Afterlives of the Rich and Famous Read online

  The Quarrymen evolved into the Beatles and headed to Hamburg, Germany, for a series of appearances at the Kaiserkeller in 1960, a trip that was abbreviated by George’s deportation for being underage. And then, in November 1961, a record shop owner named Brian Epstein came to see the Beatles at the Cavern Club in Liverpool; he became their manager, and the magic of Beatlemania took root and lasted through the 1960s with a body of work that had an unprecedented impact on music and the youth of the world. George’s contributions as a songwriter were often overshadowed by those of his fellow Beatles John and Paul, but such distinctively “George” songs as “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” have become undeniable classics.

  In the mid-1960s George was introduced to the sitar and one of its masters, Ravi Shankar. As George’s passion for East Indian music and culture grew, so did his interest in Hinduism and transcendental meditation. His fellow Beatles accompanied him to India to study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and he and John Lennon returned in 1969 to explore the Hare Krishna tradition, a sect of Hinduism that George embraced and practiced for the rest of his life.

  Beginning in 1970 with the breakup of the Beatles, George launched a string of albums whose success diminished as the 1970s progressed. Without a doubt one of his most notable accomplishments of that decade occurred in August 1971, when he became one of the musicians to organize a charity concert, the massively successful Concert for Bangladesh, at which George and fellow superstars Ravi Shankar, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, and Ringo Starr, among others, raised more than $15 million for UNICEF efforts in that country and around the world.

  George was wonderfully creative and diverse throughout the 1980s and 1990s, once he recovered from the shock of losing John Lennon in 1980 and wrote “All Those Years Ago” in his memory. He recorded albums with his friends Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison as an almost spontaneously formed group who called themselves the Traveling Wilburys. His film company, HandMade Films, produced twenty-three movies, including Monty Python’s Life of Brian. He recorded with one of his idols, rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins. He toured Japan with his old friend Eric Clapton, whom George also referred to as his “husband-in-law”—George’s first wife, Patti Boyd, to whom he was married from 1966 until 1977, was subsequently married to Eric Clapton from 1979 until 1988. He performed at charity concerts at Royal Albert Hall and Madison Square Garden. He appeared in Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” music video, was a guest musician on friends’ albums, and continued producing albums of his own. And last but certainly not least among his post-Beatles accomplishments, he married Olivia Arias in 1978, a marriage that lasted until his death. Their son, Dhani, also born in 1978, is a successful musician today, with a look and a voice that are eerily reminiscent of those of his father.

  In the late 1990s George began a series of battles with cancer, starting with throat cancer in 1997 and progressing to lung cancer, for which he underwent surgery at the Mayo Clinic in 2001. In the summer of that same year he began receiving radiation treatments for a brain tumor. He’d already curtailed public appearances at the end of 1999, after a crazed fan who believed George’s spirit had possessed him broke into his home in England and attacked him, stabbing him seven times. By the time cancer overtook him, he was rarely seen outside his Hollywood Hills mansion, where he quietly passed away on November 29, 2001. According to Hindu tradition, his closest family members gathered for a private ceremony to scatter George’s ashes in the sacred Ganges River.

  From Francine

  How appropriate that George’s family followed Hindu tradition in his honor—he was a devout East Indian Hindu in the only other incarnation he lived on earth, which is why India, transcendental meditation, yogis, and the sitar struck such responsive, familiar chords in his soul. His previous life in India was a quiet, modest one, devoted to farming and raising his eight children with his wife, Marathi, whom he married again in this life in her current incarnation as Olivia Arias. He inherited his love of gardening and landscaping from that lifetime, giving thanks as he did every day in India to the generous earth, which provided nourishment to his family, and he’s one of our most esteemed, creative horticulturists and teachers on that subject.

  He was welcomed Home by a massive crowd of admirers, including a historic group of gurus, and it speaks volumes for our priorities here that, while George’s music is widely known and appreciated, the word “Beatles” had nothing to do with the joy with which he was greeted, nor is it often mentioned. It’s very much worth mentioning, though, that John Lennon was among the first to embrace him. They’re frequently together, meditating in the Gardens of the Hall of Justice and taking long, quiet walks through what corresponds to your English countryside. But while John continues to compose and perform music, George plays the acoustic guitar, sitar, and mandolin only in the privacy of his secluded, windowless one-room cottage in the hills, a round adobe structure with a shrine centered inside. He still writes songs, but only to share with other Hindus at the temple where he practices his public worship.

  He says he charted his part in the phenomenon of the Beatles, because he and the other three were kindred souls from Home, different from each other as they were, and made that contract for extraordinary success together before they incarnated. George knew they would create music together that would bring lasting joy to vast numbers of people and, in doing so, “help unify the world a little.” He also knew it would provide him with a platform he would never have achieved on his own, not to loudly preach an agenda, but to quietly, by example, encourage the pursuit of individual spiritual growth.

  George is a highly advanced soul, on the path to becoming a great guru in the tradition of his own treasured guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who is now among us and is one of his most constant companions. George is as introverted, contemplative, and filled with light here as he was on earth. He says of his wife and son nothing more and nothing less than, “I am with them always.” And to the world he left behind, but for which he continues to pray, he offers a peaceful “Namaste,” which he roughly translates to mean, “The God in me greets the God in you.”

  Katharine Hepburn

  Legendary actress Katharine Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907, in Hartford, Connecticut. Her father, Thomas, was a highly respected physician. Her mother, Katharine, was a suffragette whose outspoken rebellious liberalism was undoubtedly a model for young Katharine’s insistence on marching to her own distinctive drummer throughout her life. She was one of six children, and her early years were marred by the tragedy of finding her older brother, Tom, to whom she was very close, hanging from the attic rafters. (Whether it was an accident or a suicide has never been clear.) Katharine, only fourteen at the time, sank into a depression that led to her being primarily home-schooled for the remainder of her high-school years.

  She graduated from Bryn Mawr College determined to become an actress and was soon appearing in minor roles on Broadway, which ultimately led to her first film, A Bill of Divorcement with John Barrymore, in 1932. She was promptly put under contract by RKO, made five films in the next two years, and won her first Oscar as Best Actress in 1933 for her work in Morning Glory.

  In 1928 she married a Philadelphia broker and socialite named Ludlow Ogden Smith, which seemed to solidify her antipathy toward the traditions of marriage and motherhood. By all accounts, including her own, she was too unconventional and independent to be a successful wife and too career-oriented to be a successful mother, and the couple divorced in 1934.

  Neither Hollywood nor the moviegoing public could quite figure out whether they were attracted to or repelled by the aristocratic, athletic, unorthodox Katharine Hepburn. She was completely disinterested in giving interviews, attending the right parties, and following such other traditional studio rules as never being seen in slacks or without makeup. By 1938 audiences seemed to be steering away from her films, and she headed back to New York to star in a Broadway show called The Philadelphia Stor
y. Not only was the play a success, but Katharine was shrewd enough to buy the film rights, forcing Hollywood to welcome her back and meet her demands in the process. Her eccentric, elegant, beautiful charm in the film version of The Philadelphia Story, surrounded by her personally selected costars James Stewart and Cary Grant, reformed her status from “box-office poison” to “bankable” and led to her third Oscar nomination.

  Her life changed inalterably in 1942, when she starred in Woman of the Year. Her costar was the superbly gifted, iconic Spencer Tracy. The powerful chemistry between them kept them together onscreen for a total of nine films and offscreen for a romance that lasted until Spencer’s death shortly after the making of their last film together, the classic Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, in 1967. Katharine’s relationship with Spencer was as nontraditional as almost every other aspect of her life—as a Catholic, he would have betrayed his religion by divorcing his wife, so Tracy and Hepburn simply proceeded by their own rules without the “technicality” of a marriage license.

  In the 1970s, with eleven Academy Award nominations and three Oscars to her credit, Katharine began to include TV movies in her long list of credits and won an Emmy in 1975 for her performance in Love Among the Ruins with Laurence Olivier. Her fourth Oscar followed in 1981 for On Golden Pond. She continued working until the mid-1990s, when her escalating battle with Parkinson’s disease demanded her retirement from her career and public life. Katharine Hepburn passed to the Other Side on June 29, 2003, in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, at the age of ninety-six.

  From Francine

  The look of joyful shock on Katharine’s face when she emerged from the tunnel was touching enough, but finding her father, her brother Tom, and Spencer Tracy waiting to welcome her so overwhelmed her that she did nothing but silently hold them for a very, very long time. During a lifetime lived very much “in the moment,” headstrong and practical, she wasted no energy wondering what was around the next corner or over the next hill, but instead focused intently on her immediate surroundings and what if anything needed to be tended to, so it was consistent with that approach that she believed, “When you’re dead, you’re dead.” She referred to herself as an atheist or occasionally as an agnostic, but she also counted kindness, integrity, and lending a hand to those in need among her priorities, and in God’s eyes how we live is far more significant than the rhetoric we use.

  One of the most rare and interesting aspects of Katharine’s most recent lifetime is that she and her soul mate charted themselves to incarnate together. Since soul mates spend an eternity together on the Other Side, they usually choose to incarnate separately for their brief trips to earth. But Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy mutually agreed that they could help further each other’s purposes if they spent part of their last lives on earth together as well, and with Katharine’s unique life themes of Warrior and Loner, her charting of their unapologetic unconventional relationship, designed to include frequent separations, was inspired. She also, by the way, charted her brother from a past life as her father in this most recent life, and her son from a past life to be her brother Tom, which explains why his death was so especially devastating to her.

  She and Spencer live together at the sea, as they always have and always will. Katharine works side by side with her father as a medical researcher, specializing in neurological disorders. (She is adamant, by the way, about the fact that, contrary to popular belief, the neurological problems she encountered later in life had nothing to do with Parkinson’s disease.) They’re currently developing a cure for epilepsy, which they plan to infuse to a research team in Sweden, who will announce a major breakthrough in 2019 by your years. She is also an avid golfer—Christopher Reeve is her favorite partner—and a master gardener. While we’re able to create gardens here through simple thought projection, Katharine loves “the feeling of my hands in soil,” and she’s grown a blanket of fragrant ivory flowers that covers her and Spencer’s beach home like a great cloak.

  Her one regret about her most recent lifetime is the pain she caused by marrying despite the fact that she knew herself too well to make any such commitment. Professionally, she has no regrets about her insistence on ignoring the “studio system,” which would have stripped her of her individuality “and therefore my very soul,” and the role in which she took the greatest pride was her performance in Long Day’s Journey into Night.

  There is no one she visits on earth. She’s learned that Spencer often visited her after he died, both when he was earthbound and after he’d transcended and become a spirit. “I kept hearing and seeing things and thought it was an intruder, and I’m not about to besiege my loved ones with that same annoyance,” she explains. Nor, she adds with a radiant smile, is she any more sentimental in the bliss of Home than she was on earth, taking the position that “we’ll all be together again soon enough.” There is, however, a place there that she and Spencer occasionally visit together. She describes it as a very private courtyard, hidden in a square of brownstones in New York, where she and Spencer spent some of their most peaceful days together. He was ill and frail, confined to a wheelchair, and they would sit beneath a tree; she would read to him and feed him soup, and they would talk and quietly laugh, with no one around to disturb the intimacy of their treasured solitude. If any of you on earth know where that courtyard might be, watch for them there, listen for their whispered voices, and appreciate that you’re being given a glimpse of your own immortality.

  Brittany Murphy

  An actress who seemed to pack a few lifetimes into her brief thirty-two years on earth this time around, Brittany Anne Murphy was born on November 10, 1977, in Atlanta. Her mother, Sharon Murphy, divorced her father, Angelo Bertolotti, when Brittany was two years old, and she was raised by her mother. Sharon and her baby daughter moved to Edison, New Jersey, where Brittany began performing at the age of two and starred in a regional production of the musical Really Rosie when she was nine years old. She was thirteen when her mother agreed to move to Los Angeles, so that Brittany could pursue her acting career in a more promising city, and the relocation immediately proved profitable when she landed her first television job on the sitcom Blossom. A supporting role on a short-lived Fox sitcom called Drexell’s Class followed, as did a steady stream of other television appearances on such series as Almost Home, Frasier, Party of Five, and Boy Meets World. Through the course of her career she added TV movies to her resume, particularly The Devil’s Arithmetic, David and Lisa, Megafault, and Tribute, and her talent as a voice actor won her the role of Luanne Platter on the long-running animated show King of the Hill.

  She inevitably found her way to the big screen, where she starred in a variety of hit films, including Clueless, Girl Interrupted, and Drop Dead Gorgeous. She became a favorite of writer-director Edward Burns, who cast her in Sidewalks of New York and The Groomsmen, and she costarred with her real-life boyfriend Ashton Kutcher in Just Married in 2003, a film whose success outlasted the tabloid-favored relationship, which ended shortly after the movie was released.

  Her private life remained turbulent for a while, with two broken engagements in 2005 and 2006, but in 2007 she found happiness through her marriage to British writer Simon Monjack. In the meantime, her career continued to show great promise—she provided the voice for Gloria the penguin in the charming 2006 hit feature Happy Feet, gave an especially wonderful performance in 2008’s comedy-drama The Ramen Girl, and completed the thriller Abandoned in 2009. But in late 2009, rumors of drug use and unprofessional behavior spread, and there was added concern over what appeared to be a sudden and shocking weight loss.

  On December 20, 2009, she collapsed in the Los Angeles home she shared with her husband and her mother. Paramedics’ efforts to resuscitate her failed, and at the age of thirty-two Brittany Murphy was pronounced dead on arrival at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of an apparent cardiac arrest. According to the coroner who performed the autopsy, the cause of death was a combination of pneumonia, anemia, and both prescription an
d over-the-counter drugs. In her short life she completed an amazing thirty-seven films, six television movies, and, including her voice work on King of the Hill, almost three hundred TV series episodes, and loved ones and critics alike agree that she was just getting started.

  From Francine

  Brittany didn’t chart a lengthy incarnation for herself this most recent time around, which is why she approached her personal and professional lives almost compulsively since childhood. Her chosen life themes of Experiencer and Catalyst were perfectly suited to her determination to telescope as much as possible into her abbreviated lifetime, and as with so many Experiencers, it felt natural to her to be occasionally undiscerning to the point of excess. As happens to all of us when we’re Home again, she became fully conscious of her immortality and clearly remembered her two past lives—one in the late 1600s, when she was born prematurely and died in infancy from underdeveloped lungs, and a second from 1769 until 1852, in which she lived a long, harsh, cruel life as a slave in Virginia. It’s not uncommon for those who’ve been confined in one incarnation to, let’s say, overcompensate as Experiencers in their next lifetime and have trouble knowing when, where, and how to draw the line.

  It’s interesting too to notice how cell memory from her previous death in infancy affected her health in this most recent incarnation, as her body remembered those underdeveloped lungs and the resulting heart problems from oxygen deprivation (she talks of having had several severe heart murmurs) and recreated them so effectively that she was unable to successfully overcome pneumonia and the lethal combination of medications she believed were helping her.

  Those who knew her well sometimes referred to her as a “young soul.” In a way she was, but this is a commonly misunderstood term. All souls are eternal. We were all created by God an eternity ago, and we will all live eternally. Those souls you perceive as “young” are simply less experienced on earth than those “old” souls, who have incarnated many times. It’s perfectly natural that Brittany, who was only on her third incarnation, often struck those around her as being oddly unworldly for someone who “on paper” seemed so experienced.