Why I am Leaving Hong Kong: The Lowdown

Central, HK Island, seen from across Victoria Harbour

One of the wisest and most perceptive women I ever knew once said something I'll never forget. She said that people don't grow when they are too comfortable. In fact this message was relayed to the spiritual group I was in at the time, by the group teacher Tracy. Jessica  had phoned her from a city several hundred kilometres away and told Tracey that the group was getting too settled and that Tracy needed to "Stir up the dust!" Jessica didn't need to be present to know that because she was the most powerful clairvoyant I have ever known. More than once she rang me personally to inform me about issues that were going on in my own life and to give me feedback about my 'consciousnesss field', including what I needed to do to rectify the problem. She was always right.

I can assure you that it was tough being in that group. Expectations were extraordinarily high. You either did what was expected of you, or you were shown the door! There is no hiding stuff from Spirit. In its essence the mind is transparent. 'God' and certain spiritual entities can see everything - and some people can see most of it too! It's only human beings that hide things from themselves, and from each other.

There's a reason why I mention these things. I've been living in Hong Kong now for eight years. It's hard to believe it's been so long! During this time I have continued to write and speak as futurist and as a person involved in the consciousness movement. What's more I have also held down a full-time job throughout those eight years - as high school teacher in Hong Kong's public education system. It's a pretty good job by most measures. The workload is not that heavy and the pay is excellent, probably the best in the world for a public high school job. If I earned this amount of money in Australia (given the low tax rate in HK), I would be well into the top ten percent of wage earners. My school here has been wonderful. I particular the teachers, administrators and students are simply 'lovely' (to use HK vernacular).

So I almost get it all here. A good income, great work relations and low stress.

 Discovery Bay

So why am I leaving?

I am leaving because it is too comfortable. I could certainly do this for the next 15 years and then retire. But it would be too easy.

I also had a 'vision'.

About two months ago I awoke in the early hours of the morning, in the pitch black of night, and a clear image came into my mind's eye. It was a map of Australia. The map was dark, but the coastal outline of Australia was clear. On the map there were four bright red dots. One was in far north Queensland, around the location of the city of Cairns. The other three were all situated very close to Melbourne in the far south-east corner of the continent. Then a song began playing in my head. It was part of the song 'Funky Town', originally sung in the late 70s by a band called Lips Inc (if I recall correctly). Specifically, the line that played in my head was the following:

Gotta make a move to a town that's right for me

Gotta keep me movin' keep me groovin' with some energy

There was no need for me to analyse what I had seen and heard. After years of working with my spiritual intuition (what I call Integrated Intelligence), I have learned to allow certain knowings to settle immediately in my mind without needing to process the information in linear, sequential fashion. It's actually a clairvoyant process, quite literally. 'Clairvoyant' means 'clear seeing.'

I was being told that it was time for me to move on. Hong Kong was no longer the right town for me. Australia, my home country, was beckoning. The red dots referred to places that were suitable for me to visit or live.

When visions are this powerful you don't forget them. In the old days, when I first started developing my Integrated Intelligence, I used to write down important dreams and visions. Now I rarely do. I don't need to anymore because the connection between the 'rational' and 'intuitive' parts of my mind is well developed (I do make an exception when I have a long and profound dream, where I know I won't be able to remember it all the next day).

But did I follow my spiritual guidance? Actually, I dithered! I was feeling so comfortable with my life in Hong Kong, that I was really reluctant to leave.

Then I got a kick in the pants. One day at school the principal called me into his office and said the school would not renew my contract. This is perfectly the schools prerogative after a standard two-year contract is complete. To be honest, I was shocked, as I had always gotten on well with the principal and everyone else.

But this kick in the pants made me act. I looked at my situation more carefully, and realised that my guidance was correct. It was time for me to leave Hong Kong. Bizarrely, as soon as I moved to this committed position, the new principal of my school (it is changing leaders right now) called me into the office and asked me to stay on at the school, saying she thought I was a good teacher. While that did make me feel better, I knew that I needed to make a break for it. I thanked her and told her I was leaving.

It's fascinating that the old principal had decided to let me go. If he had not done this, I might have stayed. So even though I felt bad about the initial 'rejection', it was actually a blessing in disguise. It was the universe's way of tapping me on the shoulder and getting me to move along.

The truth is that, just as my vision had suggested, Hong Kong does not quite have the right "energy" for me. It is a peaceful and well organised city. But on the downside it is very conservative and materialistic. The education system encourages repetition and an adherence to the 'one correct answer'. It's also a very hectic place, where people work long hours. Across the wider city it is difficult to find people who are committed to the kinds of ideas that I am. It's not the right fit for me.

 Peak hour at Admiralty Station, HK Island

Still, I will miss Hong Kong. I have lived in beautiful Discovery Bay on Lantau Island for the past few years,. The ocean and the hills are just minutes away from my apartment. Hong Kong also has a vibrant nightlife, great transpiration systems, and is exceedingly efficient. Efficiency and comfort are the order of the day. But these things do not encourage 'growth'. The actually promote stagnation of the spirit.

Halloween in the Lan Kwai Fong bar area

Yet the bottom line is that I feel that I have knowledge and skills that cannot be readily used here. All of us are given certain gifts by God. I know what mine are. Living here I am a bit like the Biblical son who buries his talents (coins) in the ground, believing that his father will be proud of him when he later shows him that he hasn't lost any of it.

I am not doing the work that I am meant to be doing.

Thank you Hong Kong. I will miss you!

Blessings,

Marcus

Time, Space, Will and Synchronicity

Thanks to Anita Moorjani posting the link on her Facebook page, yesterday's blog post about her wonderful book Dying to be Me, created quite a stir. There were a few fascinating and important things about the experience - and the great reaction to the blog post - that I thought I would write about today.

For those who didn't read through the comments below yesterday's post, there was another fascinating occurrence yesterday which only confirmed what I have been writing and speaking about all these years: that mind and cosmos are intimately linked, and that mainstream science has got it hopelessly wrong in its understanding of who we are as human beings and where we fit in the greater scheme of things. 

I wrote the post about Anita late (by my standards) on Sunday night, the same day I met her. I normally go to bed by 11.00 pm, because I have to get up by 6.00 am to commute to work. But that night I felt very relaxed and energised, so I decided to write of my synchronicity in meeting Anita, beginning around my normal bedtime. I completed it still feeling relaxed and barely tired, but went to bed to try to get a decent six hours of sleep.

Early  Monday morning at around 5.00 am I had a vision as I was sleeping. At the age of 26 (twenty years ago) I began having regular visions and prophetic dreams. This coincided with my new habit of meditating and recording dreams and intuitions. Ever since that time, such visionary experiences have been a regular part of my daily life (I give a semi-autobiographical account of how this happened in my brand new e-novel Shadow Light). Visions have a slightly different quality from dreams, and tend to be very short - often just a flash of insight, or even a mere symbol which is 'embedded' with information which is telepathically "transmitted" without words. At least that is how I experience many of them.

In my early morning vision yesterday I saw a friend of mine standing before a huge computer screen - Doug Seiddon, the transpersonal psychologist I mentioned in yesterday's post. There was a vertical white bar of 'energy' on the right-hand side of the screen, and it began to expand upwards, beginning near the bottom of the screen, then shooting upwards towards the top. The energy was white luminescent, quite bright to look at. The screen looked like the image at the top of this blog - the guy standing in front of the earth (but in this case the man was Doug). I intuitively knew that the white bar of energy represented traffic on a web site - this blog. I felt slightly apprehensive, as I wondered whether the increased 'attention' might attract some negative posters (this happened in a previous viral 'hit'). As he stood there examining the bar of light (in the vision) Doug said; "This is because of something you wrote." 

I awoke immediately. I knew that in the dream Doug represented the mystical side of the cosmos (he is a transpersonal psychologist, after all!). 

Around 1.00 pm yesterday, I opened my blog and went to the 'design' section to check on web traffic. I was not overly surprised to discover that instead of the 10-20 hits I normally get for a blog post within the first 24 hours of posting, the blog post about Anita had already received 400 odd hits in only half a day (In fact the post has now gotten 1400 hits so far, and this blog got a total of 1800 hits yesterday, massively above the average 180-200!)

The fascinating thing for me is that, as far as I am aware, Anita did not share the link to the post till sometime late morning, several hours after I had the vision. If Anita reads this, perhaps she can confirm the timing. (Edit: Anita has confirmed that she didn't post the link till about 11.00 am - six hours after the vision)

The vision was therefore a precognition of a significant event that was about to unfold in my day. It is interesting to note that so much of what Anita learned during her NDE mirrors perfectly what I (and many others) have come to understand from developing Integrated Intelligence, or INI (my term for spiritual intuition - see my book Discover Your Soul Template if you are interested in developing INI). Time is not the simple linear concept that we often assume it to be; and mind is not confined to the head. Human beings are perfectly capable of sensing connections in other places and times - just as Anita did during her NDE. You don't actually need to die to access this ability! Not everyone will experience it the way I do though. My brain is very visual and auditory. I also developed the 'feeling' aspect of INI through many years of practice, and thanks to having the privilege of working with some wonderful spiritual teachers.

There is one more important point I would like to make about yesterday's synchronicity in meeting Anita. A few people leaving comments suggested that I had "willed" the event into existence. Actually, this is not true. I made no attempt to create the meeting with Anita at any time. When I wrote that I had been imagining the spontaneous meeting with her in the days leading up to the the actual meeting, I was not trying to do anything. This imagined scenario was coming into my mind regularly as a kind of daydream (at least 3 times, I recall). There was an element of 'desire' - perhaps 'excitement' is a better word - with the scenario, but I wasn't trying to create it, or manifest it as some New Age law-of-attraction philosophies might suggest is possible.

The last time the scenario came to me was Saturday night (the night before I met Anita), when I met two of my friends, Doug Seiddon and Alick Lau in a Hong Kong Central restaurant for dinner. We had agreed to meet at a Chinese restaurant, but when we got there we decided to make a late change to an Indian restaurant. When we arrived at the Indian restuarant and started eating, I began to 'feel' that Anita was close by. I actually looked around the restaurant to see if she was there!

Rather than my creating the event, I think what was happening was that I was sensing an important upcoming connection. Time was collapsing in on itself - in a sense - and I was already experiencing the energy of the upcoming meeting with her, still about sixteen hours away. 

This is not the first time this kind of thing has happened to me. I have had numerous precognitions in the past. The first similar one I recall was about twenty years ago when I was walking down the street in Grafton, New South Wales, Australia. I was merely passing through the town at the time. As I was walking down the main street I looked up and saw a man walking towards me. For some reason I thought he was Warren, a guy who had lived on my wing of the University of Newcastle campus hall of residence some five years previously. When the man got closer, I saw it wasn't Warren. It struck me that it was truly bizarre that I had thought it was Warren, as I barely knew the guy, and hadn't thought of him even once in the preceding five years. But what happened next was even more bizarre. I walked around a corner, and down a street, and on a whim decided to pop into a little clothes shop. I was shocked to see Warren buying a shirt at the counter! I went over to him, and even mentioned how I'd just been thinking of him!

Again, I think this was simply a case of the mind drawing in information - and especially emotional energy - from the 'future.' When an event has special emotional or spiritual importance, the intuitions will be stronger.

It's a wonderful and mysterious universe we live in. There is so much we don't know or understand. I suggest we all relax and just enjoy living here!

Blessings,

Marcus

Dying to be Me. Incredible!

Marcus T Anthony's new web site and blog can be found at: is www.mind-futures.com.

The universe works in mysterious ways. 

Last week I was out and about with my wife in the IFC Mall, one of Hong Kong's more pricey shopping establishments. Walking around on the third floor, I stumbled across a book shop and went in. There, right on top of a pile of books on a table near the front of the bookshop was a certain volume which caught my eye: Dying to be Me, by Anita Moorjani. I picked it up and did what I always do when deciding whether or not to buy a book: I stilled myself, bringing my mind fully present, then felt the book. My intuition told me that the book was for me, so I went straight to the counter and bought it.

I wasn't disappointed. The author, I found out, is a Hong Kong woman of Indian decent. Several years ago she was diagnosed with cancer. The book details her experience with the disease, and her remarkable visit to death's door. To cut a long story short, Anita describes how her condition gradually deteriorated, until she was admitted to hospital in a coma. Her doctor's had basically given up on her, and her organs had begun to shut down. One of the doctor's wrote down that her family should be informed of her true condition, meaning that he was convinced that she was about to die.

The author then describes the miracle that happened next. She had a classic near death experience where she was able to hear not only what was being said by doctors who were treating her, but she could also see into the minds of her close relatives, including a brother who was on  plane, rushing to see her. She saw her current life in a grand spiritual context, witnessed her past lives, and experienced an expanded state of mind which transcended time and space. This is mental state is what I call a classic experience of Integrated Intelligence (INI), as I outline in my book Discover Your Soul Template, INI is the experience of mind which extends out from the body and interacts with other people, places and even other times.

Anita Moorjani shares her wonderful spiritual insights with the reader. The message is clear. We spend too much of our lives denying our own magnificence, living for some future goal, or just believing that we are inadequate. It is these beliefs and attitudes that the author sees as being central to her becoming sick. Her cancer was an expression of a greater dis-ease in her mind. The genuine miracle occurred when Anita awakened from her coma. Within two weeks her cancers had reduced dramatically in size, and soon they had vanished from her body without a trace.

I love the book. In fact, as I read it I realised that I had a strong connection with its message. Although I have never had a near death experience, I have experienced many non-ordinary states of consciousness and had many spiritual experiences where I received insights that mirror those of Anita Moorjani.

As I was reading the book, I texted one of my good friends in the consciousnesses movement here in Hong Kong, transpersonal psychologist Doug Seiddon, and told him he should read the book. He texted me back saying that he had met Anita two years previously at the Hong Kong Consciousness Festival. He said she was a very nice woman. I felt rather envious.

What I will relate next is actually true, even though it may seem rather incredulous. I was seriously considering contacting the author, as we live in the same city. A scenario kept popping into my head during the first few days after I purchased the book. 

I am sitting in a public space. Suddenly I realise that Anita Moorjani is sitting right beside me. I walk over to her and say "Are you Anita Moorjani?" I point to her book, which I am holding.

In fact this scenario came to me just yesterday when I was travelling on public transport. It was as if I could feel Anita very close to my physically. There definitely felt like a connection.

So today, Sunday, I went out in the afternoon to the Pacific Coffee place in Discovery Bay, not far from my apartment. I sat down and began to do a little writing on my computer. Suddenly a woman's voice caught my attention. I looked up to see three people of Indian heritage sitting just a metre away from me at the next table. The woman, who was turned away from me, was talking about her publicist. I realised that she must be a writer. The idea immediately came to me that this woman was Anita Moorjani. I couldn't see her face clearly, but I could see a distinguishing facial feature on her right cheek. So I opened my copy of Dying to Be Me (which I had on the table) and turned to the author page. Sure enough, the woman sitting a metre away from me had the same feature in exactly the same spot on her face. I checked her energy intuitively, and saw that she had a soft and very feminine energy, and was very relaxed in her body. It was a perfect match!

I was just thinking about how I might interrupt their conversation (as I am not a natural extrovert) when suddenly the Indian man chatting to the woman got up and walked over to me. "Is that book any good?" he asked. He was smiling. 

"Yes! Is this Anita?" I asked indicating to the woman. They were all smiling.

Sure enough it was her. I kindly invited myself over for a chat with them! The man was Danny, Anita's amiable husband. We chatted for about twenty minutes or so, and I was delighted to discover that Anita was as genuine as her book suggests. But the synchronicity didn't end there. I discovered that the couple live in Discovery Bay too. But even more incredibly, we found out that we had both lived in the same tiny village of a few hundred people in Hong Kong's New Territories at the same time (2008) - at opposite ends of the village. They knew several of my friends in the village. The odds of that must be astronomical. I honestly can't remember seeing Anita or Danny there, but I must have seen them at some time, because the village is quite isolated, with only one mini-bus which takes about 25 minutes to get to the nearest train station.

 

Anita and Danny

What a wonderful series of synchronicities! 

Even better, if you go to Amazon.com you'll see Anita's book has become an instant best seller. I have to be honest and say I have read some spiritual best sellers which I would describe as simply awful - where I intuitively sensed that the author was not capable of walking the talk. Happily with Dying to be Me, this is not the case. I give it five stars out of five.

(* I have written a little more about the aftermath to this incident and a profound vision I had the next day in the following blog post)

Blessings,

Marcus

Are You Going to Ascend Soon?

Some time ago I had a person come to me for some spiritual counseling. Let's call him Jack, and he was about forty years old. Jack was not a happy chap. He hated his job and was planning his escape, a nice trip around the world. In particular he was going to visit all the great spiritual destinations out there. 

Nothing wrong with that, you might say. Good on him for having the goolies, so to speak. Yet as I spoke to Jack it became quite clear to me that he was living a fundamental delusion. This delusion is common in alternative spiritual circles, so I am going to discuss it briefly here today. It also mirrors a psycho-spiritual delusion that is the foundation of many religions across the world.

Jack had been told by a certain spiritual teacher that he was going to ascend one day, and this formed the basis of his spiritual belief structure. 'Ascension' is the idea that you are going to be pulled up and out of the body and into a higher dimension. This other place is trypically seen as having a higher vibration, being more blissful, and generally just a lot nore groovy than the mundane world of the earth plane. Sound familiar? Well, to me this other place sounds a lot like the Heaven or paradise of most religious philosophies.

Here's the problem. Ascension is a false teaching. It is not going to happen. There are two reasons why this is vitally important to understand.

Firstly, what generally lies behind the belief in ascension (and Heaven) is the rejection of what is here now. There is a subtle desire to escape. In this sense ascension entails a rejection of the life that is before you, and also the 'you' that you are now. You are saying that this life is not good enough, this 'me' is not acceptable.

Secondly, this rejection of your life makes it impossible for you to be fully present, and it is in presence that the true joy and love of "God" is found. If you speak to those who have experienced strong transcendent experiences they will tell you that they almost always emerge when the mind is in a deeply embodied state of silent presence. Thus the great irony is that the belief in ascension actually cuts you off from presence, from God, and from Heaven on earth.

What is now before you is the truth of life. There is tremendous simple joy to be found in just being here now, in the body. You were not put here to escape. You were put here to be here.

What drives the delusion of ascension is the dissociation of mind, body and spirit - and the trauma this entails. Your mind feels this pain at all times, but it doesn't know quite what is wrong. In fact if you stop and become fully present, you may actually find yourself falling into a state where you begin to feel this pain within you. If you have the courage to give it a voice, it rises from belly and into the throat, expressing itself as a sad whining sound, like a lost child which cannot find its mother. It is the fundamental feeling of being lost and unloved. Empty. This is how I have experienced it.

The mind, in its dissociated state, is unable to recognise that it has created the pain by itself, by not being here fully. Instead of stopping to be here, it runs. It tries to escape. It finds solace in entertainment, fiddling with gadgets, 'romance', eating, drugs and alcohol, sex, gossip, reading blogs like this... Or going on a spiritual journey. It might even believe that it is going to be lifted out of the body and beyond the mundane world into a better place. In this endless seeking it turns toward a hoped-for better future, and away from itself. Yet in all this there is no relief. The pain does not heal.

The quest is doomed to failure, for it merely perpetuates the split, the separation. 

This is what I told Jack. I told him that he was already a being of light, love and compassion. There was no need for him to ascend, merely to deepen into presence. In that moment Jack didn't understand. He didn't want to. His final words to me where that he had arranged the meeting to check to see if my knowledge was coming from a higher plane. But alas my understanding is not higher, merely deeper. He decided to keep aiming for the higher place.

Yet one day, one lifetime, Jack will get it. Maybe that little seed God planted in him that day as we talked will find fruition soon. It is not for me to judge.

The only way to heal your pain is to be here now. That's it. One of the great mysteries of our species is that this is so very, very simple. Yet only a few extraordinary individuals have ever been able to master the process.

Marcus

Marcus T Anthonys' The Mind Reader' now available!

What if you could see into the unknown country within men, to the dark places that even they dare not venture…?

Greg Marks is an extraordinary young man. After having several incredible paranormal experiences, the formerly average university student finds that his mind can access an undreamed of intelligence: the light. Yet Greg struggles to understand his newfound abilities. He joins a mysterious group which teaches him how to harness his intuitive abilities - to read minds and receive communication from mysterious spiritual realms. But just when it seems that he has scaled undreamed of heights, he is confronted by dark forces that threaten his very mind and soul. For Greg Marks has become a threat to those who would prefer his knowledge not be revealed to the world.

The Mind Reader is the exciting semi-autobiographical novel by futurist and mystic Marcus T Anthony, detailing many astounding events that really happened to him.

The Mind Reader is currently available directly from Marcus in eBook format (PDF) for US$2.99, and is also be available on Amazon Kindle for $2.99: here. It is available in multiple formats for computers and mobile devices here on smashwords.com

If you would like to purchase the eBook (PDF) directly from Marcus, click here. 

Early praise for the book

Marcus, have been reading your book The Mind Reader. Went to read chapter 30 but no more of your book was available. I want to purchase the rest of your awesome book - how do I go about doing this? I would like to be able to download and read on the computer.

Katie Donnelly, Futures Community, Colorado

Brilliant, Marcus; this gets better and better. Extremely powerful, it brought tears to my eyes to read it. Looking forward to reading more.

Simon Buckland, Wall Street International.

It's been a privilege editing this wonderful work. I hope it finds its way to a lot of people.

Rebecca Faith Grossman, professional editor (and editor of this book)

About The Mind Reader

What if the world we inhabit is but a shadow cast behind a brilliant, all-knowing intelligence? What if we could peel back that shadow and experience the light in all its brilliance, illuminating all that we see, hear and know? And what if that light gave us the incredible power to see into the souls of others and discover their deepest secrets?

Greg Marks is a seemingly normal young man who is thrust into a life quite extraordinary. At the beginning of his third year at the University of Newcastle in Australia, Greg begins to have paranormal experiences: voices that call to him in the night, cryptic dreams and visions that seem to be telling him something important about his life journey, and seeing an eerie light that streams from people and trees. The awakening of Greg’s inner light also makes him smarter; his intellectual life blossoms, and he finds himself going from being an average student to one who receives brilliant grades. Yet Greg is not in control of his newfound ‘brightness’. It comes and goes of its own accord.

It is when Greg is almost killed in a lightning strike that the full reality of the light is revealed to him on an exhilarating journey out of his body and into another spiritual dimension. Greg resumes his normal life, but he is never the same again.

As a means to help him cope with the confusion his newfound abilities bring, Greg joins a meditation class, and it is here that he connects with a mysterious student named Michael, who invites him to join another secretive group called the Journey of Light. There Greg stumbles upon a small community of incredible people who teach him the seemingly impossible: how to telepathically sense the thoughts and feelings of other human beings. But the teachings are not without a price, for Greg is confronted by the reality of his own traumatic past, and the terror of invisible, dark minds that stalk him wherever he goes…

 

From the Prologue of The Mind Reader 

"How much do you really want to know? How deep do you want to go? If you stuck a camera in someone’s eye that could record everything he said and did, how interested would you be in seeing what the camera reveals? What if that little device could also record the thoughts of that guy? Would that turn you on?
     

Or would you turn it off?  
    

Imagine that you were able to peer right into the guy’s soul, into the dark country within him that even he has never dared venture?        
      

I am the man who discovered the camera. I just didn't realise that it would cut right into the heart of the universe itself, and flay wide and broad the secrets of the cosmos. All those secrets. 

     

Before you call me mad, I have a story to tell."  

The Winner!

Now is the exciting time when I get to announce the winner of my competition, which involved helping me to help name my new book, which was tentatively entitle Light. And the winner is... me. Yes, sadly, I have - at least for the time being - not chosen any of the titles provided by the three brave souls who put forward suggestions (I eliminated Wayne's suggestion as I have a feeling he wasn't being serious). This is not just a cynical attempt to save cash on having to distribute the competition prize, which is actually two of my books! To dispel any such claims, I have decided to give the prize to all three who put forward suggestions. To claim your prize just email me with your address: mindfutures-at-gmail-dot-com.

You can see my current title in the book cover, below. What do you think? It isn't easy to select titles, and in fact every single person I have spoken to has suggested a different one!

The book is currently available in eBook in pdf format (email me). It will be out in Kindle form in about a week. It should be around $4.99 on Amazon. The hard copy is probably a month or two away.

Blessings,

Marcus

Death, Karma & Free Will: A Mystic Speaks

One of the fascinating - some might say disturbing - aspects of mystical, spiritual and intuitive experience is that sometimes different mystics can come to quite different conclusions about the same subject matter. As regular readers of this blog or my books will know, one of my favourite spiritual teachers is Leonard Jacobson. I first met Leonard two decades ago and find his teachings and insights to be truly profound. 

 

 Gary Weber

Another mystic friend of mine is Gary Weber. Both Leonard and Gary share a similar 'mindset' - they exist predominantly in a state of silent presence. However they have come to quite different understandings about certain vital issues: Leonard says there is free will, karma, and life after death. Gary states that there is not. So I sent a query to Leonard on his most recent video webcast, and asked him about this difference. I asked him how it was possible that he and Gary (I didn't name him) could have such divergent thoughts on these ideas. I should mention that before this question, I had never introduced Gary's thinking to Leonard. However I do believe that the two have met.

I might state that my own insights in regard to these specific points are more in line with Leonard's, and are laregly drawn from many insights I have had in meditative and non-ordinary states of consciousness. At any rate, Leonard's response to my query is well worth listening to. It is a good example of how to 'agree and disagree' without projecting from ego. 

You can see it from minutes 26.30 - 39.00 on the video below.

Blessings,

Marcus

Prometheus: Further and Shallower

 

Prometheus is the long-awaited ‘prequel’ to Ridley Scott’s Alien films. This movie is paradoxically both entertaining and disappointing, but certainly worth the price of the ticket.

The movie is visually. The spectacular the vast landscapes of an alien world are brought to life, perhaps as no other film ever has, with the possible exception of Avatar. Earth-bound cinematography at the film’s beginning is also exceptional. Grand sweeps of mountains and waterfalls herald the promise of a similar grand vision by the famed director. The viewer will no doubt be aware of the essential plot line. Set towards the end of the twenty-first century, ancient cave paintings found across far-flung civilisations point to a connection with an alien civilisation, seemingly inviting humankind to venture forth and visit them. And ‘now’ that human beings have the technology to span the galaxy, a vehicle is sent to a distant world to investigate, seemingly in the hope to uncover the origins of humanity.

Acting takes backseat in Prometheus to special effects and a promising story-line. Barely a character in the movie becomes anything more than cartoon-character deep.

Many of the characters are so ‘flat’ that their reactions in particular scenes often appear inexplicable and confusing. For example (slight spoiler incoming) when a team searching the landscape of the planet stumble across the remains of a giant humanoid alien, one of the party seems completely disinterested, saying angrily “I’m going back to the ship”. Given that this is, assumedly, the first time human beings have ever laid eyes on alien life, the reaction is bizarre to say the least.

Meredith Vickers (Chalize Theron), with her Aryan good looks, plays the role of a rather robotic executive for Weyland Industries. The robot analogy is clearly played up, given the similarity in appearances with David, the one ‘real’ robot on show.  A heavily made-up Guy Pearce plays her boss. However Pearce’s screen time is minimal, his importance being that he is the expedition founder. Idris Elba portrays the ship's captain Janek. But again, he remains something of a cardboard cut-out.

The other unconvincing and disappointing aspect of the characterisation is the sameness of the human beings on show. Each seems to be shallow, egotistical and untrustworthy. The best science fiction allows us to penetrate the veneer of human surfaces to peer into the soul of mankind. Director Scott did this brilliantly in Bladerunner, where Rutger Hauer’s amazing performance as the replicant (robot) remains a defining performance in the long history of Hollywood robots. Other characters in the film also spring to life.

Having commented on the lack of characterisation in Prometheus, the one redeeming and memorable acting performance is that of Michael Fassbender as the android David. Ironically, without his meticulous acting the film would be devoid of any genuine soul. Like the androids in Alien and Bladerunner, this machine man has depth and complexity, as well as a seemingly mischievous agenda which seemingly transcends his programming. 

 

 David (Michael Fassbender)

The ultimate disappointment of Prometheus is that it fails to address any of the questions that it apparently seeks to answer – the deeper existential and spiritual queries of the human species’ place in the cosmos, or the ‘meaning’ of life. Of course the refusal to answer the questions is not a ‘sin’ in itself, as great science fiction films are notoriously ambiguous in this respect. It is the refusal to address them in any genuine way which disappoints.

In part the problem is that both the aliens and humans depicted are driven by little ‘higher’ motive than profit, sexual gratification and the survival instinct. Where are the deeper mystical and spiritual moments that a narrative that sweeps the galaxy might invite? We don’t get to see any. Instead what we get are essentially neo-Darwinian biological machines in a shit-fight to survive, to destroy ‘the other’. This leads me to wonder whether Scott’s own spiritual vision has stagnated in the three decades since the beautifully crafted Bladerunner was released. Thus in mnay ways Sctt's future fails to transcend what I call "Money and Machine Futures", where technology, money and selfishness dominate at the expense of greater depth of meaning and experience.

This problem is compounded by the dominance of the special effects, which are admittedly very special. They make the movie worth seeing for that reason alone. The aliens – both humanoid and monstrous – are as realistic as any seen on the big screen.

The movie retains elements of the space-horror genre. After all, Alien is probably the greatest of all such movies. It does retain elements of suspense quite well, and there are a few scary moments. But experienced horror film buffs won’t need to worry about covering their eyes (although the young Chinese girl and her boyfriend beside me did seem genuinely horrified at times!)

Prometheus doesn’t live up to the greatness of his previous science fiction films. In some ways, it is almost a parody of them. But that does not mean that it is not worth seeing. It certainly is. Despite its limitations, I stayed gripped for the entire two hours.

I give Prometheus four stars out of five. If this were not a Ridley Scott movie with such high expectations, the movie-goer would leave the cinema thinking “that was a pretty good flick”. But given the weight of expectation on the film and its director, I left feeling just slightly let down.

Marcus

Video & Radio Talks by Marcus T Anthony

Here is a little complilation of some public talks, interviews and videos I have done in recent times. I hope you enjoy them. (If you are interested in inviting me for public talks and interviews, contact me, Marcus: mindfutures-at-gmail-dot-com).

Video Presentations

“Cosmos,Psyche and Our Brilliant Futures.” Talk given at the March 2012 TEDx conference at the University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong.

In this short talk I make several predictions about how I think the way science sees the nature of mind and intelligence will shift in the coming years.

“Deep Futures.” A 2011 talk about Deep Futures, given at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. 

Here I discuss the need to deepen our view of the future to acknowledge a broader range of human experience, and move beyond Money and Machines futures. The talk includes a discussion of the changing nature of human intelligence, as well as the idea of a non-local intelligence, or Integrated Intelligence. (The first five minutes is an introduction by Dr Luke van der Laan of USQ).

Short videos:

• A review of David Shenk's book The Genius in All of Us. 
• What is Your Bliss?
• Can Intuitive Intelligence be Developed?

Radio Talks

"Discover Your Soul Template." On the H2O Network (New York) with Dia Nunez. In this interview I chat with Dia Nunez about the idea of the Soul Template and what it means for your soul’s journey.

"Deep Futures and Consciousness." On The Morning Brew, Hong Kong's Radio 3 with Phil Wheelan. Here we talk about how we can develop our minds to include more intuitive ways of knowing, and what it means for the future. (Scroll down the page till you see my name, then click).

Choose My New Book Title and Win!

I have been writing my latest book for a year now, and it is all but complete. One thing I am not entirely happy with is the title: Light. Perhaps it's a little bland (click here to read or download the first part of the book). So I'd like to get a little help from you with choosing the final title. 

This is a competition! Everyone who enters will get a free e-copy of the book (in two weeks). The winner will also get a hard copy of the book, plus one hard copy of my other books of choice (Discover Your Soul Template, Extraordinary Mind or Integrated Intelligence). Plus, they will get a credit in the book if you suggest a better title than the ones I've given.

To enter, all you have to say which one of the suggested titles is best OR suggest a better title.The winner will be either 1) The best new title 2) ONE of the people who choose the most commonly selected title of the one's recommended below. In the second scenario, I will just draw the names out of a hat.

Don't forget to either send me your email address, or if you don't want to do that, check here on 22C+ within the next two weeks to see if you have won (mindfutures - at - gmail dot com). There will be a new post on this site to announce the winner, but I'll also announce it in the comments section below, so you should receive an email saying there is a new comment on this post at that time.

The title has to match the theme and style of the novel. You can see a brief introduction to the story below the suggested titles. It is about a university student, Greg Marks, who learns to channel consciousness and read minds. The upside it that he becomes a lot 'brighter' - including academically - and develops incredible intuitive abilities. The key conflict emerges when he is confronted by some very dark 'energy', which is effectively trying to destroy him. He also has a hard time trying to reconcile his newfound abilities with what he is being taught at university. This is why my suggested titles are mostly centred on the idea of an interplay between light and darkness. Clearly, the book is about a spiritual journey.

The book is semi-autobiographical - 20 years of my life condensed into one. Most of the 'paranormal' events described really did happen to me.

I look forward to hearing your suggestions. Leave them in the comments section, below.

Marcus

Suggested Titles

1. Light
2. The Light of Shadows
3. Shadows at the Edge of Light
4. Shadows of the Light 
5. The Light of Darkness
6. The Mind Reader
7. A Darkness Beautiful

 About the book

Something awakens...

There is a doorway between this world and another more mysterious domain. Greg Marks is about to stumble upon the key, and open the door. Unbeknown to him, he is about to discover something wonderful; something terrifying...

    ***

      "How much do you really want to know? How deep do you want to go? If you stuck a camera in someone’s eye that could record everything he said and did, how interested would you be in seeing what the camera reveals? What if that little device could also record the thoughts of that guy? Would that turn you on?
     Or would you turn it off?
   Imagine that you were able to peer right into the guy’s soul, into the dark country within him that even he has never dared venture?
      I am the man who discovered the camera. I just didn't realise that it would cut right into the heart of the universe itself, and flay wide and broad the secrets of the cosmos. All those secrets. 

     Before you call me mad, I have a story to tell."  

    ***

Light is a semi-autobiographical novel which dares to venture into the frontiers of mind and cosmos, detailing many events and experiences which actually happened to the author.