Alejandro Jodorowsky - Psychomagic - The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy

What advice would you give for losing the fears we suffer?

Each one is distinct, but I have always said it is necessary to manifest them in a psychomagic shape. You must first discover what you are afraid of; then you can overcome it. If a person is afraid of dying, I make her go to a funeral or I bury her symbolically. Whoever fears poverty, I send him to another city to beg for a day. I make the client live on the edge of what she fears, to face it.

Georg Groddeck said something I like a lot: “You are afraid of what you desire.” If a person is very afraid of being homosexual, I send him dressed as a transvestite to a gay bar. To defeat a fear, you must let it enter into your life as a concrete shape.

Will medicine in the future contemplate subjects like Psychomagic, theater, or psycho-shamanism?

Medicine in the future will have to integrate all of this, although it already is doing it. I have many students of Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer who have created bio-psycho-genealogy, which is a delirium to me but, little by little, it becomes evident.

For two years, my friend Jean-Claude Lapraz, a doctor in phytotherapy, sent his patients for me to see if psychological problems existed. Between us, we came to an agreement in principle that said: “We do not assume that all illnesses are psychological, but we are going to observe what there is of psychology in the illnesses.” We studied psychic events in relation to the physical, and at the same time, we both did our work.

Do doctors today practice a little psycho-shamanism?

For the big majority of them, you are only a number and you have nothing to say! We must radically reform the state of medicine: from the hospitals to the habits. Nurses, doctors, they do not know how to treat patients; they think they have to treat the patient cruelly and impersonally, and this does not work. They treat machines.

What is fundamental to healing is that the person express herself and speak. You notice, when you heal someone, that it produces a change in a person who has been listened to. To heal, you have to know who the patient is and where the illness and character have developed. To know the patient, it is essential to develop a genealogy tree at least to the great-grandparents. But none of this is applied today in conventional medicine.

What is your opinion about suicide?

If you have a grave illness, incurable, suicide is a possible option. People have the right to end their lives. Life should not be prolonged agony. Current medicine prolongs pain, and this is awful.

How do you see the way our society looks at death?

It is an atrocity, how one is born and how one dies. It’s not a way to come into the world. We must bring birth and death back into the home.

UNDERSTANDING LIFE

Is all of life, perhaps, a miracle?

Life is rich. If you carefully observe a meadow, you realize that each plant is a different color of green, each ladybug is different from the other. Many of us know the anecdote of the man who photographed snowflakes and discovered that each one was different: thousands of millions of snowflakes, each one with its own shape. That is to say, everything is variety, difference. But, at the same time, everything communicates; we are united by secret threads. Life is a miraculous creation. All of reality is a pure union of mental and emotional threads.

We must tiptoe lightly upon the world without becoming victims of reality.

Our footfalls are important. The whole being reflects in the bottoms of the feet, where all the endings reach. Our step defines us. Loved ones, dogs and cats, for example, know our steps. But there are people who live very enclosed in the mind and are unconcerned with their steps, as if the earth were really dirty and one could stain his feet.

When I left Chile, I was twenty-three years old; when I went back, I was sixty-three. The streets were full of memories, of emotionalism; there was all of my adolescence, full of poetry. I walked on the sidewalks, caressing them with the soles of my shoes. Acts toward others should be as delicate as the steps we take on a land that is part of ourselves.

What does “ do not become a victim” of reality mean?

The person who does not control her territory does not control her existence. If someone is not conscious, she is taken over, not only outwardly but also with the thoughts that assault her. She is very vulnerable to desires and feelings. For example, you live calmly with your wife, then — catastrophe! Suddenly you lose control because you have fallen in love with another. You don’t have to fall victim to that reality; what you have to do is navigate in it, overcome the winds and sandstorms. Amid the storms at sea and the signs, you must move forward calmly and look toward the port you’re heading for.

In New York, when I was filming The Holy Mountain, I had problems of all sorts. I soaked six or seven T-shirts a night with my sweat. I went to see a Chinese sage that someone had recommended. He was a poet, a great master of tai chi, and a doctor. When he first saw me, he said, “What is your purpose in life?” I was disconcerted and did not answer. He continued, “If you do not tell me what is your purpose in life, I cannot heal you.” So I understood that if a ship crosses the sea without a purpose, it will arrive at no port. What prevents life from devouring us is having a purpose. The higher it is, the further it will carry us.

As a mystic, I have but one aim: to know God. Not the God talked about everywhere, but this incredible thing that moves the universe. Further still: to dissolve myself calmly into that. This is my purpose, and for that, I do not need to be a guru, or a visionary, or any sort of paper doll.

Should we act in life as if it were a big dream?

As if in a lucid dream, not like in a nightmare. And the more lucid a dream is, the less of a dream it is. To cross a river is to cross life: complete happiness in spite of complete suffering. I do not like wars at all. I have lived through many, beginning with the world war. I am not one who believes that the human being should be distressed.

But the fact is we live filled with anxiety.

Remember that Mary and Zacharias see an angel, and that, twice, the angel tells them to have no fear. When I was writing Gospels for Healing, this scene came into my head. I believe the angel took away their fear. The first step to entering into divine and cosmic consciousness is to lose the fear. Why? Because the essence of animals is to fear, and that limits us. Our body is afraid of becoming food. That is the first and the most basic. Movies like Alien and Jaws drive at this primitive depth: to be devoured or to not have anything to eat.

Fear, on the other hand, is useful. If children do not learn that fire burns, they will all die. Fear preserves life; without fear we may not live. Panic, however, is another thing. Anxiety is fear of the unknown. When you do not know that you are afraid, then you feel anguish. What is essential is not so much freeing yourself from fear as not letting yourself be dominated by panic.

It is said that love grows insofar as criticism decreases. How should we act toward the defects of others?

The enemy of love is to criticize another. If someone criticizes you, it is because they do not love you. It is necessary to accept people as they are. However, to criticize is one thing and objective judgment is another. To judge is bad, but to know what is happening with others is good. One must say to the other, “I am not criticizing you, because I love you. But I see your limits, and I would like to make you conscious of them. Then you can do what you want.” This is not criticism.