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

That first night together (interspersed with demonstrations of Reyna’s erotic expertise), we talked until dawn. It was more of a monologue than a conversation, for Gurdjieff’s daughter was keen to relate her father’s teachings with great rapidity.

She analyzed several tales of Mulla Nasruddin. She maintained that the notion of masculine and feminine thinking was obsolete and described what she called androgynous thinking. She criticized the vulgarity of human beings who live by using their senses in a negative way. “They curse what they see, what they hear, what they feel, taste, and touch,” instead of blessing everything they perceive. She taught me exercises for learning to love, exercises for giving birth without damaging the seed of the fetus’s soul, and exercises to develop creativity. All of this was founded on the principle “Never struggle with yourself.” She said, “When the world is not as you like, it is because you want the world to be not as you like.”

I wanted to see if Reyna had a true mastery of the secret of symbols. Taking advantage of our intimacy, I asked her about the meaning of the “game of the goose” in which the poor bird has to advance on a path full of traps: it falls into a well, goes to prison, goes to the hospital, goes to the cemetery, is always having to retreat and begin again, and so forth.

“What is the goose seeking with such obstinacy? For years I have puzzled over this without finding the answer in any book.”

“I know the answer!” she replied. “How much will you pay me for it?” Offended, I made a gesture that I intended to be exalted, representing our intertwined bodies. But she would have none of this. “How much?” she insisted. Angrily, I grumbled, “Twenty pesos.” She began to laugh. “Is that how much you value the secret? You’ve searched for it for all that time, and now that you find someone who has it, you become stingy. You believe that knowledge should be free, but you are mistaken: if you do not pay for it, you give it no value and it will be useless. Give me everything you have! It’s the only fair price.”

I glanced at her with the same hatred with which I sometimes regarded my mother because of her lack of affection. From a pocket of my pants lying in a heap beside the bed, I retrieved five wrinkled bills.

“That’s all I have.”

“Liar! I know you’re lying. You have a big wad of bills in another pocket. So much the worse for you — keep it. I’m going to reveal the secret to you anyway.”

She put her lips to my ear and whispered: “The goose braves all those dangers because she is desperately looking for a mate.” I gave a huge sigh and fell asleep.

When I woke up, the raucous calls of a flock of thrushes living in the courtyard were invading the room. Reyna yawned, then spoke to me with a smile that seemed condescending:

“What do you think about the things I’ve told you?”

“Reyna, I’ll be frank with you. The things you have told me are a revelation that will surely change my life. But there’s one thing that makes me wonder about you: Why would a woman as wise as you waste her time with a psychological barbarian like me? And there’s another doubt I have: The pain you have undergone in order to live in accord with what you believe to be your realization is enormous. Yet how can we really live in peace while making such strenuous efforts? Where is everyday tranquillity in all this? The simple pleasure of eating a piece of bread next to a river, of doing nothing, or walking in the street, smelling the wet asphalt after a rain, watching a flock of sparrows fly without wondering where they’re going? What about simple weeping in grief as we scatters the ashes of a loved one in a beautiful landscape, or speaking of ordinary, unimportant things with a child, an old woman, or a madman?. .”

“What bad taste! That’s quite enough! Do you wish to belong to the anonymous herd of sheep, abandoning yourself to an empty happiness, sitting like a clam with your bread beside the river, sniffing the wet asphalt like a dog, thinking yourself a poet because you admire the flight of a few scrawny, ugly sparrows, reveling in your grief as you scatter ashes that testify that you are mortal, with the misfortune of some becoming the happiness of others, wasting your time discussing trivialities with people of limited intelligence? If so, you are putting off till later — perhaps much later, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years — something important. And what you are putting off is the blooming of cosmic consciousness.

“ Please realize this: The universe is a being in the process of evolution. Degree by degree, it is rising from inert matter to pure thinking. The consciousness of the human race is a minuscule light in this immensity, a light that is the result of the effort of the entire cosmos. Call it God if you like, this will to go beyond the limitations of form. Then at least you can accept the idea that you are a part of this alchemical process, a process in which, for reasons we don’t yet understand, God has imprisoned himself in matter and has been trying since the very instant of his fall to liberate himself. As for us, we are here in this fleeting present in order to help God escape from the organic cell. To fail to develop your consciousness is to betray God.”

“But. .”

“Don’t interrupt, don’t argue with me, put aside your reason for a moment and just listen. Why did I seek you out? It was because I perceived that you are an artist who will create a different film more ambitious than the first. My blessed father transcended his personal interests in order to become a benefactor of humanity, one who awakens those who are asleep. What ordinary mortals call ‘death’ did not stop him in the great work that he took upon himself. Dissolved in his ideas, he continues to act. In making love with me, you have been touched by him. Now, whether you like it or not, you carry him embedded in your soul. He will guide you in the creation of your next work. Through cinematic images, you will unite with him to bring consciousness to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.”

At this time I had not yet even begun to think of the adventure of making the film The Holy Mountain . In it, a master similar to Gurdjieff promises to reveal the secret of immortality to his disciples. Therefore, what Reyna was telling me seemed to be delirious raving. My analysis was that, in spite of her astounding mental and corporeal techniques, she had not yet overcome her incestuous desires. However much she wanted to appear to me as a mature adult, she was really a little girl in love with her mythic father. With the cynicism of a retarded adolescent, I decided to humor her in her neurosis to take full advantage of learning as much as possible about her four sexual categories. .

We had a copious breakfast together and then lost ourselves in a battle of sexual caresses that lasted at least five hours. Exhausted, we fell asleep like two satiated stones.

When we woke up, it was midnight. I felt a kind of indigestion, like a child who has eaten too much candy. I tried to leave on the pretext that I needed to change my clothes.

“Out of the question. The seeds of my blessed father’s teachings have been sown only in your intellect. Now we need to undertake an act that will show your unconscious mind how the work of initiation can conquer time, accelerating the unfolding of the soul. Wearing your barbaric costume as a disguise, you must come with me to a sacred place: Monte Alban, a six-thousand-foot mountain whose peak was flattened by the Zapotecs for their ceremonies. I will call the hotel desk right now so they can find us a limousine with a chauffeur. Monte Alban is about 380 miles from here. If we stop to eat, we’ll need at least six hours to arrive there. During the trip, we can continue our conversation or perhaps practice certain oral techniques I haven’t yet shown you. You can decide.”