650 Disciples Spend a Weekend in the Lives of Shirley MacLaine

No cameras allowed. No tape recorders. Pillows are permitted. Minors too, if accompanied by their Higher Selves.

On the otherwise bare stage of a ballroom in the Westin Bonaventure Hotel is a vase of flowers, an easy chair, a somewhat sanitized diagram of a male torso. As 10 a.m. approaches, there is a shuffle at the rear of the ballroom. A fast shuffle, or at least a lively one. From among a group of admirers bounds Shirley MacLaine in white sweater, lavender slacks, apposite running shoes. Applause crescendoes as she jogs through the audience to the stage to begin her two-day seminar entitled “Connecting With the Higher Self.”

The audience of 650 is rapt--as were audiences in New York, San Diego, wherever MacLaine has hypothesized of late. Most have read at least one of her four best-selling autobiographies concerning the entertainer’s quest for the meaning of life, a search for self that has culminated in a firm belief in multiple reincarnations. The vast majority of the seminarians are admirers, some even self-styled “disciples.”

MacLaine is enthusiastic, guileless, winsome, charismatic, and there is an almost palpable effort to understand her theses. Furrowed brows are worn as proudly as amulets. Patience is endemic; hours are ignored. It is, as MacLaine says: “All time is happening at the same time.”

While MacLaine’s sincerity, her flaming desire to enlighten, is a virtual given, there is, she recognizes, the matter of $300 a pop for the seminars (a total of about $200,000 for the L.A. group)--a matter she immediately addresses. “After the response to ‘Out on a Limb,’ ” she says of her third book, “I wanted to go into interrelation. There was a conflict between spirituality and materialism. How can you measure karmic value? I decided to be materialistic,” and “I settled on $300: $100 each for the mind, the body and the spirit.”

That settled, MacLaine’s premises seem to be that: (1) We all are immortal, passing through an infinite series of reincarnations; (2) “we are all God,” ergo; (3) the “cosmic energy” of which we are all part--the superconscious--is the only reality, the only truth, the only knowledge, and (4) by “getting in touch with our higher consciousness,” we can purge the universe of evil, soul by soul.

An exuberant, inquisitive entity, MacLaine has patched her highly personal philosophy together from remnants of wisdom ranging from Einstein to astrology, from Buddha’s chakras to Christ’s New Testament (before the latter, she says, was bowdlerized in the 6th Century). The MacLaine mind, open as a Malibu window in July, rejects little.

At 10 a.m., MacLaine starts to talk. Breaks excepted, she will not stop until 6:15 p.m. of the following day. The seminar is loose in format, the bolder of the seekers interrupting with questions from the floor.

There is an urgency to her message, a message concerning “the essentialness of the connection with the higher self.” Nevertheless, there is an honest attempt to “keep this as simple as possible so you won’t have to go through the metaphysical wrenching I did.” With that, MacLaine is off and running.

“The superconsciousness of you,” she says, “is telling you to hurry up and clean up the karmic debris.”

“We are essentially spiritual beings,” she says on another occasion. “That is the internality of us.”

“The cosmic law spirals the light.”

“Everything takes on a different perspection when you’re right in the middle of it.”

“Love travels faster than light. It’s a question of frequencies.”

“This is the science of taking total responsibility for the potential of your empowerness.”

“Got that?”

There is a brief break, during which one might reflect where Shirley MacLaine is coming from, or where she is, or where she will be--whichever comes first.

In “Out on a Limb,” MacLaine, then in her mid-40s (now 53) and already an extraordinary performer, describes her belated quest for the meaning of life, the answer to “Why am I here?” “This book,” she writes, “is about the experience of getting in touch with myself.”

On a friend’s advice, she wanders into the Bodhi Tree, a Melrose Avenue bookstore specializing in the metaphysical. Slowly, even reluctantly, she begins to believe in reincarnation. The belief is reinforced by a visit to Sweden where a “trans-channeler,” or medium, is in touch with a “spiritual entity named Ambres.” Back in Malibu, another medium facilitates chats with other multidimensional beings, some of whom have known her for half a million years.

Friend David takes Shirley to Peru, where UFOs are as common as mosquitoes. David has met a young woman, Mayan, who has revealed to him the key to universal truth: “To know yourself is to know God.”

Mayan--who, it turns out, hails from the Pleiades--has told David to pass the word to Shirley, who is to “be a teacher, but on a much wider scale.”

Hence the book. Hence the seminar.

“During the break,” MacLaine is saying, “most of your questions revolved about the conflict of linear versus hologramic. The Life Drama, of course, is non-linear. . . . “

“The Greeks,” she continues, “already understood that each of us knows everything already. So when you’re vibrating to the totality of your superconscious, you already know everything.”

To facilitate resonance, MacLaine prepares to lead the crowd in a mass meditation--eyes closed; lotus posture recommended--that will last fully two hours. First, however, she demonstrates chakras--centers of physical and psychic energy--on the chart of head and torso of the stylized male. Each chakra has a musical note (“a vibrational frequency”) and a color (“We are all rainbows”).

We are asked to “visualize cleansing through the chakra system,” in unison. “When three or more people gather with the same intentionality,” MacLaine declares, “the energy unit is squared.”

Lights out. Ethereal music. MacLaine exhorting. “Touch your divine mass purpose.” “Float above the garden.” “Recall your memory, past and present.”

Lights up. Music off. Cleansed, a number of disciples repair to the Bagel Nosh.

‘Astral,” says a lady in the lox line. “That’s what Shirley is, astral!”

“It’s hard to get actuated when the air-conditioner’s off,” another says.

“I got to the garden level, then I tried to force it. . . . “

“Rage is my problem. I’m into heavy rage.”

” . . . Outtakes of my consciousness . . . “

“ My higher consciousness is on my left side. Is that OK?”

“It’s an emotional anesthetic is what it is.”

“I thought of sticking to my diet, but now I know the body doesn’t count , you know what I mean?”

“I guess Shirley asked herself these things so late in life because she’s on a different timetable.”

“Astral. Absolutely astral.”

Post-lunch, chairs are removed and astral adherents take to the floor, most in the lotus position but some prone, seeking succor for their third, or yellow, or belly chakra.

There is a question-and-answer interval, mostly answer.

Many are anxious to express their inner peace, their love, “the understanding I feel, far above any intellectual level.”

MacLaine is pleased. “The cloud of unknowing is an illusion,” she says.

“When I came out of the light,” a believer testifies, “I saw a Roman warrior in gold armor. No, I didn’t talk to him. . . . “

“Next time,” MacLaine says, “give him my phone number.”

She gets serious. We are all manifestations of each other’s imagination, she avers. “We create our own spouses, our parents, our children, so how can you get angry with what you chose ?”

There is a laying on of hands, strangers straining to absorb each other’s higher self. “Don’t visualize,” MacLaine says. “Sensualize.”

The mood lightens. MacLaine relates an early dream. She is being chased by a gorilla to a precipice. Unwilling to plunge, she confronts her pursuer. “What’ll I do now ?” she asks. “ I don’t know, little girl,” says the gorilla. “It’s your dream.”

Day 2 dawns, overcast. Everyone seems to be back.

A chirpy aide named Midge warms up the crowd: “It takes me a little longer to get up to my higher self because I’m so short.”

MacLaine has a confession: “Professionally, I border on Streisand-like perfectionism. I have to feel in control. In this work, it’s just the opposite. I am not prepared. I can’t allow myself to be prepared, or I would block your spontaneity.”

There is a monologue on loneliness (“We must construct more sophisticated ways to make the loneliness more permissible”). A long one on loving yourself above all. Another on choosing the right colors of food to correspond to the neediest chakra. (“How many blue foods are there?” a man whispers to his seat mate.)

Another mass meditation, with a caveat: “Let the intentionality of everyone get out of their own way.” This time, we are asked to let higher selves “show you parts of your distant past.”

A seeker cheats, opening his eyes to see how Shirley is getting along. Sure enough, her right hand is waving “Hi” to a past acquaintance, her left patting the head of another unseen essence. She smiles, nods, waves again.

“Shift the forces forward, to the future memory,” we are told. “If you don’t like the picture, you have the power to uncreate it.”

Now, “From the positionality of your chairs, recognize the higher selves of everyone in the room. . . .”

An exchange of psyches follows, one that turns out to be somewhat disturbing. MacLaine, well-traveled, picks a volunteer, places her hands on her shoulders, and attempts to divine images of the woman’s subconscious, to wit: “Down the Nile on a barge; eating nuts in Africa; India; dust; Coca-Cola; goat carts; abhorrence of dung; South Pole. . . . I’m getting these images from (woman’s name).”

Positions are reversed. The woman begins to sob: “It’s just me alone is a big, big universe and I’m so afraid. There isn’t any light. . . .”

“Good,” MacLaine says. “Go with it. You’ll get it. Just look in your heart.”

“This is important,” the volunteer says, still crying. “I’m really learning. Thank you.”

Encouragement is shouted from the audience, as well as a dozen more questions. MacLaine fields them all with concern and aplomb. Never once during the two-day seminar does she answer: “I don’t know.”

The experiment concluded, we are told “The body is nothing but coagulated thought,” but “since you are God, the issue turns on the sticky wicket of your perception of God.”

There is the ritual swipe at “the Church,” Ronald Reagan and other temporal aberrations, then another meditation on chakras:

“Breathe in green. Let the mellow yellow drip into the pancreas. Spew indigo through your third eye.”

Chakras segue into a MacLaine-guided tour to a village in a lovely wood, where sits a crystal dome. Inside the dome, we are asked to smash images of those who have hurt us most, most specifically Mom and Dad, then forgive them.

Back in the village, says MacLaine, birds with our faces spit on us; furry things, also with our faces, urinate on our legs. MacLaine breaks up. First a titter, then a full-throated laugh. “I wonder,” she says, “if God giggles.”

A very late lunch, a final Q-and-A, and a last meditation, this one on the polarity of the sexes. We were all androgynous once, says MacLaine, “until the fall of Atlantis. We’re still looking for the other half that used to be us.” In the dark, the feminine in us is asked to seek out the masculine, and vice-versa.

MacLaine now stands on a box in the center of the hall. The audience joins hands to chant “Om.” The Om, orchestrated by the leader, lasts a long, long time: an Om for California, for America, for every country in Europe, Asia, Africa.

Finally, Shirley MacLaine, astral ombudsperson, solicits a last, lingering Om for the universe at large, and jogs out of the ballroom to its echoes.