conversation center conversation viewer and audience to justin and justin book just in time you can see as well as the man himself out in california justin you've got a hell of a life you've led and the book is very been in many many places you've had a very interesting life to lead the book is magnificent if i may say so and it's filled with wisdom and wit and i congratulate you enormously on it just in times  maybe do share you were born and raised in you seem to have moved around a great deal around the world and gathered knowledge and wisdom and as you went in the various places that you traveled maybe share with this year all your own background as you see it and then let's talk about some of the adventures that you've been in terms of your life but also the inside that you guard garnered during that process ok that sounds great moved into the city and lived in the city for a while and had some exposure to the underbelly of life in new york city a little gambling a little b any kind of thing and until i tired of the repetition of some of those activities and was looking for something more and then that search for something more met some people who knew things and understood things that i didn't and i was very fortunate in that regard some people from this country and some people from other places and spend some time visiting those people in there and getting to understand that there's a whole nother level of life they need to level out getting more reputation and getting more money and getting more everything yeah you had one chapter in there and i forget what the term was but you would dress people i think i forget what your term you use but there are people who are called to believe that was materially they don't have to be concerned with the rigors of doing what you have to do to earn a living in any direct and in way i forget what the term was that you use for those people but that is to me very much because there are more and more people despite the injustices that exist and have i throughout most all and the inadequacy throughout the human experience we've been here a couple one hundred thousand years as a species i guess and we've got we've been able to get more and more people who might be able to be  comfortably ensconced within the system that exists rather than having to be struggling you familiar with that section that caught my attention because i think that maybe a situation for humanity writ large the time that we're in we may be coming to a time where more and more of the world's population will be able to be in that kind of comfortable not having to be a concern with the  that once we become comfortable and have our grounding and have our level of success that the challenge to see that the small alterations that we may make or that we seek to make  take to move to another area to get to know new people to get a different job of the jobs gotten really have an element of repetition and it in them and it's difficult really to appreciate that these small that getting to that point and having to reassess and reassess and really explore what's possible for a human being and go more in that direction and certainly you can see from my book that i've i've traveled and tried so many different things but really it was part of an exploration of seeing that there is some depth in life that ordinarily we don't make connection with because there's so much repetition  in what we do and i'm speaking as you are as you refer to people who already have an amount of of comfort and leisure and and  control in their lives and that it may be when a person gets to that point it's time to seek a different level of depth in life yeah absolutely or it may be that it's actually  occurring i'm a great fan of bucky fuller i don't know if you've been involved with bucky fuller or not but bucky fuller was somebody that i'm very inspired by and so forth and he's made the point that through technological advancement or through the whole evolutionary process he used to be in order to i saw a program on television recently in the public television about the treatment of the people in the manor house is an edwardian england and they had the great manor houses for the people suffering or living in very great splendor within these manor houses and they didn't want to be bothered or they wanted the com but they didn't want to be bothered with having to have the servants that were bringing in the comfort in a direct way so they had what they had spiral staircases that were built into the walls of the building and then they had people and it was interesting because they had it for some reason in this i remember it was a very good program they had a lot of young went relatively young women but they had to carry buckets of water up a spiral staircase within the battle within the walls of the thing to poured into a bath tub so the lord could get a bath now almost everybody in the developed world can just by a matter without even thinking about it turn a tap and have clear and  water available to them as well as warm water so you can take a shower so that condition material condition that people are coming into a comfortable position let's say without having to be in a struggle it's becoming more and more available through the through the use of the use of the technology and i think maybe that's something that i'm concerned with i think we're getting the point where we have a capability of taking care of people more and more through through in the evolutionary process for said we're getting to the point where there could be actually more he talked about being have and have not materially spiritual is another matter of course that you will know but the idea of the material ability to take care of everybody in a way where there is enough residence zero scarcity where one wins another ad to lose all of that has been characteristic of history do you understand is there anything to that in my off base or what do you think about that i mean i think i think that i am also somewhat of a fan of buckminster fuller and i do comply with that idea and i do recognize th city for sensitivity for people who haven't gotten to that point because there are hundreds of millions of people that haven't got to that point so we can't pretend like technology and they dan now and not separate from those people but because where we're cutting a sense of their plight it's still does not put us in a position where we have to forget about that are fortunate this allows us a certain opening to something different and you could call it spiritual we code could call it yeah something of depth but it's important for us to understand that there is a next step for people who are fortunate and part of that next step is to have to take responsibility for the people who are less fortunate but that's not the whole step there's also another step of seeking more depth and quality in our lives in some way other than accumulating more whether it's hit reputation or goods or money or money could be that thing that seems to be the main issue so much of humanity now does revolve around the getting money it seems overwhelmingly the major thing to people have to be concerned with and yet the capability for taking care of me body at the level of capability that we have is growing all the time well money represents a lot a lot for us other than the ability to buy things money has been put forth as the vehicle for controlling life whether it's succeeded in doing that or not is definitely a question worthy of exploration because i contend that the accumulation of money requires the accumulation of insurance to make sure that money is protected to be more isolated from people and being afraid that that money is going to be taken away from you so they're really as money is accumulated we don't really get the increased control and satisfaction and peace that we imagine that we're going to have what we get is a whole nother set of problems and that's were clearly acknowledged and we would know that yes money is a factor and accumulating money has a positive effect but there are also other dimensions in life that have to be explored and if a person puts so much of their energy into accumulating money they're going to ignore or really be unaware that there is a depth in life that has nothing to do with money at all absolutely well said absolutely worlds and that we have to be concerned with what our great spiritual leaders have told us in the least among us more than we do and to have a sense of collective responsibility for the system that we're all part of better than perhaps is being manifest seems to be wars go on and the weapons have become so dastardly destructive now  increasingly so they're used to have one power fight another and so forth and i believe i don't know if you've given it much thought it's not a very pleasant thought but i've seen studies that the weapon systems collectively that have developed for one power to win out against another to make the wars in the kind of things that have been so part of the human condition and history that they finally come in their collective capability the capability to provide for everybody in a material way has increased but in the same time the weapon systems have become so you fission that apparently if they war to be unleashed from modeling it could very well mean the end of the homo sapiens species do you think that's the case that certainly was not the case as recently as a nd world war or so forth but there is something qualitatively different going on in the very times in which we've reached maturity and so many of the youth coming up are beginning to consider what their maturity might look like if you asked if there's i mean i hear what you're saying and i think there's there's a lot to that i think that the  downside of technology is difficult to appreciate when we are focused on the upside whether it be automobiles or or microwaves or or smart phones or computers as well as the the the the chemicals and the the explosives that can do so much damage that we're really not aware of the sophistication necessary and the wisdom necessary to operate a smartphone and not to operate a technology but to operate it wisely yeah so that people are still ripped retaining the ability to talk to each other and not only talk over a technological vehicle and that people are able to drive cars with an attitude of when they're going from place to place there is they are alive during that time and it's not just dead time between going from place to place and and telephones and televisions and really every aspect of technology that has so many positive possibilities and has base of science as well or also has that  accompany the recognition that it takes wisdom and sophistication and an understanding of that these things can be used in positive ways and these things can be used in self full of wisdom if i may and insight and storytelling that is really important and so what the problem is i wasn't able to put it down as much as i would like to do all the things i have to do so in it's on the cover of your book at you she was making sure all is one for representing before the birth or something and one after the birth and you ask her why didn't you make something relevant to the time of your life span and she did it such a short time that was a very interesting thing and you seem to have been able to find stories like that then and then in bring out in th to the ethos of the lake if you know yeah so i remember and share maybe we could share the experiences we had in bill in the country of bolivia if you don't well i did start visiting and i had a family friend yeah who lived right on the lake right on the border of karumba living in a small town and that family friend invited me down and i started visiting him when i was about twelve years old really i don't know maybe every new year in the summer after that and that person becomes became somewhat of my mentor and i certainly traveled around with him she was so for and also the director of their weaving co op in the small town and we would go around to the villages around around the lake and in the living in the mountains and he would collect we that and then gather them together and take them into lima peru and sell them for for exportation around the world and that actual story was something that happened to me a person that i ran into this lady weaver when i was quite young and obviously it made a big impression on me because i had never heard anybody say anything like that something to the effect of the these things these claws they call montoya's which are that they use for birth and death but actually the time in between the very important but not as significant as we make it according to our self importance yeah  that i've traveled a good deal in peru i've been in the mountains i've climbed to the mountains i've been in the desert i've spent probably three years if you would add up all the time that i've spent in peru it's been a while since i've been there since the passing of this mentor but it is it is one of my favorite places to have been to you've been all over the world and you've had adventures all over the world and you drawn from the adventures tremendously important ethical and moral insight and i congratulate you again on the book is magnificent and i think it on them are wide circulation you apparently were a knowing me or are or explorers in their own right and i said not only external explorers because we've gone on some good adventures together mostly connected with social work and helping where help is needed but sent to me year clips of your place where you're living it seems to me you're living in what is a very very real paradise now in northern california in seems absolutely gorgeous where you're living now  are you not caught with the travel bug do you want to go where do you want to go next the moon or to mars or you know you just have a nerd to murder to wander around or something you know well st let me nature friendly and there's grass in those trees in this hills but there are people that are living in the equally idyllic circumstances that are having difficulties and their life is filled with problems plans and problems are relationship so it's not only the external features of the photos that i've sent to that make this this world that i'm part of so i delight gets really the nature of inner exploration that makes it special and but that inner exploration it's important that it not be isolated so in answer to your question every couple of years  we spent a few months going to a place where people are less fortunate whether it then the syrian refugees or the the victims of hurricane katrina  or people when mexico that are having troubles or burmese people on the burmese border we go there for a few minutes and we use our building skills because we have developed here in this community that i live in building skills so we've built medical clinics and we've built improvements on houses and so mostly most of the exploration in terms of traveling to places in the last a number of years has been traveling to places in order to do that kind of assistance work and crisis intervention very and the encouraging are great leaders invariably have been all people even though they've been treated very badly out very often by political leaders that resented or whatever couldn't stand the things  saying such as a well a couple was jesus and spartacus and a couple of other people were saying let's take care of the least among this most of our spiritual or or meaningful leaders have said that and it's certain it is so much to be done that way to to prove them to improve the condition of the least among us rather than just giving in to greed and and and a war making thinking in that direction that's an interesting question i would i'm saying that i'm thinking that i am optimistic about the capacity of of individual human beings and if it happened conceivably an effect that would be broader reaching but i can't speak to that because it really has not been so much my my calling or or the job i feel that i have i work with and live with and know a relatively small number of people and i am optimistic about their possibilities because i see that the human capacity to explore inner a abilities and more depth is definitely there i would like and part of the reason that i've written these books that i've written is is because i suspect there are numerous people around the world people that i will never me that have this desire for another level of depth in their life rather than repetition and maybe something in something i've written will call their attention in this decade and next decade and next enter century two to some desire to to becoming more of an inner explorer so i am optimistic if i were an optimistic about that i wouldn't be able to write these books but what the overall possibility is for humor hannity on earth that's just a little bit too big a question for me to address it is could you share with you were in and back to where we started in order to get to this town that we wanted to get to and i and i really appreciated the challenge which is a challenge for anyone who asked to do something over again that they thought they had to really get ready accomplished and i felt the challenge of that but i i also was encouraged to take on the challenges and to learn that sometimes in order to go forward you have to go backwards have right that's a very important lesson to be learned you know and i buy i was all including the you got me up and everything like that but there was one bridge was out and you couldn't get over it and then you had to get to another one and that was you were upset because you had to go back i was go take a lot of time or something and then you instead of just cursing at our something you do a very moral and relevant realistic metaphor from that that was really very interesting and seemed to be you been a very interesting life do you ever get tired saying i want to stop is too interesting i'm having too many adventures and i'm going to slow down and just sit in the hammock for a while or something or  what you've been a very busy fellow you know it well it appears so but i have i have a lot of time i don't conceive of myself as busy ok i take a lot of time i mean i meditate i walk in the woods i sit still i allies you might say that encouraged me so when when i looked at something in a way they were not productive and i had somebody there to remind me that there is a productive way to look at this though the situation may not be preferable and i have personally taken on that role in relation to the people that i know and anybody that i might get to know in that we can't always d manipulate our external to rest more and do less things most of my exploration now or a certainly a larger proportion than has been in the past is internal exploration meaning meaning what human being is internally capable of not only through meditation but through getting rid of obstacles to our natural state because in my opinion our natural state contains a lot more goodness and kindness and giving then we understand and then we realized we preach appreciate but that goodness and kindness has to be uncovered so a lot of the exploration i've been part of  learn from what a person crossed paths with yeah is it tremendously valuable skill because if a person demands that they cross paths with wisdom and insight now that's a very big demand that people manifest because of their lack of possibility of options options that we have and there is so much to learn from from the from the acceptance of life that is available more to people in underdeveloped countries so i've learned so much from people in less fortunate situations as i have from people who are who are successful and accomplished and entering into terms of spiritual spiritual leaders there are elements of people that i have that learned lessons from and some of those people would be in the category of names that have been known and people had gone to know and certainly many more have been in the names of people that are not known and met people who have gathered certain amounts of wisdom in their lives and willing to pass it on so i have been very fortunate in that way in that i have learned how to learn from whatever circumstances come along and then also i have crossed paths with people that have had elements of wisdom and understanding that i've been able to to been inspired by while there are many that we can draw upon aren't there people  a spiritual tradition do you think the world is becoming to politico that the right attitude toward the left and spiritual leaders down through the ages that have appeared among not and do you think the i would be coming to secular perhaps are too wrapped up in the material world and the demands of the material world to take time to be considering the tradition that it held for so very long the rich who knew him out of the past from india or from other places and and from them from our spiritual leaders i suppose you do y do think that i think that that the valuation for learning from history has definitely decreased to a point that it's even dangerous that we don't learn from the mistakes that we made not only in this country but globally and i think that there are lessons to be learned from individuals but a knowledge of how of the progression of human history seems vitally important to me and the idea of spirituality being only a study of the present is a misunderstanding and a narrow and that's of the of the of the depth of human accomplishment and human error and the only way that we can really appreciate that is by studying it with some depth and understanding the history of human endeavor i think so many so many accomplishments and so many so many mistakes and missteps would have been avoided had we not known that this identical situation out of context has been lived through before and we know that even in our short time of the korea and vietnam and how we dealt with the st world war and the spanish american war and then and all that all the political scandals where not just seeing now for the st time but there's a history to that and it seems that we are oblivious to the history but there was a man who i'm sure you're familiar with senator moynihan who no longer is alive and but he was a new york senator and a historian who whenever asked for his opinion on a subject would give the historical context of that yeah that subject and the possible learning that that comes from those subjects and i think that we've lost the valuation for that we're not we're not we're not we're not anchored to the lessons of history and world as we ought and you coming up and so what we're doing for the moment too much and  before in this year what is is two thousand and seventeen of i guess the christian era is that what that would be worth living in are you optimistic or pass or can you do you sometimes feel pessimistic about the human prospect i just wonder well i i see that i see that the study of of our moments of life in the present and th discovery of the ups tickles to what could be a different manifestation of human activity is is undervalued and with the if with possible change in the valuation for studying ourselves studying for what we occupy ourselves with and how much negativity in small ways we deal with  lack of awareness of our condition is a problem but i see it also as a problem that could be altered with with a slight change in focus that our priorities are changing things externally not really understanding that there is a sea of disharmony within individual human beings even human beings that do  kind of gestures toward others there is this and this sea of this harmony can be altered but it requires a certain self study for it to be altered because we are not generally aware of the specifics of our disharmony and we can be aware of that and very frequently that awareness allows things to drop away and not not an agony of loss d of giving up or surrender but more seen things as they are so that they can be left behind because they are no longer profitable or worthwhile but more self destructive i where i was a you might even say addicted to that t v because it was a window on a world that was much more expanded then the world that i had which was basically going to school and and my friends and playing stickball in the street again and things like that so i was definitely enamored by watching movies and watching movies and foreign places and watching documentaries about things that have taken place  old mike wallace documentaries and yet so many so many documentaries that i have watched and learned really so much from that i came i became a television person yeah and even when i went to high school i session was the afternoon session so i had all morning to be to be at home and and so since my my house was less crowded at that time people went out to work i would either get together with my friends or i would watch documentaries on t v even then so my my valuation for t v was a lot more than entertainment it was really my window on the expanse  expansiveness life and it's not so much that i was a special child or precocious in any way whatsoever but i was fascinated by all the different places that that a person could go to of the capability of the of the internet and i you a fan of the internet are you happy to have it here the ability to get so much ability of information and forth and then also the multimedia the trend toward multimedia away from literacy week to visit with marshall mcluhan i don't know if you would take it with my argument blue and and he was he wrote a book called the gutenberg galaxy and who was a student of the digital development and seemed to be an intrinsic part of the human condition and what is your thought on that particularly as it more not only into information technology but it's morphing over on into robotics now and that's good that's huge i think that i think that it's really important to understand that breakthroughs in technology are precious and there is a definite and wisdom what is our capacity to handle to handle the a parents information then repeated information and misinformation then how capable are to handle that wisely i think it's interesting because as you say i've written four books and each of these four books i've written for a different reason the st book i wrote i wrote because i had a lot of ideas and notes written down and  i was curious to see if i could compile those notes into something that was substantial and really to have a story woven through it so i wrote a wrote this poker story and that and seemed to be able to put everything all these ideas through that and i was pretty satisfied and that book became a bestseller which was a big surprise to me but then i didn't i didn't write anything again for a number of years and then poetic license in developing that story i had now and i was very pleased with that with the way the wisdom came through in that story and then i follow that with writing really international monetary adventure to take place in cuba which is a place i've been to but had very little experience with and that was more i took the note as a personal challenge to see if i could write a spy story because i like spy stories and and then the th one the last one was this just in time which i'm really glad that you appreciate because i'm proud of that accomplishment i think that that i've done well in young because they all have a moral at the end and the moral is presented with such a literary style style and so forth and so it's deep and really beautiful humor that i dis really congratulate you enormously on that i'm going to take  little point of privilege here and i'm sorry about it we've had a lot of trouble here and i'm going to have to ask my my producer to let me know if she has how the time do you how much time to go eight minutes you get me a signal i've lost the time so even minutes we got more eight more minutes so now we know what we can go within everything and again i do congratulated are you are you still think do you still enjoy not only the challenge of playing but i also do enjoy the camaraderie of the people that have that interest because that generally wouldn't be considered a part of the elation that i would get to know but sitting at a poker table with with eight or nine people you get to know some people that you would never rise get to know and i do like that part of the school didn't you get one if i'm not mistaken if i am you just got me short never there was a thing where you had running tipsters or something at the track you know how to read the racing form and you got involved and i would say a point of personal privilege in my life i've had a very privileged up great family and we had a woman who took care of us when we were young and and she and she had there were such devastation from the depression and the great depression and james stein back in there and she was there she used to take care of us and everything like that and i was privileged i guess because i had a great family my mother was the best mother in the history of the universe and everything but she was there she had been a wayward she been thro land and so she ended up in our house to the best sisters in the history of the world a great dog you know i had a wonderful background and she was one who gave me a little bit about answer because she she taught me some really important valuable if you want to pass on any wisdom or be able to understand how people live and think so not only languages in terms of french and spanish and italian but language in terms of the language of of  languages and to be part of that so that i don't feel that there are aspects of life whether it be in nature and in the big cities that i feel exclusive to i feel inclusive of all those things it's all part of the human experience  in order to have access to the story of human knowledge and you think it might be good if we could get the cyber wizards to maybe deal with the kind cough anie of the seven thousand languages that exist through some sort of all rhythmic way of translating the languages one into the other and get over the language divide do you think there's rumors that they may be working seriously on that major event or major do you think that would be a good thing if we could get multimedia which doesn't require the alphabet and the language problem would be autonomically handled so you'd have a distorted human knowledge presented with graphics and all of that sort of thing but i think i think although harold i think i could be a very interesting breakthrough in a very interesting exploration for now i have a collected a number of  books and songs and and movies all of which i value and all of which have some message has some undercurrent of something that i think would be  people for people and and i have included that list in the back of the book because i thought you know i have gotten great value from from this these creative expressions of different people think about in the time ahead maybe this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship i would like to suggest between you and me i think that would be beautiful and very receptive to that yeah ok very good how much i we got two minutes left ok i'm sorry i read the clock down so anyway and we had a lot of problems with this thing i got to get traps on this doing more are you doing are you making every thought to make film yourself or not if you got into multimedia as a way of expression you write very well often writing is the thing that makes the most media or the film make the expression really meaningful and so forth have you thought about trying to think your hand in filmmaking or video and or anything else every every month or so i speak to number of people and people come and that's it's tree and it's available and it's in northern california and and we video meetings so there's been numerous video representation so be speaking and some of them have elements of adventure travel that we've gone and participated in like that and that's about as far as i've taken the production of the of my dear i love the thought of developing a film itself like a feature film that brings in some of the experience and you bad because you write so well and very often the good writing is sign of somebody who could be just as well real good filmmaker and even story to going along the lines of maybe you could get in touch as a people have you had some time in hollywood with  the maybe maybe you can find a few people that you could be cozying up to or something like that and i just graduated you enormously and such a very well led life and certainly the book and i thank you for this meeting and please do g my my best to paul and everyone in your corner and i wish you all the very best and thank you very much for such a very well led life ok ok no well i guess that's it  troubles but ok and i'm very happy to have made this this connection with you here now then look forward to being in touch ok