We began our research into the human mind by studying psychology. That led me to hypnosis, which I began to study.

This produced a lot of valuable information for us.

For instance, I was testing an individual at one time, for positive hallucination. Positive hallucination means that the person would experience more than was actually present in the environment.

Here is how I did it:

Fooling the body

I took my subject to a deep theta level. Even though he was deeply hypnotized, he had his eyes open and was watching me.

Then I told him that I was going to touch him with a red hot iron. I picked up a piece of stainless steel with a pair of pliers, and touched the back of his hand with it.
Even though the piece of stainless steel was not hot, when I touched him with it, he screamed. He felt the burn. He felt the heat...he experienced a positive hallucination...he was sensing more than what was there. The piece of stainless steel was still at room temperature.

Not only did he feel the pain, his body responded as if it has been burned. Ninety percent of the subjects you do this to develop a little red spot, little red dot, as if they were burned with boiling water, or something like that. Ten percent develop a blister. I was lucky to see that phenomenon. My subject developed a blister.
I asked myself, "What happened here? I didn't burn him. Did I fool the healing process, the natural healing process of the body, to send healing chemistry to a spot that did not need it?"

I realized that that's exactly what happened. My suggestion caused his healing mechanism to build a blister, build new skin under it, and get rid of that burned skin.
But the skin was not actually burned.

Then I wondered, "Could we send in extra healing chemistry to accelerate the healing process?

Of course you can do that. If you can do one, you can do the other. No question there.

Shortcomings of hypnosis

So, many things came through in experimenting with hypnosis.

But there are shortcomings. For instance, I found that the deeper a person went, the more they forgot.

At a certain level, they start forgetting. If you want them to forget everything, then you suggest to them that they forget everything. If you don't want them to forget, then you tell them to remember everything, and they will.

But you leave it alone, the deeper they go, the more they forget, until they forget everything. They remember nothing. If you want them to remember, you have to tell them to remember.
We kept on working with our subjects hour after hour after hour after hour, until finally they started remembering a little bit, the way they did before, earlier in their training.

Then we continued for even more hours, and they started remembering more and more. It was as though they had dreamed it. Eventually, they reached the point that they could remember everything that took place while they were at deep levels of hypnosis.

Finding a new level

We wanted a level where they could remember everything. Not like in hypnosis where the deeper they went, the more they forgot. As we continued to investigate, we found that what was happening, they were coming up from theta to alpha. Theta is the deepest you can go in hypnosis. They were coming a little bit at a time, until finally they got to alpha, and then they remembered everything. They could even talk to you, like they did before.

A hypnotized subject in theta never asked questions. Their mind functions inductively, like when they were prior to seven years of age. When you take them to five cycles theta, that is comparable to when they were five years old.

Why do they forget? Because now they are 50. That happened 45 years ago, brain-wise. How can they remember?

So there at five cycles, in deep hypnosis, their mind functions inductively. They cannot formulate a question. They can answer questions, but they can never ask questions, because they are not able to while they are at that level.

So we found out what level they could become active at. It was at the alpha level that they could activate their mind, that they could analyze information and come up with solutions to problems.

That's how we discovered the alpha dimension and what could be accomplished at alpha.

After that, it was a matter of developing an altered state of consciousness to get a subject to alpha, where they could analyze information, where they could function deductively, where they could ask questions and also answer questions.

This is how we developed the Silva System