Jodorowsky, Alejandro - Psychomagic - The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy

Out of his personal circumstances and knowledge, Jodorowsky has opened roads and shortcuts in his search for happiness. Far from being a guru (he does not like to be depicted this way), our author is an evolved being who—precisely for this reason—laughs at himself. His paths are appropriate for a whole effervescent generation of mutants who make use of individual formulas of consciousness and self-actualization. To heal, to grow, Alejandro shows us that man has tools like meditation, art, dreams, certain sacred substances, magic, alchemy, language, humor, and the tarot, within his reach. The first part of Lessons for Mutants is dedicated to these techniques.

Throughout a hectic life, Jodorowsky has traveled a fantastic human voyage of thousands of years in a very short time. He has experienced many different cultures while at the same time playing an active role in avant-garde culture with his contributions to comics, film, and literature. This trip through the memory of humanity is a constant and imaginative challenge and a profound exercise of release whereby, above all else, it is necessary to know who we are, forgetting part of what we have learned. The author reveals these methods to us in the second part of these lessons.

Jodorowsky conceives these experiences of breaking-off and changing in a personal style, totally distrusting the church, “marionette” or agent of the soul. From freedom and for freedom, he uses a synthesis of experiences with therapeutic and necessary results to complete the human who has stopped fighting for pure survival and seeks inner development. At the margin of whatever revelation or sacred text, of all dogmatic or ideological traditions, Jodorowsky understands that reality must be perceived in the first person and achieved artistically. To this formidable search, to this crazy score, the third part of this interview is dedicated.

The ideas of the author about the distinct levels of consciousness and so many other questions connect with the perennial philosophy in its pure state but are far from the narrow frameworks of traditional religions. Although he speaks of God, Jodorowsky is neither theist nor atheist, spiritual nor religious, rather he is simply a person. For him, health is equivalent only to the morale; because our fulfillment cannot wait for the beyond, rather, it must carry itself out in this world, breaking the boundaries that impede it. Some of these ideas attest to a phenomenon called “religión a la carta,” or “religion by the book,” which recently came slinking into our society.

Alejandro is a visionary in so far as his level of consciousness leans out beyond the limits of time. He is a “luminous” being who hates the possibility of establishing a school, but who, for years, has dedicated his time to the surprising undertaking of civil sanctity. His intuitions about society, religion, and the destiny of humanity have been gathered in the fourth part of this interview, in the form of visions that include an exercise in futurology, where the reader will find many of the author’s ideas and impressions.

Through these interviews, Alejandro explains the therapeutic activity that he considers fundamental and that he carries out in many workshops around the world. In the chapter dedicated to the art of healing, he goes back to clarify some aspects already put forward in his Psicomagia. The last bit of this work is a hymn to life, which reflects the luminous and happy attitude of our character.

The transcription of Jodorowsky’s words has in no way been easy, but I have been as respectful as literarily possible—though my limitations are evident at not catching all the abundance of his oral discourse. He trusted in being able to pass on some of his intuitions to those who seek answers and experiences on the marvelous journey of life. I avoided interviewing Alejandro specifically about the techniques he uses, although here almost all of them are spoken of. For this reason it is, in the end, a work of impressions, a guide for everyone who desires to be transformed. This is not a manual for scholars but a testimony to the way he does things and lives things; it is a modest lesson in the form of a dialogue in which I represent a new generation of mutants.

I have to confess that I believe that in principle Alejandro agreed to carry out these interviews simply to help me, even though afterward he liked the results and considered them useful for others. I went to Paris with a certain busybody complex. Some days, I dedicated myself for precisely an hour a day to meditating at home. At the end of each interview, I could mentally translate his responses into examples that flowed like a waterfall of images. The state of unburdened consciousness led to a pleasant, telepathic drunkenness. Questions connected in sequence like chains of images. We finished by talking of the saints’ auras, without any motive. At the end of the second day, I confessed, “I don’t know if all this will be useful, because I don’t remember anything you said.” Jodorowsky had the kindness to answer my questions while in a trancelike state. During these divine hours I felt like a sculptor hammering an immense block of marble from which a face would appear, a strange portrait that at the same time would provide a mirror to others. “How do you see it?” he kept asking me, as if I were painting. During the days I went to his home, the dynamics were varied. My questions often quickly lowered the level of discourse, but at other times would catapult us into higher spheres. We traveled a lot together, and the inebriation caused by his presence would often last for hours. Of all the images I keep from those days, there is one that sometime visits me in dream: we are paintbrushes that paint our own lives, transforming them at every instant.

JAVIER ESTEBAN

PARIS–BARCELONA, MARCH–JULY 2003

NINE

KEYS TO THE SOUL

I

Asleep and awake are two secretly united faces of reality. Understanding dreams is a path to knowing and transforming ourselves. But, to what extent can we do that, keeping in mind that they are gifts that we don’t ask for?

Yes, we can. Throughout my life I have passed through various phases with respect to the dream. I come from a neurotic family; I worried; I had parents who hated one another—all this caused me to have horrible nightmares. I had to defeat these nightmares by confronting them, taking on my neuroses. It is true that since my youth I’ve used the gift of lucid dreaming, directing my dreams. At first, the lucid dreams would present themselves in the form of temptations. I would find myself aware that I was in a dream, and I wanted to obtain fame, become a millionaire, have sexual experiences. Finally, what happened is that I got trapped. Whenever I asked for specific things, I got lost in the dream and consequently lost lucidity. I had put myself into a dream that was again unmanageable. Later, in my dreams, the desire to be a magician began to appear: I played with the images, I turned into a guru, I wanted power. Again, I became trapped and lost lucidity.

Dreams keep changing, and you can do different things in them like a demiurge. But then you realize that when someone dreams, it is for a reason, and it is not healthy to interfere in the parade of images.

I’ve finally reached the point of simply being a witness to my dreams: I contemplate them and I rest. Actually, I don’t know really if I dream or not because in my dreams the character I am is just as I am in real life.

Do you blend waking and sleeping?

No, it’s not that. What I mean is, when you dream, normally you are not you, you have other personalities, you are capable of doing things that you don’t do in real life. In my dreams, however, I help people: I continue giving classes; I read the tarot; I give conferences. There are really no differences between what I do in my dreams and what I do while awake. This is at the margin of language or symbolic content. The other night, I was in an airplane in complete darkness, and the airplane broke into the light. What I have now are happy dreams; I don’t have nightmares anymore. I am not afraid, because I control these situations. I sleep without any tension. I accept the dreams just as they come. In a certain way—I do not say my ego because I am not referring exactly to my personality—my identity has solidified. It has coagulated. My personality in my unconscious is exactly like that in my real life.