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A: 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. They don't know what they should be doing with their lives. They're reading all these self-help books.

W: 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. 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.

A: 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. Life becomes habitual.

A: 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, 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.

W: 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. 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.

A: No, you wouldn't be.

W: I mean, uh, and my dreams are sort of different and I feel a little bit different when I get up in the morning.

A: 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. 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.

A: 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.

W: 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, 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, isn't there just as much reality to be perceived in a cigar store|as there is on Mount Everest? 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, of course, on some level, I mean obviously it's very different from a cigar store on 7 th Avenue.

A: 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 10 years from now people will pay $10,000 in cash to be castrated just in order to be affected by something.

W: 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?”

A: 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 Björnstrand. 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.

A: 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.”

A: 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.

A: 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.

W: Yeah, I know some people are just sometimes existing just side by side. I mean, uh, the other person's, face could just turn into a great wolf's face and, it just wouldn't be noticed.

A: And it wouldn't be noticed, no. It wouldn't be noticed.

A: And then, at a certain point, I realized I'd just gone for a good 18 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. 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.

A: 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.

A: 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?

W: 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… You wouldn't think it would be so frightening. It's strange that we find it so frightening.

A: 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.

W: Yeah, it's just so pathetic if one doesn't do that.

A: 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.