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The Silva Method is a
Silva Method Case Working Site
The Silva Method official website
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{{Authority control Large-group awareness training Pseudoscience Self religions Cognitive training New religious movements established in the 1960s
The Silva Method is a self-help
Self-help or self-improvement is "a focus on self-guided, in contrast to professionally guided, efforts to cope with life problems" —economically, physically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis.
When ...
and meditation
Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique to train attention and awareness and detach from reflexive, "discursive thinking", achieving a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state, while not judging the meditat ...
program developed by José Silva. It claims to increase an individual's abilities through relaxation, development of higher brain functions, and psychic
A psychic is a person who claims to use powers rooted in parapsychology, such as extrasensory perception (ESP), to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance; or who performs acts that a ...
abilities such as clairvoyance
Clairvoyance (; ) is the claimed ability to acquire information that would be considered impossible to get through scientifically proven sensations, thus classified as extrasensory perception, or "sixth sense". Any person who is claimed to h ...
.
It has been variously classified as a self-religion, a new religious movement
A new religious movement (NRM), also known as a new religion, is a religious or Spirituality, spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. NRMs can be novel in origin, or they can be part ...
, and a cult
Cults are social groups which have unusual, and often extreme, religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals. Extreme devotion to a particular person, object, or goal is another characteristic often ascribed to cults. The term ...
, and has been criticised as pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable cl ...
.
Biography of José Silva
José Silva (August 11, 1914- February 7, 1999), an American electronics repairman, grew up in Laredo, Texas. He developed an interest inpsychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
to see if it could help him increase his children's IQ. After experimenting and being convinced of his daughter's sudden clairvoyance, Silva decided to learn more about the development of psychic abilities.
In 1944 Silva began developing his method, formerly known as Silva Mind Control. He used it on his family members and friends before launching it commercially in the 1960s.
Silva was the subject of a 1990 biography.
Technique
The technique aims to reach and sustain a state of mental functioning, calledalpha
Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter ''aleph'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ...
state, where brainwave frequency is seven to fourteen Hz.:p19-20 Daydreaming and the transition to sleeping are alpha states.:p19-20
Silva claimed to have developed a program that trained people to enter certain brain states of enhanced awareness. He also claimed to have developed several systematic mental processes to use while in these states allowing a person to mentally project with a specific intent. According to Silva, once the mind is projected, a person can allegedly view distant objects or locations and connect with higher intelligence for guidance. The information received by the projected mind is then said to be perceived as thoughts, images, feelings, smells, taste, and sound by the mind. The information obtained in this manner can be acted upon to solve problems.
Skepticism
James Randi wrote of the Silva Method:See also
* Autosuggestion * Extra-sensory perception * Visualization *Remote viewing
Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen subject, purportedly sensing with the mind. There is no scientific evidence that remote viewing exists, and the topic of remote viewing is generally regarde ...
* Samyama
* Self-help
Self-help or self-improvement is "a focus on self-guided, in contrast to professionally guided, efforts to cope with life problems" —economically, physically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis.
When ...
References
External links
Silva Method Case Working Site
The Silva Method official website
The Silva Method Official Partners
{{Authority control Large-group awareness training Pseudoscience Self religions Cognitive training New religious movements established in the 1960s