The Power of the Imagination

The autonomic nervous system controls your pulse and your glands. But your imagination can also take control... you can choose what you will think about. And what you think about can change your physical body.

Imagination can cause you to age faster... or age more slowly... it can cause an ulcer... or heal an ulcer. Medical case histories are filled with stories of people who were literally scared to death. What would a coroner write on such a death report—"cause of death: imagination"?

Here is an interactive example of the power of the human mind: First, suspend your natural disbelief, just for a minute, while you try this exercise. It's easy and everyone can, do it. It will only take a few seconds.

First relax and take a deep breath and clear your mind; now use your imagination and try to clearly picture this in as much detail as possible:

You have a bright yellow, ripe lemon in the palm of your hand. Rub the skin of the fruit with your hands. Feel the texture. Smell it. Now pick up a sharp knife and slice slowly through the lemon. Juice squirts and runs out of the lemon onto your hand. Put a drop of juice on your finger and touch it to your tongue. Is it terribly sour?

For most people, just a simple little exercise like this will cause their mouth to water.

Doctors will tell you that mouth-watering is an involuntary reflex of the autonomic nervous system. Or, to put that in layman's terms, you can't physically control it. However, you can use your imagination to think of lemons... and that will do the trick.

Does it make you wonder... what else can the imagination control? It is vastly more powerful than most people realize.

We've all had the experience of preparing for something important; maybe a big speech, maybe calling a potential employer, client, or even a first date, when simply "imagining" what would happen caused our hearts to race and our palms to sweat.

But can the imagination control influences from outside the body?
The answer is YES!

We have known for a long time how powerful the imagination can be, but until recently few have dared to study it. Today, however, scientists in many health disciplines are looking into "relaxation and visualization" techniques. (The word "imagination" is more accurate than "visualization" because the most powerful visualization techniques, like The Silva Method, involve all of the senses, not just the "visual.")

How a Father's Love Led to this
Brainpower Breakthrough

Forty years ago, when José Silva began his groundbreaking research in this field, scientists would have laughed at the very idea of studying the imagination. Because José Silva had no formal educational training, he simply didn't know any better. Like the famous Wright brothers, his research was driven by passion, not by educational background.

A self-taught electronics expert, Silva was a pioneer in developing antenna systems in the early days of television. His vision and entrepreneurial spirit turned a small radio repair shop into a large, thriving electronics business.

His entry into the field of mind development started at first as an offshoot of his natural curiosity. While his days were filled with electronics, his nights were devoted to books on the subjects of psychology, hypnosis, and The "Success" Frequency parapsychology.

Then one day, a "lucky" misfortune occurred in the Silva household: His children brought home "F's" on their report cards from school.

In those days it was thought that I.Q. was something you were born with. Like eye color, you couldn't change it. José worried, as any parent would, that bad grades and other failures might become his children's lot in life. He decided to turn his full attention to helping them do better.

The question "Could it be possible to raise one's I.Q.?" started José on his historic quest into mind research.

He knew from his work with electronics that the ideal circuit was one with least resistance. If brain cells acted somehow like circuits, he reasoned, would it be possible to lower their resistance and thus make them more receptive to storing and receiving information?

Would the brain function more effectively if he could slow down the brain waves?

Using hypnosis techniques to quiet his children's minds, José Silva discovered that at lower brain-wave frequencies the brain did indeed receive and store more information. Under hypnosis, his children could remember fantastic amounts of information, such as dates, names, numbers, and other facts.

However, while hypnosis helped his children remember more, it did not contribute to better understanding. That problem is what led him to develop his famous mental training exercises.

He created specific exercises that his children could use to quiet their minds and lower their brain rhythms. They could do this without losing consciousness (as in sleep),
and without losing conscious control (as in hypnosis).

His first sign of proof that this new system was working, much to his delight, was in his children's sharply improved grades.

We know today that José Silva's initial mind-development experiments were a landmark in the study of human consciousness.

He was the first person to prove that people can learn to function with awareness at the alpha and theta brain-wave frequencies. The medical and psychological establishments have since confirmed this finding with numerous experiments, of which biofeedback technology has been one of the most useful outcomes.

Other parents in Silva's neighborhood took notice of the Silva children's great improvements at school and asked José if he could teach their children. He accepted, and over the next 10 years of working with children, José developed what would become the basics of The Silva Method training.

Alpha Levels and the Development of ESP

A strange thing happened one evening at the Silva house. It was a normal week night, and José was working with his daughter Isabel on her schoolwork. She had relaxed and used her training to go into her alpha brain-wave level so that her father could begin quizzing her on her lessons. Suddenly, and quietly, the routine was momentously changed. As José formed a question in his mind, Isabel answered it. It was a question he had not yet spoken! Then she answered another, and another.

She was reading his mind!

Could his daughter's brain, while in a relaxed state, somehow gain the power to act as a receiver of his thoughts? Did the brain have the equivalent of electronic components that were able to act as transmitters and receptors? It was the beginning of a period of experimentation and learning with alpha levels of consciousness that continues even to this day.

One of the most interesting of these studies came several years ago at the Stanford Research Institute in California. The research was called "The Distant Viewing Project." Two groups of volunteers who had experienced The Silva Method training were chosen—one group in New York and the other in California. The West Coast group was given pads of paper and pencils, and without prior information, they were asked to make a sketch of what the New York volunteers were seeing at given moments. Meanwhile, the New York volunteers took Polaroid pictures and marked each one with a time and a date.

The drawings were later compared with the photos by an unbiased third group and judged either as a "hit" or a "miss."

Would you like to guess the percentage of drawings that contained hits? Your guess might be higher than it would have been before you started reading this report. But few people ever guess as high as the actual "hit ratio"... the Stanford Research Institute reported an 80 percent success ratio!

How were the volunteers in California communicating with the test subjects in New York? Were they communicating on a spiritual level? Or were they receiving what some researchers have called "psychotronic energy"?

Only through your own beliefs and experiences can you answer that question for yourself.

Using the Imagination to Control Outside Influences

Now that you understand a little about how The Silva Method was developed, let's return to an earlier question. Can your imagination control influences from outside the body? Many researchers at major medical centers believe it can. Many Silva alumni can tell you of their own successes.

A Silva Method Seminar graduate (Mike D., Chesterton, IN) used his training to control his allergies. He had suffered the effects of hayfever throughout his childhood and into his thirties. Anyone with an allergy knows that pollen and other allergens can be powerful outside influences!

After his Silva Method training, it seemed quite reasonable to him that if other people without hayfever could ignore the irritation of pollen, then so could he! He simply decided that he was tired of the swollen, itchy eyes, the asthma, and worst of all, the uncontrollable runny nose and sinus congestion. Using his training, he was able to imagine the symptoms away. And now late summer is his favorite time of the year!

Unbelievable! But you already know that you can make your saliva glands flow, heart race, and sweat glands open. You know that great actors can make their tear ducts cry on command. The glands that cause a runny nose are just as easy to control, if you know how.

Many of the relaxation and visualization techniques that are used in hospitals across America today are watered-down versions of The Silva Method. Doctors tend to teach only the most basic of these techniques over a one- or two- hour period. Instruction in the basic Silva Method Course spans two to four days; the audio version includes six hours of listening and at least twice that much time in recommended practice.

The Silva Method alpha-level training is a skill like any other—the more you practice, the better you get! In the audio program, you'll find plans for a 40-day self-training course that will help you form powerful healing abilities, as well as creative, intuitive, and clairvoyant skills.

Understand that relaxation and visualization techniques
are on the cutting edge of medical research today.

Researchers at the University of Chicago Medical Center have used imagination techniques, similar to The Silva Method, to help children with asthma. And they've had outstanding success. They've shown that children can use these techniques to reverse the swelling of bronchial passages that can choke off their air supply, regardless of whether the asthma attack was brought on by stress or an outside influence—an allergen like pollen, dust, or pet hair.

Relaxation and visualization in conjunction with the care of a licensed physician has been tried successfully with heart disease, cancer, and a myriad of other diseases. Although some 40 years behind José Silva, medical science is discovering that healing can't take place without self-healing. Attaining the alpha level is the most powerful way to promote self-healing.

Imagination: A Right-Brain Activity

It was Albert Einstein who said that most people use only 10 percent of their mental capacities. By implication he was saying that his brain was no different from anyone else's, that he had only learned to use more of it than other people.

Our brains function as two halves, a Right Brain and a Left Brain—two brains with two very different functions and points of view.

One of the most exciting things you'll find in your alpha level is the ability
to listen to your Right Brain.

In normal waking consciousness, the Left Brain rules. It is logic, it is ego, it is the little voice inside your head that nags you and tells you that you can't possibly do this. The Left Brain helps you remember to balance your checkbook, brush your teeth, and take out the garbage.

It's the timekeeper. It is also your primary mode of functioning on a daily basis at work. It likes to understand the world one thing at a time in a proper order, using deductive reasoning. The Left Brain "can't see the forest for the trees."

The Right Brain, on the other hand, thinks globally. It is creative, intuitive, and instinctive. It is ruled by feelings and sensations. It understands everything all at once, in inexplicable leaps of faith.

The Right Brain allows baseball players to catch a fly ball without sitting down with a pencil to figure out force, trajectory, and wind speed. Outfielders see the bat hit the ball, and without stopping to think, they intuitively start running to the spot where it is going to fall.

If you ask great musicians to look at their fingers while they are playing, the music will invariably stop. At its best, music flows freely from the Right Brain. Great musicians learn how to put their Left Brains on hold while they play freely from their emotional Right Brain.

As you learn through The Silva Method how to go to your alpha level and work on a problem in your imagination, you will begin to discover the power of the Right Brain. Stress drifts away; time disappears; worry, negativity, and doubts are abandoned.

You enter a waking dream where everything is possible and you are in complete control.
You feel intuitively what is right and wrong, and solutions to problems simply come to you.

This is precisely the way the world's most famous geniuses have described their own inspirations. Newton described how the theory of gravity came to him while resting under a tree. Max Planck, who invented the quantum theory of physics, said the theory just popped into his head while resting in a hot bath. Einstein liked to work on problems as he awoke from his afternoon naps.

Perhaps this ability to think clearly while experiencing a deep state of relaxation is what has separated geniuses from the rest us. But now, thanks to the work of José Silva, anyone can learn to do this!

If you had been Right-Brain educated, in addition to learning history and math, you would have done less passive learning and more experiential learning. You would have had classes like "Basic Creative Imagination" and "Enhancing Intuition, Instinct, and Inspiration." Both students and teachers would have talked less and done more.

You'd have studied telepathy, psychometry, and all sorts of other Right-Brain sensing experiences. Unfortunately, that is a whole realm of human potential that is left unstudied and unlearned.

The Silva Method gives you the training you need to begin restoring your lost,
but not forgotten, God-given powers of imagination.

Reprogramming Your Mind to Change Your Life

Psychologists say that the harder you try to break a habit, the more certain it is that you will fail! This seems paradoxical, and yet most of us have had this experience. What you think about generally becomes your reality. If you are constantly thinking about your bad habit, it will never leave your mind; it will never go away.

For the most part, people are very good at negative self-programming. Do you do this? When you get home from work, you plop down in an easy chair, take a deep breath, settle into a comfortable state of mind, and then start thinking about everything that went wrong during the day. If you go over in your mind everything that has gone wrong and everything that can go wrong, then what are you creating? You are reinforcing your troubles, deepening your problems, and prolonging your difficulties.

Parents, teachers, clergy, doctors, and bosses are very good at correcting what we do wrong. Few ever show us what is right. We internalize this type of teaching and use it on ourselves.

You can learn to break lifelong habits, almost effortlessly!

Now that you understand this, you're going to stop thinking about your problems and start thinking about solutions, right? If only it were that easy for you. The bad news is that you are programmed to think the way you already do.

The good news is that the alpha level is where basic programming can be developed for your mind. It is like the DOS, or system level, in a computer.

A good hypnotist can bring you to an alpha level and give you mental programs to follow. In a Las Vegas act, you can be asked to walk like a chicken—and you will! In therapy, a hypnotist can help you break habits, like smoking. But the strength of hypnotism is always limited by the willpower of the participant. No hypnotist can make you stop smoking if you don't truly want to stop.

There's an axiom in psychology that says when the will and the imagination are in conflict,
the imagination always wins.

By Using a Silva Method technique called "The Mirror of the Mind," you can learn how to consciously enter your "programming level" and examine your own will, reason with yourself, come to understand yourself better, and change your mind forever!

No other system is more powerful for helping you:

• lose weight
• quit smoking
• stop procrastinating
• change eating habits
• stop abusing alcohol or other drugs
• break negative emotional patterns
• and create new patterns for success

Nightingale Conant has "bottled" the life-transforming Silva workshop
into an easy-to-use audio program

Now, teaching you to use more of your brain is really what
The Silva Method audio self-study course is all about.

Because no other system gives you the tools to control your mental programming
and your own destiny like The Silva Method.

Whatever you do, you'll do better, because you have awakened the genius within you! With The Silva Method, you'll believe that you have finally found the "User's Manual" that never came with your own amazing human brain.

The Silva Method is simply a skill that allows you to take control of your own mind... and the human mind is the most powerful force on earth.

In taking conscious control, you have the key that opens up every other possibility in your life!

The Silva Method audio program teaches you the skill of mind control at the alpha level-a process that is simple, sequential, and as natural as resting in an easy chair. Once you have learned it, and gained full control of this mental ability, you'll find that the new power you control will be... mind-boggling.

After listening to just the first three sessions, you'll already have learned how to enter the alpha level. You'll be surprised at how easy it is to do. Laura Silva, a veteran Silva trainer and José's daughter, and Robert B. Stone will be your guide, leading you step-by-step through all of the programming sessions.

When you start your Silva training, you can decide what areas interest you most.

Whether you want to:

• improve your I.Q. and memory,
• develop your creativity and intuition,
• work on healing and self-healing techniques,
• program yourself to break habits, or
• practice success skills,
• you'll discover that The Silva Method is a tool for total mind development!

You'll also find that The Silva Method is incredibly relaxing and refreshing. Every Silva session is like the perfect cat nap! You come out of the alpha level feeling more energetic and more focused for whatever the rest of your day brings you.

For most Silva graduates, the stress-relieving benefits of The Silva Method alone are worth the effort of learning it and practicing it on a daily basis.

And because the mind is such a powerful tool to develop you'll have your own amazing experiences in your alpha level. Anyone who has taken this course can tell you stories that simply defy explanation. Once you learn to tap the power of your mind, you'll discover hidden talents that are, frankly, difficult to explain.

Here's what you'll learn in each of the 12 sessions plus the FREE Bonus CD:

Session #1 — The Amazing Power of Your Mind

José Silva's startling discovery. The three components of faith—desire, belief, and expectancy. Tapping the hidden resources of the mind. Applying The Silva Method in your daily life.

Session #2 — A Special Level of the Mind

Your awesome brainpower. Using both hemispheres of the brain. Objective vs. subjective functioning. The case of Emil Coue. An exercise to take you to your alpha level.

Session #3 — The Importance of Mental Housecleaning

The problem of negative self-programming. How the Mental Housecleaning Method works with language, thoughts, and daydreams. Focusing on what you want, turning it into a reflex, and getting it. Steps toward a positive way of life.

Session #4 — Achieving Your Goals with the Mental Screen

Developing your abilities to visualize and imagine using the Mental Screen. The spiritual dimension. How to instantly trigger alpha with the three fingers technique.

Session #5 — Powerful Problem-Solving Techniques at Work

Turning problems into opportunities by using both sides of your brain. Becoming clairvoyant. A five-step process for intuitive problem solving. Premiering your own mental movie. How Dynamic Meditation works. The "Distant Viewing" project.

Session #6 — Powerful Problem-Solving Techniques at Home

Using subjective communication to create ideal relationships with friends and family. Finding your purpose in life. Putting the intuitive wisdom of your dreams to work. The Glass-of-Water technique: instant solutions from the deep, subconscious mind.

Session #7 — Mental Discipline: How to Be More Like a Genius

What intelligence really is. Acquiring a fail-proof memory. The Rapid Learning technique. How visualization improves your memory. Learning to use your mind like a natural genius.

Session #8 — Using Your Mind to Improve Your Health

Discovering your power for self-healing. The Energy-Enhancing technique. A seven-step guide to relieving chronic pain. Activating your body's natural pain-control systems. Using The Silva Method to create better health.

Session #9 — Gaining Habit Control with the Mirror of the Mind

How unwanted habits can be programmed out of your life quickly and easily. Creating new solutions for your life. Selecting the right mental imagery for you. Permanently ending unwanted habits like overeating and smoking.

Session #10 — Creating Your Own Mental Laboratory

Building your mental laboratory. Finding your spiritual counselors. The importance of daily creative sessions. Channeling the energy of consciousness.

Session #11 — Discovering Your Powers for Clairvoyance and ESP

Using Right-Brain reference points. Bringing genius to everything you do. Finding and strengthening your clairvoyant powers. Exercises for your Right-Brain education. Projecting your mind in time and space.

Session #12 — Glimpses of a Silva Future

Five steps to continue your mental transformation. A shift in the understanding of Consciousness. The long-range implications of Silva's discoveries. The morphogenetic field. Programming positive change.

Bonus Session — Alpha Reinforcement Exercise with José Silva

A quick and easy means of reinforcing your ability to enter the alpha level.

"The Alpha Sound"

Play whenever practicing advanced Silva techniques to help you maintain your alpha level and make better use of your mental powers. Use to guarantee a deep focus and a successful, dynamic meditation session.

Conduct your own mind-power experiments, and discover just how powerful your mind can be!

Testimony of Evidence

Biography of José Silva