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

How can we imitate holiness?

By intuition. The saint hears what he should do. And this comes to us from the interior, from what we call the God within. There is a perception inside of us, something that says, “What is the best in this situation? How can I help my fellow man?”

Sacrifice does not exist to the civil saint; like everyone, he avoids the masochistic sacrifice of the saints and carries out a normal life, integrated in society. But, in addition, he is conscious of the world; he is conscious that his acts have to be healing for others and for himself.

Holiness is not something that belongs to religions, nor does it mean sexual repression. Holiness consists in having a cosmic and divine consciousness. When I spoke of civil holiness, they took me for a madman, but now they are practicing it. It was necessary to speak of civil holiness, and I did. Just as I say that for art to be art it has to cure. And many people have begun practicing it. When you discover an idea and you mention it, sometimes it spreads everywhere. When a flower opens, it is springtime everywhere.

II

Is making policy necessary to develop our consciousness?

Politicians have a social function. They are our employees; we pay them. We must realize that a president could be our one in charge; the police are dependent on us, like bank tellers and waitresses. Politicians are our servants, not our mistresses.

But one can have a political passion . . .

I never had it, I always hated politics. I never mixed with these people because, for me, politics had to be metaphysical, mystical, an art. I recommend that politics end; it has become the cancer of society because now it does not mean anything. Actually, a president is not a big deal. The president embodies an old symbol, but behind him are the multinationals, the oil companies, and all that. We could live very well without them, without paper dolls and without politicians. People are learning this, because people see them staging puppet shows or being mimicked by comics and television, and they no longer let it confuse them.

At the same time, you say it is necessary to change the world.

It is necessary to change it, but not through politics. When I was in Latin America, very celebrated writers told me to join the party, to take part with the left because otherwise they would inform on me and I would never have literary success. They also told me that if I did not side with the left, I would be considered in favor of the right. “Join and you have literary success! It is what the rest of us have done! If not, you will have us as your enemies,” they clarified. I did not join them because I feel that art is not political. The political should turn itself into art, but not the artist into a politician.

What could be the utopia for the present age?

To begin with, I would want all of human order to make a partnership, beginning in schools. It is atrocious that the children leave the partnership and go to be educated by a professor, just a man or a woman. This negates partnership. Classes should by taught by couples of both sexes, and children should be educated by a man and a woman, the same way that it should be a Pope and a Popesse , a president and a presidenta, not necessarily husband and wife. This is what I would do as a first political measure to improve social life: all human activities would have to be carried out in complimentary pairs.

We live alienated by a world that is at the mercy of technology, the market, and money. Is this due to capitalism or is the problem within us?

If you look carefully, what defines man is not quantity but quality. Humanity has always been qualified by his valence. Another thing is the great multitude, which, at the core, directs the world—the politicians need their votes, and they have to deceive them to legitimize themselves. Our labor is something else; it is to create conscious people. Everything I desire, I desire for others. Work the consciousness, then share it, so that humanity does not sink into catastrophe, because then the multitude will dominate—and the masses have a limited level of consciousness. It is necessary to elevate the level of consciousness: the multitude does not represent the human being. In this sick society, people emerge who are like antibodies; they are called to expand the consciousness, but this is work that must be done through the schools, on the streets, through art, and with every word. For this reason I say that art, not politics, heals.

Entertainment that sedates serves nothing; well, maybe to be able to bear life, right? I amuse myself. Like a little dwarf, I entertain myself with American movies, which serve to dull the brain. But all of this pseudo-art does not change society. Although really society should not change, it should mutate. And, little by little, it is mutating. If you take any mediocre being of today, and you transfer him to the Middle Ages, he would be a genius. We are changing, we are mutating, but the masses do it much more slowly. Society is like the body of a chicken: the chicken’s foot is hard and insensitive while the eye is very alive. And there are beings who embody the cells of the eyes and others who embody the cells of the feet, of the wings, or of the anus.

Although not all human beings have the same function, the collective consciousness is totally necessary. There are, as I said, different levels of consciousness, and this is the most important: the mutation of the level of consciousness. If we had another level of consciousness, humanity would be marvelous. The problem is that the man on the street has an animal, infantile, and romantic level of consciousness, which makes him continue to help those who do not suit him, whether of the political class, the military . . .

In schools and on television they constantly praise war and power. Our history is the history of battles and impositions. It’s the shame of humanity. The military and the police are repressive elements that appear indispensable, but we really could do without them. I suggested in Chile that the military change its uniform to a tutu and learn before anything else to dance classical ballet and then study flower arranging and gardening and fertilize our Chilean desert and turn it into a garden.

III

The future is something that is already passing. How do you see the future of our species, this humanity of which you speak?

I am tired of pessimism; the human race always changes when it is in danger of death. When we start dying in the streets, we will put a stop to pollution and other atrocities. We will react out of necessity.

It’s never too late?

It’s never too late. At the same time as they are perfecting mobile telephones, cars, genetics, and armaments, they are also developing many other things that are good for humanity. The discovery of atomic energy resulted in benefits for medicine and science. The path genetics has taken appears to us now to be monstrous, but it is necessary because we are entering life. We must perfect cloning if we want to evolve and abandon our primate origins. In alchemy, one of the ideas of strength was the homunculus: a created human being. We have to be able to do it. The idea of the purification of the race ruined the desire for man to advance genetically, but we have to obtain a different body because this one does not respond to our spiritual desires.

But with the disappearance of cultures and species, the destruction of the Amazon . . . the earth cannot return to what it was.

But we can re-create it with genetics. Thanks to genetics, we are going to recover the animals that we have exterminated. It is not necessary to go against science. I believe scientific advancement is very positive. As in nature: the more we progress through the bad, the more good we do.