In her autobiography, "Don't Fall Off the Mountain," Shirley MacLaine tells of the night that she lay shivering in a Bhutanese house in the Paro Valley of the Himalayas. Her teeth chattered and her insides "tied themselves in a knot." As she lay wondering how she might overcome the terrible cold, she remembered the words of a Yoga instructor in Calcutta who had told her that there was a centre in her mind that was her "nucleus, the centre of your universe." Once she had found the centre, he had said, pain, fear, nothing could touch her. "It will look like a tiny sun," he had instructed her. "The sun is the centre of every solar system and the reason for all life on all planets in all universes. So it is in yours."

Miss MacLaine closed her eyes, searched for the centre of her mind. Then the room "left" her. The cold room and the wind outside began to leave her conscious mind.

"Slowly in the centre of my mind's eye a tiny round ball appeared," she writes. "I stared and stared at it. Then I felt I became the orange ball."

The centre began to grow and generate heat. The heat spread down her neck and arms and finally stopped in her stomach. She felt drops of perspiration on her midriff and forehead.

"The light grew brighter and brighter until finally I sat up on the cot with a start and opened my eyes, expecting to find that someone had turned on a light. Perspiring all over, I was stunned to find the room dark. I lay back. I felt as though I were glowing. Still perspiring, I fell asleep. The instructor was right; hidden beneath the surface there was something greater than the outer self.