"Every morning, I asked myself how I was going to live." "I could go to work." "I could take a boat and leave my parents forever." "I could stay on the ground in my filth, without moving." "I could live intensely, full of hate, uncompromising." "I could be banal, play the game and have a lot of women, try to be happy." "They tell me I stray too far from reality." "The only reality I know is chaos." "I haunt the cafes, I talk to my friends." "Brief moments of respite in the middle of our common misery." "We speak to each other but without looking each other in the eyes." "No, eyes turned away from their true power, looking for women in the street." "A bum approaches." "He's come from Brittany." "We talk for a while," "I give him a franc." "He's another wanderer in this city of shadows." "Last night I was sitting at a cafe table," "I liked the girl sitting next to me." "I touched her on the shoulder and asked her:" ""Who are you?"" "She gave me an icy look and turned away." "It was my last effort a pathetic gesture against the advancing obscurity." "But I can feel the Spring and with the Spring I smell women and David's love can't help me." "I have to leave." "David takes my hand and kisses me on the cheek, but I draw back." "We can't be happy together when women, with their fine legs, are coming between us." "I got up from the park bench where we had been sitting" "I started to walk under the hot sun and the sun's reflection bounced off the silver cross resting between the fine, firm breasts of a young woman." "I breathed deeply and sadly set off again." "Of course, I walked." "I couldn't stay in my room." "Too much desire and too much resentment." "So I continued my stroll around Saint-Germain, determined to walk until love overwhelmed me." "I had nowhere to go." "I had nothing to hope for." "I stared at the passersby." "They looked at me too, but turned away, because was I not the one true man?" "David had tried to proclaim that I was a mystic." "Right now that's absurd." "Later, maybe." "But at the moment I'm nothing but passion and sex and pathetically chaotic poetry." "Hurry up I don't have all night!" "Hurry up!" "When one is alone, hate grows and gnaws at one's insides." "It ruins everything and creates a real nest of vipers in one's heart, everything becomes bitter." "This bitterness is such a part of me." "But it's not everything." "The faint hope of youth remains." "But since my youth refuses, that faint light will perhaps go out." "Hello." "Are you coming in?" "Give me your coat." "The swami seems to know where he's going." "He controls his senses through meditation instead of being a slave to his needs and desires, like everyone else." "He says that man must liberate himself from what the Indians call Samsara, the cycle of death and reincarnation." "The goal of this rebirth is to attain wisdom," "find God within oneself." "All the rest is secondary." "The swami's path, of which he seems so sure, could it be the one I must take?" "That which everyone must take, one day?" "One, two, three, four five, six, eight nine, ten." "You killed the seven." "That's not the place for the seven." "There's always a place for seven." "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten." "One, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine..." "Seven!" "One, two, three, four, five, six seven, eight, nine, ten." "A few phrases now." "The weather is good." "The weather is bad." "It's freezing." "It's raining." "It's freezing." "When is the... next boat to" "Tunis?" "What's the price of a cabin in" "first-class?" "Tell me what lovers say to each other, in French." "Lovers?" " Lovers, yes" "I love you, that it?" " Yeah" "But tell me all the words you know." "I love you, that's pretty standard." "There has to be something else." "You love me." "See?" "You're not the only one who can speak English." "I love you" " Oh no, no." "The nearest..." "where is the nearest beach?" "That it?" " What?" "Nearest... yes, the nearest beach." "What time does the swimming pool close?" "At seven o'clock." "Where's the entrance?" "Have you a good saddle-horse?" "Have I a good saddle-horse?" "As long as a man lingers in ignorance, as long, in other words, as he has not attained God, he will be reborn on Earth." "But he who has been illuminated will no longer have to return to earth nor to any other sphere." "He who has tasted sugar candy takes no further pleasure in molasses." "He who has lived in a palace doesn't worry about sleeping in a dirty hovel." "The soul that has tasted the sweetness of divine beatitude takes no more delight in the vulgar pleasures of this world." "But the yogi who lives in the world has reason to be wary because living surrounded by sensual attractions comes with the risk of weakening, no matter how slight the risk may be for the yogi." "If you live in a room full of soot, you will inevitably get dirty, no matter what precautions you take." "One day, Vijay Krishna Goswami asked Sri Ramakrishna:" ""In what state of mind should a man be, in this world, in order to be able to aspire to freedom?"" "The master answered:" ""He can only be free if, with God's grace, he completely renounces the things of this world, then only will he be freed of his attachment to women and gold."" "How will he achieve this complete renunciation, this passionate absence of desire?" ""I will come to God little by little."" "This is the language of a half-hearted renunciation." "But he who renounces all with strength and ardor has a heart full of desire for God, of thirst for God, like the heart of a mother who desires to see her child." "He is searching for God alone and the world, pulling out water from a well in which he is constantly at risk of drowning." "His friends seem to him like poisonous snakes which he must avoid, his determination and desire to find God are so strong that he doesn't even think of putting his domestic affairs in order before turning completely to the Lord." "How can a man learn to detach himself from the things of this world?" "A woman once said to her husband:" ""I'm worried about my brother." "He's been thinking about becoming an ascetic for a long time, he prepares himself by gradually reducing his needs and desires."" "Her husband replied:" ""Don't worry." "Your brother will never manage to become a sannyasin like that."" ""How does one become one?" she asked him." ""Like this!", cried her husband, ripping his robe to pieces, wrapping a strip of it around his waist and declaring to his wife and to all the women of the world that they would all be as mothers to him from then on." "He left his house and never returned." "What is it?" "What is it, Pierre?" "What is it?" "What's wrong?" "What's wrong, Pierre?" "Nothing." "But why are you so bitter?" "I'm not bitter." "Anka was becoming too possessive, too demanding." "I don't want to go to a restaurant, to the cinema, or to a party nor make love." "Sometimes I imagine myself, dressed as a monk, high in the Tibetan mountains." "Rent a room..." "I'm obsessed with this suggestion of Gerard's, but..." "I told him I need to be alone, to meditate," "to change my habits, to withdraw from the world." "I'm convinced that in our everyday activities we avoid what is really important." "I told her I'm going to rent a room near the Bastille." "While I was talking to her, I sensed that I was hurting her." "Which only increased my anxiety." "I really love you." "Anka, you have to understand that I'm leaving." "Listen." "Selfish desire, no matter how august its object is an attachment; and that until you eliminate all desire you will not be free to dedicate yourself to the work of the master." "The master teaches us that man should give no importance to anything that comes from the exterior:" "sadness, problems, illness, loss." "These things must be seen as irrelevant, they must not be allowed to affect one's mental equilibrium." "They are the result of anterior actions and must be cheerfully tolerated, because you must remember that all is transient and that your duty is to remain joyful and serene." "These things belong to your past life, not at all to this one." "You can't change anything, it is therefore pointless to worry about it." "Consider, rather, those acts which will bear upon your next life." "because those you can change." "You must renounce all feelings of possession." "Karma may take from you the things you value most, maybe even the people you love the most." "You must be prepared to abandon anything at all, with joy or anyone at all." "Don't be mistaken, don't misunderstand." "One does not mock God because man reaps what he has sown." "Man always finds himself when he is face-to-face with himself." "The unforgivable sin is the voluntary and knowing rejection of spiritual truth." "In a way, all sins are unforgivable because they must be expiated in order to undo any effect they may have had, but if someone voluntarily rejects the truth in full awareness of what they are doing, with no good reason," "that proves that they prefer evil to good and that they have thus allied themselves with the forces of evil." "It is thus dangerous for men to acquire occult knowledge before having attained that state of wisdom which would help them to stay on the right path." "One of the first people to read was a young man who had suffered from anaemia since childhood." "His father was a doctor and as a child he had been subjected, unsuccessfully, to any potential treatment." "A functional malady which so obstinately resists treatment suggests a profound karmic disorder." "In effect, a reading of his past lives attributed his illness to a previous incarnation in Peru five lifetimes ago, during which he had brutally conquered the country and become its overlord." "A lot of blood was spilled, said the young man, from which came his current anaemia." "The law of evolution may oblige a soul to return in flesh, endlessly." "The law of evolution may oblige a soul to return in flesh, endlessly." "The law of evolution may oblige a soul to return in flesh, endlessly." "The law of evolution may oblige a soul to return in flesh, endlessly." "Did you bring my saw?" "And the... rum," "bread, yogurt," "cheese." "This is a terrible place, Pierre!" "Why?" "Do you miss the music box much?" "What's happening to you?" "What?" "Art model." "Art model?" "Nude?" "Yes, nude." "He must have good taste." "What?" "What are you saying?" "Where are my... underpants?" "Ah, your underpants?" "Here." "I thought about her, at the discotheque." "We were sure that we knew each other, that we had seen each other before." "Since it wasn't in this life, it must have been in another one." "They say that the same souls meet each other in different lives." "So why do I treat Anka the way I do?" "Oh, I'm all right, still a bit rheumatic but you know, at my age..." "How's the man on the 3rd floor?" "We can't expect miracles, with our ancestors." "The day he dies, let us know because the room upstairs is really awful." "It's always the same here, the cistern is always blocked!" "They're young, we don't know where their income comes from" "They're not bad people, but have you seen how they look?" "Unshaven, long hair, uncombed, like girls!" "They come home at all hours." "I went looking for Anka." "She wasn't at home and I had to wait for her outside, trying to remain calm." "It was odd to see people in the street." "It seemed completely unreal." "When Anka turned the corner," "I got up," "I walked towards her and I held her close to me for minutes until her skin couldn't take any more scratching from my beard."