“About the theme of this conference – Bridge between Science and Religion in the light of 'Dialogues with the Angel' – I would like to speak, rather than religion, of a religious experience or a spiritual experience deep within oneself.

If this subject seems to me to have a real meaning, and it really had one for Gitta MALLASZ herself, it is from a reflection that I found myself obliged to carry out.

I saw how the Talking with Angels were welcomed in a number of circles of psychoanalysis in France and scientific circles. We were still at the time when scientists wanted to be extremely positivist, with the idea that science – when it would have developed enough – would make all metaphysics, all religion, all spirituality disappear, whatever they were.

As for the reactions I received, I must say – broadly speaking – that psychiatrists and scientists were more or less in agreement in saying that Gitta MALLASZ was a madwoman, who certainly kept a more or less decent exterior if one can say, but that deep down she was crazy.

I happened to belong to a Jungian school of psychology myself, and I couldn't call it crazy. I felt, on the contrary, that there was an extremely deep truth which was being said in it.

And I wondered how one could take up, rethink and reconcile a certain amount of knowledge and interior experiences of today, by showing that they are not incompatible with each other. And that we can indeed live an experience of the order of Dialogues with the Angel, while recognizing the validity of a rational approach to the world.

It was while thinking of this kind of problem, thanks to the case of Gitta MALLASZ in the background, that I had been led at the end of the 1970s to bring together in Cordoba a large International Colloquium, entitled Science and Consciousness, the two readings of the universe, in which physicists, neurophysiologists, biologists, psychoanalysts, specialists in religious sciences and spiritual people as such took part.

Which at the time was really considered a little crazy – and I know very well that a certain number of people wondered if Gitta MALLASZ's “craziness” hadn't rubbed off on me slightly.

And, I invited Gitta MALLASZ to this great Colloquium, precisely because I felt obscurely, I didn't know why moreover, but I felt that it was important for her.

During the five days of this Colloquium, at the rate of eight hours of work in session per day, I had been very struck by his attitude, by his attention span, by his concentration, his ability to listen to everything that said to himself. When psychologists spoke, as they were usually Jungian psychologists whose background she knew well, it didn't cause her much of a problem. When it was religious, spiritual people who spoke, she was on the same level.

But, when it was physicists… There was a Nobel Prize in physics and Einstein's great heir there who were talking about physics and I said to myself “there then, anyway…”. Knowing that she had practically no scientific training, I had an absolutely extraordinary kind of admiration for the way in which she was able to invest herself, to listen. And in the evening, in the conversations we had, his ability to intuit and understand in depth what had been said often overwhelmed me.

She told me moreover – and we had recorded her testimony on tape – “Finally, I understood a certain number of things…”.

We hear an echo of this in the statements she makes in this film, when she speaks of the relationship between Light and matter, of the union of Light with matter in our own body.

Of course it speaks of the spiritual Light and not of the physical light.

She had heard and perceived - coming precisely from these scientists, these physicists who were all great physicists of international renown - that in the West, at least at the time, the war was over between the science of a hand and the spirituality of the other.

She had perceived that the time had come when one was able to think and feel that these two domains, which spoke of different things at different levels, were in fact not mutually exclusive.

I remember how struck Gitta was.

How many times did she point out to me that a Kabbalist rabbi who was there – one of the greatest Kabbalist rabbis in Israel – listened with extraordinary attention to what the physicists were saying and how much the physicists listened to the psychologists or Kabbalistic rabbis.

Gitta had told me: “I had understood some things of what the Angel taught us thirty years ago to a certain degree, but now I understand it in a new light. With this very, very deep idea of his, I would even say with this kind of obsession in a way – using the word obsession obviously in the best sense of the word – which was the vision of Oneness.

Of the Unity of the world, of the Unity of man and of the reunification of areas which, as a result of the historical development of things, had been separated from each other to such an extent that at the end of the 1970s we had almost arrived at a state of radical separation between these disciplines.

Following this Colloquium in Cordoba, Gitta suggested to me that we work together on precisely this theme, to establish a possible bridge between modern science and spirituality.

She even offered to write a book together, but I declined the offer. Because I considered that I was certainly not of Gitta's spiritual level and that, if I knew the sciences a little better than she, there was nothing to get any use out of it; finally, I thought it was much more a job that I had to do with myself.

We had refined this subject in many conversations and many correspondences, through many faxes that we exchanged. It was the moment when the fax appeared, the mail did not exist yet.

We explored this subject little by little together, each one moreover playing the bad spirit vis-à-vis the other in a certain way. Because when I said something, she spent her time telling me: “I don't understand anything! And every time she said something to me, I said, "If you would like to be more clear...". It was the rule of the game between us, to push each of us to our limits.

It was this kind of discovery that the two of us had made together, this rediscovery of a whole part of the history of ideas of the 20th century: how some of the greatest physicists, particularly those who founded modern physics, and a number of depth psychologists, descending into the depths of the soul and seeking what those depths of the soul lead to, have ultimately found, let us use the word, a spirituality.

Considerable work had already been done, positing the existence of a mode of reality – I would rather say a level of reality – perceived as deeper, as going beyond the physical, material, daily reality that we inhabit. .

A level of reality where there is not yet a division precisely between body and spirit, between body and soul. Where there is no division between what Gitta calls Light and what we call matter. In the end, we, such as we are, would only be manifestations and therefore differentiations of this primary unity.

There obviously, I refer to what I discovered thanks to Gitta. It was she who almost forced me to go and work in this field, on this extremely deep work that had been done between several Nobel Prize winners in physics such as Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Pauli and then the great psychologist from Zurich who was Carl Gustav Jung . With this clear observation that the soul leads precisely to spirituality, when it descends deep enough into itself.

That was exactly what interested us both so much. It was precisely this level which little by little had been sensed – one cannot say that they were explained very clearly, but sensed by a great physicist and a great psychologist.

What, ultimately, the Angel can be the messenger.

That is to say this Reality deeper than the reality in which we live, and which testifies to another Reality still much deeper than, traditionally, we call the Divine Reality.

I have to say that was the kind of thought that had been bothering me for a long time. Gitta on that was an absolutely extraordinary sort of spur to me. And according to what she told me, which I dare to repeat here, our exchanges have brought a lot to herself as well.

I would say luckily there was Gitta. Because this type of experience in the depths of oneself, both through the phenomena of dreams and in certain interior states - what we usually call "altered states of consciousness" - this kind of thing, I think that if it hadn't been for Gitta, quite frankly, I would never have had the courage to talk about it in public.

I wouldn't have had the courage to say it in public, because I would have thought that I would be considered mad myself.

Since then, I have already written about it in several books and I often say it…

To say that there is another reality, then yet another reality behind, in which you have to dive, by which you have to let yourself be inhabited in a way…. I admit that it is really to Gitta that I owe the courage to be able to hold this discourse and to testify that it can correspond to real experiences lived in the most intimate of oneself.

It seems to me that perhaps few people are aware today that it is in a certain way to Gitta MALLASZ, if only indirectly, that we owe this work that she generated and which ultimately meets a lot of echoes today. I am struck by how encounters between physicists and religious – physicists, biologists and spiritual men – have become commonplace when at the time it caused a real scandal.

All this is due precisely to this very deep questioning that Gitta had on certain words of the Angel which remained obscure to her.

I ask myself the question: have we not in a certain way been the vectors ourselves, I would say almost unconscious in the end – but perhaps we had to be unconscious precisely to be the vectors? vectors – the vectors of what was asked of us from this deeper Reality? From this angelic Reality which, as for me, I recognize completely and of which it seems to me that the Angel is the true figure, as Gitta formulates it in the film.

I think that's the last expression she came up with, her last way of saying it, of expressing it.

Because – how to say it? – it's almost at the limit of the unspeakable. We know very well that by saying it we betray it at the same time.

But you have to communicate it, you don't have the right to keep it to yourself...

In order to arrive at this figure of the Angel which is the call for the unification, or the reunification, of humans among themselves, for the unification of man with his body, of the whole of humanity with the universe as it is.

In order to rediscover these modes of Reality of which we are generally unaware, to which it is a question of awakening and without which, if I believe more and more what my physicist friends tell us, without which we might not even exist.

I think the greatest tribute I can pay to Gitta is to tell you what I attended just three months ago, at an international Colloquium. This Colloquium was brought together on the initiative of the Radio where I work, that is to say France Culture, and of the University of Brussels which, from the point of view of physics and cosmology, is the one of the most advanced universities in the world.

A cosmologist explained to us there what was the state of knowledge at which we arrived today. Namely that even beyond the Big Bang theory, the universe would have been born from what is called 'a fluctuation of the vacuum'. Then, he would add: "Finally, I don't understand very well", - and he would turn to the philosophers, there were a few of us, saying to ourselves: "...but there, my thoughts stop, you would have to tell us come to the aid of us cosmologists”.

There were several other cosmologists who supported him enormously, saying: “Indeed, we no longer understand anything about what we are happening at the moment”.

The discussion had taken hold and I had asked him: "But in the end, this void, how would you define it?" He replies: “It's emptiness for us, but maybe it's not really emptiness. Anyway, I can only think of it on another level of reality than the reality of the matter in which we are. If I had to give it a name, but in reality I don't even know what it means, I would say it's uncreated, uncreated creative”. I started to laugh, and I said to him: "Listen, tomorrow I'm bringing you two things: on the one hand the works of the great apophatic Christian theology, that is to say the Fathers of Cappadocia, Gregory of Nyssa and Saint Denys, and I bring you the Talking with Angels by Gitta MALLASZ”.

That a scene like this could happen with a cosmologist who is one of the international specialists in this strange particle called the neutrino is extraordinary. And since he read the Dialogues with the Angel, he confided to me that in the meetings in which he attends, he now calls the neutrino: “the Angel without weight”.

That something like this could happen is really a sign of upheaval.

It may take us years, even decades, to feel the full consequences.

I believe that it truly echoes what Gitta MALLASZ brought us – through, it is true, the extension that we have tried to give her.

Without her experience, without what she provoked and without the experiences of those who surrounded her – and I dare to count myself very very modestly among those who surrounded her from this point of view – it is something something that probably wouldn't exist.

At the beginning one can ask of course, - and I know people who still ask themselves: "But how could there be a bridge between the Talking with Angels and the most modern science? »

This is what I would like to insist on.

It is that this bridge exists, that it is demonstrated day after day through encounters and often, it is quite astonishing, in the interior experiences of a certain number of physicists, of a certain number of cosmologists which we can clearly see that they are open to this reality.

I repeat, without Gitta MALLASZ this movement might have taken place, I don't know. But if it had taken place, anyway it would certainly not have been the way it took place, with the same rigor that, for my part, I personally inherited from Gitta MALLASZ.

Because he was a terrible person. As soon as one deviated a little bit, or as soon as one was not very very clear, his judgment fell like a cleaver. There was an absolutely constant call to order.

Without Gitta MALLASZ, this dialogue between modern science and spirituality would not take place as it takes place today.

I would say that may be Gitta's legacy, or one of his legacies because God knows there are many. But, there are things that we don't really talk about, on which we don't insist enough...

It is one of the most precious legacies she has given us.

And finally, the amazement that this kind of little good woman who we would not even have noticed in the street – of course it is all my tenderness that speaks through this formula – in the end, step by step , ends up truly changing something in the modern world.

Thank you. »