Alejandro Jodorowsky - Psychomagic - The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy

Fine. .

Listen, let me tell you another story. In 1957, long before I theorized all this, I asked my wife, “Where do you want to go for vacation?”

“I would really like to go to Greece,” she replied.

“Very well,” I replied. “We will go to Greece.”

“But how? We don’t have a penny.”

“We are going to Greece!”

At that moment, someone knocked on the door of the garret where we lived. It was a friend and member of Francisco Marín’s well-known (at the time) South American music group, Los Guaraníes. He said to me, “Listen, we have to leave on tour to Greece in three days to give a show at a folk festival, and one of our dancers has fallen ill. Would you replace him?”

“But I do not know these dances. .”

“It doesn’t matter. My wife is going to teach you!”

Right away I learned two dances, Bailecito and Carnavalito. Then, sure as you please, we left for Greece. After that, how can I not consider reality like a dream that belongs to me to create as I go along?

I agree on the principle; but your anecdotes and the way in which you express them appear to me to be open to confusion. After all, the earth is populated with people who don’t ask for anything but to realize their dreams without effort. Experience shows that to desire is not enough; one must also merit it.

What you say here appears very important. Of course, these things that I’m telling you happened to me, so I can say that my life is commensurate with my craziest dreams. I truly believe in the magic of reality. But for this magic to operate, it is befitting to cultivate in oneself a certain number of qualities that are at times contradictory, at least in appearance: innocence, self-control, faith, bravery. . Putting this magic into motion requires a lot of audacity, and also purity, and a lot of work on oneself. So I insist that I devote my existence to perfecting myself, to knowing myself, and to making myself internally accessible. It is important to never lose sight of all the discipline without which this approach to existence would be but an illusion. Life is not there for satisfying the desires of the first sloth that was created! Life is wonderful to us when we abandon ourselves to it and when we overcome our egocentrism.

Does this asceticism work then include an application of lessons received by means of the lucid dream? Because, in brief, asceticism requires a great deal of effort, unlike the lucid dream where it is enough just to hold the intention for something to be achieved.

Believe me! To remain conscious within the dream requires a considerable effort.

In addition, the perceived emotions during the dream are very real. If you are terrorized, you really are; you perceive the terror, and it is difficult to face up to things. Finally, the greatest lesson of the lucid dream does not reside as such in the demand for lucidity. So, do not forget that without lucidity, nothing is possible. Thus, as I said, from the instant when one lets oneself be caught up by the experience one crosses into, the dream absorbs us, and the lucidity that was the only guarantor of this initiation dimension ends. The magic we have called forth does not operate except by detachment. What makes the game possible is the lucidity of the witness, whereas identification with consensus reality, on the contrary, shrinks existence and reduces the realm of possibility. In dreams, as in daily life, the same laws operate: The more one is detached, the more one can enjoy perceiving all of existence as a vast playground. The less one is detached, the more life turns into a dead end. Dreaming thus taught me, paradoxically, to wake up and maintain a lucid current as a thread of existence, even if this requires a major effort. Because God knows how marvelous life can be when one is, above all, open to its magic! The danger of identification is the temptation to let oneself be captured by the spell as one opens up. On the other hand, lucidity strengthens itself with practice.

Another lesson of lucid dreaming, which we have already made allusion to, another facet of magic: the flexibility of the real. Not only do you not hold back life in a rigid process, but you train yourself to be flexible.

Yes, I pay close attention to not allowing too much self-definition, to not caging myself into a narrow-minded self-vision. In the dream, I can perceive myself as a sixty-year-old man, but also as a young boy, or as an elder, you see, or as a woman, why not? Diverse facets of my being manifest. In reality, I try to let these facets express themselves while responding to the demands of the situation without clinging to a preconceived idea of what I am or what I should be. When I travel, people often ask what is my nationality. If someone strikes up a conversation on an airplane and they say to me, “Are you Italian?” I respond, “Yes.”

If someone takes me for Greek, French, Russian, Israeli — whatever — I always respond with the affirmative. Delighted to have guessed, the person then relates to me as an Italian, a Russian, a Greek, or a Chilean, and that does not change anything. Our adventure the other day at the Marjolaine is a good example of this attitude. When we arrived, the public was not waiting for us; they had come for Dr. Westphaler.

Dr. Woestlandt, Alejandro.

Yes, Dr. Wiesen-Wiesen.

In brief. .

I asked you to introduce me as Dr. Westphallus, but you did not dare. Yet, I could have given two hours of lecture under the provisional identity of Dr. Wouf-Wouf. I would have spoken about health and conveyed my message. Little matter who broadcasts it! Little matter who I am! I always behave according to what one desires to see in me. If she expects a filmmaker, I play the filmmaker; if he expects a comic strip writer, I play the writer. . I accept whatever role, while knowing in my inner conscience that I do not reduce myself to what another perceives of me, to what someone else believes me to be.

Have you explored other aspects of the lucid dream?

Later, I wanted to explore other, more metaphysical dimensions: I put myself to the search for my inner master. Permit me, again, to read to you a dream in this decisive respect:

I am in the company of two ordinary, fat Mexicans whom I sense to be friends although I do not know them. We cross a courtyard and go to the stone wall, which could equally likely be that of a school, a temple, or a government palace. Everything is very spacious. We walk, hugging the wall. Suddenly an enormous telluric hum bursts out. The noise really alarms the Mexicans. One of them exclaims, “An earthquake is coming!” They study the stones, anxiously awaiting the first tremors. Beginning to realize then that I was dreaming, I told them, “Do not be afraid; nothing will happen to you. It’s a dream.” Everything seems, however, so real that I begin to doubt. But, in making the deafening noise stop by force of will, I acquire a certitude that I am really dreaming. Right away, I suggest to myself to make good use of this lucidity. “This time,” I tell myself, “I am going to ask to gaze at the Divinity.” Although I would be seized by a deep terror, I decided to do it. “Help me to face God,” I say to my friends. They place themselves under each of my armpits, resembling human crutches, to help me move toward a staircase of black stones, which comprises twenty-two steps and rises up in the middle of the courtyard like a pedestal. “I now feel capable of facing the Divinity alone,” I say to my friends. Knowing they are parts of the dream, I make them disappear with a push, and I begin to climb the steps. Again I am prey to terror. Maybe I am going to see a horrible image stand before me. . I glide up the stairs, which are covered with water, and I make enormous efforts to avoid sliding. Then an animated photograph appears on which a gigantic actor grimaces like a clown. I can’t believe it. “A photo, a role-player, the Divinity. . this is not possible!” The actor disappears, and I take his place. I am sixty years old and dressed in a cashmere suit. I have the appearance of an old university professor, with glasses on the tip of the nose. I know that this immense image of myself is a necessary veil, the projection of bygone ideals, and that it let me survive without anguish my first meeting with the Divinity. The photo animates itself and begins to speak to me with sympathy. It communicates a message to me; it gives me a lesson. I retain very little of it, not more than a few words: the treasure of humanity. I often replay this first experience, which allows me to make a first step in the search for the inner God, the guide, the master inside of me, the impersonal me — little matter the name that one attributes to it — and this without being in terror. I muster my strength, take support in the air, mount, and put myself to floating. Like a ram, I throw myself against the screen and cross it to topple over into the vault of heaven, a vast infinity spotted with stars. I want to again contemplate my inner God. In front of me appears, huge like Cheops, two interlocked pyramids resembling the Star of David in relief. I tell myself that I must not be content to just look at them — one is black, the other is white — but that I must melt into them. So I penetrate their center, and I explode like a universe on fire.