OUT ON a LIMB

by Shirley Maclaine

  “Well, maybe you believe that, but I’m just asking. I wonder how six million dead Jews feel about being part of a higher conscious cosmic design.”

  “Why stop at six million Jews? What about twenty-five million Russians? Or the kids in the Children’s Crusade? Or God knows how many so-called heretics burned at the stake? If you’re asking me to answer for every apparent injustice and horror the world has seen, I’ll tell you flatly—I can’t. And I doubt very much that you’ll ever be able to either.”

  “Then what the hell is all this about for Christ’s sake?”

  “Shirley, I can only tell you what I believe.” He paused. “Cause and effect …”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “Now wait! Science believes in cause and effect. Most reasonable people believe in cause and effect, right? Say to the average person, ‘You reap what you sow,’ and they won’t give you an argument. But think that through—if you don’t reap in this life, then when? In heaven? In hell? Even religion believes in cause and effect—that’s why, when they threw out reincarnation, they dreamt up heaven and hell to take care of all the unfulfilled effects. But why, for God’s sake, are a hypothetical heaven or hell easier to believe in than the justice of reincarnation on Earth? I mean, on the face of it, what seems more reasonable to you?”

  “Oh, God,” I said. Then I thought a moment. “Maybe I don’t happen to believe in either. It could be life is just a meaningless accident.”

  “Then nobody’s responsible for anything.’ And as far as I’m concerned, that’s a dead end. I can’t live with a dead end, and I don’t think you can. But it’s up to you. It all comes back to the individual, the person. Shirley, that’s what karma means. Whatever action one takes will ultimately return to that person—good and bad—maybe not in this life embodiment, but sometime in the future. And no one is exempt.”

  I stood up and stretched. I needed to move. Maybe I’d think better. I felt like a person caught in a real life version of The Twilight Zone. I had been conditioned to believe in only what I could see … not what I could sense or feel. What David was saying made a kind of sense, at least in terms of individual responsibility. But I had always needed proof—something I could see, touch, or hear. It certainly was the Western way. We were trained to respect the physical and psychological sciences. But then even we in the Western World were learning that just because something didn’t fit our concepts didn’t mean it wasn’t to be respected. Suppose the spiritual dimension of mankind was recognized as a possibility? Would it act as a kind of connective glue to bind together the purpose of each of our other sciences from chemistry to medicine to mathematics to politics? Weren’t all of our sciences part of the search for harmony and understanding of the meaning and purpose of life? Maybe the science of the spirit was what was missing.

  “Anyway,” said David, “even Western scientists agree that matter never dies. It just changes form. That’s all physical death means.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s the connection?”

  “I mean,” said David, “that when we die only our bodies die. Our souls simply leave them and take up residence in the astral form. Our souls, regardless of what form they assume, are what is permanent. Our bodies are only temporary houses for our souls. But what we’ve done with ourselves while we’re alive is what counts. And it doesn’t matter who we are. If we hurt someone in this life, we’ll be hurt the next time around. Or the time after that. And it’s like Pythagoras said, ‘It’s all necessary for the development of the soul.’ He also said, ‘Whoever fathomed that truth fathomed the very heart of the Great Mystery!’ ”

  “Pythagoras, the great mathematician?”

  “Yes,” said David.

  “You mean, he believed in all this stuff?”

  “Sure,” said David. “And he wrote a lot about it. So did Plato and a whole mess of other Westerners.”

  He smiled at me and gathered up the sandy peach pits. He put them into the bag, placed them under the house, and we slowly began to walk.

  Jesus, I thought. I wished I could talk about this stuff with Gerry. But when you are involved with someone, you settle. You settle for whatever there is … because you are afraid of jeopardizing the blind illusion of love. And the blind illusion is sometimes so necessary, we can even allow it to obfuscate our real identities. I put Gerry firmly out of my mind. My personal search right now was more important.

  Suppose humanity (and this human in particular) could solve the riddle of its identity?—its origin? … and end? Would such knowledge lead to greater moral responsibility? What if I could bring myself to understand that I was not merely a body with a mind, but that body and mind were inhabited by a soul, and furthermore, that my soul existed before my birth in this life and would continue to exist after the death of this body. Suppose for a moment that the behavior of a soul would determine not only what was inherited in this life but also explain our fortunes or misfortunes? Would I, in that case, have an attitude of deeper responsibility and a feeling for justice and participation in whatever I did? If I understood that my “actions” would require dues to be paid, both good and bad, would I finally understand that my life had a reason beyond what I could see?

  Would I act more responsibly or more kindly toward myself, and toward others, recognizing that if I didn’t I would prolong the struggle in the fundamental quest for perfection which I was apparently compelled to achieve one way or another because that was the real meaning and purpose of life? And was all this true whether one was an Arab sheik increasing oil prices, or a Jew who had been marched to the gas chamber? Whether one was a mafia godfather or a PLO terrorist or simply a beggar on the streets of Calcutta?

  My mind spun and tumbled and recoiled and boggled at the possibilities of what I was thinking. Again, I wasn’t sure whether I liked it or not. It was too new—too preposterous and, finally, maybe too simple.

  “Belief in reincarnation would make the world a more moral place?” I said. “Not necessarily. I could imagine plenty of people who would manipulate that belief to aggrandize their own lives, acquire power, enhance their lifestyle—whatever.”

  “Sure,” said David. “But this life is not the only one to be reckoned with. That’s the whole point!”

  “Okay, suppose for a minute the whole thing is that honest and simple? Suppose life, like nature, is simply a question of getting back what we put into it, and suppose with every instant and every second of each of our days we are creating and dictating the terms of our futures by our own positive and negative actions?” I took a deep breath as I began to realize the implications. “Well, my God,” I went on, “how long would it take to be a ‘good’ person in relation to your cosmic justice?”

  “Time doesn’t really matter,” said David calmly, “not when you’re speaking in an overall sense, with the knowledge that you already have lived and will continue to lead many lives. Remember, all of the great religions speak of patience being the great virtue. That means patience with ourselves as well as our fellow humans.”

  “You mean we should just be patient with the Hitlers of this world?”

  “I mean that six million Jews did not really die. Only their bodies died.”

  “Beautiful,” I said. “That’s really great. Tell the families of those six million lucky people that only their bodies died.”

  David winced as though I had hit him. Sadness bathed his face as he looked out across the ocean.

  After a long while he finally said, very quietly, “I know it’s hard to fathom. But so is turning the other cheek.”

  “Well,” I said, “if I could have, I would have nailed Hitler to the cross!”

  David turned and looked deep into my eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I see.”

  Then I realized what I had said. “Well hell, what would you have done with Hitler?” I asked, hearing the defensiveness in my own voice. “Shit, there are a lot of people who believe that if the British had not disarmed, had developed weapons instead, Hitle
r could have been stopped before he really got started. Was it wrong to disarm? I mean you can really get into a can of worms this way.”

  “I know,” said David. “That’s why you have to start just with yourself. Think a minute—if Hitler had felt moral responsibility as a person, he would have stopped himself, wouldn’t he? You have to make it personal. I don’t believe in killing anyone. That’s where your question about God and the grand design comes in because only God can judge in that context. An individual can only judge of his own behavior. Ultimately no one can judge another. Besides you know, Hitler is not the only monster that ever lived. What about Idi Amin or the guys in the Khmer Rouge, or Stalin? Genocide is an old human problem. Or how about the pilots who dropped bombs on hospitals in North Vietnam with no feeling that humans were under there?”

  “So what are you saying? That humans are cruel to each other?”

  “Right. And if they understood the consequences of their actions for themselves they would think twice.”

  “That would make reincarnation a form of deterrent.”

  “Of course. But an individual, a self-deterrent if you like. And that’s only the negative aspect, remember. There are also positive consequences.”

  “How can you be so sure there are consequences? What proof do you have?”

  “None. What proof do you have that there aren’t?”

  “None.”

  “Well, then. Why not give what I’m saying a shot? You might as well. What’s going on in the world now certainly isn’t working too well.”

  “Give what a shot? How?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Just think about it, I guess You’re saying nothing has any meaningful purpose and I’m saying everything does. You say you’re not peaceful and you want to know why I am. Well, this is why. I believe in that phrase you hate—Cosmic Justice. I believe that what we put in, good or bad, balances out somewhere, sometime. That’s why I’m peaceful. Maybe you have a better idea.”

  David kissed me on the cheek and said he’d call me.

  I stared out at the waves. I had a headache. On the whole, I thought, maybe I’d rather be a fish.

  Chapter 7

  “I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was such a one as Christ among my contemporaries.”

  —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

  Letters

  When I woke up the next morning, I found myself wondering whether my daughter was some other reincarnated adult. Who might be living in the body of a person I thought of as my daughter?

  There had been so many moments during our mother-daughter relationship when I had had the feeling that she knew me better than I knew her. And, of course, every mother feels she learns from her children. That was the miracle of child-rearing. But, if I let my mind wander and then focus on the possibility of reincarnation, I looked at Sachi with a totally different perspective. When the doctor brought her to me in the hospital bed on that afternoon in 1956, had she already lived many many times before, with other mothers? Had she, in fact, been one herself? Had she, in fact, ever been my mother? Was her one-hour-old face housing a soul perhaps millions of years old? And as she grew, did she gradually forget her spiritual dimension in an attempt to adjust to the physical world she found herself living in? Was that what they called the “veil of forgetfulness”? Was that what happened to all of us as we found ourselves encased in physical bodies?

  When she went to live with her father in Japan, maybe she had actually planned it before she was born, and her talent for languages was based on having actually spoken them in previous lives. Perhaps she became Japanese when she spoke Japanese because she had actually been Japanese in another lifetime. And when, later on in her adult life, she argued with us to allow her more independence and self-identity, was she responding to a legitimate inner voice that murmured that she already knew who she was? Maybe parents were merely ancient friends, rather than authority figures who felt they knew better than their children. And too, maybe the unresolved conflicts of previous lifetimes contributed to the all-too-frequent antagonisms that erupted between parents and children today.

  I had some breakfast and drove into town and back to the Bodhi Tree bookstore.

  John, the owner, was in his office having his herb tea and reading.

  “Oh, hello,” he said formally but sweetly. “Did you get some good reading in?”

  Jesus, I thought, so many of these people into metaphysics were formal … formal and sort of awesomely patient. I mean, almost irritatingly patient.

  I said I had been reading and thinking and talking to David, and now I’d like to talk to him for a few minutes.

  “Certainly,” he said, “along what lines?”

  “Well,” I said, “about reincarnation I guess, about reincarnation in relation to our children. I mean, who are our children if every soul has already lived many lives?”

  John smiled and took off his glasses.

  “Well,” he began in a gentle tone, “from the teachings it says that we shouldn’t treat our children as our possessions anyway. They are, as you say, just small bodies inhabited by souls that have already had many experiences. So, reincarnation principles help explain some of the crazy contradictions in parent-child relationships.”

  I thought of the news documentary I had seen on grown-up children beating and abusing their parents. Were these children doing that because they had been beaten in some previous life? Or because the parent had beaten someone else in a previous life? Who was working out whose karma? But John was continuing, “I can tell you,” he said, “from some of my past-life recall, that I’m sure that my eight-year-old son was once my father.”

  I laughed out loud because of what I had been thinking about Sachi that morning. John put his fingers to his lips and smiled.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Did you ever tell your son that?”

  “Sure. He laughed and said I should watch myself! See how Cosmic Justice works?”

  Here we go again, I thought. The only way I’ll get to hear about this is to listen to the “astral” jargon. Well, okay. The occult has as much right to its own verbiage as any science, or religion, or philosophy.

  I sat down on a bench. “I’m not sure,” I said, “if I see how anything works. How does a person find out who they were in a past life?”

  “You go to the right person.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like a psychic. That’s what they’re into.”

  “You mean fortune tellers?”

  “Well, there’s lots of cranks, but there have been some very well respected psychics, like Edgar Cayce. Have you ever read any of Edgar Cayce’s stuff?”

  “I’ve heard of him, but I’ve never read him,” I said, knowing that, really, I had never heard of him either.

  “Okay, that’s what you’ll read next,”

  John reached up on the bookshelf and pulled down some of Edgar Cayce’s books.

  “He was an uneducated man, essentially—in fact most psychics are. Cayce was actually a trance medium. But they are all very spiritually and psychically attuned to the Akashic Records. Do you know what the Akashic Records are?”

  I bent over and cracked my back into place.

  “Listen,” I said under my breath, “I’m really in over my head.”

  “You what?” asked John.

  “What kind of records?” I asked, not even able to remember the name he had just mentioned.

  “Oh,” he answered. “The Akashic Records?”

  “Yes. What are they?”

  “Oh, okay,” he said, “okay, it’s hard to find much written about the Akashic Records, but let me try to explain. They are referred to as The Universe Memory of Nature,’ or ‘The Book of Life.’ Akasha is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘fundamental etheric substance of the universe.’ Okay?”

  “Jesus,” I said, “I guess so. What’s etheric?”

  “Okay, all the universe is supposedly composed of ethers—that is, gaseous energies whi
ch have varying electromagnetic vibrational properties. As you know, everything we do, see, think, say, react to—everything we are—emits, or creates, energy charges. These energy charges are called ‘vibrations.’ So every sound, thought, light, movement, or action vibrationally reacts in those electromagnetic ethers. They are a kind of magnetic plate that attracts all vibrations. In fact, everything is electromagnetic vibrations. So the Akashic Records are a kind of panoramic record of everything that’s ever been thought or felt or done. And if you are really sensitively attuned physically, you can plug in to those vibrations and, in fact, ‘see’ the past in the cosmic sense. So a good psychic can tell you what your previous lives were like.”

  “God,” I said, “do you believe all that?”

  “Oh sure,” he said simply, “and furthermore, I think, and all the books say, that the inherent ability to see these records is in all of us. It’s just a question of developing the ability, which really means getting more in tune with ourselves first. If our spiritual and mental powers are developed enough, we can. It’s nothing more than developing our ESP, which now even science regards as a fact pretty much. See?”

  “You mean,” I said, “that it’s just a question of expanding our consciousness?” I was grateful that I understood what I said.

  “Sure,” said John.

  “And if we become more consciously aware of these other dimensions, we’ll know more about who we are and what our lives are about?”

  “Look,” he said, “it’s no more fantastic than sound waves or light waves, only these are thought waves. Science certainly knows they are there because no energy ever dies. So, if you are sensitive enough to get on the right thought wave lengths which plug into the Akashic vibrational waves, you can see lots of stuff that’s already happened. And, if you are aware of what pain you’ve suffered in the past and also what pain you might have caused someone else to suffer, it all acts as an educative process. See what I mean?”