The Physics of Truth: An Interview with Eric Burlingame

In loving memory of Eric W. Burlingame

July 4, 1969 – November 12, 2017

My dear friend Eric died very unexpectedly in 2017. I wrote a piece for the relaunch of this website that talks about how massive of an influence he was on me personally, and how he impacted my understanding of David R. Hawkins’ work and consciousness research as a whole. You can read about that here.

Part 1: Down the Rabbit Hole

The desire to identify what’s “really going on” has always been one of humanity’s primary drives. We see it in our fascination with spirituality, philosophy, religion, and the sciences, with each orientation trying to answer the same basic questions: “What is going on here? Where did this all come from? What are we doing here?”

I find human behavior to be supremely fascinating, but it can also be a very confusing thing to observe. At the core of this confusion lies the inability to determine the essence of something by considering its appearance. While essence and appearance are two inseparable aspects of this world, when we only consider the things we can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell with our physical senses we leave the majority of available information off the table.

We look at well-groomed politicians on TV and hear their carefully crafted messages, and then we're shocked when news comes out that they’ve done something dishonest and destructive. Many people obsess over the acquisition of possessions and status only to realize later that they don’t contain happiness. Those are considerations of appearances, but things like honesty and happiness are matters of essence.

For me, this all excellently illustrates the importance of energetic research and the relatively unknown discoveries in recent years that have blown open the doors on this historical human limitation. If you’ve read the Hug the Universe posts about David R. Hawkins’ discoveries in consciousness research and the hidden determinants of human behavior, you’ll know this is a topic that’s had a huge impact on the way I understand the world and on my personal development. At the core of these discoveries is a fascinating phenomenon called “Coherence Verification,” and I had the opportunity to interview someone who’s on the leading edge of this branch of scientific research and discovery.

You met Eric Burlingame of Inception Publishing in the Hug the Universe post that dissects the energetic Realities behind Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s operating during the 2016 presidential race, but who is Eric? Eric is a human behavior expert, consciousness researcher, and Coherence Verification pioneer. He’s currently creating an entire ecosystem of materials to empower others in the learning and use of Coherence Verification, and to spread the awareness that humans possess a largely unrecognized ability to objectively identify Truth and that which is actual.

New discoveries that change our paradigm can sound kinda crazy or highly suspect at first, but this interview is going to clarify a lot of the “Wait, whaaaaaaaat?” that you might have experienced when considering these discoveries. So, let’s dig in! 

Hug the Universe: First off, thank you for participating in the first-ever Hug the Universe interview! It’s so exciting having an opportunity to dive into all of these absurdly fascinating details of consciousness research, and you’re definitely the guy to talk to about such things!

Eric Burlingame: Thank you, Ryan, for hosting this interview and for also being a pioneer in getting Coherence Verification out into the world!

Hug the Universe: So, getting right to it, let’s address an elephant that I imagine is going to be in at least some readers’ rooms. What would you say to people who think energetic research and Coherence Verification sounds like pseudoscience?

The great thing about Coherence Verification is that anyone can participate in, or at least view, the process with their own eyes or body.

Eric Burlingame: The pseudoscience claim is understandable because of the unusual nature of the work, and the fact that most people have not followed the development of research into human consciousness. However, the pseudoscience claim lacks validity for a number of reasons.  

First, at no point do I claim that anyone should just accept what I am writing or talking about without confirmation of their own. The great thing about Coherence Verification ("CV" for short) is that anyone can participate in, or at least view, the process with their own eyes or body. There is no point where I’m saying, “You just have to accept this.” I fully intend for people to investigate for themselves, and if that is done with objectivity, then you’ll be able to confirm everything I’m saying. 

A pseudoscience has no such capacity. 

Second, identical experimental results (within acceptable parameters) can be obtained over and over again in all different settings, which is vital to confirmation of a particular claim—scientific or otherwise. Again, no pseudoscience can be put through that kind of rigor. 

Third, at no point in my theoretical or practical models do I rely on magical or non-science-based forces. Everything I’m doing is based in widely accepted fact, or else accepted reasonable theories. I may be pushing the understanding of those facts and theories to some seemingly distant edges, but even that pushing process isn’t particularly abnormal. Just Google “many worlds theory” and you’ll find completely mainstream scientists standing by un-confirmable theories that make CV look routine and utterly sane by comparison. 

Using CV for energetic research of all sorts is relatively new. That newness and lack of wide acceptance as of yet does not make it pseudo anything, just unusual to date.

Hug the Universe: So it would be accurate to say that the CV phenomenon stems from things that the sciences are already very well acquainted with, but there are additional aspects of these realities which aren’t widely recognized yet?

Eric Burlingame: Correct. Some may find this to mean I’m saying I have secret information, or I imagine that an eleventh-century demigod has given me a glimpse into the fundamental nature of reality that no one else has. That is not the case. I’ve never even met a demigod.

The recognition that information and energy are intertwined elements and processes of the universe is so widely understood in advanced physics studies that it's taken for granted, but we are all (humanity) still trying to sort out how the process works and what we can do with that fact. CV and human consciousness studies are simply a new approach among many to working out the answers.

Hug the Universe: Huh! I know that the Coherence Verification phenomenon at the heart of consciousness research stems from the reality that everything is what we’d call “energy" and “information," but what kind of energy and information? It’s kind of hard to conceptualize.

Eric Burlingame: That’s a super important question because it gets to the essentials of the nature of everything. It’s also a very big subject matter!

My short answer is that energy and information are the two “basal forces” in the Universe. Energy and information are the most basic stuff (although I have to admit that they aren’t really things so much as processes). I also recognize that, while some writing has been done in both scientific and metaphysical texts about the fundamental forces that make up and shape the Universe, there isn’t full, mutual agreement about what those forces might be. 

Throughout human history, these basal forces have been attributed to the existence and activities of a deity, or deities. Leaving aside the argument of whether a God or gods exist, there is still the question of what the basic “stuff” is. Furthermore, what are the mechanisms of “creation” that have come to be the Universe we live in, and that has resulted in human beings and our sense of ourselves, or what we'd call “consciousness”?

The primary scientific answer is that everything is some form of energy—and at the quantum level at least—there are exchanges of information between seemingly separate or discrete states and “things.” These concepts have been somewhat thoroughly confirmed, but that's happened without the terms “energy” and “information” actually being defined to a degree that can be mutually agreed upon. 

…you can kind of think about information as the process that shapes energy.

As of late, the realization that most of the matter and energy in the universe is effectively unknown to us has muddled the discussions about energy and information even further. Despite all that lack of definition and muddled discussion, I think I have confirmed some critical factors through the use of CV:

1. What is scientifically called energy is the ground state of Everything. Essentially, Everything is energy, and the totality of energy is an indivisible whole. Energy is the primary basal force.

2. The entire Universe is only varying forms and expressions of energy. For example, matter is just another form of energy, or energetic state, as is information.

3. What we know as energy—or the ground of all—is not fully explainable at this time. We see its expression in everything, but it lacks definition, likely because it is not able to be subdivided. It just is.

4. Information is the secondary basal force (there are only two basal forces, by the way), and is a fundamental energetic process. In fact, information is a fundamental aspect of all processes.

5. Given current knowledge, information as a process is not fully explainable, although the action of [the] information process is explainable.

6. [The] information process provides potentiation to energy, in that, you can kind of think about information as the process that shapes energy. In that process we can see information as a form of infrastructure for Everything.

Hug the Universe: Whoooooa. OK, so for readers who aren’t entirely familiar with the mechanism of a CV yet, I want to revisit a bit of what was covered in the second part of my series on the hidden determinants of human behavior before moving on to my next question. 

Coherence Verification is a form of muscle-test that allows us to make visible the natural interactions with and processing of information energy that the human brain and nervous system are constantly doing. The very basic description of what’s happening in a CV is that a muscle will either stay strong and able to resist pressure, or it will lose strength and be incapable of resisting even minimal pressure. As Eric says in one of his forthcoming books, “it doesn’t sound very impressive on paper, but the effect in person is dramatic.”

The most common group of muscles tested are the deltoid and trapezius muscles in the shoulder. Not only are these generally rather strong muscles, when they’re flexed to hold the arm out (as seen in the picture below), they have something of a “locking” quality to them. This helps the moment they weaken and “unlock” to be particularly noticeable.

The tester has the testee hold their arm parallel to the ground and then applies pressure to the testee’s wrist at the appropriate moment for a CV.

Ok, now on to the next question: 

In a CV, what we’re seeing is the nervous system experiencing a break in the energy it’s conducting. What is it that creates that effect?

Eric Burlingame: That could be a fairly lengthy answer from start to finish, so let me focus in on the energetic/physical mechanisms. 

In an affirmative CV (or strong muscle response), the electromagnetic energy movement is increased considerably; and, this has the physical effect of tight compaction of subatomic states (or, “subatomic particles,” in common parlance), and subsequently, increased tissue density. At the subatomic level, a coherence occurs in the human body when the brain assembles or experiences a coherent concept that is truthful or beneficial (Hug the Universe note: “truthful" being something that exists objectively and is not dependent on the knowledge, perception, or opinions of humans). All subatomic particles in the electromagnetic continuum align in a coherent moment. So, in a coherent state, there is maximized electromagnetic flow.

The increased tissue density and more fluid electromagnetic movement provides for greater alignment in, and involvement of, muscle tissue. So, the musculoskeletal system in the human body can be used to overtly confirm a coherent or non-coherent state. This is accomplished by simply applying pressure or force against a muscle group during the moment of a focused thought, or informational entanglement (Hug the Universe note: we’ll get more into the "informational entanglement" nature of thoughts in a minute). 

When experiencing a non-coherent state, a test subject cannot resist even moderate force with the muscle group being tested. In a coherent state, a test subject can easily resist the person applying the pressure. To be super concise, nervous system conductivity and muscle tissue tensioning are more effective in a coherent, beneficial, or truthful verification, and less so in a non-coherent, or untruthful, verification.

Hug the Universe: Whoa. Ok! So, looking back at the subject of information, energy, and how the human brain interacts with it, I know from David R. Hawkins’ discoveries that the thoughts we experience are not created in the brain, but it is where we experience them. I don’t remember him going into much detail of what’s actually happening with our thoughts, though. It’s sounding like thoughts are what we experience when our brain is interacting with information energy. Is that accurate?

Eric Burlingame: Yes, you basically have it. Think about it like cloud computing or the internet (imperfect but highly comparable simile). 

While my laptop does hold a vast variety of information, most of that information is either transient or else part of operating functions, and ultimately it can be wiped out pretty easily. When I reach out to the internet, though, I’m connected to endless amounts of information, all of which is changing by the millisecond. That information stored "out there" is interacted with by me in whatever way I choose. 

You can liken it to a Google search: I assemble the preference for data and then send a command to go fetch it, and that information shows up on my screen (which is analogous to the human mind in this example). I can then choose to interact with that information, or ignore it.

There’s essentially no need to store any data “locally”; and in fact, local storage is an inefficient model of operation. It overloads the system, or else I have to keep creating larger and larger local storage options. Remote storage and access is much more efficient, leaving the brain to perform with amazing speed and efficiency.

The "answer" is identified through a quantum computational process... In fact, your brain could well be the ultimate example of a quantum biological process.

Hug the Universe: Wow. Okay, so let’s say you and I are doing a CV together and I want to know what my friend Sheila’s level of consciousness (LOC) is right now (referencing David R. Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness). How does my brain or body know anything about that? How on Earth does it access or even find that information?!

Eric Burlingame: The “answer” is identified through a quantum computational process. A quantum computation is just a way of saying that all—or nearly all—possible solutions to a particular "problem" or question are being sorted out just about simultaneously. We tend to think of life as going from step 1 to step 2 to step 3, etc., because that’s a useful model for us to consciously keep track of details, given our limited brain use (that is, conscious brain use). But the Universe doesn’t really work that way. 

Everything is happening all at once, and our brains follow that same model because they exist in the same space. Stated differently, your brain can’t work by a different set of physical laws than the ones it exists within.

In this universe, biological entities function at the most basic level as quantum, or "all at once,” processes. Your brain is no exception. In fact, your brain could well be the ultimate example of a quantum biological process.

Hug the Universe: But if our brains are processing virtually everything, how is it that we’re not aware of everything?

Eric Burlingame: The reason you aren’t always aware of all the information the brain (and really, your entire body and energy system) is processing is that there appears to be a funneling, or sorting process that eliminates the background data. This is done in favor of the data and patterns that are consciously chosen (or else that have been most redundantly chosen semi-consciously). 

Think about it like this: Imagine you are taking a walk in a forest on a pleasant spring day. You like being out in the forest, so you are wide-eyed and observing all the plant and animal action. You are effectively choosing perspicuity as a brain function, which means you are choosing observation. However, you also have created a deathly fear of spiders throughout your life, and that is a redundant pattern of awareness the brain is also keeping track of. The semi-conscious processes in the brain keep you aware of spider webs and spiders so you can stay clear of them. This is a significant pattern of thought for you, so when you almost go face-first into a spider web, perspicuity goes out the window in favor of fight-or-flight mechanisms that will keep you "safe" from the man-eating spiders. 

The information you are taking in and considering has one sorting process one moment based on your choice to enjoy a walk in nature, and a drastically different sorting process a second later. But all the sorting has been based on your prioritized attention and choice. 

That’s the basic explanation.

Hug the Universe: That makes a lot of sense. So being that everything is energy and information, where does it all come from? Are we creating new information when we think, invent things, or imagine stuff?

Eric Burlingame: Ok, you really have three questions there. First, the answer to where energy comes from is: we don’t know. Anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you something. 

In fact, it’s a useless question (not to sound dismissive). The question just has no valuable function. I know it’s one of the “big" questions for humanity, but it’s really a waste of time and energy—pun intended. 

Getting caught up in that search is like choosing to hold your breath until you discover the exact elemental makeup of the air you are breathing. Energy as a basal force just is, and if there is an answer to from whence it came, it’s outside the realm of our universe, so we can’t really find out. What is valuable is to clarify the nature of what we can do and create with energy and information. 

Now, to the question of where information comes from, that’s a bit hidden too. We can, however, confirm with CV that information is a composite form of energy that is also absolutely basic to everything. There’s nothing without information other than formless energy. 

We do not create new information, but we do potentially create new assemblages of information.

Your third question about whether we are creating new information when we think, imagine, or make stuff, is answerable. The answer is no. We do not create new information, but we do potentially create new assemblages of information. Usually not, but sometimes. 

Hug the Universe: So what we’re doing is accessing nuggets of information that already exist in the field of consciousness, yes?

Eric Burlingame: Yes. We access existing information that is both “free floating” but also embedded into everything. Everything is holonic (i.e., a part and a whole), in that all information is contained within all stuff.

All human thought is some kind of assemblage of already existing information (Hug the Universe Note: here's the bit about information entanglement I promised!). All information is extant (i.e., already in existence), but that does not mean there aren’t new combinations. It’s not too far off of the Lego concept. 

There aren’t really very many different Lego pieces, but the number of potential combinations is in the trillions. Multiply that idea by a virtual infinity, and you start to get how endless thought assembly can be. What’s also very exciting is that the more novel assemblies there are, the more there can be. So, the future of new ideas is wide open. Tragically, most humans spend most of their time rerunning tired, old, redundant combinations of thought assemblies. And that’s a big waste of energy too, as well as a deferral of an amazing potential evolution.

Hug the Universe: Ok, so then our interactions with information energy sounds very similar to choosing ingredients in a grocery store (if that grocery store contained all possible ingredients). Each ingredient I choose could be used in any number of recipes, but to create a specific outcome I need certain ones while omitting others. I mean, you wouldn’t want fresh garlic in a strawberry cheesecake.

Wow. Understanding thoughts and information energy in this way helps me see how pieces could be “mismatched” or combined in ways that produce inaccurate perceptions. Could you say that the calibrated LOC (Level of Consciousness) of a concept or idea represents how accurate or inaccurate an information combination is?

Eric Burlingame: Sort of. Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness is great for truthfulness guidelines, but it is too broad a measurement for fine-grained accuracy measurements. You can ballpark it, but you can’t get into details. 

For example, let’s say the content of a particular news article is a 250 LOC (Hug the Universe note: energy that calibrates at 250 on Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness is the level of states we'd call “Neutrality”). That seems useful in that it implies the neutrality of the content. If you want to define accuracy in detail, though, you’d have to go sentence by sentence and complete “yes/not yes” verifications to see where errors or inaccuracies have occurred. It’s a useful method, but laborious. 

This (among other reasons) is the motivation for my construction of the Truth Value scale. The Truth Value scale is a more precise CV measurement tool for content and data.

Hug the Universe: Whooooooa. So would it be accurate to say that what’s happening with people who embrace destructive ideas about things like race or nationality (like we’re seeing in the rise of white nationalism in the U.S. right now) are in actuality just people operating within a framework of inaccurately combined information energy?

Eric Burlingame: Yes, you have it. For example, the belief that I am better than someone else because my skin is light-colored and I live in the US is just a severe form of ignorance composed of errant and misassembled information.

Hug the Universe: Wow. That really changes the conversation, doesn’t it? I mean, that right there is an amazing example of how problematic it is to elevate opinions and beliefs over what is objectively confirmable.

So looking at the calibrations you put together regarding Donald Trump (which can be seen in the Hug the Universe post looking at the 2016 Presidential Race, as well as in Eric’s Inception Publishing reports on this new administration, it all makes him sound like he’s not far from being a homicidal maniac. If he’s so dangerous and holds so little value for others, what’s stopping him from being a full-on serial killer or something?

Coming up next...

In the second part of this interview series, we'll talk specifically about the implications consciousness research and Coherence Verification has on better understanding and navigating the immense complexities of human behavior.