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

Why do some fear the future?

Look, an animal is afraid because something can eat him at any moment. For this society to function and not spread anarchism, it has to work the fear. There are various terrors: economic terror (very current); sexual terror (AIDS); the terror of consciousness (when a society begins to think about the death penalty); emotional terror (the war of the sexes); and on and on. Terror is something complex: it makes us build defenses and maintain society without change.

How do you imagine the world in a few years? What mutations do you see possible?

I believe that in the future our driving force, our energy, is going to change. The changes of a society are changes in energy. We are all bound to fly! Not to fly like birds, but by discovering an antigravitational force. We cannot conceive a future without defeating gravity. Everything is going to change. A city is a place with roots, and the cities are going to change. We will live in flying shells. The sky will be populated, the land will be free of streets and roads, and we will not use gasoline. We are going to fly above a marvelous garden populated by all kinds of animals. We are going to live in freedom. We are going to change the human spirit; we are going to change everything!

Do you think we are directing ourselves toward a world without material limits, toward a spiritualization?

Yes, and it will be a gradual change. We will not have furniture; we will work with intelligent materials that will undo and recover their shapes; there will be portable robots and healing clothes, which will be able to tell us our body temperature and the state of our health in any given moment; we will have intelligent homes that will function on their own. All this is already evolving, but it has to be perfected. The use of fossil fuels will end: automobiles that run on hydrogen, methane, and compressed air already exist. Pollution will end. Money will evolve toward something immaterial. If we have a new free energy, we are all going to enjoy free time and long life. We are going to develop art and beauty. We will talk singing, maybe, like poets. Telepathy, little by little, will be established as a language. There will be an instantaneous and universal means of communication. Partnerships will improve a lot and will have consciousness. It will not be, as it is now, that some eat and others don’t; hunger will disappear. Common man will have to evolve to a new level. We are gorillas, primates. We are still forming, but we are going to fly.

Although there will be many fights and nationalist resistance to preserve the little things, at some point it will stop because it will be useless. How will it end? Thanks to the children. Those sons of nationalism in the future will be communicating with the whole world. Little by little all nationalities are going to intermingle. Languages are going to intermingle. A marvelous future awaits us, after passing through enormous but necessary plagues, so that we don’t overwhelm the planet and we don’t destroy other species. There will always be illnesses to balance the population. But we will heal ourselves with the mind.

Are nearly all the species that have accompanied us in evolution condemned to die?

No. We will re-create them. From the tiger’s skin hung on the wall, we will bring out tigers.

But, will they be real or virtual?

Real.

What should we think about genetic experiments?

Genetics is sacred. It is not necessary to oppose it.

Do you believe then that one day we will be able to create beauty, like the wing of a butterfly or a flower?

Of course. We can take a bone or something organic and create an animal: everything is in a cell.

Re-create but not create . . .

Well, they will be able to mix animals and species . . .

Therefore, you think genetic manipulation is a necessity?

It seems to me essential. Our conscience commits us to experimentation.

And cloning?

It is absolutely essential, and it is necessary to experiment thoroughly. There was a time when it did not advance due to religious prejudices, and now it is not advancing because of scientific, economic, and political prejudices . . . We must continue!

There are those who think cloning can violate a person’s fundamental rights.

Why, if the person wants it?

I speak from the point of view of those who are born cloned. They can create a hundred copies of a human to be used as organ donors or slaves.

Goethe wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther, and two thousand young people committed suicide. So there were those who said, “Why did he have to write it? One should not write such things.” Thus arose censorship, derived from suppositions of this kind. But, following the same reasoning, we should also burn the Bible, because it has caused more deaths than the atomic bomb, or all of the Buddhist texts because of self-immolation. Everything has a danger, always. But just because this danger exists, we are not going to prevent things from following their course. Just as danger exists in creating armies of zombies, the possibility exists of making another exceptional humanity, with long life: a mutation of humanity toward something infinitely better than what we are now. This is the path.

Nonetheless, if we analyze history, whenever there was an effort to make the species better, very grave phenomena were produced: Nazism, for example.

But in this case, the aim was racial selection with domination being the goal. It was not genetic, it was not work on the fetus or on the cells, or anything of this nature. Those were dreams of the age, motivated by the desire of a superior race to dominate other races. But what I am speaking about is a superior humanity, not a superior race. From that point of view, let genetics be admitted. You see how there are barriers that impede our moving toward the truth? We remain stuck in the idea that genetics carries the risk of another führer. Let’s change the concept: let’s create a superior humanity and accept genetics.

Do you think in the future we will have a virtual world, like they are drawing on the Internet?

No. The root of the virtual is the real. Because of this, the virtual world will always dissolve into the real.

Do you think that religion, as we understand it, will be a thing of the past?

Of course, a historical phenomenon, a fossil. There will be mystics, but the old beliefs will already be fossils. When I see movies with priests, I laugh a lot: priests are like a real carnival, rabbis are like a parade of madmen, the Tibetan lamas, the Hare Krishnas, all of them are dressed up like transvestites. A religion does not need a uniform.

Will there be new churches?

Churches I don’t know, but there will be great dance halls. All of these places will be converted into places for parties.

How do you think art will evolve?

We are seeing it now. With new means all-purpose art is born. That is to say, right now we are used to reading a poem, to admiring a sculpture or painting, to attending the theater . . . In a little machine you will have it all: literature, music, voice, images . . . you will have a third dimension—total art.

How will our sense of time evolve?

As we will live much longer, when we have three thousand years of life, it will be a pleasure to be old, because to be old is to be in the midst of the cosmos and the universe. We are going to feel the universe. It is a divine gift that life gives us. To be alive is an unimaginable gift. We have to get to work making this miracle better.