OUT ON a LIMB

by Shirley Maclaine

  “Yoga achievement requires four attitudes,” he said, “faith, determination, patience, and love. It is like life. And if you are good and faithful in your struggle in this life, the next one will be easier.”

  My leotard was damp with sweat. “Struggle in this life and the next one will be easier?” I guessed he really believed that stuff. He was, after all, a Hindu. I put on a skirt and T-shirt, and David and I left class.

  Walking out into the drenching California sunshine, David said, “I’m going over to the Bodhi Tree bookstore. Want to come?”

  “The Bodhi Tree?” I asked. “Isn’t that the tree Buddha meditated under for forty days or something?”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “So what kind of a bookshop is it—Indian?”

  “Oh, a little,” he answered. “They have all sorts of occult and metaphysical stuff there. Haven’t you ever heard of it?”

  I felt shy but admitted I hadn’t.

  “Well, I think you’ll like it,” he said gently. “If you relate so well to your yoga, you’ll love some of the writing of the ancient mystics. I’m surprised you spent so much time in India without getting into the spiritualization of the place. Anyway, it’s on Melrose near La Cienega. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Sure, why not,” I said. Looking back, I can say that making that simple, lazy-afternoon decision to visit an unusual bookstore was one of the most important decisions of my life. And again, I am reminded that we make important small moves when we are prepared. Earlier in my life such a suggestion would have seemed a waste of an afternoon when I had so many scripts to read and so many phone calls to answer. I was too busy being successful to understand that there were other dimensions to life.

  David was already at the Bodhi Tree when I arrived, waiting for me outside, leaning against a tree. He smiled as I fitted my big Lincoln into a parking space meant for a Volkswagen.

  “I rent this car,” I said. “I don’t own one. They’re a pain in the ass and I don’t understand them. As long as I have four wheels and some gas I’m satisfied. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “Probably better than you realize.” He took me by the arm and led me inside. As we walked in, I smelled sandalwood incense filtering faintly through the rooms of the cluttered bookstore. I looked around. Posters of Buddha and of yogis I had never heard of smiled down from the walls. Customers with books in their hands stood about drinking herb teas and talking in soft voices. I began to study the bookshelves. Lined up along the walls were books and books on subjects ranging from life after death to how to eat on Earth while alive. I smiled faintly at David. I felt out of place and a little silly.

  “This is fascinating,” I said, wishing that I hadn’t found it necessary to say anything at all.

  A young woman in sandals and a gauze skirt came over to us handing us tea.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in a voice that was calm and peaceful. She matched the atmosphere in the shop—or maybe I was being theatrical. When I turned to look at her, she recognized me and suggested that she introduce me to the owner who was in his office having tea. David smiled and we followed.

  The office was creaking with books. The owner was young, in his mid-thirties, and wore a beard. He was pleased to see me and said he was honored. He said he had read my books and was especially interested in what I had to say about my time in the Himalayas.

  “How deeply are you into meditational technique?” he asked. “Do you use Kampalbhati breathing? It’s difficult but effective, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about and just at that moment a young man with a crew cut and a football T-shirt sauntered in. He looked at me, at David, at the owner (whose name was John) and had a kind of smirk on his face.

  “Listen, man,” he said, “what’s all this shit about if you think right you get happy? I mean, man, how can a dude be happy in this world and why are you people conning folks into thinking they can?”

  David touched my arm when he felt how startled I was. John asked if he could help the guy, but he went right on. “I mean, what is this?” he said, “with the incense and the herb teas and the flashy posters—you guys are full of shit.”

  John gently took David and me by the arm and led us out of the office and back into the shop.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “No problem,” said David. “He’s got to find his own way like we all do.” I nodded that it didn’t matter, and David suggested we could find what we wanted by ourselves—not to be concerned.

  “Jesus,” I said, “why does he find this place so threatening?”

  “I don’t know,” said David. “Maybe he’s got a big emotional investment in hostility. It’s hard to believe that peace is possible.”

  Then he led me over to a huge bookshelf marked “Reincarnation and Immortality.” On it were books from the Bhagavad Gita to the Egyptian Books of the Dead to interpretations of the Holy Bible and the Kabala. I didn’t know what I was looking at.

  I looked at David closely. “Do you believe all this?” I asked.

  “All what?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Do you really believe in reincarnation?”

  “Well,” he said, “when you’ve studied the occult as long as I have you learn that it’s not a question of whether it’s true but more a question of how it works.”

  “You mean you believe it’s that firmly established as a fact?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Why yeah, I do. It’s the only thing that makes sense. If we don’t each have a soul—then why are we alive? Who knows if it’s true? It’s true if you believe it and that goes for anything, right? Besides, there must be something to the fact that the belief in the soul is the one thing all religions have in common.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But maybe all religions are phony too.”

  He went on looking through the books not as though the conversation was uninteresting to him, but more as though he was simply and directly looking for a book.

  I hadn’t thought much about religion since I was twelve years old and played tic-tac-toe in Sunday school class.

  David reached up for a book. “You should read some of the works not only on this shelf but also of Pythagoras, Plato, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Goethe, and Voltaire.”

  “Did those guys believe in reincarnation?”

  “Sure, and they wrote extensively about it. But it always ends up on the occult bookshelf like it’s black magic or something.”

  “Voltaire believed in reincarnation?”

  “Sure,” said David, “he said he didn’t find it any more surprising to be born lots of times than to be born once. I feel the same way.”

  I looked at him. His blue eyes were steady and clear.

  “Listen,” he said. “Do you know what the definition of occult means?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Well, it means ‘hidden.’ So just because something is hidden doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

  I looked more closely at David’s bony-cheeked, sad face. He spoke in a peaceful tone, with no hesitancy except when he realized I was trying to comprehend what he was saying.

  “Do you want me to compile a kind of reading list for you?” he asked with down-to-earth practicality.

  I hesitated slightly, remembering five scripts I had to read and also wondering what Gerry would think if he saw me reading books like these.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not? People thought the world was flat too until someone proved otherwise. I guess I should be curious about all kinds of ‘hidden’ possibilities. Whoever thought there were bugs crawling all over our skin until someone came up with the microscope?”

  “Great,” said David. “For me, real intelligence is open-mindedness. If you feel you’re looking for something, why not give it a shot?”

  “Okay.” I found myself smiling.

  David said, “Make yourself comfortable browsing around and I’ll
get you a bunch of stuff to read.” He wiped the corners of his mouth and with an intense squint he began to survey the bookshelves. I thumbed through books on food-combining, yoga exercises, meditation and other healthful subjects I understood.

  After about half an hour, David had an armful of books and I wondered as I thanked him and we walked out into the California sunlight if I’d ever crack one of them.

  I was leaving for Honolulu the next day so I said goodbye to David and went home to think, rest, pack, and if I had time, to read.

  That night I found myself looking up reincarnation in the encyclopedia.

  Let me say that I was not brought up to be a religious person. My parents sent me to church and Sunday school, but it was because it was the accepted place to be on Sundays. I wore crinoline petticoats and tried not to glance too often at the lyrics in the hymnal I was supposed to have memorized. I wondered where the money went after the collection plate was passed, but I really never had any feeling one way or the other whether there was a God or not.

  Jesus Christ seemed like a smart, wise, and certainly a good man, but I viewed what I learned about him in the Bible as philosophical, mythological, and somehow detached. What he preached and did didn’t really touch me, so I didn’t believe or disbelieve. He just happened … like all of us … and he did some good things a long time ago. I took his being the Son of God with a grain of salt and, in fact, by the time I was in my late teens, had decided for myself that God and religion were definitely mythological and if people needed to believe in it that was okay with me, but I couldn’t.

  I couldn’t believe in anything that had no proof and besides, I wasn’t all that agonized by the need for a-purpose in life or something to believe in besides myself. In short, where religion, faith in God, or the immortality of the soul were concerned, I didn’t think much about them. No one insisted and I found the subject boring—not nearly so stimulating as something real and humorous like people. Every now and then as I grew older I would engage in a bemused argument over the pitfalls of such mythological beliefs and how they detracted from the real plight of the human race. I didn’t much like the authoritarianism of the church—any church—and I considered it dangerous because it made people afraid they would burn in hell if they didn’t believe in heaven.

  But as much as I was disinterested in God and religion and the hereafter, there was something I was extremely interested in. From the time I was very young I was interested in identity. My identity and that of everyone I met. Identity seemed real to me. Who was I? Who was anyone? Why did I do the things I did? Why did they? Why did I care about some people and not others? The analysis of relationships became a favorite subject of mine—the relationship I had with myself as well as with others.

  So maybe because I was interested in the origin of my own identity it intrigued me that there might be more to me than what I was aware of in my conscious mind. Perhaps there were other identities buried deep in my subconscious that I only needed to search for and find. Indeed many times in my work with self-expression, whether dancing, writing, or acting, I would be amazed at myself, baffled as to where a feeling or a memory or an inspiration had come from. I had put it down to a hazy concept called the creative process, as did most of my fellow artists, but I have to admit that at the bottom of whoever I was I felt a flame that I was not able to understand, to touch. What was the origin of that flame? Where did it come from? And what had come before it?

  I was always more interested in what went before than what might come after. So for that reason, I suppose I wasn’t so interested in what would happen to me after I died as I was in what made me the way I was. Therefore when the notion of life before birth first struck me I guess you might say I was curious to explore it.

  The encyclopedia said that the doctrine of reincarnation went back as far as recorded history. It consisted of belief in the connection of all living things and the gradual purification of the soul, or spirit, of man until it returned to the common source and origin of all life which was God. It was the belief that the soul was immortal and embodied itself time and time again until it morally worked out the purification of itself. It said that the companion subjects of karma—that is, working out one’s inner burdens—and reincarnation—the physical opportunity to live through one’s karma—were two of the oldest beliefs in the history of mankind and more widely accepted than almost any religious concepts on earth. This was news to me—I had always vaguely connected reincarnation with disembodied spirits, hence ghosts, the occult and things that go bump in the night. I had never connected it with any major, serious religion.

  Then I looked up religion. Although it was impossible to give a conclusive definition, several characteristics were common to most religions. One was belief in the existence of the soul, another the acceptance of supernatural revelation, and finally, among others, the repeated quest for salvation of the soul. From the Egyptians to the Greeks, to the Buddhists and Hindus, the soul was considered a pre-existent entity which took up residence in a succession of bodies, becoming incarnate for a period, then spending time in the astral form as a disembodied entity, but reincarnating time and time again. Each religion had its own belief for the origin of the soul, but no religion was without the belief that the soul existed as a part of man and was immortal. And somewhere between Judaism and Christianity, the West had lost the ancient concept of reincarnation.

  I closed the encyclopedias and thought for a while.

  Hundreds of millions of people believed in the theory of reincarnation (or whatever the term might be) but I, coming from a Christian background, hadn’t even known what it actually meant.

  I prepared to leave to meet Gerry wondering what else might be going on in this world that I had never thought about before.

  Chapter 4

  “It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterward return again.… Jesus is not dead: he is very well alive; nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle; at times we believe we have seen them all, and could easily tell the names under which they go.”

  —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

  Nominalist and Realist

  The flight from L.A. to Hawaii was blue and smooth. I slept and thought of Gerry most of the way. I thought of my friendship with David and wondered how many other people I had walked and eaten and hung out with and had never really known. I checked into the Kahala Hilton under another name. No one noticed. Then I went to my room to wait.

  There I was … standing out on the balcony of yet another hotel room overlooking the lilting, lulling Pacific, the red sun nestling on the water … waiting. Waiting for a man. Waiting for a man I loved or thought I loved, whatever that meant. I knew that what I felt for him was powerful and I knew that I’d go anywhere I had to to be with him. We were both busy and had creative work to fill our lives, but I guess we needed more. I know I did. As long as I could remember, I needed to be in love. A man seemed the most obvious object of such a feeling and desire. But maybe not, maybe I just needed to feel love, and a deeper objective was what seemed to be eluding me. I don’t know.

  Honolulu is one of my favorite places, especially at sunset, even though now it was crammed with muumuu-clad, camera-toting tourists on conventions. And the Kahala Hilton is one of the prettiest hotels in the world, with its indoor-outdoor landscaping, the underwater bar, and the dolphins that leap playfully in the seawater pool below. I listened quietly to the lull of the water slapping the beach. I heard the coconut pines rustle. Then I heard a thud. A coconut had fallen ripe and ready to crack. I looked at my watch. Gerry said he would arrive by six-thirty. It was already seven-thirty. The weather was good so there were no planes delayed. And airport control had said there was no weather problem out of London. So he must have taken off on time. Well, the world was only a golf ball. He’d be here soon. But I resented the tardiness because I knew we’d only have thirty-six hours. Jesus, how time seemed to be my enemy. No matter what I wa
s involved with I never had enough of it. So much did I want to use and enjoy whatever there was of it that I was continually frustrated at the time I didn’t have, and somehow the past and the future were always getting in the way; the past with its consequences, the future with its mystery. I wanted the present to be all there was.

  I breathed the soft twilight air, walked inside the room and turned on the television set.

  Carter was upset with Begin. Teddy Kennedy was upset with Carter. The dollar was still falling. Pierre Trudeau had called someone a dirty name in the Canadian Parliament. The world was funny or falling apart, depending on how you looked at it. Nobody had it together.

  I looked around the hotel room. I hadn’t wanted to attracts attention so I had asked for a room, not a suite. But it was plenty for the time Gerry and I would have together. I knew he would love Honolulu. He had never been here. I hoped he would be able to feel it. The first thing he would do would be to walk out on the balcony and survey what surrounded him. He needed to do that. He would look out at Diamond Head and he would talk about the palm trees. He calmed down when he was surrounded by nature. His mind could actually idle in neutral over a rain-drenched tree with a bird quivering its wings in the wet. He could actually stop fretting over the state of the world and the prospects of his reelection when the sun rose flamingo-pink. His spirit seemed soothed by the idea that nature was beautiful, more powerful than anything else. But then he had grown up in the English countryside, endured the English winters. He had walked in English meadows and swum in the cold water of the English Channel. City life got him down. He needed space and natural challenge. I was glad we were meeting in Honolulu. He would enjoy the swaying peace of it. There I was thinking of Gerry again as though I were he.

  Another fifteen minutes had gone by. Fifteen minutes we’d never get back. The carpet in the room was deep maroon, tufted. The bedspread was olive green with maroon flowers. Why did the draperies always have to match the spread? I wondered if Hilton would hack a hotel into the side of a mountain in China. How silly the Chinese looked dancing to “Staying Alive” from Saturday Night Fever at the Chinese-American reception. And how were one billion Chinese going to turn on a dime yet another time in their long struggle toward modernization? Was it really worth it? I didn’t know what was worth anything anymore.