Mind Mirror EEG

Expand All | Collapse All

Home
+ People
Anna Wise
+ Max Cade
Life & work
Young Max
The Scientist
Influences
E.S.R.
Biofeedback
The Teacher
Healing
Recognition
Max's Health
Epilogue
Testimonials
Qualifications
Geoff Blundell
Neil Hancock
+ Equipment
Unique EEG
Mind Mirror Models
+ Mind Mirror III
Mind Mirror EEG
Software
Software Modem
Harnesses/Switch Box
Contact Placement
FAQ
Mind Mirror I & II
E.S.R. / G.S.R.
Books & Links
Contact Info

Chapter 10: Epilogue

After Max’s death, the basic courses were continued by Isabel and Sandra Stein, who had attended his courses for many years.  They spent one or two days together at Sandra’s house, at Northwood, Middlesex each week, immersing themselves in the course notes and practising the presentation until they felt themselves to be proficient.  Together, they ran the classes at Chesterford Gardens for two years.  Sandra continued to hold the courses at her home until her untimely death in 1993; she also gave lectures in biofeedback and as a healer visited hospitals and healing centres.

Max’s special evening for his long-term students, the Thursday group, also continued with various members offering their special skills - notably Sydney Crawford, Pamela Jones, Niki Honore and David Annersley.

The basic courses then continued with Isabel and her partner, Peter Staples, initially at Chesterford Gardens and then at several other venues.   The “Awakened Mind mobile unit” of the Maxwell Cade Foundation, i.e. with the instruments neatly transported in crates, has given biofeedback courses in many centres - in North Wales, Northumbria and Devon and in different countries - in Holland at the Humaniversity and also in Spain.  Courses and presentations have been given with me at the Healing Arts exhibitions, the College of Psychic Studies, the National Federation of Spiritual Healers and the Institute of Complementary Medicine.

The Maxwell Cade Foundation

Ideas for perpetuating Max’s work began to surface after his death.  Finally the impetus for forming the Maxwell Cade Foundation came from Geoff Jukes and Jeannette Obstoj, who met the legal costs of setting it up.  Both believed they had benefited profoundly from Max’s teaching and, in June 1985, they wrote to Isabel offering to set up a charitable trust to look after future activities relating to his work.  This trust and foundation would support the continuity and development of Max’s ideals, ideas and work.  Max’s writings and also tapes of his talks remain in safe keeping.

To set up the foundation, references were needed from his peers. Here are quotations from some of  them:

Sir George Trevelyan, founder and president of the Wrekin Trust:

Maxwell Cade, his wife and his colleague Geoffrey Blundell came to many of our Wrekin Trust courses and demonstrated the instruments they had evolved through their research.  

At a time when meditation has come to play so great a role in personal transformation, the possibility of scientific assessment of brain rhythms can be of the greatest value. I am convinced that Maxwell Cade’s work and research is of scientific value and of profound interest.  This research takes a very important place in the movement for alternative therapies and a new lifestyle.  It will make a real contribution to the emergence of a new vision and way of living.

 

CD Curling, former Sub-dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of London (Kings College):

I regard the research and development carried out by Maxwell Cade in the area of biofeedback as being of great importance.  When I gave a course in the University of London on the Control of the Internal Environment, I was able to use some of his techniques and results.  The further exploration of the boundaries between physics and psychology is likely to be important to the health of the community as well as to the advancement of knowledge in areas recently re-illuminated by new discoveries in physics.  I therefore wish to give my wholehearted backing to the foundation so that his work may be continued and his high hopes given practical expression.

 

Dr Ann Woolley-Hart MSc, MB, BS:

Max Cade’s work was unique. From his knowledge of Western psychology, Eastern philosophy and of electronics, he created a biofeedback training system for self-awareness and self-realisation.

In the more advanced courses, further training was given to bring out the innate creativity in people and to reshape their lives and regain their health. Many, many people, including myself, owe a debt that is hard to repay. He gave us confidence in ourselves and showed us the way forward in times of personal difficulties.

We live in times of crass materialism. Max gave us another dimension of awareness. Now that he has died, it would be a catastrophe if his work were to die with him. I learnt much from him myself which I have in some small degree been able to pass on to those who consult me.

Somehow this work must be continued and this can best be done as a separate foundation, free from the paraphernalia of existent institutions. Surely it speaks for itself that those who knew Max and worked with him are prepared to spend time, effort and money to continue what he started.

 

In 1989, trust status was granted after a lot of hard work by Isabel Maxwell Cade and Peter Staples.  A first newsletter appeared in July 1990.  Some of Max’s papers have been made available:

The address of The Maxwell Cade Foundation is: c/o 2 Old Garden Court, Mount Pleasant, St Albans, Herts AL3 4RQ, United Kingdom.

The Future

The essence of Max’s work can be captured in the ancient dictum “know thyself”.  He was the perhaps the first “electronic guru” – someone using machines in the service of self-knowledge with the potential of leading to the state he called the Awakened Mind.

While many have used biofeedback methods in particular applications, he was the first to have sufficient experience of traditional teaching to be able to confidently use a machine to check whether his subject had actually experienced the altered state of consciousness that he was trying to impart.

The recognition that stress and emotional conflict can greatly affect our health means that Max’s work can now take its rightful place in the health aspects of complimentary medicine.  Within the business community, stress managers benefit from the objectivity of biofeedback machines to improve efficiency.  Complementary therapies are now being examined within the medical community.  As Professor Nixon at London’s Charing Cross hospital says: “After a heart attack, recovery depends more on what is happening in the patient’s head than his body.”  As Max put it: “Biofeedback is limited only by the imagination of the therapist.”

In Britain, with my nephew Neil Hancock, I have formed a new company, Biomonitors Ltd.  Neil is especially skilled in digital and computer techniques and this has resulted in an improved version of the Mind Mirror with enhanced facilities.  With a new four-channel version being developed it will be possible to study, for example, the relationship of the occipital brain rhythms to those measured from the frontal lobes.

Before Max’s death, we had already made some tentative studies using two separate Mind Mirrors but found we needed a combined display so that patterns would be more easily recognised and compared.  Other EEG machines are now being produced using many channels which can show for example the movement of alpha over the whole brain as a representation on-screen.

A problem arises here because when you have more channels there is so much information that it is an impossible task to make sense of it; some way of reducing the complexity of this data is needed; assumptions have to be made which will almost certainly hide information of value.  Knowing how much we have gleaned looking only at the occipital lobes using two channels makes the task of adding two more channels over the frontal lobes seem daunting.  The thought of even more channels is very intimidating.

Also new is a meter that shows the ESR and temperature reading together on a small screen.  With this instrument, I want to include a course based on Max’s introductory courses and this would earn money for the foundation.

Peter Staples also has not been idle. When Audio Ltd could no longer produce the Omega 1 due to high production costs, he designed and produced the Discovery ESR and Therapist’s meters. The latter includes the equivalent of the old Omega 2 which shows small changes in ESR (often referred to as GSR), the old Omega 1 and the temperature meters.

Anna Wise continues to develop Max’s work in America.   Her book The High Performance Mind, published in 1996 in hardback, is now available in paperback.  Max’s ideas are the basis but it also shows how she has digested them and developed them in her own way.

Anna feels it is an honour that she was asked to contribute a chapter to a book edited by Joe Kamiya, who is considered to be the father of biofeedback in America when he discovered in the 1950s that the alpha wave could be controlled by feedback.  This book, A Comprehensive Textbook of Applied Pyschophysiology, Biofeedback and Related Behavioural Medicine (publication date not yet decided) will finally place Max’s work within the academic framework among the great EEG theorists and practitioners in America.

What of the future?  The idea of the Mind Mirror and the State 5 pattern has entered the zeitgeist of our times. It got very wide publicity from a chapter in Michael Hutchinson’s book Megabrain which probably reached a million copies in paperback and referred to “the legendary Mind Mirror”.  All the other chapters of this book were devoted to machines that provide some sort of brain stimulation, which is now big business in America.  Undoubtedly these methods do give some kind of experience but what is the guidance, training or philosophical background that enables one to “grow” from these experiences?

There have been may other references to the Mind Mirror patterns in magazines, books and articles.  We can be sure that the idea will continue to grow. I, for example, want to incorporate them into fractal patterns to make a dynamic meditation image.  What of virtual reality, where the images can be made to appear in space in front of us?  I can imagine this leading both to both very banal travelogue images and to very fundamental teaching on the nature of the mind.

Finally, from Max’s gravestone:

A source of inspiration to many

The dew drop slips into the shining sea