I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time.
Taking time to be more fully present.
Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.
I'm delighted to have as my guest today the funny man and the satirical man that we all love to hate, the character Dwight Schrute from the hit series The Office, brought to us so artfully and thoughtfully by Rainn Wilson.
Oh, you're too kind.
No, I'm not too kind, it's true.
So why a funny man Rainn Wilson on our Soul series?
I'll tell you why. Two words.
Soul pancake. Soul pancake.
Rainn Wilson, what is soul pancake?
That is an excellent question, Oprah.
I love that I just said that.
I said that's an excellent question, Oprah.
What a delight to meet you.
Thanks for having me here.
I went to high school here in Chicago.
I love this great city.
I'm not just saying that for the Chicago office fans.
Okay, good. I do. I really love this city.
And where would you go to high school?
Newtrier High School on Wanaka.
Wow. And did you have any idea then that this is where you would be?
You know what? I had, well, we'll get back to Soul Pancake in May here.
Yeah, we'll get back to that in a minute.
Hold that thought. You know, it's interesting that here I am talking to you at that point because I definitely knew I wanted to be an actor.
I had that dream. I had that longing to be an artist.
And that was my deepest drive.
My family. Because that is the heart of our soul's calling is that longing thing that you're talking about.
Yes. Yes. And I knew that I basically had to be an actor or I would die.
I had such a deep drive to become an actor.
And at the same time, you know, I grew up as a member of the Baha 'i faith and my parents are Baha 'is.
And we lived over by the Baha 'i House of Worship there in Wilmette, that beautiful temple on Lake Michigan.
Yes, the Baha 'i temple.
Yes. I've passed that temple and I wondered what because it's so beautiful.
And there is this sort of mystery surrounding it if you have never been in and don't know anything about the Baha 'i faith.
What is that? The Baha 'i faith?
Well, another excellent question.
First of all, I want to say that had you come in the summer of 1984 to the Baha 'i House of Worship in Loment, Illinois, you would have seen young Rainn Wilson in a security guard uniform.
Patrolling the grounds.
That's what you were doing.
And I was really intimidating because I was probably about 154 pounds at the time and six foot two, gawky, acne, bespeckled, Baoist fierce.
I was a fierce, fierce security guard.
No, the Baha 'i faith is and it's always difficult to sum up a kind of a world religion in a nutshell.
But essentially, the Baha 'i faith is a religion of unity.
The founder of the Baha 'i faith, Baha 'u'llah, brought the message for this day and age that there is only one religion, that all of the religions of the past are one changeless faith of God, that when you go way back in the annals of human history to Zoroaster, Abraham, to Buddha, and then going forward
to Jesus and Muhammad, that all of these people are divine messengers from God that are bringing God's message to that people at that particular date and time and geography.
And there are many manifestations of God or prophets of God or messengers of God, whatever you want to call them, that have come and gone that we don't know about and there will be ones on into the future.
So you grew up with this sense of openness toward all religions and a belief that we're all the same, we're all connected.
What a miracle it was to grow up that way.
One of the fundamental tenets of the Baha 'i faith is the elimination of racial prejudice.
So to grow up feeling that we're all one human family.
Just to know that from age four, as soon as you could think or walk or talk, was a gift.
The equality. So were there people of other colors, races in your church?
All the Baha 'is, every race, age, creed, background that you can possibly imagine.
And so I'm sure that infuses not only certainly your personality, but also distinctly infuses your art.
Yeah, that's an interesting question.
How does it affect my art?
Here I play this weird, annoying geek on a TV show.
It's not like I'm playing Gandhi.
I'm not on like touched by an angel or something like that.
You know what I mean?
I play a lot of different weirdos.
But you know, here's an interesting thing about the Baha 'i faith and this will get us to soul pancake is one of the one of the teachings of Baha 'i faith is that in this day and age, Baha 'u'llah tells us that the making of art is no different than prayer.
There's not any difference between lifting up a paintbrush and touching it to a canvas and bowing your head in a church.
You know, I just got a little, yeah.
The hairs on my head rose a little bit.
Good. When you said that.
Get a little tingle.
I got a little tingle from that, right?
So there's, and you know, there are many other teachings, but you know, the...
That art is prayer.
Creativity is an expression of prayer.
It is prayer. You know, to go to get a little mystical on your ass?
Yes. Go ahead. Get a little mystical on my ass.
Here we go. Check this out.
What? At the end of the Baha 'i prayers, you say the name of God, like there are prayers for everyone.
They're not just for Baha 'is.
But at the end, you're like, you know, thou art the powerful, the mighty, the all -seeing, all -hearing God.
You know, there's a lot of different faith traditions.
But one of the names of God that has been revealed by Baha 'u'llah is the fashioner.
And there's a beautiful quote in the Baha 'i faith is that because this word fashioner was revealed, as God is the fashioner, that this relates to the arts, because when you're an artist, you're a fashioner, whether you're making a sculpture or a painting or a piece of music.
So you're emulating God.
Fashioner as in... Creator.
God is the creator.
You know, it's just a different word for creator, that's all.
So being creative and being a creator is the ultimate testament to the great creator God.
So you're, just as God is kind and merciful and just and patient and all -loving and all -compassionate, and those are the qualities of God that we seek to emulate as human beings.
Right. Hopefully, you know, we try our best.
You know, one of those is also to be fashioners.
To be fashioners. And I happen to be a fashioner of weird, eccentric, freaky geeks.
Characters. So this is Rayne Wilson talking, y 'all, from The Office, who is really talking about God in such a cool, not airy, fairy way.
Thank you. And that was your fashioned intention for Soul Pancake.
Yes. Soul Pancake, as I became a celebrity, and I have my spiritual belief, and I seek as a Baha 'i, and I believe that our highest calling as human beings is to be of service.
Yes. Isn't that the truth?
That's what I deeply believe.
I do too. So I was thinking about, like, how can I be of service?
What can I best offer the world?
I mean, obviously, you know, I do some work with charities and stuff like that, and, you know, try and be a good father and a good husband and, you know, struggle with these things.
And, but the, but this is, you know, when I speak to young people about God or about religion or about faith, I kept coming up on the same answer.
Yeah. Which is young people, you'd say to someone, you know, kind of the generations younger than me in 20s or 30s, say, do you believe in God?
And they would say, yeah, kind of.
There's a kind of belief in God, but I don't believe in an old man on a beard who's judgmental.
I believe in some force in the universe that is, you know, that is creative and loving.
I'm not quite sure what that is.
The universality of God is what people say.
But I love that you say that because I've heard people say that.
Do you believe in God?
Kind of. And I have a point, is that like kind of being pregnant?
It was like, exactly.
Yeah, kind of. That's what I always say.
But anyway, so they don't, young people think that they kind of believe in God.
They know they can't be a part of an organized religion and they have a great distaste for anything that feels kind of hippy dippy or airy fairy about religion.
Anything that's kind of like, you know, let's hold our crystals, our breath together and I'm getting a sense of your aura and that kind of stuff that, um, for young people, they hate that and they cringe at that.
They'd want to go turn on Nirvana and crank the volume whenever they hear something like that.
So I was like, how can I, how can I inspire young people to take a spiritual journey in their lives that doesn't have to do with organized religion that does that questions this idea of who God is and is there a God and isn't hippy dippy or airy fairy in any way.
And that's kind of how SoulPancake was born.
I also feel like the way that young people can best experience some kind of religious feeling is through art because art turns people on, religion turns people off, creativity is turning people on.
And so I wanted is a prayer and art is a prayer.
I believe the two are the same thing.
So there's not any difference between being creative and being spiritual.
And so I want to investigate that in our website.
And you created it for all the reasons that we've been talking about.
Yes, really to bring spirituality, creativity to a level that young people would be receptive to the, to the greater voices.
I love it to the greater voice.
I'm going to use that.
Okay. To the greater voices.
And so how did you come up with that idea?
Um, boy, uh, I had a couple of friends, um, uh, Devin Gundry and Joshua Hamnick, a couple of buddies of mine.
And we spent a lot of hours consulting.
We spent a lot of hours talking about, do we do this?
Do we do that? How do we do this?
And you guys were actually sitting down saying, how do we get young people connected to the greater there is?
How do, how do I, Rainn Wilson, who is now kind of a, somewhat of a recognizable celebrity, albeit for playing a weirdo.
Um, uh, but he's been playing weird fun.
Don't you love that guy?
It's so much fun. Yeah.
Don't you really like Dwight, don't you?
I do. I love him. I love him.
Dwight's been very good to you.
Sweet love to him. No, that's terrible.
Why would I say that?
I hope you edit that out.
Oh, um, yeah. And we just, we consulted about it and this is kind of what we came up with.
I can't even remember like this.
We had all kinds of different ideas.
Um, what gradually came to is like social networking, right?
Let's try and create a community of people that are sharing work together that are talking about life's big questions.
That's what I felt was missing.
I love that. Life's big questions.
Young people today aren't talking about it.
When you, not even young people, people in our culture, if you go up to someone and you're not on the street, but if you're in the conversation and you say to them, what do you think happens when you die?
What do you think happens after you die?
People get freaked out.
You know what? It's common.
It's common and not, not so long for some of us.
And I think it's, it's probably the most important question that we can ever ask ourselves.
I have a list of life's big questions.
Can I hit you with some?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
I'd like to hear what yours are.
All right, Oprah. For my next dinner party.
Fasten your seatbelt.
It's go, go mystical on my ass.
What does your soul look like?
What does your soul look like?
Ooh, that's good. What do you miss most about being five years old?
Oh my God. That's really good.
If you could ask God one question, what would it be?
That's a good one. What would you ask God?
Um, I would just ask God why.
Excellent question.
Why? Which brings us to the biggest question of all.
Why are we here? What is the purpose of life?
That would be it. Why, why, and why, and why, and why, and why humans and why, and why, and why.
But when you sat down with these questions, though, and I'm still on that question of, you know, what do you miss most about being five years old?
Your answer. What do I miss most about being five years old?
Um, I guess I, uh, the thing that I hate the most as I grow older is my constant battle against being jaded.
You know, my first reaction so many times I get a piece of news or someone says something or even something inspiring about the world.
I'm like, Oh yeah. You know, that whole kind of jaded thing, cynical thing, cynical thing.
Yeah. It's so easy to become cynical and, uh, it's a first defense.
It's an easy way to go.
It's the easiest thing to do is to be sarcastic.
Um, and five years old, you don't, you don't know, you don't know that.
You're just so open.
You're open to receive open to possibility.
Yeah. So soul pancake is about, uh, creating this mixture of everybody else's ideas and thoughts.
It creates an online community of people who are interested in digging into life's big questions and interested in the arts.
We want to create a world community where you can see, like you might have, um, you might do a contest where you talk about what your soul looks like.
And then someone in Nepal might be doing that.
And someone in South Africa might be doing that.
And you get to talk to people all over the world about life's big questions and get, get a world perspective as well.
You know what? I think this, my soul looks, I think it looks like everybody I see.
I think it looks like everybody and everything that I see.
That's awesome. Yeah.
Mine looks like Steve Carell.
Harry. No, I'm just, I'm not going to go there.
You're not going to go there.
Do you, so I know you guys came up with these questions.
Do you think about life's big questions for yourself?
I do. I do all the time.
I, I, in, in my own life, you know, I felt myself go on a spiritual journey that I'm still on.
And so you never really leave it till you take your last breath.
I thank you. Hallelujah.
Unless you're shut down.
Well, a lot of people are on the journey.
Don't know they're on it because they're just so shut down.
They're just walking blindly through it.
Yeah, absolutely. So it was about taking other young people on a, on a spiritual journey.
Maybe there's some kid who watches the office in Omaha, Nebraska, and he's feeling a little bit lost and has an aching or a longing for God in some way in his life or not even God, but just purpose or, or, or something more.
There's got to be something more than this material world.
I want to ask life's big questions, but if I do it at school, like people throw me into soda machines.
They think I'm a geek.
Yeah. So, uh, you know, maybe this can be of service to someone like that.
What do you do for your son, Walter?
Um, how do you speak of spirituality?
Excellent question.
Um, well, we teach Walter about God.
Um, we pray every night and we talk about, uh, you know, what we believe about God.
And it was very cute.
Walter went into preschool.
He goes to the preschool teacher.
He was like, miss Pat, did you know that God is everywhere and he's in your heart and he's in our heart and he loves everyone.
He's like, right on.
That's my boy. There you go.
You go, Walter. Um, for me, it's all about this.
It's about this spiritual journey.
You know, I, I talked about when I, when I was after I was an actor and I was started investigating, uh, whether in fact there was a God, uh, I came to believe that I couldn't.
What made you conclude that there was?
Well, I, I read all of the holy books in the world.
Well, not all of them, but I read the central books of the main religions.
You did. Yeah. I read the Bhagavad Gita and I read the Dhammapadas and I read the Quran and the Bible.
You read, read them.
Yeah. Yeah, I did. Oh, you are a scholar.
No, I'm not a scholar.
Just, just a weird dude, but, um, and what I read some, this book.
It's an amazing book.
I think it was called the gospel of the red man was one.
And I read this other thing about native American spirituality.
And I was like, you know what?
I can't believe in God, but you know what?
I can believe in one can Tonka, one can Tonka, the great spirit of the Lakota, I think was the name of it.
And I was like, I can believe in an all loving force that runs through nature.
That's, that's a starting place.
That's where I can believe that's how I believe in, in God kind of came back to that and, you know,
