Dr. David R. Hawkins, writer and psychologist, put his mark on the research on consciousness in a series of original, fascinating short books. Consciousness in and on itself is an intriguing mystery topic and the same way as the vastness of space, the starry night sky it has fascinated people for thousands of years. As we start to discover the mysteries far out there in space, the same way more and more great minds have turned inwards to discover and shed some light on the mysteries of our inner world.

The relationship between our brain, the chemicals of the body, the emotions we experience, the interactions of energies, frequencies that we sense and the consciousness that embraces them all is hard to define. It is not easy to describe such a vast topic also because of it’s complexity and the hardness to measure anything about it objectively. The importance of Dr. Hawkins’s work is in opening a gate towards more detailed understanding. It’s a foggy place still, but at least some of the fog might start to dissolve after reading his books. Seeing more clearly can help you figure out better steps on your path of personal development.

With this article we intend to give a short intro to this perspective by presenting some of the main concepts in an overview format, offering a general summary (leaving out the details) for those who aren’t familiar yet with this kind of approaches.

In this Article:

• Background
• Short overview of the main concepts
• Summarizing the levels of consciousness
• Conclusions and personal insights

Background

“We change the world not by what we say or do, but as a consequence of what we have become.”

― Dr. David Hawkins

Dr. David R. Hawkins is well known for his work in psychiatry, writing, educating and researching. His main fields of research are related to the human consciousness, emotions and human behavior. He had a great impact on many people’s lives therefore he is considered by many a great spiritual teacher. Nonetheless his work is not strictly spiritual in nature and much of his activity as a researcher and writer adds valuable knowledge to the general understanding of the total spectrum of human emotions and consciousness.

The video below provides a visual explanation to the basics behind his work and his theories. This video material wasn’t prepared by me, but I am sharing it here because I like the way it summarizes the theory. The main assumptions about how the brain works and how we perceive things around us are summarized in a fun animated way in this video. It is a clear and simple approach to presenting the basics of Hawkins’s spiritual research work :

Short overview of the Main Concepts

What does Consciousness Mean?

Consciousness is a huge and a really complex subject, in other words no-one really knows. We are sensing something that we cannot yet describe. There are many approaches from more scientific ones to the more spiritual ones and all of them have a drop of truth in them, but none of that can really describe what we mean when we say soul or consciousness. In a simplified description we can call it a state of emoting, being and operating.

Our state of consciousness is related to how we perceive and filter reality, how aware we are of our emotional reactions and how capable and skilled we are at directing attention.

About The Spectrum of the Human Consciousness

The Hawkins Scale presents the levels of consciousness separated in zones. These zones are presented in what he refers to as a map. However the

The Hawkins Scale is an essential framework to understanding human emotions and their relationship to the level of ones consciousness. It can be a usefull coaching tool to help one understand where they currently are on the emotional-consciousness scale and how one can move on to experiencing the higher levels of consciousness. The visual chart, the so called ‘Map of Consciousness®‘, that Hawkins developed, is gaining practical application mostly for spiritual healing and emotional recovery.

The two books that deal mostly with the topic of the emotional map and the consciousness scale are Dr. David R. Hawkins – Power vs Force and Dr. David R. Hawkins -Transcending the Levels of Consciousness: The Stairway to Enlightenment. For those who are interested in the topics of consciousness, spirituality and emotions, I recommend reading the books. The books are pretty understandable and they provide a great reading experience.

“Handling an emotional crisis leads to greater wisdom and results in lifetime benefits. Fear of life is really the fear of emotions. It is not the facts that we fear but our feelings about them. Once we have mastery over our feelings, our fear of life diminishes.”

― David R. Hawkins, Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender

Dr. David R. Hawkins, in his above mentioned books, lays out the spectrum of consciousness on a so called ‘Map of Consciousness®‘. The map is patented material so neither we or other bloggers can share it with you, but it is to be found in all his published books now. This map is called a map, but it is not really a map. The map looks more like a spectrum, like a numeric scale that goes from 0 to 1000. This range is considered by Dr. Hawkins, to define the human domain of consciousness. Consciousness is viewed as a much larger field in his approach and it is considered, that certain entities might go beyond the 1000 level. Who knows? As of now the main idea is that there is a consciousness field and our human system can handle a segment within this field.

The emotional spectrum, as presented by Dr. Hawkins, presents a shocking resemblance to the electromagnetic spectrum, also called the spectrum of light. Interestingly the spectrum of light also differentiates a wavelength range that can be perceived by humans. Other ‘entities’, animals for example, can see beyond what is available to the human eye. The spectrum visible to humans is separated into 7 segments that we know as the colors of the rainbow ( red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, deep blue, violet).

For the description of the consciousness zones in his map format, Dr. Hawkins used a very similar approach. The same way colors are differentiated into segments on the spectrum of light, on the consciousness spectrum the emotional segments are differentiated in a very similar way.

How consciousness was measured

The consciousness scale that they got as a result of years of measurement and testing goes from the lower levels measuring 20-30 to higher levels measuring 700-1000. These numbers from 20 to 1000 are not totally arbitrary, according to Dr. Hawkins. He believes that every word, every thought, and every emotion creates what is called a morphogenetic field that can be measured using Kinesiology, or muscle testing. The numbers that are used to create the linear model come from actual measurements of the morphogenetic field of the human body.

Muscle testing was pioneered in the 1970s by Dr. John Diamond who named the discipline behavioral kinesiology. His work was more concerned about how stress is causing energy imbalances throughout the body. Dr. Hawkins expanded on this research and experimented with muscle testing applying it to all kind of stimuli testing, like measuring reactions to music, art, simple words and much more. He conducted countless experiments for more than 20 years to explore how the power of the subconscious mind affects muscle reactions. He claims that the conscious and subconscious mental processes are closely correlated to muscle reactions and can give accurate, objective information about one’s range of consciousness, emotional state and even about detecting lies.

So to sum up, a muscle testing method was used to measure the perceivable differences that separate one segment form the other. The results of thousands of muscle testing measurements were organized in a linear scale that is similar to the electromagnetic spectrum and the spectrum of visible light. In the spectrum of light there is no real boarder between the segment as they transition into each other.

Summarizing the Levels of Consciousness according to Dr. Hawkins

We, as human beings, have the capacity to experience the full spectrum of the human emotional levels, calibrations, emotional zones form its lower ranges to its amazing heights.

The Hawkins scale identifies the lower levels of consciousness as shame, guilt, apathy and the higher, more expanded levels of consciousness as being love, ecstasy and enlightenment. Each so called level of consciousness has its own identifiable, corelating human behaviors and perceptions (thought programs) about life. What a person is interested in and thinks about mostly, corresponds with their level of consciousness. In Dr. Hawkins’s view each level works also as a certain field of attraction so the persons life circumstances correlate also with the level of their consciousness.

Hawkins describes the lower levels of consciousness as ego dominated, instinctual life. He points out that people on these levels live a reactive life. The inputs automatically trigger the brain and result in automatic reactions without initiating higher level, more complex cognitive functions. The levels below the vibrational value of 200 are dominated by the lack of self-confidence, lack of power and lack of vitality. Calibrated at these levels makes people prone to be easily manipulated.

Hawkins concluded, based on his research, that there are far more people calibrated on the lower levels than on the higher levels. He estimated that about 85% of humanity is calibrated below the level 200, that he called the ‘level of courage’. He suggested that there is a balance in the World reached vibrationally, because the positivity of one person calibrated above the 500 level on the scale of consciousness can counterbalance the negativity of thousands calibrated below the ‘level of courage’ (200).

On the higher levels consciousness is best described by harmony and clarity. The world is perceived as an organic whole, where all parts are significant, meaningful and integrated. People calibrated on this level tend to have a holistic approach to reality.

Conclusions – Personal Insights

Overall, the work of Dr. Hawkins is an original approach to describing the human mental-emotional experience. I think he provides an exceptional way of explaining how emotions and conscious, mental activities are connected.

Visual tools like the ‘Map of Consciousness®‘ try to simplify the understanding of very complex psychological concepts. However care should be taken when using such simplifying tools!

The other issue is that he provides a lot of details, numbers, descriptions and the formatted, visual representation of his ideas in the form of his map. But, still…. the question remains if this is really objective and if this is really science? The ideas resonate with so much truth that can be sensed, but the map, the method might be more questionable as it looks like at first glance. This doesn’t mean however, that the zones are not correct and it doesn’t mean that it isn’t beneficial and worthy to familiarize with that perspective of emotional zones as presented in his books in a lot of detail….

The best way might be to look on it as spiritual research and not scientific research. The spectrum of light is scientifically measurable. Those numbers on the emotional spectrum and the levels seem like science, but they are mostly arbitrary delimitations based on some personal muscle testing observations. Not even the colors in the electromagnetic spectrum can be delimitated harshly as they flow into each other. Can the body measuring really make the difference in the transition zones?

His work feels mostly intuitive to me. It doesn’t mean it is wrong. I think he intuitively understands something correctly and that something, that knowledge came trough him and got this semi-scientific semi-spiritual form because of his unique skills and understandings.

Most spiritual teachings are working much the same way. they are all talking about emotional levels, good and bad, low and high levels of emotions and separate emotions into groups. So that isn’t really a ground breaking idea. Emotions can be separated in just two groups or 10+ groups like in this case. To me the originality of his approach is in his personal way of explaining the connection of our mental working with the emotional zones, and the correlation of body, muscle processes with the emotional aspects.

His perspective is one of the many approaches to describing how the body, the mind and the emotions work together. His work is a translation, an interpretation of something that we can sense, we can observe but we cannot really describe yet. There are other very good interpretations of the same thing, that differ from this research method and visual representation, but basically talk about the same thing.

The most important thing to bare in mind – mainly for those starting out in self discovery- is that the duality of emotions is necessary. When trying to move up on a scale like this we may tend to forget that, the not so good feeling emotions are necessary part of our human experience and our learning cycles. Our consciousness activity and our emotional movement in this sense is not really linear.

The research work of Dr. Hawkins and especially the ‘Map of Consciousness®‘ was really original and exceptional when it appeared and it stirred a lot of interest both positive and negative. Time is bringing forth new insights, new and improved translations of that knowledge and there is an evolving understanding of consciousness and emotions. In my opinion the Hawkins consciousness approach is a strong step toward clearer understanding of the behavior of human beings and it is a building block that can be integrated in our greater system of future knowledge.

Dr. Hawkins is a teacher, an educator and it is recommended to all who are interested in personal development, mainly for those starting out on their journey of self-discovery to familiarize with his ideas. Those looking for tools for self-awareness, self-discovery and self-help can find his books very useful.

Photo credits : Featured color scale , The spectrum of visible light

Resources and further readings: Dr. Hawkins’ works on Veritas Publishing , the Map of Consciousness by Veritas Publishing, Behavioral Kinesiology , Hawkins Consciousness Scale; Visible light spectrum