Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Creator of El Topo

“What are you seeking?”

“Awakening!”

“Then you’re a dreamer. You seem to think you’re climbing a ladder with only one rung, but it has many more. You sit motionless on your butt in this zendo, hoping to attain a mysterious state that they’ve taught you to name ‘awakening.’ You’re like a parrot that salivates when it sees clouds, because it’s been taught that they’re also called ‘banana.’ You imagine that awakening is like obtaining a piece of gold or a precious object that you can then keep, like a halo around your head. It’s ridiculous. Only when your stagnant ideas become fluid will you experience your first explosion of consciousness. And of course you think that will last forever, but you are mistaken — in this dimension of reality, the only permanence is impermanence. That which does not change stagnates. Acquiring fluidity can be likened to a large stone falling into the middle of a lake. The shock creates a circular pattern of waves that covers the entire surface of the water. The expansion of consciousness is infinite, but the lake of the mind is finite. Once the process begins, you will go from awakening to awakening, from smaller to greater surprises, never ceasing to be astonished before the newness of the world. Do you understand? You have been searching for a static awakening, whereas there is only continual change. .”

She grabbed me by the shoulders, pressed her face to mine, and cried: “Stagnation is not only mental! It is also emotional, sexual, and physical! Break down your dams!”

A dense anger made my heart pound. “I agree to be your lover, not your pupil!”

“Then why are you so angry? I only want to give. .”

“Giving has nothing to do with obliging someone to receive! Give me only what I ask for!”

“Very well.”

“Then shut up and let’s fuck again!”

With an astounding agility, she shoved me so that I fell onto my back on the bed, and she immediately began caressing my penis. Her hands were like butterflies fluttering from testicles to glans without ceasing. Her fingers moved so fast that they seemed to become transparent and multiply. Soon, she interrupted this delight to administer a series of small, authoritarian taps that went from high to low and back again. Then came the deep caresses, spiraling, stretching my organ out toward infinity and then making it soft and burying it in my pubis as if to change it into a vagina, squeezing it like a fruit, moving it from one hand to another, cradling it tenderly like a mother cradles a baby. Finally, after a multitude of different kinds of caresses, she seized it firmly and began masturbating it with a superhuman rapidity for a very long time and with increasing vigor and no sign of fatigue until I could resist no longer and the white fountain shot out.

Seeing that I was exhausted and mute with pleasure, she assumed the schoolteacher role again.

“What you have just experienced is the first technique that every woman should develop to satisfy her lovers: the manual technique. The three other techniques are the oral, the vaginal, and the anal. My blessed father associated these with the intellectual, emotional, sexual, and corporeal centers. The manual technique corresponds to the body, the vaginal to the sexual, and the oral to the intellect. Therefore, it is through the anal technique that we can control the emotional center. Would you like to try it?”

When we did, I went crazy. The dam that had been holding back my emotions, created by the absence of maternal caresses, burst into pieces. Convinced to the marrow of my bones that I was totally in love with her, I begged her not to leave Mexico and stay with me forever.

She laughed. “As I told you before, you are a psychological barbarian. You are weak, because you lack a true will of your own. The result is that any strong emotion can make you change your ideas or even corrupt you. You do not dominate events; they just happen to you in such a way that you have no control over them. A few expert anal contractions and you are ready to be my slave. This is not because you are foolish, it is simply because you have made an error: you have been using your meditation practice to construct a big, fat ego disguised as the Buddha, which serves only to hide instead of reveal your impersonal essence.

“In India, they worship an elephant, Ganesh. He is always accompanied by a mouse who eats the offerings. This image reveals the hidden situation: the real god is not Ganesh; it is the mouse. The elephant, swollen and covered with gold with a great jewel upon its forehead, stretches out its four arms toward symbolic objects. It makes an impressive disguise, hiding the truth that the mouse is really the master. No one can see a true master. He is invisible, like the mouse. He has no favorite disciples, for he teaches all of humanity. He has no church, for the planet and the entire cosmos are his temple. He often hides inside a seemingly unimportant figure. He is the tiger skin upon which the Buddha meditates, the donkey that Christ rode, the black bull that gave Mithra his strength. . This truth is a difficult one for you to understand, because you have been trying to transcend the body, whereas you should be submerging yourself within it to become so small that you arrive finally at that inner offering that is our birthright — that indefinable diamond that we call ‘soul’ but which is beyond words.

“Please don’t answer me, don’t try to argue with me. I see your ego. I see how you waste your energy, believing that you are who you think you are — a jumble of learned behaviors that began at the cradle. My blessed father called this jumble the ‘elephant,’ and he divided it into two categories: the stinking elephant and the perfumed elephant.

“The first type is unbearable, living only for appearances, ready to do anything for fame, reward, and recognition. He has contempt for the wise, because he is terrified of their level of consciousness. Convinced that he is master of himself, he has no qualms about assuming or stealing the virtues of others. He is like a pathetic beggar disguised in the suit of a millionaire.

“The second type is bearable and is able to balance his needs and desires. With humility, he kneels before his own essence and recognizes that he does not belong to himself. ‘Belong to the Holy Spirit, not to yourself,’ says the Bible. The domestication of the ego consists of converting the stench into perfume. In Japan, this process is represented by a series of drawings showing a black ox that, little by little, becomes white. In China it is a horse; in India it is an elephant.

“My blessed father realized that animals were our first teachers. On a trip to Bangalore, he went to live in an elephant reserve to learn about their domestication. The first thing he learned was that the trainers, the mahouts , of these great beasts commanded them in a language of two basic words: ara and mot . To make an elephant move, they would repeat with authority: mot, mot . To stop him, they would repeat ara with the same tone of authority. This seemingly insignificant fact became the inspiration for the basis of my father’s teaching. The two pillars of his temple were called Mot and Ara.

“The stinking elephant is the situation of individuals trapped in the jumble of insane demands that they call ‘reality.’ They desire, feel, think, and act constantly inside it, forgetting their immortal essence. In order for human beings to recall this essence at any moment, even when they are totally trapped by the world, they must be able to command themselves: Ara! . . or, in other words, Stop! Then, in stillness, they can observe the torrent of useless ideas, infantile illusions, impotent desires, and purposeless plans in which they are submerged, and, like Christ driving the money changers out of the temple, they can free themselves of this absurd swarm in which their stinking elephant has been acting as though it was immortal instead of their true essence. This act of stopping is unity in the midst of multiplicity, which leads them to realize that the only permanent thing is impermanence. Thus, little by little, the elephant becomes perfumed. Only when the garbage can is empty can they perceive the jewel inlaid in its very bottom. Only then can their will command Mot! The perfumed elephant moves consciously. Then, thought can describe the world without mistaking itself for the world, feelings can form attachments with knots that can be untied, and desires are in harmony with what is possible. And finally, realizing possibility after possibility, we attain the impossible.