Wally Shawn :
Well, didn't George tell me that
you were gonna do a play
that was based on
The Little Prince?
Andre :
Hmm. Well, what happened, Wally...
was that fall I was in New York, and I met
this young Japanese Buddhist priest named Kozan;
and I thought he was Puck from the Midsummer Night's Dream.
You know, he had this beautiful, delicate smile.
I thought he was the Little Prince.
So, naturally, I decided to go off to the Sahara desert,
to work on The Little Prince with two actors
and this Japanese monk.
Wally Shawn :
You did?
Andre :
Well, I mean, I was still in a very peculiar state
at that time, Wally. You know, I would look
in the rearview mirror of my car.
And see little birds flying out of my mouth.
And I remember always being exhausted in that period.
I always felt weak. You know, I really didn't know what was going on with me. I would just sit out there all alone in the country for days... and do nothing but write in my diary. And I was always thinking about death.
But you went to the Sahara, Oh, yes, we went off into the desert.... and we rode through the desert on camels. And we rode and we rode. And then at night we would walk out under that enormous sky... and look at the stars. I just kept thinking about the same things that I was always thinking about at home... particularly about Chiquita. In fact, I thought about just about nothing but my marriage. And then I remember one incredibly dark night... being at an oasis, and there were palm trees moving in the wind... and I could hear Kozan singing far away in that beautiful bass voice. And I tried to follow his voice along the sand. You see, I thought he had something to teach me, Wally. And sometimes I would meditate with him. Sometimes I'd go off and meditate by myself. You know, I would see images of Chiquita. Once I actually saw her growing old... and her hair turning gray in front of my eyes. And I would just wail and yell my lungs out out there on the dunes. Anyway, the desert was pretty horrible. It was pretty cold. We were searching for something, but we couldn't tell if we were finding anything. You know that once Kozan and I... we were sitting on a dune, and we just ate sand. No, we weren't trying to be funny. I started, then he started. We just ate sand and threw up. That's how desperate we were. In other words, we didn't know why we were there. We didn't know what we were looking for. The entire thing seemed completely absurd, arid and empty. It was like, like a last chance or something. So what happened then? Well, in those days.... I went completely on impulse. So on impulse I brought Kozan back to stay with us in New York... after we got back from the Sahara, and he stayed for six months. - And he really sort of took over the whole family, in a way. - What do you mean? Well, there was certainly a center missing in the house at the time, There certainly wasn't a father, 'cause I was always thinking... about going off to Tibet or doing God knows what. And so he taught the whole family to meditate... and he told them all about Asia and the East and his monastery and everything. He really captivated everybody with an incredible bag of tricks. He had literally developed himself, Wally... so that he could push on his fingers and rise off out of his chair. I mean, he could literally go like this... You know, push on his fingers and go into like a headstand... and just hold himself there with two fingers. Or if Chiquita would suddenly get a little tension in her neck... well, he'd immediately have her down on the floor, he'd be walking up and down on her back... doing these unbelievable massages, you know. And the children found him amazing. I mean,you know, we'd visit friends who had children... and immediately he'd be playing with these children... in a way that, you know, we just can't do. I mean, those children... just giggles, giggles, giggles... about what this Japanese monk was doing in these holy robes. I mean, he was an acrobat, a ventriloquist... a magician, everything. You know, the amazing thing was that... I don't think he had any interest in children whatsoever. None at all. I don't think he liked them. I mean,you know, when he stayed with us... in the first week, really, the kids were just googly-eyed over him. But then a couple of weeks later, Chiquita and I could be out... and Marina could have flu or a temperature of 104... and he wouldn't even go in and say hello to her. But he was taking over more and more. I mean, his own habits had completely changed. You know, he started wearing these elegant Gucci shoes under his white monk's robes. He was eating huge amounts of food. I mean, he ate twice as much as Nicolas ate, you know? This tiny little Buddhist when I first met him, you know... was eating a little bowl of milk, hot milk with rice... was now eating huge beef. It was just very strange. You know, and we had tried working together, but really our work consisted mostly... of my trying to do these incredibly painful prostrations that they do in the monastery. You know, so really we hadn't been working very much. Anyway, we were out in the country, and we all went to Christmas mass together. You know, he was all dressed up in his Buddhist finery. And it was one of those awful, dreary Catholic churches on Long Island... where the priest talks about communism and birth control.
And as I was sitting there in mass, I was wondering, "What in the world is going on?"
I mean, here I am. I'm a grown man.. And there's this strange person living in the house, and I'm not working... You know, I was doing nothing but scribbling a little poetry in my diary. And I can't get a job teaching anymore, and I don't know what I want to do. When all of a sudden a huge creature appeared, looking at the congregation. It was about, I'd say, 6'8" something like that, you know... and it was half bull, half man... and its skin was blue. It had violets growing out of its eyelids and poppies growing out of its toenails.
And it just stood there for the whole mass.
I mean, I could not make that creature disappear.
You know, I thought, "Oh, well. You know, I'm just seeing this 'cause I'm bored." You know, close my... I could not make that creature go away. Okay. Now, I didn't talk with people about it, because they'd think I was weird... but I felt that this creature was somehow coming to comfort me... that somehow he was appearing to say... "Well,you may feel low and you might not be able to create a play right now... but look at what can come to you on Christmas Eve. Hang on, old friend. I may seem weird to you, but on these weird voyages... weird creatures appear. It's part of the journey. You're okay. Hang in there." By the way, did you ever see... that play, The Violets are Blue? No. Oh, when you mentioned the violets, it reminded me of that. It was about people... being, strangled on a submarine. Well, so that was... that was Christmas. What happened after that? - Do you really want to hear about all this? - Yeah. Well, around that time... I was beginning to think about going to India. And Kozan suddenly left one day. I was beginning to get into a lot of very strange ideas around that time. Now, for example, I'd developed this. Well, I got this idea which I... Now, it was very appealing to me at the time, you know... which was that I would have a flag, a large flag... and that wherever I worked, this flag would fly. Or if we were outside, say, with a group, that the flag could be the thing we lay on at night... and that somehow, between working on this flag and lying on this flag... this flag flying over us... that the flag would pick up vibrations of a kind... that would still be in the flag when I brought it home. So I went down to meet this flag maker that I'd heard about. And you know, there was this very straightforward-looking guy. You know, very sweet, really healthy-looking and everything. Nice big, blond. And he had a beautiful, clean loft down in the village with lovely, happy flags. And I was all into The Little Prince, and I talked to him about The Little Prince... these adventures and everything, how I needed the flag and what the flag should be. He seemed to really connect with it. So, two weeks later, I came back. He showed me a flag that I thought was very odd, you know... 'cause I had, you know, well, you know... I had expected something gentle and lyrical. There was something about this that was so powerful... it was almost overwhelming. And it did include the Tibetan swastika. He put a swastika in your flag? No, it was the Tibetan swastika, not the Nazi swastika. It's one of the most ancient Tibetan symbols. And it was just strange, you know? But I brought it home, because my idea with this flag... was that before I left... you know, before I left for India... I wanted several people who were close to me to have this flag in the room for the night... to sleep with it, you know, and then in the morning to sew something into the flag. Sol took the flag into Marina, and I said, "Hey, look at this. What do you think of this?" And she said, "What is that? That's awful." I said, "It's a flag." And she said, "I don't like it." I said, "I kind of thought you might like to spend the night with it, you know." But she really thought the flag was awful. So then Chiquita threw this party for me before I left for India... and the apartment was filled with guests. And at one point Chiquita said, "The flag, the flag. Where's the flag?" And I said, "Oh, yeah. The flag." And I go and get the flag, and I open it up. Chiquita goes absolutely white and runs out of the room and vomits. So the party just comes to a halt and breaks up. And then the next day I gave it to this young woman... who'd been in my group in Poland, who was now in New York. I didn't tell her anything about any of this. At 5:00 in the morning, she called me up and she said... "I got to come and see you right away." I thought, "Oh, God." She came up, and she said, "I saw things. I saw things around this flag. Now, I know you're stubborn, and I know you want to take this thing with you... but if you'd follow my advice, you'd put it in a hole in the ground... and burn it and cover it with earth, cause the devil's in it." I never took the flag with me. In fact, I gave it to her, and, she had a ceremony with it... six months later, in France, with some friends... in which, they did burn it. God. That's really, really amazing. So, did you ever go to India? Oh, yes, I went to India in the spring, Wally... and I came back home feeling all wrong. I mean, you know, I'd been to India, and I'd just felt like a tourist. I'd found nothing. So I was spending, the summer on Long Island with my family... and I heard about this community in Scotland called Findhorn... where people sang and talked and meditated with plants. And it was founded by several rather middle-class English and Scottish eccentrics. Some of them intellectuals, and some of them not. And I'd heard that they'd grown things in soil... that supposedly nothing can grow in, 'cause it's almost beach soil... and that they'd built, not built, they'd grown the largest cauliflowers in the world... and there are sort of cabbages. And they've grown trees that can't grow in the British Isles. So I went there. I mean, it is an amazing place, Wally. I mean, if there are insects bothering the plants... they will talk with the insects and, you know, make an agreement... by which they'll set aside a special patch of vegetables just for the insects... and then the insects will leave the main part alone. - Huh. - Things like that. And everything they do they do beautifully. I mean, the buildings just shine. And I mean, for instance, the icebox, the stove, the car... they all have names. And since you wouldn't treat Helen, the icebox... with any less respect than you would Margaret, your wife... you know, you make sure that Helen is as clean as Margaret, or treated with equal respect. And when I was there, Wally, I remember being in the woods... and I would look at a leaf, and I would actually see that thing... that is alive in that leaf. And then I remember just running through the woods as fast as I could... with this incredible laugh coming out of me... and really being in that state, you know, where laughter and tears seem to merge, I mean, it absolutely blasted me open. When I came out of Findhorn, I was hallucinating nonstop. I was seeing clouds as creatures. The people on the airplane all had animals' faces. I mean, I was on a trip. It was like being in a William Blake world suddenly. Things were exploding. So immediately I went to Belgrade, 'cause I wanted to talk to Grotowski. Grotowski and I got together at midnight in my hotel room... and we drank instant coffee out of the top of my shaving cream... and we talked from midnight until 11:00 the next morning. - God. What did he say? - Nothing! I talked. He didn't say a word. And then I guess really... the last big experience of this kind took place that fall. It was out at Montauk on Long Island... and there were only about nine of us involved, mostly men. And we borrowed Dick Avedon's property out at Montauk. And the country out there is like Heathcliff country. It's absolutely wild. What we wanted to do was we wanted to take, you know... We wanted to take All Souls' Eve, Halloween... and use it as a point of departure for something. So each one of us prepared some sort of event for the others... somehow in the spirit of All Souls' Eve. But the biggest event was three of the people... kept disappearing in the middle of the night each night... and we knew they were preparing something big... but we didn't know what. And midnight on Halloween, under a dark moon, above these cliffs... we were all told to gather at the topmost cliff and that we would be taken somewhere. And we did. And we waited, and it was very, very cold. And then the three of them: Helen, Bill and Fred... showed up wearing white. You know, something they'd made out of sheets... looked a little spooky, not funny. And they took us into the basement of this house that had burned down on the property. And in this ruined basement, they had set up a table with benches they'd made. And on this table they had laid out paper, pencils, wine and glasses. And we were all asked to sit at the table and to make out our last will and testament. You know, to think about and write down whatever our last words were to the world... or to somebody we were very close to. And that's quite a task. I must have been there for about an hour and a half or so, maybe two. And then one at a time they would ask one of us to come with them... and I was one of the last. And they came for me, and they put a blindfold on me... and they ran me through these fields, two people. And they'd found a kind of potting shed, you know, a kind of shed, on the grounds... a little tiny room that had once had tools in it. And they took me down the steps, into this basement... and the room was just filled with harsh white light. Then they told me to get undressed and give them all my valuables. Then they put me on a table, and they sponged me down. Well, you know, I just started flashing on death camps and secret police. I don't know what happened to the other people, but I just started to cry uncontrollably. Uh, then they got me to my feet and they took photographs of me, naked. And then naked, again blindfolded, I was run through these forests... and we came to a kind of tent made of sheets, with sheets on the ground. And there were all these naked bodies... huddling together for warmth against the cold. Must have been left there for about an hour. And then again, one by one, one at a time, we were led out. The blindfold was put on... and I felt myself being lowered onto something like a stretcher. And the stretcher was carried a long way, very slowly, through these forests... and then I felt myself being lowered into the ground. They had, in fact, dug six graves... eight feet deep. And then I felt these pieces of wood being put on me. And I cannot tell you, Wally, what I was going through. And then the stretcher was lowered into the grave... and then this wood was put on me... and then my valuables were put on me, in my hands. And they'd taken, you know, a kind of sheet or canvas... and they'd stretched about this much above my head... and then they shoveled dirt into the grave... so that I really had the feeling of being buried alive. And after being in the grave for about half an hour... I mean, I didn't know how long I'd be in there... I was resurrected, lifted out of the grave... blindfold taken off, and run through these fields. And we came to a great circle of fire, with music and hot wine... and everyone danced until dawn. And then at dawn... to the best of our ability, we filled up the graves... and went back to New York.
And that was really the last big event.
I mean, that was the end. I mean,you know, I began to realize... I just didn't want to do these things anymore, you know?
I felt sort of becalmed, you know, like that chapter in Moby Dick...
where the wind goes out of the sails.
And then last winter,
without, thinking about it very much...
I went to see this agent I know to tell him I was interested in directing plays again.
Actually, he seemed a little surprised
to see that Rip Van Winkle was still alive.
Mmm. God. I didn't know
they were so small.
Well, you know, frankly... I'm sort of repelled by the whole story, if you really want to know.
What?
Ah, you know...
Who did I think I was, you know?
I mean, that's The Story of some kind
of spoiled princess, you know.
Who did I think I was, the Shah of Iran?
You know, I really wonder
if people such as myself
are really not Albert Speer, Wally.
You know, Hitler's architect, Albert Speer? - What? No, I've been thinking a lot about him recently because, I think I am Speer. And I think it's time that I was caught and tried the way he was.
What are you talking about?
Well, you know, he was a very cultivated man, an architect, an artist, you know...
so he thought the ordinary rules of life
didn't apply to him either.
I mean, I really feel that everything I've done...
is horrific, just horrific.
My God. But why?
You see, I've seen a lot of Death
in the last few years, Wally...
and there's one thing
that's for sure about Death...
You do it alone, you see.
That seems quite certain, you see. That I've seen. That the people around your bed mean nothing. Your reviews mean nothing. Whatever it is, you do it alone. And so the question is, when I get on my deathbed, what kind of a person am I gonna be? And I'm just very dubious about the kind of person who would have lived his life... those last few years the way I did. Why should you feel that way? You see, I've had a very rough time in the last few months, Wally. Three different people in my family were in the hospital at the same time. Then my mother died. Then Marina had something wrong with her back, and we were terribly worried about her. You know, so, I mean, I'm feeling very raw right now. I mean, I can't sleep, my nerves are shot. I mean, I'm affected by everything. You know, last week I had this really nice director from Norway over for dinner... and he's someone I've known for years and years... and he's somebody that I think I'm quite fond of. And I was sitting there just thinking that he was a pompous, defensive... conservative stuffed shirt who was only interested in the theater.
He was talking and talking.
His mother had been a famous Norwegian comedienne.
I realised he had said "I remember my mother" at least 400 times during the evening. And he was telling story after story about his mother. You know, I'd heard these stories 20 times in the past.
He was drinking this whole bottle
of bourbon very quietly.
His laugh was so horrible.
You know, I could hear his laugh... the pain in that laugh, the hollowness.
You know, what being that woman's son had done to him. You know, so at a certain point I just had to ask him to leave... nicely, you know. I told him I had to get up early the next morning, 'cause it was so horrible. It was just as if he had died in my living room. You know, then I went into the bathroom and cried 'cause I felt I'd lost a friend. And then after he'd gone, I turned the television on... and there was this guy who had just won the something. Some sports event, some kind of a great big check and some kind of huge silver bottle. And he, you know, he couldn't stuff the check in the bottle... and he put the bottle in front of his nose and pretended it was his face. He wasn't really listening to the guy who was interviewing him... but he was smiling malevolently at his friends, and I looked at that guy and I thought... "What a horrible, empty, manipulative rat." Then I thought, "That guy is me." Then last night actually, you know, it was our 20th wedding anniversary... and I took Chiquita to see this show about Billie Holiday. I looked at these show business people who know nothing about Billie Holiday, nothing. You see, they were really kind of, in a way, intellectual creeps. And I suddenly had this feeling. I mean, you know I was just sitting there, crying through most of the show. And I suddenly had this feeling I was just as creepy as they were... and that my whole life had been a sham... and I didn't have the guts to be Billie Holiday either. I mean, I really feel that I'm just washed up, wiped out. I feel I've just squandered my life. André, now, how can you say something like that? I mean, Well, you know, I may be in a very emotional state right now, Wally... but since I've come back home I've just been finding the world we're living in... more and more upsetting. I mean, last week I went down to the Public Theater one afternoon. You know, when I walked in, I said hello to everybody... 'cause I know them all, and they all know me, they're always very friendly. You know that seven or eight people told me how wonderful I looked? And then one person, one, a woman who runs the casting office, said... "Gee, you look horrible. ls something wrong?" Now, she, you know, we started talking. Of course, I started telling her things. And she suddenly burst into tears because an aunt of hers who's 80... whom she's very fond of, went into the hospital for a cataract, which was solved. But the nurse was so sloppy, she didn't put the bed rails up... and so the aunt fell out of bed and is now a complete cripple. So you know, we were talking about hospitals. Now, you know, this woman, because of who she is... You know, 'cause this had happened to her very, very recently. She could see me with complete clarity. She didn't know anything about what I'd been going through. But the other people, what they saw was this tan, or this shirt... or the fact that the shirt goes well with the tan. So they said, "Gee, you look wonderful." Now, they're living in an insane dream world. They're not looking. That seems very strange to me. Right, because they just didn't see anything, somehow... except, the few little things that they wanted to see. Yeah, you know, it's like what happened just before my mother died. You know, we'd gone to the hospital to see my mother... and I went in to see her... and I saw this woman who looked as bad as any survivor of Auschwitz or Dachau. And I was out in the hall sort of comforting my father... when a doctor who was a specialist in a problem she had with her arm... went into her room and came out just beaming. And he said, "Boy, don't we have a lot of reason to feel great? Isn't it wonderful how she's coming along?" Now, all he saw was the arm. That's all he saw. Now, here's another person who's existing in a dream. Who, on top of that, is a kind of butcher... who's committing a kind of familial murder... because when he comes out of that room, he psychically kills us... by taking us into a dream world... where we become confused and frightened... 'cause the moment before, we saw somebody who already looked dead... and now here comes a specialist who tells us they're in wonderful shape. I mean, they were literally driving my father crazy. I mean, you know, here's an 82-year-old man who's very emotional... and you know, and if you go in one moment, and you see the person's dying... and you don't want them to die, and then a doctor comes out five minutes later... and tells you they're in wonderful shape... I mean, you know, you can go crazy. - Yeah. I know what you mean. - I mean, the doctor didn't see my mother. The people at the Public Theater didn't see me. I mean, we're just walking around in some kind of fog. I think we're all in a trance. We're walking around like zombies. I don't think we're even aware of ourselves or our own reaction to things. We're just going around all day like unconscious machines... and meanwhile there's all of this rage and worry and uneasiness... just building up and building up inside us.
That's right. lt just builds up... and then it just leaps out inappropriately. I mean, I remember when I was, acting in this play... based on The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. And I was playing the part of the cat. But they had trouble, making up my cat suit... so I didn't get it delivered to me till the night of the first performance. Particularly the head, I mean, I'd never even had a chance to try it on. And about four of my fellow actors actually came up to me... and they said these things which I just couldn't help thinking... were attempts to destroy me.
You know, one of them said, "Oh, well, now that head... ...will totally change your hearing in the performance. ...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. 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. 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... even if I had known what I felt... I might say something, if I'm really annoyed... like, "Oh, yeah. Well, that's just fascinating... and, 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 so weird, Wally. If four Tibetans came together, and tragedy had just struck one of the ones... and they spent the whole evening going... 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. I mean, really, 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, 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, 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, making her way... from the steppes of Russia to the suburbs of Chicago. I think that's right. You know, 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.
That was one of the reasons that, Grotowski gave up the theatre.
He just felt that people in their lives now were performing so well
that performance in the theatre was sort of superfluous...
and, in a way, obscene.
Wally Shawn :
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.
Andre :
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.
Wally Shawn :
Yeah. They don't know what they
should be doing with their lives.
They're reading all these
self-help books.
Andre :
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, 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.
Wally Shawn :
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 organised 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.
Andre :
That's right. Our minds are just
focused on these goals and plans
which in themselves are not reality.
Wally Shawn :
No. Goals and plans are not...
I mean, 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 goal in life.
I mean, it's so absurd, in a way, when you consider
that it doesn't matter which one it is.
Andre :
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.
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."
Wally Shawn :
Huh.
