Jose Silva speak­ing at a Sem­i­nar in Laredo

 

We’re shar­ing with you more words of wis­dom from Jose Silva. Can you imag­ine ever hav­ing been lucky enough to share a deep and mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion with Jose Silva? Most peo­ple  weren’t lucky enough to expe­ri­ence this and so sadly for peo­ple dis­cov­er­ing Silva for the first time will never see the great man in action. 

Ed Bernd Jr. was one of the lucky ones , here’s a glimpse of his Jose Silva encounter.

The fol­low­ing is an exact, unedited tran­script of a con­ver­sa­tion with Jose Silva, con­ducted dur­ing a con­fer­ence in Mr. Silva’s office in Laredo. Silva Newslet­ter edi­tor Ed Bernd Jr. had been wait­ing for an oppor­tu­nity when Mr. Silva was obvi­ously func­tion­ing cre­atively and clair­voy­antly, and was “tun­ing in” to get answers and information.

     The phys­i­cal signs included a sort of “far away” look, eyes turned upward and towards the left, and eye­lids flut­ter­ing from time to time. The tone of voice was soft and thought­ful, the words flow­ing out smoothly and mak­ing a lot of sense. When all of these signs were noticed, the inter­viewer asked:

Q: Stop and think for just a moment if you would: Exactly what kind of men­tal process were you going through when you were giv­ing me that answer?

Silva: When­ever I need to find the answer, I am accus­tomed to get­ting a feel­ing, to remem­ber a feel­ing I get to enhance my abil­ity to get infor­ma­tion. I am famil­iar with this feel­ing because of prac­tice and experience.

     For instance, when I was work­ing with Harry McK­night to develop a glos­sary of terms in the Grad­u­ate Sem­i­nar man­ual, I would get into a state of con­cen­tra­tion and an idea would come, in many and dif­fer­ent ways, many descrip­tions for one word, many kinds of mean­ings for the same sit­u­a­tions. When I would come out, it would not always make the same kind of sense that it made within. So I always try to go with it as I sense it, and if it con­tin­ues to make sense at the outer lev­els, then I’d go with it. (Note: Through­out this inter­view, he con­tin­ued to show the same phys­i­o­log­i­cal signs of “tun­ing in” as the signs that prompted the question.)

Q: You said a “feel­ing.” Is it like a phys­i­cal feel­ing?

Silva: It is like an emo­tional feel­ing more than any­thing else. Kind of a men­tal thing. You can not explain it. It is not phys­i­cal. It is a feel­ing you get through expe­ri­ence, of hav­ing come up with infor­ma­tion suc­cess­fully before, and you have detected that feel­ing when that took place.

     I notice on this book that I’m writ­ing now, that I get stuck some­times and don’t know where to go from that place. Then I con­cen­trate and imme­di­ately the doors are opened and I start off writ­ing again, with more information.

Q: What do you mean “con­cen­trate”? Exactly what men­tal process?

Silva: Just quiet down your mind and go back to think­ing the way you have thought before when you were successful.

Q: Do you review a suc­cess?

Silva: No, not nec­es­sar­ily. You could do that too. Go back to the level where you learned to go. But the thing is, even­tu­ally you don’t have to review a suc­cess, you just pro­voke that feel­ing, or desire that feel­ing, and you are back to the level where you should come up with the infor­ma­tion. Just by know­ing that you want the infor­ma­tion, auto­mat­i­cally you will become attuned, because of your desire, to the same level.

Q: How does the infor­ma­tion come? Do you hear it?

Silva: No, it just occurs to you.

Q: Just like your own thoughts?

Silva: Like as though it is a nat­ural thing, you knew it all the time and you have to say it.

Q: Can you tell me how you, per­son­ally, invoke that feel­ing?

Silva: It is auto­matic once you get used to doing it, because you have been doing it for so long you know. You need to con­cen­trate because you need the infor­ma­tion, and you need some way to get the infor­ma­tion, you just develop a way of get­ting the infor­ma­tion you need, by con­cen­trat­ing in a way that starts the infor­ma­tion flow­ing in to you again. It’s as though you are ask­ing for the infor­ma­tion, and it comes to you.

     I always believe that when Rabbi Jesus said, “Ask and you shall receive,” “Knock and it shall be opened,” it is some­thing like that; it is as though when I desire to have infor­ma­tion, I am ask­ing and it comes. It comes from the inner dimen­sion, not the outer dimen­sion. It is a spe­cial type of con­cen­tra­tion. You are look­ing for that feel­ing that you have devel­oped, have even­tu­ally devel­oped, through practice.

Q: That “Spe­cial feel­ing that comes with suc­cess” that you have talked about before?

Silva: That would be it. That’s it, because actu­ally you rec­og­nize that feel­ing and you like that feel­ing, because when you have suc­ceeded, you stay on it a lit­tle longer because it is a good feel­ing to be suc­cess­ful. So the more times you get to feel that feel­ing of suc­cess, the eas­ier it comes to you. Like, prac­tice makes perfect.

Q: You have told us that after prac­tic­ing enough suc­cess­ful health cases, you no longer need the 3 to 1 and 10 to 1 rit­ual, but can sim­ply “day­dream” and the day­dream­ing becomes “cre­ative and the true real­ity.” Is that what you’re doing?

Silva: Yes. That’s what we’re talk­ing about. That’s the best way I can explain it. You’re not really see­ing any­thing, you let your eyes go wher­ever they want to go, but usu­ally it’s to the left, you see? To the left and slightly upwards. And then you start day­dream­ing. You stare, defo­cus your vision, and infor­ma­tion starts com­ing to you, when you desire it, and when there’s a need for it. You don’t just play with it, but when you need to have infor­ma­tion, then you use your method for pro­vok­ing the feel­ing, to open the door to the information.

Q: Then it is not nec­es­sar­ily an imag­ing? You are not nec­es­sar­ily day­dream­ing in pic­tures?

Silva: No. Well, it would be sim­i­lar to day­dream­ing, because when you start get­ting infor­ma­tion you start mak­ing images of it, for it, or with it. But you don’t make the images before the infor­ma­tion comes. You make the images after the infor­ma­tion comes.

Q: And it is not a clairau­di­ence, like hear­ing a voice or some­thing?

Silva: No. It is just like your own thoughts com­ing to you. But it is the infor­ma­tion you desire from the inner dimension.

Orig­i­nal Arti­cle

Want to hear about the Silva Method and the Jose Silva per­sona? You’ll have to check out this exten­sive and com­pelling inter­view where McK­night fires ques­tion after ques­tion at Jose Silva. Read An Inter­view with Jose Silva

 

The Silva Method has impacted on people’s lives in a colos­sal, immea­sur­able way. One key thing we hope this blog will cover in depth is real life sto­ries of peo­ple wak­en­ing up to the virtues of the Silva Method and the incred­i­ble and uplift­ing expe­ri­ences they have encountered.

This great story fol­lows one per­sons dis­cov­ery of the Silva Method from it being prac­ticed in India. As you know the teach­ings of Jose Silva are a world­wide phe­nom­e­non and fea­ture in over 100 countries.

Arund­hati tells the story of her first Silva Method sem­i­nar and the delight of her dis­cov­ery is clearly evident.

 

Intu­ition and ESP can now take a back­seat. The Silva Method promises all that and more with a voli­tional con­trol of the mind

by Arund­hati Mitra

 “Most peo­ple go through life using only a small frac­tion of their brains,” says Bimol Rak­shit, head of the Indian chap­ter of the Silva Method of Mind Con­trol. Pre­dictably, this method teaches you how to use more of the mind-for increas­ing mem­ory, hon­ing men­tal skills or even heal­ing and spir­i­tual growth.

When I first met Rak­shit, I had just read The Silva Method of Mind Con­trol by Jose Silva and Philip Miele. The book makes inter­est­ing claims about the brain’s capac­ity and the ener­gies emit­ted by it. Mea­sured by an elec­troen­cephalo­graph (EEG) in cycles per sec­ond (cps), it is this energy that deter­mines our state of wake­ful­ness or sleep.

There are four lev­els of this energy emis­sion: between 14 to 21 cps is beta level, from 7 to 14 is alpha, 4 to 7 is theta and less than 4 cps is delta. Sci­en­tists claim that of the four lev­els, we can con­sciously expe­ri­ence only the beta level because it is the only one in which we are awake. The alpha level is the sub­con­scious or, as the Silva peo­ple say, the inner con­scious level. The state just after falling asleep or just before wak­ing up is the alpha state. Theta and delta are realms of the uncon­scious and deep sleep.

So far, so good. But then the Silva Method goes on to claim that it’s pos­si­ble to stay awake at alpha and the deeper lev­els as well! Jose Silva, who cre­ated this method, explains in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, I Have A Hunch, how he once con­sciously entered and stayed in the alpha state at the Uni­ver­sity of Texas, San Anto­nio. All the while, he solved math­e­mat­i­cal prob­lems even as the EEG ver­i­fied he was in alpha.

This imme­di­ately opens up many inter­est­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties. The right hemi­sphere of the brain, the seat of cre­ativ­ity and intu­ition, is believed to become active mostly at the lower lev­els. The Silva Method teaches you how to con­sciously go to alpha and use more of the brain’s right side, which often makes the cru­cial dif­fer­ence between great­ness and genius. There were a thou­sand ques­tions on my mind. But to all of them, Rak­shit returned one answer: “Do the course and you’ll know for yourself.”

With a mix­ture of excite­ment, appre­hen­sion and incredulity, I approached Hotel Le Meri­dien in New Delhi on a cold gray morn­ing for the two-and-half-day course. Gen­er­ally, Rak­shit con­ducts a course when­ever there are suf­fi­cient num­bers of par­tic­i­pants. In India, there are just three other instructors—Raka Rak­shit, Dr Kalpana Desai and Jayesh Patel. Some oth­ers are under training.

The course started by ‘going to level’ together. This meant con­sciously low­er­ing the brain’s energy from beta to alpha level. Lights were dimmed. We closed our eyes, took a deep breath and began the jour­ney into our mind.

It was a curi­ous sen­sa­tion. I was aware of the peo­ple around me, but it seemed they didn’t phys­i­cally exist. My head felt heavy. I could dimly hear Rak­shit telling us we were now in alpha level. In the back­ground was play­ing a tape that sounded like a mov­ing train.
Day two was spent on mem­ory con­trol and prob­lem solv­ing. Most of these exer­cises involved strong visualization.

We were asked to cre­ate a men­tal screen and project var­i­ous objects on it. These were then exam­ined minutely, some­times chang­ing their shapes and color, and feel­ing their tex­ture, odor and taste. I could actu­ally smell the var­nish of a newly pol­ished chair and taste a sug­ary sweet apple-vivid details to which I had paid no atten­tion in my daily life.

Rak­shit says: “No sci­en­tist has been able to invent a com­puter like the human mind. From the time a per­son is born, he records every­thing that he sees, hears, smells or tastes. The key lies in being able to tap the mem­ory at will.” This is what mind con­trol is all about. Accord­ing to Silva, a per­son can do this best when he is in alpha level.

An impor­tant exer­cise in the course involved set­ting and meet­ing tar­gets. “Go to level every­day and tell your­self that within a set time you will meet your tar­get,” Rak­shit announced. Many in the room claimed this had worked for them. A. Sawh­ney, an Indian busi­ness­man and one of the many grad­u­ates repeat­ing the course, said he had first done the course 20 years ago. He used to smoke heav­ily then, he said, a habit that Silva helped him kick.

The Silva book is replete with exam­ples of peo­ple who have been able to cure headaches, migraine and insom­nia, lose weight or get pro­mo­tions. One of the first-timers, Dev Ashish, told the remark­able story of his aunt who had been diag­nosed with a tumor—which later dis­solved by reg­u­lar prac­tice of the Silva method!

The course also included a dream con­trol exer­cise. Rak­shit pointed out that dreams are com­mu­ni­ca­tions from the sub­con­scious and have unique sym­bolic sig­nif­i­cance. He asked us to go to level, pro­gram our­selves to remem­ber a dream and write it down in the morn­ing. The Silva Method claims that by inter­pret­ing our dreams, we can explore our inner con­scious­ness and solve prob­lems. This involves going to level, stat­ing the prob­lem and ask­ing for a solution.

That’s about as far as the first work­shop goes. For a deeper under­stand­ing of the Silva Method, there are two advanced courses—the Ultra Sem­i­nar, con­ducted once in three years by instruc­tors cho­sen by Jose Silva, and the 12-day Ulti­mate Sem­i­nar, which Silva him­self con­ducts at his Psy­chori­en­tol­ogy Insti­tute in Laredo, Texas, head­quar­ters of the Silva orga­ni­za­tion. For both, you have to be a Silva grad­u­ate. The Laredo cen­ter also con­ducts reg­u­lar research to keep improv­ing the Silva Method. The Silva course mate­r­ial has been suc­cess­fully trans­lated into 29 lan­guages across 106 countries.

Accord­ing to Silva, the intu­itive fac­ul­ties devel­oped through his method are not extrasen­sory but effec­tive sen­sory per­cep­tions. The chap­ter on ESP in The Silva Method of Mind Con­trol explains the sub­sti­tu­tion thus: “Extrasen­sory means out­side… our sen­sory appa­ra­tus. This seems to deny the exis­tence of a sen­sory appa­ra­tus other than the five senses, though obvi­ously one exists, since we do sense infor­ma­tion with­out the use of them.” Silva teaches an indi­vid­ual to project his aware­ness to acquire knowl­edge with­out either using the five senses or los­ing con­trol, as hap­pens with intuition.

Dur­ing the last ses­sion of the sec­ond day, Rak­shit held a live demon­stra­tion to explain how this is done. He called a first-timer to the podium and asked her to go to level. Another girl, Pooja, wrote down her mother’s name, age and address on a piece of paper and handed it to Rak­shit. Also men­tioned on the paper were a few ail­ments her mother was suf­fer­ing from.

Rak­shit read all the infor­ma­tion, except the ail­ments bit, aloud to the per­son at level and asked her to visu­al­ize Pooja’s mother. He asked her to exam­ine the visu­al­ized body minutely and tell him wher­ever she felt some­thing was wrong. The answers were part accurate.

More con­vinc­ing was Anoop Murari, a grad­u­ate repeat­ing the course. He asked Pooja if her mother had prob­lems with her arms. A stunned Pooja admit­ted that her mother’s arms some­times got paralyzed—a prob­lem not men­tioned on the paper. Appar­ently, Murari had also gone to level while study­ing the case. “When I visu­al­ized the woman,” he explained, “I sud­denly saw she had no arms.”

Dur­ing the course, first-timers are paired with grad­u­ates to do case stud­ies. In our case, both mem­bers of the team were asked to prac­tice by turns as the psy­chic (the per­son at level try­ing to guess the ail­ments) and the ori­en­tol­o­gist, sup­ply­ing rel­e­vant data to the psy­chic. Rak­shit stressed the impor­tance of fol­low­ing our instincts. “The moment you feel some­thing is wrong with some part of the body, no mat­ter how insignif­i­cant, voice it,” he said.

This bit of advice proved invalu­able when I was the psy­chic. Of the four cases I stud­ied, the first two were my biggest suc­cesses. I could vividly visu­al­ize both peo­ple and was right on every count. Once, the moment I was given the rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, I visu­al­ized a crip­ple walk­ing with a stick. It turned out that the con­cerned person’s legs were deformed.
In the ulti­mate analy­sis, it’s a bit dif­fi­cult to draw con­clu­sions. The human mind is still uncharted ter­ri­tory. It is sug­gestible, it can be hyp­no­tized. Is that the secret of Silva? Maybe. Though, unlike hyp­no­tism where a per­son is led to do some­thing, Silva gives you the capac­ity to act voli­tion­ally. In any case, Silva’s mind con­trol has def­i­nitely exploded some myths about the mind and opened up a future where mind truly rules over matter.

Source

Liked this story? you should read about How Sci­ence Came to Rec­og­nize Jose Silva. The Silva Method can be a great dis­cov­ery in your life just like t was for Arundhati.

Jose Silva, although he never spoke of the Law of Attrac­tion or used that word­ing, has to be seen as one of the most impor­tant fig­ures in the uni­ver­sal law. This is due to him being one of the great pio­neers of thought and mind con­trol. I found a great post which shows how you can improve your results from the law of attrac­tion by uti­liz­ing Jose Silva’s Rules of Programming.

A com­pelling read …

 

How to Get Bet­ter Results with the Law of Attrac­tion by Using Jose Silva’s Rules of Programming

 

Everyone’s talk­ing about the Law of Attrac­tion ever since the movie “The Secret” was released to the world. Even Oprah did two shows on the sub­ject in Feb 2007.

But accord­ing to Jose Silva, the famous mind researcher and founder of the Silva Method, there are spe­cific “Rules” that help you get bet­ter results.

The Most Impor­tant Rule is…What You Seek to Man­i­fest, Will Come Faster if You Seek it to Ben­e­fit Human­ity, instead of for purely self-satisfaction.

Ed Bernd Jr, one of Jose Silva’s Friends and Instruc­tors shares this piece with us.

 

Rather than think­ing about what you want and how you will feel when you get some­thing or achieve some­thing, it is far bet­ter to think about how the suc­cess will cor­rect prob­lems, will relieve suf­fer­ing, will help some­one to achieve their pur­pose in life and cor­rect more prob­lems and make the world a bet­ter place to live.

If you need a new car (not want, but need) then don’t think about how you will feel when you get it, how proud you will be, etc. Instead, think about the prob­lem you will solve by hav­ing the new car:

Your fam­ily will be safer, you will get places on time, you will be able to help other peo­ple, etc.

The more peo­ple who will ben­e­fit, the eas­ier it will be to achieve your goal.

We were not sent here on a 70 year vaca­tion, Mr. Silva told us. We were sent here with a job to do, and that job is to cor­rect prob­lems and to make the world a bet­ter place to live… to fin­ish the cre­ation and con­vert the world into a paradise.

It is not about us and what we want and how we feel. We can have every­thing we need to do our job, plus more, pro­vided that we are doing our job — pro­vided that we are doing what higher intel­li­gence sent us here to do, and that is to cor­rect prob­lems, relieve suf­fer­ing, and make the world a bet­ter place to live.

So focus on doing that, not on your­self, and you will get much bet­ter results.

Read the full story on Jose Silva and the Law of Attraction

An Inter­view with Jose Silva

Jose Silva was an incred­i­ble man with so much to offer. Gain some Jose Silva wis­dom from the Silva — McK­night interview:

This inter­view was con­ducted with José Silva in 1977 by Alice McK­night and appeared in the July 1977 issue of Coun­sel­ing and Val­ues mag­a­zine. It is reprinted with their per­mis­sion. Fig­ures and sta­tis­tics in this inter­view were cor­rect in early 1977, slightly more than one decade after the Silva Method was first made avail­able to the public.

McK­night: Mr. Silva, will you please give us a few com­ments about the begin­nings of the Silva Method?

Silva: The Silva Method was designed to be the Amer­i­can Dynamic Med­i­ta­tion Sys­tem. As such, it is still in process, as all dynamic things are. We began the Silva Method in 1944, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that we began teach­ing the course to groups struc­tured as it is today. Our orig­i­nal research had as its pur­pose increas­ing the IQ of individuals—in par­tic­u­lar, children—but when we dis­cov­ered dur­ing our exper­i­ments that we were achiev­ing deep lev­els of the mind and our sub­jects were able to antic­i­pate our questions—that is, they gave us answers before we pre­sented the questions—we knew that we were on the thresh­old of a whole new dimen­sion of mind and man’s con­trol of his own mind.

When we had ver­i­fied to our own sat­is­fac­tion that the sub­jects in our research design were, indeed, using the psi factor—or psy­chic functioning—in answer­ing unvoiced ques­tions, giv­ing us infor­ma­tion about per­sons they had not per­son­ally met, and were doing this at a level of mind that can best be called sub­jec­tive, we wrote a let­ter to a lead­ing uni­ver­sity then doing research in para­psy­chol­ogy. We described our work and results, request­ing that a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the depart­ment come to observe our research. This was in 1953.

The reply was terse and to the point: We had appar­ently stum­bled onto “nat­ural” psy­chics because the psi phe­nom­e­non is not teach­able, just observ­able. A lit­tle dis­mayed, but undaunted, we con­tin­ued our men­tal train­ing exer­cises with dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als and groups of peo­ple con­tin­u­ing to prove to our own sat­is­fac­tion that the psi fac­tor is teach­able and that it is learnable.

Since my back­ground is in elec­tron­ics, and since I had a wife and fam­ily to sup­port while I was doing this research with the mind, I seemed to draw a log­i­cal con­nec­tion between elec­tron­ics and human brain-mind func­tion. I stud­ied Freud, Jung, Braid, Esdaile, Liebeault, Bern­heim, and many oth­ers. I also stud­ied the prin­ci­ples of yoga and hyp­no­tism, and for a time was an active Rosicrucian.

In those early years, all that I read, expe­ri­enced, and put together—what turned out to be a new arrange­ment and appli­ca­tion of old concepts—has become, and is still becom­ing the Silva Method.

In the years since we began lec­tur­ing to the pub­lic, many other groups, aca­d­e­mic and oth­er­wise, have begun doing research along the same line. There are a num­ber of “consciousness-raising groups” on the mar­ket now, and sev­eral aca­d­e­mic and med­ical insti­tu­tions are engaged in mind poten­tial research. We like to think of ourselves—the method and the graduates—as being pio­neers in the sub­jec­tive edu­ca­tion field.

We orga­nized the Laredo Para­psy­chol­ogy Foun­da­tion, which we later named the Insti­tute of Psy­chori­en­tol­ogy, in 1944.

McK­night: What does the word “psy­chori­en­tol­ogy” mean?

Silva: Psy­chori­en­tol­ogy means: Edu­cat­ing the mind to func­tion con­sciously within its own psy­chic dimen­sion. It means becom­ing aware of the enor­mity of human poten­tial and learn­ing how to actu­al­ize this poten­tial for the bet­ter of human­ity. The main focus of our Basic Lec­ture Series is to acquaint stu­dents with the poten­tial of their whole per­son and how, by using more of their mind, they can slough off lim­it­ing ways of think­ing and unpro­duc­tive habits to become, as we are fond of say­ing, “the beau­ti­ful peo­ple that they are called to be.”

If I may digress for a moment, I do want to say that the notion of being “called,” of being in touch with a higher guid­ance fac­tor, is a cen­tral con­cept in the Silva Method. We shall not get into a the­o­log­i­cal state­ment because our col­lec­tive seman­tics prove to be such stum­bling blocks in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of humanly orga­nized spiritual—that is to say, religious—systems.

Since we are deal­ing with human rela­tion­ships and with improv­ing the lot of human­ity on this planet, we see in our work the mir­ror­ing of Pierre Teil­hard de Chardin’s con­cept of spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion and the striv­ing toward the attain­ment of higher consciousness.

We believe that our con­cept of homo sapi­ens can only lead us to a more all-embracing con­cept of homo amans, which has essen­tially been the cen­tral mes­sage of the sev­eral avatars on our planet. Although his­tor­i­cally it appears that humans have hear­kened more to the “wars and rumors of wars” aspects of the­o­log­i­cal tra­di­tion, we have rea­son to believe that we are part of a new phase of human evo­lu­tion on this planet.

McK­night: In what ways has the Basic Lec­ture Series—the BLS—changed dur­ing the past ten years?

Silva: The Basic Lec­ture Series as it is cur­rently being pre­sented varies lit­tle in design from the first pre­sen­ta­tion I made out­side Laredo and Nuevo Laredo in 1966. We are pre­sent­ing the same use­ful tech­niques for more suc­cess­ful liv­ing and the same men­tal exer­cises or con­di­tion­ing cycles—with some con­struc­tive changes in wording—but we have expanded and broad­ened our lec­ture mate­r­ial considerably.

A grad­u­ate of the Basic Lec­ture Series from any place in the world can repeat at no addi­tional cost the entire BLS any num­ber of times any­where in the world that it is offered. Cur­rently, we have the BLS being pre­sented in all states in the U.S.A. and in 31 for­eign coun­tries. (Editor’s note: As of 1995, the BLS is being pre­sented in 103 coun­tries and in 29 languages.)

Recently we began diver­si­fy­ing our lec­tures and con­di­tion­ing offer­ings; for spe­cial needs we have designed spe­cial pro­grams: We are man­u­fac­tur­ing and mar­ket­ing kits that con­tain per­ti­nent lit­er­a­ture and taped mate­r­ial. These are use­ful to the per­son who feels that he or she can­not take time out of a busy sched­ule to attend the class time required for grad­u­a­tion from the BLS.

Also, the taped pro­grams can be use­ful to the grad­u­ate of the BLS for relax­ation or rein­force­ment purposes.

“We are sin­cere in our belief that it is essen­tial that every per­son be encour­aged to real­ize that he or she can use more mind to make this world a bet­ter place to live in; we believe that the method of men­tal train­ing that we have devised is the most effi­cient and effec­tive means for doing this.”

It is the Amer­i­can Dynamic Med­i­ta­tion Sys­tem, the Silva Method.

McK­night: Would you describe for us the con­tent of the Basic Lec­ture Series?

Silva: The BLS is com­posed of four sec­tions of twelve-hour ses­sions each: ∙101, Con­trolled Relax­ation. ∙202, Gen­eral Self-Improvement. ∙303, Effec­tive Sen­sory Pro­jec­tion. ∙404, Applied Effec­tive Sen­sory Projection.In the Con­trolled Relax­ation lec­tures, the stu­dent learns how to relax phys­i­cally, men­tally, and emo­tion­ally, and how to reach in sec­onds a level of pro­found insight.

The intel­li­gent use of the tech­niques pre­sented in this sec­tion of the BLS leads to increased effi­ciency, con­cen­tra­tion, expan­sion of learn­ing capac­ity and self-control—all results of learn­ing to relax the spinal and auto­nomic ner­vous sys­tems at will.

Tech­niques pre­sented and pro­grammed in the Con­trolled Relax­ation seg­ment are Sleep Con­trol, To Awake Con­trol, Awake Con­trol, Dream Con­trol, and Headache Con­trol. Stu­dents report an increase in vital­ity and energy, and a less­en­ing of ten­sion and stress from the prac­tice of relax­ing at will; from the feel­ings of well-being, they expe­ri­ence bet­ter self-management through apply­ing the tech­niques I just mentioned.I could give you count­less anec­dotes attest­ing to suc­cess­ful appli­ca­tions of each tech­nique, includ­ing the relief and even­tual rid­ding of migraine headaches, but you can read tes­ti­mo­ni­als elsewhere.

About ten hours of instruc­tion and ten to fif­teen min­utes of prac­tice every day pro­vide the stu­dent of the first sec­tion of the Silva Method with the tech­niques to relax, and sev­eral use­ful for­mu­las for suc­cess­ful living.The sec­ond sec­tion of the BLS is the Gen­eral Self-Improvement portion.

These ten to twelve hours enable the stu­dent to make use of the expanded lev­els of aware­ness acquired in 101 for solv­ing spe­cific prob­lems. Prob­lems are han­dled as projects to be suc­cess­fully com­pleted, and the cre­ative use of imag­i­na­tion and visu­al­iza­tion are pre­sented and rein­forced as tools for achiev­ing spe­cific self-improvement goals.The orga­ni­za­tion of the material—the methodology—is a major fac­tor in the suc­cess of the appli­ca­tion of techniques.

Dur­ing the course of our pub­lic lec­tur­ing, we have inspired——if I may demean the term—a num­ber of spin-offs who present imi­ta­tions of our sys­tem, our method­ol­ogy. Per­haps we should be flat­tered at their imi­ta­tion; as it is, unless they vio­late our copy­right laws, we merely shrug our shoul­ders and say, “Do not for­bid them, for who­ever does good works in our way is with us.”

Nat­u­rally, we encour­age our pro­fes­sional peo­ple to use the Method in their occu­pa­tions, but hardly expect them to com­mer­cial­ize our method­ol­ogy. Un-researched changes may degen­er­ate the effec­tive­ness of the course offer­ing; thereby we may lose a valu­able tool for help­ing human­ity. And, of course, we pre­fer that our lec­tur­ers remain with us, par­tic­i­pat­ing in our goal of reach­ing all of human­ity, because we believe that the orig­i­nal is supe­rior to the imitation.

Be that as it may, to return to the con­tent of the gen­eral Self-Improvement 202: Mem­ory Tech­niques, the Men­tal Screen, Three Fin­gers Tech­nique, Mir­ror of the Mind, Hand Lev­i­ta­tion. Glove Anes­the­sia, Glass of Water Tech­nique, and Habit Con­trol are the tech­niques pre­sented and rein­forced for the stu­dents’ benefit.This seg­ment of the BLS is par­tic­u­larly effec­tive in enhanc­ing a person’s cre­ativ­ity, be it in artis­tic or pro­fes­sional endeav­ors, or in every­day life.

Too, the stu­dent can learn greater con­trol of phys­i­o­log­i­cal func­tion and how to con­trol pain. Extremely pop­u­lar because of their suc­cess are the tech­niques for the elim­i­na­tion or con­trol of unpro­duc­tive habits and the devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion of pro­duc­tive ones. Again we have numer­ous tes­ti­mo­ni­als in our files sent to us by appre­cia­tive grad­u­ates of the Method cor­rob­o­rat­ing the effec­tive­ness of the techniques.

In these first two sec­tions of the BLS that I have briefly out­lined, you can see that the “con­trol” aspect of the Mind Devel­op­ment tech­niques have been largely objec­tive. By objec­tive, I mean that we have directed our atten­tion to things that we per­ceive in the five senses world that we have long been famil­iar with—not really aware of, per­haps, before par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Silva Method—but con­scious of their exis­tence anyway.

Through the men­tal train­ing exer­cises, the con­di­tion­ing cycles, which are part of each series sec­tion, the Silva Method stu­dent learns through prac­tice to enhance his or her pow­ers of imag­i­na­tion and visu­al­iza­tion. In short, he or she learns to be aware of his or her sub­jec­tive life or inner world, and sub­jec­tive edu­ca­tion begins.

Being reflec­tive crea­tures, we are all capa­ble of bring­ing to mind a dis­tant per­son, event, or place by sim­ple recall; by uti­liz­ing mem­ory, imag­i­na­tion, and visu­al­iza­tion we are able to edu­cate our­selves sub­jec­tively, to project our minds to wher­ever we have points of ref­er­ence. Our method of train­ing for con­sciously tap­ping deep lev­els of aware­ness is the most suc­cess­ful yet devised for pro­duc­tive value.

Again, I repeat: the Silva Method is a dynamic med­i­ta­tion system.

McK­night: Mr. Silva, what do you mean by “deeper lev­els of mind”?

Silva: I have made ref­er­ence sev­eral times to deeper lev­els of mind. In our Basic Lec­ture Series we uti­lize a chart to illus­trate appli­ca­tions of our tech­niques and to show the brain wave cycles—the elec­tric impulses of our brains. Since we under­stand that a higher intel­li­gence, through mind, con­trols and alters the brain’s man­ner of functioning—that is, the brain is a func­tion of human intel­li­gence through mind—we have cor­re­lated brain wave fre­quen­cies with mind activ­ity and named the lev­els of mind accordingly.

Researches in the brain-mind field fol­low the model passed on by Hans Berger in the 1920s that names Beta waves those brain fre­quen­cies above four­teen cycles per sec­ond, called cps; Alpha waves at seven to four­teen cps; Theta waves as four to seven cps; and Delta waves as one-half to four cps.During a twenty-four hour period, indi­vid­u­als gen­er­ally expe­ri­ence each of these cycles.

Research indi­cates that when the brain expresses Beta waves, a per­son is at the five senses level of aware­ness; when the brain expresses Alphawaves, the per­son has “turned down” the exter­nal world, is still, and is tuned in to a focal point of men­ta­tion; when the brain expresses Theta waves, the per­son has with­drawn from vir­tu­ally all exter­nal stim­u­la­tion, and is in what has been described as a con­tem­pla­tive or mys­ti­cal state of mind; and when the brain expresses Delta waves, the per­son is totally uncon­scious; that is, unaware of him­self and his environment.

It appears through cur­rent research, how­ever, that man can learn to be con­scious at Delta. These words that I used to describe the Beta, Alpha, Theta, and Delta states of mind as expressed in brain wave fre­quen­cies are purely descrip­tive. Other sci­en­tists might express the con­cepts dif­fer­ently; I am merely mak­ing the point that our research has shown us that it is from deeper lev­els of mind that our moti­va­tions spring, and from which we can effect ben­e­fi­cial changes in habit­ual think­ing and behaviors.

Hence, the impor­tance of the Con­trolled Relax­ation seg­ment of the BLS, and also the impor­tance of our hav­ing planned the series in a sequen­tial order—of 101 before 202, for exam­ple. The orga­ni­za­tion and sequen­tial pre­sen­ta­tion of the mate­r­ial, the method­ol­ogy, are vital to the suc­cess of the Silva Method. The move­ment from objec­tive aware­ness to sub­jec­tive aware­ness through the blend­ing of the two con­sciously, what some sci­en­tists call “altered states of con­scious­ness,” is a kind of tak­ing from the out­side in and bring­ing from the inside out—a total expe­ri­enc­ing, a true aware­ness that we and our grad­u­ates can uti­lize in every­day experience.

The third sec­tion of the BLS, Effec­tive Sen­sory Pro­jec­tion, focuses the atten­tion of the series par­tic­i­pant on direct expe­ri­ence of his or her inter­nal sens­ing fac­ul­ties through psyche-orientation, that is, on the valid­ity of his sub­jec­tive per­cep­tion. The stu­dent projects men­tally into metal cubes for the pur­pose of estab­lish­ing points of ref­er­ence in the inan­i­mate mat­ter king­dom, into leaves of plants for estab­lish­ing points of ref­er­ence in the ani­mate mat­ter plant king­dom, and into ani­mal life for estab­lish­ing points of ref­er­ence in the ani­mate mat­ter ani­mal kingdom.

The student’s prac­tice in achiev­ing increas­ing aware­ness at deeper lev­els of mind, and his devel­op­ing skill in imag­in­ing and visu­al­iz­ing gained in 101 and 202 increase his con­fi­dence so that the stu­dent sees him­self or her­self as a more aware and per­cep­tive indi­vid­ual. Then the stu­dent begins to use his intu­itive fac­ulty to aim him in the solu­tion of prob­lems: the mechanic, to solve inan­i­mate mat­ter prob­lems, the farmer to solve plant life ani­mate prob­lems, the ani­mal lover to solve ani­mal life ani­mate problems.

Human life is, of course, included in the ani­mate king­doms; and we progress to the more com­plex prob­lems, which we call projects, in the human realm in stages, just as we move from 101 and 202 in con­sec­u­tive order.

McK­night: The notion of doing things in order seems cen­tral to your methodology.

Silva: It is. Observ­ing, par­tic­i­pat­ing, and absorb­ing the mate­r­ial pre­sented are the means by which the stu­dent acquires his sub­jec­tive edu­ca­tion, much as in the way he acquires his objec­tive edu­ca­tion. The dif­fer­ence lies in inter­nal focus rather than exter­nal focus. Sub­jec­tive edu­ca­tion involves the dis­cov­ery, appre­ci­a­tion, and appli­ca­tion of the king­dom within for suc­cess­ful liv­ing, whereas objec­tive edu­ca­tion con­cerns itself with the dis­cov­ery, appre­ci­a­tion, and appli­ca­tion of the exter­nal world for suc­cess­ful living.

To our way of think­ing, a har­mo­niz­ing of the two makes for a more bal­anced human being, the edu­ca­tion of man’s inner life has for too long been in bits and pieces. The Silva Method offers a suc­cess­ful means by which per­sons can edu­cate them­selves sub­jec­tively through psy­che ori­en­ta­tion at their own pace.

The BLS con­sists of as much as forty to forty-eight hours of class time; but the use, appli­ca­tion, and prac­tice of the con­cepts and tech­niques presented—these are the hours when the indi­vid­ual edu­cates him­self subjectively.Just as the par­ent holds the hand of the tod­dler learn­ing to walk, and the tod­dler releases the hand when he becomes sure-footed—so it is with sub­jec­tive education—the prin­ci­ples are instilled, and they become man­i­fest in practice.

An impor­tant tech­nique or cre­ative appli­ca­tion of the method pre­sented in this third sec­tion involves the sub­jec­tive cre­ation of a com­plete lab­o­ra­tory for prob­lem solving.It is well known that solv­ing major prob­lems and devel­op­ing new ideas is due to the exten­sion of con­trolled aware­ness into the so-called sub­con­scious realm of mind. We call this inner consciousness.

This is the intu­itive field, the inspi­ra­tion area, the realm of cre­ative under­stand­ing, Jung’s “col­lec­tive uncon­scious” of which we, as human beings on this planet par­take, accord­ing to our own desire and under­stand­ing of it. Cre­at­ing through one’s own imag­i­na­tion a pro­duc­tive set­ting for opti­mum func­tion­ing at a sub­jec­tive level of mind is both an exer­cise and a reward for the indi­vid­ual; it is the work­ing place in his king­dom within.

All the­is­tic sys­tems that I am famil­iar with anthro­po­mor­phize their deities, and in a some­what sim­i­lar fash­ion we “cre­ate ”—we “recognize”—our inner con­scious pow­ers in terms that we can express effec­tively. We become aware of and iden­tify for our­selves our own coun­selors or guides in effect­ing work in the “king­dom within.”

The con­cept of guardian angels is a sim­i­lar but more lim­ited notion.

McK­night: What kind of work does the Silva Method stu­dent do in the lab­o­ra­tory that he or she creates?

Silva: The work that the stu­dent does in the lab­o­ra­tory is what the first three sec­tions of the BLS have pre­pared him for, and what the final sec­tion enables him to prove to him­self: That he has increased his intu­itive poten­tial and is using more of his mind to solve problems.The stu­dent has learned to actu­al­ize for the good of human­ity, in intuition.

In 404, Applied Effec­tive Sen­sory Pro­jec­tion, the stu­dent is pre­sented with prob­lem cases. The stu­dent then becomes aware of actual exist­ing prob­lems at a dis­tance through the psy­che ori­en­ta­tion of his or her sub­jec­tive senses, and the abil­ity to do this, the pos­i­tive results, con­vinces the stu­dent of the mar­velous power of his or her sub­jec­tively edu­cated mind.

McK­night: Just how do the stu­dents do this?

Silva: By estab­lish­ing points of ref­er­ence at sub­jec­tive levels.At the con­clu­sion of 404 grad­u­ates have suc­cess­fully learned to psy­chi­cally func­tion at the Alpha level of mind. Some are func­tion­ing at the Theta level. All our stu­dents are indi­vid­u­als, all have dif­fer­ent goals and objec­tives. What they have in com­mon is a belief in the pos­si­bil­ity of bet­ter­ing them­selves by using more mind—and there­fore, bet­ter­ing humanity.

“The Silva Method is a goal-oriented prag­matic sys­tem designed to enable peo­ple to develop pos­i­tive men­tal atti­tudes. Much of our instruc­tion con­sists of help­ing peo­ple to stop set­ting lim­its to their achieve­ments, and thereby defeat­ing them­selves before they get started. Our method is geared to show peo­ple how to achieve spe­cific goals by rec­og­niz­ing and recon­di­tion­ing their self-image.”

By way of anal­ogy, you might say that 101 and 202 enable peo­ple to light a can­dle, and 303 and 404 enable them to trim the wick and set it out, not under a bas­ket, but on a housetop.

Being a col­lec­tor of insights is not suf­fi­cient; uti­liz­ing insights for the bet­ter­ment of self and human­ity are more worth­while projects. Because of the height­en­ing of visu­al­iza­tion, the grad­u­ate can set before his mind’s eye the desired result of hav­ing worked a case or hav­ing solved a prob­lem of what­ever nature, and it can become done on earth as it is in the “king­dom within.”

McK­night: What kind of response has the aca­d­e­mic sci­en­tific com­mu­nity given to the Silva Method?

Silva: That depends on whether you mean the ones who have taken the course work, or the ones who have not. Of the sci­en­tists who are grad­u­ates, sev­eral are using the Method in their work, some are research­ing and val­i­dat­ing objec­tively our sub­jec­tive work. Of those sci­en­tists who have not per­son­ally taken the BLS there are two groups: Those who admit the pos­si­bil­ity of the suc­cess of the Method, and those who con­sider us and the Method to be fraud­u­lent. It’s the same old story; our sever­est crit­ics are those who know the least about us.

The inter­est­ing thing, though, is that the lab­o­ra­tory stud­ies about the brain and mind being pub­lished by bio­chemists, psy­chol­o­gists, neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gists, and phys­i­o­log­i­cal psy­chol­o­gists are all sup­port­ive of our work. We are well aware of synap­tic junc­tures, of the elec­tro­chem­i­cal pro­cess­ing of energy, and of the mind that directs the embryo before the brain is formed; it is not nec­es­sary for us to ground our grad­u­ates in cur­rent brain-mind the­ory, just as it is not nec­es­sary to under­stand elec­tric­ity in order to turn on a light switch.

I am not belit­tling research—I con­sider myself to be a research sci­en­tists, and I know whereof I speak.

“The point is that human­ity can improve human life on this planet and the lives of every­thing else as well by turn­ing on the light switch, because the elec­tric­ity is all around us just wait­ing to be put to good use.”

McK­night: Fol­low­ing your anal­ogy, could some­body get “shocked”?

Silva: Quite the con­trary. What is shock­ing is that some peo­ple believe that knowl­edge of self-management and inter­nal con­trols is sus­pect and should only be in the hands of the edu­cated few. Bet­ter that the many be edu­cated to their poten­tial and how to acti­vate it for their own ben­e­fit and for the ben­e­fit of their loved ones than that they be vic­tim­ized by their own self-ignorance.

These are sci­en­tific times, and it is good that this is so. The wis­dom of the ages about human­ity is being cor­rob­o­rated by modem sci­en­tific research, by empir­i­cal knowl­edge. Socrates’ admo­ni­tion, “Know thy­self,” is com­ing to pass in this tech­no­log­i­cal age for the bet­ter­ment of more peo­ple with the aid of humanity’s own technology.

McK­night: You don’t think that peo­ple are deify­ing their own technology?

Silva: In some quar­ters, undoubt­edly. When­ever you have a soci­ety where cre­ation is more val­ued than the cre­ator, you have this sit­u­a­tion. Look back through his­tory. There are count­less illus­tra­tions. In our time, how­ever, psy­chori­en­tol­ogy is edu­cat­ing per­sons to the sig­nif­i­cance of their own inner being, is teach­ing them to use more mind, is edu­cat­ing them in a prac­ti­cal fash­ion to actively par­tic­i­pate in the spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion of the planet.

One of the max­ims of our orga­ni­za­tion is: “Wel­come to the sec­ond phase of human evo­lu­tion on the planet.” We are quite seri­ous when we speak of psy­chori­en­tol­ogy as “the sci­ence of tomor­row today.” Since we struc­tured the class pre­sen­ta­tion and began teach­ing out­side of Laredo in 1966, our grad­u­ates keep increas­ing in num­bers at a very rapid pace.

Peo­ple are eager to be a part of a move­ment ded­i­cated to the uplift of the planet. The days of eso­teric soci­eties, cults, and covens and num­bered. What was hid­den is being shouted from the house­top; all that is nec­es­sary is that peo­ple have eyes to see and ears to hear.

McK­night: Isn’t the Silva Method itself believed by some to be occult?

Silva: As I under­stand occult, it refers to infor­ma­tion that is secret, mys­te­ri­ous, and super­nat­ural, and—as I just said—our move­ment is the very antithe­sis of that. The Silva Method is a tech­nique designed to enable peo­ple to use more of their minds to make them­selves more effec­tive in mak­ing this planet a bet­ter place to live. There are no secrets, no ini­ti­a­tion, no dra­matic rites or tri­als to be met and scaled. It is purely and sim­ply the most effec­tive way yet devised and avail­able to all to make one’s self a more effec­tive human being on the planet.

McK­night: You say that the Silva Method is avail­able to all, but you charge money for the courses. Why don’t you give it away like the teach­ers of old did?

Silva: By teach­ers of old, I pre­sume you mean the likes of Con­fu­cius, Bud­dha, Socrates, or Jesus. Each of these teach­ers lived in a dif­fer­ent eco­nomic sys­tem from the one we have, and each was rec­om­pensed for his ser­vices in accor­dance with the cus­toms of the times. Free enter­prise is the pre­vail­ing cus­tom of our time and locale. As a mat­ter of fact, we did offer the Silva Method to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment free of charge in 1965 but were turned down.Having invested over half a mil­lion dol­lars in the method myself, it seems rea­son­able to me that mak­ing it avail­able to the pub­lic via the free enter­prise sys­tem is the best way to ensure its devel­op­ment and dispersion.

Besides that, peo­ple tend to attach lit­tle value to some­thing that they get for nothing.There are hun­dreds of Silva Method lec­tur­ers all over the world. Many are still active earn­ing their liv­ing by pre­sent­ing the Silva Method. We have printed mate­r­ial, tapes, and elec­tronic train­ing equip­ment for the use of our stu­dents and grad­u­ates; we have a staff to sup­port. Money is the cur­rent means of exchange for ser­vices ren­dered, it is the way that our eco­nomic sys­tem is set up.

We have in the past, and are still con­duct­ing spe­cial projects, whereby cer­tain groups are offered the Basic Lec­ture Series at no cost to them. Copies of such com­pleted research projects are avail­able to inter­ested par­ties. We offer the Basic Lec­ture Series to schools—elementary, sec­ondary, and colleges—and have had only suc­cess where it is accepted.

Our only require­ment is that research be con­ducted and that we be allowed to use the pub­lished results in our pro­mo­tional work. This method has also been pre­sented in var­i­ous types of reha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­ters, pris­ons, and social ser­vice pro­grams. Let us put it this way: For the needy, the Silva Method is avail­able in accor­dance with abil­ity to pay. You might be inter­ested to know that there is a money back guar­an­tee. We respect fed­eral laws in that regard. In fact, we were using the money back guar­an­tee before those fed­eral laws were enacted.

McK­night: Do you have addi­tional courses besides the BLS that you can describe for us?

Silva: Yes. There is the Grad­u­ate Lec­ture Series which three other lec­tur­ers and I present to grad­u­ates of the BLS, and there is our Exec­u­tive 500 Series which is a pro­gram using the Silva Method tapes and train­ers. This series is the result of our ongo­ing need to diver­sity through research and devel­op­ment. We are diver­si­fy­ing our offer­ing so as to reach a wider spec­trum of humanity.

McK­night: Would you tell us some­thing about the cor­po­rate struc­ture of your organization?

Silva: The par­ent orga­ni­za­tion is the Insti­tute of Psy­chori­en­tol­ogy, Ltd., gov­erned by a board of direc­tors. The teach­ing of the Silva Method Basic Lec­ture Series is done through Silva Inter­na­tional, Inc., and the man­u­fac­tur­ing of elec­tronic equip­ment is han­dled by Silva Sen­sor Systems.

McK­night: Since this inter­view is being con­ducted for pub­li­ca­tion in Coun­sel­ing and Val­ues, whose read­er­ship is in the edu­ca­tional field, would you direct some remarks to them specifically?

Silva: It is clear that some degree of per­sonal involve­ment is nec­es­sary in any­one whose occu­pa­tion involves consultation.The per­son who is trained in sub­jec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion and aware­ness has obvi­ous advan­tages over those who are not so trained. Psy­chic growth and devel­op­ment can be valu­able tools to edu­ca­tors at all levels—particularly so to coun­selors and all human rela­tion­ship personnel.

“We con­sider the Silva Method of psy­chori­en­tol­ogy to be the best sys­tem of men­tal train­ing avail­able for devel­op­ing inner aware­ness. It is sub­jec­tive edu­ca­tion, and the per­son who is sub­jec­tively edu­cated is dynamic, acti­vat­ing his or her own poten­tial, and is bet­ter able to help oth­ers to real­ize their own potential.”

Why not dis­cover more out about Jose Silva? You can by read­ing How Did Sci­ence Dis­cover Jose Silva

In the begin­ning, José Silva was alone in his research. Even his wife Paula was skep­ti­cal and cau­tious until she even­tu­ally saw the ben­e­fits in the work he was doing with their chil­dren. A few friends in Laredo became inter­ested and lis­tened to his ideas and helped him when he asked them to, but many more were sus­pi­cious and even hostile.

Even­tu­ally Silva’s work attracted the atten­tion of one sci­en­tist, who became a close friend and asso­ciate, and who brought the research find­ings to the atten­tion of many other sci­en­tists. This pio­neer­ing research, over­com­ing many obsta­cles and chal­lenges, has pro­vided José Silva with many won­der­ful mem­o­ries of the peo­ple and events that helped us to take the first step into the sec­ond phase of human evo­lu­tion on the planet by suc­ceed­ing with metaphysics.

This is the story about how sci­en­tists became aware of the new sci­ence that José Silva has named “psychorientology.”

A SCIENTIST TAKES A PEEK

The first sci­en­tist who came to Laredo, Texas, to inves­ti­gate the research that Silva was doing was Dr. J.W. Hahn, direc­tor of the Mind Sci­ence Foun­da­tion in San Anto­nio, Texas. Through Dr. Hahn, many more sci­en­tists became inter­ested in the pio­neer­ing research into the mind and human poten­tial. Mind Sci­ence Foun­da­tion was founded by oil mil­lion­aire Tom Slick Sr. It was Mr. Slick who asked Dr. Hahn to check out Silva’s work. He took back a very favor­able report.

In fact. Dr. Hahn took the first step that led to the Silva Method being taught to the pub­lic for the very first time.

Here’s how it happened:

After Dr. Hahn’s visit to Laredo, he called Dr. N.E. West, the head of the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy at Way­land Bap­tist Uni­ver­sity in Plain­view, Texas, and arranged for him to visit Laredo and inspect Silva’s find­ings. Dr. West was impressed. Even though he had vis­ited the lab­o­ra­to­ries of Dr. J.B. Rhine at Duke Uni­ver­sity on two occa­sions, he said that he had never seen so much valid sci­en­tific work done on ESP.

A VERY SUCCESSFUL VISIT

That led to an invi­ta­tion by Dr. West for Silva to come to Plain­view and present a lec­ture to the psy­chol­ogy stu­dents at the college.The visit was so suc­cess­ful that Dr. West told his friend Dord Fitz, an art pro­fes­sor in nearby Amar­illo, that he should invite Silva to come speak to his art students.

When sev­eral of the art stu­dents expressed an inter­est in learn­ing Silva’s tech­niques, Fitz sug­gested that Silva come teach a class in Amar­illo. More than 80 stu­dents attended that first Silva Method course. Even before they had fin­ished their train­ing, they were telling Silva that their rel­a­tives and friends were also inter­ested, so Silva sched­uled another class.

The Silva Method con­tin­ued to grow by word of mouth until today it is being offered in more than 100 coun­tries world­wide, in 29 dif­fer­ent languages—and mil­lions of peo­ple have benefited.Meanwhile, while Silva was impress­ing stu­dents and artists with his find­ings, Dr. Hahn was arrang­ing for a visit to the lead­ing para­psy­chol­ogy lab­o­ra­tory in the world: The Mind Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Lab­o­ra­tory in Los Ange­les, California.It was here that Silva observed a sci­en­tific project with a plant that con­vinced him that the human mind could alter mat­ter just by thinking.

VERIFIED RESULTS

Silva con­tin­ued teach­ing, and Dr. Hahn con­tin­ued encour­ag­ing him. But not every­one believed that such trail­blaz­ing research and results were com­ing out of Laredo, Texas. Dr. Hahn needed to demon­strate to the Mind Sci­ence Foun­da­tion board of direc­tors that Silva’s pro­gram was valid, so he under­took a major survey.Detailed, com­pre­hen­sive sur­vey forms were mailed to 10,000 Silva Method grad­u­ates. More than 1,100 of them took the time to fill out the forms and return them, an unusu­ally high per­cent­age. The grad­u­ates seemed eager to express their opinions.

The results were spec­tac­u­lar. Not only were peo­ple receiv­ing all of the ben­e­fits they had sought when they first came to the course, they were ben­e­fit­ing in ways they had not expected. They were cor­rect­ing prob­lems that they had not even con­sid­ered cor­rect­ing by using the Silva Method tech­niques. There was also a ques­tion about the grad­u­ates’ over­all opin­ion of the Silva Method. Only half a dozen had any com­plaint, while the rest—99.6% of the graduates—were satisfied.

To val­i­date the sur­vey, Dr. Hahn con­ducted another sur­vey. In this one, he got responses from every per­son who attended a Silva Method Basic Lec­ture Series in Albu­querque, New Mexico.The results in Albu­querque were the same as the results from the other sur­vey, and every per­son was sat­is­fied with the course. Armed with proof that the Silva Method works and that grad­u­ates were report­ing out­stand­ing benefits.

Dr. Hahn now approached other sci­en­tists and encour­aged them to inves­ti­gate Silva’s work. He helped arrange with clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Dr. Puryear to hold a Silva Method class at the Trin­ity Uni­ver­sity cam­pus in San Anto­nio. Then Dr. Hahn approached the Uni­ver­sity of Texas Med­ical School in San Anto­nio. He arranged for Dr. Robert Barns, head of the Psy­chi­a­try Depart­ment, and Dr. Richard McKen­zie, head of the Psy­chol­ogy Depart­ment, to invite Silva to present a lec­ture and demon­stra­tion of how to con­trol brain waves consciously.

Stu­dents and pro­fes­sors were impressed, because at that time, sci­en­tists believed that brain waves were under auto­nomic con­trol, and could not be altered by indi­vid­u­als. Later Dr. Hahn arranged with Dr. Fred Brem­ner, head of the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy at Trin­ity Uni­ver­sity, to test Silva and some of the peo­ple that Silva had trained.

“For the first time, sci­en­tists ver­i­fied in a sci­en­tific lab­o­ra­tory that peo­ple could learn to con­trol their brain waves.They also con­ducted a sci­en­tific exper­i­ment that involved Silva teach­ing his method to 20 of the stu­dents at the uni­ver­sity. As usual, the results were successful.”

They were reported in the British sci­en­tific jour­nal Neu­ropsy­cholo­gia, Vol. 10, pages 307–312 and pages 467–469.

PRESENTATION TO SCIENTISTS

The three sci­en­tists, now on the Silva Inter­na­tional staff. Dr. Hahn, Dr. DeSau, and Dr. McKen­zie, were instru­men­tal in arrang­ing for 40 sci­en­tists from all over the United States to meet Silva in Hous­ton, Texas, so that he could explain to them what he had done and what his future plans were.

Sci­en­tists ver­i­fied that peo­ple trained by Silva could alter brain­wave fre­quency at will, as demon­strated at the Uni­ver­sity of Texas med­ical School in San Antonio.

Do you want to get to know Jose Silva bet­ter? A great place to start would be with this inter­view with Jose Silva.