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.