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

This is the explanation for why I took these kinds of drugs. The consequence is that it opened my mind and served me by demonstrating how far I could go. Gurdjieff said drugs are useful for that: You are in the cellar of a building, and the drug makes you rise quickly to the terrace. You are in the underground garage, and you jump fifty flights. You see the whole horizon, the whole city, and when you return, you realize that to go up again, you have to climb each floor on your own, without drugs.

Like in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, but being able to investigate beyond . . .

Yes. But, in this case, climbing with your own strength, without LSD. It has to do with being able to see it all without the drugs—which one can do. Otherwise it serves nothing.

In the West, we lack a point of reference or a culture of using these substances. For example, mushrooms here are consumed in the most brutal ways, at parties, without reference or finalization. María Sabina García, the shaman, provided them for you.

She sent them to me by way of Francisco Fierro, who was her assistant. He knew how much I had to take, how to vomit, what to do during the experience, and all that. This experience can become a very wise ritual if you don’t try to make it a religious experience. Because it is you who has to make the trip, without controlling it from the outside or imposing archetypes, among other things, because your archetypes are inside you and your trip is yours.

Many people practice syncretic worship with ayahuasca, just as with other drugs.

There is no reason to mix ayahuasca (a South American psychoactive plant) with holiness and things of this nature, as with other drugs. Ayahuasca must be taken calmly, without rites, and guided by someone who knows it, as with all psychedelic drugs.

Do you mean to say that these substances must be taken with someone who knows them, but who does not project any religious meaning or his own interests or personal story onto others?

Exactly. With someone who has developed her spirit and who acts as a guide, but without imposing any particular concepts on you during the experience. Who, when you are anxious, shows you the way to exit. I was talking with Oscar Ichazo and, suddenly, the telephone rang. I was in the middle of the trip, and he said to me, “Answer.”

“But how?” I asked him.

“You can be in both worlds,” he answered.

I answered the telephone, I spoke normally, and then I continued with the trip. This is the mark of a good guide.

I could, and each person can, be in two worlds: the one called real and the other. That is an important lesson that only a master can give. This is only one example of what we can learn by tripping.

Or could it be that the substance opens the way to knowledge?

For me it was a huge step. I recommend doing it at least one time and always with a guide. I saw that my wife, Marianne, had spiritual limitations—even though she was young, spoke six languages, was a university graduate—precisely because she had received a French rationalist upbringing. She wanted to continue the path of the tarot, and I told her she could not remain in this prison of the rational, that she needed a psychedelic experience. So I went with her to Holland. I rented a room with a window opening to the sky, and at two or three in the morning I had her eat some mushrooms so that the effect would last until sunrise. I guided her. I marked the path, and it resulted in being a decisive experience in her life. If I had taken advantage of the fact that she was on a trip and seduced her, she would have lost all the benefit of that experience.

Even marijuana should be taken as an initiation, like alcohol at a bacchanalia. The ceremonial banquets formed part of this culture that we have lost.

What strange mechanism of the conscious can make these substances break our boundaries?

We are used to living in a linear world, in a cubic and rational architecture, and because of this, we are obligated in a given moment to break boundaries. Many times we cannot do it, precisely because we are prisoners to our minds. For this reason, we need an experience in which our mechanisms of perception leap, with the goal of knowing other worlds.

The shamans were primitive people, but now it is we who want to take mushrooms at our leisure, not with their rites. I am not going to take anything with a shaman of yore. For what? So that taking ayahuasca gets me to sing to the Virgin Mary or to the snake? What does all that matter to me? Some followers of gestalt therapy put on Wagner to take ketamine. No, thanks!

When you take substances, you should be out in nature, waiting for the light of day to arrive, with as little outside interference as possible. It’s enough to be with a teacher who tells you to go here or there. And one or two trips is sufficient for the brain to open well enough to last for the rest of your life.

It really has nothing to do with drugs. An experience with mushrooms is not like consuming drugs. I had some mushroom powder, and I decided to give it to some loved ones because I thought it was better that I gave it to them than that some imbecile gave it to them with the excuse to show them a party and to be dumb.

I imagine that these substances are sacred for you.

Now wait a minute—let’s not fall into the trap of the “sacred” concept. Everything can be sacred to a saint, even dog excrement. And nothing is “sacred” to a normal person even if it may be “useful.” It is true that these experiences have different functions and results according to the level of consciousness of the user. Psychedelic substances were, in the first place, taken by shamans, who had a level of consciousness superior to that of the tribe. My thesis is that they should be recommended only for people who have a high level of consciousness. There are people with an almost beastlike level of consciousness who can lose control or accentuate unhealthy tendencies with these substances. One must be very careful, not only about who provides the drug but also about whom one takes them with. I have a phrase to sum this up, “I do not know where I go, but I know with whom I go.” One should not take this path with people who are incapable of understanding the experience, because they will try to slither in and interrupt your trip. Give drugs to soldiers, and you will turn them into assassins. Give drugs to a saint, and you can make magnificent works. Take special care with this. We must not think, as some would hope, that to toss LSD in the water supplies will make society better. This would be a danger to the public.

For example, ayahuasca has fallen into the hands of people with a romantic-infantile mentality who have converted it into a religion. Grave error. Low levels of consciousness will, in a systematic way, squander these energies. But it is clear that at the right moment, when it is agreed to within a rational social framework, like we’ve been given, it is necessary that the people in positions of responsibility have an experience of knowing that there is something out there beyond the rational.

But will there be people who do not need them?

Of course. At this moment, I do not need them. It is like being in a dream, and I am already there. What do I gain with seeing hallucinations and things that I know? The experience is beautiful, agreed, but what am I going to find there? It is useful when you feel you have a limitation and you take it to help you better yourself. The person with a low level of consciousness is afraid to discover his limitations; it angers him, and he cries for knowing it. The person with a higher level of consciousness, the only thing he desires is that the trips show him where his limits are so he can defeat them, and he appreciates them deeply because he can be better. The people with low levels of consciousness look for someone else to affirm their value, but people with higher levels of consciousness, what they seek is someone to point out their defects so they can become better.