''You may hear everything completely differently...
''and it may be very upsetting.
''Now, I was once in a performance where I was wearing earmuffs...
and I couldn't hear anything anybody said.''
And then another one said, ''Oh, you know, whenever I wear even a hat on stage...
I tend to faint.''
I mean, those remarks were just full of hostility...
because, I mean, if I'd listened to those people, I would have gone out there on stage...
and I wouldn't have been able to hear anything, and I would have fainted.
But the hostility was completely inappropriate...
because, in fact, those people liked me.
I mean, that hostility was just some feeling that was, you know...
left over from some previous experience.
Because somehow in our social existence today...
we're only allowed to express our feelings, uh...
weirdly and indirectly.
If you express them directly, everybody goes crazy.
Well, did you express your feelings about what those people said to you?
No. [ Chuckles ] I mean, I didn't even know what I felt till I thought about it later.
And I mean, at the most, you know, in a situation like that, uh...
even if I had known what I felt...
I might say something, if I'm really annoyed...
like, uh, ''Oh, yeah. Well, that's just fascinating...
and, uh, I probably will faint tonight,just as you did.''
I do just the same thing myself.
We can't be direct, so we end up saying the weirdest things.
I mean, I remember a night. It was a couple of weeks after my mother died.
And I was in pretty bad shape.
And I had dinner with three relatively close friends...
two of whom had known my mother quite well...
and all three of whom had known me for years.
You know that we went through that entire evening without my being able to...
for a moment, get anywhere near what -
Not that I wanted to sit and have this dreary evening...
in which I was talking about all this pain that I was going through and everything.
Really, not at all.
But the fact that nobody could say...
''Gee, what a shame about your mother'' or ''How are you feeling?''
It was just as if nothing had happened. They were all making these jokes and laughing.
I got quite crazy, as a matter of fact.
One of these people mentioned a certain man whom I don't like very much...
and I started screeching about how he had just been found in the Bronx River...
and his penis had dropped off from gonorrhea, and all kinds of insane things.
And later, when I got home, I realized I'd just been desperate to break through this ice.
Yeah.
I mean, do you realize, Wally, if you brought that situation into a Tibetan home -
That'd be just so far out. I mean, they wouldn't be able to understand it.
That would be simply- simply so weird, Wally.
If four Tibetans came together, and tragedy had just struck one of the ones...
and they spent the whole evening going - [ Loud Laughing ]
I mean,you know, Tibetans would have looked at that...
and would have thought that was the most unimaginable behavior.
- But for us, that's common behavior. - Mm-hmm.
I mean, really, the - the Africans would have probably put their spears into all four of us...
'cause it would have driven them crazy.
They would have thought we were dangerous animals or something like that.
- Right. - I mean, that's absolutely abnormal behavior.
Is everything all right, gentlemen?
- Great. - Yeah.
But those are typical evenings for us.
I mean, we go to dinners and parties like that all the time.
These evenings are really like sort of sickly dreams...
because people are talking in symbols.
Everyone is sort of floating through this fog of symbols and unconscious feelings.
No one says what they're really thinking about.
Then people will start making these jokes that are really some sort of secret code.
Right. Well, what often happens in some of these evenings...
is that these really crazy little fantasies will just start being played with, you know...
and everyone will be talking at once and sort of saying...
''Hey, wouldn't it be great if Frank Sinatra and Mrs. Nixon and blah-blah-blah...
were in such and such a situation?''
You know, always with famous people, and always sort of grotesque.
Or people will be talking about some horrible thing...
like - like, uh, the death of that girl in the car with Ted Kennedy...
and they'll just be roaring with laughter.
I mean, it's really amazing. It's just unbelievable.
That's the only way anything is expressed, through these completely insane jokes.
I mean, I think that's why I never understand what's going on at a party.
I'm always completely confused.
You know, uh, Debby once said, after one of these New York evenings...
she thought she'd traveled a greater distance...
just by journeying from her origins in the suburbs of Chicago...
to that New York evening...
than her grandmother had traveled in, uh, making her way...
from the steppes of Russia to the suburbs of Chicago.
- I think that's right. - [ Wally Chuckles ]
You know, it may- it may be, Wally, that one of the reasons...
that we don't know what's going on...
is that when we're there at a party, we're all too busy performing.
Uh-huh.
That was one of the reasons that, uh, Grotowski gave up the theater.
He just felt that people in their lives now were performing so well...
that performance in the theater was sort of superfluous...
and, in a way, obscene.
Huh.
Isn't it amazing how often a doctor...
will live up to our expectation of how a doctor should look?
When you see a terrorist on television, he looks just like a terrorist.
I mean, we live in a world in which fathers...
or single people, or artists...
are all trying to live up to someone's fantasy...
of how a father, or a single person, or an artist should look and behave.
They all act as if they know exactly how they ought to conduct themselves...
at every single moment...
and they all seem totally self-confident.
Of course, privately people are very mixed up about themselves.
Yeah.
They don't know what they should be doing with their lives.
- They're reading all these self-help books. - Oh, God!
I mean, those books are just so touching, because they show...
how desperately curious we all are to know how all the others of us...
are really getting on in life...
even though, by performing these roles all the time...
we're just hiding the reality of ourselves from everybody else.
I mean, we live in such ludicrous ignorance of each other.
We usually don't know the things we'd like to know...
even about our supposedly closest friends.
I mean - I mean, you know...
suppose you're going through some kind of hell in your own life.
Well, you would love to know if your friends have experienced similar things.
But we just don't dare to ask each other.
No. It would be like asking your friend to drop his role.
I mean, we just put no value at all on perceiving reality.
I mean, on the contrary, this incredible emphasis that we all place now...
on our so-called careers...
automatically makes perceiving reality a very low priority...
because if your life is organized around trying to be successful in a career...
well, it just doesn't matter what you perceive or what you experience.
You can really sort of shut your mind off for years ahead, in a way.
You can sort of turn on the automatic pilot.
You know,just the way your mother's doctor had on his automatic pilot...
when he went in and he looked at the arm...
and he totally failed to perceive anything else.
That's right. Our- Our minds are just focused on these goals and plans...
which in themselves are not reality.
No. Goals and plans are not -
I mean, they're - they're fantasy. They're part of a dream life.
I mean, you know, it always just does seem so ridiculous, somehow...
that everybody has to have his little - his little goal in life.
I mean, it's so absurd, in a way, when you consider that it doesn't matter which one it is.
Right. And because people's concentration is on their goals...
in their life they just live each moment by habit.
Really, like the Norwegian telling the same stories over and over again.
- Mm-hmm. - Life becomes habitual.
And it is today.
I mean, very few things happen now like that moment...
when Marlon Brando sent the Indian woman to accept the Oscar...
and everything went haywire.
Things just very rarely go haywire now.
And if you're just operating by habit...
then you're not really living.
I mean, you know, in Sanskrit, the root of the verb ''to be''...
is the same as ''to grow'' or ''to make grow.''
Huh.
[ Woman Laughing ]
- Do you know about Roc? - Hmm?
[ Chuckling ] Oh, well.
Roc was a wonderful man.
He was one of the founders of Findhorn...
and he was one of Scotland's -well, he was Scotland's greatest mathematician...
and he was one of the century's great mathematicians.
And he prided himself on the fact that he had no fantasy life, no dream life -
nothing to stand be - no imaginary life -
nothing to stand between him and the direct perception of mathematics.
And one day when he was in his mid-50s, he was walking in the gardens of Edinburgh...
and he saw a faun.
The faun was very surprised because fauns have always been able to see people...
but you know, very few people ever see them.
You know, uh, those little imaginary creatures.
- Not a deer. - Oh.
- You call them fauns, don't you? - I thought a fawn was a baby deer.
Yeah, well, there's a deer that's called a fawn, but these are like those little imagi -
- Oh! The kind that Debussy- - Yes. Right.
Well, so he got to know the faun, and he got to know other fauns...
and a series of conversations began...
and more and more fauns would come out every afternoon to meet him.
And he'd have talks with the fauns.
Then one day, after a while, when, you know, they'd really gotten to know him...
they asked him if he would like to meet Pan...
because Pan would like to meet him.
And of course, Pan was afraid of terrifying him...
because he knew of the Christian misconception...
which portrayed Pan as an evil creature, which he's not.
But Roc said he would love to meet Pan, and so they met...
and Pan indirectly sent him on his way on a journey...
in which he met the other people who began Findhorn.
But Roc used to practice certain exercises -
like, uh, for instance, if he were right-handed...
all today he would do everything with his left hand.
All day- eating, writing, everything - opening doors...
in order to break the habits of living.
Because the great danger, he felt, for him...
was to fall into a trance, out of habit.
He had a whole series of very simple exercises that he had invented...
just to keep seeing, feeling, remembering.
Because you have to learn now.
It didn't used to be necessary, but today you have to learn something...
like, uh, are you really hungry...
or are you just stuffing your face - [ Laughing ]
Because that's what you do, out of habit?
I mean, you can afford to do it, so you do it...
whether you're hungry or not.
You know, if you go to the Buddhist Meditation Center...
they make you taste each bite of your food...
so it takes two hours - it's horrible - to eat your lunch.
But you're conscious of the taste of your food.
If you're just eating out of habit, then you don't taste the food...
and you're not conscious of the reality of what's happening to you.
You enter the dream world again.
Now, do you think maybe we live in this dream world...
because we do so many things every day that affect us in ways...
that somehow we're just not aware of?
I mean, you know, I was thinking, um, last Christmas...
Debby and I were given an electric blanket.
I can tell you that it is just such a marvelous advance...
- over our old way of life, and it is just great. - [ Andr� Chuckling ]
But, uh, it is quite different from not having an electric blanket...
and I sometimes sort of wonder, well, what is it doing to me?
I mean, I sort of feel, uh, I'm not sleeping quite in the same way.
[ Chuckles ] No, you wouldn't be.
I mean, uh, and my dreams are sort of different...
and I feel a little bit different when I get up in the morning.
I wouldn't put an electric blanket on for anything.
First, I'd be worried I might get electrocuted. No, I don't trust technology.
But I mean, the main thing, Wally, is that I think that that kind of comfort...
just separates you from reality in a very direct way.
- You mean - - I mean, if you don't have that electric blanket...
and your apartment is cold and you need to put on another blanket...
or go into the closet and pile up coats on top of the blankets you have...
well, then you know it's cold.
And that sets up a link of things.
You have compassion for the per- Well, is the person next to you cold?
Are there other people in the world who are cold?
What a cold night! I like the cold.
My God, I never realized. I don't want a blanket. It's fun being cold.
I can snuggle up against you even more because it's cold.
All sorts of things occur to you.
Turn on that electric blanket, and it's like taking a tranquilizer...
or it's like being lobotomized by watching television.
I think you enter the dream world again.
I mean, what does it do to us, Wally, living in an environment...
where something as massive as the seasons, or winter, or cold...
don't in any way affect us?
I mean, we're animals, after all.
I mean, what does that mean?
I think that means that instead of living under the sun...
and the moon and the sky and the stars...
we're living in a fantasy world of our own making.
Yeah, but I mean, I would never give up my electric blanket, Andr�.
I mean, because New York is cold in the winter.
I mean, our apartment is cold. It's a difficult environment.
I mean, our lives are tough enough as it is.
I'm not looking for ways to get rid of the few things that provide relief and comfort.
I mean, on the contrary, I'm looking for more comfort...
because, uh, the world is very abrasive.
I mean, uh, I'm trying to protect myself...
because, really, there are these abrasive beatings to be avoided everywhere you look.
But, Wally, don't you - don't you see that comfort can be dangerous?
I mean, you like to be comfortable, and I like to be comfortable too...
but comfort can lull you into a dangerous tranquillity.
I mean, my mother knew a woman, Lady Hatfield...
who was one of the richest women in the world...
and she died of starvation because all she would eat was chicken.
I mean, she just liked chicken, Wally, and that was all she would eat.
And actually her body was starving, but she didn't know it...
'cause she was quite happy eating her chicken, and so she finally died.
See, I honestly believe that we're all like Lady Hatfield now.
We're having a lovely, comfortable time with our electric blankets and our chicken...
and meanwhile we're starving because we're so cut off from contact with reality...
that we're not getting any real sustenance, 'cause we don't see the world.
We don't see ourselves.
We don't see how our actions affect other people.
Have you read Martin Buber's book On Hasidism?
- No. - Well, here's a view of life.
I mean, he talks about the belief of the HasidicJews...
that there are spirits chained in everything.
There are spirits chained in you. There are spirits chained in me.
Well, there are spirits chained in this table.
And that prayer is the action of liberating these enchained embryo-like spirits...
and that every action of ours in life...
whether it's, uh, doing business, or making love...
or having dinner together, or whatever-
that every action of ours should be a prayer...
a sacrament in the world.
Now, do you think we're living like that?
Why do you think we're not living like that?
I think it's because if we allowed ourselves to see what we do every day...
we might just find it too nauseating.
I mean, the way we treat other people.
You know, every day, several times a day, I walk into my apartment building.
The doorman calls me Mr. Gregory, and I call him Jimmy.
Already, what's the difference between that...
and the Southern plantation owner who's got slaves?
You see, I think that an act of murder is committed in that moment...
when I walk into that building.
Because here's a dignified, intelligent man - a man of my own age -
and when I call him Jimmy, then he becomes a child, and I'm an adult...
because I can buy my way into the building.
Right. That's right.
I mean, my God, when I was a Latin teacher...
I mean, people used to treat me -
I mean, uh, you know, if I would go to a party...
of professional or literary people...
I mean, I was just treated, uh, in the nicest sense of the word...
uh, like a dog.
I mean, in other words, there was no question...
of my being able to participate on an equal basis in a conversation with people.
I mean, you know, I'd occasionally have conversations with people...
but then, uh, when they asked what I did...
which would always happen after about five minutes...
uh, you know, their faces -
Even if they were enjoying the conversation, or they were flirting with me, or whatever it was -
their faces would just have that expression just like the portcullis crashing down.
You know, those medieval gates. They would just walk away.
I mean, I literally lived like a dog.
And I mean, uh, when Debby was working as a secretary, you know...
if she would tell people what she did, they would just go insane.
I mean, it would be just as if she'd said, uh...
''Oh, well, I've been serving a life sentence recently, uh, for child murdering.''
I mean, my God, you know, when you talk about our attitudes toward other people...
I mean, I think of myself...
as just a very decent, good person, you know...
just because I think I'm reasonably friendly...
to most of the people I happen to meet every day.
I mean, I really think of myself quite smugly.
I just think I'm a perfectly nice guy, uh, you know...
so long as I think of the world as consisting of, you know...
just the small circle of the people that I know as friends...
or the few people that we know in this little world of our little hobbies -
the theater or whatever it is.
And I'm really quite self-satisfied. I'm just quite happy with myself.
I just have no complaint about myself.
I mean, you know, let's face it.
I mean, there's a whole enormous world out there that I just don't ever think about.
I certainly don't take responsibility for how I've lived in that world.
I mean, you know, if I were actually to sort of confront the fact...
that I'm sort of sharing this stage...
with-with-with this starving person in Africa somewhere...
well, I wouldn't feel so great about myself.
So naturally I just - I just blot all those people right out of my perception.
So, of course - of course, I'm ignoring...
a whole section of the real world.
But frankly, you know...
when I write a play, in a way, one of the things I guess I think I'm trying to do...
is I'm trying to bring myself up against some little bits of reality...
and I'm trying to share that, uh, with an audience.
I mean - I mean, of course we all know, uh...
the theater is, uh, in terrible shape today.
I mean, uh - I mean, at least a few years ago people who really cared about the theater...
used to say, ''The theater is dead.''
And now everybody's redefined the theater in such a trivial way...
that, I mean - I mean, God...
I know people who are involved with the theater who go to see things now that -
I mean, a few years ago these same people...
would have just been embarrassed to have even seen some of these plays.
I mean, they would have just shrunk, you know,just in horror...
at the superficiality of these things.
But now they say, ''Oh, that was pretty good.''
It's just incredible.
And I really just find that attitude unbearable...
because I really do think the theater can do something very important.
I mean, I do think the theater can help bring people in contact with reality.
Now, now, you may not feel that at all. You may just find that totally absurd.
Yeah, but, Wally, don't you see the dilemma?
You're not taking into account the period we're living in.
I mean, of course that's what the theater should do.
I mean, I've always felt that.
You know, when I was a young director, and I directed the Bacchae at Yale...
my impulse, when Pentheus has been killed by his mother and the Furies...
and they pull the tree back, and they tie him to the tree...
and fling him into the air, and he flies through space and he's killed...
and they rip him to shreds and I guess cut off his head -
my impulse was that the thing to do was to get a head from the New Haven morgue...
and pass it around the audience.
Now, I wanted Agawe to bring on a real head...
and that this head should be passed around the audience...
so that somehow people realized that this stuff was real, see?
That it was real stuff.
- Now, the actress playing Agawe absolutely refused to do it. - [ Giggling ]
You know, Gordon Craig used to talk about...
why is there gold or silver in the churches or something - the great cathedrals -
when actors could be wearing gold and silver?
And I mean, people who saw Eleonora Duse in the last couple of years of her life, Wally-
people said that is was like seeing light on stage, or mist...
or the essence of something.
I mean, then when you think about Bertolt Brecht -
He somehow created a theater in which people could observe...
that was vastly entertaining and exciting...
but in which the excitement didn't overwhelm you.
He somehow allowed you the distance between the play and yourself...
that, in fact, two human beings need in order to live together.
You know, the question is whether the theater now can do for an audience...
what Brecht tried to do or what Craig or Duse tried to do.
Can it do it now?
'Cause, you see, I think that people today are so deeply asleep...
that unless, you know, you're putting on those sort of superficial plays...
that just help your audience to sleep more comfortably...
it's very hard to know what to do in the theater.
[ People Chattering, Laughing ]
Because, you see, I think that if you put on serious, contemporary plays...
by writers like yourself...
you may only be helping to deaden the audience in a different way.
What do you mean?
Well, I mean, Wally...
how does it affect an audience to put on one of these plays...
in which you show that people are totally isolated now...
and they can't reach each other, and their lives are desperate?
Or how does it affect them to see a play that shows that our world...
is full of nothing but shocking sexual events, and terror, and violence?
Does that help to wake up a sleeping audience?
See, I don't think so, 'cause I think it's very likely...
that the picture of the world that you're showing them in a play like that...
is exactly the picture of the world they have already.
I mean, you know, they know their own lives and relationships...
are difficult and painful.
And if they watch the evening news on television...
well, there what they see is a terrifying, chaotic universe...
full of rapes and murders and hands cut off by subway cars...
and children pushing their parents out of windows.
So the play tells them that their impression of the world is correct...
and that there's absolutely no way out.
There's nothing they can do.
And they end up feeling passive and impotent.
I mean, look- look, at something like that christening...
that my group arranged for me in the forest in Poland.
Well, there was an example of something that really had all the elements of theater.
It was worked on carefully. It was thought about carefully.
It was done with exquisite taste and magic.
And they, in fact, created something...
which, in this case, was, in a way, just for an audience of one -just for me.
But they created something that had ritual, love, surprise...
denouement, beginning, a middle and end...
and was an incredibly beautiful piece of theater.
And the impact that it had on its audience - on me -
was somehow a totally positive one.
It didn't deaden me. It brought me to life.
Yeah, but I mean, are you saying that it's impossible -
I mean, uh - I mean - I mean, uh, isn't it a little upsetting...
to come to the conclusion that there's no way to wake people up anymore...
except to involve them in some kind of a strange, uh, christening in Poland...
or some kind of a strange experience on top of Mount Everest?
I mean, uh, because, uh, you know that the awful thing is...
if you really say that it's-it's necessary...
to, uh, take everybody to, uh, Everest...
it's really tough, because everybody can't be taken to Everest.
I mean, there must have been periods in history when it would have been possible...
to, uh, save the patient through less drastic measures.
I mean, there must have been periods when in order to give people...
a strong or meaningful experience...
you wouldn't actually have to take them to Everest.
But you do now. In some way or other, you do now.
You know, there was a time when you could have just, for instance, written...
I don't know, uh, Sense and Sensibility byJane Austen.
And I'm sure the people who read it had a pretty strong experience. I'm sure they did.
I mean, all right, now you're saying that people today wouldn't get it.
Maybe that's true. But I mean, isn't there any kind of writing or any kind of a play-
I mean, isn't it still legitimate for writers...
to try to portray reality so that people can see it?
I mean, really, tell me, why do we require a trip to Mount Everest...
in order to be able to perceive one moment of reality?
I mean - I mean, is Mount Everest more real than New York?
I mean, isn't New York real?
I mean, you see, I think if you could become fully aware...
of what existed in the cigar store next door to this restaurant...
I think it would just blow your brains out.
I mean - I mean, isn't there just as much reality to be perceived...
in a cigar store as there is on Mount Everest?
I mean, what do you think?
I think that not only is there nothing more real about Mount Everest...
I think there's nothing that different, in a certain way.
I mean, because reality is uniform, in a way...
so that if your- if your perceptions are -
I mean, if your own mechanism is operating correctly...
it would become irrelevant to go to Mount Everest, and sort of absurd...
because, I mean - it just - I mean, of course, on some level, I mean...
obviously it's very different from a cigar store on 7 th Avenue.
- But I mean - - Well, I agree with you, Wally.
But the problem is that people can't see the cigar store now.
I mean, things don't affect people the way they used to.
I mean, it may very well be that 1 0 years from now...
people will pay $1 0,000 in cash to be castrated...
just in order to be affected by something.
Well, why-why do you think that is? I mean, why is that?
I mean, is it just because people are lazy today, or they're bored?
I mean, are we just like bored, spoiled children...
who've just been lying in the bathtub all day...
just playing with their plastic duck...
and now they're just thinking, ''Well, what can I do?''
Okay. Yes. We're bored.
We're all bored now.
But has it every occurred to you, Wally, that the process...
that creates this boredom that we see in the world now...
may very well be a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing...
created by a world totalitarian government based on money...
and that all of this is much more dangerous than one thinks...
and it's not just a question of individual survival, Wally...
but that somebody who's bored is asleep...
and somebody who's asleep will not say no?
See, I keep meeting these people - I mean, uh,just a few days ago...
I met this man whom I greatly admire.
He's a Swedish physicist. Gustav Bj�rnstrand.
And he told me that he no longer watches television...
he doesn't read newspapers, and he doesn't read magazines.
He's completely cut them out of his life...
because he really does feel that we're living in some kind of Orwellian nightmare now...
and that everything that you hear now contributes to turning you into a robot.
And when I was at Findhorn, I met this extraordinary English tree expert...
who had devoted his life to saving trees.
Just got back from Washington, lobbying to save the redwoods.
He's 84 years old, and he always travels with a backpack...
'cause he never knows where he's gonna be tomorrow.
And when I met him at Findhorn, he said to me, ''Where are you from?''
I said, ''New York.'' He said, ''Ah, New York. Yes, that's a very interesting place.
Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?''
And I said, ''Oh, yes.'' And he said, ''Why do you think they don't leave?''
I gave him different banal theories. He said, ''Oh, I don't think it's that way at all.''
He said, ''I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp...
''where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves...
''and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they've built.
''They've built their own prison.
''And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia...
''where they are both guards and prisoners.
''And as a result, they no longer have - having been lobotomized -
''the capacity to leave the prison they've made...
or to even see it as a prison.''
And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree...
and he said, ''This is a pine tree.''
He put it in my hand and he said, ''Escape before it's too late.''
See, actually, for two or three years now...
Chiquita and I have had this very unpleasant feeling that we really should get out.
We really feel likeJews in Germany in the late '30s.
Get out of here.
Of course, the problem is where to go.
'Cause it seems quite obvious that the whole world is going in the same direction.
See, I think it's quite possible that the 1 960s...
represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished...
and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future, now...
and that from now on there'll simply be all these robots walking around...
feeling nothing, thinking nothing.
And there'll be nobody left almost to remind them...
that there once was a species called a human being...
with feelings and thoughts...
and that history and memory are right now being erased...
and soon nobody will really remember...
that life existed on the planet.
Now, of course, Bj�rnstrand feels that there's really almost no hope...
and that we're probably going back to a very savage...
lawless, terrifying period.
Findhorn people see it a little differently.
They're feeling that there'll be these pockets of light...
springing up in different parts of the world...
and that these will be, in a way, invisible planets on this planet...
and that as we, or the world, grow colder...
we can take invisible space journeys to these different planets...
refuel for what it is we need to do on the planet itself...
and come back.
And it's their feeling that there have to be centers now...
where people can come and reconstruct a new future for the world.
And when I was talking to, uh, Gustav Bj�rnstrand...
he was saying that actually these centers are growing up everywhere now...
and that what they're trying to do, which is what Findhorn was trying to do...
and, in a way, what I was trying to do -
I mean, these things can't be given names...
but in a way, these are all attempts at creating a new kind of school...
or a new kind of monastery.
And Bj�rnstrand talks about the concept of''reserves'' -
islands of safety where history can be remembered...
and the human being can continue to function...
in order to maintain the species through a dark age.
In other words, we're talking about an underground...
which did exist in a different way during the Dark Ages...
among the mystical orders of the church.
And the purpose of this underground...
is to find out how to preserve the light, life, the culture...
how to keep things living.
You see, I keep thinking that what we need...
is a new language -
a language of the heart...
a language, as in the Polish forest, where language wasn't needed.
Some kind of language between people that is a new kind of poetry...
that's the poetry of the dancing bee that tells us where the honey is.
And I think that in order to create that language...
you're going to have to learn how you can go through a looking glass...
into another kind of perception...
where you have that sense of being united to all things...
and suddenly you understand everything.
[ Siren Wailing In Distance]
Are you ready for some dessert?
Uh, I think I'll just have an espresso. Thank you.
- Very good. - I'll - I'll also have one. Thank you.
And -And, uh, could I also have, uh, an amaretto?
Certainly, sir.
Thank you.
You see, Wally, there's this incredible building that they built at Findhorn.
And the man who designed it had never designed anything in his life.
He wrote children's books.
And some people wanted it to be a sort of hall of meditation...
and others wanted it to be a kind of lecture hall.
But the psychic part of the community wanted it to serve another function as well...
because they wanted it to be a kind of spaceship which at night could rise up...
and let the U.F.O.'s know that this was a safe place to land...
and that they would find friends there.
So, the problem was - 'cause it needed a massive kind of roof-
was how to have a roof that would stay on the building...
but at the same time be able to fly up at night and meet the flying saucers.
So, the architect meditated and meditated...
and he finally came up with the very simple solution...
of not actually joining the roof to the building...
which means that it should fall off...
because they have great gales up in northern Scotland.
So, to keep it from falling off, he got beach stones from the beach -
or we did, 'cause I-I worked on this building -
all up and down the roof, just like that.
And the idea was that the energy that would flow from stone to stone...
would be so strong, you see...
that it would keep the roof down under any conditions...
but at the same time, if the roof needed to go up, it would be light enough to go up.
Well - [ Chuckling ] it works, you see.
Now, architects don't know why it works...
and it shouldn't work, 'cause it should fall off.
But it works. It does work.
The gales blow, and the roof should fall off, but it doesn't fall off.
[ Man Coughing ]
Yep.
Well, uh...
do you want to know my actual response to all this?
- Do you want to hear my actual response? - Yes!
See, my actual response - I mean -
[ Laughing ] I mean - I mean, I'm just trying to - to survive, you know?
I mean, I'm just trying to earn a living...
just trying to pay my rent and my bills.
I mean, uh -
Ah, I live my life.
I enjoy staying home with Debby.
I'm reading Charlton Heston's autobiography.
And that's that.
I mean, you know - I mean, occasionally, maybe...
Debby and I will step outside, we'll go to a party or something.
And if I can occasionally get my little talent together and write a little play...
well, then that's just - that's just wonderful.
And I mean, I enjoy reading about other little plays people have written...
and reading the reviews of those plays and what people said about them...
and what people said about what people said.
And I mean, I have - I have a list of errands and responsibilities that I keep in a notebook.
I enjoy going through the notebook...
carrying out the responsibilities, doing the errands...
and crossing them off the list.
And, I mean, I just - I just don't know how anybody could enjoy anything more...
than I enjoy, uh, reading Charlton Heston's autobiography...
or, uh, you know, uh, getting up in the morning...
and having the cup of cold coffee that's been waiting for me all night...
still there for me to drink in the morning...
and no cockroach or fly has-has died in it overnight.
I mean, I'm just so thrilled when I get up...
and I see that coffee there, just the way I wanted it.
I mean, I just can't imagine...
how anybody could enjoy something else any more than that.
I mean - I mean, obviously, if the cockroach - if there is a dead cockroach in it...
well, then I just have a feeling of disappointment, and I'm sad.
But I mean, I - I just - I just don't think...
I feel the need for anything more than all this.
Whereas, you know, you seem to be saying...
that, uh...
it's inconceivable that anybody could be having a meaningful life today...
and, you know, everyone is totally destroyed...
and we all need to live in these outposts.
But I mean, you know, I just can't believe - even for you -
I mean, don't you find - Isn't it pleasant just to get up in the morning...
and there's Chiquita, there are the children...
and The Times is delivered, you can read it.
I mean, maybe you'll direct a play, maybe you won't direct a play.
But forget about the play that you may or may not direct.
Why is it necessary to -Why not lean back and just enjoy these details?
I mean, and there'd be a delicious cup of coffee and a piece of coffeecake.
I mean, why is it necessary to have more than this...
or to even think about having more than this?
I mean, I don't really know what you're talking about.
I mean - I mean, I know what you're talking about...
but I don't really know what you're talking about.
And I mean, you know, even if I were to totally agree with you, you know...
and even if I were to accept the idea that there's just no way for anybody...
to have personal happiness now...
well, you know, I still couldn't accept the idea...
that the way to make life wonderful would be to just totally...
you know, reject Western civilization...
and fall back into some kind of belief in some kind of weird something -
I mean, I don't even know how to begin talking about this...
but you know, in the Middle Ages...
before the arrival of scientific thinking as we know it today...
well, people could believe anything.
Anything could be true - the statue of the Virgin Mary...
could speak or bleed or whatever it was.
But the wonderful thing that happened...
was that then in the development of science in the Western world...
certain things did come slowly to be known and understood.
I mean, you know...
obviously, all ideas in science are constantly being revised.
I mean, that's the whole point.
But we do at least know that the universe has some shape and order...
and that, uh, you know, trees do not turn into people or goddesses...
and there are very good reasons why they don't...
and you can't just believe absolutely anything.
Whereas, the things that you're talking about -
I mean - I mean, you found the handprint in the book...
and there were - there were three Andr�s and one Antoine de Saint-Exup�ry.
And to me that is a coincidence.
But -And-And then, you know, the people who put that book together...
well, they had their own reasons for putting it together.
But to you it was significant, as if that book had been written 40 years ago...
so that you would see it, as if it was planned for you, in a way.
I mean, really- I mean -
I mean, all right, let's say, if I get a fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant...
I mean, of course, even I have a tendency-
I mean, you know - I mean, of course, I would hardly throw it out.
I mean, I read it. I read it, and - and, uh -
I just instinctively sort of- You know, if it says something like, uh...
''A conversation with a dark-haired man will be very important for you''...
well, I just instinctively think, you know, ''Who do I know who has dark hair?
Did we have a conversation? What did we talk about?''
In other words, uh, there's something in me that makes me read it...
and I instinctively interpret it as if it were an omen of the future.
But in my conscious opinion, which is so fundamental to my whole view of life -
I mean, I would just have to change totally to not have this opinion.
In my conscious opinion, this is simply something...
that was written in the cookie factory several years ago and in no way refers to me.
I mean, you know, the - the fact that I got it -
I mean, the man who wrote it did not know anything about me.
I mean, he could not have known anything about me.
There's no way that this cookie could actually have to do with me.
And the fact that I've gotten it is just basically a joke.
And I mean, if I were gonna go on a trip on an airplane...
and I got a fortune cookie that said ''Don't go''...
I mean, of course, I admit I might feel a bit nervous for about one second.
But in fact, I would go because, I mean...
that trip is gonna be successful or unsuccessful...
based on the state of the airplane and the state of the pilot.
And the cookie is in no position to know about that.
And I mean, you know, it's the same...
with any kind of, uh, prophecy, or a sign, or an omen.
Because if you believe in omens, then that means that the universe -
I mean, I don't even know how to begin to describe this.
That means that the future is somehow sending messages...
backwards to the present.
Which-Which means that the future must exist in some sense already...
in order to be able to send these messages.
And it also means that things in the universe are there for a purpose - to give us messages.
Whereas I think that things in the universe are just there.
I mean, they don't mean anything.
I mean, you know, if the turtle's egg falls out of the tree and splashes on the paving stones...
it's just because that turtle was clumsy- by accident.
And-And to decide whether to send my ships off to war on the basis of that...
seems a big mistake to me.
Well, what information would you send your ships to war on?
Because if it's all meaningless...
what's the difference whether you accept the fortune cookie...
or the statistics of the Ford Foundation?
It doesn't seem to matter.
Well, the meaningless fact of the fortune cookie or the turtle's egg...
can't possibly have any relevance to the subject you're analyzing.
Whereas a group of meaningless facts that are collected and interpreted...
in a scientific way may quite possibly be relevant.
Because the wonderful thing about scientific theories about things...
is that they're based on experiments that can be repeated.
Hmm.
Well, it's true, Wally.
I mean, you know, following omens and so on...
is probably just a way of letting ourselves off the hook...
so that we don't have to take individual responsibility for our own actions.
But I mean, giving yourself over to the unconscious...
can leave you vulnerable to all sorts of very frightening manipulation.
And in all the work that I was involved in, there was always that danger.
And there was always that question of tampering with people's lives...
because if I lead one of these workshops, then I do become partly a doctor...
and partly a therapist, and partly a priest.
And I'm not a doctor, or a therapist, or a priest.
And already some of these new monasteries...
or communities or whatever we've been talking about...
are becoming institutionalized...
and I guess even in a way, at times, sort of fascistic.
You know, there's a sort of self-satisfied elitist paranoia that grows up -
a feeling of''them'' and ''us'' - that is very unsettling.
But I mean, uh, the thing is, Wally, I think it's the exaggerated worship of science...
that has led us into this situation.
I mean, science has been held up to us as a magical force...
that would somehow solve everything.
Well, quite the contrary. It's done quite the contrary.
It's destroyed everything.
So that is what has really led, I think...
to this very strong, deep reaction against science that we're seeing now...
just as the Nazi demons that were released in the '30s in Germany...
were probably a reaction against a certain oppressive kind of knowledge...
and culture and rational thinking.
So I agree that we're talking about something potentially very dangerous.
But modern science has not been particularly less dangerous.
Right. Well, I agree with you.
I completely agree.
No, you know, the truth is...
I think I do know what really disturbs me about the work you've described...
and I don't even know if I can express it.
But somehow it seems that the whole point of the work that you did in those workshops...
when you get right down to it and you ask what was it really about -
The whole point, really, I think...
was to enable the people in the workshops, including yourself...
to somehow sort of strip away every scrap of purposefulness...
from certain selected moments.
And the point of it was so that you would then all be able to experience...
somehow just pure being.
In other words, you were trying to discover what it would be like to live for certain moments...
without having any particular thing that you were supposed to be doing.
And I think I just simply object to that.
I mean, I just don't think I accept the idea that there should be moments...
in which you're not trying to do anything.
[ Chuckling ] I think, uh, it's our nature, uh, to do things.
I think we should do things.
I think that, uh, purposefulness...
is part of our ineradicable basic human structure.
And to say that we ought to be able to live without it...
is like saying that, uh, a tree ought to be able to live without branches or roots.
But - But actually, without branches or roots, it wouldn't be a tree.
I mean, it would just be a log. Do you see what I'm saying?
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
I mean, in other words, if I'm sitting at home and I have nothing to do...
well, I naturally reach for a book.
I mean, what would be so great about just sitting there and, uh, doing nothing?
It just seems absurd.
And if Debby is there?
Well, that's just the same thing.
I mean, is there really such a thing as, uh...
two people doing nothing but just being together?
I mean, would they simply then...
be, uh, ''relating,'' to use the word we're always using?
I mean, what would that mean?
I mean, either we're gonna have a conversation...
or we're going to, uh, carry out the garbage...
or we're going to do something, separately or together.
I mean, do you see what I'm saying?
I mean, what does it mean to just, uh, simply, uh, sit there?
That makes you nervous.
Well, well, why shouldn't it make me nervous? It just seems ridiculous to me.
That's interesting, Wally.
You know, when I went to Ladakh in western Tibet and stayed on a farm for a month...
well, there, you know, when people come over in the evening for tea, nobody says anything.
Unless there's something to say, but there almost never is.
So they just sit there and drink their tea, and it doesn't seem to bother them.
I mean, you see, the trouble, Wally, with always being active and doing things...
is that I think it's quite possible to do all sorts of things...
and at the same time be completely dead inside.
I mean, you're doing all these things, but are you doing them...
because you really feel an impulse to do them...
or are you doing them mechanically, as we were saying before?
Because I really do believe that if you're just living mechanically...
then you have to change your life.
I mean, you know, when you're young, you go out on dates all the time.
You go dancing or something. You're floating free.
And then one day suddenly you find yourself in a relationship...
and suddenly everything freezes.
And this can be true in your work as well.
And I mean, of course, if you're really alive inside...
then of course there's no problem.
I mean, if you're living with somebody in one little room...
and there's a life going on between you and the person you're living with...
well, then a whole adventure can be going on right in that room.
But there's always the danger that things can go dead.
Then I really do think you have to kind of become a hobo or something, you know...
like Kerouac, and go out on the road.
I really believe that.
You know, it's not that wonderful to spend your life on the road.
My own overwhelming preference is to stay in that room if you can.
But you know, if you live with somebody for a long time, people are constantly saying...
''Well, of course it's not as great as it used to be, but that's only natural.
The first blush of a romance goes, and that's the way it has to be.''
Now, I totally disagree with that.
But I do think that you have to constantly ask yourself the question, with total frankness:
Is your marriage still a marriage?
Is the sacramental element there?
Just as you have to ask about the sacramental element in your work-
Is it still there?
I mean, it's a very frightening thing, Wally, to have to suddenly realize...
that, my God, I thought I was living my life, but in fact I haven't been a human being.
I've been a performer.
I haven't been living. I've been acting. I've - I've acted the role of the father.
I've acted the role of the husband. I've acted the role of the friend.
I've acted the role of the writer, or director, or what have you.
I've lived in the same room with this person, but I haven't really seen them.
I haven't really heard them. I haven't really been with them.
Yeah, I know some people are just sometimes...
uh, existing just side by side.
I mean, uh, the other person's, uh, face could just turn into a great wolf's face...
and, uh, it just wouldn't be noticed.
And it wouldn't be noticed, no. It wouldn't be noticed.
I mean, when I was in Israel a little while ago -
I mean, I have this picture of Chiquita that was taken when she -
I always carry it with me. It was taken when she was about 26 or something.
And it's in summer, and she's stretched out on a terrace...
in this sort of old-fashioned long skirt that's kind of pulled up.
And she's slim and sensual and beautiful.
And I've always looked at that picture and just thought about just how sexy she looks.
And then last year in Israel, I looked at the picture...
and I realized that that face in the picture was the saddest face in the world.
That girl at that time was just lost...
so sad and so alone.
I've been carrying this picture for years and not ever really seeing what it is, you know.
I just never really looked at the picture.
And then, at a certain point , I realized I'd just gone for a good 1 8 years unable to feel...
except in the most extreme situations.
I mean, to some extent, I still had the ability to live in my work.
That was why I was such a work junkie.
That was why I felt that every play that I did was a matter of my life or my death.
But in my real life, I was dead.
I was a robot.
I mean, I didn't even allow myself to get angry or annoyed.
I mean, you know, today Chiquita, Nicolas, Marina -
All day long, as people do, they do things that annoy me and they say things that annoy me.
And today I get annoyed. And they say, ''Why are you annoyed?''
And I say, ''Because you're annoying,'' you know.
And when I allowed myself to consider the possibility...
of not spending the rest of my life with Chiquita...
I realized that what I wanted most in life was to always be with her.
But at that time, I hadn't learned what it would be like to let yourself react...
to another human being.
And if you can't react to another person...
then there's no possibility of action or interaction.
And if there isn't, I don't really know what the word ''love'' means...
except duty, obligation, sentimentality, fear.
I mean - [ Chuckling ]
I don't know about you, Wally, but I -
I just had to put myself into a kind of training program to learn how to be a human being.
I mean, how did I feel about anything? I didn't know.
What kind of things did I like? What kind of people did I really want to be with? You know?
And the only way that I could think of to find out...
was to just cut out all the noise and stop performing all the time...
and just listen to what was inside me.
See, I think a time comes when you need to do that.
Now, maybe in order to do it, you have to go to the Sahara...
and maybe you can do it at home.
But you need to cut out the noise.
[ Car Horn Honks On Street ]
Yeah. Of course, personally, I-I just, uh -
I usually don't, uh - [ Chuckles ] like those quiet moments, you know.
I really don't.
I mean, uh, I don't know if it's that, uh, Freudian thing or what -
But, uh, you know, the fear of unconscious impulses...
or my own aggression or whatever, but, uh...
if things get too quiet, and I find myself just, uh, sitting there...
you know, as we were saying before...
I mean, whether I'm by myself, or-or I'm-I'm with someone else...
I just, uh - I just have this feeling of...
uh, my God, I'm going to be revealed.
In other words, I'm adequate to do any sort of a task, um...
but I'm not adequate, uh, just to - to be a human being.
I mean, in other words, I'm not, uh -
If I'm just, uh, trapped there and I'm not allowed to do things...
but all I can do is just, um, be there...
well, I'll just fail.
I mean, in other words, uh...
I can pass any other sort of a test...
and, you know, I can even get an ''A'' if I put in the required effort...
but I just don't, uh -
I just don't have a clue how to pass this test.
I mean - I mean, of course, I realize this isn't a test...
but, um, I see it as a test...
and I feel I'm going to fail it.
I mean, it's - it's very scary.
I just feel, uh,just totally at sea. I mean -
Well, you know, I could imagine a life, Wally...
in which each day would become an incredible, monumental, creative task...
and we're not necessarily up to it.
I mean, if you felt like walking out on the person you live with, you'd walk out.
Then if you felt like it, you'd come back.
But meanwhile, the other person would have reacted to your walking out.
It would be a life of such feeling.
I mean, what was amazing in the workshops I led...
was how quickly people seemed to fall into enthusiasm...
celebration,joy, wonder, abandon, wildness, tenderness.
Could we stand to live like that?
Yeah, I think it's that moment of contact with another person.
I mean, that's what scares us.
I mean, that moment of being face to face with another person.
I mean, now - [ Laughs ]
You wouldn't think it would be so frightening. It's strange that we find it so frightening.
Well, it isn't that strange.
I mean, first of all, there are some pretty good reasons for being frightened.
I mean, you know, the human being is a complex and dangerous creature.
I mean, really, if you start living each moment?
Christ, that's quite a challenge.
I mean, if you really reach out and you're really in touch with the other person...
well, that really is something to strive for, I think, I really do.
Yeah, it's just so pathetic if one doesn't do that.
Of course there's a problem, because the closer you come, I think, to another human being...
the more completely mysterious - and unreachable -
that person becomes.
I mean, you know, you have to reach out, you have to go back and forth with them...
and you have to relate, and yet you're relating to a ghost or something.
I don't know, because we're ghosts.
We're phantoms. Who are we?
And that's to face, to confront the fact that you're completely alone.
And to accept that you're alone is to accept death.
You mean, because somehow when you are alone, you're alone with death.
I mean, nothing's obstructing your view of it, or something like that.
Right.
You know, if I understood it correctly, I think, uh, Heidegger said...
that, uh, if you were to experience your own being to the full...
you'd be experiencing the decay of that being toward death...
as a part of your experience.
You know, in the sexual act there's that moment of complete forgetting...
which is so incredible.
Then in the next moment, you start to think about things:
work on the play, what you've got to do tomorrow.
I don't know if this is true of you, but I think it must be quite common.
The world comes in quite fast.
Now, that again may be because we're afraid to stay in that place of forgetting...
because that, again, is close to death.
Like people who are afraid to go to sleep.
In other words, you interrelate, and you don't know what the next moment will bring.
And to not know what the next moment will bring...
brings you closer to a perception of death.
You see, that's why I think that people have affairs.
I mean, you know, in the theater, if you get good reviews...
you feel for a moment that you've got your hands on something.
You know what I mean? I mean, it's a good feeling.
But then that feeling goes quite quickly.
And once again you don't know quite what you should do next.
What'll happen?
Well, have an affair, and up to a certain point...
you can really feel that you're on firm ground, you know.
There's a sexual conquest to be made. There are different questions.
Does she enjoy the ears being nibbled?
How intensely can you talk about Schopenhauer at some elegant French restaurant?
Whatever nonsense it is.
It's all, I think, to give you the semblance that there's firm earth.
Well, have a real relationship with a person that goes on for years -
That's completely unpredictable.
Then you've cut off all your ties to the land, and you're sailing into the unknown...
into uncharted seas.
I mean, you know, people hold on to these images of father, mother, husband, wife...
again for the same reason -
'cause they seem to provide some firm ground.
But there's no wife there.
What does that mean? A wife.
A husband. A son.
A baby holds your hands...
and then suddenly there's this huge man lifting you off the ground...
and then he's gone.
Where's that son?
[ Wally Narrating ] All the other customers seemed to have left hours ago.
We got the bill, and Andr� paid for our dinner.
Really?
[ Conversing, Indistinct ]
[ Wally Narrating ] I treated myself to a taxi.
I rode home through the city streets.
There wasn't a street, there wasn't a building...
that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind.
There, I was buying a suit with my father.
There, I was having an ice cream soda after school.
When I finally came in, Debby was home from work...
and I told her everything about my dinner with Andr�.