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

Jennifer’s brother Matt, who guides me towards many things interesting, sent me a YouTube link today.

It’s an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook, where he talks about how his intuition told him to take a job at Apple when the company was almost broke, and everyone he trusted told him not to take the job.

(Steve Jobs was a strong advocate of intuition.)

I disagree with Cook on one point though – he says that you’re not born with intuition, you develop it. I don’t believe that to be the case.

Certainly some of the wise men and women I’ve interviewed in India and Italy attest that we’re all born with intuitive powers, it’s just that life – parental and societal pressures etc – forces us to distrust our intuition, and steers us towards “common sense,” or what’s deemed to be correct and logical.

Common sense would have me not go to Dallas and spend fifteen days in a cheap motel, eating crap food, without any money.  But as soon as the Bombay astrologer told me this is what my charts advised me to do, I had an immediate and very strong intuitive response to do it.

I received an email overnight from someone in the US. They’d heard about the Texas Cosmic Rays Experiment, and they wanted to put me up in a flash hotel.

I gratefully declined, saying that I had to start in a cheap motel as per the astrologer’s instructions. But I mused on it later, thinking: It’s starting…

McCurry is a master at using colour…

The cosmos is sending me to a city chock full of millionaires.

In fact, according to a recent report, Dallas has the fastest growing population of millionaires in America.

Nearly 70,000 millionaires at last count, with another 50,000 expected to join that elite club in the next five years.

Twenty-two people on Forbes’ Richest in the World list come from Dallas.

All I can say is – Whoo hoo universe!

Thank you for not sending me to West Africa.

I’m looking forward to these fifteen days from November 23rd!!

I’ve just posted on the Gone Tours website some information on the distances and elevations of the various stages on the Assisi tour, next April / May.

Here is the link –
Assisi Tour – distances & elevations.

The pilgrimage is 224 kms over 10 days of walking. There’s a day in Florence, a rest day in Gubbio (a wonderful historic town) – finishing in Assisi.

It’s going to be a glorious walk…

I got an email from my brother Bob yesterday. He's currently walking the Camino Frances with his 21 yr old son Rupert.

They've been walking nineteen days now, without one rest day, and last night they would have got to Leon.

That's hooting along!

I'm astonished, because they hardly did any training. My brother did though do squats in lieu of walking. He said he was doing 300 squats a day before he left Australia.

He said in the email they both have bad blisters, but they're “soldiering on.”

Ha! And before they set off they were wondering if they'd even make 100kms. They'll be in Santiago before they know it!

The Camino carries you upon its wings…