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A cooperative production of the University of Hawaii and PBS Hawaii.
He reveals the true story of his life and his
long journey to reconcile his public persona
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“ONE ON ONE” WITH PAUL COSTELLO © 2004. Okihei Enterprise, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Tribute to Richard Chamberlain |
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A cooperative production of the University of Hawaii and PBS Hawaii.
He reveals the true story of his life and his
long journey to reconcile his public persona
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| INTERVIEWER (INT): He was one of television’s
authentic stars. From his breakout role as Dr. Kildare, to the wildly successful
mini-series’ “The Thorn Birds” and “Shogun”, Richard Chamberlain was the
true American golden boy. He’s written about his life and his long journey
to reconcile his public persona with his deepest self, his recently published
autobiography “Shattered Love”. Welcome.
RC: Thank you. |
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| INT: I wanted to start by going to the end
of the book where you write, “What if the only barrier between us and our
realization of our own divinity is simply our ignorance?” I’m curious what
was it like to write those final words and knowing that that was the end
of the book?
RC: Well, to begin with, it came from something that was going to appear earlier in the book and it turned out it fit very nicely at the end of the book because now I start the book with this 7 year old experience of sitting on the wall and sort of having an extraordinary experience and then it repeats itself in a way at the very end of the book at a much, much, much older age. The point of what I’m saying is that I don’t think of God, I use the word God, but I don’t think God is a distant deity. I think there’s nothing but God. I think that’s all there is is God. Is this essential, the essential nature of all that is, I think, is the dynamic, immensely intelligent, extremely creative energy of love. That’s what I think God is the essence of everything—you and me and everything. INT: So you have a very eastern issue, as you would say, eastern notion of God vs. a western notion of God? We read in the book of the notion of the God that we know of in western culture as being the God of fear, the God of destruction. And you write it in a very, as you just talked about it, in a way that we all represent that. And I’m curious, what does that mean and how do you help people understand what that means and how they can interpret that in their own lives? RC: Well, there is fear and destruction, obviously,
in the world. What I think is that goodness has nothing to do with reward
and punishment, in other words the idea of heaven and hell, we create our
own. God knows there’s enough hell around and there’s also a lot of heaven
around in our daily lives. And who knows what happens afterwards.
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| INT: You began, I’m interested in how the
concept of writing a book came into being? You wanted to teach people and
show people what? Examples of……..
RC: I don’t want to teach. Well, what I’d like to do is to think that people would read the book and start thinking about stuff. I’m very interested in how we live our lives. I’m very interested in how I live my life and how I might live my life more fully. The basic question of the book is “Is it possible to live with an open heart all the time? That is in the presence of love all the time?” No matter what life throws at you? And we all know life throws some pretty heavy stuff at us. But does it do us ever any good to close down? I’m not talking about romantic love here; I’m talking about intelligent, wise, creative love, the love that is the source of right action. If you ask me some kind of terrible question right now and I get angry with you and I want to bop you, INT: Are you asking me too? RC: I’m sort of out of relationship with you right away. I’m in relation to my own problems about you, my own thoughts about you. But if I encounter this question, and you, fully, open-heartedly, what, what does it mean? Then I’m still alive, I’m still openhearted and not, well, some people think you’re so vulnerable and life is tough. No, you’re smart. There’s nothing smarter than love. Love is the smartest thing there is. INT: Did you have a fear that people would be, that some of the notions in the book would be very abstract for people. And you’re explaining very complex concepts and how did you work through being able to talk about those and write about those so that you brought clarity to some pretty complex issues? |
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| RC: I love thinking about these things. That’s
the primary interest in my life now. It’s thinking about life. What is
it all about? How are we doing it? Is it necessary to be involved in a
soap opera all the time, this melodrama that we see on television all the
time. We think that’s what life is. I found that one of the great things
about writing is that I found I’d sit down and say for instance, “What
is hate?” I didn’t know what I was going to write. I wanted to know what
hate was. What is hate? And I started writing about hate and I wrote much
more than ended up in the book. That’s the one place I wish I hadn’t given
into the publisher because I had quite a bit more about hatred. And I started
to get ideas. The ideas started to come. And it suddenly became very clear
to me that hatred is an avoidance of coping. It’s an avoidance of intelligently
coping with the problem.
INT: And you talk about that in the book by speaking about a contractor who’s working on your home and the strong feelings you had so when you think that through and you deal with the specifics of your contractor or talk a little bit about how that changes your notion of, and how people deal with the issue of hatred or the feeling of hatred. |
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