I'm Mathieu Arsenault
and a voice in my head told me
to find my cosmic twin in San Francisco
to try to save the world.
I was just coming back from Cannes Film Festival
where I showcased a short film I made.
I was pretty proud of it.
My daughter, Lou, was three years old
and my wife was pregnant with our second child.
So it was a happy summer.
And I just received big money to shoot a new film
so I was very excited.
But I started to become very sensitive
very creative.
My sleep was not so good.
I just slept, like, five or four hours a day.
When I finished shooting my new film
I heard a voice in my head telling me
'Hi, my name is Oak Tao.
I'm a 2,000-year-old tree
and I have a mission for you.'
It seems pretty funny, but the voice told me
'OK, now you have to go to the West Coast.
There you will meet your cosmic twin
and you're both going to start
a spiritual revolution around the world.'
So I was like, 'Oh my God.
That looks amazing! Let's do it.'
So I just dropped my regular job and told my wife
'OK, I need a break before the new child is coming.'
And I flew to San Francisco.
When I got to California I rented a car
and started rolling in the Death Valley.
All around, I think I made
3,000 kilometres in 10 days
because I was just sleeping two hours maximum by day.
The next day I met her
in a youth hostel in Chinatown.
My real cosmic twin.
It was a real girl named April.
And when I saw her, I fell instantly in love with her.
But more than in love.
It was a big spiritual connection.
At night
we rode to Baker Beach
and there, there was what I call a sacred tree.
A big beautiful pine
all curved by the wind.
I asked her to lay down naked on the tree
and cover up with a blanket
and I started my ritual
to do the magic to heal her.
Yeah, he explained to me all the chakras.
On the beach of San Francisco, you can find
pebbles of all colours.
So, Oak Tao told me to pick coloured pebbles
and explained to me
'Oh, this is the purple chakra of the heart
or green chakra of the brain.'
I don't remember which chakra was where.
But he was explaining how to
heal people and make them feel better.
It was pretty challenging to
fall in love with another woman because
you know, my wife, Alix, was pregnant.
I had a daughter
a life
good things in Montreal that
by doing this, I was just destroying.
My family didn't know a lot of things at that point.
Alix felt that something was wrong.
She called me many times a day and
challenged me
to know what happened and
at a point I admitted that
OK, I met a new girlfriend.
Her name is April.
I'm in love, and I won't come back to Montreal.
And she was
so destroyed by this.
I think she didn't sleep for three days.
Alix started to send me some videos of our daughter, Lou
because it was the only thing that made me react.
And I started thinking
'Oh, I don't want to be the father that will abandon
his daughter, my daughter, Lou.
It looks crazy.'
So, I finally decided to come back to Montreal.
In Montreal
Alix was at the airport
with my daughter Lou and my big brother.
I spoke like two minutes with Alix and
she asked me, 'Okay what do we do now?'
And I explained to her, 'Oh, I want to live with you and April
if you're okay with that and we start a new life together.'
She just said: 'No.' And...
she left me with my big brother and
my brother was so scared of me
of my strange talking
and everything, that he called 9-1-1.
And policemen and
paramedics came in his apartment and
took me to the hospital
where a psychiatrist told me:
'Oh, now you are in psychosis.
You have bipolar disorder.
What you are experiencing is not real.'
And I was like...
And he described to me the symptoms and everything
and I was, 'Oh yeah, yeah, could be, possible.'
And I trusted the man, so I started to take
pills that put me in depression for a whole year.
In the hospital, I had a choice to make.
And I made it for my daughter.
Because I didn't want to abandon her.
My link
emotional link with my daughter
was more powerful than the divine mission
or the voice of Oak Tao.
So I made that choice at that point.
Yeah, at first when
when they told me, 'Oh, you are bipolar,' I thought
my life was over.
And for a year and a half
I even didn't know if my mind was OK or
if it had been destroyed by the process.
I didn't know if
I'm going to be able to go back to work someday.
Everything was so fragile.
But slowly we start back to travel.
I came back to
work for a television network
doing editing and stuff like that.
I came back to a normal life and
after that I decided to
make a film about what happened.
I decided to challenge the society
all the society, and say, 'OK, I have mental
sickness, and I don't care.
I'm good, I'm OK. I am talented. I can do great films.
And I will show you
that it's great.'