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

The useful paper doll is one that leads us to necessary mutations. The monks, due to living in celibacy, are not worthy of faith. If everyone was a priest, the human race would end. In this sense, they are no good. It is not possible to carry God inside you or communicate to others from a life that goes against human nature.

When these monks organize themselves into sects, other problems arise.

I suppose they try to monopolize what they call truth?

Sects could be useful. The problem is, effectively, that their reality consists in taking control of God. They make God their private property. Then they declare that whoever does not participate in the sect is unfaithful, worthy of destruction. They are separators. They do not unite. I believe that in the future the temples will be multipurpose. There will be cathedrals where they celebrate all the cults with free access and absolute compatibility. Subsequently the names of the gods will be removed; there will be anonymous organizations. If you give a name to God, you are appropriating him.

Religion, the same as a Constitution, should be revised because as man changes, religion has to change. The sect uses prohibitions. What man does not know, he calls God: it is a form of superstition. As the brain evolves, blind beliefs and taboos crumble.

How does this affect what you call “ health”?

We have to be very conscious of the fact that beneath every illness is a prohibition. A prohibition that comes from a superstition.

Therefore, you do not recommend any church?

No, not even temples of the Zen masters, which are now Spanish, American, Mexican. They are paper dolls imitating traditions, languages, and Japanese food.

But the sects own interesting techniques and knowledge.

Of course. But these techniques and knowledge can be acquired without all the circus. When Ejo Takata introduced me to the Zen rod, I gave it back saying, “I am not a Zen master. Don’t give me this. I am never going to be a master, nor am I going to hold anyone up; this is a great honor, but my way is another.”

What sense does it make that humanity has produced beings such as Jesus or Buddha?

When you say Jesus and Buddha, you are talking of beings that, for me, are imaginary. It is as if you said Don Quixote or Hamlet. The same. But it doesn’t matter that they are imaginary. What is important is the quality of the message, which is marvelous.

In a way, they are there; they can almost be touched.

They are there, mythical, but now we are speaking about human beings. We do not know if some human beings have received the revelation. We will never know if the saint is crazy or if he has hallucinations.

And of the apparitions or revelations, what is your opinion?

To see apparitions of the Virgin does not interest me. It does not prove anything to me. To see a little smiling transparent girl climb a tree is to me the same as seeing a gorilla climb a tree. It is as peculiar as that. It has no benefit whatsoever.

And what explanation do you give to these phenomena?

They take place because people yearn for them to exist. It’s like a collective hallucination. Jung said that flying saucers are a product of the collective unconscious. They are collective dreams.

Why do we have the feeling that religions are traps for the soul?

Religions become traps when they set up boundaries. Divinity has no name or nationality and is for everyone. Religion comes to segment mystical reality. Ultimately you feel the limits of each religion, and these become traps. On the other hand, for centuries sacred books have been interpreted in an aberrant way by monks for whom woman is the devil, and they end up infecting the holy texts with their off-the-track interpretations. Then the same occurs in schools, in politics, in society—and it ends up creating oppression. Religion, which should be the universal panacea, becomes a universal poison—all religions.

You studied the Kabbalah, which, besides having religious significance, is a language.

Yes, a language that produces a bunch of crazies: in Hebrew each letter has a numerical value, and each word that you read equals the value of the letters in the word added up to a definite number. So you have combinations, and you say, “The number 87 is moon ( levanah, in Hebrew) but also the word carrion ( nevelah ) equals 87, then moon and carrion could be the same.” It is a crazy system; the Kabbalah makes you crazy. We are adults. We do not need to believe in fairy tales. We cannot say that a book was written by God. We cannot say that the Bible, the sacred book, is the divine word. We can say that it is a novel, a work of art. And languages are works of art. But all of them, not only Hebrew or Sanskrit. I can play with all languages in the same way.

What relationship have you had with Sufism?

In Sufism, when you know it, you discover great beauties. It is like the cream of Islam. It is a deep mysticism, but they are prisoners of the Qur’an.

Even though Shams-i-Tabriz or Jalaluddin Rumi were very free souls . . .

I decided to heal, to be conscious of the illnesses that come with their books. Behind every illness there is a book, be it the Qu’ran, the gospels, the Old Testament, Buddhist sutras . . . All books, if they are interpreted through fanaticism, produce illnesses. We must reinterpret all those texts and take them for what they are: works of art. The Bible, for example, is a marvelous novel.

All beliefs establish metaphors to explain life, but the explanation of what happens to us continues to be a mystery. This lack of understanding, at times, takes us on nonsensical journeys. Do you believe God is a gambler?

It is an interesting intellectual game to talk about God and to think of it as a being that plays, that has attributes, that gets bored, and that defies that boredom by rolling dice. When Moses Maimonides wrote his book The Guide of the Perplexed, it took him three volumes to try to define God—and he arrived at the conclusion that God is that of which nothing can be said. God is the unimaginable, the immeasurable. And I add that God is the unlovable, because how are you going to love what you do not know? I like the idea of the game, but I believe it is not he who is playing it. It is the human being who plays: it is humanity who plays. Johan Huizinga wrote a book called Homo Ludens, which is an analysis of man as a being who plays. Man is a being who plays and builds illusions in his likeness. So man has imagined a God who plays.

What do you have faith in?

When Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was asked if he believed in God, he said no. “How is it possible that such a great mystic does not believe in God?” they said. “I do not believe because I know it,” Ramakrishna replied. I do not believe in the concept of “faith”; I believe in knowledge.

Do you know?

There are things that I know, yes. The dumb know not, but believe they know.

What does the concept “civil saint” mean to you? Who can be this?

I am a person who has suggested to myself to do good, simply. It is not that I have succeeded, but I have suggested it. Besides, to earn my living or to have children and a wife, like we all can, I have suggested to myself to do good insofar as I exist in a civil society. The civil saint could be someone who imitates holiness from these positions. No one is really a saint but rather imitates holiness. The saint could be the perfect human being, but the actual human being is still in the process of evolution. Because of this, he is limited to only imitating holiness.