Programmed dream pays big dividends

Silva technique leads to a valuable scientific breakthrough

Imagine that you are working for a corporation. How would you like to do your job so well that your efforts produced several millions of dollars in new revenue?

How would that make you feel?

And suppose at the same time that your efforts are bringing in that kind of new revenue, the product you developed was saving people's lives. How would that make you feel? What do you suppose the leaders of the company would think of you?

You'd be a hero in that company, wouldn't you. And imagine how your family would feel about your tremendous success.

The head of the research department at an Ohio company didn't have to imagine it - he experienced it first hand after using a Silva technique to help him find the solution to a problem.

Probably the most common problem in business is making the correct decision. Jose Silva always reminded us that there is no such thing as a problem without a solution. If you have enough information, it is easy to make decisions. If you could tell in advance what the results of your decision would be, imagine how much easier it would be to make decisions.

In the case of the research director at New Dimensions in Medicine (NDM), he did not have enough information to complete his project. He had been working hard in the laboratory to come up with a formula for artificial arteries.

Imagine the benefits: At the time, doctors had to transplant arteries from other parts of the patient's body to replace bad arteries in the heart. If they could use artificial arteries, it would be much easier on patients, and would undoubtedly extend their lives in many cases.

Silva instructor Ken Obermeyer explained what was happening with the project:

"He had already developed four new formulas at his beta level," Obermeyer reported. But there was still a problem with the body rejecting the "foreign" material.

The researcher attended a Silva course. Obermeyer explained that there is more information available at alpha than at beta, and that you can gain access to the information that you need by going to your level. Another common way to get information in this creative dimension is in dreams.

Inventors like Elias Howe reported that information came to them in dreams. Elias Howe was trying to build a machine that would automate the process of sewing, so that it could be done more quickly. He took a regular needle with a point on one end and a hole on the other end and tried to build a machine that could manipulate the needle and thread the way a seamstress' fingers could.

It didn't work. It was frustrating.

Then he had the dream. Apparently his frustration was influencing his dreams: He dreamed that he had been captured by natives and they had ordered him to invest the machine by morning or he would be executed.

He still couldn't do it, even in his dream.

His dream continued. He dreamed that it was morning, and the natives were closing in on him, thrusting their spears back and forth menacingly as they got closer to him. Now the tips of the spears were almost touching him as the natives thrust them forward.

Suddenly he realized that there was something different about the spears: They had holes going through the points of the spears, from one side to the other. A hole...at the point end of the spear...moving back and forth, back and forth...

He woke up, rushed into his shop and did just the opposite of what he had done before - something that was so "illogical" that he hadn't thought of it in the beta waking state: He drilled a small hole in the point end of the needle instead of the back end, put thread through the hole, pushed it through the cloth, used another threat below the cloth...and he had invented the sewing machine.

Where did the idea come from? Was it from his own subconscious mind? Or did the idea come from higher intelligence?

Wherever it came from, it solved the problem. The idea, which was acted on, improved conditions here on earth and has provided many benefits for humanity.

The NDM researcher reasoned that there was nothing to lose and perhaps something to gain, so he programmed to have a dream that would contain information that he could use to solve the problem he had in mind - the best formula for artificial arteries.

"He awakened sometime during the night,"

Obermeyer said, "and wrote out a formula." then he went back to sleep.

"When he awakened in the morning, he saw the formula, went into the laboratory, put a sample together and found that the human body would accept his plastic.

"One interesting note about this creative solution," Obermeyer continued, "The chemist said that if he had considered this formula on his beta information, he wouldn't have believed it to be a formula the body would accept. He would not have come up with this solution through reason and logic."

This is not to say that reason and logic should be ignored, Obermeyer is quick to point out. We all need the logical, objective beta level for analysis and reasoning; and we also need the creative and intuitive alpha level for the creative insight that it offers, and for the help and guidance that higher intelligence can provide to us.