In a very soft voice, she said, “In the most ancient times, women chanted lullabies with their vulvas to make their babies sleep, but as this art became lost and forgotten, children ceased to feel they were loved. An unconscious anxiety settled in the souls of human beings. That whimpering of yours expresses the pain of having a mother with a mute vagina, but we are going to resolve that.”
She undressed me with precise, delicate movements, had me lie on the bed, and began by embracing the soles of my feet, moving all the way up my body — countless, deep kisses given with all her soul, patiently, over every square inch of my body. For two hours, from my foot to my head, without neglecting the slightest place, she bestowed upon me that ineffable caress, murmuring each time: “You are loved.” I had been kissed by women in many ways, but never over the totality of my skin. I surrendered to it.
When she finished with a final kiss on my nose, I gave a great sigh of happiness mixed with deep sadness. “You have shown me nirvana. . but I would have preferred you to say ‘I love you,’ instead of ‘You are loved.’”
Her blue eyes flashed with utter disdain.
“As I multiplied my kisses, I perceived you moving back through time. From thirty years you went to twenty, to fifteen, to ten, to five, and suddenly you were six months old — a baby marveling at having found a universal mother. That is what you are feeling right now. Should I accept such an unworthy role in saying ‘I love you’? What do you want? By soliciting my love, what you are really saying is: ‘Because I never had the tenderness of a mother, I’m confused and lost in my life. You are my only emotional refuge. That’s why I cling to you. Be authoritarian, guide me, possess me, ground me, nourish my soul. Never abandon me, satisfy my desires constantly, amuse me when I’m bored, make delicious food for me, forget yourself, and admire me more than anyone else. Become my audience.’
“You deceive yourself by seeing me as a projection of that inner woman that you call ‘soul’—but in no case will you accept me as the portrait of your mother. When you say, ‘I love you,’ which one of your multiple selves is speaking? The mental I, the emotional I, the sensual I, the moral I, the cultural I? What is the profound I that is independent of age, sex, nationality, or beliefs? When you define yourself, which part of yourself is making this definition? Can you say, without dividing yourself in two: ‘I am what I am’? Do you realize that you are not an individual organism? Do you realize that this body that you believe is yours is all men — all who exist, have existed, and will exist — and that I am all the women from the beginning to the end of Creation? Your essential self is the cosmos manifesting itself through you. When you enter into contact with me, it is for you to unite yourself with the totality of time through our minuscule present.
“By wishing to have me, centering yourself in possession, you go astray. Love is an infinite energy that surges within you and has nothing to do with the image you have of a separate self. In the we there is no me. Love goes beyond all desire of possession. When you prefer ‘I love you,’ to ‘You are loved,’ you fail to realize that the only reason you are in this world, born in a body of flesh and bone, endowed with consciousness, is because that mysterious force that creates the universe every instant loves you. You are obeying a divine destiny. Right now, every moment, cell by cell, atom by atom, you are loved — you, just as you are, with your particular form, your style, your limitations, and your irreproducible aura. The universe thirsts for this consciousness that your organism can produce. A grain of this consciousness has been given you so that you can make it bear fruit to prevent it from disappearing without leaving a trace in time.
“My blessed father said: ‘Whoever does not create a soul lives like a pig and dies like a dog.’ You have been taught that you were no one, that no inner god lives in the center of your dark psyche. Your parents, seeing you as only a projection of their selfish plans, never saw you. Not seeing you, they never knew you and forbade you to be who you are and permitted you to be only who they wanted you to be. They did not love you. This is why you brew all this emotional muddle around women, who will never be able to love you as you would prefer. In a state of perpetual neediness, your ‘I love you’ actually means: ‘Mean mommy, you don’t love me. I search in vain for your look. If you don’t want to see me, then I don’t want to see me and I must be as you imagine me to be. If you do not tell me who I really am, then I am not. I remain a child. I cannot become an adult, because in order to do that, you would have to see me as I really am — and that’s impossible, for then you would have to be able so see yourself as you really are, which in turn is impossible because your parents — my grandparents — never saw you. Because I am afraid you will abandon me, I’ll distance myself from you first, before you can do it.’”
Suddenly, losing control of my rage, I seized a chair and smashed it into a mirror. Walking heedlessly over the broken glass, trying to hide the limp from my injured foot, I dressed, lashing out at her with insults. “You insolent, didactic charlatan! You’ve read a handful of books on psychoanalysis and think you can pass yourself off as a master! Daughter of Gurdjieff? Don’t make me laugh!” I was still hurling these insults as I opened the door, a shoe still in my hand, and I was so furious that my voice rose to a scream at the last phrase.
At that precise instant a blind tourist passed in the hallway with a guide dog. Startled by my scream, the dog sensed aggression and began to bark loudly. The blind man was frightened and began to call for the hotel police. I jumped from the corridor back into the room and closed the door.
Reyna D’Assia received me with hilarious laughter. “You see? You can’t escape so easily. A blind man’s dog stopped you. In English, dog spelled backward is god. The god of the blind, the ignorant like you, obliges you to listen to me.
“Now open your ears: We always fall into a rage for reasons other than what we believe. You think mistakenly that I have offended you. The truth is that during these hours in this room, you have received something from me that you have never before received in your life. It has brought to the surface all the hatred you feel for your mother. You are reacting as a psychological barbarian might react. You have aspired to a relation between man and woman that is as simple as that between animals, never imagining that love between a man and a woman is also the expression of a neurosis of two genealogical trees.
“You must understand this: The only true couple is not a symbiosis, but a collaboration between two free, conscious beings. Cease to beg for love! I am not your solution, still less your crutch. The purpose of our meeting is not to share the sublime pleasure of an existence that is neither mine nor yours. An alchemical text says: ‘From one substance, two are made and from these two, one is made that bears no resemblance to the first substance.’
“You and I shall establish a meeting of soul and soul so that this androgynous energy expands into the eternal and infinite present. It is marvelous to meet someone who exists at your own level of consciousness! This has not yet happened for you. Your intellect is like a wild horse that you have never tamed. It does as it pleases, dominating you, directing you under the influence of insane ideas implanted in it by your ancestors ever since your birth. Instead of being the slave of its desires, you must teach it to obey and develop it into a machine without limits.”