Silva Psychic Training

Perhaps no other large organization makes such a direct claim to ESP training as Silva Mind Control. The training generally takes 48 hours, culminating in a weekend intensive, and one "graduates" by ostensibly passing an ESP test which involves diagnosing the personality and medical condition of an unknown individual. Hundreds of thousands of individuals have taken this training and readily offer testimony as to its effectiveness.

The training involves basic exercises in concentration, relaxation and visualization. The experience, while intense, is said to be rather pleasant. The techniques begin with simple exercises in visual imagination. Students begin by imagining the details of their own homes. Students are asked to actually feel the objects in the house, and also to cause their colors to change. In the next session students mentally project themselves into cubes or cylinders of various metals. Then students project themselves into various plants. Then the projection of the mind is into a pet animal, examining each part of the body individually. From this follows the graduation exercise of doing a psychic diagnosis on a human being.

The philosophy of this training is couched in psychophysiological jargon relating to EEG brain waves. Students are told to enter into an "alpha level" where they can contact their inner mental resources. The use of this terminology has been highly criticized as inaccurate and even antiscientific (Stanford 1976).

No fewer than five experimental studies have been conducted with Silva graduates in order to test their claims of psychic diagnosis (Brier et al. 1974, Brier et al. 1975, Jacobson 1976, Vaughan 1974). In some cases these experiments were done with the full cooperation of the Silva instructors and their full approval of all experimental conditions. None of these studies yielded any significant ESP.

Jose Silva (1977) in his recently published book on the mind control course makes no reference to the scientific studies that failed to support his claim. He says that in 1953 he had contacted J. B. Rhine with the claim that he had discovered a method to train psi abilities. Rhine's response was that his method was invalid without testing subjects before the training. The book goes on to say that over the next ten years, Silva trained 39 schoolchildren from Laredo, Texas, in the use of ESP. The book states that Silva "had developed the first method in history that can train anyone to use ESP, and he had thirty-nine repeatable experiments to prove it." No details regarding these alleged experiments are offered.

In evaluating the apparent inconsistency between the experimental evidence and personal testimony regarding the Silva program, Rex Stanford (1976) makes the following comments:

"In such courses the student diagnostician is often given the first name and initial, sex, age, and geographic locale of the target person. Additionally, many graduates have told me that they had multiple opportunities to psychically read someone until a reading was felt to be a success, and then they were graduated from the course. Most students seem not to think of their failures which preceded the success and do not reflect on the implications of such failures for the reliability of the results of the training. Nor do they seem to ask themselves why they should be permitted to graduate after a single success instead of being asked to do more successful readings to prove they have been reliably trained. The typical student also does not seem bothered by the fact that in giving the reading he is usually face-to-face with someone who knows the condition of the target person. He does not realize that subtle or even not-so-subtle sensory cues cannot be ruled out. Nor does he realize that it is not always easy to know when one is being sensorially cued by another person. Similarly, the student does not stop to think that the examination process for such courses could not in principle permit a judgement of whether he or students in general have really been trained in ESP performance. They do not realize that such an inference would, at the very least, require pre-course testing for ESP ability but that students are not given the opportunity to see how well they can do before being ‘trained'. Most of them assume that ESP is impossible to do at will without special training.

"Students do not realize that the examination process simply gives them an opportunity to try to use ESP in an optimism-inducing, highly supportive setting which has shown, in the laboratory, to be psi-conducive even when the subjects have not been ‘trained. Thus they do not realize that even if they show some ESP ability in this setting, it proves nothing about their having been trained to use ESP reliably. Therefore any success they have is attributed to the efficacy of the training procedure.

"Granted the inability of the typical student to adequately evaluate the parapsychological outcome of his training, granted the high-powered salesmanship, the morale-boosting atmosphere, and that the student has paid a considerable sum for such a course, it is little wonder that many persons leave the course feeling it has been a success. They graduate believing themselves capable of using ESP and other psychic powers consciously and reliably.

Stanford adds, that in his experience, many individuals who have taken the mind control courses retain an objective perspective on what happened to them in the course and on what has been the long-term result. However, he maintains that a certain proportion of individuals "emerge with ideas which would normally be regarded as paranoid in character regarding their psychic ability to manipulate other people.

Elmer and Alyce Green (1974), biofeedback researchers at the Menninger Foundation, have gone further than Stanford in their criticisms of mind control courses. They claim that the notion of biofeedback or brain wave training utilized in such courses is completely inaccurate and that the teachers of such courses are actually using hypnotic training. Furthermore, they state that this hypnotic training bears a similarity to the training of trance mediums and that this can lead to cases described as possession by low grade spirits. They claim that dozens of cases Of paranoid neuroses and psychoses have been triggered by mind control type courses. They question the competency of mind control teachers to deal with this problem. The Greens suggest that parapsychologists involve themselves in evaluating the various mind control and psi training courses being offered to the public.

The general sense of the above criticisms by the Greens and Stanford may be appropriately applied to many other organizations that claim to develop ESP and hypercognitive skills.

Brier, R., Savits, B., and Schmeidler, G. Experimental tests of Silva Mind Control Graduates. In W.G. Roll, R.L. Morris, and J.D. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology, 1973, Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974.

Brier, B., Schmeidler, G.S., and Savits, B. Three experiments in clairvoyant diagnosis with Silva Mind Control graduates. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1975, 69, 263 - 271.

Green, E. and Green, A. Mind Training, ESP, hypnosis, and voluntary control of internal states. In J. Regush and N. Regush (Eds.), Psi: The other world catalogue. New York: G. P. Putnam's, 1974.

Jacobson, N. Investigation of claims of diagnosing by means of ESP. In J.D. Morris, W.G. Roll, and R.L. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology, 1975, Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976.

Silva, J., and Miele, P. The Silva mind control method. New York: Pocket Books, 1977.

Stanford, R.A. Scientific, ethical and clinical problems in the "training" of psi ability. Paper presented at the symposium on the Application and Misapplication of Findings in Parapsychology, American Academy for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, New York City, January, 1975. In R.A. White (Ed.), Surveys in Parapsychology. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976.

Vaughan, A. Investigation of Silva Mind Control claims. In W.G. Roll, R.L. Morris, and J.D. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology, 1973, Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974.