I’m posting this to prevent any confusion –

I’ve been contacted by a few people on this blog wondering whether we’re in partnership with Arlene on mounting a Portuguese Camino tour next year.

We’re not.

She’s promoting a tour that will be a vastly different experience to what Gone Tours offers.

We wish her well.

Jennifer and I leave for the U.S. tomorrow, and in preparation for this trip, and for my filming, I’ve been doing quite a bit of research. I’ve also dipped back into books I’ve read before too including –

• The Web of Life, by Fritjof Capra
• Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell
• Thinking Fast and Slow, by Prof Daniel Kahneman
• Search Inside Yourself, by Chade Meng Tan

Basically, I’m reading scientifically and factually based books at the moment.

Professor Kahneman for instance won the Nobel Prize for his work on the psychology of judgement and decision making. His book Thinking Fast and Slow examines the science behind intuitive versus rational decisions.

It’s fascinating.

I’m currently reading Supernormal, by Dr. Dean Radkin. It sets out to prove scientifically whether the extraordinary  psychic feats and abilities of yogis and others can be substantiated empirically.

And they can.

But some very interesting stuff has come out of this reading. For instance –

• What we know of the universe has been gathered from only 4% of detectable data.
• DNA is 96% unknown “junk.”
• What most people call intuition is what Professor Kahneman calls “expert recognition.”
• The largest form of energy that exists in the  universe is what scientists call “dark energy” and they don’t have a clue what it really is or where it comes from.
• We still cling to a Cartesian mechanistic view of the world even though with breakthroughs in quantum mechanics and Unified Feild studies it’s now been proven to be incorrect.
• The universe is largely flat. And there is a theory that there are multiple universes.

What I’m learning is that scientists are constantly playing catch up to the ancient seers and mystics.

What’s in that 96% of DNA that we don’t know about – that so called “junk?” If we are such highly evolved beings, why would it be there? What’s it’s function?

And the universe FLAT? And MUTIPLE universes? That bends my head.

So what does all this have to do with intuition?

Well, I’m exploring, amongst other things, where does intuition come from, and how does it work. Essentially I’m filming in India for the spiritual view, Italy for the religious view, and America for the scientific view.

American will also provide fertile ground for the spiritual as well –

There’s a lot of material out there that looks at intuition in a superficial way, slanting the subject towards the particular bias of the writer, or filmmaker. There’s a lot of really hokey stuff been written on intuition.

I’m approaching this journalistically, with my own particular slant.

Which, as by now I’m sure you know, is severely skewed…

My brother Bob and his 21yr old son Rupert today walked into Santiago.

They made it!

Today on their last stage they walked from Arzura, some 40kms.

I’m so proud of them both. It took them 31 days in total – without a rest day.

That’s remarkable.

They did hardly any training (although my brother swears about the benefits of doing 300 squats a day beforehand!), and both were harbouring previous medical and health issues.

Interestingly, it was not my interest in the Camino that spurred them to do the pilgrimage. Rupert watched The Way, then urged my brother to watch it, and that’s what got them thinking that maybe they should do it together – as father and son, just like in the movie.

So right now they’ re in a Santiago restaurant bingeing out on paella.

They deserve it!

Here is the third and final part of the sequence I shot with the astrologer in Bombay.

If you were in my shoes, what would you do?

Would you go to Dallas and stay in a cheap motel and hang out for fifteen days to see if the Cosmic Rays do their stuff?

What would you do?

Link to: Bombay Astrologer Prediction Pt3

Here is the second of three parts of the sequence I shot with the Bombay Astrologer –

Link to: Bombay Astrologer Prediction Pt 2

There’s a new film out – playing in selected theatres in America at the moment. It’s called AWAKE, about the life of Yogananda, the bloke who wrote Autobiography of a Yogi. 

The New York Times says:

…the story itself is compelling, as is the testimony of devotees. It’s not surprising to see interviews with Ravi Shankar, Deepak Chopra and George Harrison (who died in 2001). It’s a bit more so to hear contemporary scientists marvel at Yogananda’s understanding of neuroplasticity decades before Western science considered it. Much is made of a report that the only book on Steve Jobs’s iPad was Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi.” That’s enough to make a modern soul look inward.

Here is the full New York Times review of AWAKE

Check out the trailer for the film.   Trailer for AWAKE

And please support it, if you can –

In preparation for my impending trip to the US, I went back over the interview with the Bombay Astrologer, Dr. Bimal Bhatt.

I’ve decided to make it available for a short time on this site, broken down into three parts.

I’ve taken off the password protection for 24 hours. After that time it will no longer be available for public viewing.

I should also explain that my principal focus is in making my intuition film – INTUITION IS YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM. While I’m in Dallas I’ll be continuing to work on that film. Already I have some fascinating interviews lined up.

And later when I return to California, I’ll be shooting for the PGS film exclusively. I’m excited at what’s lining up to shoot there too.

What I film in Dallas over that fifteen days might be a sequence in the PGS film, or it might be a Special Feature on the DVD, or it might be a small documentary that’s sold as a companion piece to the PGS film, or it might be a separate stand-alone documentary.

I won’t know until the end of that fifteen days.

If you think I’m going to be sitting around in a scummy motel room waiting for something to happen, filming myself gazing up at the heavens waiting for the cosmic rays to deliver, baby you’re wrong wrong wrong.

Already I’ve had people from Dallas approach me offering to help, to be involved in the filming, and to connect me with the powerful and the rich. Plus my two billionaire friends from Bombay are lining up stuff for me in Dallas too.

I’m going to be very busy.

All that aside, the time spent in Dallas is going to be an important step forward in the production of PGS, which is my singular goal – to make that film and get it out to the widest audience possible.

So here is the link to the first part of the Astrologer’s prediction. As I say, it’s in full and not edited in any way, other than top and tailing. It will be up for 24 hrs only.

Link to : Bombay Astrologer’s Prediction – Part 1

Jennifer and I were invited to a pre-Dallas lunch on Sunday by a wonderful Mudgee winemaker.

Mudgee is a beautiful wine growing district about 4hrs drive north west of Sydney. My cousin is a photographer here and took these photos of the district –

http://themudgeeproject.com.au

Lunch was on Sunday afternoon, on a shaded verandah looking out over their expansive vineyards. Their house is nestled in classic Australian bushland, with kangaroos grazing under distant shadowed gum trees.

They’d invited us to lunch to find out all about Dallas, and the Astrologer’s prediction. They were intrigued. They’d also invited some friends, and they too were eager to learn more.

At the lunch table I was seated next to a lovely lady whom I’ve known for some time. She and her husband are retirees, and used to run one of Mudgee’s premiere wineries.

Jennifer sat opposite them.

The lady dropped in conversation that she soon wanted to walk the Camino. She had no idea that I’d walked it. None at all. She just let slip that she intended to walk it in the next year or so.

I quickly realised she’d been bitten. She was gone. She had the Camino virus!

We chatted and she asked a lot of questions. And of course I was more than happy to talk about my favourite subject. Jennifer too. Jennifer’s conversation were always on a more esoteric level, of course!

Soon the conversation came around to coincidences, and angelic interventions, and into spiritual areas which seemed at odds to the surroundings – a magnificent lunch with vintage wines on a glorious verandah overlooking one of the most picturesque sights imagineable, shared with a bunch of elderly folk who weren’t short of a quid!

The deeply spiritual talk seemed at variance to the worldliness of the occassion. And yet also it seemed absolutely right and natural. And I mused to myself how far the Camino has spread –

The lady wanted to know about my book, so I pulled out my iPad to show her the Amazon page, and as I did I noticed on the screen that it was 3:33pm. This struck her immediately as being a sign – validation from the spirit world that she must do her Camino.

I talked to her about my 4:44am, and how sometimes these signs are attempts by greater powers to simply grab your attention, and remind you that they’ve got your back.

It was a fascinating lunch, and conversation, and the lady felt it was no coincidence that she’d been invited, and had been seated next to me and opposite Jennifer.

I would not be surprised if she walks the Camino sooner than she thinks.

By the way, an update on my brother and his son, currently walking the Camino Frances: they were last seen heading to Sarria. They still haven’t stopped for a rest day. Incredible. And they did no training prior. And they were not fit.

Goes to show, hey?

There is an energetic imprint on that pilgrimage walk that is powerful beyond words.

This book I’m reading at the moment – Supernormal, by Dean Radkin, PhD – brings up some fascinating stuff. The tagline for the book is:

Yoga, Science, and the evidence for extraordinary psychic abilities. 

Radkin is a highly credentialed scientist, and essentially what he says in the book is that so called “miracles,” such as clairvoyance, levitation, telepathy, telekinesis, bilocation (meaning you can be in two places at once), surviving only on air for months at a time, and other such unbelievable things, are actually very possible at the extreme pointy end of yogic practice and study.

Patanjali, who in ancient times literally wrote the book on yoga, describes a method called ashtanga, which is broken down into an “eightfold path.” This is:

1. Yama – abstaining from harmful behaviour.
2. Niyama –  developing good behaviours.
3. Asana – developing physical postures to enable one to meditate for long periods.
4. Pranayama – developing breathing techniques to focus the mind
5. Pratyhara – limiting your focus to a single object of attention (mindfulness)
6. Dharana – developing single pointed concentration.
7. Dhyana – deep meditation
8. Samadhi – unity or mystical absorption with an object of attention.

Note that Asana, which is what we in the west know as yoga, being the physical postures, is only the third stage of yogic study. We believe that the asanas are yoga, but in fact they were originally only a step towards advanced meditative practices.

According to Patanjali in his Sutras, which is the source scripture for yoga, it’s at the ultimate state of Samadhi, or enlightenment, that one can exhibit “siddhis.” These are particular psychic abilities, which Patanjali describes in a separate chapter in his classic Sutras. Interestingly, he describes them very matter-of-factly, as though they’re no big deal. If you put in the work, you too can levitate and read minds!

Anyone who has read Autobiography of a Yogi will remember accounts of such extraordinary feats such as levitation, clairvoyance, being in several places at one time, and so forth.

Radkin in his book sets out to see if any of these things can be proven, scientifically. But one of his difficulties is that those who have attained enlightenment aren’t predisposed to show off their powers, or wantonly subject themselves to scientific scrutiny. It goes against the very notion of samadhi.

I haven’t finished the book yet – his scientific experiments are still to come – however I read one passage which I thought I’d share with you.

Radkin was talking about how we have a need for empirical evidence to prove that something exists, and is “real.” But then he talked about magnetism. Magnetism was regarded as magic for centuries. No-one knew how or why it “worked.”

In the 12th century, they believed there was a North Pole star that was also magnetic, which was why magnetic compasses always pointed to the north. It was some six hundred years later that scientists figured out what magnetism actually was.

So for all that time, magnetism was regarded as something supernatural. Magical.

So what else operates within our current realm that we regard as magical, or supernatural, and yet in times to come might be completely understandable, and measurable?

Just like magnetism, could there be a time in the future when these miraculous yogi siddhis are eventually accepted as a natural part of our world?

Australia’s top film magazine for the industry, If, has just published a story about my trip to Dallas, to film The Texas Cosmic Rays Experiment.

Here’s the story –

http://if.com.au/2014/11/06/article/Intuition-is-sending-filmmaker-on-bizarre-mission-to-the-US/XCYOWKEARF.html