Geoffrey Blundell

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Biographical Information

Geoffrey Blundell (died in 2003) "developed the cordless radio microphone, now widely used in television news and film making; he also worked with Maxwell Cade to develop a machine he called the Mind Mirror, which they used to measure the brain patterns of Eastern swamis and gurus...

"He was educated at Ratcliffe College, near Leicester, where he made crystal sets for boys in his dormitory. After leaving school aged 17, he moved to London and became a design engineer at EMI, working with John Logie Baird on the development of television sets... In the early 1970s, he was invited by a friend to join him at a course in "biofeedback" - the electronic monitoring of physiological responses to "altered state" mental processes such as meditation. Maxwell Cade, a former government physicist, and his wife Isabel were running the classes in central London.

"Blundell became intrigued and suggested to Cade that he could design improved monitoring devices for his research. He went on to produce a series of instruments, including, in the mid-1970s, the "Mind Mirror", a portable EEG machine that could monitor the alpha, beta, delta and theta rhythms from each brain hemisphere simultaneously. The machine, which attracted considerable media interest, showed that students meditating or in deep relaxation produced interesting combinations of brain-wave patterns as both brain hemispheres synchronised, and the students found that their creativity in the waking state was enhanced.

"When eastern gurus such as Swami Prakashanand showed interest in the work and agreed to have their brain rhythms measured, the team found patterns they had not seen before. Blundell and Cade concluded that the swamis' spiritual training conferred unusual powers of healing and perception. One Tibetan master, after being wired to the Mind Mirror, was heard to observe: "Yes, it reads mind." Blundell became involved in the biofeedback courses that Cade ran as part of the Wrekin Trust's weekend summer courses in the 1970s and 1980s, and as a regular participant at conferences of the Scientific and Medical Network and the annual Festival for Mind and Body in London, where visitors could try the machines at Audio's biofeedback stand.

"Blundell himself became interested in eastern mysticism. He once had an audience with the Beatles' guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, though he admitted: "All I could remember afterwards was the pink froth emanating from his lips." From 1975 he followed the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism and became a member of the UK DzogChen community led by Choygal Namkhai Norbu.

"In 1988, Blundell and his second wife Helen Stapleton travelled in a 90-strong "caravan" that made an arduous six-week pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, a sacred site in Western Tibet."