Alejandro Jodorowsky: The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography

If reality is like a dream, we must act in it without suffering from it, as we do in lucid dreams, knowing that the world is what we think it is. Our thoughts attract their equivalents. The truth is what is useful, not only for us but also for others. All the systems that are necessary in a given moment will later become arbitrary. We have the freedom to change systems. Society is the result of what it believes itself to be and what we believe it is. We can begin to change the world by changing our thoughts.

The skin is not our barrier: there are no limits. The only definite limits are those that we need, momentarily, in order to individualize ourselves while at the same time knowing that everything is connected. Separation is a useful illusion, as when the healer places a loop of rope around the patient’s neck in order to tell him to take responsibility for his disease and not propagate it. Miraculous healing is possible, but depends on the patient’s faith. The psychoshaman must subtly guide the patient to believe in what he or she believes in. If the therapist does not believe, no healing is possible.

Life is a source of health, but this energy comes forth only where we concentrate our attention. This attention must be not only mental but also emotional, sexual, and corporeal. The power does not lie in the past or in the future, which are the seats of illness. Health is found here and now. Toxic habits can be abandoned instantaneously if we cease to identify ourselves with the past. The power of the “now” grows with the sensory attention. The patient must be led to explore the present moment, to become aware of colors, lines, volumes, sizes, shadows, spaces between objects. One should feel every part of one’s body in order then to unite the parts into a whole; breathing should become pleasure, and one should capture its warmth and energy flowing in and out and understand that to love is to be happy with what one is and with what others are. Love grows to the extent that criticism decreases. Everything is alive, awake, and responding. Everything gains power if the patient bestows it. A mother using a phytotherapeutic treatment to heal her baby, in which she had to give him water to drink with forty drops of a mixture of essential oils added, found that the disease continued. I told her, “What is happening is that you do not believe in this medicine. Since your religion is Catholicism, say the Lord’s Prayer every time you give him the drops to drink.” She did this, and the boy was quickly cured. If we do not give spiritual power to medicine, it does not act.

Here, it is necessary to emphasize the importance of imagination. In a certain way, I have undertaken an exercise of imaginary autobiography in this book. This was not in the “fictional” sense, since all the characters, places, and events are real, but by virtue of the fact that the profound history of my life is a constant effort to expand the imagination and widen its boundaries in order to grasp its therapeutic and transformative potential. Along with intellectual imagination are emotional imagination, sexual imagination, physical imagination, sensory imagination, and economic, mystical, scientific, and poetic imaginations. It acts in all areas of our lives, even those considered “rational.” It is for this reason that one cannot tackle reality without developing the imagination from multiple angles. Normally, we visualize everything according to the narrow limits of our conditioned beliefs. We perceive nothing more of the mysterious reality, so vast and unpredictable, than what is filtered through our limited point of view. Active imagination is the key to a broad vision: it permits us to focus on life from angles that are not our own, imagining other levels of consciousness that are higher than ours. If I were a mountain, or the planet, or the universe, what would I say? What would a great teacher say? And what if God spoke through my mouth, what would the message be? And what if I were Death? The Death that revealed a dog to me that deposited a white stone at my feet, that separated me from my illusory “I,” that made me flee Chile, that drove me to search with desperation for a meaning in life — that Death has changed from a dreadful enemy to my amiable companion.

Alejandro Jodorowsky, age 72. Photo: Roger Farin.

To conclude this book, I would like to return to my youth, sitting once again on the branch of a tree next to my poet friend, and, as on that memorable occasion, deduce from the many things that we do not know what precious little we do know:

I do not know where I’m going, but I know who I am going with.

I do not know where I am, but I know that I am in myself.

I do not know what God is, but God knows what I am.

I do not know what the world is, but I know it is mine.

I do not know what I’m worth, but I know not to compare myself.

I do not know what love is, but I know that I rejoice at its existence.

I cannot avoid blows, but I know how to resist them.

I cannot deny violence, but I can deny cruelty.

I cannot change the world, but I can change myself.

I do not know what I make, but I know that what I make makes me.

I do not know who I am, but I know that I am not the one who does not know.

Psychomagical Acts

Transcribed by Marianne Costa

1. A young man would like to work in the tourism industry, going to Hong Kong and other legendary cities. But this professional desire seems impossible. He doubts himself. After questioning him, A.J. found that the client’s mother had died and that during childhood his brother had captured all the maternal love.

Response: On one side of a can of sardines stick a picture of your mother, and on the other side, a picture of your brother. Walk along the right-hand side of Champs-Élysées, from the Obelisk of Luxor to the Arc de Triomphe, kicking the can along in front of you until you reach the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Then leave without looking back.

2. After this young man, a young woman came in to consult. She is his girlfriend, but their relationship has not gone beyond the platonic. She also doubts her professional abilities, and her psychological problems are similar to those of her boyfriend: an older sister favored by the parents, a distant and perhaps incestuous father.

Response:Do the same thing your boyfriend was advised to do, but instead of a can of sardines buy a fake phallus in a sex shop. To avoid being bothered by the police wrap it in a bag, along with a picture of your father. Walk with your boyfriend, each of you kicking your own item along. Face each other before leaving the Arc de Triomphe, with your faces an inch apart, and roar in anger until you are exhausted.

3. An Algerian woman is possessed by great sadness. The Tarot shows that this pain is that of her mother, who died in exile, separated from her homeland.

Response:Since you cannot go there, have someone in Algeria send you a bag containing seven kilos of earth from the village where your mother lived. Go to the cemetery and deposit this soil on her grave. Then, to celebrate this event, go to the Grand Mosque and drink seven cups of mint tea.

4. Another sad woman; she does not know the joy of living. When her mother was six months pregnant with her, her father left to go and live with another woman.

Response:Go to see your father, disguised as if you were six months pregnant. Ask him to kneel before your belly and ask forgiveness from the fetus he abandoned.