Mount Shasta, CA, March 21, 2026 — A new project beckons. It’s called “The Book of Hu.”
I’ll explain the name later, but here’s what it is … The Book of Hu is a guidebook to a better life. It contains clear, useful, and easy-to-apply methods to Live Longer, Prosper, and Find Peace.
Although that may sound presumptuous, I was startled recently when I realized that–somehow–in this lifetime I have stumbled across, or developed, or in some cases just plain stole a rather large set of simple-to-use methods to accomplish many, many things that people generally think to be difficult, or even impossible.
How to Live Longer, Prosper, and Find Peace
As it happened, these many short methods of how-to do things just naturally fell into three categories …
- How to Live Longer: Although I took *lousy* care of my body in early years, I was always interested in things like diet and exercise, as most guys are. Read a lot of books about weight-control, about this or that marvelous supplement, or about weight-lifting machines. And in my 40’s one day I ran across a mention of a book called “Life Extension,” and I thought to myself: “Now why WOULDN’T a person read that book?” Got the book, started studying, got real serious. I’d already been taking my vitamins since, at age 26, a minor starlet in Hollywood had told me about vitamins, back when NOBODY took vitamins, back when there were only two stores in Los Angeles that sold vitamins. But I started taking them, and taking my vitamins had been the one smart thing I’d done that paid dividends for my whole life. Aside from vitamins, no method of diet or exercise seemed to stick, until I was 70, way too fat, and felt crappy. And then I stumbled into a sequence of simple things that removed the weight, restored the health, and felt a LOT better. And it was rather easy!
. - How to Prosper: This is a collection of many different systems for doing things in the world. Some I learned from others, some from books. Others I developed. These don’t cover everything, but there are a surprising number of them altogether. For example, if you need to write things, I have simple systems for how to cure writer’s block in two weeks, how to write an entire book in a week, how to modify language to persuade hypnotically (beneath conscious awareness of the reader), and more. For example, if you need to manage people, I have simple systems to select people who will work out in the job when you’re hiring, how to either repair or eliminate any problem person, and how to quickly get rid of stage fright if you must speak before groups. For example, how to find a sweetheart if you don’t know how. For example, how advertising works, how to debug systems that are broken including electronics, paper trails, the sales process, phone wiring, and business systems. These don’t cover everything, but they cover a lot, and they’re all … simple.
. - How to Find Peace: This was a side-effect of my college studies (and earlier) in psychology, plus later learning in hypnosis, and a number of “rapid-results” therapies that led me to become skillful at handling either my own unruly emotions or helping others clear problems out of the way and find clarity about pretty much anything. Examples include how to clear troublesome automatic emotions from your life, how to find and clear limiting beliefs, how to actually understand dreams (and use those to find limiting beliefs, negative emotions, and discover new truths), and how to hugely increase your communication with your own unconscious mind, which has FAR more awareness of things outside your vision than you do. And you’ll even find a surprisingly simple explanation of how we create our own unconscious minds, how there are actually three functioning brains in your head, and why you can have fear trembling you even when everything *seems* to be OK.
Lao Tzu and the Tao te Ching
The story goes that Lao Tzu, in later years, grew weary of society’s corruption, and decided to leave the city forever. He had a water buffalo, so he packed a few things, climbed on top, and left the city. He was heading west toward the mountains, intending to disappear into solitude.
In those times, at the western border stood the Hangyu Pass, guarded by a gatekeeper named Yin Hsi, and recognizing Lao Tzu as a sage, Yin Hsi refused to open the gate, saying, “I won’t let you pass until you write down what you have learned, to share with the world.”
Lao Tzu wrote it down, in a concise book. This was the Tao te Ching.
In the book, Lao Tzu explains the essence of the Tao–which roughly corresponds to the aether of ancient Greek philosophers, to the infinite web of even older Vedic documents, to the omnipresence of God in many religions, to the discussions between David Boehm and Albert Einstein about an all-pervasive substance not exactly of this world that connects, creates, and contains both ourselves and the physical universe(s), and to the latest revelations coming from quantum physics today.
And in that book, Lao Tzu goes beyond the essence of the Tao, explaining natural harmony, humility, and “Wu-Wei,” which means “effortless action.”
Chris Neklason, the Airtight Answering Service, and Cronografix
And then, many centuries later in San Francisco, I came to operate Network Answering Service in a building on Geary Boulevard at Parker Street (not far from Arguello). And working there was a wonderful and sometimes quite magical crew of people who were somehow drawn there, who became an active and energetic community, and who enriched so much of our lives.
Among them was a fellow named Chris Neklason, who became interested in my very-early “micro-computer” and then went on to learn programming, then more and more and more, and today operates an absolutely fabulous ISP (Independent Service Provider) called “Cruzio,” providing internet services for people all around Santa Cruz and beyond.
Chris had many talents. Among them, he could draw pretty well. And one day, as a lark, he created a page–and then another, and then another–of what became a little comic book. It was called “Cronografix: the Airtight Answering Service,” a pun on my name and featuring the people in our crew at the time, in a lively space-faring adventure. He posted this, page by page, on the wall in the bathroom, so we all watched it grow. It had seemingly halted by the time that Chris–who later married Peggy Dolgenos, another amazing crewmember–was leaving for a higher-tech job, down in Silicon Valley, which led him on to astounding events.
But that night, after the party we’d set up for him, when he was quite drunk and about to leave, I stood at the bottom of the stair, and I told him, “I won’t let you leave until you complete Chronografix.”
He groaned. But he sat down on the stairs, and drew a final page, very very carefully. And this single page, with a single image and a single line of text, summarized and completed the entire story he’d created. Chronografix was complete.
And now, it’s my Turn …
And somehow, this is how I saw–in a recent epiphany–that I could take the hundreds of lovely things I’ve found along the path, and create a way to share them, and then combine them into a printed book.
Because, in this way, although our world will change, when I leave, perhaps some of these lovely, useful things can persist in the world, in a book, for … who knows? A hundred years? Two? Five?
Why not?
🙂
… click the card …
June 3, 1983, Hollywood: The movie “WarGames” was released. My good friend, Harvey Warnke, created these huge display screens that you see in the movie, just as you see them in this famous scene from the film.
San Francisco, September 12, 1976: This is called a switchboard.
3304 Geary Boulevard, San Francisco 1980’ish — When we opened Network Answering Service in my studio apartment in 1976, it was because I’d realized that the phone company’s new “Call Forwarding” service would enable me to build an answering service without the need to buy a switchboard, which also needs a LOT of costly wiring. The downside of my method was that when our phone rang, the incoming call could be for ANY of our clients. But who?
