Shirley MacLaine's Leading Loves
Photo: Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty Images
PAGE 3
"Vassy"
... I had a complicated, loving relationship with a Soviet director I will call Vassy. He was from an elite Russian family and longed to come to the West to work. I was his unofficial sponsor and found him to be exhilarating, adorable, impossibly difficult, deeply religious, unbelievably chauvinistic and a profound believer in evil. We fought and argued about everything (I believe now just for the sake of the challenge). We hiked, laughed and saw movies, and I learned to cook Russian food—kasha, beets, garlic, cabbage—and of course, to drink vodka. Vassy was a very well-educated artist who managed to get hold of caviar and God knows what else, and yet he dried his socks on a teakettle.
He was certain he had lived many times before (with me, actually). Most of his leading actresses and one of his wives looked like me. He attended many channeling sessions with me. It was through Vassy that I came to know of the Soviet government's acceptance of the presence of UFOs and of extraterrestrial life visiting Earth, and he was instrumental in my visiting Billy Meier in Switzerland, whose abduction story is the most provable UFO case on record. Through Vassy, I met Roald Sagdaev, the head of the Soviet Space Agency at the time, and was told that UFOs were documented fact, alien spacecraft had visited earth and that a cover-up was in place so as not to alarm the human race.
Vassy and I were compatible in so many ways, with the exception of the obsessive belief he had in the existence of evil. He could not wrap his mind around the possibility that humans determined their own negative reality all on their own. He called it "evil interference." When we argued vociferously, he would often take my shoulders, shake me and say "Shirlitchka, you are being possessed by the Devil." He couldn't accept that the "Devil" was my own negative thinking running amok in my own mind.
He believed we humans were put on earth to fight and win the battle against EVIL (when he said it, it always sounded like all capital letters to me), the Devil, Satan, call it what you will. When I tried to reason with him by explaining that the Aramaic translation of the words "Satan" and "Evil" was simply "that which is not well for you," it made no impact. The etymology of words is important, but he was unshakably convinced (through his religion) that the Devil existed as an outside force. For a sophisticated man from such an intellectual, worldly family, I felt he should have gotten over a belief in the Devil a long time ago. He couldn't do it. When we parted ways, he gave me his family Bible and said it should remain with me. It has, and it always will.
Next: Olof Palme
... I had a complicated, loving relationship with a Soviet director I will call Vassy. He was from an elite Russian family and longed to come to the West to work. I was his unofficial sponsor and found him to be exhilarating, adorable, impossibly difficult, deeply religious, unbelievably chauvinistic and a profound believer in evil. We fought and argued about everything (I believe now just for the sake of the challenge). We hiked, laughed and saw movies, and I learned to cook Russian food—kasha, beets, garlic, cabbage—and of course, to drink vodka. Vassy was a very well-educated artist who managed to get hold of caviar and God knows what else, and yet he dried his socks on a teakettle.
He was certain he had lived many times before (with me, actually). Most of his leading actresses and one of his wives looked like me. He attended many channeling sessions with me. It was through Vassy that I came to know of the Soviet government's acceptance of the presence of UFOs and of extraterrestrial life visiting Earth, and he was instrumental in my visiting Billy Meier in Switzerland, whose abduction story is the most provable UFO case on record. Through Vassy, I met Roald Sagdaev, the head of the Soviet Space Agency at the time, and was told that UFOs were documented fact, alien spacecraft had visited earth and that a cover-up was in place so as not to alarm the human race.
Vassy and I were compatible in so many ways, with the exception of the obsessive belief he had in the existence of evil. He could not wrap his mind around the possibility that humans determined their own negative reality all on their own. He called it "evil interference." When we argued vociferously, he would often take my shoulders, shake me and say "Shirlitchka, you are being possessed by the Devil." He couldn't accept that the "Devil" was my own negative thinking running amok in my own mind.
He believed we humans were put on earth to fight and win the battle against EVIL (when he said it, it always sounded like all capital letters to me), the Devil, Satan, call it what you will. When I tried to reason with him by explaining that the Aramaic translation of the words "Satan" and "Evil" was simply "that which is not well for you," it made no impact. The etymology of words is important, but he was unshakably convinced (through his religion) that the Devil existed as an outside force. For a sophisticated man from such an intellectual, worldly family, I felt he should have gotten over a belief in the Devil a long time ago. He couldn't do it. When we parted ways, he gave me his family Bible and said it should remain with me. It has, and it always will.
Next: Olof Palme
Copyright © 2011 by Shirley MacLaine. From the forthcoming book I'M OVER ALL THAT by Shirley MacLaine to be published by Atria Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., N.Y. Printed by permission.
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