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• Ms. MacLaine's official site
• "5 questions for Shirley MacLaine"
• About Sage-ing While Age-ing
• Ms. MacLaine's bio

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Actress and author suggests subjects that schools ought to teach. (2:18)
 

Tavis: I am pleased and honored to welcome Ms. Shirley MacLaine to this program. The six-time Oscar-nominated actress has appeared in so many notable films including classics like "The Apartment," "Being There" and, of course, "Terms of Endearment" for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress. She's also a best-selling author whose latest book is called "Sage-ing While Age-ing." I love that title. "Sage-ing While Age-ing."

Shirley MacLaine: I try.

Tavis: That's cool. I dig that.

MacLaine: Most people ask me what it means, but you probably know.

Tavis: What does it mean (laughter)?

MacLaine: Well, if you love it, you must know what it means (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) I know what it means, but they don't, so tell them.

MacLaine: You know when you sage something, you clear it. You sage a room. But also when you become more of a sage, you become more wise and that's what I like to do as I get older, more wise.

Tavis: Is that available to all of us? Is it possible for all of us to sage while we age, to get wiser as we grow older? Because there's some evidence from some people I know that it's not happening for them. Is it possible for all of us?

MacLaine: Oh, I think so. I think so, Tavis. It's possible for everybody to be the best they can. It depends on the route they take. It also depends on their curiosity. What are they really curious about? What do they want to delve into that might seem wacky to others, but to them there's something real in there?

Tavis: I know what you're curious about, as many of your fans do, because you keep giving us these books that share with us what you're curious about. What I don't know necessarily is how you got on this road, how you got on this journey of being curious, for lack of a better phrase, about your place in the universe.

MacLaine: Yeah. Don't know. Was a mystic since I was little. Always thought in those terms. Knew there was an otherness to reality than what they teach in school. That, I really have a beef with. They are not teaching us in school the levels of reality that we really ought to be aware of. Everything is just so mechanistic and cut and dried and, if you can prove it, it's there. There's much more going on.

Tavis: To your point, what ought they then be teaching that they're not?

MacLaine: I think that they should be teaching the power each person has within, which addresses your question. I don't mean prayer, but I mean there is power in there. They should be teaching that we have different energy centers and each of those energy centers relate to issues that we all meet in our lives. They should be teaching meditation. They should be teaching, frankly, that we're not alone. I think they ought to start teaching that pretty soon (laughter) because it'll be a shock when it comes that we're not.

Tavis: That raises a couple of questions for me at least, Ms. MacLaine. One is how one would go about teaching that, number one, and number two, how we convince educators to teach something that so many of them can't or don't grasp or buy into.

MacLaine: Right, or don't even want to. They're frightened by it. They're skeptical because they are so, you know, scientifically and mechanistically oriented. How do it, I don't know, but we need a revamp of our education system anyway. So while we're at it, why don't we put in some of these other things?

I also think we should be teaching how to take care of ourselves and not just go to a doctor for a pill. We should be looking at what it means to visualize, what it means to take long walks, what it means to be in touch with trees and nature and birds and worms and animals, as a curriculum.

Tavis: I know this isn't the first time you've heard this, to some your ideas are a little different, to some they're weird, to some they're too mystical, to some they are - pick a word. I asked earlier how you got on this journey, but I'm curious as to how you navigate the journey that you're on when there are folk who don't appreciate it, don't understand it, don't embrace it and make a mockery of it.

MacLaine: Well, most of this stuff that I've been writing about for twenty years is mainstream now anyway, so I've survived all that. Yoga and, as I said, meditation and good thinking and visualization and inner healing, I mean, that's all mainstream now.

But most of my understanding of this other way of looking at life came from traveling because, every time I made a movie, I would leave the set and I'd get on a plane and go somewhere. I thought I was going to India for a day. I spent three months. Lots of things happened while I was there.

Tavis: Stop. India. A day turns to three months. Why?

MacLaine: Well, I got caught in a revolution (laughter). That's one thing. I began to understand the theories of reincarnation while I was there. I wanted to study more of it. Everyone believed in it. I got involved in the Himalayas. I went up to Bhutan. That's where I got caught in a coup d'etat basically. But you learn so much by traveling. You learn how other people think and how other people relate to life and the pursuit of happiness and reality.

Tavis: And yet I don't need to tell you that so many Americans don't just travel, but don't even have passports in this global world. What do you make of that?

MacLaine: What do you mean?

Tavis: You said that traveling teaches you a lot. You learn from traveling. So many of us here in America don't even have passports, let alone actually use them to travel the world. I guess what I'm asking is, what do you make of the fact that in this country, if your point is that we learn, we get exposed by traveling, what do you make of the fact that so many Americans don't travel outside of our borders?

MacLaine: Oh, I thought you meant they were forbidden to travel.

Tavis: No, no, no. They choose not to for whatever reason.

MacLaine: Yeah, the impetus isn't there. The sense of inspiration, the curiosity, it's true that it isn't there. So without curiosity, you don't have knowledge. I mean, Einstein talked about that a great deal. Everything is about what he called the holy curiosity.

Well, you know, frankly right now, it's difficult to travel. I don't know if I would do it now, but thank goodness it happened to me when I was younger and I could learn and it was more peaceful. I went everywhere. The one country I wanted to go to that I've never been to is Afghanistan and I don't know if that's going to happen.

But it's the journey through self that I was always interested in because, in traveling, everyone has a different point of view and you learn about who you are and who you're not when you're splashed up against a foreign environment. So that's why consciousness has always been so important to me. To study the roots of consciousness; to study the meaning of it. What is it? Why are we alive? What are we doing with it and the future?

That's what I've written about as I get older. What am I doing with my consciousness? That's why I got into the physicality of aging and what it means to be more naturopathic than allopathic. A big hunk in there on that. I've learned a lot about that, being my age.

The same with dentistry. You know, you learn that every tooth in your head is attached to an acupuncture meridian that goes to a different internal organ in your body. As they say, it all starts in the mouth. I didn't know that. I've only learned that in the last year and a half, frankly.

Tavis: For lack of a better term here, so much of western medicine doesn't delve into that. I raise that only because I wonder how it is you think, since you believe so strongly in what you're arguing, obviously, how it is against that reality that we get more Americans to be curious?

MacLaine: You know, I don't understand why the curiosity has depleted. I think we're suffering from a kind of fear, fear of the unknown. We're a little xenophobic. We think everyone who's not us is strange. Maybe that comes with being an island psychology. I don't know. Thank goodness I traveled because my orientation is more open than most Americans. But, you know, to call what I'm saying "weird" because I'm more educated about the world is really not a good move (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) How does Shirley MacLaine process, to your earlier point, that so much of what you were talking about, Yoga, etc., etc., so much that you were talking about twenty or thirty years ago, to your point now, is mainstream? These are best-selling books now, this stuff that you were talking about back in the day. What do you make of that?

MacLaine: It's a cottage industry now because, well, people tried it and it worked. I think they understand that just going to an allopathic doctor and taking a pill is just not healthy because there are always side effects to that. You have sciences of other countries and other civilizations here on earth that are really more sophisticated than we are about all this stuff.

I was aware of that the moment I started traveling. That's why I never stopped. I wanted to share it and put it all down, and I've learned a great deal about myself and about everybody else in relation to how to stay healthy and how to stay balanced and, by the way, how to keep your sanity in a world that is so riddled with fear.

Tavis: To that point now because you mentioned that a couple of times now and I want to get that, this notion of fear. There are so many of us who have been frozen by fear, who are gripped by fear in the world that we live in. What do you say to those persons watching right now who, for a variety of reasons, you know, are afraid of the world that we live in?

MacLaine: Yeah, I can see why they are. But the only real solace and the only solution, and that's probably why it's happening, is that you have to go within.

When you go within and you find that divine within and you find that color within and you find the sound vibration within and you've found the chakra system within which I've been talking about for years, you have more of a peace. Then you start living a parallel reality to the world that is in such fear.

Your own reality becomes, at the same time as the fear reality, it becomes more blissful and you can become actually happy and you sleep better and you know there's something else besides what you've been taught or even what's been speculated upon. You understand that that power is within you and nowhere else.

That's what I've learned by - I mean, places that I've visited, Tavis, where there is such poverty and such extraordinary kind of demeaning quality of life, they know how to do that. They had to, and maybe we're coming to that point.

We're so materialistic now. Show us that we can thump on it and we can prove it and that's science, and that's the kind of medicine that goes through a laboratory. I'm talking about the medicine and the healing that comes from the power within.

Tavis: I'm not sure how to phrase or word this question, but let me just put it out there anyway. You are, to my mind, given what you have done for so many years and all these texts, a teacher of sorts. You're teaching us. You're trying to expose us to what you have come into the knowledge of, whatever that might be.

Whether we disagree, like it or loath it, you're a teacher. I'm trying to juxtapose how it is that your gift, the way that we've come to know you and appreciate you, is through your being a thespian, your being on the stage, your being on the screen. Can you make sense of that for me?

MacLaine: I can. It's very interesting that you ask that because we talk about creating our own reality, right? Every day and every minute of life. That's what I do when I go to work. I create the reality of the character, so I've been versed and educated in this exercise.

I create the wardrobe, the hair, the makeup, sometimes repair the script. I create the character I want to play that day. That's what we do in life. So I've been acquainted with the power of creating your own reality. So metaphysics to me is not woo-hoo at all. It is what we're doing every day.

You're creating your reality sitting here with me wondering what you are going to ask me next. I realize that and every bit of your body movement is telltale to me as to what you're thinking. That's wonderful fun when you get into that with all the crazy people in the world. Imagine the fun I'm having with watching George Bush (laughter). I mean, this is a comedy show.

Tavis: What do you make of the fact that, to your earlier point, that there has to be at the epicenter of our being a curiosity? Do you think George Bush is a curious guy?

MacLaine: (Laughter) I don't know what's wrong with him. Oh, my God, the poor guy. But you know what? We deserve it. In my opinion, like they say, it's all happening as it should, as much as I hate to -

Tavis: - what do you mean by we deserve it, though?

MacLaine: He has so destroyed the nobility of our spirit and our country that we have to look at the fact that he is ours. Stole the election or what, he's ours. What are we doing with a president like that and some of the other leaders that we have? Therefore, he is acting as a magnificent example of how we have to take back our own power (laughter). We have to take back what it means.

Tavis: This is a good way to circle back, Ms. MacLaine, circle back to -

MacLaine: - you can call me Shirley.

Tavis: Well, I'm working on that.

MacLaine: Now that this is gone, you can call me Shirley.

Tavis: I'm working on that, Ms. MacLaine (laughter). Your point now, though, is a good way to circle back to the exposure of traveling, to what you've learned in your travels. One of the things that I notice, and you made the point earlier, that it's getting more dangerous to travel. Part of that, for us, is because we are not so well-liked, much less loved, around the world, as you well know.

MacLaine: That's the truth.

Tavis: So when you talk about a guy like George Bush who you say we deserve and he's helped sink us into this abyss, when you travel around the world now, what do you say to people who ask you and how do you explain the fact that we picked this guy, George Bush?

MacLaine: I go as a Canadian (laughter) because my mother is Canadian, so I wear my little maple leaf. No, I don't do that.

Tavis: How do you explain George Bush to the world when you get asked about him?

MacLaine: Very, very tough. I try, when I say, “Well, we deserve him and we're learning who we are because of who he's not and of who he is.”

Tavis: We're learning who we are because of who he's not.

MacLaine: Yeah. They kind of get it. I think, frankly, many people are more aware of this journey within than we are. There's a whole segment of this country that's been examining itself in terms of, I guess, the New Age, you would say. I'm not talking about them.

I'm talking about - I mean, most people are in this thing of "I've got to go to work, I've got to get it done, I have to be on time, I've got to feed the kids, I need to salute, I've got to go to church, give me a pill, please let me have a drink, let me watch whatever and fall asleep." That's no way to live.

When you start going further into yourself and what you can be, even if you don't have anything, and you take back the notion of you having the power to change it all, you might change the job. You might change what you're doing. You might really understand that there is something else there.

That's why I say the leadership that we have, we deserve, because it's getting pretty bad. I'm not one of those people who have said, "I'm not going to look at the news anymore" because -

Tavis: - you say you are or are not?

MacLaine: I look at the news. I want to know what's happening.

Tavis: You don't get depressed when you watch it?

MacLaine: Yeah, I must get depressed from seven in the morning when I start (laughter). But what I'm learning to do when I'm looking at the news is I'm going within and saying, "What am I to learn from this?" What is it with what's going on with O.J. or what's going on with the plastic surgery lady that died or what's going on in Darfur?

I figured this out, Tavis, when I was really having problems with seven million starving Ethiopians years ago. I was just having a terrible time until I realized there must be seven million aspects of me that were starving and, if I could feed those seven million aspects of me, however preposterous that sounds, I could get into the refurbishment of myself, and I wasn't so depressed.

That's what I mean. We are all creating our impression of everything. We're creating our perception of everything and, if we've got such a bold character as Bush being the poster boy for what has happened to us, then we have something to improve ourselves with.

Tavis: I take that. I don't just hear it, I take it. Yet I'm still wrestling with the fact that, no matter what I change in myself, no matter what those seven million deficiencies are inside of Tavis or Shirley MacLaine, there's still seven million folk starving in Ethiopia.

MacLaine: That becomes an extremely complicated, quantum physical question.

Tavis: I didn't know I was capable of that, you all.

MacLaine: Yeah, you are. You started that off this way. I'll tell you why. It's quantum physics. We shift the object by observing it. Who is to say, as the Buddhists teach, who are we? Humans dreaming of a better place or a better place dreaming we're humans? You know, we can't really prove we're here.

So it's a leap that I as an actor, as an artist, as a metaphysical practitioner - that's what you do when you act - I as one of those am more acquainted with this language of "Yeah, but there's still seven million Ethiopians."

I don't know. I don't know and neither does science because they can't prove anything. They can't prove this is happening. We think it's happening, but how do we know we're not dreaming it? That's a whole other discussion and that will sound wacky to everybody watching it (laughter).

Tavis: You had me for the last twenty-four minutes.

MacLaine: Yeah, but when you really -

Tavis: - but they are in fact starving. They're starving there, there's genocide in Darfur. No matter how we internalize that or how we process that, it is the reality.

MacLaine: No. When you start to process, you are one of the seven million. You are one of the ones who are desperately leading these lives. Something shifts in the reality everywhere when you are more aware that we're connected.

Tavis: I take that. I get that part.

MacLaine: Yeah. That's everything Deepak is talking about. We're all connected. I mean, healers, doctors, nurses understand there's a healing power that goes on when you recognize the unfortunate lives of others. Yes, there are still seven million Ethiopians starving, but maybe it's not quite so bad when you begin to identify with the seven million in you which is them.

Tavis: This is an impossible question. How does, for Shirley MacLaine, God fit into all of this?

MacLaine: Well, this is belief now because who could prove this, but I believe in a source, in a creator or creatress (laughter). I believe in some extraordinary power that created everything including extraterrestrials, by the way, which you haven't asked me about.

Tavis: You and Dennis Kucinich.

MacLaine: Dennis saw a UFO at my house in Seattle, Washington.

Tavis: I saw you answer that question in one of those debates, yeah.

MacLaine: Yeah, Tim Russert -

Tavis: - Tim Russert asked you that question.

MacLaine: Yeah, but he should have asked Governor Richardson who is the governor of extraterrestrials in New Mexico because they're all over the place. But back to the God thing. Thanks for the question, Tavis. The God in me is connected to the God in you which is connected to the God source. What is that? It's everything and it is love and compassion, as the Buddhists say.

I'm not a Buddhist and it's not a religion, by the way. It's a philosophy. So their philosophy of learning compassion is because they don't even really have a word for love. I mean, the Dalai Lama now speaks in those terms, but it's more the compassion of all sentient beings. Maybe that compassion is the adjective and description of God.

Tavis: I'm out of time. I can tell you this, Shirley MacLaine, it's been an honor to talk to you. And I can tell you, whenever I ask you or anybody else any question and your answer ends up with love, then you're all right with me.

MacLaine: Love, love, love.

Tavis: You're all right with me. That's what it's about, isn't it?

MacLaine: Um-hum. The alpha and omega is about that.

Tavis: Yeah, you end up in real good shape.

MacLaine: Love your tie and especially this match.

Tavis: I love the fact that I had a chance to talk to you today. What an honor for us to have you here. I mean that.

MacLaine: Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: The new book from Shirley MacLaine. I love the title. "Sage-ing While Age-ing." She's written so many bestsellers and I'm sure this will be no less than the others, so run out and get it and add it to your library and decide for yourself. "Sage-ing While Age-ing" by Shirley MacLaine. Nice to you see.

MacLaine: Thanks, Tavis.