Description

None of us knows our genuine self because from the moment of birth we absorb images and behaviors of the people and things around us. We mimic our parents and teachers acting out in accordance with our impressions and their expectations. Our personalities are shaped by external factors and we learn to perform roles rather than live genuinely. We act and react, unknowingly portraying characters in contrast with professional actors who deliberately take on different qualities. People who come to the wisdom of Kabbalah gradually remove their personae to reveal a single point upon which they begin to build their authentic selves. New examples are provided by the Upper Force and used to construct a new and true identity.

Transcript

TV Program with Dr. Michael Laitman
"20 Ideas"

"The World Is a Stage"

With participation of Jenya Berelekhis

June 29, 2009
New York

Jenya Berelekhis: Whenever I was a child, I would... Every child wonders who they want to become when they grow up and you're wondering what you would do. I would think about it and somehow one lifetime wasn't enough for me to experience everything. I was thinking: what is it that I can do where I can experience everything that is possible to experience in this life?

And acting was the only thing I could think of. Ever since I was a little girl I always wanted to be an actor, and I envisioned myself being on stage and other people watching me and that was so exciting. At the same time being able to live everything was... that was just the only way I thought I could feel alive. Why do you think that is? Why do people feel this way?

Dr. Michael Laitman: You thought of going through many lifetimes through acting, within a single lifetime?

Jenya Berelekhis: Yes. Yes, exactly. I'm just wondering: does everyone feel this way?

Dr. Michael Laitman: No, that's very interesting. You're so hungry for life that you want to just grab every kind of form and not miss out on anything, huh?

Jenya Berelekhis: I guess. Is this how everyone feels? Is this how every actor feels?

Dr. Michael Laitman: I think that a person...well, any person who...especially if you watch television or at the movies, if you see other forms of life you are envious: "Why am I not this, why am I not that? Did I choose the right way in life? Maybe I should have been just a driver, whatever, or a doctor or something?" Everyone's like that, thinks in these terms; it's natural. Do you think that... Well, normally people who come to acting, do you think they want to dress in other people?

Jenya Berelekhis: I think there are different reasons why people come to acting. Some probably do it because they're looking for the meaning of life and they... Like in my case, I thought I could find the meaning of life through pretty much living all these different lives.

If you live every possible life in your life, maybe that's where the meaning is. But then other people probably come to be loved, to be famous, to be admired, to be wealthy. That's probably... When you look at Hollywood, that's what Hollywood shows, that's what Hollywood is.

Dr. Michael Laitman: I don't think a serious actor thinks about life in this way, just being famous. A serious actor is someone who really wants to dress in all kinds of forms-like you said it-who wants to feel, to experience what it's like being a king or a judge or a slaughterer or a thief, or a good or a bad person; who wants to live it. I think that's the sign of a really...that's the right kind of motivation for being a true actor.

Jenya Berelekhis: Do you think an actor has a responsibility before the world, in a way, to teach people something since people look at them, to show them something, to explain? Is there a way an actor can explain the truth to people, the meaning of life to people, or basically teach them something, teach them the way to be; and how can they do that?

Dr. Michael Laitman: Well, first, let's say we're all actors. None of us is genuine, true. None of us really knows who he is, because when I was born I was looking at the world like, say, a year-old baby or even less than a year, a few months. I already started getting all kinds of impressions. Mom was acting in front of me-ma ma ma-daddy was doing something, my granny, aunts and uncles, and friends and brothers.

And that's how I grew up with kindergarten and then school. Everyone was doing some kind of an act towards me. I don't know if they're acting or not, but I received certain impressions from them. All these impressions, like these molds, these images, penetrated me and now I act out in life accordingly.

I don't act myself; I always picture some kind of an image, some kind of persona that I have to express as whom to be, from the people that I saw. That's how I go through every moment in life-acting out, using the molds, the examples that I received as a child up to, say, the age of fifteen or twenty.

Even today we still absorb examples and molds. Even at my age I get all kinds of examples and forms from life, but they don't impress me as much. I'm past the age of maturing (which is the age up to the age of 15 or 20), when you constantly absorb the world's acts, as in, what to act, how to act. So we're all actors.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, when we reach the truth we gradually remove all of these robes of a king or a thief or a doctor or a driver or... All these clothes, we take them off and in the end you remain naked. And who are we? Then we see that we are non-existent, that there's only one point in us.

And out of that point I want to receive new images. From whom? From the Upper Force. I begin to ask of that: "Show me yourself." Then I begin to take examples from that, all kinds of molds, new kinds of images, and then I begin to resemble them. And then I build myself as a human being, which is the true me. Before that I was only acting out all kinds of images that were presented to me by my relatives, teachers, friends, the world.

Jenya Berelekhis: So you're saying that in this world there's no way we can know who we really are and we can't find out who we are?

Dr. Michael Laitman: No, and actors are even worse, because with actors-besides acting the people that they are, even that they carry with them with childhood all those examples that they were carrying out-when they study acting, they're shown forms of acting: behave this way, that way, dress this, dress that, all kinds of things.

A good actor is one who has, say, three hundred examples of how you should act out everything; a better actor has five hundred examples; and the best maybe has one thousand or two thousand behavioral kind of examples that you bring them out and act accordingly. But you're never yourself. And that's how it is in theater, in cinema, and everywhere.

It turns out that there is not such big a difference between the acting that we non-actors do (ordinary people) and what you actors do, except you know that you're acting personas that you were taught, and we forgot and don't know that we too are acting images that were permeated in us by our teachers, parents, as children, when we were children.

Jenya Berelekhis: But in that case, what's the point of anything? What's the point of us living? What's the point of us working? Why should we... We're speaking about acting right now, but if there is no point, if there is no way you can attain anything through acting or through any kind of profession or through living, and not everybody asks themselves the questions of how they can attain spirituality and what is spirituality, then what's the point of all of this? If somebody doesn't have a question, how can they even come to finding out about spirituality? Then we can never find out who we are?

Dr. Michael Laitman: Well, yeah, but through history we develop and now we're coming to a point where the world is beginning to pressure us and bring us to the question of, "What are we living for, why are we suffering? What is the message of the world?"

And with this question, we come to a point where it becomes worthwhile for us to search for the truth, to find it; not these behavioral forms, but the real forms-what is that? And we gradually come to that question. I see that people suffer, people are depressed, people become drug abusers, all kinds of ways they want to exit the game of life. Where to? They still don't know. I hope that soon humanity will begin to find out.