Steps to Paradise and Beyond: Hawaii to China, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and Elsewhere. Steps to Paradise and  Beyond is the second volume of Verner Bickley's autobiography. He describes the events and issues that were important to him during a period of his life spent in Hawaii and Saudi Arabia. In Hawaii from 1971 to 1981, he served as the Director of the Culture Learning Institute at the East-West Center, established by the U.S. Congress.  For nine years, Verner led a small team of anthropologists, cross-cultural psychologists and linguists, focusing on the different ways in which individuals and whole societies cope in bicultural and multicultural contexts and how they address problems presented by different cultural norms.