How to Determine the Truth of Any Statement

Back in the late seventies, a doctor by the name of John Diamond was doing some research into biofeedback and kinesiology (muscle responses). He noticed that the body would respond to positive and negative emotional and intellectual stimuli, as well as just physical stimuli. He was following up on the research of a man named Dr. George Goodheart, who had found that the body would give a strong muscle response in the presence of something beneficial, such as vitamins, and that it would go weak in response to something unhealthy to it, such as a packet of artificial sweetener. Diamond found that a positive influence - a smile, for example, would cause the body to give a strengthened response from certain indicator muscles. He also found that those same indicator muscles would give a weakened response to a negative stimuli, such as the statement, "I hate you." It turns out that negative things - even psychological ones - are actually physically detrimental. And the body shows the effects of this, since it impairs the proper functioning of the nervous system, and that shows up in how the muscles, particularly certain indicator muscles, behave.

This is a procedure almost anyone can use successfully. Here it is, from Dr. Diamond's 1979 outline in "Your Body Doesn't Lie" (available further down the page). He adapted it from the description in H.O. Kendall's "Muscles: Testing and Function".

It takes two people to perform a kinesiological test. Choose a friend or a family member for testing. We'll call him or her your subject.

1. Have the subject stand erect, right arm relaxed at his side, left arm held out parallel to the floor, elbow straight. (You may use the other arm if you wish.)

2. Face your subject and place your left hand on his right shoulder to steady him. Then place your right hand on the subject's extended left arm just above the wrist,

3. Tell the subject you are going to try to push his arm down as he resists with all his strength.

4. Now push down on his arm fairly quickly, firmly and evenly. The idea is to push just hard enough to test the spring and bounce in the arm, not so hard that the muscle becomes fatigued. It is not a question of who is stronger, but of whether the muscle can "lock" the shoulder joint against the push.

Assuming there is no physical problem with the muscle and the subject is in a normal, relaxed state of mind, receiving no extraneous stimuli (for this reason it is important that the tester not smile or otherwise interact with the subject), the muscle will "test strong" - the arm will remain locked. If the test is repeated in the presence of a negative stimulus (for instance, artificial sweetener), "although you are pushing down no harder than before, the muscle will not be able to resist the pressure and the subject's arm will fall to his side."

Diamond also noticed while conducting the research that people listening to recordings of known deceits - Lyndon Johnson perpetrating the Tonkin Gulf hoax, Edward Kennedy stonewalling the Chappaquiddick incident universally tested weak. While listening to recordings of demonstrably true statements, they universally tested strong. Since this wasn't the focal point of his research, he scribbled a few footnotes about it and went about his business. In 1975 this was picked up on by Dr. David R. Hawkins, who went on to research applications of kinesiology in determining truth from falsehood, made some tremendous advances, and went on to write what has gone on to become a bestselling book about it, Power vs. Force (available further down the page).

Hawkins found that it didn't matter whether the subjects knew anything about the statements being tested, or even what the statements were! They could be verifiably true and false statements ("Water is wet.") written on 3-by-5 cards, sealed into envelopes, the envelopes shuffled and passed around to lecture audiences of hundreds of people. By checking the truth of the statement, "The statement inside this envelope is true." they could all determine the true envelopes from the false envelopes - and all get the same response.

What we're working with here is nonlocalized consciousness. Anything available to consciousness anywhere is available to consciousness everywhere else. False statements are inherently weakening because they are detrimental to life, an attack upon the dignity of consciousness everywhere. This gives an effect within the nervous system of the person encountering it, and that effect is demonstrated by the indicator muscle responses.

Hawkins conducted research on the reliability of kinesiology as a testing mechanism, and then proceeded to use it as a scientifically objective means of inquiry itself. For the first time, mankind has a means of objectively, accurately, and repeatably determining truth. Hawkins applied it to researching, scientifically, what we never has the means to do before: the nature of consciousness itself.

He went on to use this procedure to calibrate the levels of consciousness, and to determine their nature and characteristics. He used it to evaluate for the degree of truth in the major religions of the world. He found applications in areas as diverse as spirituality, politics, sports, investment, and conventional technological research and investment. For this reason, the book he wrote about it has the rare distinction of receiving praise from diverse figures such as Lee Iacocca and Mother Teresa. In fact, when he eventually wrote Power vs. Force, he used the technique itself to fact-check his writing for inaccuracies, chapter by chapter, page by page, and sentence by sentence.

In his book, and the proof-of-concept videos he's made, Dr. Hawkins demonstrates numerous practical applications of the technique. Want to determine if an investment opportunity is sound, or a scam? Want to check if art is genuine? Or a politician? It's difficult to suppress an wide, empowered grin when Dr. Hawkins uses, from the comfort of his own home, kinesiology on his video to determine where the corruption and disconnect are within the CIA. What about speeding up Research and Development for new technologies? It can be time-consuming and prohibitively expensive to experiment with many different possible approaches and materials; with kinesiology, you can divide the options into two groups, test each group for the best approach, and repeat the process until you've narrowed it down to one possibility.

But perhaps the most devastatingly cool demonstration of the practical uses of applied kinesiology comes when Dr. Hawkins, in his video, uses it to find the location of a hidden murder weapon. He uses the technique to play a sort of "Twenty Questions", narrowing down the possible locations within the house until he has determined precisely where, and what, the weapon is. This application of kinesiology has enormous practical ramifications. Imagine being able to find anything - or anyone - anywhere. You might not even know what or who you're looking for, specifically, yet you can find it with kinesiology. What about going through Missing Children reports online and locating the children with kinesiology? Reuniting devastated families and earning a substantial chunk of reward money all at the same time.

The applications for this kind of technique are enormous and near-infinite. All it takes is a little thought. Life becomes less a matter of "how can we get what we want?", and more a matter of "what is it that we really want?". Whatever practical applications we put it to, one thing is clear: some great things are about to happen. Why not be a part of it? I'd love to read entries in my guestbook about how you've used kinesiology to do tremendous things. What is it you'd like to see in the world, and how can you apply this technique to make it happen? (In the case of reuniting families for reward money, with gobs of money and no need for a full-time job, I'm sure you could do anything you set your mind and heart to.) I'd love to hear from you.

I have been fascinated by Hawkins' method and application of muscle testing for several years, and this Squidoo page had only been up for a few days when today, February 22, 2008, new information came my way via a Google search someone who visited this site had run to get here. It is an interesting, well-reasoned, and thoroughly researched inquiry into Hawkins, his muscle testing approach, and his methods in promoting awareness of it. Though I make commission on this page by introducing people unfamiliar with Power vs. Force to his work and hopefully generating sales of his books, my primary motivation is to promote public awareness of something that can assist mankind. So despite the fact that it will probably impact my own bottom-line, I cannot in good conscience continue to promote Hawkins' work without also making researched criticisms available. To do otherwise would be an unacceptable lapse of conscience and integrity on my part.

What's all the hullaballoo? Attorneys representing Hawkins or his business associates going on the 'net threatening critics with suits for "libelous statements" - resulting in behavior which intimidates people and subverts free speech. More threatened legal action against those online sharing, for example, his Map of Consciousness - though it's distinctly within Fair Use. Apparent misuse of commendations on his work, in order to promote his books. Seeming puffery in many of his listed titles and credentials. His own Wikipedia entry was removed due to all the controversy. And his evident dismissal of criticisms as being void by alleging that his critics (and experiments with results unfavorable to his approach) calibrate below the level of truth, so their calibrations are void.

What is going on here? We have someone espousing virtue and integrity on the one hand, and using self-evidently Fear-based approaches like legal threats to silence anyone who disagrees with his message. An apparent air of dogmatic totalitarianism seems to be finding its way into the David Hawkins camp, eroding the integrity he's written so well about by compromising it in his attempt to publicize it.

A few thoughts occur. The muscle testing technique itself appears to be viable, though often used under inclement circumstances, with unintentional disregard to other factors that will affect the results. It is certainly a young science, after all.

In his excellent book "Lord of Light", Roger Zelazny has one of his characters say, "As you know, the personal strengths and weaknesses of a leader are no true indication of the merits of his cause." And this may well be the case here. Hawkins has written extensively on the choice for integrity, and on how it can erode. In his videos, he also demonstrates how something (tobacco, in that instance) can be detrimental in general, but not detrimental for a particular person who has managed to render themselves impervious to its effects. This demonstrates that muscle testing can yield two results, one giving information in a general, objective context, and another answering within a person's own individual context. If this distinction were not made correctly, it would be easy to get responses from muscle testing that were valid and true within a person's own native, subjective perception of reality - but which is inaccurate in the larger, objective context everyone else uses. In essence, muscle testing might be yielding David Hawkins information which is true for him, according to his own personal beliefs and reality, and yet inaccurate in an objective sense. A very understandable mistake like that could easily cause someone to misinterpret the muscle testing results as an irrefutable demonstration that their own subjective context was actually objectively true - and apparently agreeing with it every time.

With "proof" like that, coming from what one accepts as an irrefutably objective and accurate fact-checking method, obviously those who disagree with Hawkins' own perceptions would be completely wrong - and many courses of action, including legal action, would seem completely justified. Unfortunately, just because something can be justified and rationalized does not mean that it is loving... something which David Hawkins knows all too well. As he writes in Power vs. Force, "The more dualistic the creed, the greater seems to be its vulnerability to misinterpretation. Dualism promotes a split between belief and action and the disorientation of levels of truth. When this occurs, the spiritual essence can be confused in translation into physical expression. Thus, the conceptual Christian Soldier (of the spirit) becomes, through a distorted `literal' translation, a self-justified battlefield killer." And using to muscle-testing to determine right from wrong, unintentionally getting results that establish that anyone who disagrees with your own beliefs is wrong, could give rise to that sort of "Us" vs. "Them" dualism on a scale that few on the planet have encountered. That would certainly explain what the world has been seeing lately from David Hawkins' attorneys.

A situation like that would give rise to all sorts of cognitive dissonance, such as we're seeing in the evident discrepancy between Hawkins' message and his methods. I see the sad case of a great man unintentionally subverting and undermining the very movement he gave to the world, increasingly eroding it and rendering it on par with the papal authority of the Catholic church in feudal Europe.

For an excellent and compelling read on cognitive dissonance, and on the process by which we tend to rationalize our own lapses in integrity, I recommend "Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)", by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. David, if you're reading this, I write this with unconditional love for you. I do believe that your recent basis for motivation has been unfortunately, and understandably, mistaken. Your work was, is, and will remain worthy of our attention and our respect... and so do you.

And thanks to Andrew P. at Energy Grid for putting together such a great investigative article.