Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Dance of Reality - A Psychomagical Autobiography

In that same dimension I find myself in the company of Teresa, my paternal grandmother, whom I never had the opportunity to know due to family quarrels. She is a small woman, thickset, with a wide forehead. In the dream I know that in reality we do not know each other, that we have not been together even once. I ask her, “How is it possible that you, my grandmother, never held me in your arms?” I realize this is an immoderate thing to say and rectify it with, “Rather, how is it, Grandmother, that I, your grandson, never gave you a kiss?” I suggest that I kiss her now and she accepts. We hug and kiss. I wake up with a clear memory of the dream, happy to have recovered this family archetype.

Thanks to these lucid dreams I can meet again with Denisse, my first wife, a delicate, intelligent woman, affected by madness. When I settled her in a home for the mentally ill in Canada, her home country, she began to build a table with twenty legs. She also watered a dry plant in a flowerpot by the window of her room. One day, a green leaf grew on the dry stalk. To Denisse it seemed that this plant, which had appeared dead, wanted to thank her for her care. “I finally understood what love is: being grateful to someone else for existing. ” Along with her I also saw Enrique Lihn, who was still writing and giving lectures; Topor, who having passed through this mystery of death that had prevented him from appreciating life was now drawing images full of happiness; and my son Teo, on July 14, 2000, who would have been thirty, in the midst of his incomparable vital euphoria, having left this world at age twenty-four. In this dimension, he knew his grandmother, Sara Felicidad.

When I threw my address book into the sea, I cut off my family tree at the roots. I never saw my mother again. One night, shortly after I turned fifty, she appeared in my dream. I first heard her voice, which I thought I had forgotten, singing lightly. “Come in, do not be afraid.” I realized that I was in a hospital. I opened the door and saw her, very tranquil, reclining in her bed. I sat by her, and we talked for a long time, trying to resolve our problems. She explained to me why she had been so locked up in herself, and I explained my silence for all those years. Finally, we hugged like we never had before. Then she stretched, closed her eyes, and murmured, “Now I can die in peace.” I woke up sad, convinced that this meeting was prophetic: my mother was dying. I immediately wrote a letter to my sister, whose address I had thanks to the poet Allen Ginsberg, whom I had chanced to meet in Paris (he had been expelled from Cuba for saying in a radio interview that he had dreamed of making love to Che Guevara), and mailed it to Peru, where Raquel lived with my mother. I wrote, “Raquel, I do not know if Sara Felicidad is still in a condition to read my letter. However, even if it seems that she cannot hear, read the words I write to her. Her soul will capture them.” The letter arrived two days after my mother’s death. I kept a copy of it:

Cast of my Opéra Panique, ou l’éloge de la quotidienneté (Paris, 2001). From left to right, back row: Edwin Gerard, Jade Jodorowsky, Adan J., Brontis J., Valérie Crouzet, Marianne Costa, Kazán, Cristobal J., and Marie Riva; front row: Damián J., Rebeca J., Alma J., Alejandro J., Dante J., and Iris J. Photo: Alberto García Alix.

Dear Sara Felicidad:

I regret not being beside you in these difficult moments. If fate so wills, we will see each other once again before the great final voyage. We were born in tragic circumstances and remain marked for life. The pain we felt and the mistakes we made mostly originated from the world that other human beings created around us. It took me years to realize that the pain we had in this family that you tried to build was the result of our lack of roots, of our race that, having been so much persecuted, is foreign in all places. If there was anything negative between us, I have forgiven it. And if I committed the sin of ingratitude toward you, I beg you to forgive me. We did what we could in order to survive. But I want you to be assured: your essential being, your great strength, your unbreakable will, your fighting spirit, your royal pride, your sense of justice, your overflowing emotion, your appreciation for the written word, all these things have been a valuable legacy for me and have become part of my being, for which I am infinitely grateful. I remember from those days the importance you gave to the shape of the eyes, hands, and ears; how you hated canned food and artificial light; your love of flowers, your generosity in sharing food, your fundamental desire for order and cleanliness, your moral sense, your ability to work for hours and hours, your heart full of ideals. Yes, you suffered a great deal in this world, and I understand why. A few days ago, I had a dream about you. You were ill. But you looked calm. We talked as we have never done. We decided to stay in contact, you and I. I understood that you had received very little love during your time on Earth. I expressed my love as your son and blessed you that you might cease to suffer. You were exactly the mother I needed in order to set me on the path of spiritual development that was necessary for me. The truth is that without you, I would have gotten lost along the way. And now I want to tell you that I am by your side, that I am accompanying you, and that I know you will finally know the happiness that your name indicates. Trust in the will of the Mystery, surrender to its designs. Miracles exist. All this is a dream, and the awakening will be magnificent.

Your son forever.

In the dimension of the dead, they live by the energy of memory. Those whom we are forgetting pass like faded silhouettes, almost transparent; they appear in more distant places each time. Those whom we remember appear clearly, close to us, they speak, there is a grateful joy in them. But in the dark there are silhouettes of ancestors who lived centuries ago. It is because we did not know them that they fade away. If we merely move toward the areas where they are, they will appear more clearly and will speak to us in languages that we may not know, always with great affection. Those not familiar with this experience may have noticed that relatives and friends consider it very important for us to prove to them that they are not forgotten by celebrating birthdays, sending postcards while on a trip, calling them on the telephone. We know that, to the extent that others remember us, we are alive. If they forget us, we feel that we die. It is exactly the same in the world of dreams. If the unconscious is collective and time is eternal, one can say that every being who has been born and died is engraved in this cosmic memory that every individual carries. I would dare to say that every dead person waits in the dream dimension for an infinite consciousness to finally remember him or her. At the end of time, when our spirit achieves its maximum development and spans the entirety of Time, no being, no matter how insignificant it may seem, will be forgotten.

I also explored the dimension of the myths, where ancient gods live along with magical animals, heroes, saints, cosmic virgins, powerful archetypes. Before being accepted by them we must overcome a series of obstacles that are, in fact, initiatory trials. They present themselves in malignant form, attacking us, mocking us, or seeming insensitive, asleep, indifferent. Jung, in his autobiography, writes that he had a dream in which he found a sleeping Buddha in a cave, his inner god. He did not dare to wake him up. However, if we keep calm, if we do not run away, if we act with faith, if we are brave and dare to face them or awaken them, the monsters turn into angels, abysses become palaces, flames become caresses, the Buddha does not reduce us to ashes with his gaze when he opens his eyes. On the contrary, the Buddha communicates all the love in the world to us; we obtain allies who can be invoked in any sort of danger. Lucid dreaming teaches us that we are never alone at any moment; that individual action is illusory. Thought, trapped in the net of rationality, tries to reject the treasures of the dream world. But it is constantly besieged by forces coming from the depths of the collective memory; in real life, the dethroned gods have become clowns, film stars, football legends, political heroes, mysterious multimillionaires. We want to make them into powerful allies, but they have no consistency: they disintegrate very quickly into oblivion. In the dream dimension we encounter real entities with ancient roots. I could often see the arcana of the Tarot there, embodied in persons, animals, objects, or heavenly bodies; the symbols are living entities that speak and convey their wisdom. At first, when I tried to contact the divine beings without being prepared for it, I had a dream: