The Nondual Highlights
The Best of the Internet's Nonduality Email Lists, Forums, Web sites, and More

Editors: Jerry Katz, Gloria Lee, Christiana Duranczyk, Michael Read, John Metzger

Highlights Issue # 1039

Friday, April 12, 2002

Today's Highlights Compiled, Edited, and Designed
by Gloria Lee

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Excerpts from Interviews with Harvey Keitel

On Acting and Art

Acting is a storytelling process, and to play those stories, we must invest ourselves profoundly in the place of the story. Perhaps it's not so much acting as it is being. Without that being, there's no way to convey the importance of being a human being.

The idea of art is to reveal, to let us know an experience we didn't have a moment ago. The experience to struggle to understand. Given a choice between a soul and a Mercedes, people will generally choose what they can feel. My challenge has always been not to sell my soul for that Mercedes, although now that I own one, I hope that I retain my soul.

http://desires.com/2.4/Performance/Harvey/Docs/intro.html

------------

H.K.: ... nine out of 10 Hollywood directors do not know how to rehearse. And most actors do not know how to rehearse. The rehearsal process is a very important part of the creation. And it will do directors and actors a lot of good to study the craft to learn how to rehearse. To learn how to do their homework. To learn what to do as homework.

TR: Specifically, how does one rehearse?

HK: ... Well I cannot teach a class here now on acting. ...They have to immerse themselves into it. I can tell you that if you do not take the training that a Marine takes, and you are thrown into the jungle, you're probably going to die. If you do not take the training an actor needs to take when you are put into that human jungle of cement and palm trees, you are going to die. You need your craft to support you, to guide you, to sustain you. I can only advise your directors to study acting. And your actors to study acting.
---------
So what was the initial driving force that took you into acting? Was there an epiphany at some point: 'I could become an ACTOR!'?
No, no.
Or was it simply something you thought you were good at and could take further?

No, I didn't think I was particularly good at it but I wanted to be, I had a strong will to be good at it. And it was my need to know, my need to draw my pictures on the cave walls about what my fears were, what my needs were. Somewhere in there. I was in a cave and I needed to draw some pictures on the wall about what my journey was, and that drive, that need, led me to acting. I wasn't good at it, but I had a deep, intense desire to be good at it, and all my failings didn't stop me. I had that will to learn that kept me going through all my effort, through all of my struggle.                                                                     ------------ When we were talking about your part for the Jane Campion film, (The Piano) I remembered that sparkle in your eyes when you were describing the gestation of this character. When did you first see that sparkle, that mystery that you described, coming from within yourself?

Probably when I met this girl once upon a time and I looked into her eyes, and what was in her eyes somehow moved me in such a way, that I couldn't understand it, and I put together these boxes that were strewn about, and she was walking down the street and I jumped over these boxes to try and impress her. But there was snow on the ground and I slipped and I fell on my ass. I was probably about five years old then!    ---------

They weren't living the life of actors, they were just playing the part?

Yes, that's why I'm trying to say. Because if you really want to be an actor you have to live the life of it, as you say, which means doing things. It doesn't just mean giving yourself a title, a star, success. All success is in the struggle, and in the work itself, not in the result. The result's wonderful, I don't want young actors getting it wrong reading this, but the real success is in the struggle.

Have there been instances where you were satisfied with the struggle and not with the final result?

[Laughs] Yes! In other words I'm thinking about creating a role, or creating a play, and struggling very hard in the work, maybe coming up short of answers that I felt were right. But consider the interweaving of feeling success in the struggle and realizing you didn't get the result that you perhaps hoped to get, and yet you feel very good about the struggle, very successful about the struggle.

Somehow it strikes me, and I'm still exploring, that if I could commit myself to the doing, free of results, and accept what occurs in the doing, then that's the place I think I want to be in. When I become more proficient at this, come back and ask me the question again.

What do you mean by more proficient?

Being able to stand there on the stage in my own place. In me. Be able to paint bamboo.

Did I tell you the story about the bamboo? I was reading in some book of Zen philosophy about a painter, and in this Zen artist's way of work, he was describing that before feeling he could paint bamboo, he had to look at the bamboo and touch the bamboo and eat the bamboo and sleep with the bamboo and then he felt that he could paint the bamboo.                        -------

Even if some of those notes are raw, I think the music is strong enough to overcome a wrong note. I think the positive nature of things will always overcome the less positive nature of things. If the music is on, the music is beautiful; it will be heard I think no matter what the interference is. It's like if I'm looking at a Van Gogh, and there's some jackhammer going off outside the place, I think I'm still going to get the music of the Van Gogh – and hear the jackhammer at the same time.

With a string of acclaimed performances, Keitel has become recognized as one of the most celebrated (and busiest) actors in recent years, in both Hollywood and independent film, including THE PIANO, BAD LIEUTENANT, RESERVOIR DOGS, PULP FICTION, SMOKE and BLUE IN THE FACE.
http://members.aol.com/morgands1/closeup/text/keitel.htm

"Acting is like trying to get at some certain truth, some common denominator, some exchange, some connection, that makes us feel a certain truth in ourselves. The way of acting that you really try to finally learn is how not to act. That's where it's at. Acting is not acting."

- Al Pacino

  DR SUSANNE FREEBORN   from TrueVision "I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word "love. . . ."
  Miss Sullivan put her arm gently round me and spelled into my hand, "I love Helen."

"What is love?" I asked. . . .

"Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out,"
  she replied. . . . "You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and
  know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You
  cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.
  Without love you would not be happy or want to play." The beautiful truth burst
  upon my mind--I felt that these were invisible lines stretched between my spirit
  and the spirits of others."

Helen Keller

SU GANDOLF    from  GuruRatings list

The blind person has no words, no concepts, for a color of which he
has no idea, no intuition, no experience. You can only speak to him
in analogies. No matter what he asks, you can only say, "Not that."
C.S. Lewis says somewhere that it's like asking how many minutes are
in the color yellow. Everybody could be taking the question very
seriously, discussing it, fighting about it. One person suggests
there are twenty-five carrots in the color yellow, the other person
says, "No, seventeen potatoes," and they're suddenly fighting. Not
that, not that! This is what is ultimate in our human knowledge of
God, to know that we do not know. Our great tragedy is that we know
too much. We think we know, that is our tragedy; so we never
discover. In fact, Thomas Aquinas (he's not only a theologian but
also a great philosopher) says repeatedly, "All the efforts of the
human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly."

~~ Anthony de Mello, SJ

Dis-cover!
Love,
Su

VIORICA WEISSMAN    from MillionPaths

And of course I hope that we shall still have a world
to live in . I never cared about any politics in the world ,
I never cared what leaders say or say not or who they are
or what they want ; I am the first to stop any political subject
on this list . Yet today it was our bus that blew up ,
and we had the luck not to be in it .
So I can't but cry for this world now.

Have a nice journey and if you can write to us ,
please do , it would be a pleasure to hear from you ,

vicki.

(Vicki lives in Jerusalem with her two children.)

SARLO   from NondualitySalon

---------------------------
Wowser!
-------------------------

We are living in a very exciting age! Science has made some astounding
discoveries in the last two decades that will forever change how we view
our world and our connection to it and to each other. In 1982 a research
team at the University of Paris lead by Alain Aspect discovered that under
certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to
communicate with each other instantly. This discovery rocked the scientific
community because it showed that not only could they communicate from a
distance (whether they were one mile or a thousand miles way), but that
somehow each particle always seemed to know what the others were doing.
In the last 20 years this discovery has spawned many new theories of the
interconnectedness of all things. David Bohm, a University of London
physicist, has developed the quantum hologram theory-which says that the
'whole' is contained in every part. Bohm suggests that the subatomic
particles in Aspect's experiment can remain in contact with each other, not
because of some mysterious communication, but because the idea of their
separateness is an illusion.
He suggests that these particles do not exist independently, but that they
are part of a whole fundamental something.
A remarkable experiment was conducted by a team of researchers from the
Institute of Noetic Sciences and The Global Consciousness Institute just
before the Millenium in 1999. They set up 40 devices around the world called
Random Number Generators (RNG's) that fed back into a computer at Princeton
University.
These random number sequences were created to detect synergy of mass
consciousness. When a specific event became the focus of mass consciousness
(a significant mass of people thinking about the same thing at the same
time) the numbers would become more ordered and less random.
On New Year's Eve 1999 what they discovered was that as the time line swept
across the world heralding the year 2000, and huge populations in each
geographic area were celebrating together, the numbers indeed became
more ordered and less random.
The equipment has remained in place. In September of 2001 something
remarkable happened. After the horrific events of 9/11, the team was
astonished after studying the input from the 40 RNG's around the world.
What they found was that not only was there a massive blip on 9/11 (the
Numbers became very ordered), but the blip actually started to occur two
days earlier on 9/9. Late in the day on 9/9 the numbers began to appear less
random and more ordered. There were several peaks on 9/10, and by 9/11
it was off the scale!
From this data they made an incredible conclusion-- that human consciousness
knew on some level was what about to happen! This was more evidence proving
the existence of the hologram-that we are not separate, we are intimately
connected, and we are all a part of a fundamental whole. They now believe
that this program can be used as a predictor for significant world events.
In earlier newsletter we discussed the data that supports the fact that it
takes a very small portion of a population to shift consciousness. In fact
it has been shown that the square root of 1% of a given population becomes
the quality of consciousness for that population. What that means is that
in a population of 1,000,000 people, the square root of 1% of that
population is 100 people.
So, following this theory, a total shift of mass consciousness can occur if
100 out of every 1,000,000 people align their thinking! That's a very small
percentage of the world population. It takes a very small number of
individuals seeing the world in peace to create the peaceful existence we
have always wanted here. As Margaret Mead said, 'Never doubt that a small
group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is
the only thing that ever has.'
For more information:
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/terror.html
http://noosphere.princeton.edu
http://www.noetic.org/

LOBSTER    from NondualitySalon

try downloading serene sounds - mellow . . .
:-)
basement files
http://www.basementnoises.com/free4u/index.htm

SU GANDOLF    from NondualitySalon

this living skin

I am alive.

You would have gotten along
perfectly well without me -
anything important is offered in a hundred million forms -
but here I am, anyway.

Not Mattering!
Grandly Useless.
Supremely Redundant.

But willing to inhabit this living skin
(I happen to be living in)

What is life but death!
New cells imitating the old,
less that, more this,
each time.
Each recipe transforming the taste in some gross or subtle way
(From sweet to bitter
And back again)

Where is the crime
In loving this grand mess?
This -
Blinding Perfection?

There is a sense of continuity
Because this serves a purpose

But remember:
There is no purpose to serve.
No tale to tell.
No reason.

So if there is a question, "Why?"

Here is the answer

(whispered):

"I"  

MAZIE LANE     from NondualitySalon

Can't stop rockin' with Ramana,
he always makes me wanna-a-lot, really wanna-a-lot
of Looking, rolling eyes-ogling, goo-goo gaa-ing,
when i look into those Eyes to Nowhere,
E v e r y where, and i am inside Seeing Only Further Into That.
The Maharshi really does a number on me!
He sits about playing with squirrels and dhotis,
and the entire time He's feeding me peanuts
and He's adjusting my pants! Crazy, huh?
Well, He's just that kind of a Jnani.
Give a big hug to the One who wants
to rip a rug with Sri Ramana.
Kiss like a new lover, the One who stays
up all night to watch The Bhagavan,
watch the Magic Mountain Man zap That Glance
on some wild-eyed devotee muttering "Who Am I?"
Wowie Ultra Zowie! Got a get a Glance from God!
Sometimes, most of the time, well alot of the time,
i like to hang out with That Holy Man,
i love to sit up on top of His Beloved Mountain
and disappear into Him.
Flat-out beat a rosy path right on inside Him.
And Baby! There just ain't no better View,
than Inside The Blessed Heart of Bhagavan!
 

Love,
Mazie