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