OUT ON a LIMB Read online

  OUT ON A LIMB

  “This book is about the experience of getting in touch with myself when I was in my early forties. It’s about the connection between mind, body, and spirit. And what I learned as a result has enabled me to get on with the rest of my life as an almost transformed human being. So this book is about a quest for myself—a quest which took me on a long journey that was gradually revealing and at all times amazing. I tried to keep an open mind as I went because I found myself gently but firmly exposed to dimensions of time and space that heretofore, for me, belonged to science fiction or what I would describe as the occult. But it happened to me. It happened slowly. It happened at a pace that apparently was peculiarly my own, as I believe all people experience such events. People progress according to what they’re ready for. I must have been ready for what I learned because it was the right time.…”

  —Shirley MacLaine

  “A woman of considerable intelligence and charm.”

  —The Washington Post

  “More startling than any of her celebrated films … Out on a Limb is out of this world.”

  —The Toronto Sun

  Bantam Books by Shirley MacLaine

  Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed

  DANCING IN THE LIGHT

  “DON’T FALL OFF THE MOUNTAIN”

  GOING WITHIN

  IT’S ALL IN THE PLAYING

  OUT ON A LIMB

  YOU CAN GET THERE FROM HERE

  DANCE WHILE YOU CAN

  MY LUCKY STARS

  OUT ON A LIMB

  A Bantam Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam hardcover edition / July 1983

  Bantam rack edition / April 1984

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the publishers named below for permission to reprint the following material:

  Excerpt from The Forgotten Language by Erich Fromm. Copyright 1951, © 1979 by Erich Fromm. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Publishers.

  Excerpt from Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. Copyright © 1959 by the Library of Living Philosophers, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Excerpt from C. G. Jung, Letters, ed. Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffe, trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XCV, Vol. I : 1906–1950. Copyright © 1971, 1973 by Princeton University Press. Excerpt, page 343, reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

  Excerpt from A. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World. Reprinted with the kind permission of Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.

  Excerpt from Albert Einstein, The World As I See It. Reprinted with the kind permission of the Philosophical Library, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Excerpt from Joseph Wood Krutch, More Lives Than One. Copyright © 1962 by Joseph Wood Krutch. By permission of William Morrow & Company.

  Note: Every effort has been made to locate the copyright owner of material reproduced in this book. Omissions brought to our attention will be corrected in subsequent editions.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1983 by Shirley MacLaine.

  Photographs copyright © 1983 by Roger Ressmeyer/Starlight.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 82-45955

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76504-8

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  Dear Reader,

  From the time I was very small, I remember having the impulse to “express” myself. At the age of three I attended dance classes because I wanted to express myself physically. As a teenager, I went from dancing to singing, which seemed a natural and logical extension of that self-expression. Later, as an adult, I carried that impulse for expression even further, into acting, and experienced a greater form of expression. I loved the intricate mystery of being another character, sorting out background and motivation and meaning, exploring my own feelings and thoughts in relation to another person.

  Then I found writing—an outlet that enabled me to express more intricately and specifically my experiences. I wrote to know what I was thinking. I wrote to understand my profession, my travels, my relationships, and, in fact, my life. Writing helped to whet an already insatiable appetite to understand the why and how of everything.

  I like to think of each of my books as a kind of map depicting where I’ve been and where I’m going. “Don’t Fall off the Mountain” described how I learned to spread my wings as a young artist and began to take charge of my personal destiny. In a series of expeditions to Africa, India, the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, and to the land of my daughter Sachi’s namesake, Japan, I first reached out to touch the unknown—and was changed by it. The personal period profiled in You Can Get There From Here was one of great internal, intellectual, and political growth for me. The star system had come to an end in Hollywood, so I ventured into the quicksands of television. The result was disastrous and the impact on me profound. It drove me to test myself in the political arena during the presidential election of 1972, when I campaigned for George McGovern against Richard Nixon. That experience motivated me to pursue a desire few Westerners had been allowed to fulfill in the early 1970s. I led the first women’s delegation to China to study the remarkable evolution of a brand-new culture from the ashes of an ancient and little-known land. The experience of adjusting to an alien culture brought us smack-up against ourselves. We learned about our own evolution as well, and even more about what the human will, properly directed, can accomplish even against great odds. All of this prepared me to return to my performing career with a greater enthusiasm and appreciation for the craft by which I earned my living, and to explore what new levels of creativity I could bring to it. I believe this experience also helped to drive home another lesson: Anything is possible if you believe you deserve it.

  I thought for a long time before I published Out on a Limb because it is the written expression of a spiritual odyssey that took me further than I ever expected to go, into an astonishing and moving world of psychic phenomena where past lives, the existence of spirit guides, and the genuine immortality of the soul became more than concepts to me—they became real, true parts of my life. I think of this book as my spiritual diary opened to the eyes of those who also seek an inner understanding, and as my statement to those who taught me and opened my eyes that I accept their gifts with gratitude and humility.

  I like to think of Dancing in the Light as a celebration of all my “selves.” It was a fulfilling and satisfying exploration of the promises I made to myself in Out on a Limb. In it I look with pleasure, humor, and some contentment upon my experiences as a daughter, a mother, a lover, a friend, a seeker of spiritual destiny, and a voice calling for peace in the world. I think it expresses my great personal joy at reaching this important point in my life, as well as the strengthening of my sense of purpose. But the story is not yet finished, for I am still a woman in search of myself, the lives I might have lived and the inner heart of my being.

  If my search for inner truth helps give you, the reader, the gift of insight, then I am rewarded. But my first reward has been the journey through myself, the only journey worth taking. Through it all I have learned one deep and meaningful lesson: LIFE, LIVES, and REALITY are only what we each perce
ive them to be. Life doesn’t happen to us. We make it happen. Reality isn’t separate from us. We are creating our reality every moment of the day. For me that truth is the ultimate freedom and the ultimate responsibility.

  Love and Light,

  Some of the people who appear in this book are presented as composite characters in order to protect their privacy, and the sequence of some of the events is adapted accordingly. But all the events are real.

  To my Mother

  and

  my Father

  “Never utter these words: ‘I do not know this, therefore it is false.’ One must study to know; know to understand; understand to judge.”

  —Apothegm of Narada

  “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  —Hamlet

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “The dreams of ancient and modern man are written in the same language as the myths whose authors lived in the dawn of history.… I believe that symbolic language is the one foreign language that each of us must learn. Its understanding brings us in touch with one of the most significant sources of wisdom.… Indeed, both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves.”

  —ERICH FROMM

  The Forgotten Language

  The sand was cold and soft as I jogged along the beach. The tide came in steadily and by sundown it would reach the pilings that supported the houses along Malibu Road. I loved to jog just before the sun set because watching the magenta clouds above the surf helped divert my attention from how much my legs hurt. Some health instructor had once told me that jogging three miles in soft sand was the same as jogging six miles on a hard surface. And I wanted to stay healthy no matter how painful it was. When I wasn’t dancing, running kept me in shape.

  But what was the story I had heard the day before—about the two brothers? One was a health nut who jogged along the boulevard five miles early every morning of his life regardless of how he felt. The other never did any exercise. One morning the health nut brother was out jogging along the road and turned around to shake a fìnger at his lazy brother when—bam! He just didn’t see the truck …

  Maybe it didn’t really matter what we did to preserve ourselves. There was always some truck somewhere. The thing was not to let that stop you, not to let it direct your life.

  I remembered sitting at the dinner table with my mother and father in Virginia, where I grew up. I was about twelve and the thought struck me that regardless of how much happiness I might feel at any given moment, I was aware of the struggle underneath. The “trouble” I called it then … everything had some brand of trouble attached to it. I remembered my Dad had said I had inadvertently struck on an old Greek principle—Pythagorean, I think he said. Dad was a kind of country philosopher and had almost gotten his degree in philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He loved to speculate on philosophical meaning. I guess I inherited the same trait. I remembered he said my thought had a deep and principled meaning which was true of all life. No matter how good something might seem to be, there was always the negative compensating factor to consider. Vice versa was true too, of course—he said—but Dad seemed to focus on the negative. For me, it made me aware of the duality in life. In a blinding flash over the Birdseye peas, I had felt I understood something, without knowing quite what I understood.

  The wind came up sloshing the waves into white-caps further out to sea. Sandpipers scurried in and out of the ripples, savoring what food might be washed up with the tide while their graceful wide-winged pelican brothers swooped and then dove, like mad kamikaze pilots, headlong into schools of fish swimming further out in deeper water.

  I wondered what it would feel like to be a bird with nothing on my mind but flying and eating. I remembered reading that the smallest bird could travel thousands of miles across the Pacific unencumbered and alone, needing only one piece of baggage; one possession … a twig. He could carry the twig in his beak and when he got tired he simply descended to the sea and floated on it until he was ready to move on again. He fished from the twig, ate from the twig, and slept on the twig. Who needed the Queen Mary? He flapped his wings, clamped his life raft in his mouth and set out to see more of the world.

  What a life. I wondered if that bird ever got lonely. But even if he was alone he seemed to perceive the proper direction for his life. Birds seemed to have innate compasses that guided them wherever they wanted to go. They seemed to know just exactly what they were, how to live, why they were alive. But did they have feelings? Did they fall in love? Did they cocoon themselves off with only one other bird as though it was the two of them against everything? Birds seemed part of everything. Space, time, air. No, how could they shut out the world if they wanted to fly over it?

  I remembered an experience I had had once. I call it an experience and not a dream, even though it happened when I was asleep, because it felt more real than a dream. I felt I was suspended over the Earth and I dipped and flowed with the air currents just like the birds. I floated over countries and mountains and streams and trees. As I drifted, the tops of trees brushed gently across me. I was careful not to pluck even one loose leaf from the branch to which it belonged because I, too, belonged to everything there was. I wanted to go further and faster and higher and wider—and the higher I went the more I became connected, my being concentrated and expanded at the same time. I had the sensation that this was actually happening, that my body was irrelevant and that that was part of the experience. The real me was floating free and clear, filled with the peace of connection to everything that was.

  It was not the usual sexually oriented flying dream which psychologists describe. This was more. There was another dimension to it. The word I’m looking for, I thought to myself as I ran, is “extra.” That was why I had remembered it so vividly, and whenever I felt displeased or lonely or out of sorts or strung up and nervous, I thought of that experience and of how peaceful I had felt when I floated outside of my physical body feeling involved with all there was above and below me.

  That feeling of belonging to “everything” gave me more pleasure than anything. More pleasure than working, than simply making love, than being successful or any of the other human endeavors people devoted themselves to in order to achieve happiness. I loved to think. I loved to concentrate. I loved to be involved with concerns outside myself because, to be honest, I believed that was actually my path to understanding myself. Somewhere way underneath me were the answers to everything that caused anxiety and confusion in the world. What an arrogant thought! But, if I could touch me, really touch me, I could touch the world … maybe even the universe. That was why I was a political activist, a feminist, a traveler, a kind of curious human reporter; and probably it was why I was an actress and performer. I needed to reach inside and touch me if I was going to understand the world and also if I was going to be any good in my work. That was probably why I began my life as a dancer. When I moved, I was in touch with who I was. Whatever … to me the journey most worthwhile taking was the journey through myself.

  A
chill wind scattered sand around my legs as I ran. I slowed down to a walk, remembering that after hard exercise it’s good to ease off gradually so the lactic acid in the muscles doesn’t congeal. “That’s what makes your muscles sore,” the gym instructor had said. “Never stop cold after hard exercise. Come down slowly. You’ll hurt less later.”

  I listened with attentiveness to anything to do with physical culture because I understood that it put me more in touch with myself. I respected my body because it was the only one I had. I wanted to make it last. But, my God, it could be painful, especially when I had let fifteen years pass with no exercise at all to speak of. That was really dumb, I thought as I walked. All those years of acting, I thought my body wasn’t that important. I had had good formal training as a dancer when I was young; that would be enough, I thought. I was wrong. People have to take care of their bodies every day or they can wake up one morning and find it won’t do what they want it to. Then they’ll say they are old. I always felt old when I was not in touch with my body. And the process of connecting with my body put me more in touch with the real me inside of that body. And what was the real me? What was it that made me question and search and think and feel? Was it just the physical brain, the little gray cells, or was it the mind which was something more than brain? Did “mind,” or perhaps “personality,” include what people called the “soul”? Were they all separate, or was being human a recognition that one was the sum of all these parts, and if so, how did they fit together?

  That is what this book is about … it’s about the experience of getting in touch with myself when I was in my early forties; it’s about what the experience did to my mind, to my forbearance, to my spirit, and for my patience and belief. It’s about the connection between mind, body, and spirit. And what I learned as a result has enabled me to get on with the rest of my life as an almost transformed human being.