"The Ultimate Mind ESP" by Jose Silva

Probably older people remember the craze about the Silva Method in the 70s (I wasn't born yet :) and it seemed to be very popular then, spiking in popularity again in the late 80s and in the mid 90s. I was introduced to it when in high school in the mid 90s and I walked around for a long time with the three fingers clasped together. The Jose Silva foundation is still alive and kicking, publishing books, tapes, CDs and doing courses. Many trainers still make their living teaching the Silva Method.

I was impressed the first time I learned about it. The alpha state, the brainwaves, the mental screen, projections into almost anything, and all that with a scientific sounding to it was pretty impressive for an adolescent boy. I've learned better later on in life. I've seen other systems and techniques that were just as good if not better, like NLP, and seen systems that seemed like copied from Silva, without the name, or the other way around, but these new systems were much more expansive and strolled deeply into the realm of parapsychology.

With the background I have so far, I can say that the Silva Method is a combination of auto-hypnosis/auto-suggestion and creative visualization. As such, I give it credit, however for all the rest of the 'projection' stuff, as well as 'higher intelligence' and 'improve the life on earth', it just sounds very cliche and like cheap ministry. The stories about people 'tremendously' changing their lives only with the Silva techniques, and welfare mothers becoming wealthy career women, are pretty common among many other 'technologies' which require payment for their services, Scientology being one of the most dramatic ones. All of these success stories, of which this book/CD is full of, are to be taken with a grain (or a pound) of salt, all of the other methods have their share of success stories.

As for me, beyond the entering the alpha state, which is possible with the technique described in the Silva Method, and which technique forms the base for all the other techniques, I haven't found much use for the rest of Jose Silva's teachings. Alpha state is relaxing and all, but beyond being stress-relieving and adequate for visualizations, there are no miracles there. Many other teachings use this state, and different techniques for entering it, and do pretty much similar things as Silva. The rest of the stuff, remote viewing, higher intelligence, telepathy, astral and other projections I've never experienced; I guess I didn't work hard enough at it, or I didn't have imagination buoyant enough.

Jose Silva was a self-taught electronics repairman. He had to support his family from the age of 12 and never had the means to put himself through formal schooling, but he learned by himself, starting with a correspondence course in radio repair. Later he got interested in the brain, and the electric nature of brain's operation, and theoretized about lowering the impedance of the currents through the brain. Then he started developing his theories and techniques, using the Alpha frequency brain waves. He had contacts with the famous parapsychologist Dr.Rhine, and Silva's daughter was one of the subject Dr.Rhine tested and found to be a psychic, or so the story goes.

The book is a pretty good introduction to the theories and techniques of Jose Silva, from the '3 to 1' relaxation and Alpha-entering technique, the mental screen, contacts with higher intelligence(s), psychometry, dowsing, to finding one's purpose in life and getting everything you want. There are, however, large parts which consists mostly of people'ssuccess stories, which become boring and repetetive after the second one. There is one segment of live recording of Jose Silva himself, giving a lecture on sales and business success with his method. The book is a good introduction to the techniques and teachings of Jose Silva for all of those not having the pleasure yet to have made their acquaintance.