"I shouldn't have waited for you." "I shouldn't have waited for you." "You already said that." "You're a real pain lately." "Does my getting married bother you?" "You're jealous." "You waited and we're eating on a bench." "You could've gone ahead and reserved." "I'd have caught up with you." "Please, that's enough." "Anyway, we're all sheep." "We all eat at set hours, line up to use the can at set hours, we all watch the boob tube." "In the past, we'd make a public protest of it at least." "But nowadays, slavery's par for the course." "We've always been slaves, you'll tell me." "But to submit to this extent!" "We even fuck at set hours." "No, we don't fuck at set hours." "Then good for you." "Make the best of it." "It certainly won't last." "Aren't you the pleasant guy." "Think for a moment of those who, in a few years time, will have kids of their own, and as a result, will have new constraints to deal with." "Look at that poster." "What do you think of it?" "Attractive." "Even a bit arousing." "It was designed to be." "Think a little..." "Panties... are meant to protect two orifices." "Or to protect us from these two orifices." "Brassieres, as you know, are designed to provide support." "These two pieces of fabric, their first mission accomplished, are then turned into tools of charm." "So they come at a high price, probably because we are all... fetishists." "He's got a nerve!" "Our undies and the protection of our "two holes"?" "He's right, you know." "You're as vulgar as he is." "We all imprison ourselves." "I've lost you there." "Why do we imprison ourselves?" "I'm going." "Sandrine, we're really late." "You're a real pain." "Relax, young lady, I'm going." "But in any case, whatever you do, what sky can fall on your heads?" "What a jerk!" "Sure, if we're late again, the sky will fall on our heads, especially yours." "You're late every day now." "They won't fire me." "Maybe not fire you, but you won't get a promotion, old girl." "Let's go." "Come on." "You get on my nerves." "Sure, we all submit." "No one enjoys it." "But if you want to succeed, or just eat, what else is there?" "You feel superior now since you're expecting an inheritance, so you let that tramp get to you." "Do like I do." "Think of things that make you forget, like love and marriage." "Let's go." "Fred..." "Come here." "Do you think that we're all conditioned?" "That we do things at set hours?" "Not tonight." "I have to be up at 6:00 for work." "Turn off the light, please." "Why are you doing that?" "Because it feels good." "Didn't it feel good earlier?" "Are you trying to humiliate me?" "I'm exhausted these days." "I know." "You have been for some time." "True, you work too much." "It's not even that." "I'm fed up with the routine, fed up with lying to you." "You've been lying to me?" "Every day." "You cheating on me?" "No." "I mean, yes." "I touch myself every day." "Even with this." "Why?" "Because I enjoy it." "You're a slut." "What are you doing here?" "Why didn't you come to work?" "I'm quitting." "What's the matter?" "I decided to take a year off." "Just like that?" "You're nuts." "How will you live?" "My grandmother died." "I have enough to live on for a year." "I'm stopping." "You'll never find another job later." "I have an MBA." "I'll find a job when I feel like it." "Had a fight with your boyfriend?" "I decided to take a break, that's all." "Lately, I feel like I'm in a prison." "I have to get out, take a look around." "I'm fond of you, but you should spend your money on a shrink." "Like you?" "I have to go." "Keep me posted?" "Okay?" "I'll call you." ""Studies in Hysteria"" ""Trance and Hypnosis"" "Say, mister..." "Am I disturbing you?" "No." "Can I ask you a question?" "It depends." "I'm not sure I can answer you." "What exactly is psychoanalysis?" " You really want to know?" " I wouldn't ask otherwise." "What do you know about it?" "Not much." "I went to business school." "May I?" "Go ahead." "I'll make it short and sweet." "I'll try anyway." "It all begins with hysteria, conversion hysteria." "In the late 1800s, certain patients suffered from psychic disorders like blindness and paralysis but not organic injuries." "They were thought to be bluffing." "But if you stick a pin into a paralyzed hysteric's leg, he feels nothing, no pain." "At the time, Freud began to work with a doctor named Breuer, who took hysteria very seriously." "By using hypnosis, he managed to return to the patient's past and discovered one or more traumatic events that caused the symptoms." "Explain that." "I don't understand." "In fact, it's an idea, a violent but forbidden desire that is so repressed, it becomes totally unconscious." "Then it resurfaces, but converted into a physical symptom." "For example:" "a young woman at her father's sickbed;" "She tends to him." "An incestuous desire appears in her." "She thinks:" ""Not another step in that direction."" "So the desire and the thought that comes with it are repressed." "But the thing is, it resurfaces in physical form." "Here, as a paralysis." "To put it simply, she can no longer walk." "Just like that?" "She's not faking it?" "Not at all." "Do you really think a thought, a desire, can become something physical in your body, even express itself as paralysis?" "Yes, or as total or partial blindness or loss of appetite." "Or in the case of certain neurotics, the appearance of phobias or obsessions." "And you provide answers?" "I'd like to." "Anyway, we try." "We're only starting to discover the mysteries of the human soul." "Psychoanalysis has moved away from hysteria and the physical to concentrate on other neuroses." "It seeks to understand manifestations of the unconscious." "It's amazing to see just how much our unconscious expresses itself in our daily lives." "The unconscious speaks." "It speaks continually." "In what way?" "Through our faulty acts, our Freudian slips, and the projections we make in life." "Everything has meaning." "The unconscious speaks all the time." "But to people like me, who have no idea how it works." "Right." "Except that you, you pick things up quickly." "It's strange how our unconscious speaks by itself." "After all, we usually speak to our entourage consciously without really being heard." "We always talk to ourselves." "Wouldn't it be really interesting to study the body, to know how and why a thought, a desire turns into pain or paralysis?" "Am I being silly?" "Not at all." "Maybe I shouldn't say this, but you're cute." "I like you." "I really like you." "Because I talk about hysteria?" "Maybe." "I want you." "Let yourself go." "Think of nothing." "What's your name?" "Gregory." "My mother chose that because she was in love with Gregory Peck, a '50s Hollywood movie star." "Everyone calls me Greg." "What do you do for a living?" "Training to be a psychiatrist." "You also study hypnosis to cure people?" "Not only that." "I'm trying to go faster and deeper in my knowledge of people and life." "Hypnosis is a shortcut." "Your patients know you use them for your research?" "Yes." "Well, not always." "But I don't rape them." "I just learn from them without telling them everything." "Isn't it dangerous?" "For whom?" "For them, for you?" "My love of truth is stronger than any morality." "What do your parents do?" "They're both dead." "My mother was a cleaning woman, my father, an engineer." "He abandoned us when I was 12, never saw him again." "But I was very happy that way." "He paid us a small allowance." "We lived off that." "And today, I'm a doctor." "And what do you do?" "For a living, I mean." "Since yesterday, nothing." "I'm exploring life." "Starting to, anyway." "You see, we're a bit alike." "Where have you been?" "I just had sex with a man in a hotel room." "Has he been your lover long?" "Since this afternoon." "When did you meet him?" "This afternoon at 5:00." "I ran into him in a café." "He told me exciting things about life." "I wanted him." "And you enjoyed it?" "Except for one thing..." "That you'd be hurt." "You don't say!" "But it didn't stop you from having sex." "And you want more?" "With him or someone else, if I feel like it." "Why don't you like me?" "Are you kidding me?" "Want to hurt me for no reason?" "No." "Maybe I should have lied to you." "But I don't want to anymore." "You're behaving like a whore." "You already said that." "I'll send for my things tomorrow... and my furniture." "You know, I just realized something really odd." "Hello." "Hello, young lady." "Like you, I observe people and the world around me, all that exists." "If I touch someone, a woman, you, for instance, she'll react." "She may slap me or be glad about it." "But in fact, what are you if not a void?" "Did that shock you?" "You didn't feel anything since I'm a void." "You're very arrogant." "And you have a funny way of starting a conversation." "But, young lady, you're not a simple "someone" for me." "What I see..." "People, trees, that tall building over there..." "I realize, with difficulty, that everything, including the sense of space, and time, and distance..." "All that is entirely in my head." "What's more, they're images first seen upside down, then set right by reflex by my mind." "In other words, I see you upside down." "So I'm an upside down void." "Listen good." "Matter is made up of atoms." "Atoms are made up of a nucleus and electrons that vibrate around it." "But... the distance between the nucleus and these electrons is more than a thousand times greater than their dimension." "Observe those trees." "They look like a compact mass." "If you get closer, you realize that void is greater than matter." "Read this." "Go on." "It's not a trick." "A, B, C, D, E, F, G." "9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15." "Watch this." "Watch closely." "You see, they're exactly the same signs, but you read them in two different ways." "Sure, depending on the context." "What does that prove?" "That the way you see things and beings is predigested, unconsciously oriented by acquired knowledge, which can also conceal certain truths." "You might tell me," ""What is truth?"" "What do you do in life?" "I'm a taxi driver." "I work when I want." "Meaning, not often?" "You're quite mistaken." "A long time ago..." "I was engaged to a young woman." "She was very beautiful, and very rich." "Her family wanted to force me to enter society, to elevate me to be her social equal." "I left the girl." "You didn't love her?" "I did... deeply." "I was looking for something else." "First I went to work in the mines, in the factories." "And then," "I hitchhiked to India, where I spent seven years." "Then I came back." "I drive a taxi." "Why did you leave?" "Why do we leave the people we love?" "Maybe I was running away." "I was looking for myself." "Did you find yourself?" "No." "And you?" "So what happened?" "Nothing." "I cheated on him." "I told him, and he left." "My daughter is mad." "He's just a little jealous." "It'll work out." "What made you touch yourself in the next room after making love with him?" "I wasn't satisfied, that's all." "It could have excited him." "Hardly." "That's something you should only do to avoid seeing other men." "And discreetly." "You'll learn with age, love isn't everything in life, love of men, in any case." "So you had a little fling." "Okay." " But why did you tell him?" " I was tired of lying." "I'm practicing freedom." "That's a good one." "If anyone finds you your freedom, send it to me." "We all have moments of freedom, often privately." "Meaning, in secret." "We all have our secret lives." "Everyone knows it, everyone pretends not to, and that's fine." "But tell me, what about this other man?" "I was in a café." "I was talking with a stranger, who's no longer a stranger." "We talked for a long while, and I suddenly wanted him." "We went to a hotel." "Listen, daughter." "You and Fred have been engaged for six years." "He's smart." "He's got a bright future ahead of him." "You'll learn to love him." "Usually, you're in love first, and all that changes later." "For you, it's the opposite." "Do you think I'm an idiot?" "There aren't just marriages of love." "That's a good thing." "Sure, society puts you in a cage." "But that's how it is." "So choose the most comfortable cage you can." "Your respectable straitjacket is not for me." "Don't get on your high horse." "It's hard not living like other people." "You'll learn that at your expense." "You all right?" "You men will never know how good it is." "By the way," "I don't even know your first name." "And Mr. Psychoanalyst only asks now?" "And first of all, why?" "We met." "We call each other." "You teach me lots of interesting things." "We make love." "What's the point of knowing my name?" "Just your first name." "Sandrine." "I want to know all about you." " Give me a break." " I'm serious, really." "You want to psychoanalyze me?" "Not necessarily." "I want to know who you are." "I'm not the slightest bit interesting." "I don't even know what you do in life." "Nothing." "I'm trying to get off my own beaten paths." "You mean that?" "And what will you live on?" "Relax." "Not your money." "Why do you say that?" "Oh, shit!" "I'm late." "I completely forgot." "I have to meet a friend." "Excuse me, honestly." "Come along, if you like." "I'll introduce you." "She's a real case." "I almost forgot." "Sandrine." "Sophie." "Sophie." "Sandrine." " Salut." " Salut." " What do you do in life?" " I'm in modern dance." "It's a bit special." "I'm invited weekends by little theaters, in youth clubs." "And you're making a living off of it?" "I get by, more or less." "Mostly less." "How did it go with Olivier today?" "He cried, in front of the judge, in front of everyone." " What's going on?" " I just divorced." "Olivier is my exhusband." "We were in court this morning." "He started to bawl." "But we had a lovely wedding." "Want to see the photos?" "Sure." "Why not?" "What do your folks do?" "My mother's a psychiatrist." "My father's in real estate." "They're separated." "And what does your exhusband do?" "He spends his time moving money around." "It doesn't stop him from loving me." " How long have you known him?" " 19 years." "He's a childhood friend." " And how long were you married?" " Two months." "What?" "Ten days after the wedding," "I met a guy in my mother's waiting room." "We had sex right off." "It was so good, I couldn't help seeing him again." " But isn't your mom a shrink?" " That's right." "Didn't you ask her advice before your marriage?" "Sure, I did." "We phone each other every day." "She told me, "I think you're a big girl."" "And your father?" "All he cares about is money." "So why did you get married?" "I don't know." "To make my husband happy." "To make everybody happy." "You see, until now," "I'd always had very small orgasms, especially with Olivier, even by touching myself." "I touch myself every day." "But it's always disappointing." "When I met Greg at my mom's- he's the one I slept with." "I figured that out." "In the beginning, it was great." "We did it again." "We had sex all the time." "You know, I had sex with Sandrine too." "Was it good?" "Sure." "I think so." "I hope it lasts for you two." "For me, my orgasms were soon only little ones again, even with him." "Delighted to hear it." "But you, you're going to be a shrink and you sleep with every girl you meet?" "But never with my patients." "I have a right to a private life." "Say, know what happened to me?" "I was on stage." "The director had a friend in the house, a guy in his mid to late 30s, thereabouts." "Good looking." "Very goodlooking, even." "An architect." "When I got home, he called me." "He was nice." "He asked if I'd agree to undress in front of him." "I said yes." "So he came over." "He ordered me to strip in front of him." "So I did." "It excited me a little." "Then he asked if he could give me a spanking, saying that I could, of course, refuse and that I could stop when I wanted to." "Well, I said okay." "It was a new experience." "So he hit me with his hands, then with his belt, then with a whip." "He kept asking me if I agreed." "It hurt." "But I wanted to keep going." "I wanted to go all the way." "And you know what?" "The truth is, it gave me pleasure, a lot of it." "And you did it again often?" "Once, sometimes twice a week." "Now it's at his house and with his wife." "You know, I like to please." "When it's over, I feel drained, a bit like today." "This morning in court killed me." "I never understood how you could feel pleasure through pain." "You never experienced it?" "If you want," "I'll ask him if you can come to one of our sessions." " You agree to obey me?" " Yes." "If you don't, would you tell me?" "I'd tell you." "Take off your panties." "Come over here." "Finger yourself." "Unclip your hair." "Good." "Finger yourself faster." "Are you enjoying it?" "A little." "Especially when I'm ordered to and you watch." "Then I'll give you orders and I'll watch you." "Finger yourself faster." "Stand behind the couch." "Keep fingering yourself." "Good." "Keep going." "Mina, go over to her." "Keep going, Sophie." "Good." "Mina, lift her dress." "Slap her once hard on her thigh." "Did it hurt?" "Harder, Mina, slap her harder!" "Again!" "Good." "Keep going, Sophie." "Take her dress off, Mina." "Go on." "Keep fingering yourself, Sophie." "Look at me." "Take off your dress, Mina." "Keep going, Sophie." "Faster." "Faster." "Good." "Kiss her, quick." "Mina, get under her and lick her." "Quick." "Sophie, look at me." "I'm going to come over, take a belt, and whip you." "Scratch her!" "What do you do in life?" "I'm an architect." "Actually, I'm more interested in decors, and with interiors, arranging these decors in space, including for the theatre." "That's how I met Sophie." " Sophie?" " Yes." "Did experiments like tonight's start before your divorce?" "Yes." "When I told my husband, he wasn't pleased." "He wanted my life to be just with him, have children, a family, a middleclass job..." "How could I have said yes to that, especially when he cheated on me a week after our wedding?" "It made me very sad." "We parted because he never wants to see me again." "He even said he was sorry he ever met me." "Personally, I think that when you love someone, it's for life." "The proof is, I still love him." "Does loving someone mean refusing new experiences?" "Mina and I are often accomplices." "She's a beautiful woman, intelligent, simple, and very gentle." "And she has one major quality:" "she obeys." "Only under certain circumstances, often in an erotic vein, but not only with you." "Are you the submissive kind?" "Not really." "What's the submissive kind?" "Someone who, during certain parties, obeys, whatever the order." "Can I ask you a question?" "Go ahead." "I suppose you must get orders that are hard to obey." "Yes." "Are you a masochist?" "No." "Then why be obedient all the time?" "For the eroticism and the pleasure." "It's practical." "You're relieved of criticism and real choices." "But I also find a kind of liberation in it." "A liberation?" "By being obedient all the time?" "Yes." "Freedom isn't something very easy to live with." "Obedience led me to something different, more profound, to stop thinking." "That was the first step." "Towards liberation?" "Yes." "To stop thinking is to be free of pain." "A few years ago," "I went through a very painful period." "I had a little girl." "I lost her when she was only a few months old." "At that time," "I'd already given up all sense of pride, for my own survival." "But that time, I touched bottom." "I obeyed people who happened to be around, to help me;" "nuns, yogis." "They gave me simple advice..." "Crush my ego." "I obeyed." "Without asking yourself questions?" "Without asking myself questions." "And my pain gradually faded." "By becoming a slave?" "Not exactly." "By not thinking, my inner defenses fell." "So without even wanting to," "I could find previously hidden realities inside myself." "In fact, my pain was linked to a profound refusal to accept myself." "So the pain slowly diminished." "I gradually felt almost totally free." "I also began to really know my body, and to use it, including as an object of pleasure." "So obedience calmed you down?" "I stopped thinking." "My constant anxiety disappeared." "Don't laugh at the word, but I opened myself up to everything." "I have to be up early tomorrow morning." "You can stay." "You can stay with our new friends too." "We'll see each other again." "Good night." "See you later." "You know, he's a really fine man, but he's also very curious, very hungry for new pleasures." "Meanwhile, my ass hurts." "Right, joke about it." "My back hurts too." "You seemed to enjoy being whipped." "Yes, but the orgasm is over." "The pain remains." "It's unpleasant." "Want to go back inside to turn your pain into pleasure?" "Right, joke about it." "Seriously, tonight it hurts more than usual." "Greg?" "Could you hypnotize me to soothe the pain?" "You don't practice hypnosis for fun." "Why not?" "They say I'm a very docile subject." "You often practice hypnosis?" "I already told you." "I'm a psychiatrist." "Certain clinicians, such as myself, sometimes use this kind of treatment." "Ever hypnotize Sophie?" "Yes." "Do it again." "I want to see how it works." "It's nothing spectacular." "You put people into a kind of sleep." "You give them orders, you wake them up... and they obey without knowing why." "I want to see for myself." "Please." "Mind if we watch?" "Not at all." "I just want to stop hurting." "Then don't do it again." "Or go see a doctor." "Hypnosis is not a game." "I'm not sick." "Hypnotize me." "No way." "You matter too much to me." "Try it on me." "You won't have any problem since you don't know me." "I love to watch the stars." "It's one of those simple things that gives me a small idea of infinity, along with some grandiose poetry at the same time." "Did you know the Earth revolves around the sun at 110,000 kilometers per hour?" "And as the entire solar system revolves at 800,000 kilometers per hour around the center of the Milky Way, we are now moving" "1 million kilometers per hour through space without realizing it." "If the stars all exploded now, we'd see the first burst in four and a half years, and the others, gradually over billions of years, in the time it takes the images to reach us." "If our sun disintegrated, we'd have to wait eight minutes before seeing it." "You think we're alone in the universe?" "Probably not." "But do you realize, we're the only living beings in our solar system?" "But the other sun closest to us is four and a half light years away, or more simply," "4,000 million billion kilometers." "At the speed of 50 kilometers per second, it's the speed of our space probes." "It would take us, at best, 25,000 years to reach the closest possibly inhabited planet." "Maybe there are secret doors that allow us to cross space and time in a flash." "Maybe." "You talk a lot, you know." "But I enjoy listening to you." "You're like a child." "You believe what you say." "When I'm alone, I ramble on even more." "That's why I like your presence." "Just before," "I went so far as to start waiting, even hoping that we'd meet." "I feel small next to you." "Meaning?" "I ask the questions I asked when I was a kid." "What is a star?" "Why am I here?" "I remember one night, I was walking with my parents." "I was very small." "I wondered what my shadow was." "My mom or my dad explained." "We forget, we grow old, we change." "It's weird." "True, I feel good here." "So do I, except that at my age, I'm luckier than you are." "Tell me..." "I'd like to see where you live." "You really flatter me." "When I was young, it was me who'd ask the girls to come see where I lived." "I just want to know what it's like." "If you insist, I'll take you some day." "I'd really like that." "The next time we meet," "I'll tell you about the stars and their relation to time." "A glass of orange juice, please." "How've you been since you stopped working?" " Everybody left me." " Your family?" "My family, my boyfriend, everyone." "But that's okay." "I'm meeting other people." "I'm learning." "Thank you." "What's the important thing you have to tell me in person?" "You got married?" "You're happy?" "I'm getting a divorce." " You too?" " What'd you mean?" "Skip it." "I can only talk to you." "Everybody will be against me." "It's serious?" "What did your shrink say?" "I switched." "He started saying things I didn't like." "The new one is better?" "I don't tell him anything." "So why do you pay him?" "I feel better talking to him but only things I want to." "So I'm the one to whom you tell the serious stuff?" "I loved my boyfriend." "I was so happy on my wedding day." "But right from the honeymoon, I was bored." "Did you have sex before then?" "Often, and I loved it." "But it wasn't the same then." "We didn't live together." "We weren't glued to each other all the time." "Before, we couldn't wait to see each other." "We'd dream, go out to restaurants, or eat sandwiches in his car." "He was going to be everything:" "my husband, my lover, and my very own child." "As soon as I really had all that, it was over." "And you still have sex with him?" "The worst is at night." "We sit down to eat, we watch TV, then we go to bed." "Daily life is just a sea of boredom." "You clean and cook?" "No, he does." "He loves me, so he wants to do everything." "It's worse." "When I used to do something, I wasn't bored." "Tell the truth." "You had another guy?" "Not right away." "I met him three weeks later." "I waited before we had sex." "How long?" "Two days." "Does your husband know?" "What's the other guy do in life?" "He's a smuggler." "Drugs?" "Mostly arms dealing." "But he's interested in gold right now." "He's going to Latin America, to Cayenne, where the big deals are made." "And I'm going with him." "What can I do for you?" "Nothing." "I just came to say goodbye." "You're leaping without a net." "You were madly in love with your husband." "My mind's made up." "You think I'm crazy?" "I can't send you my address." "So this is really goodbye?" "Give me a kiss?" "Please sit down." "You look uneasy." "Should we stop?" "Not at all." "I'd rather consider you a bit like a sorcerer." "That would help." "As you like." "Please sit down." "What do you know about hypnosis, Mina?" "I used to think it was like magic." "Now I know it's used in psychiatry, in medicine." "Look into my eyes." "Don't look away." "You're looking into my eyes." "And now... you're beginning to feel calm, relaxed." "You trust me completely." "Now..." "Your gaze is fixed on the tip of this cigarette." "Don't look away from the end of this cigarette on no account." "At the same time, you're beginning to feel sleepy." "Your eyelids are heavy." "You have to close your eyes." "Your body lets go." "You're lying down." "You feel good." "You're asleep." "You're asleep, Mina." "You're aware of nothing now, not so much as a sound." "You're only listening to my voice." "You're going to obey me, aren't you, Mina?" "Yes." "Good." "When I wake you in a moment, you will remember nothing." "The four of us will talk, and when I light my cigarette, you'll get up and go over and open the umbrella by the fireplace." " Is that understood, Mina?" " Yes." "Good." "Now... hold out your arm." "Roll up your sleeve." "I'm going to place a coin on your arm." "This coin is burning hot." "It's white hot." "I'm going to place it on your arm." "The burn will hurt very badly, so badly that you'll probably scream in pain." "But you'll leave the coin on you arm until I remove it." " Is that clear?" " Yes." "So I'm placing the coin on your arm." "Keep the coin there." "It's over, Mina." "You feel relaxed." "There is no more pain." "It no longer hurts now." "Good." "Now, Mina," "I'm going to count to five, and you'll wake up." "You won't remember a thing, but you will obey the orders I just gave you." " Is that clear?" " Yes." "I'm counting to five." "One, two, three, four, five." "You're awake." "What happened?" "You fell asleep." "Don't you remember?" "What should I remember?" "Mina, why did you open the umbrella?" "Because it's pretty." "Why are you looking at me like that?" " Can I tell her?" " Sure." "While you were hypnotized, Greg ordered you to open the umbrella when he lit a cigarette." " This is a joke." " No." "You don't remember anything?" "Should I remember something else?" "I also put a cold, ordinary coin on your forearm, telling you it was burning hot." "It hurt so badly, you almost screamed." "Where did you put the coin?" "On your forearm, your left one, I think." " Are you kidding me?" " No." " Why?" " Look." "You burned me badly." " Does it hurt?" " No." "Using suggestion, I forbade you to feel pain." "But this coin was cold." "The girls can vouch for that." "Are you trying to trick us, to upset us?" "Why would I do that?" "And how?" "In that case, you were so influenced by my suggestions that you unconsciously burned yourself." "But this sort of phenomenon is very rare." "One out of a hundred." "No, out of a million." "What that means, Mina, is that you're an exceptional subject." "If I'm such an interesting subject, why not try other experiments, and go further this time?" "Meaning?" "I often have strange dreams of ecstasy, violent, mystical ecstasy." "It's something like an orgasm, only more intense." "Help me." "To do what?" "Find out if it exists." "What?" "Ecstasy." "Sexual or mystical?" "It's not the same thing." "How do you know?" "Even if you're right, what's the difference?" "Do you know?" "And you?" "Nobody knows anything about anything." "The only way to find out is to take a closer look." "You're my only chance to do it." "I'm game too." "And why not me?" "We can't control how this will go." "It's okay." "We're big girls now." "And if the ecstasy happens to turn erotic, so what?" "How about you?" "Got the guts for something like this?" "Are you all nuts?" "We're all adults and consenting." "and ready to go." "So shall we?" "You're asleep." "Mina, I'm going to ask you... to search your memories." "Let yourself slip back into your past." "What do you see?" "I'm in a forest." "It's hot, very hot." "I'm little, very little." "I'm in a woman's arms, my mother's." "She's holding me tight, very tight against her breast." "She's on her knees in a very thick bush." "She lowers her head but is watching something behind the bushes." "She looks terrified." "What's she doing, hiding?" "Yes." "She lies down and puts her hand over my mouth." "She won't let me breathe." "She's suffocating me." "I'm terrified too." "I hear harsh sounds, screams, sounds of car doors slamming, cars driving away, then silence." "My mother still doesn't dare move." "She still holds me tight." "She waits a little longer, then lets me breathe and gets up." "I'm crying." "My mother is walking along a road, among people lying there." "And there are men, women, and children, cats and dogs, all lying in their blood." "A few steps away, there's a truck." "No... a bus with signs on it." "No, just written things but in Arabic script." "I'm in Algeria." "My mother keeps walking... past people." "No..." "Bodies." "And then, suddenly, she drops to her knees beside a man." "His throat is strangely red." "She screams." "And I feel her tears dropping on my face." "How old are you?" "I don't know." "Less than a year old." "Relax a bit." "Think she really can't remember?" "How can she go so far into her past?" "She's not equipped to imagine what happened and to remember." "But it rings true." "Think she really went back into her past?" "Yes." "What is it, Mina?" "Where are you?" "I'm far back, very far back." "I'm flying through a very beautiful but strange sky." "I've just opened a door in the sky." "It's full of stars." "I fly to another door that closes behind me." "Where are you?" "In a castle." "I'm in this castle lying on the ground, face down, my arms stretched out." "Keep going." "An old woman is talking in Flemish." "You understand Flemish?" "I'm Flemish." "I'm praying now." "Beside me, are other girls." "They're lying like me with their arms stretched out." "I think they're nuns." "The two women sitting at the end of the hall." "Above us are the mother superiors." "There's a Christ on his cross behind them." "I'm in a convent." "The Déchaussées Convent." "What's going on?" "I heard something like a moan, followed by a strange sound." "So I slowly lift my head and I see a light that seems to be coming out of the ground." "The two mother superiors look in the same direction." "The light stops then starts again." "Actually, it seems to come from the body of another sister." "She's lying on her back, her arms outstretched but slightly bent." "A noise." "The sister moans." "Her head is thrown back and her neck supports the rest of her body." "Her face expresses both intense pain and ecstasy." "The other girls lift their heads and look too." "The two mother superiors say," ""Sisters, we're going to interrupt prayer." ""Don't worry about Sister Katerina." ""We'll take care of her." "Now rise and go to your cells."" "The girls obey, more or less pushing and shoving." "I'm one of the last." "Suddenly," "I feel a harsh light behind me." "I turn around." "Sister Katerina's face is all white, all lit up." "She's not moving." "There is a strange silence." "I can't hear the girls or anything else now." "I look at Katerina." "I see her rise slowly." "The mother superiors are stunned." "Katerina slowly continues to rise." "The others try to hold her down and even push her back to the floor." "One girl sits on her stomach to hold her down." "She's caught in the rising movement." "She's terrified." "She can't speak or scream." "Both remain there a few minutes above the ground." "Then they come down." "It's over." "I saw total ecstasy on Sister Katerina's face." "It looked like intense happiness." "Mina, I'm going to count to five now and you'll wake up." "You'll remember everything you've just been through." "I want to feel that ecstasy." "I thought you were beyond all that." "You can't understand." "It's so much more." "Hypnotize me again." "Hypnotize me too." "Why?" "You hear what she just said?" "There's nothing more to say." "What she describes looks like the ultimate orgasm, total fusion." "I've always wanted that." "I won't miss out on the experience." "Me neither." "You're all maniacs." "She's describing mystical ecstasy." "There's nothing sexual about it." "I want to know both." "Your eyelids are getting heavy." "Close your eyes." "Now your body is letting go." "You feel good." "The three of you are going to feel the most violent ecstasy you've ever known." "Then you'll wake up." "Come on." "You're very early, young lady." "Say something." "Tell me about your stars." "Show me your house, like you promised." "Are you that unhappy?" "I rushed into a new life." "Sometimes, I'm afraid." "God loves those who dare." "I don't believe in God." "Neither do I." "But sometimes it's useful to find a word to talk about certain things we don't know." "Won't you tell me a little more about yourself?" "No." "Talk to me about your stars, please." "The stars." "I love it when you laugh." "The sound of my shout spreads at 360 meters per second along the boulevard." "Supposing you could travel faster than the sound, you shall overtake it and hear it again." "On the other hand, had you started before it, at this same speed, at 400 meters per second, the shout wouldn't overtake you and you wouldn't hear a thing." "You understand?" "I think so." "During the last century, physicists all thought the same was true of light." "Not at all." "You can't catch light." "You can't pass light." "It's an absolute." "Did you learn that in India?" "No, I learned meditation in India, which means, to stop thinking." "But before all that, when I still had hair," "I was a physics teacher." "Go on with what you were saying." "Come on." "Einstein came up with a rather disturbing explanatory model." "According to this model, the time we live, the speed we move at, the space we occupy are relative to our speed." "Suppose we have the same watch set in the same way." "You travel by plane, I stay here." "Your watch goes less fast because the time each of us lives in is different." "Obviously, the difference is minute, so minute we can't detect it." "But if I now flew in a rocket at 99% of the speed of light and came back to Earth a day later, you will have lived 18 years, and me, 24 hours." "The space I occupy during that time would become very small, but my mass, let's say my body, would be harder to pull than a thousand freight trains." "Am I boring you?" "No." "Taking this theory to its conclusion, we come to think that at the beginning, the universe was just a quantity of matter no bigger than a pingpong ball which exploded... 10 to 20 billion years ago." "Let's say 14, more likely." "It took 4 billion years for the Milky Way, our galaxy, to appear before the birth of the solar system." "Our Earth dates back 4.5 billion years." "In the beginning, we could have touched the Moon with our hand." "The Earth cooled off but... it took 1 or 2 billion years to create the atmosphere, then water." "Reptiles date from 2 or 3 billion years." "Man, probably a million." "Imagine that all this time is represented by a 24hour day." "The Stone Age would begin at five minutes to midnight, virtually at the end of the 24 hours." "The birth of Christ, at one minute to midnight." "Most surprising of all, we are here, we human beings, tiny bubbles lost in the immensity, and we have the capacity to understand all that." "Because the miracle is that all is logic." "If there is a God, he may not be a softie, but he's certainly a very good mathematician." "Come in." "Want something to drink?" "I haven't much to offer, just water or cider." "Cider." "The main life line of the Universe, from the Big Bang to the dinosaur." "The thickness of the red line next to the dinosaur equals 1 million years, mankind's entire past." "And the crucifix?" "What about it?" "I thought you didn't believe in anything." "I don't believe in a god conceivable to the human mind, that's all." "Even that I have doubts about." "Here's to you." "To the two of us." "Come in." "Thanks for coming." "I just had to speak to you." "Please." "Something fantastic is happening to me." "First, I have to tell you..." "I'm in love with Mina." "I hope you won't be angry with me." "And her?" "She feels the same." "You have to understand." "I feel like" "I've happened on a subject that I'll never find again." "I'll try to take her very far into the unknown and follow her there." "That's risky." "Yes, maybe." "But we don't care." "Please, put your jealousy aside." "First I have to tell you..." "Remember when she had that orgasm under hypnosis?" "She wasn't the only one." "If you advertise female pleasure, you'd be overrun." "I'm serious, Sandrine." "What she describes is close to the state of bliss certain mystics speak of." "Remember her second memory?" "She mentioned a convent." "I checked." "It could be a Belgian convent where nuns experienced ecstatic states they tried to hide." "That was in the 14th century." "Mina could have copied them." "Those saints never interested her." "She doesn't know they exist or what their names are." "Why tell me all this?" "I want to put her under hypnosis, to suggest she reach a strong orgasm without gimmicks." "No women, no caresses, no men, nothing." "Katerina and the others were in love with a guy dead for 14 centuries." "So what?" "Remember the violent ecstasy last time?" "You'll do it again, but this time without your hands, without anyone to help you." "You'll go beyond, then go into ecstasy like the nun you saw in the Flemish convent." "You understand me, Mina?" "Yes." "Remember, your most violent orgasm." "You'll go beyond it." "Start." "Where are you, Mina?" "Inside myself." "The heat of my body is dropping." "I feel an incredible mellowness." "My heart is slowing down." "Her pulse is very low." "My eyes see nothing now." "An inner force makes me shut them." "My senses and my body are indifferent to me." "I feel driven toward a kind of glory, a glorious world." "I'm in pain, yet I'm immersed in a sea of bliss." "I'm one great joy." "I hear..." ""My daughter, your soul no longer lives." ""It is I who lives in it."" "Who's speaking to you?" "Mina, who is it?" "I don't know." "There's no name." "Words don't fit." "Now I feel stuck between two worlds;" "the one I come from and which I'm not a part of now and the other indescribable world to which I am being abducted." "Keep going." "What do you feel?" "Tell me, where are you?" "What's going on now?" "Try to say it." "Mina... wake up." "Books, objects, everything went flying." "Then, suddenly, everything calmed down." "And your friend Mina?" "She no longer speaks." "She just wants to go into a convent." "A convent?" "Did she do it?" "I don't know." "Your friend should have been more careful." "What arrogance." "What selfimportance." "But you know, I'm a bit like them;" "maybe a bit calmer, at peace." "Then you understand what happened?" "My mentors would have told you that your two friends, out of stupidity, unleashed some very powerful negative forces." "And what do you think?" "I don't know." "I thought you knew it all, but you don't know a thing." "How right you are." "What is life?" "What is pleasure?" "What is love?" "Look at this landscape." "What does it inspire in you?" "A feeling of calm and harmony." "As it does for me." "But, and you know this, it's, first of all, emptiness," "yet at the same time, filled with plants and insects, and thousands of animals that devour each other to survive." "The plants grow thanks to the light, thanks to the sun." "But the balance, the harmony depends on neverending savagery and murder." "Maybe we're nothing more than silly accidents in the universe, or else, fallen angels." "Fallen from what?" "I don't know."