins describes enlightenment as the summit of a numbered scale of levels of consciousness, set out in Power vs. Force: reason at 400, love at 500, peace and enlightenment above 600; one ascends by letting go of the ego's positions one after another (Letting Go), and the last step comes by grace. Krishnamurti holds that all psychological becoming is the very problem: the idea of progressing towards a better state is born of thought and time, and strengthens the self that wants to achieve something; truth is a pathless land (Ommen address, 1929) and freedom lies at the beginning, not at the end. Both agree that the ego cannot abolish itself and that liberation is not a conclusion of the intellect.

Why: The contradiction is real, though it starts from a shared diagnosis. Hawkins, trained as a psychiatrist and a reader of devotional traditions, offers his readers a map that lets them locate themselves and orient inner work, and his way is surrender. Krishnamurti, raised in the Theosophical Society, with its doctrine of initiations and grades, rejected precisely every spiritual hierarchy: a map of levels would seem to him the subtlest form of ambition. One sees the scale as an aid to letting go; the other, as a trap that turns letting go into another achievement. They agree that no one can do the work for another and that thought is not the goal.

They agree on

David R. Hawkins · Nisargadatta Maharaj

Everything happens and no one does it: the doer as an assumption

Both hold that the self that believes it decides is an assumption. Nisargadatta, in I Am That, answers questions about free will by dismantling the questioner: the person who thinks he chooses is a combination of body, memories and the feeling of existing, what he does is determined by countless causes, and the consciousness in which everything appears does not choose; it witnesses. Hawkins states in The Eye of the I and I: Reality and Subjectivity that linear causality is a construction of the mind and that everything arises spontaneously as an expression of the whole, while the ego claims authorship. Both allow a language of choice for one who still identifies with the person, and both regard it as provisional: on awakening one does not gain a freer will; the one who chose disappears.

Why: The affinity comes from a common matrix, non-duality of Vedantic origin, which Nisargadatta received from his lineage and Hawkins adopted in his mature works. No relationship between them is recorded in this library. They differ in register and audience: Nisargadatta speaks in direct conversations, translated from Marathi, with a negative method that discards everything perceived; Hawkins writes books combining his experience, clinical language and a map of levels of consciousness whose calibration basis lacks scientific validation. Hawkins also stresses devotional surrender to God; Nisargadatta stays with pure enquiry into the I am.

Anecdotes and stories

Testimony1939

The blizzard

Hawkins recounted that in 1939, aged twelve, he delivered newspapers by bicycle along a seventeen-mile route in rural Wisconsin. One winter night, miles from home, he was caught in a twenty-below-zero blizzard; the bicycle fell over on the ice and the wind ripped the newspapers out of the handlebar basket. He broke through the icy crust of a high snow bank, dug out a space and crawled in. Soon, he writes, the shivering stopped, there was a delicious warmth and then a state of boundless peace and light, a loving presence in which there was no longer body or worry. He was brought back by someone shaking his knee: his father's anxious face appeared. Returning to the body, he says, met great reluctance, and only his father's love and anguish decided it. He told no one for years. The episode opens the autobiographical note of his books from 2001 onwards, which presents it as a foreshadowing of the 1965 experience.

Origin of the story: It comes solely from Hawkins himself: the 'About the Author' note in The Eye of the I (2001) and later books. There is no independent testimony and no precise date.

Source: Hawkins, David R. The Eye of the I: From Which Nothing Is Hidden. Sedona: Veritas Publishing, 2001, «About the Author» (nota autobiográfica, reproducida también en Truth vs. Falsehood, 2005; Transcending the Levels of Consciousness, 2006; Healing and Recovery, 2009; Letting Go, 2012). Consultado mediante la búsqueda de texto completo de Internet Archive (ejemplar eyeofi0000hawk).

Testimonyc. 1965

The atheist's prayer

Around 1965, aged thirty-eight and practising psychiatry in New York, Hawkins was suffering, as he wrote, from a progressive illness that did not respond to any available treatment: at that age he knew he was 'in extremis' and about to die. Although he considered himself an atheist, a question crossed his mind — what if there is a God? — and he turned it into a prayer: if there was a God, he asked Him for help. From that moment, he says, everything ceased and the personal self disappeared, replaced by an infinite Presence that thereafter governed his life. The same note states that he came to have the largest psychiatric clinical practice in New York City, that the state later led him to withdraw into seclusion for several years to research the nature of consciousness, and that he did not mention the experience for over thirty years, until the publication of Power vs. Force. It is the core of his authority as a teacher and, at the same time, an account with no source but himself.

Origin of the story: Autobiographical note in his books from 2001 (The Eye of the I onwards). No medical records or witnesses are known that would allow the illness or the experience to be checked.

Source: Hawkins, David R. The Eye of the I: From Which Nothing Is Hidden. Sedona: Veritas Publishing, 2001, «About the Author» (nota autobiográfica, reproducida también en Truth vs. Falsehood, 2005; Transcending the Levels of Consciousness, 2006; Healing and Recovery, 2009; Letting Go, 2012). Consultado mediante la búsqueda de texto completo de Internet Archive (ejemplar eyeofi0000hawk).

Documented2000s

Scepticism 'calibrates' at 160

When the writer Robert Todd Carroll included Hawkins in The Skeptic's Dictionary and attributed his muscle-testing demonstrations to the ideomotor effect — the small involuntary movements by which tester and tested unknowingly confirm what they expect — the response from his circle was not a blind experiment. Veritas Publishing's FAQ page replied that scepticism is a 'negative' attitude that calibrates at 160, below the threshold of integrity, and that The Skeptic's Dictionary calibrates exactly the same; it adds that scepticism is unable to comprehend nonlinear reality. The same page states that the technique is reliable only if the practitioners and their intention calibrate above 200. The episode illustrates the problem critics point out: the method is used to disqualify whoever questions it, and the precondition makes it impossible to refute.

Origin of the story: Documented on Veritas Publishing's 'FAQs' page ('Critics' and 'Kinesiology' sections) and in the 'Applied kinesiology' entry of The Skeptic's Dictionary (s20).

Source: Veritas Publishing. «FAQs» (incluye «Critics: Clarification of Consciousness Research», normas sobre grupos de estudio, derechos del Map of Consciousness® y el Institute for Spiritual Research, Inc.).

Unverifiable1990s–2000s

Mother Teresa's praise

In the promotion of his books it is repeatedly said that Mother Teresa of Calcutta praised Hawkins's work, often alongside the name of Wayne Dyer. The Spanish publisher, for instance, presents La sabiduría del Dr. David R. Hawkins by saying that the author was extolled by both for his research and teachings. Among readers the idea circulates that the nun wrote him a letter after reading Power vs. Force. The praise acts as a moral endorsement for a work disputed by science, so it is worth separating what is on record from what is repeated: the mention appears in publishers' and promotional texts, but this research has not located the text of a letter, its date or a verifiable reproduction.

Origin of the story: It appears in promotional texts (e.g. the El Grano de Mostaza page for La sabiduría del Dr. David R. Hawkins). Neither the letter nor its provenance has been found; it remains pending.

Source: Ediciones El Grano de Mostaza (Barcelona), catálogo de libros de David R. Hawkins en español (fichas con ISBN como SKU).

Documented2010s–2025

The biography the publisher disowned

Scott Jeffrey had prepared the two 2011 anthologies for Hay House, Along the Path to Enlightenment and Dissolving the Ego, Realizing the Self, and ran a website, the Consciousness Project, devoted to Hawkins's work. After the teacher's death he wrote a biography. According to Veritas's FAQ page, Hay House, which had contracted it, decided not to publish it, and Jeffrey chose to self-publish; the family's publisher states that it no longer has any association with him or his website and does not endorse the book. In 2025 Hay House published the authorised biography written by Susan Hawkins. The episode shows how closely Veritas and the Institute for Spiritual Research guard the author's image: the same page warns that no study group or website is authorised or supervised by them.

Origin of the story: Statement by Veritas Publishing on its 'FAQs' page (consulted 2026-10-25). Not checked against Scott Jeffrey's version; title and date of his book pending.

Source: Veritas Publishing. «FAQs» (incluye «Critics: Clarification of Consciousness Research», normas sobre grupos de estudio, derechos del Map of Consciousness® y el Institute for Spiritual Research, Inc.).

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

Map of Consciousnessmap-of-consciousness

A scale Hawkins presented in Power vs. Force (1995) and developed in all his later books. It orders human attitudes and states on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 1000: shame (20), guilt (30), apathy (50), grief (75), fear (100), desire (125), anger (150), pride (175), courage (200), neutrality (250), willingness (310), acceptance (350), reason (400), love (500), joy (540), peace (600) and enlightenment (700–1000). Each level would have a dominant emotion, a view of God and of life and its own 'energy field'; the threshold of 200 would mark the passage from force to power, from the destructive to the life-supporting. According to the author, the values are obtained by 'calibrating' with the muscle test, which is why he assigned figures to people, books, works of art or nations. It should be read as a moral and spiritual typology proposed by him: as a description of attitudes it is intuitive and many readers find it useful, but its figures do not come from any reproducible measurement, the scale has not been validated by independent studies, and the 'proven' label on some editions is a marketing formula. The Institute for Spiritual Research registered it as a trademark (Map of Consciousness®) and restricts reproduction of its tables.

It combines the hierarchy of needs of humanistic psychology, the emotional scales of self-help movements and the traditional idea of degrees of spiritual realisation.

Source: Hawkins, David R. Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior. Sedona: Veritas Publishing, 1995; ed. revisada, Carlsbad: Hay House, 2002; «Author's Official Authoritative Edition», Hay House, 2012.

Calibration by muscle testingcalibration-muscle-testing

The procedure by which Hawkins claimed to measure truth. It takes applied kinesiology, a diagnostic system created in 1964 by the chiropractor George Goodheart and popularised by John Diamond, and turns it into a universal detector: one person extends an arm, another presses on it while a statement is made, and the muscle's strength or weakness would indicate whether the statement is true or false, or what level it reaches on his scale. Hawkins held that it works because the individual mind is connected to an all-knowing field of consciousness, and that it is reliable only if the participants and their intention are above 200. The evidence does not bear him out. The review by Hall and colleagues (2008) found no evidence that applied kinesiology has diagnostic value; a 2014 randomised double-blind trial obtained hit rates equivalent to chance; and the studies by Jensen and colleagues (2016), which record some ability to tell true from false sentences under controlled conditions, place it far from the infallibility he attributed to the method. Critics explain the public demonstrations by the ideomotor effect. The 200-threshold clause makes the theory unfalsifiable: any failure can be blamed on the tester's level.

The author's claim; the scientific assessment is summarised with sources s8, s9, s10, s11 and s20.

Source: Hall, S.; Lewith, G.; Brien, S.; Little, P. «A review of the literature in applied and specialised kinesiology». Forschende Komplementärmedizin 15 (1), 2008, pp. 40–46. doi:10.1159/000112820. PMID 18334813.

Power and forcepower-and-force

The distinction that gives his best-known book its title. Force is imposition: it needs justification, is directed against something, generates a counter-force and eventually exhausts itself; he associates it with pride, anger, manipulation and coercion. Power is the capacity that derives from true principles — dignity, freedom, compassion, integrity — and that need oppose nothing, just as a gravitational field does not push. Hawkins illustrates the distinction with Gandhi against the British Empire, with great statesmen against tyrants, and with advertising and sport. Beyond its anchoring in calibration, the idea belongs to a long ethical tradition — non-violence, Taoist wu wei, moral authority versus coercion — and it is the part of his work that has circulated most widely outside spiritual circles, in leadership and management.

Set out in Power vs. Force (1995) and taken up again in Success Is for You (2016).

Source: Hawkins, David R. Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior. Sedona: Veritas Publishing, 1995; ed. revisada, Carlsbad: Hay House, 2002; «Author's Official Authoritative Edition», Hay House, 2012.

Letting go (surrender)letting-go-surrender

A technique he set out at length in Letting Go (2012), though he had been teaching it for decades. It consists in becoming aware of a feeling, allowing it to come up, staying with it without judging, resisting or acting on it, and letting it run its course until it is exhausted; when thoughts arise, they are let pass and attention returns to the feeling. For Hawkins thoughts are rationalisations of accumulated emotions, so releasing the emotion dissolves hundreds of thoughts at once. He distinguishes this process from suppression, uncontrolled expression and escape, and applies it to anxiety, guilt, desire, relationships and health. It has an evident kinship with contemporary acceptance and mindfulness practices and with emotional-release methods such as Lester Levenson's, and it is the part of his teaching that can be practised without adhering to the scale of levels; its efficacy, like that of other self-help techniques, has not been assessed in specific studies.

The practical core of his late work; it connects with surrender to God in the devotional path.

Source: Internet Archive, búsqueda de texto completo (servicio FTS) sobre ejemplares digitalizados de bibliotecas: powervsforcehidd00hawk (Hay House, 2002), eyeofi0000hawk (Veritas, 2001), i00hawk (Veritas, 2003), lettinggopathway0000hawk (Veritas, 2012), alongpathtoenlig0000hawk (Hay House, 2011).

Devotional nondualitydevotional-nonduality

The name he gave in 2003 to his own spiritual path. It joins two currents often presented as opposed: the nonduality of Advaita Vedanta and Zen, according to which the separate self is an illusion and ultimate reality is one, and the devotion to a personal God of Christian mysticism and bhakti. In practice it proposes surrendering to God, moment by moment, every thought, desire, opinion and attachment, with humility and without seeking results, until identification with the personal self dissolves and only the Presence remains. It stresses integrity, kindness to all that lives and prayer, and advises against following teachers who claim money, power or devotion for themselves. He presents his own experience as proof that this path leads to enlightenment, a claim that by its nature cannot be verified.

Set out in I: Reality and Subjectivity (2003) and Discovery of the Presence of God (2006).

Source: Veritas Publishing. «Dr. David R. Hawkins» (biografía oficial, educación, premios y fundaciones). veritaspub.com.

Retreats

Retreats and centres

Places and gatherings linked to their teaching. We put you in touch with the organisers.

Grupos locales en varios países y por Zoom · Internacional
David R. Hawkins study groups
Veritas Publishing (directorio)
Veritas Publishing, the Sedona publisher of David R. Hawkins's work, maintains a directory of study groups devoted to his books and his Map of Consciousness. Groups are listed by their own organisers, can be searched by country or postcode and include online options by video call; the same website explains how to start a new one. These are not retreats led by the organisation but gatherings of readers. Veritas also offers a streaming video library with the lecture series, dialogues and satsangs Hawkins gave between 2002 and 2011, the most direct record of his teaching.
Request information

See all retreats →

Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

Dr. David R. Hawkins: No Mind is the Ultimate Context
Lecture· EN· 7 min
veritaspubOfficial channel
Dr. David R. Hawkins: The Direct Way to God
Watch on YouTube
This video cannot be embedded; it opens on YouTube.
Dr. David R. Hawkins: The Direct Way to God
Lecture· EN· 3 min
Veritas Publishing – Dr. David R. HawkinsOfficial channel
Dr. David R. Hawkins: How to Become the Witness
Watch on YouTube
This video cannot be embedded; it opens on YouTube.
Dr. David R. Hawkins: How to Become the Witness
Lecture· EN· 3 min
Veritas Publishing – Dr. David R. HawkinsOfficial channel
How Do You Let Go?
Watch on YouTube
This video cannot be embedded; it opens on YouTube.
How Do You Let Go?
Lecture· EN· 4 min
Veritas Publishing – Dr. David R. HawkinsOfficial channel
“How far up the scale is it possible to go in one lifetime?”
Watch on YouTube
This video cannot be embedded; it opens on YouTube.
“How far up the scale is it possible to go in one lifetime?”
Lecture· EN· 4 min
Veritas Publishing – Dr. David R. HawkinsOfficial channel
Forgiveness
Watch on YouTube
This video cannot be embedded; it opens on YouTube.
Forgiveness
Lecture· EN· 5 min
Veritas Publishing – Dr. David R. HawkinsOfficial channel
Dr. David Hawkins: Why Your Mind Won’t Stop Thinking
Lecture· EN· 24 min
Hay HouseOfficial channel
El legado del Doc David Hawkins, mapa de la conciencia, dejar ir | Entrevista Miguel Iribarren
Interview· ES· 85 min
Imanol Correa
TODO sobre EL MAPA DE LOS NIVELES DE CONSCIENCIA del Dr David Hawkins
Analysis· ES· 24 min
Sebas Klinkert
Dr. David R. Hawkins: Vol I: Power vs. Force – Muscle Testing Video
Original recording· EN· 2 min
Veritas Publishing – Dr. David R. HawkinsOfficial channel
Who You Are Brings You What You Need - April 2004
Lecture· EN· 2004· 10 min
Veritas Publishing – Dr. David R. HawkinsOfficial channel
Altered States of Consciousness (August 2005)
Lecture· EN· 2005· 3 min
Veritas Publishing – Dr. David R. HawkinsOfficial channel
Dr. David R. Hawkins: Grace and Karma
Lecture· EN· 2 min
Veritas Publishing (veritaspub)Official channel
Mesa redonda - David Hawkins - El poder frente a la fuerza
Analysis· ES· 2026· 55 min
El Grano de MostazaOfficial channel
Mesa redonda - David Hawkins - Dejar ir
Analysis· ES· 2026· 58 min
El Grano de MostazaOfficial channel

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

Met
Linus Pauling
They co-edited Orthomolecular Psychiatry: Treatment of Schizophrenia (W. H. Freeman, 1973).
Documented relation
Influenced by
George J. Goodheart
Hawkins took from Goodheart's applied kinesiology (and its populariser John Diamond) the muscle test on which he based calibration.
Documented relation
Family of
Susan Hawkins
His wife; she presides over the Institute for Spiritual Research and wrote the authorised biography (2025).
Documented relation
Ideas akin to
Ramana Maharshi
Both locate realisation in the recognition of the Self and the disappearance of the personal self; Hawkins adds a Christian devotional component.
Similarity identified by analysis
Ideas akin to
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Affinity in the thesis that the personal 'I am' is a transient identification to be transcended.
Similarity identified by analysis
Contemporary of
Eckhart Tolle
Contemporaries read by the same public; both narrate a sudden dissolution of the self at a moment of crisis and propose letting go of identification with the mind.
Similarity identified by analysis

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

Rights holder: Herederos de David R. Hawkins (copyright a nombre del autor) a través de Veritas Publishing, editorial propia sostenida por el Institute for Spiritual Research, Inc. (Sedona, Arizona), que custodia además las marcas Map of Consciousness® y prohíbe reproducir sus tablas; Hay House publica bajo licencia la mayor parte de las ediciones en inglés desde 2002.
Official site: veritaspub.com

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

Retrato: no hay ninguna fotografía de David R. Hawkins con licencia libre en Wikimedia Commons (búsqueda del 2026-10-25; Wikidata Q1176226 sin P18). Las tres imágenes son de lugares y de Linus Pauling; ninguna se marca como principal. Pedir a Veritas Publishing / Institute for Spiritual Research una imagen con licencia o permiso.
Tesis doctoral de 1995 (Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis and Calibration of the Level of Human Consciousness): localizar el registro bibliográfico (Columbia Pacific University / posible edición de Veritas) y su ISBN, si lo tiene.
Localizar ISBN de las ediciones en ruso de Power vs. Force («Сила против силы», editoriales Весь y АСТ) y de Eye of the I / Transcending; solo se ha verificado «Отпускание» (Ганга, 2018). Fuente de partida: Chitai-gorod (s23).
Localizar ediciones italianas distintas de Il potere dei condizionamenti (Macro Edizioni), p. ej. de Letting Go, y ediciones hindi y árabes de las obras principales (solo se han verificado dos árabes: Letting Go y I).
Ediciones españolas sin ISBN localizado: The Ego Is Not the Real You, In the World But Not of It, The Highest Level of Enlightenment («El nivel más alto de iluminación» figura en Goodreads sin ISBN), Along the Path to Enlightenment. Año de publicación de «La explicación del mapa de la conciencia», «La evolución de la conciencia» y «El hombre que creó el mapa de la conciencia» (El Grano de Mostaza).
Edición española de Realidad, espiritualidad y el hombre moderno: el catálogo de la editorial da 9788412295696 y Goodreads 9788412312430; confirmar si son dos ediciones (papel y digital).
Fecha exacta de salida de The Final Doorway to Enlightenment (Hay House, 2026): los catálogos dan 13 de enero y 4 de agosto de 2026. ISBN de My Journey of Light de Susan Hawkins (9798318604577 o 9781837826681 según el vendedor).
Grabaciones de audio y vídeo: Veritas vende decenas de conferencias en CD/DVD y streaming (series mensuales 2002–2011, «Office Visit Series», «The Highest Level of Enlightenment» en audio, etc.); solo se han registrado como obras tres títulos de audio. Inventario completo en https://veritaspub.com/.
Carta o elogio de la Madre Teresa a Power vs. Force: localizar texto, fecha y procedencia; hoy solo consta en textos promocionales (anécdota marcada como unverifiable).
Título y fecha de la biografía autopublicada por Scott Jeffrey que Veritas desautoriza en sus FAQ.
Confirmar autoría de «Dialogues on Consciousness and Spirituality» (Veritas, 1998) y su contenido, que no se ha podido consultar.
Leer la biografía autorizada de Susan Hawkins (2025) para contrastar fechas (enfermedad de c. 1965, traslado a Sedona, título coreano) y posibles últimas palabras.
Buscar vídeos oficiales insertables: casi todos los del canal Veritas Publishing tienen la inserción desactivada (oEmbed 401); hay una conferencia en coreano de 2000 mencionada en The Eye of the I sin localizar.
Sala de lectura (2026-10-25): ninguna obra de Hawkins (m. 2012) es de dominio público; derechos de Veritas Publishing / Institute for Spiritual Research y Hay House hasta 2083 (UE, 70 años) y más allá en EE. UU. para las obras posteriores a 1977. Sin reading_texts.
Vídeos (2026-10-25): añadidos 6 (4 de Veritas insertables, 2 mesas redondas de El Grano de Mostaza); la mayoría de los vídeos del canal Veritas siguen con la inserción desactivada. La entrevista con Oprah Winfrey que circula en YouTube está en un canal de aficionado y no se incluye.
Obras (2026-10-25): cotejo con Open Library sin obras nuevas. Registros atribuidos por error a este autor en Open Library y descartados: Biotransformations (1992–1993, otro David R. Hawkins, químico), The Little Book of Letting Go (2000, de Hugh Prather), Journey Together (Harvest House, 2021) y Side by Side (2009), de homónimos; Ultimate Dr. David Hawkins Library (2022) es un lote de libros, no una obra.

Researched on 2026-10-25

Biography

A boy in the blizzard

The Long Island psychiatrist

The night at thirty-eight

Sedona and the map

A disputed bestseller

Devotional nonduality

A life, year by year

Birth in Milwaukee

Essential works

Power vs. Force

The Eye of the I

Transcending the Levels of Consciousness

Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender

Complete works (36)

Essential ideas (editorial summary)

What their work answers

Affinities and tensions

Thinks most like

Thinks most unlike

Anecdotes and stories

The blizzard

The atheist's prayer

Scepticism 'calibrates' at 160

Mother Teresa's praise

The biography the publisher disowned

Teachings

Retreats and centres

David R. Hawkins study groups

Videos

Gallery

Connections

Sources