Shirley MacLaine’s Spiritual Aerobics : Hot-selling tape offers to cut stress through meditation : MacLaine

She’s just made her first video and it has sold more than 100,000 copies in seven weeks. Her latest book is at the top of the best-selling nonfiction lists, and she stars in a major movie scheduled for release in the fall. Her chakras are aligned, her feet--attached to those famous legs--are on the ground, and her Higher Self has never been higher.

But something seems to be bothering Shirley MacLaine. It’s sort of . . . well, it’s this whole Shirley MacLaine thing .

The actress/author/metaphysician began to revise her thinking about her guiding spirit role in the New Age after giving a series of much-publicized seminars a couple of years ago. Suddenly, the barrier between messenger and masses wasn’t there anymore. MacLaine was face to face with her followers. And she realized many of them were literally following her.

“I noticed there were groupies,” MacLaine remembered in a recent interview. “I’d travel from city to city to give these seminars and I’d start seeing the same people show up. Finally, I told them to stop coming--they were missing the point.”

After years of trying to get the world to take her seriously as an explorer of the metaphysical realm--through writing about everything from channeling to out-of-body experiences--MacLaine says she realized that a lot of people at the seminars were taking her too seriously. “I feel very comfortable with people trusting me. I don’t feel comfortable with people asking me to do it for them. Or saying they ‘couldn’t do it without me.’

“We spend too much time in this culture giving outside authority the privilege of telling us what to do. Because it’s all about the work within yourself--being disciplined and attending to your own stuff.”

“I was getting the feeling that . . . “--she pauses and pulls on the sleeve of an oversized white sweater--”there was too much interest revolving around me when the real point of this work is to revolve around yourself, to take it home and do your own work.”

Thus the new book, “Going Within: A Guide for Inner Transformation”--a look at several New Age self-improvement techniques that’s considerably less autobiographical than her previous literary works. “It’s already her most successful hard-cover book in terms of best-seller status,” says Bantam Vice President Stuart Applebaum. “It’s No. 1 on both the New York Times and Publishers Weekly nonfiction lists.”

And thus the new video, Vestron’s “Shirley MacLaine’s Inner Workout.”

“A lot of video store managers weren’t prepared for how big this tape would be,” says Jeff Peisch, vice president of non-theatrical programming at Vestron. “The success shows how people have a need for this in their lives. It’s opened up a whole new genre in videocassettes.”

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“The video came out of the seminars,” MacLaine says. “We worked for those two days (of each seminar) all day long on these inner techniques of relaxation, stress reduction--clearing out emotional problems, working with the chakra system. And so many people said: ‘You should do a video, or put it down on paper, at least, so that we can take it home with us.”’

And just what is the chakra system? As MacLaine explains at the beginning of the video, chakras are seven “wheels of light” that lie within each person, running from the base of the spine to the top of the head. Each chakra has its own corresponding color and note on the musical scale, and each is believed to be the seat of a certain aspect of the human soul. You can meditate on the red “base chakra “ to get “grounded” and in touch with the Earth. Or on the yellow “heart chakra “ to increase feelings of love, the blue “throat chakra “ to aid expression, and so forth.

“We have so much ‘bugaboo’ judgment attached to meditation,” MacLaine says. “I think we’re afraid of it in the West. Even though doctors and psychiatrists are recommending it now as a stress-reduction technique, people just don’t have the feeling they can do it successfully. So I wanted to do a video where I would guide the viewer to then take over from there. And I didn’t see anything better to initiate the viewer with than the chakra system. It’s the most important thing you can learn about your own inner consciousness, your inner technology.”

Oddly enough, the person who talked MacLaine into doing a video, negotiated the deal with Vestron and served as executive producer was Bella Abzug, a longtime friend who, as she puts it herself, often “challenges”MacLaine’s metaphysical interests.

“Bella encouraged me (to make the video),” says MacLaine. “She’s the one who made the deals, and she went and talked to the people at Vestron and said: ‘You ought to look into this.’ You know why? Because her husband passed away two years ago. It was devastating for her. And she got more out of the meditations at my seminars than almost anybody.”

Abzug confirms that she had never been able to meditate until she attended a couple of MacLaine’s ’87 seminars. “I was very impressed by the guided meditations. They seemed useful, whether you were into the New Age or not. I found they enabled me to access my consciousness, and I told Shirley, ‘I think this is something you should share with other people.’ I negotiated with a few companies, and Vestron offered the best deal.”

Still, MacLaine asserts, Vestron wasn’t prepared for how quickly the video would take off. “They had no idea that the hunger for this kind of internal reflection process is as large as it is.”

Says Peisch: “We got some raised eyebrows when we announced the title, and many video store owners wound up being taken by surprise (at the strong sales). Once the word was out that this tape was making waves, we began to get calls from the dealers who didn’t initially order it.”

Although Abzug encouraged MacLaine to make the video, the former New York congresswoman (along with Pete Hamill and a few other close friends) tried to discourage MacLaine from publishing 1983’s “Out on a Limb.” It was the actress’ third autobiography but the first to unequivocally reveal her metaphysical interests. And “Bella thought that I went too far in the last three chapters in this new book,” MacLaine says.

What are the subjects of these chapters?

“Gasparetto, Panisset and Orbito,” says MacLaine. “Wait ‘til you read those.”

Indeed. Unlike earlier chapters on such relatively uncontroversial matters as meditation, the ones on Luis Antonio Gasparetto, Mauricio Panisset and Alex Orbito are likely to draw more howls from MacLaine’s detractors.

Gasparetto allegedly heals with light. Panisset paints pictures that he claims are channeled through him by deceased artists such as Picasso. Both are Brazilian.

But it is the chapter on Orbito that will probably cause the biggest fuss. This Filipino “healer” claims to perform “psychic surgery”--seemingly dipping his hands into patients’ insides to remove anything he considers unhealthy.

As described in “Going Within,” MacLaine not only witnessed these operations--she underwent them more than once. And although the actress did not identify her friend in the chapter on Orbito, MacLaine says Abzug observed his work.

Abzug confirmed MacLaine’s statement. “I never saw Gasparetto, but I did see Panisset and Orbito work. It’s hard to accept this sort of thing even if you see it. You say to yourself, ‘How could it happen?’ But it’s there. Still, I’m skeptical. Shirley says I haven’t reached the stage where I can accept such things, but I don’t know.”

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MacLaine has been knocked for her beliefs and revelations and knows she’s going to continue to be knocked. She tries to not let it bother her.

“There’s so much humor in all of this,” MacLaine says. “I love the jokes--if they’re good. Or, let’s say, I don’t mind them. It was an adjustment to turn on the Emmys and hear someone saying ‘Welcome to the Emmys of 1987--except to Shirley MacLaine, who’s seeing the Emmys for 1999.’ ”

If MacLaine really had the ability to tell the future, she probably wouldn’t have announced plans, during the seminars period, to build a healing center with the earnings ($300 per person).

She’s now having “second thoughts” about the project. Some obstacles have cropped up, she says--among them “water-rights problems” and her own increasing lack of enthusiasm about screening all the potential healers.

Right now, MacLaine seems more interested in making movies, something she’s had little time for since her Oscar-winning performance in 1984’s “Terms of Endearment.” But she received some rave reviews for the recent “Madame Sousatzka”; “Steel Magnolias,” with several female stars, is coming out in the fall, and she’s just started filming “Waiting for the Light” in Seattle.

After that MacLaine may do a film version of Carrie Fisher’s semi-autobiographical “Postcards From the Edge,” with Meryl Streep co-starring and Mike Nichols directing. She has also been discussing a movie about legendary eccentric silent film star Louise Brooks. And there’s also the possibility of another one-woman musical revue tour, maybe in January.

All of which would not leave MacLaine much time to do what she’s always accused of--starting her own religion.

She laughs when this old charge comes up. The laugh transforms into a reflective smile, and she comments: “When people ask, ‘Are you starting a new religion?’ I say: ‘Well, yes: the religion of self-enlightenment. And it’s got only one member.”