Alejandro Jodorowsky - Psychomagic - The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy

There you have it: the dream, just as I recorded it. It is from this memorable experience that I wrote the screenplay, El Incal.

So the practice of lucid dreaming consists of planting an act or intention within the oneiric script. Can you go further than the lucid dream?

Yes, it is possible to go to what I call the therapeutic dream, in which the lucidity is utilized to heal a wound, to make up for a deficiency in the enlightened state. I want to give you four examples taken from my notebook:

I find myself in the company of Theresa, my paternal grandmother, whom I never had the occasion to meet, following some family quarrels. She is a plump little woman, with a big forehead. In the dream, I realize that we do not really know one another: we have never spoken or even once taken a walk together. I ask her, “How is it possible that you, my grandmother, have never taken me in your arms?” I realize that I’m verging on tactlessness, and I correct myself, “Or rather, how can it be, Grandmother, that I, your grandson, have never hugged you?” I suggest that I do it, and she accepts. We embrace. I wake up in the clear memory of the dream, happy to have found this family archetype.

Second example:

I am in my bedroom, such as it is in reality, standing face to face with my father. I say to him, “All my life, you never hugged me like a father. You gave me your fear, and nothing else. But now that I am an adult, I am going to take you in my arms.” With that, and without fear, I hug him, kiss him, and rock him. Cradling him this way, I feel with my hands the amazing vigor of his back. With pleasure, I exclaim, “You are ninety years old, and you are still strong!” I continue to cradle him, with audacity and tenderness, and I tell him, “Just as you never communicated with me by touch, I also have deprived my son Axel of physical contact.” Axel appears, at the age he is now, twenty-six. I take him in my arms and ask him to rock me as I have just done with my father. I wake up.

During the day, I chat with Axel, and I tell him joyously that he was part of the dream. I ask him to embrace me and cradle me. A bit shy and bothered at first, he does it by forcing himself and, progressively, the act touches him. We end up having a contact from which we draw a feeling of well-being and peace. Thus, I achieved in a dream something that was missing in my relationship with my father, which then gave my son the possibility of having it in reality.

Third example:

I have financial problems and dream that they are going to hire me as an actor in a theater company. I am going to see the producer to discuss my salary. I explain to him that he must pay me very well as “knowing me as I know myself” I am not going to be happy to just act but to also make sure his show goes very well. I will supervise the lighting, the music, the costumes, my comrades’ roles, and so forth. Briefly, I am going to occupy myself with everything. The producer understands me and agrees to give me a good salary, what I deserve. I wake up reassured, my confidence in myself regained. I know that my material difficulties are going to be resolved.

Finally, fourth example: For three days, I suffered strong pains in the stomach, probably an intestinal infection. I couldn’t sleep, and I did not want to take antibiotics. I went to bed and dreamed:

I lie in my bed, prey to the same pains I had while awake. The healer Pachita arrives. She lies on top of me and begins to suck the right side of my neck while saying, “I am going to heal you, little brother.” In a supreme effort, she slides my left hand between us and puts it on my stomach. Then she rises in the air without separating from me. We levitate a moment, horizontally, then we descend to the bed. She slowly fades. I wake up cured, without ever feeling any pain again.

It occurs to me to say that I have thus incorporated healing and that I have access to an inner doctor, a kind of Divinity. I remember that in Mexico, before dying, Pachita made a ring appear in the palm of her hand, and she put it on my left ring finger, then said, “I will come visit you in your dreams.”

As you can imagine, dreams like this are tremendously beneficial. They are truly repair dreams, in which the unconscious channels its power to effectively dress the wound.

If it is possible to use this knowledge acquired in the practice of lucid dreaming to unblock in the therapeutic dream, can you go further, to touch in the dream a dimension of knowledge?

Yes, and this other stage, I call the humble dream. One day, I stopped planning scenarios, preferring to attend a dream only as an observer. I let it roll, follow its own course, but because I wasn’t caught up by it, everything remaining lucid. I am spectator of my own dream, and I abstain from all intervention. In fact, I believe I have recently passed to another level even more subtle that I call the wise dream. At present, the protagonist of the dream I attend, as spectator is a sage. He pronounces speeches, which I take note of upon waking up, which are not original and may be extracts from some sacred text. But from the deepest place in my unconscious, these texts surge just as I observed lucidly during the dream.

Can you recount some from these “wise dreams”?

Yes, but not without reluctance. .

Why? Are you now going to play modest?

It does not have to do with that! I simply fear not being believed. (Alejandro extracts from his library an immense notebook that resembles a golden book.) You see it is in this other notebook that I note my most positive dreams. I can open it and read you an example of a wise dream; but will our readers be ready to admit that a man is able to have such dreams? Maybe you should, first, give me your word of honor. .

Why not? This could be kind of surreal: I declare on my honor that you have wisely dreamed. .

Okay. I certify then on my honor to have actually had the following dream! Each is free to believe me or not.

These dreams are that extraordinary?

No, in fact, they are very simple. What is unusual is precisely the element that makes them sage dreams. Everything is in the interior climate of the dream. (Jodorowsky reads from his big notebook, translating simultaneously as all of his dreams are written in Spanish):

I find myself in the company of a master in martial arts who is teaching me. He tells me, “Let yourself fall into my arms without tensing up at all.” The thought comes to me, “Well, I am going to reach an absolute relaxation,” and I let myself fall without tensing up at all. The master receives me, then lays me on the studio floor and tries a capture. I am so relaxed that he does not succeed. He then says to his assistant, “Impossible to fight with him. He is as if dead, and against the dead, one can do nothing.”

You see? An example of a sage dream in which I achieved absolute relaxation. Another example:

I go out on the street in a tight suit that makes me appear extremely puny. So I tell myself, “It is good that people see me as weak, as I know me and I feel myself so strong on the inside.”

Or, more, this other dream:

I attend a class of a professor of philosophy who declares, “The secret is to be in thought.” And I respond, “If you have not accepted death, you have achieved nothing. Only the acceptance of death delivers us from the thought of death.”

Permit me to give you another reading of two sage dreams:

Gypsies brought me to their warehouse where they have amassed all sorts of furniture. They want to consult with me, and they show me a cardboard box and a big cutout that looks like the Ace in the Tarot of Marseille. With it, they think to devote themselves to alchemy and discover the universal solvent, the material capable of dissolving all other materials. I smile at them and ask them, “Do you know what the universal solvent is?” Seeing they have no response, I tell them, “It is the blood of Christ. One drop of the blood of Christ on your heart dissolves all other feelings. So only love lasts.”