I really do find it hard to believe that just three months after launching my talk show in 1986, there I was talking to Shirley MacLaine on national daytime television about spirituality. I invited her to the show because I had read and loved her memoir, Out on a Limb, while filming The Color Purple. The international bestseller detailed Shirley's lifelong spiritual quest, and reading her story was life-changing for me. In fact, her writings helped inspire my own spiritual awakening. Shirley has always felt a keen connection to the world beyond.
A bohemian at heart, Shirley MacLaine has always identified herself first and foremost as a dancer. She believes dance imprints on the soul. It's the life force that aligns her mind, her body, and spirit and informs her entire being. It's also the very reason she's so disciplined, so hardworking, and in her words, somewhat accustomed to pain and criticism. You've written, 'I'm a dancer who loves to think.' What do you most love thinking about?
Who we are, where we came from, where we're going. How did it all happen? Yeah, that's my fun. I consider it really fun. Yeah. And whenever I'm with a scientist or a very kind of so-called left-brained intellectual person, that's what I love being with at dinner. And then, of course, I have to be fairly well read in like Genesis and the Bible. The Bible is the book. It's right there. It's written all about the otherness of otherworldly truth. I mean, that's the truth as I see it. What is our purpose? Why are we here? So, religion is called into question now, and a lot of people say... But then what is the purpose? What is the purpose of human experience? I think curiosity. That's what saved me.
Shirley's spiritual path has always been driven by her curiosity, which she's never been afraid to express. This is from our conversation in 1989. I think you are really, really misunderstood. When I was, you know, telling various people, even friends of mine who are supposed to have some sense, that you were going to be on the show, their interpretation of who you are and what you represent is really off base. I think a lot of people think you are literally out on a limb someplace. And don't you think that's misunderstood?
Well, I think not—I don't think everybody does. But and I think it's coming around now to where that's not—that's getting to be old-fashioned, that concept.
This is from 1986 when we talked about reincarnation for the first time. When someone dies, respect their need to do it because the death is only an expansion into a much higher consciousness. It is a rebirth. The death is only a transition to a much grander life. We like to think this is all there is. That's the beauty in this philosophy and in what I think is the giant truth: nothing ever dies. She certainly has always been candid and consistent. This is from nearly 25 years later.
You are the result of everything your soul has learned from lifetime to lifetime to lifetime. Listen, two-thirds of the world believes this. So, when are we going to wake up? But we're such a mechanistic, technological, left-brain society, frankly, that unless you can prove something, you know, thump on it, it is not real. So, we need to open up in a serious way to the recognition of other realities that are not just materialistic.
What do you now know for sure about our humans, our place in the universe?
I am sure we're not alone.
Mhm. But you've been sure of that for a pretty long time. Yeah. So, you've spoken publicly about reincarnation and past lives forever, and your belief that no one—literally forever. Forever. Really, probably many lifetimes. No one ever really dies. When did you start to know that?
I think when I first started having past-life recall. Well. And then, of course, I got into the scientific study of it and did many regressions. And what was so fascinating was in the regressions of the past lives that I have experienced, I realized the people who showed up in those experiences were also in my life today. Really? Yeah. And that became very educational. Oh, that's why they're acting like that. Look what I did to them then. That's when I understood the laws of karma. It's an inspiration to try to figure out what's going on here. I look at it as an adventure in understanding the science of the spirit. Yeah. That's what I'm interested in now in every way.
How do you feel about where we are now?
I think we're in big trouble.
I think we don't know or have any comprehension of what we're doing to nature. Now, those who are scientists and the Al Gores of the world and stuff, yes, of course. But what's happened to the rest of us? We're so materialistic. Our values—that's our religion—is materialism. So, we've become addicted to the materialism and have no sensibility of what is that doing to the very sustenance of our lives, which is nature. And everybody knows we've got to fix it. And yet, we're all leaving it up to somebody else to fix.
