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

Your ideas could be described as mutacionistas. Are we mutants?

We all are. There are many things that we do not understand because our bodies are still developing. Recently I spoke with a doctor who told me that the pineal gland was an atrophied gland. I replied to him that the human being is an animal in evolution and cannot have anything in him atrophied. The pineal gland could be—why not?—the seed of an organ that is developing and evolving into a fourth brain. He changed his scientific view a few hours before he was to present a paper at a scientific conference in Los Angeles. I explained to him that nothing is atrophied; in fact, you could say exactly the opposite, and that appears more logical to me. We are developing something new from this gland . . . there are things we do not understand because we are like chimpanzees . . .

What sense does it make that we cannot now understand something we are destined to discover?

We cannot imagine the eternal. We cannot conceive of it. And if we cannot understand the universe, we are ignorant and limited. You ask me about the sense of all this, but surely it is our descendants who will be able to understand it. We are here to produce descendants who can understand it. We are here to produce descendants who will use the same brain that we already have but be more evolved. If the reptilian brain evolved into our three human brains, I sincerely believe that we are creating a fourth brain—and it doesn’t have to be material.

In the Middle Ages they intuited this. They painted the fourth brain in the form of a halo because that’s how they saw it, as a golden circle around the head. What reason is there for painting a halo? Why would they invent a halo? Well, because the halo is real.

II

What advice could you give to a seeker of knowledge, to someone who is looking for himself?

I began with meditating. But before that I looked for people who had a more elevated consciousness than mine, though I did not go to pay homage nor become a disciple. I put myself in contact with those whom I thought were interesting. The error that I committed was to make friends with a teacher, because then you do not accept the exchange or the lesson. With friendship you unbalance the levels of consciousness between people. But by knowing these people, my level of consciousness rose, and I learned a lot until I arrived at what I considered valid. When you get to a level that you value as important, you can and should devote yourself to others in order that they learn with you.

From all your experiences with knowledge—psychoanalysis, shamanism, taking substances, meditation—what would stay with you?

The most resounding exercise to which I have dedicated myself for years is to suspend thought. To succeed at not letting even one word enter my brain.

Once I achieved that, even the thought that I was able to stop all thought left my head. This has been the most difficult.

Also, to practice meditation was for me very important, although my path has been more to do with artistic creation.

Do you advise against the rational paths like philosophy or the study of science?

I do not advise against; I believe that all these paths are also good. Philosophy made me pose questions for myself that later I had to resolve by way of other disciplines.

Are the higher levels of consciousness found in people or in groups?

It is difficult to belong to a group, because established groups create dependencies. If we speak with the common sense that characterizes us, we must speak of the large group of humanity, all of humankind. Fortunately, it’s been a while since I quit being picky about my clientele. Every Wednesday I meet those who want to come to a café, and I can read the tarot. At a certain age, you have to make yourself useful for others. When you have lived and life has given you an experience, whether good or bad, the moment arrives when you should pass on what you know.

Rather than turn into a dumb old person, you should go further every time. Aging does not exist, neither does mental decline. The memory can have less capacity to find a word or maybe you can feel less sexual desire, less virulence, but there is no reason for desire to have disappeared. If, during your life you have worked the emotions, when you mature you begin to know sublime feelings, which you did not have when you were young because nature did not let you. It takes forty years to find yourself. The true opening of the consciousness cannot be had before this age. From there, the journey begins.

You indicate that contemplation is the technique that perfects all these things. What is contemplation to you?

In meditation, you immobilize yourself and dedicate your attention to what happens inside you, as if you were seated at the edge of the river seeing things pass by. And contemplation is the same—but you’re swimming in the river. That is to say, you are seeing what happens to you, but you are in the depths of life, acting.

What does “to be possessed by the spirit of the teacher” mean?

Our brain is broad and infinite. In the same way that it produces the personality we have, it can produce others. That is to say, we learn to build our personality. Schizophrenics can have thirty personalities and even more. When you are going to see a teacher, you see another human being that has a higher level of consciousness than yours. What happens? You pursue this level of consciousness; your brain pursues it. So your brain grasps this level and reproduces it in your person, but because it’s the first time you see it in yourself, you identify it with the teacher, with her ego, with her character. And the brain, instead of acting as if it had your form, gives you the form of the other: it makes you feel like you have the body of another, the personality of another, the apparent individuality of another.

This produces an imitation, and I believe this is what you refer to when you say “to be possessed by the spirit of the teacher.” It is not that the teacher is inside you but that there is an imitation of a level of consciousness that you are considering superior to yours.

And the teacher who believes herself to be the chosen one?

Well, on the path of the evolution of consciousness there are traps. I explained this in my book Los Evangelios para sanar [Gospels for Healing]. In reality you are a path. Your brain is a path on which all gods walk. If on a path I see a god and I believe myself a god, I have fallen into the trap of the guru. In reality, we are the path where things are passing, we are not the passersby.

What are initiation tests?

In Castaneda’s words, challenges. Here’s a way to think about them. We observe some traumas: A woman is raped and this destroys her life. Another woman is raped, she bathes, she cleans herself, she cries, she recovers, she decides that she is never going to talk about that again, and she continues with her life. The same thing happens in war: some people stay hurt forever, yet others become stronger. The point is that traumas do not produce illnesses; traumas are the detonators. There is latent illness inside us that the trauma makes explode.

And as far as initiation tests, they consist of the following: You have a level of consciousness, and you are faced with an event. You have to react in a useful way and advance. The test is a challenge for you to evolve.

And sacrifice: is it a masochistic trap?

That’s right. Religions have confused us. In our culture, the sky is not on earth, it is not within your reach. You have to attain the beyond by suffering in life, and the church tells you that suffering will make you rich and powerful.