Graeme Rattigan

One man s journey to financial

success and happiness

’

The purpose of this book is to establish a method of achievingwhat everyone wants—happiness, abundance and success; ineffect, to become healthy, wealthy and wise.

Graeme Rattigan applied the principlescontained in this book to his own life in hissearch to raise the funds for the film

, which became one of thelargest budget films to be shot in Australianfilm history at that time, and possibly since,which was funded entirely from privatecapital. He used the same principles againwhen raising money for the film

, and in a very shorttime had raised seven and a half milliondollars from private financiers to fund andproduce the film.

Paradise Road

Under the

Lighthouse Dancing

About the author

Graeme Rattigan turned a head full of dreams into reality, leaving his legalpractice to chase filmmaking and a lifelong desire to be on the stage.Sometimes one encounter can seem to alter the trajectory of a life. WhenGraeme immersed himself in studying the Feldenkrais Method, particularlyAwareness through Movement, the prospect of creating a desired realitythrough focused thought bloomed. Graeme sees himself as a conduit,channelling the power of the Divine. He has used affirmation, visualisationand prayer to raise millions to finance two films, directing, producing and co-writing for the big screen. Graeme has described 'the magic of Feldenkrais',and the benefits of visualisation and prayer, but has seen the very realapplications. In he offers readers a practical methodto harnessing thoughts that can choose, growand transform a life. Let there be no regrets, hesays. Live out your fantasies!

The Road to Success

Non fiction / spirituality / new age

ISBN 978-0-9807399-1-6

9 7 8 0 9 8 0 7 3 9 9 1 6

GR

AE

ME

RA

TT

IG

AN

www.shortstoppress.comwww.aampersanda.com

THE ROAD TO

SUCCESS

One man’s journey to financial

success and happiness

Graeme Rattigan

SHORT STOP PRESSAn imprint of A&A Book Publishing

admin@aampersanda.comwww.aampersanda.com

ISBN 978-0-9807399-1-6

First published 2010Text © Graeme Rattigan 2010

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under theCopyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means orprocess whatsoever without the prior written permission of the

publishers.

Cover design, text design, illustrations and typesetting by David Andor

Wave Source Designwww.wavesource.com.au

An entry for this title can be found in the National Library of Australia

Become aware of the power and beauty within you.

Introduction

THE PURPOSE of this book is to establish a method of

achieving what everyone wants—happiness,

abundance and success; in effect, to become healthy,

wealthy and wise. This book provides a technique for

achieving this in a precise and effective manner. The

question I expect to be asked is whether I apply the

principles contained in this book to my own life. The

answer is yes. I applied these principles in my search to

raise the funds for the film Paradise Road, which became one

of the largest budget films to be shot in Australian film

history at that time, and possibly since, which was funded

entirely from private capital. I used the same principles

when raising money for the film Under the Lighthouse

Dancing, and in very short time, we had seven and a half

million dollars from private financiers to fund and produce

the film. Both of films brought me great personal

happiness because I was indeed living my bliss: I was

working with people who stimulated my creativity and

imagination; I became moderately wealthy, in that I had

more money in the bank; I was paid for doing work that I

loved doing; and I was fitter, healthier and more

adventurous. Becoming involved in the trials and

tribulations of the characters in both films added a new

dimension to my life and made me look at adversity and

problem solving in an entirely new light.

The Journey to Paradise Road

The major motion picture Paradise Road tells the true story

of a remarkable group of women prisoners who were held

captive by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second

World War in a prisoner of war camp in Sumatra. Their

epic story of survival against seemingly unassailable odds

is truly inspirational and proof that the power of the

human spirit can overcome and change our physical

reality. Indeed, when I first read the script, I became aware

of the power in raising human consciousness and how the

human consciousness can affect events in the material

world.

In the early 1990s, on a balmy evening in Brisbane,

Queensland, outside the stage door of the playhouse, I met

Martin Meader, who was one of the authors of the script. I

had met him once some years before, through a mutual

4

GRAEME RATTIGAN

friend. We recognised each other but were unsure of the

connection. He told me he had written a film script with a

colleague David Giles. Martin asked me upfront if I was

interested in helping them fund the film. I said, ‘How

much are you looking for?’ expecting him to say something

like two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

To my amazement, he said, ‘Twelve million.’

I just laughed, saying facetiously that I thought it would

be just as easy to get twelve million as two hundred and

fifty thousand. I think it was the audacity of the amount he

was seeking that drew me in. Raising so much money for a

film at that time had a certain exhilaration to it, a zaniness

that had the possibility of becoming a reality. I didn’t,

however, make any commitment at that point—I had no

idea what the script was about or how to raise one million

dollars let alone twelve—but Martin invited me to his

house the following day to read the script and meet his

partner/co-writer, David Giles.

The next day, I arranged a lift to Martin’s house, met his

enchanting and talented wife, Dawn, and David. Martin

gave me the script and I took a chair out on the back

veranda and read it throughout. The story brought tears to

my eyes; I felt an immediate realisation and shift in my

consciousness. I had little comprehension of this shift at

the time, but it would prove to bring about a major change

in my life and my beliefs. Before my very eyes I had a story,

occurring some fifty years before, in which the power of

5

THE ROAD TO SUCCESS

the human spirit was able to change events in the so called

‘real’ world—a hard and evil world at that.

I’ve always had a spiritual belief but, up until that time,

I had separated it from the material world. Mine was an

intellectual, spiritual belief rather than a heartfelt belief. I

did believe, however, that prayer could affect this world,

but I personally felt separated from the spiritual reality. I

remember growing up and listening to a radio program in

which the announcer would intone at the end of the

segment:

‘There are more things wrought by prayer than this

world dreams of ’. These words stuck in my memory and

helped engender my belief that prayer does bring about

results in this world, though I saw it more as some giant

hand of God reaching down to help us out in some way.

B

After reading Paradise Road, it dawned in me that there is

only one world; a light was switched on inside me. What

brought tears to my eyes on reading the script was one of

those transcendent moments where I realised that there is

a higher power intersecting with the affairs of humankind,

and it is a loving and benevolent power, a power that

watches over us, suffers when we suffer and rejoices when

we rejoice. But because humankind has been granted free

will, the ability for the power of the Divine to intervene is

6

GRAEME RATTIGAN

limited. If we walk out onto a busy highway with our eyes

closed, we are likely to get hit by a car. If we drive long

distance while fatigued, we are likely to fall asleep at the

wheel, drive off the road and kill ourselves or someone else.

If we cannot control our lust or greed, we are likely to hurt

or damage an innocent person. If we go without sleep for

three days, we are likely to become psychotic. We have free

will. We have the capacity for transcendent greatness and

for base evil. God is not going to reach out his hand and

grab us if we jump over a cliff. Humans can choose as a

result of free will to help or to harm others. We should

learn to deal with the concept of the Divine on a personal

level. Furthermore, we can’t blame God for the woes of the

world, and we can’t generalise about life or the woes of the

world. Life is a very personal business.

I wanted to feel this other world—the spiritual world.

When you look at another person, you can see and

appreciate the attributes of that person—their physicality,

presence and personality. You can weigh up their good

points and bad points. However, when you love that

person, there is something intangible and so much more

powerful than anything else you have felt or thought about

that person. Love is invisible; it is on another plane, it

subsumes everything you have ever thought or

experienced with that person. Everything else fades away.

When you are not in love, you are separated. When you are

in love, you are one. I wanted to feel this love for the

7

THE ROAD TO SUCCESS

THE ROAD TO SUCCESS

9

spiritual world. I wanted the spiritual world to be part of

my physical world.

B

When I was in my late thirties, I recall saying to a friend,

with whom I discussed my spiritual and esoteric beliefs,

‘What if all these theories we discuss are true?’

He said, somewhat puzzled, ‘What do you mean? Aren’t

they?’

‘Yes, to me they are, but don’t you understand what I am

saying—truth is relative to an individual’s knowledge of

the facts, but what if these theories are universally true?’

He then understood what I meant. We had been

discussing these theories simply as theories. But are these

theories as real to us as catching public transport, or eating

a piece of fruit, feeling the warmth of the sun on our

bodies?

B

The two worlds started to merge for me after I read the

script for Paradise Road, a story of truly remarkable women.

Here is a précis of the story of Paradise Road:

Margaret Dryburgh, a missionary with a musical

background, was interned in a Japanese prisoner of war

GRAEME RATTIGAN

10

camp in Sumatra, along with hundreds of other women

and children. The conditions where atrocious; it was a rat

infested cesspool. The guards treated the prisoners with

contempt, not only because they were prisoners but

because they were women and children. The guards

themselves were at the bottom of the pecking order, meting

out punishment and receiving punishment from their

superiors in return in an irrational and punitive

environment.

Despite the harsh conditions in the camp, Margaret

recreated from memory the entire works of Beethoven,

Debussy and Chopin without the aid of a single musical

instrument. With her fellow prisoner Nora Chambers,

they arranged the music for a choir of voices. The choir

had to practice in small groups and wrote the music on

whatever scraps of paper with whatever stubs of pencils

they could find. The Japanese discovered what they were

up to and punished them, destroying the precious

manuscripts. The women were undeterred, even though

they had to start all over again. They made another

complete copy of the music on scraps of paper and

practiced in secret in small groups of two or three.

The complete choir didn’t meet together until they

gathered in the quadrangle on an appointed day. Most of

the women were too weak to stand and had to sit. Nora

Chambers stood in front of the choir ready to conduct.

The commandant, seeing the gathering, barked an order

THE ROAD TO SUCCESS

11

to the young guard on duty. The young guard stood to

attention, fixed his long steel bayonet, before charging

Nora. Nora raised her arms to conduct the choir. A sound

like the wind emanated from the women’s mouths. It swept

across the parade ground, striking the guard. He faltered

inches from Nora’s back, quivering. Unable to move

forward, he dropped his rifle and sat on the ground,

listening in awe to the music, which enveloped him and

the entire compound. The commandant stood to the side

also entranced by the spectacle.

From this time on, the women had more freedom in the

camp. The Japanese allowed them to perform their

concerts and came to listen. Though the prisoners

continued to die, their spirits were lifted. Their music gave

many of them the will to survive until their release.

B

Let’s paint a poetic picture of the event back in the camp.

It will be a new cinematic event, if you like, to give credit

to Divine Intelligence. If the Divine created the women in

the camp, it created the Japanese guards. If the Divine

loved the women in the camp—its creation—then it also

loved the guards. Divine Intelligence didn’t start the war;

men started the war. An order was given to the guard by

a superior, who might have had limited perception and

intelligence. The guard obeyed, as he was conditioned to

GRAEME RATTIGAN

12

do by his cultural imperatives and his fear of reprimand

if he did not comply, which limited his capacity to think

and reason. He ran towards Nora with his fixed bayonet.

He probably had no intention in his mind at all. Perhaps

God reared his head in righteous anger, as we would do if

we were standing on the sidelines. ‘Stop imbecile! Stop

coward! Listen to my voice!’ Another person might not

have stopped; he might have kept going and impaled

Nora. But the guard did stop, trembling in his tracks.

Perhaps he accepted grace into his life at that moment

and became a changed man. We don’t know what his

story is, but someone in the world knows it and God

knows it. The power and higher level of consciousness

that was created by the love and energy of these women

was stronger than the power of the humble guard. He was

powerless against it.

Let’s think about what might have happened after this

event occurred—another film, another time. The Japanese

guard enters the Kingdom of Heaven. Nora is there,

waiting for him. She pleads his case before the celestial

court. ‘Here was a man,’ she says, ‘who had the chance to do

evil but chose to do good. Instead of playing the role of

impaler, he lay down his weapon and listened to the sound

of song.’

An alternative story is that Nora enters the Kingdom of

Heaven where the guard waits for her. ‘I now see all things

in the totality of their reality,’ he says to Nora, ‘and I am so

THE ROAD TO SUCCESS

13

deeply happy that I did not cause you pain and death on

that occasion. I now realise that the voices of those young

and innocent women contained the voice of God and I did

listen.’

Or one last story, one last film clip: The guard enters the

Kingdom of Heaven, and Margaret Dryburgh is waiting for

him. ‘I am so happy to find you at last,’ he says, ‘because I

feel such love and devotion for you. You taught me the love

of music. You opened a channel inside me through which

love entered, and I spent the rest of my life giving thanks

for life and all it had to offer. I suffered remorse that I did

not do more to ease your burdens, that you died so young

and did not live to see peace.’

‘I am at peace now,’ answers Margaret, ‘as you should be.

All is forgiven. Your soul is healed.’ The guard falls to his

knee and kisses her hand in gratitude.

I’m very familiar with the phrase: The pen is mightier than

the sword, and I believe it. Thought power, word power,

mind power, political power is much more powerful and

enduring than physical power, but can the power of song

stop a man in his tracks when he is running at you, a nine

inch bayonet in his hand and the intention of thrusting it

into your back? It is an action that he has been ordered to

do and conditioned to do, something which he thinks is

his duty to do. In this case, it did stop him, caused him to

drop his weapon and sit on the ground listening to the

music; music which on the conscious level he could not

GRAEME RATTIGAN

14

possibly have understood. He wasn’t educated nor was he

culturally attuned to it and yet it hit him like a wave, the

rifle and bayonet quivered in his hands until he let it drop,

before he sat down to listen to the women’s voices in awe.

I had to ask myself, ‘What was this power that emanated

from these women?’ It is a power that has resonated

through history and will resonate for all time in the story

of these women who died with free spirits.

Terrible things happen in the world because of the

people in the world, and rather than living a life of love and

compassion, they lead a life of anger and hate. The world

has its own energy and rhythm, and sometimes if we are in

the wrong place at the wrong time, this energy intersects

and crushes us. If God were to intervene in every instance

to protect the innocent, we wouldn’t be living in this world

but in some other world. We live in a world of free will

where we struggle to come to terms with our humanity

and overcome the travails that beset us. Each one of us has

our own destiny to find and fulfil. We can be gods or we

can be devils.

I had the privilege of meeting some of the survivors

during the making of the film, including Vivian

Bullwinkel, who was the only survivor of the Bangka Island

massacre. Here several young women, survivors of a

bombed ship, were herded into the shallows of the bay and

machine gunned in the water. Vivien, the only survivor,

was left for dead but managed to get to shore. She was later

THE ROAD TO SUCCESS

15

captured and interned in the camp. Though wounded in

her side, she was never able to let on that she was a

massacre survivor, a witness to the atrocity. After the war,

she was able to give evidence of this massacre at a war

crimes tribunal.

The grace and compassion of these remarkable women

struck me the most. There was a serenity and

ingeniousness about their demeanour. They held no

rancour in their hearts for their former tormentors.

Rather than making anger and hatred their companions,

they had risen above such predispositions to a level that

gave them freedom of spirit.

Margaret ultimately died in the camp only weeks before

liberation; however, whilst surrounded by such pain and

squalor, she wrote a song in addition to the music she

transcribed. It was entitled “Captive’s Hymn”, and the

women sang this song in captivity at the beginning of each

church service. This song sums up Margaret’s view of our

connection with a higher Divine will. Margaret expressed

her unconditional love through this song. She never

judged her captors. Her thoughts were universal and

transcendent, and she was not concerned with her own

immediate temporal needs.

GRAEME RATTIGAN

16

Captive’s Hymn

Father, in captivity

We would lift our prayer to Thee,

Keep us ever in Thy love,

Grant that daily we may prove

Those who place their trust in Thee,

More than conquerors may be.

Give us patience to endure,

Keep our hearts serene and pure,

Grant us courage, charity,

Greater faith, humility,

Readiness to own Thy will,

Be we free or captive still.

For our country we would pray,

In this hour be Thou her stay,

Pride and selfishness forgive,

Teach her by Thy laws to live,

By Thy grace may all men see

That true greatness comes from Thee.

For our loved ones we would pray,

Be their guardian night and day,

From all dangers keep them free,

Banish all anxiety,

May they trust us to Thy care.

Know that Thou our pains doth share.

May the day of freedom dawn,

THE ROAD TO SUCCESS

17

Peace and justice be reborn.

Grant that nations loving Thee

O'er the world may brothers be,

Cleansed by suffering, know rebirth,

See Thy kingdom come on Earth.

Through these words, Margaret Dryburgh became eternal.

Whilst her body was being tormented, her spirit and her

mind remained free, and she has encapsulated that in her

song. Her jailers, who had power over her body but not her

spirit, have slipped into anonymity and deserved

obscurity, but not she. Her spirit has triumphed.

The other miracle was that when the complex music of

Handel, Chopin, Brahms and Beethoven was unearthed at

the Music Library of Stanford University in California, it

was found that Margaret’s music was note perfect. This

surely was a Divine gift. It has been described as akin to

transcribing the works of Shakespeare from memory, word

for word.

B

One of the amazing stories to come out of the internment

camp was the way in which the prisoners organised their

life in captivity to accommodate the deprivation and

squalor in which they lived.

The Dutch nuns in particular kept to a strict daily

programs, which focus physical attraction as a means

to harnessing self-belief and positive self-image, are

we missing something? Is looking good a valid step

in the self-love process? What are the benefits of

looking after the body? What are the dangers of body

and image obsession?

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Graeme Rattigan

One man s journey to financial

success and happiness

’

The purpose of this book is to establish a method of achievingwhat everyone wants—happiness, abundance and success; ineffect, to become healthy, wealthy and wise.

Graeme Rattigan applied the principlescontained in this book to his own life in hissearch to raise the funds for the film

, which became one of thelargest budget films to be shot in Australianfilm history at that time, and possibly since,which was funded entirely from privatecapital. He used the same principles againwhen raising money for the film

, and in a very shorttime had raised seven and a half milliondollars from private financiers to fund andproduce the film.

Paradise Road

Under the

Lighthouse Dancing

About the author

Graeme Rattigan turned a head full of dreams into reality, leaving his legalpractice to chase filmmaking and a lifelong desire to be on the stage.Sometimes one encounter can seem to alter the trajectory of a life. WhenGraeme immersed himself in studying the Feldenkrais Method, particularlyAwareness through Movement, the prospect of creating a desired realitythrough focused thought bloomed. Graeme sees himself as a conduit,channelling the power of the Divine. He has used affirmation, visualisationand prayer to raise millions to finance two films, directing, producing and co-writing for the big screen. Graeme has described 'the magic of Feldenkrais',and the benefits of visualisation and prayer, but has seen the very realapplications. In he offers readers a practical methodto harnessing thoughts that can choose, growand transform a life. Let there be no regrets, hesays. Live out your fantasies!

The Road to Success

Non fiction / spirituality / new age

ISBN 978-0-9807399-1-6

9 7 8 0 9 8 0 7 3 9 9 1 6

GR

AE

ME

RA

TT

IG

AN

www.shortstoppress.comwww.aampersanda.com