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

Near dawn, I was awakened by the raucous calls of a flock of vultures. Reyna was still dead. The sorcerer was outside, shouting imprecations. I stood up with difficulty and walked out of the cabin with cramped legs. Don Prudencio had a big stick with which he was striking at the vultures who were swarming over the dead body of his dog, Mictiani. The animal’s eye sockets were empty, bloody pits. Its guts were spilling out on the ground. Finally, the blows of the stick prevailed, and all the vultures flew away.

“No, it wasn’t these devil’s messengers who killed him. He let himself die. Help me put him in the grave.”

He was a big dog. The curandero grabbed him by the neck, I seized his back paws, and we tossed him into the pit. Little by little, he covered the dog with the dirt piled up at its side, talking to him.

“I never imagined I was digging this grave for you, my brother. You are so good that you decided to die for the foreign visitor. In the after-world, you will protect her soul. Praise to you! You have sacrificed your own happiness in order to lessen the suffering of the foreigner. Praise to you! You have given everything in exchange for nothing!”

Taking a deep breath, he chanted a final “Amen,” which seemed to last interminably.

He looked at me, smiling, but his eyes were sad. I saw his cataracts reappear. His back bent slowly until he had once more become the kind old man instead of the formidable sorcerer.

“Thanks to Mictiani, your friend is no longer in danger. Yesterday, she passed through two petals. Today, she will pass through the last two. Early tomorrow morning, she will arrive at the center of the flower and come back to life.

“Look — somewhere over that way, I have some tortillas, goat cheese, and many prickly pears. Have something to eat — but quietly.”

That night was very long. Don Prudencio knelt before the altar again, chanting his interminable series of prayers to Santa Muerte. Lying on the floor, Reyna was still not breathing and her skin was terrifyingly white. I also lay on the floor, my head against the little bench. I wanted to sleep, but no matter how I tried to empty my mind, a river of words flooded it. I thought I had solved the koan known as stepping into the abyss; I thought I had realized what the Chinese monk Dazu *25was speaking of in the poem he wrote on the day of his death:

El Topo reawakens under the mountain. From El Topo.

One of the four masters before his duel with El Topo. From El Topo.

El Topo confronts the colonel. From the Jodorowsky film El Topo.

El Topo rides off with his son, leaving vestiges of their past life behind. From El Topo.

The female gunfighter and his former companion gun El Topo down. From El Topo.

Gay cops at a wedding. From El Topo.

Captured monks watch a bandit read the Bible. From El Topo.

The lineup. From El Topo.

The Sex Machine. From The Holy Mountain.

A parade of Santa Claus at the factory. From The Holy Mountain.

The war monster berates the corpse. From The Holy Mountain.

Christ carrying the cross. From the Jodorowsky film The Holy Mountain.

Christ for sale. From The Holy Mountain.

The tiger ascends the mountain. From The Holy

In face of the real, words and reflections are obliterated.

In true identity, seeing and hearing are gone.

Such is the place of calm peace.

All other study is mere verbal rambling.

I also thought I understood what the philosopher Seng Zhao †26wrote after the king sentenced him to death by beheading:

As the naked blade approaches my head,

it will be like beheading the spring wind.

Yet Reyna’s courage in putting her life in the hands of a primitive curandero brought about an intense crisis in me. When Ejo told me “Learn to die, intellectual!” was he saying that I must stop identifying myself with my thoughts or was he saying I must learn to accept physical death as my friend was now doing? In any case, was this cataleptic state true death? Could the visions produced by a hallucinogenic mushroom be considered a true exploration of life beyond death? Who was Reyna now, during this long, long night? Was she this inert body or was she a spirit voyaging in a mythic world?

In our readings of the secret book of koans, Ejo and I came across one that might apply to the present situation: *27“There was once a woman named Seijo, whose body and spirit separated. One fled her home to marry her lover, Ozu, whereas the other Seijo — sick, silent, and wasting away in bed — remained with her parents. Master Goso Hoen asked a monk: ‘If the body and spirit of Seijo are separate, which is the real Seijo?’ The monk replied with this question: ‘Which of the two is real?’”

At first, it seemed to me that the monk made it clear that it was not a question of the reality of one Seijo or the other Seijo, but of the concepts of body and spirit . Later, I realized that the monk was referring to the spirit and body of Goso Hoen himself. He was saying: “At the moment when you ask me this koan, trying to trap me in the metaphysics of body-spirit duality, which of the two are you? In reality, you are one. No matter how many different names you give to this unity, it does not change.”

In his own turn, Goso Hoen answered the monk’s question with another question: “What is Seijo’s state of being?”