Staying on the theme of recent posts : mind expansion and extended mind, let’s take a look at former Glasgow barber, Gordon Smith. He’s not to everyone’s taste and it requires some belief, or direct experience of his work, to get into the swing of it.

I usually buy Gordon Smith’s latest books as they are published, because they always contain rich nuggets of wisdom on all aspects of the spiritual and the afterlife.

Gordon Smith is generally held to be the most accurate spiritual medium in Britain. He started life in a lowly part of Glasgow, ran his own hairdressing business for a while, and now makes his living as a TV presenter and an author of books.

The following passage occurs in his latest volume : Stories From The Other Side.

“Our consciousness keeps expanding but because we live in a world where there are linear thought and time and space we are restricted by what we can describe and what we can understand.

“The very nature of our existence is about ripening our consciousness. So often people restrict themselves by thinking that everything has to be achieved or got over in this life. It is such an unburdening process to come to the realision that there is no beginning and no end.

“Eventually we learn to mistrust the material world because everything we hold on to ages and dies, including our bodies — a process we monitor daily. As that happens, we become dimly aware of a realm above the bodily which, strangely, a part of us already inhabits.”

Gordon Smith’s strength is that he is acutely aware of the thin veil which prevents many of us seeing beyond the linear aspects of our daily lives.

Psychics say they can do it; that is, read the minds of others. Now scientist say they can do it too, and they have proved it in studies involving high-tech brain scans like funtional MRI and computer algorithms instead of the tradional crystal ball.

John-Dylan Haynes from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, in cooperation with researchers from London and Tokyo, conducted experiments in which the secret intentions of subjects were predicted with 70% accuracy.

Participants were asked to choose between two tasks, to either add or subtract two numbers. The participants made their choices secretly and before they were shown the numbers they were to add or subtract. Researchers asked participants to hold their intention in their mind for a while until the numbers were shown to them on a screen. Based on scans of brain activity, the researchers were able to predict which calculation the participants had decided upon before they saw the numbers or made any calculations.

These startling incidents of “mind reading” were accomplished by programming computers to recognize characteristic brain activity patterns associated with specific thoughts. The computer then can predict the decisions of subjects from scans of their brain activity.

The technology may have future uses in computer-assisted devices and brain/computer interfaces for patients who suffer paralysis.