Ep. 26 - A Life of Meaning with Ralph White

[Music] Welcome to episode 26 of Synchronicity. My guest today is Ralph White and I have allergies today. It's beautiful. It is so beautiful. It's like April 17th, 18th. I don't actually know. It's a Monday. It's beautiful. And spring has sprung. The birds are chirping. And it's really nice, but I got the allergies. So, you know, if I sound a little funny and congested, that's what it is. So yeah, today, Ralph is a super interesting guy. Superlative, superlative. Boom, I got him. I'm full of them. But Ralph is one of the original program directors of the Omega Institute in Ryan Beck, New York. If you haven't been, you've heard me mention the Hudson Valley. It's beautiful up there at the Omega Institute in particular, one of my favorite places. He's now working. He worked with the Open Center, which is in Wright, New York on 30th Street. So basically, he's had a huge hand in founding and helping and get started, helped to get started these these holistic kind of culture, you know, what do you, what do you call them? Holistic centers, places where you can learn about other things, maybe besides what is popularly, you know, taught in regular culture, regular culture. I don't even know what that means anymore. But you know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? You know, I'm making institute like they're going to bring in some speaker like a meditation teacher or a sound healer or a shaman. They're going to talk to you about stuff that maybe you don't know about or maybe you do, but you want to hear someone who knows what they're talking about, talk about it.

So that's his book, right? Let me get to that. He's got a book. Ralph, I read your book two weeks ago and I tore through it and it was one of my, I got it on my Kindle and I always, you know, I love real books, but the books I get on my Kindle, I seem to read a lot more quickly. I think it's by virtue of just being attached to my cell phone so much. So we don't call them cell phones anymore, right? Smart phones, smartphones, iPhone, whatever the hell you want to call it. But Ralph's book, it's memoir, it's called the jeweled highway on the quest for a life of meaning. Of course, this will be on the podcast page, post, post, man, do you think I could get through one intro without mispronouncing a word? I think my hit rate is pretty good for messing up words on intro, no big deal. But Ralph's memoir really such a, it's, it's a great recounting of his life, but also a wonderful narrative through kind of being a part of these cultural centers, Fintorn in Scotland, it's Scotland, right? I'm not fucking that up Ralph, I hope not. I believe it's Scotland. The spiritual centers around the world and also just having the ability to look back at this point in his life and see what's evolved out of that because, you know, 30, 40 years ago, spiritual centers were much more fringe than they are now. You know, now someone in New York City can go up to Omega, you know, for a weekend or a five day thing, pretty common place. Right in New York City, there's the open center. And there's a ton of other cultural places that have emerged over the last few years, decades, really. And it's interesting to hear from someone who's had a perspective on that. So yeah, this is a great talk. I'm saying so, yeah, because I also have some other stuff I wanted to talk about in this intro, but I want to be mindful and keep it kind of short and also give you an overview of Ralph. Ralph, you're going to hear, again, this book, it's really great. The jeweled highway on the quest for a life of meaning, I legitimately read it in like four days. It was incredibly easy to read. And again, just a wonderful synopsis of kind of the evolution, not only for Ralph, but of these spiritual centers around the world and kind of what is evolved from there. We talk about a lot of really interesting things there. And I'm not going to mention all of them, but some of them, he has the term holistic hustlers, right? I'm sure as you can imagine, when you're starting kind of like a holistic center, there are some very genuine people who have some real wisdom and stuff to share with people. But there's also people in, you know, the holistic and new age world who maybe they're not nefarious characters, maybe they just see something and kind of think it's a way to maybe make some money or get some exposure. I don't think most people have, you know, bad intentions when doing that, some sure, maybe they do. But I think there's also just the big component of it is anyone at any point in time can essentially say I'm a spiritual teacher. If I got on this podcast next week and said, Hey, guess what? Podcast has been great. Digital strategy stuff has been great. Music's been great. But now I'm a spiritual teacher.

So follow me and listen to my wisdom. And I did it with enough conviction and belief. Maybe a lot of you would be like, Nah, dude, definitely not. But maybe some people will be like, you know what? No, I really didn't. And like enough, basically, my point is anyone can do that at any given point, which is why I am a big fan of lineages in various paths. I don't want it to be some authoritarian. Well, you're only sanctioned because you came through this lineage. And that's not how it works exclusively. But when you can track back a path of thought or a mind stream or heart stream, whatever you want to call it through generations and years and really know that there's something substantial there, I think that's important. So Ralph has come across a lot of characters throughout his life. And I love that term. He calls holistic hustlers. He also tips me off to my new favorite author, mystic, genius guy, Rudolph Steiner. If you've heard, I think I've mentioned him in previous podcasts, I gave away the philosophy, philosophy of freedom. His book, I haven't picked a winner yet. I'm going to pick it tomorrow. So I don't, I'm like, I announce it on this show, but I'm sending a copy of that out. Or wait, did Jeremy get philosophy? No, he got Oliver Berkman's the antidote. No, so I haven't picked the winner for philosophy of freedom. Bear with me. I have a kid on the way. So my mind is, you know, it's, it's just, uh, discombobulated, let's say. Um, but Rudolph Steiner, holy shit. This guy is just amazing. One of my favorite thinkers already. Um, he really, what I love about him is he, he really takes like a very empirical approach to the science of the spirit. And that's tough to do, right? You can't verify experiments. If someone's psychic, you know, we're talking about a hit rate that maybe beats the percentages every so often, but it's not really very, it's not replicable, right? This is something Carl Jung talked about, talked about with, uh, synchronicities. Like, if you go into a lab to try to study something like a synchronicity, it's really hard to replicate those results. Um, so empirically, which is what we have kind of foundationally built our world upon, the empirical method. In that regard, it doesn't really work that well, but yet we can still be aware that these things are influencing our lives, like the unconscious spirit worlds, whatever you want to call them. Um, one of the reasons I really enjoyed psychedelics throughout my lives, my life, my lives. That's a Jungian slip. I'm inventing that term right there. Um, but, uh, you know, one of the reasons I enjoyed psychedelics is because they give you a glimpse of maybe something else that's going on. Um, which I don't know if you guys saw this recent study of the LSD, they mapped the effects of LSD, um, on the brain. And also can you imagine, they're getting injected to a fucking needle for fuck's sake. That's the last way I ever want LSD unless I'm out of this huxley going out like that. But, uh, they're injecting people with 75 micrograms of LSD and then put them in MRIs. And I've never had an MRI, but I know if I ever have to get an MRI, I'm not going to like an MRI. So they're putting in people, but God bless these people. They signed up for it and they were tripping 75 mics, not a huge amount, but it's pure LSD. I'm sure it's pretty good. And they map the visual effects on the brain.

And it's pretty amazing. All of these connections that otherwise wouldn't be made are kind of just firing off all these, I believe, you know, forgive my rudimentary understanding of, you know, neuro, neuroscience, but believe neurotransmitters are essentially, and they've known this for a little bit, but they're actually mapping it. They're showing all these connections that are taking place, which is an amazing thing just to show you that the brain can be more active just on something like LSD. But I love the concept of being able to learn about other things that are going on that we can't perceive with our five senses. And Rudolph Steiner did an amazing, he's, I mean, he gave like Ralph says 6,000 lectures at the end of his life, like eight years, 10-year period. And a lot of these things have been aggregated and he wrote a lot and spoke a lot.

And there's just a ton out there. And I'm really excited to kind of plunge in and learn more and more. He also founded Waldorf schools. Do we know Waldorf schools? Like I just found out about these in five years when I have, you know, my son is five and going to school, I'm trying to get him into Waldorf school. I'm working for that now because they're basically an alternative way of learning. And I've used the word before, but it's a more holistic way of learning. I don't know a ton about Waldorf schools, but I know the people who have kids and send their kids to Waldorf schools. They're people I like. So, Shruti, you told me, right? Shruti, if you're listening, you sent out, you said your kids are Waldorf kids. And John O'Kee, you also said. So look, two people who are excellent Waldorf kids. So, love that. He also founded basically the beginnings of organic organic stuff, biodynamic farming, like how sustainable farming, like he was way ahead of this. This is, you know, 1900s. 1900s, holy shit. I was born in 1983, which I guess technically it's the 1900s.

So that's weird to say it like that. Early 1900s. Well, before I was born. But yeah, Rudolf Steiner. Okay, so let's get to the episode. I've rambled on now for 10 minutes. But before we get to the episode, I want to mention, listen, this is a long intro. I'm aware of it, but you're going to deal with it because this is a good episode. And I got some cool stuff I'm going to talk about right now. So book giveaway this week is Ralph's book, the jeweled highway on the quest for a life of meaning, paperback, Kindle, whatever you prefer, when you win, let you know, let you know. How do you get on to the book giveaway contest stuff? How do you get entered in all of this sync podcast? S Y and C podcast.com. There is a way to join the synchronicity community. Do that. And you're entered. Boom.

As the people who are on the list, there's over 100 of you at this point. And if you're listening to this, you know, past 2016 and it's 2020, I probably have a million people on this list by now. So it's pretty impressive. But if you're on that, you automatically are entered, entered into the contest and you get a book when you win, because you will win. So that's how you get entered there. Also on sync podcast.com, I started a forum. So you now can interact with other fellow listeners of the podcast. I'm happy to say it's not just me screaming into the void. People have participated and introduced themselves and spoken about things that they either like about the podcast or a cult stuff, spiritual stuff, music stuff. It's a place to congregate and communicate. That's how I'm putting it. Hat tip to Michael Donovan, who on his website, studio Donovan.com, also has a forum. He showed me it over the weekend. And I was like, wow, this is awesome. I'm going to do it. So I did it. Big hat tip to Michael Donovan for that. He's always thinking of ways to connect people and express himself and kind of get people talking about stuff. Michael is the best. Michael's super cool. So go check out his podcast to walking home. A great podcast. All right. That's a lot of stuff. Anything else? Rate and review. Subscribe if you want podcasts, synchronicity, a habit, you're listening to it.

If you want to do that, that would be great. If not, no big deal. So without further ado, here is Ralph White. I'm going to start it here. But thank you. Thank you for coming on. And I know you reached out or your assistant reached out. And I'm really glad that he did because it's just, you know, in reading the book, it's very clear that we share a lot of the same kind of inclinations, at least regarding the spiritual path, you know, not the least of which, which is maybe a great place to start is kind of merging the lofty kind of light and love spiritual goals with the kind of shadow aspect of society and the culture and the world. One of the things that caught my attention early on in the book was, and for those listening, I'm going to talk to the listen out.

For those listening, I'm talking about the jeweled highway on the quest for a life of meaning, which is Ralph's book memoir that he wrote, which is fantastic. And I'll have an intro where I explain what that is. But saying one of the things that really caught my attention was your affinity for Carl Jung, which who's, for me, my podcast is named Synchronicity. I totally jacked from Carl Jung. One of my favorite thinkers, philosophers, psychologists, spiritual people. And for one of the same reasons that it seems to be yours is that he clearly had an eye on the shadow aspects of our being and our culture and all of these things. So let's, if you could start, maybe by talking a little bit about yourself, and then maybe get into kind of what your quest for a life of meaning actually meant and the culmination of which is this book.

Well, for our listeners, I'm Ralph White. As you said, I'm author of this new memoir, the jeweled highway on the quest for a life of meaning. I'm one of the co-founders of the New York Open Center, which has been New York City's main center of holistic learning. And we'll call for the last 32, getting up to 33 years. So I've been in the thick of the whole consciousness movement. For many decades prior to that, I was program director of Omega Institute for some of our listeners may have maybe more familiar with because it draws from the East, the whole East and New U.S. up there in upstate in Rhinebeck, New York, in the Hudson Valley.

And so the book really describes my own journey, my own quest. The first part of it is concerned with my own quest for meaning. The middle part of it is, it's called The Work. It's about what do we do once we arrive at a sense as I did that the direction of our whole society and culture needed to change this was something that came to me back in the early 70s after hitchhiking to Machu Picchu and having transformative inner experiences in the mountains. Seeing western industrial civilization again for the first time, even in the relatively modest form of a southern Peruvian city at a keeper, it was just abundantly clear. I had one of those moments of intense intuitive knowing that western industrial civilization with was still is destroying, destroying both the biosphere, a deeply damaging the biosphere and really damaging, deeply damaging our own souls and that we have to create an alternative. So in a sense that when I was 24 when that happened, I mean that was quite a while ago, it was the early 70s. So that provided a kind of template for my life in a way to go about creating a more holistic, a more ecological, a more spiritually connected culture. The question became how to do that. And so for me that involved, it's involved work with a lot of these centers. I was involved with a place called the Finthorne Foundation up in the north of Scotland, back in the late 70s too, after I came back from South America, a place that saw itself as still going on 50 years later, but two years later as an echo village and a holistic learning center. But how can we demonstrate that it is actually possible? This was the question that Finthorne posed itself. How can we create a center of demonstration where we can show it really is possible for people to live in a higher, with a higher measure of love, harmony, attunement, and with deep connection to and reverence for nature. So I've had this involvement with these centers and in fact we'll be having the sort of grandfather of the annual gathering of holistic centers, which the latest one of which will happen in mid-May in Quebec City, where there's a brand new center up there, Lin Monastet, is Augustine. So this has been the path of my life. And then the latter part of the book of the actual park called the Jeweled Highway is about my own personal journey and my engagement with the West and Esther tradition and with the worker Rudolph Steiner. So that's a little intro there. Oh, I should say, yeah, I mean, I should also add my earlier life. I mean, I was born in Wales. I spent my childhood in Wales. I spent my teenagers in the industrial north of England in one of those areas where the William Blake described as filled with dark satanic mills, both original proletariat where Marx and Engels thought the revolution would happen. But fortunately for me, the part of the world that the Beatles came bursting out of in the '60s, that was my life line. That's what got me through teenagers in a very grim part of the world. So yeah, a brief version of starring. That's great. I mean, and there's so many things that emerge in the book. And I'm going to be giving away a copy of this book for listeners when this airs, so people can experience for themselves. But in addition, I mean, you provided a nice recap kind of a nutshell version, but it's beautifully written. It's close to prose, and I mean, it's really, really, really, really good. It struck me from the first part, you know, from the first sentence of the book. You do an amazing job of kind of synthesizing and distilling not only your personal intuitive and spiritual experiences, but also providing a really nice overview of kind of the themes that were emerging, because when you were starting this, and I am, I've been to Omega several times. My mom actually lives in Ryan Cliff right by Ryan Beck. So yeah, whenever I go there, we always try to stop by. I've had some amazing experiences there. So it was really nice to see how you were kind of like a founding. I mean, the fact that you actually brought it to its current location. And I didn't know this that it was a Yiddish commune basically before that was fascinating. But one of the themes in your book, there's a few things that really particularly struck me. One is this anyone who has been to a spiritual retreat center anywhere, especially one that's immersed in nature and kind of away from the world. And you touch on this quite a bit is when you go back into the quote unquote regular world, right, the mundane world where everyone is having egos and maybe they're not as attuned and aware as, you know, they everyone seems to be away from these things. But but being able to bring that way of thinking and mindset and kind of awareness into the world, right, making it not just the personal inner journey, which is, of course, the focal point. I think if you're going to do any type of real change in the world, but extending that out into the world in a form of service. So could you talk about just what you've learned over the years? I mean, you've had amazing experiences, but how, what has helped you kind of bring these intuitive inner experiences out into the world?

Well, you know, I understand completely what you're saying there about, you can have transformative inner experiences in retreat centers, whether it's the Hudson Valley, like a mega than off of Scotland, like Finland or Big Sur, California, like Castle and Institute. But then where do you go with it? You know, then that dreaded moment arrives when you've got to return to the so-called real world. So, I mean, that was one of the big reasons we started the open center in New York City because no longer would there be a dreaded real world to return to. We would be slap bang in the middle of that real world and New York City in the early eighties. Has anybody who spent time there knows it was kind of mayhem. You know, it was close to the nadir of New York with chaos and murder and crime and so on and dirt. So it was a real challenge. You know, it was sort of a deep dive there into the the the nigrato, as the alchemist would say, or down into the sort of putrefying world.

So, but it felt something absolutely necessary to do. You know, I mean, I mentioned in the book the experience I had when I was living in Columbia after hitchhiking to Mache Beach with being up on that mountain top above Bogota. On New Year's Day 1974, the whole city below was covered in this beautiful layer of white cloud. Then the first ray of dawn breaks out from the eastern horizon of falls on the sacred snow cap volcano in the far distance. And it was a moment of pure cosmic harmony. Should we say in beauty and the world appeared to be unfolding as it should. But as the sun rose higher, it burned off the clouds beneath us and what emerged was this febrile.

It made made New York in the early eighties. Look, look, I know, because it was, it was genuinely Dickensian. There were schools of pick puppets that were abandoned, children everywhere, sleeping out in doorways. Tremendous levels of poverty and justice, crime, violence. So then that's what sort of gave me once again, I hadn't realized at the time this could actually, but it turned out to actually have a symbolic message in it in a way that that's been my destiny to bring together the deeper or the more exalted spiritual values insights that the aspects of our being that relate to our truest, highest self with the gritty urban reality of the contemporary world.

So what have I learned from that? Well, what have I learned from that? What have you know, when we started the open center, the conventional wisdom was get out of here. This is New York. This is the real world. People aren't interested. Maybe California, New York needed one that already have one. Hawaii, yeah, but this is New York. People in the real world aren't interested in spiritual things or holistic things. I can say after over 300,000 people coming through the open center, there's no way that's true. There's plenty of people interested in spiritual things. I've learned people with profound spiritual existential questions and a yearning for something deeper than just consumerism and materialism. They're everywhere. I don't care where they are, whether it's cities or country or a monastery or Midtown Manhattan. There are people like that everywhere who are looking for support, guidance, companionship, community. So that's been important.

I think the other it just hang in there. Don't give up. Oh, it's just there are always going to be obstacles, but I know it sounds like a bit of a cliche, but often to accomplish anything of substance, you've got to overcome significant obstacles. It's not always going to be laid out for you. Rolled out the red carpet one, always be rolled out. You just have to keep going against the arts and trust your heart, trust your intuition, don't give up. And you know, one of the metaphor of the lotus, you know, that's what the lotus it is. It comes out of the muck in the mud to emerge. You know, that's I love that. Yeah, that's absolutely right. So, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to put in the book, I didn't want people to feel like it was just a simple breeze from Finland to Omega to the open center of the global network of holistic centers. There were plenty of dark times in there moments when I when I between Finland when I was living in California didn't really know what was happening in my life. Nothing was clicking. Or when I left graduate school in Chicago and went to live in British Columbia in Vancouver to pursue spiritual and mystical matters. I was basically selling Canada's first magazine, Ecology magazine, the Canadian conservation is door to door for a quarter and getting a lot of doors shut in my face. I wanted to show to people that it's not always a breeze, you know, that sometimes you really do come across hard times where things don't click. You don't have much money. I mean, not everybody goes through this in life. But of course, if you set out to follow your muse, to follow your inner vision, this can happen. And you just have to stay hang in there when you have a certain amount of faith, don't give up, maintain the faith in your heart, your intuition, your vision. And ultimately, the universe will obviously not in every case. But I think the universe is ultimately supportive of our growth towards the inner potential that we all carry within us.

I know. Yeah, I couldn't agree. I couldn't agree more. It's been my experience too. And that touches on something, you know, dealing with the real world aspect of this. This is another thing I absolutely love in your book is you deal with or you talk about kind of the naivete or the being naive related to spiritual pursuits. And, you know, trying to how people, there can be this tendency, especially in the New Age movement, right? I mean, see this on the internet nonstop these days related to spiritual stuff and esotericism. This everything is love and light. You know, all you have to do is be positive thinking and then everything will work out. And on one level, I absolutely agree with that. And I think the foundation of our universe and this reality is love. I really do believe that. But on the same token, if you have that kind of, you know, distant, high thinking, it some ways can prevent you from actually engaging with what is and kind of these darker shadow aspects, not only of the world, but within ourselves. And that goes back to what I open with, which is the Carl Jung thing, which is why I love Carl Jung so much is he recognized these and he saw how they were emerging, not only in dreams and in culture and, you know, arc types, but really how this is something that everyone has to deal with and to transmute those shadow qualities and quote unquote negative qualities into something positive is really where the work is done. So could you talk a little bit about what you noticed? Because you lived in some, you know, you established and lived in some pretty interesting places. And I'm sure you encountered, I know from the book, you encountered your fair share of people who kind of, you know, are not really engaging with the world as is and are sort of, you know, maybe putting their own spin positive spin on things. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yes, well, I mean, anybody who's been involved in, I prefer to use the term the holistic movement because new age is so synonymous with flakiness or has become so in our culture, maybe not just ifiably, but it has become so. So anybody who's been involved in that or with people who are seeking to develop spiritually knows that there's a danger of becoming really ungrounded in this. I mean, there's this whole phenomenon which has always frustrated me of you could call it new age narcissism. It's just people who are exclusively focused on themselves on getting their own health together, their own personal growth, their own spiritual practice. I mean, all of that is important.

I told you something, but it's only part of the story. First of all, you have to be engaged with the world in some way. You know, what's the point of taking Joseph Campbell's hero's journey? If you don't bring back whatever in a riches you discover to the society. So that, you know, I think we've got to, there's got to be a social engagement. It can't just be a spiritual phenomenon. There has to be some kind of holistic activist. So I think that's part of it. And another factor, as you were saying, is that many self-defined spiritual people, especially people who, whom it's their primary sense of identification. I learned this up at Finland on years ago.

Many people who are primarily identified as spiritual are really unconscious of their own shadows when it comes to politics. And so, you know, they will not, they'll be completely oblivious to being manipulative. And when they get called on that, it's the other person who's accused of being political. I mean, I know that I have so much direct experiences in my few short years of working with organizations and in the spiritual sector for lack of a better word. I mean, my experience is echo that on a very deep level. So yeah, I'm glad to hear you hear you. Yeah. So, you know, we've all added it says, I mean, it's one of the things too I was felt about starting the Open Center because it is is in New York City. And because we started at such a grim and difficult media of New York's experience, there's no way we could do the Open Center without being conscious of the shadow because there's was so much darkness in New York at that time.

I mean, it's a very different city today. But and of course, that's a reflection of our outer darkness and Jung's great insight where he enables us to become more whole people, more than just spiritual people. I'm more of that. I want to be spiritual, but I want it to be part of the human wholeness is that, you know, we're not we those aspects of ourselves that we're not comfortable facing. We just shoved them in the bag behind their back is Robert Bligh, the great poet Robert Bligh, always used to talk a lot about the shadow. We did a lovely little book on the Shady puts call a little book on the shadow. And it's just that we put everything we don't want to see about ourselves that we don't like, the part of ourselves that is unacceptable in the shadow.

And so the huge bag a bit of benchy develops on our back that weighs us down. And if we don't integrate and face and deal with that shadow, then we acted out. And we acted out through all kinds of unfortunate modes of behavior and thinking and feeling. So I think it is really essential as holistic people who are trying to evolve both personally and develop the culture and society to try to work with both the internal shadow to become aware of our own darkness as much as we can to turn to face it. And to do the same thing to be aware of the the darkness in the world and really the two are connected working with the two really require some of the same focus. So yeah, that is that is perfect. I mean, when you describe as new age narcissism to me sounds very much like Cho Gyeum Chunka's, you know, spiritual materialism. Yeah, spiritual concepts and things. The ego is like, Oh, let me play with this. Oh, I'm the best at meditating. I'm the best at being open-hearted and loving. Then you get into this very weird trap that interplays with the shadow, which is then essentially just grasping and aversion. You push everything away under that bag that you don't want to deal with. And then you try to grab on all to all the good stuff, which then this is Carl Jung, right? Then the unconscious is dictating your life and you have no idea of even being able to recognize that because it's just a sophisticated game that you're playing with yourself that you project on to other people, which is why when something gets politicized in a spiritual organization or holistic organization, that has been my experience too. What do you mean I'm doing that? That's these people doing that. Of course, my noble cause is what I'm interested in, not these political games and machinations. So that to me is I love that that emerges. I mean, to me, this is a very key concept and I love that you've touched on so many different traditions and paths in this book and in your life, which is the element of being discerning and trying to kind of into it or really know the people, because you described this in your book when you were doing, I believe for the Open Center, you were trying to figure out like who the spiritual hucksters were, whether they knew they were hucksters or not, but the people who clearly wanted to get on a program because that was good for their ego or it'd be good for them. And then realizing that some of them were very nice people, but their intent maybe wasn't aligned with what they were saying. So can you talk a little bit and I know this is kind of a nebulous and hard thing to do because I do it myself, but can you talk about how you cultivated kind of like, how do you determine who is this is a very difficult question? This is something that I think is unique to each person, but how do you go about what clues or what's your spidey sense for determining someone who is an authentic, you know, well-intentioned spiritual teacher rather than someone I think in the book you described, there was a Korean Zen teacher who was speaking who was just like so overwhelmed with ego that you got you had to laugh at how silly it was waiting for him to stop talking because he was speaking so much to get a word in edgewise. So yeah, yeah, well, you know, that when I years ago, you know, in the early days of the open center and Omega, when we were meeting, you know, Tibetan llamas and Zen masters and things like that, I mean, I was, I was kind of in awe. Oh my god, these guys, this is a Zen master. I mean, who am I? I mean, this guy knows something that I don't.

But as I indicated in the book, and not ever obviously, there are plenty of wonderful Zen practitioners. But in this particular instance, this person was definitely somebody gripped by their own ego and just would not stop talking and fairly unintelligible English. So yeah, how do we do this? I mean, for me in the position that I've been, it's been because I've been making the decisions about who teaches at the open center or during the same thing when I was in Omega, you have to develop a very good judgment, good discernment. So what is the essence of that? I mean, it's part of it as a gift, you know, I mean, I think I've always had a sharp eye for baloney. So I've never liked nonsense, you know, I've always, I've turned off my holistic hustlers, as I call them in the book, because when you start these centers across and the people see that they're working, everybody wants to get on board. And so they are, people will harass you to get in there. And so you have to say, no, if it doesn't feel right, but try to do it in a gracious way. Well, I mean, it's a question of attunement. You have to try to be attuned. You have to try to be sensitive. You try to have to listen to your own intuitive sense. I mean, whenever I was dealing with somebody, let's say I was dealing with somebody who wanted to teach at one of these centers, I would always, I would have them go through a different stages, write a letter first explaining what they were interested in. So I could get a sense of who they were, because just putting things down on paper is a clarifying process. Then I would always try to meet if possible, meet with somebody in person, because you can read things from body language and so on, or if they were too far away, because I'd do it over the phone. Nowadays with Skype, I mean, that's great. I mean, Skype makes a huge difference, because when I'm interviewing people to teach in, say a certificate in holistic psychology, and they're in California, I just interviewed, or just had a conversation with people via Skype, which was so helpful. So you just, you have to trust your intuition. You know, so much is one of the things I really learned up at Finto on in Scotland. We can be very intellectually rigorous. We need to be and socially grounded, but cultivating and trusting intuition and judgment and discernment. It's a very important feature for making your way through life, especially if you're working at a center or some kind of educational or cultural institution where the quality of what you bring in is crucial. And because when I did it, there was no guideline. I mean, no, I just had to make it up. There were no blueprints. There were no books written on the subject. You just did it. So I think that's what comes to mind. Just, we don't want to be in that Pollyanna-ish view where it's all love and light all the time. There is darkness. There is evil in the world, and we have to be willing to face it. And I think it's important, ultimately, to have a world view that understands the place of evil in the world and how to work with it. It's our task to transmute it all, but we're not going to transmute it.

If we ignore it and it doesn't exist either outside or within us. Yeah, I mean, I think that's incredibly insightful. This is something that I mean, I think as everyone begins wherever they are in the spiritual path in this life, that's something that becomes pretty apparent very quickly. I would love to hear, I mean, you have been kind of at the focal point of developing these centers that now, I mean, you must be in awe of what has evolved, you know, since the 70s in terms of how many places there are, how many different schools have thought there are, how many crossover things there are. I mean, what's your take on the current state of what's called the spiritual culture? And I mean, it's hard to just say in the West now, because we are so globally interconnected. What's your take on? Yeah, I'd love to hear that. I mean, when you just to refer to your last point there in the West, I mean, it's amazing what's happening in China right now.

I mean, I don't know if there was an article in the New York magazine about the year or year and a quarter ago about the Waldorf schools that come out of Ruth Steiner's work. When he died, there were only two in existence in 1925. There are now over a thousand and in China, there are they're growing like wildfire. There are like two to three hundred new Waldorf schools that have opened up in the last year alone in a communist country, because parents are desperate for an education or holistic education for children instead of just the competitive memory-based education they already have there with the team suicides that result from it, etc. So that's just an example. I mean, it's been a very moving process now to actually see it. I mean, see what's happened with the whole holistic consciousness spiritual world and we can't even call it a movement in a way, because movement implies that it's being organized. Nobody's on it. It's nobody on the physical plane is organizing it. It's a that's what's extraordinary. You know, when all these centers meet as we will in Quebec in a matter of weeks, we recognize we're all on the same wavelength. You know, we're all doing similar work, even though we're totally autonomous independent initiatives. We're part of a facets of that greater diamond of an awakening of consciousness.

So for me, when I look back on the early days of the open center and the skepticism around it and my own, you know, I didn't, I thought it would be a miracle if we'd be able to pull it off. But now, you know, in those days health, health food stores were little mom and pop holes in the wall. The New York Times was writing regular editorials dismissing every form of alternative medicine, a snake oil, anything that opened the door to mystical to mysticism was considered as opening the door to the irrational and heralding fascism. I mean, it was, you know, meditation was considered a fancy word for sleep. It's, I mean, you look at how all that's changed. I'm sure, no, you're already already tuned into this. But look at it. I mean, mindfulness is everywhere to an almost comical degree now. There's a yoga center on every fifth or sixth street corner in Manhattan seats. You know, Whole Foods is the, is far and away the biggest grocery store in Manhattan.

I mean, and complimentary alternative medicine is really widespread and Americans spend billions of dollars on it every year. So, I mean, we've, that's just to take four examples. And of course, the Dalai Lama is the most admired spiritual figure in the world. So, people have an interest and a respect for other cultures and other approaches to spirituality, not in all cases, of course, but in a good measure. So, I think all of that is, it's an indication of the fact that we come a long way. And, I mean, there are all these, there are these counterforce of this as well. I don't want to paint a fatuous, Pollyanna-ish picture that's, everything's just improving effortlessly. It isn't. I mean, we have these counterforce, there's a religious fundamentalism, extreme forms of nationalism, you know, the primacy of economic values in all spheres. And that wonderful phrase that Rudolph Steiner came up with the superstition of scientific material. I love that. I think that I think he nailed it, you know, because back in the 30s, from my understanding of listening to and reading physicists, quantum physics and all of it, you know, we've known since the 30s that the conventional materialistic view of the world is nonsense. And yet it's right, it doesn't. And yet it's still the conventional worldview. And that's, and then we had the whole phenomena of the social sciences trying to emulate the hard sciences and be equally materialistic. So, so there's those counterforce is, but, and we're still in the minority. But I think anybody like me who, and there's millions of us who have, who has been part of this, whatever we want to call it, this, this transition, this cultural change, we have a lot of grounds for optimism and hope. And, and so the struggle goes on. I mean, I personally think that, you know, we're involved in a profound struggle for the soul of humanity. Are we going to move towards that more holistic, spiritual, ecological, tolerant, multicultural world? Or will people like the so-called Islamic State, or various fundamentalist forces in this country? You know, will they gain the upper hand? I don't know that we can take any of this for granted. So we just have to keep, you know, keep our courage intact, keep our strength and keep on going and believe in the values that live within our hearts.

Believe and also the other thing that I think you touch on a lot in this book is, is this aspect of social activism and fusing that with spiritual, spiritual practice. And to me, that is the antidote to a lot of these maybe, you know, it's one thing if you're going and meditating on your own at home, and that's all you're doing. You don't share it with anyone. And I'm not disparaging that at all. And that's a very valid way of getting to, you know, some higher states of awareness, but really taking it out into the world. I'm interested, you know, you mentioned the mindfulness stuff. And, you know, I have, I work with teachers, I, you know, I'm involved with people who have been, you know, seminal figures and bringing a lot of these practices to the west from the east.

And I've been fascinated, not, not really disturbed, but, you know, in all of how consumerism can quickly latch on to seemingly anything and co-opt it in a certain way, and not necessarily in a bad way, but it happens, right? We see this, it's called McMindfulness now, right? Everyone, you can get enlightened. I would have heard that one. Yeah, I, it's, this article, I think someone wrote about it in the New York Times like a few years ago, and I love that phrase, because, you know, you know, in the, especially in the United States and in western culture, we, when someone's doing, you know, six-minute abs, well, someone's going to do five-minute abs, you know, they want to get enlightened and spiritually attuned as quickly as possible in the best possible way with the best possible teachers. So we see this cottage industry kind of, you know, sprout up around it that, that is saying, well, this is the way to do it. Here's the ways you can be more fulfilled and work and make more money and be happier and have a better sex life and all through mindfulness now. And I love that you describe it as kind of like a fight, not a fight, but a struggle for the soul of humanity, because I think that these things are all macrocosms and microcosms of each other. And I would love to hear what, and I want to get into Rudolph Steiner after this, because I admittedly, I only, I have only read a few quotes here and there. I see him referenced very often in people I respect and admire. And I would love to talk about that right after this, but, um, what, what do you see? What, what would you recommend for someone who is maybe not an initiate into mindfulness practice? Let's say they have a meditative practice, they have some, you know, they've read be here now, they have some, some understanding of, you know, esotericism in the West, maybe some alchemy. What, what are some ways you think that we can extend whatever internal realizations that the individual comes up with and then take that out into the world? I have a feeling it's going to center around community, right, the Sangha and Buddhism, because that seems like the centers you've created have fostered that in a real practical way. So I'd love to hear maybe some of your thoughts as someone who's done this. Um, what do you see as potentially some of the antidotes to this co-opting or consumerism of these, you know, really valid and useful spirit. Right. Well, you know, you're absolutely right about all of this, of course. I mean, that's a very entertaining phrase, mindfulness, but this is, you know, this is America. I mean, we live in an intensely capitalist society that commodifies everything and that everybody's looking to make, well, not everybody, but a lot of people are looking to make a buck, preferably a fast buck on what a friend or fashion comes along. You know, it so happens that mindfulness is extremely fashionable right now. The last time I saw a picture of John Cabot Zinn, he was coming out of number 10 Downing Street in London, having just met with the British Prime Minister to discuss mindfulness in public schools. I mean, I was working with John Cabot Zinn at Omega 30 years ago, he had heard of it. So I mean, and John is a wonderful person. I totally support all his work. So yes, how do we discern between the legitimate, coherent and then the many fine teachers of mindfulness meditation practice and this commodification and exploitation? Well, I mean, you've got, I think, you've got to develop that faculty of discernment. One has a text to use the word discrimination because of its association, racism and things like that. But it's just having a sharp eye. You know, by all means, let's expand our hearts and have big hearts. But also cultivate your bullshit detector, too.

Right, exactly. We need to be acute, astute. We don't want to just turn into, you know, new-aid space cadets where everything is wonderful and it's all peace and love all the time. We're living in the real world. We have a real task here to try to bring consciousness into this material world. So we just have to be as grounded as we possibly can be. I do think what you said, community there is a valuable antidote to this kind of thing, places like the Open Center on Omega or Hollyhock in Canada or wherever it may be. You go to these places and you meet other people of light mind. They may become friends. They may become people who share your professional interests if you're interested in medicine or art or whatever it is. And I think having other people, spiritual brothers and sisters as it were, with whom you can share your concerns, your doubts, yeah, the Sanger's is called in Buddhism there. I think that is certainly very helpful. You just have to use your, you know, it comes down to common sense. You know, people think, oh, this is a spiritual thing. I should just swallow. Some people might think, oh, I should swallow it, hook land and sing about.

Ezra Osina himself says, with all his thousands of brilliant insights and pronounces, one should never swallow anything, hook land and singer. We should be open to it. We should, if we think it's an interesting idea, maybe we live with it as a possibility, but we should use the full resources of our critical intellect to examine any set of new ideas or new practices. We certainly don't want to leave the intellect behind. It's all that, you know, that capacity for discernment and to distinguish between what is authentic and inauthentic. These are qualities that are just as important in a way, maybe not quite as important, but they're important, along with having an open heart and a loving, compassionate nature. Remember, it's wisdom and compassion from the Eastern perspective that go hand in hand there. You can't really have one without the other.

So having discernment and acute judgment and trusting your instincts is an essential part of developing the wisdom that is necessary to make sure that we don't all wind up going to meditation centers and doing everything that just raw capitalism will turn the consciousness movement into, given a chance and enough time. Nobody opposes it. Well, I'm always fascinated, especially with the mindfulness stuff, because, you know, like I read an article how people on Wall Street, you know, brokers were starting to meditate so they could get an edge to make more money for their company. And I asked this question to people who, you know, have been involved with spiritual pursuits their entire lives. And my general feeling is, is whether it's in this life or in next life, eventually you will come to a greater realization.

And potentially maybe that realization will be that money and the pursuit of material goods might not lead to as much happiness as you originally posited. So I think that that inevitably can sprout from these things. But I do think it's incredibly important to be discerning as you put it. It's just it's, you know, even the Buddha, the Buddha said, right? He said, don't take my word for it, right? Use your own experiences to validate the things I'm saying. If anyone is going and telling you, I have the answer to everything. This is how it's done. Take my word for it. That should be a big flag. That should be a big warning. I don't know if that's totally totally legit. Okay, I want to get into Rudolph signer because I'm going to use you as my guide here. Not only to point me in the direction of something that I could get a nice introduction from him, but could you talk a little bit about who Rudolph signer was and how he has influenced you and your life and just any any exposition on on that? Well, yeah. Well, Rudolph signer from my point of view was one of the most remarkable spiritual figures of the 20th century. He was born in 1861 in what is now Croatia, but was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire then. He died in Switzerland in 1925. He's the real founder of biodynamic agriculture, which was the beginning of the return in the 20th century of organic agriculture. That's widespread worldwide now, quarter of a million biodynamic compost piles in India, on and on. He's also the founder of the Waldorf School movement. Some of them we've had a rural style school here in New York since 1929. People like Jennifer Aniston are graduates of it. But now the Waldorf schools I was mentioning earlier was going on in China, but they're spreading everywhere. It's to do with the educating the child's head, heart and hands. It's a holistic approach to education. Most kids don't even learn to read until they're seven because they're cultivating the imagination of the child. So, Waldorf education is about developing the creativity and autonomy of the child, which is the absolute antithesis of an educational system, as we have increasing me today, is trying to turn out people who could become cogs in the global economic machine.

It's going back to the Latin root of the word education, Ed Bugari, to lead out from within. So, it's realizing the potential of the child. So, that's one thing. Some of our listeners may have heard of the Camp Hill villages for special needs children and adults that are all over the world too. Those grew out of Rudolf Steiner's work. The Triados Bank in Holland is the world leader in ethical banking that was founded by people who were students of anthroposophy, as he called it. It's a bit of a mouthful, but anthropos is just man or the human being in Greek and Sophia, of course, is wisdom. So, it's the wisdom inherent within the human being. The realized human being. So, he grew up in humble circumstances. He spent seven years in Weimar doing research in the Gerta Schiller archives. He was extremely brilliant. He was a philosopher. He had a doctor in philosophy. He wrote books in that vein in his 30s dealing with epistemology. How do we know what we know? There's that philosophical side of Steiner because he did have a very, he was trained in Vienna, in math and physics and so on, and then trained in philosophy. So, he had a very, very rigorous mind. I'd have to say that we were our sign. I had probably the biggest mind. I have, as well as extremely rigorous, biggest mind I've come across in the 20th century in the west.

Anyway, it was only when he was, he was, he left Weimar at the end of the 19th century and worked in Berlin and the Workers Educational Association. He was always a man of the people. He worked that place. They had, they had Rosa Luxembourg and Rudolph Steiner teaching there in Berlin in 1901. Now, that's what I call an oven center. So, but then he began to speak about the spiritual side of things originally to the Theosophical Society because they were receptive to it. He wound up becoming general secretary of that, but then he split from them around 1911. Because of their embrace of Krishnamurti as the matraya, you know, people in the Theosophical Society got caught up in this fantasy that Christ was going to return physically and that it was Krishnamurti. And of course, as soon as Krishnamurti grew up, the first thing he said was, "It ain't me babe." So, Rudolph Steiner was absolutely right. So then he founded the Anthroposophical Society today. But all of that, essentially, he gave 6,000 lectures in his life. Basically, between 1901 and when he stopped lecturing because he became too ill in 1924, although he continued to write, can you imagine that? 6,000 lectures. Same. I mean, I could do maybe 15 or 20 if I really worked out. But Steiner knocked off some of them three, four a day and they are brilliant. I mean, they constitute, in my view, the greatest 20th century treasure trove of esoteric and spiritual wisdom that we have. And, you know, remember the line from the Bible by their fruit, surely, you know them. There's a lot of profound esoteric material in Steiner that can only that comes from insights beyond what we can perceive with our senses. Now, why should we accept that?

As I was saying earlier, Steiner felt that we really need to exercise our full discernment in this area. But we don't want to swallow it, hook line and sinker, but it's a massive body of spiritual wisdom. And the real proof, if we could go back to that line by their fruit, surely, know them, is how has it been expressed physically? It'd be one thing if Steiner had given quarter of a century of brilliant philosophical, spiritual, esoteric lectures. And then, you know, and then some people read it, some people didn't. But in the aftermath, in the latter part of his life, after the First World War, when Europe was in ruins, that's when teachers came to him and said that we want to start a new school. How can we rebuild civilization and new principles?

Our farmers came to him and said, we can see that the soil is becoming desiccated. How can we rejuvenate the soil with these, you know, mechanical practices coming in? So he said, okay, I'll give a whole lecture series on that. So all those practical things that we know Steiner for today just came out of the last five, six years of his life. But what they are is they're an incredible validation of the fact that you can take this profound esoteric philosophy. It's not just philosophy. It's esoteric spiritual wisdom. He himself considered himself to be a spiritual scientist. So he wasn't speculating. He felt that he could actually do research in the scientific spirit. Obviously, you can't measure and weigh things as you can in a normal scientific experiment, but you can train your mind to be extremely discerning, accurate. That's why over the temple, the Oracle at Delphi, they had no thyself. If you're going to do research in the inner world, you have to know yourself pretty well. And he said, yeah, but after all these centuries of focus on science to do with the outer world, it's time to bring that same folk objective autonomous spirit to the inner world, and that we can bring that spiritual scientific perspective. And that's where a lot of his work comes from. So I feel that this the fact that by dynamics and walled off and all of this is growing by leaps and bounds is an incredible testimony to the fact that there's real substance there. There's something our world really needs. And then you actually, well, where did it come from? And then that can lead back to this deep, beautiful spirituality. And he feels that the twin pillows of the human condition are love and freedom. And I think most spiritual paths, if not all, would concur that love is, as you were saying, is the heart of the human experience. Dante would even say that love is the very motor energy, should we say, are the very propulsive force of the universe, which that's my sense too. But I love Steiner's emphasis upon freedom, one of his more rigorous philosophical books when he felt was very important, it's called the philosophy of freedom.

So to me, I'm somebody who has always loved freedom. I was a teenage existentialist before I became spiritual. So the exercise of freedom, I think, is really important. And I think that's also when people encounter spiritual groups or movements that might be limiting of an individual's freedom. I think that's another good indicator that this is not a legitimate path, that it's a path showing real skepticism about. And any spiritual teacher who does not validate the freedom of his or her students, is to be questioned seriously. I mean, there's nothing wrong with questioning authority in the right place. So I think, yeah, so that's a little-- That's a lot. Well, I'm gonna start delving in right after our discussion here. I love that you describe him as someone who is able to-- I am continuously fascinated by people who go to the edges of whatever it is, right? Reasoning anything into these other worlds, whatever you want to call them, and then are able to communicate and bring back actionable pieces of wisdom or concepts that then can be applied in the world. That's one of the reasons-- At this point in my life, I'm not a heavy psychedelics user, but when I was younger, I was in my teenage years and early 20s. And what fascinated me about psychedelics wasn't just the amazing otherworldly experiences, but to actually come into contact with these other realms of consciousness and then be able to bring those back into our regular world, quote unquote, and really integrate them and apply them.

And that always, from my very first LSD trip when I was 15, was the overarching theme of what this was about. So I love, when the way you're describing it, that he went investigated in a scientific, spiritual scientific way, all of these things, and then brought them back, spoke about them. And then in the last six years of his life, I was able to implement-- I've heard of Waldorf schools. I had no idea that was related to Rudolf Steiner. That is super-- I love-- There's always teachers or writers or thinkers who I hear about on the periphery. And then, for whatever reason, I don't actively engage on my own. But then I meet someone like you, and you tell me about Rudolf Steiner, and I'm like, oh my god, this is a guy. I need to start investigating what this is about.

And just like you can track back a lineage of Tibetan teachers, you know, through many different turkeys and incarnations, you can track back a lineage of something as concrete as a Waldorf school to Rudolf Steiner. That to me is-- that's amazing. That is so very awesome. And people should-- is that? Yeah, I mean, from my point of view, in a Rudolf Steiner is the great, or certainly one of the great spiritual philosophers of the 20th century. And Carl Jung is the great healer of the soul, the great psychotherapists of the 20th century. And I'm a big fan of both. You don't find many people who have a feeling for both of them, but they were both geniuses of a high order, had a huge amount to give our world. Well, you know, it goes in line with one of my favorite spiritual stalwarts. My favorite spiritual text is the gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.

I'm a huge Ramakrishna fan, and his basic premise for those that don't know is lots of paths up the mountain. The view is the same. And so when you can find people who maybe are approaching it from different perspectives or a different area, but then they all line up, that to me is such a wonderful thing to see and experience. Yeah, yes. That's a beautiful way of putting it. Yeah. So we're at the end here, if you can believe it. I would love-- I ask every guest on the show, and we touched on this a little bit earlier, but I'd love to hear any practical tips that have helped you in your life and on your path. Just some real down-to-earth stuff that people could potentially use or help them. You know, it's not going to help everyone. Everyone is different, but some things that have practically helped you throughout your life. I've heard you say discernment and cultivating intuition, which I think is incredibly important, and I'd put there that probably at the top of my list too, but any other practical tips that you could all-- Well, you know, I mean, just thinking about it was you're saying it. I mean, I could say something like meditation. Everybody says that. I mean, I'm glad I came up here years ago. But you know, one of the things that really has been a big ally of mine, and I've followed it, and it's still an integrated part of my life is love of adventure. You know, I think that comes through in the book, whether it's hitchhiking to Machu Picchu or that whole mission I did for the Oracle of Tibet, at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. I've always loved adventure, freedom. You know, just when I stuck out that firm when I was 16 years old hitchhiking in Britain, and that rush today, I think, when the leni energy at the spine, but I can still remember all these years later, that incredible rush of energy right at the spine when that first truck stopped. Freedom.

So I think, yes, let's be spiritual and holistic and ecological and all that we need to be, but don't give up your zest for life and your love of adventure. I'm still feeling it even here in my 60s. I don't know if that's a practical tip, but I don't think you know, don't give it up. Just just because you get into meditation and yoga or whatever it is, don't give up that feeling of joy and new worlds and new possibilities and the excitement that comes with entering a new reality. I mean, I'm working now, I'm starting to work with people who are trying to build a holistic bridge between the US and China, because, you know, we know about the wall of schools, but there's China's like the 60s in the States, by all accounts. There's a massive interest in human potential.

There's a sexual revolution going on. They're looking for something meaningful beyond that just the consumerism and materialism that they've had for these years. It's not enough. And so for me, that feels like a whole adventure to be stepping possibly if it works. It's a little not fracking, but anyway, just supporting the emergence of a more holistic awareness in basically a quarter of the world's population. I mean, it's not going to happen overnight, but it's very exciting to me that this is happening. It's incredible, especially if like me, you were in China at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre and you saw the horrors around that. So yeah, that's what comes to mind. Noah, just keep on having fun and keeping on heading out into wild new worlds.

I love it. And I love that you mentioned fun too, because I think what can happen a lot with the spiritual stuff, the, you know, all of this, like everything is fun can be lost. And we can remember this can be there can be a lightness associated with a very serious journey, right? But there can be that aspect of fun. So I love that you mentioned that too. Ralph, this is Yeah, and I'm going to get back another little plug right here. I'm sure you'll say something. I will do it. I'll do it. That's for our listeners. I just want to remind our listeners that the book is the jeweled highway. The subtitle is on the quest for a life of meaning. You can find it on Amazon, of course, or the publisher Divine Arts Media. And yes, I hope I really enjoyed this now. It's been great to talk to you. And I hope that our listeners or some of our listeners will actually buy and enjoy the book. I will be recommending it heavily. And I'll have links on this podcast page to it. And I'll also be giving away a copy that I will purchase. I can't say enough great things about it. I, you know, like I said, I picked it up yesterday on Kindle, and I'm going to finish it in probably the next hour. So it was it's an incredible read. And I'm not surprised that the overwhelming support you're getting for it and the nice things people are saying because, you know, for someone like me who is very much interested in bridging, I like to consider myself somewhat of a bridge builder. I don't want these spiritual things to seem off in the distance and not being able to be related to our everyday lives. This book is just, I think it's such a wonderful exposition of how how you have done that and how potentially anyone can do that. So really, thank you so much for coming on. Well, thank you now for doing what you're doing here with this synchronicities program. I think, you know, your way of contributing to the development of our culture. And I really appreciate it. I'm trying. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on the show. All the very best. All right. Have a good one.

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