Dr. Anatoly Ulianov: Let’s talk about the role of acting in the method of integral upbringing. You often say that a child, like any person, should learn to change himself, to develop the ability to work above his states.
Dr. Michael Laitman: A person has to learn to play various roles, and in this way, present himself to others in a different guise than he really is.
Dr. Ulianov: I noticed that everyone has the ability to act, not just actors. What is the essence of this human quality?
We Are Always on Stage
Dr. Laitman Of course, we are all acting. After all, we don’t know how to behave. Animals behave naturally. They don’t have feelings of shame or envy. True, they do experience biological envy, if you can call an animal’s emotions that. This feeling they have is determined by biological factors. Animals behave however Nature has programmed them to behave.
But man’s desire is on a higher level. He works hard trying to earn social approval, respect, and honor. It’s as if he is working for others in order to receive knowledge and various privileges from them. Man wishes to feel his power over others who are like him, and he is compelled to act in front of them. He cannot allow himself the freedom to express his natural qualities. Our inborn qualities would turn us into a mere herd of animals. But when a person acts (which is what we all do), then it’s no longer a herd. It’s a human society.
By performing different roles, we turn the herd into a human society. It is how we differ from animals. We are always acting out some persona and never behave the way we really are, even when we are alone.
The more humanity develops, the more it engages in tighter communication and people constantly follow examples they see in others. That way, we are all like actors, scanning inside through the roles we‘ve observed in others and “putting them on” when the right circumstance arises. This is how we behave. It is natural for each of us. Sometimes we notice this in others, such as when teenagers take famous Hollywood actors as role models and try to emulate the popular characters they have played.
But the skill of acting is something different. An actor plays a role consciously rather than unconsciously, unlike a regular person who has collected various examples since childhood and simply imitates the behavior of others.
At a specific stage we begin to understand that man’s task is to come to total integration, to become as one man, to feel each of us as part of a certain entirely coordinated natural mechanism.
For that, man has to feel the nature of others and “play along” with them. Obviously, it’s not an accident that man was endowed with the ability to act. Every person has to feel and understand everyone else. And for that, I have to fully agree with the existence of something that’s opposite to my natural qualities.
I am a small, primitive egoist who constantly wants to “hog” everything to himself. But to conform to society so that I may properly connect with it, I have to become an actor.
So it’s wonderful that I act out other people. My own nature pushes me to force everyone to do what I want, even when I don’t know what it is that I want.
But for an artist, it is important to do the opposite and learn from other people. It’s important for him to be able to adapt his qualities to others and play along with them, and this does not diminish the person in the slightest. On the contrary, it is how he connects with the environment and rises to a higher level. Thus, one studies people and comes closer to them, developing the ability to be in the right communication with them.
The above points were taken from the book The Psychology of the Integral Society by Dr. Michael Laitman and Dr. Anatoly Ulianov. Also available as eBook (PDF, Kindle & ePub formats).
