General Qs and my replies - reading minds - Part 27

Q: How can we read others' minds?

Krishna: Everybody, except people with certain conditions like autism,  can  read minds to 'some extent' or at least can make a guess work. I think you are asking about stretching this to "full extent".  

Before explaining 'how', I want to tell you a few things.

Mind reading will make you miserable. If you can see through the games people play, their lies, stupidity, ego, their  conditioning and other complex things that govern their behaviours, you feel very uncomfortable. Overcoming this feeling and trying to understand is  not easy and is like climbing Himalayan heights without oxygen. I use the words 'without oxygen' because you don't get any cooperation from others and you have to resolve these issues in your own mind! 

Then behaving normally despite 'knowing everything' is more difficult. 

If you try to resist bad things that is another headache because you face resistance and find yourself in the middle of the battleground very often. 

The most interesting part is you can manipulate people and situations for everybody's benefit, if you are intelligent! The most important thing to remember is you should have empathy while reading minds. Then it becomes a good tool in your hands. 

Only if you think you can handle all these things efficiently, go for it. 

Psychopaths are often good at mind-reading, but bad at empathy. This means they can manipulate others while remaining emotionally detached from their actions. Mind reading in the hands of psychopaths becomes a dangerous lethal weapon.

On the other hand poor mind-reading is linked to problems such as difficulty making friends and mental health issues.

Now let me answer the main question 'how'.

First you have to have lots of knowledge.

You should also have specific knowledge about human psychology. 

The conditions under which a person can think or act in a particular way varies from person to person. That depends on his or her conditioning of mind, degree of emotions, personality, people he or she is dealing with and knowledge base. So you should know all these things about the person whose mind you want to read. 

Then you should be able to resolve your own fallacies, biases and distortions of thinking.  

You should gain the ability to assess  any situation correctly by gaining information on all the factors affecting it.

People give some hints about themselves - these could be in the form of specific words or body language (body language differs from culture to culture -  so learning these differences is very crucial). Again there will be differences in expressions between introverts and extroverts. You have to be very attentive and 'listen' and 'observe' very carefully without leaving even minor details.

There will be generation differences, cultural differences, gender differences, and personality differences between expressions. You should be able to notice all these things. 

Try to have a little conversation if the person is new to you and notice the specificities that define that person. What triggers the person's emotions, strengths and weak points and what makes him or her comfortable or uncomfortable.

If the person is very familiar to you things become easy.

Empathy allows us to feel the emotions of others, to identify and understand their feelings and motives and see things from their perspective. How we generate empathy remains a subject of intense debate in cognitive science. Empathetic people can read others' emotions better than non-empathetic people. 'Mirror neurons' help you in this process.

I just gave you a few hints and not the full process. Now you figure out how you can read minds intelligently. Only a  responsible person can make full use of this mind reading and doesn't misuse it. A responsible person will also understand why I didn't give the full procedure. 

But then don't forget that people often give you surprises too. So despite a herculean effort on your part, you won't be 100% correct all the time. Be brave to accept this reality.

By the way scientific  Brain-reading, the use of neuroimaging techniques to read human minds, is very interesting and gives more accurate results.