Chapter 11: Experiences, anecdotes and testimonials offered by those who knew Max

 

W A Andrews

It is some 10 or 11 years since I first became acquainted with Max Cade and his work. His sincerity and selflessness was immediately apparent as it was to all who met him. His blend of scientific knowledge and application together with his spiritual insight and blending of Eastern and Western philosophies was unique. In this way he built up a positive and valuable contribution to the humanities, pointing the way in which people could take some measure of control over their own lives. He never sought acclaim or material reward in his lifetime.

David Annesley

Max

He sits without saying a word. He is quite

at ease and his silence upsets no one.

Multiple conversations criss-cross around him.

He is the centre of the occasion.

He manages to perfectly express this centre

without a word although he smiles quite often.

Someone asks him a question

and he immediately gives all his attention.

He answers with humour and intelligence.

The silence returns. He sits in this silence.

Geoffrey Blundell - collaborator, co-author

By the second series of Max’s courses I was completely hooked, for it linked my interest in Eastern meditation with my work and hobby which was electronics.

I had started a small electronics business 10 years earlier - Audio Ltd - making radio microphones which are used in the television and film industry.  It looked as though I had found an interesting new product to manufacture.  In the event, I spent so much time developing new biofeedback machines which were for ever being changed to make them better that I never made any money out of them.

Max showed me how to develop internal skills so that I became more aware of why and how I functioned on both the spiritual and physical level, but he never tried to tell one what one should do with increased abilities. There was never any dogma or advice in the form of rules.  For me his training led to an awareness that I had many unresolved childhood and relationship problems and that I was not going to solve them sitting on my bottom in front of a biofeedback machine.   I had heard of encounter groups and now I was introduced to Veeresh (Denny Yuson) and I joined his third nine-month encounter group.   Well, I certainly jumped in the deep end, we met once a week, one whole weekend a month and whole group also spent two weeks together.  Many different teachers led the weekend groups and I had many experiences of a variety of developmental methods.  If I say that I cried for the first time in 40 years, you can imagine the dramatic effect this had on me.

Marianne Cartwright

When Max and Isabel came to live opposite me at Hampton in 1968, little did I know what a profound effect they were to have on my life.

A man of great intellect, he was unfailingly kind, patient and non-judgmental - qualities that stood him in good stead when it came to dealing with me as I was going through quite a personal crisis and must have been a pain in the neck!

He and Isabel became second parents to my daughter Louise and I am quite sure that it was through their influence that she has turned to be such a well-rounded individual.  My thanks to them both.

Judy Corbalis - writer

Judy’s tribute described so well what happened in the classes that it has been incorporated into Chapter 6, about Max’s teaching methods.

Elizabeth St John

The Meditation Class

Soaring upwards

Drifting downwards

Enter the cave

Climb the cloud staircase

Follow the path

Find your own

Enter the silence

And check those meters (ESR)

This was Max.

 

Clear Mind

calm heart

And don't forget

Relax . . . warm hands

Straighten the spine

Left brain, right brain

Look at that Mind Mirror

Breathe . . . in the silence

That was Max.

 

Shouts of laughter

Stem Zen glare

And don't forget

Check your meter

Enter the stillness

This was Max

Still . . . is.

 

Nona Coxhead  - co-author, The Awakened Mind

To those of us who knew him and benefited by his unique pioneering research, his absence will be profoundly felt. For Max was not only an innovative thinker who provided great stimulation for the thousands of students who went through his classes but an adept of Zen meditation with the spiritual dimensions of a guru. Together with increasingly sophisticated instruments built in association with Geoffrey Blundell, including the Mind Mirror, Max was able to pinpoint a specific state associated with healing so that, for the first time in history, the process a healer goes through is seen to have a physiological correlate; an unparalleled breakthrough which, though not yet fully recognised by the world at large, will eventually show that he made an invaluable contribution to the understanding and self-enlightenment of Mankind.  A happy journey Max. We thank you. (condensed from a tribute which appeared in Light, magazine of the College of Psychic Studies - summer 1985)

Sydney Crawford

In the Seventies, having been exploring some of the “woolly wilderness” of the encounter scene, imported from California, I somehow landed at the Franklin School, where Max Cade appeared to be dispensing mysticism and scientific feedback simultaneously to a mixed group of seekers-after-self-knowledge.

I was impressed by this seeming paradox of meditation and machines, and when the class moved, I pilgrimaged to Chesterford Gardens, where for many years, I voyaged through my higher states of awareness.  What was the reason that I could spend four hours every week so regularly for so many years listening to him?  It was the man; it was the teachings; they were and are, one.

I remember the time he was in severe pain as he was being treated for one of his many physical problems in University College Hospital.  He astounded the nurses by refusing to take painkillers, using meditation to transcend pain.

I remember the time he was flown back from Italy with a poisoned toe.  The doctors said it would have to be amputated but he refused.  For many months at the end of each Thursday night session, our group of 12 to 15 people would sit in a circle holding hands.  Max’s foot would be on a chair, we hoped we were sending powerful waves of healing to the dark toe now visible.  Lo and behold, the dark wine colour of the toe began to fade over the months and became a normal pink.

Now, some years after his death, I try to rise above my own pressures, wrong thinking, ego trips and sometimes I succeed. Max IS. I say “is” deliberately because for me, he has never gone away from me. He is my other self, my better self.  Writing this has made me come more alive, more aware, more powerful than usual. I do not need a weekly “fix” from him but he is still my teacher.  I just have to keep his amazing last year in mind and that helps me to live “in the present”.

Sybil Harper - student

It was a privilege to know this man. He was an extraordinary personality of almost guru status, though he would fiercely deny such title. He taught his students to search and understand their inner lives and inspired them to achieve higher goals. All who knew Max will mourn him but their grief will be tempered by his teaching that life does not end with death.

Geoff Jukes  - trustee, the Maxwell Cade Foundation

I first met Max in January 1976 at the Franklin School.  I was immediately struck by his directness and humour.  Over the next two years I attended a number of courses which I found to be extremely practical and helpful.

One meeting with Max made a particularly strong impression. In early 1978 I met a Tibetan lama who was to become my teacher for the following few years.   As is often the case with such “meetings”, the communication took place at a level beyond the conceptual mind; indeed as an introduction to the fundamental nature this was at once euphoric and profoundly confusing, because it shattered all the illusions my ego-centred mind had created and adopted as a basis for reality. I naturally thought that I had realised something rather than just glimpsed the possibility.  The next two weeks were spent in a totally ungrounded psychedelic reverie which was enjoyable but disconcerting to say the least.  Max kindly agreed to see me and proceeded to guide me through various exercises that would bring some balance to my confusion.  This process took a couple of hours during which, with great firmness and directness, he showed how my conceptual mind had taken hold of the experience and had interpreted it in a completely dualistic way.  This was rather shattering and by the end of the session I felt empty and disconsolate.  I felt I had been through a psychological blender.

As I walked to the door, Max took my hand and looking deep into my eyes said: “God bless you” with such compassionate warmth and empathy that the clouds of despondency disappeared immediately.

He was truly remarkable teacher in that the wisdom he embodied so honestly and directly, was infused with a deep love and compassion for the beings with whom he came in contact. It is now a few years since he passed away, and if anything his presence is stronger than ever and his words still constantly come to mind.

Margaret Kennedy (formerly Jones) -  meditation and dream workshops teacher

It is almost difficult to talk about Max in the past tense; I still experience him as a potent and powerful presence. Although I studied with him for such a short time, during the last three months of his life and therefore never knew him very well, the effect of his spiritual and psychic enlightenment changed my life then and still richly pervades it still.

How? Through my dreams. Since his death, at critical moments of my life, I will dream of him.  At first, as I struggled on the meditative pathway, he offered me loving support - as I slowly became a meditation teacher he would appear, to reassure me that the approach I was taking was healthy. And in the most recent dream he graphically demonstrated to me that consciousness is not trapped in the physical world.  I dreamed he and I were together in cosmic space; he showed me my physical brain, told me to calm it using my dreambody consciousness. I did. Point proven. So he teaches me still.

Psychologists might suggest I have somehow internalised his wisdom; cynics might say it is wish fulfilment; and mystics might assert it is his eternal spirit continuing his work. In the end it will remain mysterious, but what matters is that he has encouraged another meditation teacher to emerge from the shadows and take up his beloved work.

Leslie Kenton  - journalist and writer

My memories of Max are of a man of enormous kindness, breadth of understanding and curiosity.  He made me far more aware of the unseen worlds than I had been before we met, in fact so aware that I actually spent four and a half years immersed in them before producing my first novel, Ludwig, which was published in 1993.  He also inspired me and contributed greatly to what I feel to be my own work, namely that of helping to free the individual soul power within each human being, that it may be fully lived while on earth.  I think of Max frequently with the deepest feelings of love and affection.  

Phillip King RA, CBE - sculptor

You could put your trust in Max.  I was in his advanced Thursday evening class for many years.  He would take you with a sense of purpose and an array of back-up tools like the Mind Mirror into areas of consciousness development that could have left you scared to carry on and even possibly scarred.  There was comfort in knowing that he was on the look-out, watching for any signs that something might be going wrong, taking you out gently when you had reached the limits that you were capable of at that time, back into the so called normal state, because he knew that a little further along something negative would turn up that would cancel any benefit already gained.

He made you realise how difficult the path was and yet how attainable.  Someone during a class told me that a Japanese Zen master of black ink painting had come to a London centre to demonstrate his art.  I went along and bought two paintings after the demonstration. One had the caption in Chinese characters, “Little by little you reach the top”, and the other had “You are already at the top”.  Without the wisdom and knowledge of Max’s teaching, I could never have understood or wanted to buy these two contradictory works.  He was my teacher, one of perhaps three people whom I have met and felt I could fully respect and believe in.

Belinda Marcetic - student

A notice pinned to a tree led me to a music therapy course. However, there were not enough subscribers and it was suggested that I join a biofeedback course, of which I had never heard.  It was my first introduction to meditation which has now become an important part of my life.  It also led to a warm and happy friendship with Max and with many others who attended his classes.

It was a great delight to me to be able to offer a room in my house [in Chesterford Gardens] when the original classrooms became unavailable.  Max was never too busy not to give a word of encouragement.   He always made light of his own difficulties but had much compassion forours, never passing judgment.  Knowing him has set me, and very many others, a standard to strive for and left me with so many happy memories, too numerous to recount.

Steve Margolis - Ki Aikido teacher, therapist and healer

Reflections in a Ruffled Mind. My Memories of Max.

When I first started attending Max’s classes I couldn’t understand him at all.  Every time I asked a question he gave me a vague or ambiguous answer which made me wonder whether he had even understood the question.  Eventually, I learnt that he was teaching me to stop asking the questions.  I discovered that Max would only give me direct answers to my questions when I really needed to know the answers.

In the classes, I was always aware of when Max was looking my way, even if I had my eyes closed.  Often and particularly in the early days, I would feel self-conscious and even more so when I realised that my meter was broadcasting my self-consciousness.  On one occasion, Max spent a long time watching my meter.  Every time it registered any embarrassment, he quietly said: “Here and now. Here and now”.  It took me an hour but I got it in the end.

Very often I would feel waves of love and compassion coming from Max.  Frequently, to this day, I call on my memories of these feelings.  After Max died I spoke to some of his fellow students who told me he was often in pain.   I knew that he was physically unwell but I believed that he was somehow ‘beyond pain’.   The realisation that all that love came despite the suffering was very moving and affected me strongly.

On one occasion, we were strolling around the gardens during a beautiful sunny lunchtime at a biofeedback summer school.  I asked Max if we could do a particular exercise, a peak experience meditation in that afternoon's class.  Max replied: “Yes, maybe it’s time we did one of those”.  That afternoon, he gave us guided imagery which offered the possibility that we could reach a higher level of consciousness than we had ever previously attained.    During the exercise, I felt myself going deeper and deeper.  Suddenly, I felt as if I was exploding outwards from my centre.  I came out of the meditation feeling excited, a little panicky and far from non-attached to the experience.  My meter was showing a highly charged state, I tried to calm myself down but nothing seemed to work and finally I tried to go to sleep.

At this precise moment Max, who was now giving his “after-meditation lecture”, was quoting John Lilly:  “Whatever altered state one was experiencing, one should WAKE UP, WAKE UP and fully experience it”.  The exact timing of this statement and the experience itself were just two examples of the magic that seemed to happen during Max’s classes.  Later he told us that we should not try to experience states before we were ready for them.   I never again asked Max to do any specific exercise or meditation.

Every now and again Max would read a short Japanese poem, a Haiku.  I always dreaded these haiku exercises as my painting skills are primitive to say the least.  Once the haiku was about the moon, a lake and the wind.  I hoped that nobody would notice that I wasn't doing anything and started doodling on my piece of paper.   After a while I scribbled: “No clear reflection in a ruffled mind”.  Looking at it, I decided it wasn’t too bad but I couldn't possibly hand in a doodle-ridden scrap of paper when everyone else was handing in works of art.  I had just started to copy it neatly on to a clean piece of paper when, before I could stop her, the student next to me collected my piece of paper and handed it in.   Max examined each picture silently while I sat cringing with embarrassment.  When my turn came he smiled saying: “Ah, this person's got it”.  I felt awkward, surprised and also a little pleased.  But shouldn’t “sartori” be attractively packaged?

I loved the wide scope of the topics which Max would teach and the way that they were interspersed with a wide range of meditation techniques: Yogic, Tibetan, Zen.  We heard Sufi, Zen and Yogic teaching stories.  Through his depth of training in Zen, Max was able to distil to us the essence of many Western teachings such as Psychosynthesis, Progressive Relaxation and Autogenic training.  He quoted from the works of Jean Houston and Ainslie Meares.  We were introduced to Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, different states of consciousness and healing methods.  We learnt about the workings of the brain and nervous system and saw their responses on all those wonderful biofeedback machines.  Max made use of his scientific background and I gained a lot of information but the real learning came through the experiences in the classes.

I had been a student of Max’s for some time when I began studying Ki Aikido, a Japanese martial art teaching co-ordination of mind and body, calmness and power without physical strength.  Max thought it was right for me and approved of the effect it was having. I was pleased to hear through Isabel that he was quite proud when I achieved my black belt.  In the Ki Aikido class, there was always a tea break during which the teacher and highest-ranking students would be served first and this seems right and appropriate in that context.  In the middle of the biofeedback classes there was also a tea break where Isabel miraculously remembered what each student wanted from a wide choice of herbal and ordinary teas as well as coffee.  Max would receive his last of all in a plastic cup.  He clearly thought that this was right and appropriate.

Looking back, I realise I can still gain access to many different states of mind and feelings that perhaps I only experienced once with Max.  Sometimes, if I need information, I can find it from that particular unique time.  In contrast, there was one Sufi story that Max seemed to repeat again and again whenever I was in the class.  He often read Sufi or Zen stories and generally I thought that I understood them.  I couldn’t understand this story, however, no matter how often it was repeated.  I could see it must be important but only now, amazingly enough, its meaning is unfolding.  Through a combination of writing these memories and the events currently taking place in my life I feel I am finally coming to see the point of the story.   Max’s teaching is like that for me.   I feel very fortunate and privileged to have been taught by Max.  I will be learning from him for the rest of my life.

Greta Martens - social worker then doing hospital voluntary work

She recalls: “The classes at the Franklin were very cosmopolitan: people from the Continent, America, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the southern hemisphere.  There were always interesting people from all walks of life”.

There was biofeedback at weekends sometimes too.  “There would be a session in the morning followed by lunch which Issy helped prepare.  There was a pleasant garden even though the railway was behind, so we were able to have lunch, fun and laughter then go back to the afternoon session.  It was all very relaxed: there wasn’t any pressure to “learn” anything.

Attending the classes at that time probably saved her life, Greta believes.  “Max told me sometime in 1975 that I should go and see a doctor because he wasn’t happy with what was showing up on the biofeedback machines.  I followed his advice because I had been feeling a bit tired and was diagnosed as having cervical cancer.  I was in hospital within a week because they had failed to diagnose it from a smear test.  It was caught just in time.

Barbara Siddall- yoga teacher and healer

Max came into my life at a very significant and crucial time in the late 1960s and has stayed in it ever since.  He was for me and many others a wonderful teacher and a very dear friend.

He ignited and validated my quest. Through him I was able to realise my own inner stillness and wisdom and connect with timeless in time.  He encouraged my courage and creativity to be brave enough to teach alongside him.

The special friendship I shared with Max and Isabel was most satisfying and healing and above all - fun.  We were able to play and be children together and at times, quite naturally, they were the parents and I was the child.

This opening up of my life came at my busiest time, when I was bringing up a second family.  I had been seeking but more unconsciously over the years and had a great curiosity about life and meaning but no one to share it with.  Then, as if a time switch had operated, I chose to move to Bushey, Hertfordshire, found a local library which was brimming with the very “food” for which I had been thirsting and discovered Max’s invitation to explore altered states of consciousness in a leaflet in one of the books!

A whole series of wondrous and synchronous associations were made at this time leading to me becoming a yoga teacher and a healer and thus connecting in with Max so that we were together as a team with Isabel and Geoffrey Blundell over the years.

I must acknowledge Isabel particularly, She always radiated warmth and caring and spoke to everyone so that we all felt nurtured and special.  A perfect blend with Max, how lucky we all were!

At the beginning, I studied with them in the classes in their cosy flat.  I remember much merriment when Max once produced an instrument that made rude noises if we slipped into sleep. [the hypnogogostat which relied on finger pressure on a button to stop it sounding]

I look on those early days with great nostalgia, when I taught yoga at the Franklin School and slipped into his classes whenever I could, and the days when we did the Wrekin Trust workshops and the summer schools.  Max would have half the students in the classroom sitting in meditation, learning, measuring and experiencing in his very unique and profound way of teaching,  I would lead the other half on the lawn in moving meditations, creative movement and breathing and spatial awareness.  We exchanged groups throughout the weekend and so creating an excellent balance of movement and sitting practice.

I carry bright jewels from Max: the precious present; the wonder of creativity flowing from within; the eye of the hurricane showing the beauty of stillness and action;  the boundlessness of consciousness and possibilities.  It is so important for me to say that all Max taught me and encouraged is very alive in me right now and in my work at the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, both in working with patients and for myself and my energy levels.  One of the founders of this centre, Dr Alec Forbes, bought meters for the centre so that I could make Max’s methods available to the patients.

Many memories come to mind: the naughty treats at Marine Ices near the Franklin School.  Picking up his precious lectures scattered around the car park on a windy day after his briefcase was stolen.   The biofeedback songs which Sandra and I composed into the early hours of the morning to well-known tunes for the summer school party and for his non-retirement 65th birthday party - a gloriously glittering affair.

Biofeedback Songs by Barbara and Sandra. (there were many more)

To the tune of  Get your arms around me, honey

Get your meters up my honey, don’t be shy

Cover up and cover up when Max goes by!

Oh, Oh, watch my meter fly

When dear Maxie passes by!

 

To the tune of San Francisco here I come

Far out beta here we come

Right back where we started from!

That alpha, that theta

Gone out of the door.

We needa more theta

Alpha, delta in the raw!

 

Sun-kissed Issy

Don’t be late

Help us to our Golden Gates

Psychedelia is our fate

Biofeedback here we come!

 

I remember he huge excitement we all felt at having a biofeedback stand at the first Festival of Mind, Body and Spirit at Olympia, at which everyone spent time on everyone else’s stand. We felt so proud at taking part in such pioneering times.

I remember the walks in Golders Hill Park and at St Albans on Sundays.  The feeling that we had that Max seemed invincible despite his growing health problems.  He taught us through humour and gentleness, never telling us what to do.  I remember his simplicity and modestly Zen style of living, and the example he set for us of creating our own reality through imagination and creative will.

Because Max’s other name was Toad, a lavish collection of Toads and cards of Toads and drawings of Toads spilled over into the classroom and their home over the years. Yes, there was a sort of similarity to Toad of Toad Hall one has to admit!  Sometimes one was lucky and had one of Max’s own drawings of himself as Toad.

I saw Max in hospital the day before he died looking as composed as ever.  Before I left home, I had drawn the rune of protection for him, protection for the spirit warrior. There may be part of me that has never really allowed him to die and I suspect others may feel the same, but I think this is really having him live in one’s heart, which feels good.

After Max’s death, we all gathered at his last Thursday class, and in turn dedicated a poem or meditation to him. This may sound macabre, but Max looked so relaxed and well at the undertakers. Some of us dropped in to spread a few crystals or snowdrops about him.

The undertaker’s two Siamese cats loved to be with him and insisted on using him as a bed.  The lady undertaker said she felt such a presence and wanted to know: “Who is this man, is he a Master?”.

Max’s funeral was a great send-off with his many friends and students.  I was very proud to read his Meditation poem from The Awakened Mind.

We did break a bottle of champagne over his memorial seat in Golders Hill Park in true Max style and now his work lives on in the Maxwell Cade Foundation which is so important and essential.  How blessed we all were, how could there ever be another Max?

John Steele   aromatic consultant

The first time I came to one of Max’s classes in 1978 at 7 Chesterford Gardens made a deep impression on me.  Max had a distinctive appearance and presence.  His skin seemed to emanate a mellow golden glow.  His aura radiated a Zen-like serenity.  His voice was soothing and easy to listen to.  His eyes seemed to have an oriental look about them.  I often had the impression that an Eastern sage had reincarnated in this Englishman's body.  Each week his classes aided by Geoff and Issy, were delightful adventures.  Relaxation, visualisation and meditation were skilfully fused with esoteric psychology, brain physiology and special instruments to record altered states of consciousness.  Through this unique instruction, I learned of a mind-space that has guided me ever since that time: the mysteries of the alpha-theta border, the paradoxical state of flicker-fusion, the union of opposites where magical imagery and insight is born.

I could always count on Max to help me explore the regions of experience where mysticism and science nourished each other.  On one occasion, Max, Geoff and Issy helped me to set up a novel experiment with Robert Tisserand to measure the effects of smelling aromatic oils on brain rhythms and galvanic skin response.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was co-ordinator on the Dragon project, an interdisciplinary team of scientists who measured geomagnetism, ultrasonics and ambient radioactivity at the Rollright Stones, a stone circle   in Oxfordshire dating from 2,500BC.  We were investigating the subtle environment factors of a sacred site which influence the choice of its location and effect on human consciousness.   One day, I invited Geoff and Max to Rollright to monitor the brain activity of dowsers on the Mind Mirror.  It was a grey winter day with the old stones appearing out of the mist.   I can still see Max with his beige Loden coat buttoned up to the top holding the dowsing rods, with his headband trailing wires back to the Mind Mirror which Geoff and I were viewing.  It was not surprising to find fascinating parallels in brain activity between dowsing and meditation.

In 1979, I was staying at the studio-villa of the sculptor Francois Stahly near Orange in the South of France.  I had been commissioned to search for harmonious locations to place his megalithic stone works of art.  I spent several days alone in the forest dowsing and eating wild blackberries.  One night I had an extremely lucid dream.  He told me that it was very important to be aware in life, to wake up!  This was the essence of his teaching, to wake up the RAS (reticular activating system), to wake up the sleeping habituated mind and be in present time, to be alert to the direct experience of what is already there.  Max was a mystic and a scientist to the man.

Elizabeth Taylor - relaxation teacher

I first met Max at Hawkwood college in 1977. I also heard the story of how upset Max was when his second master asked him why, instead of meditating he was “sitting cross-legged on mat, doing nothing” -  it was hilarious the way Max told it.  When I compared this with the weighty discourses I had heard from other lecturers on the subject, I found it very endearing and encouraging.

During the next two years, I came down from Scotland every winter, staying with friends in London to attend his seminars, hoping that some of his qualities would rub off on me.  Once he said to me “There are no limits” and I found this immensely liberating. His humility and humour are other qualities for which I shall remember him.

Michael Strutt - co-author

Only rarely in my life have I felt that I have met a true spiritual teacher.   Maxwell Cade was one.  I first saw him at Joanna Turcan’s house in Pimlico, where I was one of Bruce MacManaway’s helpers.  I say “saw” because Max was a visiting “star” whose arrival with Isabel and Geoff Blundell marked a certain sense of occasion. They would carry in boxes of electronic equipment, to an appreciative welcome, and set to work.

Over some months, as they “wired” up healers and patients simultaneously, I discovered that here were three people who knew the answers to many mysteries.  It was a startling moment to see my own healing pattern appear on a Mind Mirror and a similar pattern register on another connected to a patient.

Later, I did some of Max and Isabel’s classes and also private work with Max and got to know `the team' as friends. Max had an aura of someone plugged into the universe, with a knowledge that had been worked for.  His work has been an inspiration.  I remember the teacher with respect and the man with great affection.

Rik Wellens  - who translated The Awakened Mind into Dutch 

In the six years that I knew Max Cade, I often wanted to ask him “important questions” but then I thought: “isn't it possible to find the answer myself?”.  Max showed me my inner freedom by inspiring me to seek and find the deep, fundamental

joy and wisdom of life.

Anna Wise

I first met Max Cade in 1973 at the three month old Franklin School of Contemporary Studies in London.  I had just begun working there and had the privilege of attending any class that I chose.    Within six months I had become the program director of the school, and so was able to encourage Max to develop more advanced levels.  I also returned again and again to his beginning levels, continually finding new and deeper meaning in his training.  I meditated with him for many hours each week, during which time I said little, listened intently and had my world turned upside down with new concepts, astounding experiences and personal growth.

When the Franklin School closed, I turned to my second love - dance - and became a dance therapist, leading workshops throughout England and in most of the capitals of Europe.  Leading groups gave me the opportunity to integrate meditation and much of what I had learnt from Max into a teaching format.  I began teaching Dance Meditation and Dance as Healing using many of the inductions into altered states which I had learnt with him.

After several years, I purchased my own ESR meters and with my friend and fellow student of Max’s, Elizabeth St John, began teaching biofeedback meditation in London.  We developed several levels of courses and I also turned the format into a weekend workshop, calling into play my experiences as a group leader.  I remember fondly a workshop that Geoffrey Blundell led with me in a major growth centre in Germany.  Every word we said had to be translated!

I now sensed that it was time to leave the nest and learn to fly on my own with the knowledge that Max had so painstakingly and lovingly imparted to me.   After 11 years absence from my native America, I also wanted to go home, to be near my parents and to once again feel my roots.

I offered a certification training programme for those wishing to teach using my methods.  My students formed The Biofeedback & Consciousness Association.  I led many weekend workshops throughout the US.  My most exciting teaching trip was to Taiwan, where I taught in five different locations with translators for different dialects.  One seminar was held at the University of Taipei and, the most thrilling of all was teaching in a Taoist temple.

Even with all of this teaching, the backbone of my work has always been my private practice.  I work with both the state and content of consciousness, doing biomonitoring and brainwave training through exercises, visualisations, breathing techniques, deep psycho-physiological relaxation, many forms of meditation and direct biofeedback.  I also earned my MA in psychology and work with the contents of the mind through such methods as subconscious gestalt, inner dialogue, and active theta development meditations.  I made relaxation and imagery development cassette tapes in 1988 that continue to be popular today.

Approached by a management consulting firm, I became involved in creating executive development programs and working in large corporations.  This work eventually took me to San Francisco, California in 1989.  After a year or more in the corporate world, I found this arena was not where I wanted to be working at that time. I decided to return to my real work of individual development in private practice, and settled in Marin County.

During this period of transition, I also went through a time of personal darkness and soul searching.  I called on much of Max’s deep basic training inside me.  The foundation he gave me helped me to find my path again, and I was able to return to the original calling that I had.

I was asked by Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, to lead a workshop there.  I accepted with excitement, having never visited this world-renowned growth centre.  The Awakened Mind Brainwave Training seminars have been very popular and I now teach both weekend and five-day workshops there.  I love their retreat environment and beautiful ocean cliff-top setting for the kind of learning that takes place in my groups. Having the continuity and seclusion that Esalen offers is a dream come true for my work.

Many times I thanked Max and Isabel privately for their teaching, their friendship and their love.  They are the godparents of my son and their presence in my life has given me immeasurable gifts.   I would like to take this opportunity to thank them publicly.  Max Cade was my teacher and my friend.  He and his work will live in my heart forever.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the many people who knew or worked with Max, and who attended his classes, for their generous help in providing material and offering their reminiscences. Also, we are grateful to Dick Bowen, historian of the London Budokwai, giving us access to judo sources.