Henry Shukman

It was to realize exactly what I've just realized.

And actually, years later, I heard Yogananda saying in an old documentary, you know, this life is a movie.

It's a motion picture.

And the purpose of life

is to turn around and see the projector.

And when I heard that, I thought, oh my gosh, that's so beautifully put.

That's exactly how I felt when I was 19 and this thing happened.

But, you know, what I really want to say is really important here for me is that actually my life didn't end then.

I could have died happily that night knowing my life was fulfilled.

But it didn't end.

And a few weeks later, I went back home.

I'd been far away from home when this happened.

I went back home and it was when I went home that actually I got overwhelmed by the unacknowledged trauma of my childhood, which I had put a lot of effort into suppressing.

I'd evolved these adaptive personalities, sub-personalities, parts, so that I could deal

with the very difficult aspects of my childhood, traumatic, complex childhood trauma that I grew up with.

But I'd managed to kind of avoid feeling it because it was too much through my childhood with adaptations.

When I went home at 19, after this experience, all those adaptive strategies had been ripped away.

I was wide open, which was very beautiful.

I was so open and full of love and very aware of suffering in the streets around me.

I was in South America at the time and so on.