The year was 1987, and the event was a Harmonic Convergence Seminar attended by adherents of the New Age Movement, one of whom was actress Shirley MacLaine. While the participants — Joel Shapses was one of them — were deep in meditation, MacLaine stealthily moved through the room. She paused at Shapses and declared that he had a past life as a stone mason during the time of the pyramids. He was utterly amazed. By that year, he’d been plying his craft as a sculptor for more than two decades, enraptured with the three-dimensional art form.