Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
You know, when I was asked to do this,
I was asked to speak about the idea of what I learned outside of school.
And then I thought, "I'm not the right person for this,"
because I went to a very good private school on the East Coast,
I went to a famous college, I went to a graduate school,
I came out here to the American Film Institute,
and I've been teaching at the University of Southern California
for 20 years.
So the question is, What did I learn outside of school?
It seems like most of my time has been spent in school.
But I also realized
that when some people come and ask me - if they want to be filmmakers -
if they should go to film school, which is a common question,
and I say, "What you really need is a mentor."
You need somebody
who knows more about the subject you're interested in than you do,
and somebody who's willing to spend time with you and hopefully inspire you.
So that, essentially, is what a good teacher is,
and there's lots of them
in various institutions we have around the country, that teach.
And I thought about one of my own when I was in high school.
This was a guy who had arthritic hands,
and he used to throw erasers at us if we didn't pay attention,
and he taught Latin.
Now, those of you who understand Latin know that it's a dead language;
except for Harry Potter, you're not going to hear lots of Latin phrases.
One of the things he taught about was a character named Aeneas.
Aeneas was a superhero of his time,
and he went on journeys with his friends,
and one time, their ship crashed,
and they ended up on an island
in which there was absolutely no food, no water,
and there was no way to get away,
and there were bugs, and they were stinging him.
And he turned to his men, and he said in Latin,
"Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit."
It's the only Latin phrase I remember,
but I remember it because it translates
that sometime in the future, you're going to recall what just happened,
and it's going to be of use.
So I thought about a journey of mine that I wanted to share.
This journey started with a sweat lodge.
I don't know if you know what that is,
but sweat lodges have been around for thousands of years,
and it's a process in which you go inside a very hot space, and you sweat a lot.
And you sort of are purified beforehand
because the object is to really face who you are.
And the heat sort of makes you face who you are.
You can't sort of lie in the heat; you have to tell the truth.
As I came out of this lodge -
it was about this time of year and it was very cold, up in the mountains -
and I suddenly fell to the ground, and I couldn't move.
I thought it must be hypothermia, so I figured, "Okay, it's a big deal.
In a couple of minutes, I'll be able to get my body going again."
But a couple minutes passed; my body didn't go anywhere.
I literally could not move.
I couldn't feel my fingers, I couldn't feel my feet.
I couldn't move at all.
Not only that, but I realized I couldn't talk, I couldn't see.
Everything started to get black and striated.
I couldn't hear.
I thought, "I'm in big trouble.
Tomorrow, I'm supposed to be at Fox Studios shooting a picture.
I'm not going to be there - this is the end of my career.
'Hollywood director at sweat lodge doesn't show up'; that's finished.
That's the end of me as a Hollywood director.
I'm finished with that."
But then I thought, "This is not getting any better.
They'll call the paramedics, I'm sure.
The paramedics will take me somewhere,
but I cannot see, I cannot hear, I cannot talk, I cannot move.
When my family, my wife and daughter, come to visit me,
I won't know they're there; they won't know I'm here.
Communication is gone; relationships are over.
Now what?"
My mind still was going on; I still was able to think.
And I thought, "Wait a minute.
What if I'm dying?
What if that's what this is?
Career gone, relationships gone,
body gone.
I may be dying."
So I tried to do what everything - I tried to hold on -
there was nothing to hold onto -
but sort of interiorally, in my imagination,
I tried to hold on to myself as much as I could.
It's like holding your breath: if you all held your breath,
for a certain length of time you can hold on, but finally you can't.
And I had to let go.
And I did let go.
And then a remarkable thing happened.
I felt an incredible peace, incredible ease,
amazing release,
and I thought, "Woah. Is this what death is?"
Then I said, "Wait a minute, but I'm conscious."
If I'm conscious, I could think, "What's going to happen next."
Now, my parents told me there was no heaven or hell.
I don't know about yours.
But when I was in school, I read about heaven and hell -
you know, various books, various movies, various images.
I thought, "What if there is a heaven and hell?"
And I haven't been the best of all human beings,
so I figured that if there is, I'd probably end up going to hell.
Which is exactly where I went.
I went to my version of hell.
It's horrific; we have no time for the story,
but the point is, I was in hell,
but suddenly I realized in my own hell, I couldn't feel anything;
my body was gone.
This was all just imagined.
Hell was merely an imagined idea.
Like any idea, like a cloud.
An idea is like a cloud: it will change in a second if you let it go.
And that second I let it go, and hell was gone.
Then I went on what's called a classic near-death experience
in which - many, many people have had these -
sort of traveling through a kind of strange grayish cloudy space,
beings to my right and left.
I didn't know if they were dead relatives or guides or something.
And then I had another revelation.
All of a sudden, everything that I'd ever learned about -
that is of this Jeremy, this particular character -
everything I'd ever learned about,
all the history I'd ever learned,
all the television - the hundred thousands of hours - I'd even seen,
all the games I'd ever played, the people I'd ever met,
the music I'd ever heard, the movies I'd ever seen -
they all happened instantaneously.
In a nanosecond, I saw everything that I knew.
Everything in a nanosecond.
Who created this? What was this?
And I realized that too was an illusion.
And as all history suddenly dissolved, I saw what was going to happen to me.
What was going to happen to me - whoever I was now -
I was about to become a piece of stardust,
and I was in blissful ecstasy of perfection.
I loved it - if there was love to have love.
It was an amazing, amazing moment of absolute joy and serenity.
And then I realized that just to become a piece of the stardust of the infinite,
all of a sudden, the infinite came in on itself.
Everything suddenly became nothing,
and I lost consciousness.
And then, like turning a movie backwards,
ran screaming backwards from nothing to everything,
heading down through the solar system I was aware of - or whatever was aware -
through the solar system down toward the planet Earth,
down toward California, down to the Malibu mountains,
down to this strange body here on the ground.
And I entered that body, and I returned to being Jeremy.
And as I slowly began to sense, I began to move, feel cold,
started to see a little bit, started to hear.
I looked around,
and I had the greatest feeling of love I've ever had.
I loved every single human being I saw, that were there.
I loved the space we were in.
I loved the cold that I felt.
I loved the water, loved the air; I loved everything around me.
And I realized what an amazing miracle it is
to actually be here right now and be alive.
So the lessons of this journey for me?
One - consciousness did not end in death.
Two - we are not just our bodies;
we are not just our emotions;
we are not just our thoughts.
All of these change.
We are the witness to all of that.
And that witness is all of us as one being.
We are all interconnected as one being with enormous possibilities
to make a difference in making the world around us sustainable
and in sharing the love that, in fact, is right there.
So live and give.
My last message to you is something I learned from my father,
who learned from 2,000 years of history.
Hillel said this:
If you're not for yourself, who will be for you?
But if you're only for yourself, what are you?
And if not now, when?
Thanks.
(Applause)