The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography

by Alejandro Jodorowsky

  Encounters with divine archetypes are very dangerous if we do not prepare for them in advance. I would not exclude cardiac arrest from the list of possible dangers. I searched in alchemical texts to prepare myself for such a risky encounter. One treatise, the Rosarium philosophorum, written in Latin in the first half of the fourteenth century, inspired me with its enigmatic passages. “The contemplation of the authentic thing that perfects all things is the contemplation by the elect of the pure substance of mercury.” Before attempting to unite the individual self to the universal force, it is necessary to contemplate, feel, and identify with that source, to accept it as one’s essence, to disappear in its infinite extent. This force must act in our intellect as a dissolving agent. When the kind god in my dream offered me some tea, it was to tell me that I am the sugar cube that is to be dissolved in the hot liquid: love. “The work, very natural and perfect, consists of engendering a being similar to what one is oneself.” I understood that for the majority of the time we are not ourselves; we live manipulating ourselves like puppets, presenting a limited caricature to others. We must create the being that resembles who we really are in ourselves like a model, discovering the pattern, the designs and order that it carries like a seed. A tree, in its formation, endeavors to grow in order to become the plant pattern that guides it. The engendering of the similar is not a doubling but a transformation: in order for the natural work to be realized, the self must transform itself into the impersonal pattern “I,” the highest level of perfection. Thus we become the guides of ourselves. “Euclid has advised us not to carry out any operation if the sun and mercury are not united.” The individual I and the impersonal I, the intellect and the subconscious, must act together at all times. It is for this reason that Maitreya and Jesus became one in my dream.

  In Paris, I had the opportunity to meet the alchemist Eugène Canseliet, who published the works of the mysterious Fulcanelli. I remember him telling me, “The athanor is the body. The heart is the flask. The blood is the light. The flesh is the shadow. The blood comes from the heart, which is active, and goes to the flesh, which is passive. The heart is the sun, the body the moon. The positive is in the center. The negative is around the center. The two form unity.” If we think that the universe has a creative center then the individual, who is a miniuniverse, should also have one. After reaching the age of fifty I decided to attempt the highest encounter through lucid dreaming: to see my inner god.

  I am at a family dinner with my wife and children. We are eating on the terrace, around a rectangular table. It is nighttime, and the stars are sparkling in the sky. Cristina, the servant who took care of me so well during my childhood, serves us a roast goat kid on a cross-shaped plate.

  “I’m dreaming.”

  I put my hands out flat in the air, support myself on them, and levitate. I speak from above to my loved ones.

  “I am leaving this world.”

  They smile knowingly and begin to disappear. A profound grief fills me. This piercing sadness forces me to stay, but Cristina appears waving a pair of pruning shears, with which she snips at the air. “Go! If you rise you are an angel; if you sink you are a demon!”

  Relieved, free, I begin to ascend. I see myself floating in the cosmos. The stars shine brighter than ever. I want to exit the cosmic dimension to enter the dimension where my consciousness reigns. Suddenly, all the stars disappear: I find myself in a space that appears to extend into the infinite. This dark void is intermittently traversed with the rhythm of a human heartbeat by circular waves of light, like the ripples that occur in a lake when a stone falls on calm waters. I see the center in the distance. It is a mass of light, like a sun without flames, vibrating, beating, producing iridescent undulations. Its colossal size compared to me, smaller than an atom, fills me with dread. I want to wake up, but I restrain myself.

  “This is a dream. Nothing can happen to me.”

  “You’re wrong, if the experience is too intense it could cause your death in real life; you might never awaken!”

  “Dare to try it! Remember what Ejo Takata said: ‘Intellectual, learn to die!’”

  I decide to take the risk, fly speedily toward this tremendous being of light, and throw myself into it. At the moment of sinking into this matter I experience the immeasurable vastness of its power, for the glare is so dense that I can feel it in my skin . . .

  In order to make myself better understood at this point, I should recall a crucial moment that the actors and I experienced during the filming of The Holy Mountain. We had already lost our link to reality after two months of preparation due to having been locked in a house without going outside, sleeping only four hours a night while doing initiatory exercises the rest of the time, plus four months of intense film shooting and traveling all over Mexico. The cinematographic world had taken its place. Possessed by the character of the Master, a sort of hybrid of Gurdjieff and the magician Merlin, I had become a tyrant. I wanted the actors to become enlightened at all costs; we were not making a movie we were filming a sacred experience. And who were these comedians who, also entrapped by illusion, consented to be my disciples? One was a transsexual I had met in a bar in New York; another was a soap opera hunk; then there was my wife, with her neurosis of failure; an American admirer of Hitler; a dishonest millionaire who had been expelled from the stock exchange; a gay man who believed he could converse with birds in Sanskrit; a lesbian dancer; a cabaret comedian; and an African-American woman who, ashamed of her slave ancestors, claimed to be Native American. I was inspired by alchemy in hiring this bunch: the first state of matter is the mud, the magma, the “nigredo.” From this, through successive purifications the philosopher’s stone is born, which transforms base metals into gold.

  These people, drawn from the masses and not theatrical artists by any stretch, were supposed to become enlightened monks by the end of the film. Searching for magical sites, we had climbed all the Aztec and Mayan pyramids that had been largely rebuilt for the tourism industry. Thus we arrived at Isla Mujeres and contemplated the magnificent blue and turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea—at last, something authentic. There, I decided to arrange a fundamental experience: after having all of us shaved, myself included, we went out on a small shrimp boat. After an hour, we were on the high seas. A resplendent blue-green circle surrounded us. The beautiful ocean, with its gigantic but gentle waves, stretched all the way to the horizon. I gathered the actors around me and, in a state of trance, said, “Let us jump and submerge ourselves in the ocean. The individual soul must learn to dissolve in that which has no limits.” I do not know what happened at that moment. They looked at me with childlike eyes, offering me a faith that in fact I did not deserve. I then gave a karate-style scream and jumped, pushing the group into the sea. As soon as we fell, I received an enormous lesson of humility. We had jumped in wearing the costumes of Sufi pilgrims. We had on heavy boots, baggy trousers, sashes at the waist, roomy shirts, and long coats, as well as broad-brimmed hats. The hats were not a problem, they just floated; but the costumes became dangerously heavy as soon as they filled with water. I felt myself sinking into the depths of the sea like a stone, a descent that seemed to last for an eternity. Suddenly the whole sea was pressed against my body, with its incommensurable power, its unfathomable mystery, its monstrous presence. I was trapped in its superhuman belly, feeling smaller than a microbe. Who was I in the midst of this colossal being? I moved as well as I could, not sure that I would be able to save my life; perhaps I would continue sinking into the dark depths. I never thought to pray or beg for help; I had no time. Then the enormous mass of water threw me up to the surface. The dive had lasted only a few seconds, but we came up about fifteen meters from the boat. On land fifteen meters are barely anything, but offshore, such a distance is like kilometers. I had not considered that sharks and other carnivorous creatures might live there. On the boat the fishermen, taking us for crazy gringos, set about improvising a rescue. For our part, trained by those months of initiatory exerci
ses, we waited calmly. The individuals bobbing on the waves became a collective being. The Native American, slapping gently at the water, said that she did not know how to swim. The Nazi, who turned into a champion swimmer, held her by the chin and helped her float. Corkidi, the photographer, completely forgetting that his task was to film transcendental moments such as this, cursed while helping to throw us a lifesaver attached to a long rope. The millionaire, who was closest to the boat, threw the lifesaver to the nearest person, the bird communicator, who reciting a mantra threw it to another, and so on until we were all joined, clinging to the rope. Without this tranquillity, we might all have drowned.

  We boarded the ship in religious silence. We undressed and wrapped ourselves in towels. We began to shiver. When they recovered the use of their jaws, the actors, as well as the photographer, his assistants, and the shrimpers, began to insult me. Only two remained silent. The comedian, who in the film had the role of a thief, a symbol of the primitive and egotistic Self, had behaved as such in the water: without any concern for the group, he had simply emerged from the depths and swum with all the strength of his well-developed muscles toward the boat. The other silent person was my wife, the only one of the group who had not jumped. She had remained on the deck, watching us, paralyzed or simply disbelieving. Because of this, something between the two of us was cut off forever. In that moment, we realized that our paths were going in different directions. I realized that in order to become my true self I had to cleanse myself of this leprosy that was the fear of abandonment and accept my solitude in order to one day achieve genuine connections with others.

  The actors, however, declared that they did not give a damn about becoming enlightened monks and that all they had wanted was to become film stars. The dip in the Caribbean Sea was a mistake that had taught them a lesson: they would never again obey my follies as a director. To begin with, they demanded a good breakfast with orange juice, eggs, toast, cereal, butter, and jam, plus no more improvisation beyond what was in the script. Otherwise they would quit. For me, this was an essential experience. I knew that from then on I would have the courage to face the subconscious without letting myself be invaded by terror, knowing that the ship of my reason would always throw a rope out to save me.

  But let us return to the lucid dream. I had just thrown myself into that gigantic being of light, and just like in the Caribbean Sea, I experienced the immensity of its power. But this time, prepared as I was by the previous experience, I did not struggle to come to the surface as if escaping from the jaws of a monster, but let myself slide toward the bottom. I had the sensation of falling slowly while dissolving, as if the light was an acid. Finally, shouting with a mixture of euphoria and peace, I let go of my last crumb of individual consciousness. I was integrated into the center. I exploded into a succession of inconceivable shapes, thousands of them, millions, and they formed worlds that evaporated, oceans of color, words, phrases, conversations in countless languages intermixed like colossal labyrinths, and as time became an eternal instant, palpitating, opening itself into endless possible of futures, I was the creating nucleus, detonating unceasingly, never stopping, never silent, in countless metamorphoses. I was shaken by a kind of violent earthquake, and eight gates opened at my inconceivable extremities, or eight bridges, eight tunnels, eight mouths—what can I call them? And from them, other universes began, also exploding with delirious creations, joining in turn with the other universes until they formed an astral mass like a colossal hive.

  How long did this dream last? I do not know. The concept of duration had been abolished. I was lucky, or unlucky, that a torrential rain accompanied by gale force winds assaulted the city that night. The blinds on my windows started banging, making a racket. I woke up thinking that I was still in the dream. It took me a long time to recover my reason. The wall that separated me from the subconscious had partly crumbled. Although I knew I was an individual, in my brain I could still feel the incessant creation of images.

  My brain continued to produce worlds; it was an immense hurricane of creative madness. The “I” lived within a multifaceted demented god. Reason was a small boat sailing an infinite ocean, rocked by every storm, traversed by every entity, angelic or demonic, there was no distinction; by every language, living, dead, or as yet uncreated; by the inconceivable multitude of forms; by the absolute dismembering of unity.

  After this extreme vision, which in certain ways I used to create my Incal books, I did not dream again for a long time. Lucid dreams started to become a popular topic, first in the United States, then worldwide. There was even an American who tried to sell machines that could produce them. Several books were published, some of them serious, others less so, as in the case of one author who claimed to have magical powers. I read the books avidly. They helped me to understand something fundamental: people who describe their lucid dreams describe things that correspond to their level of consciousness and to their beliefs. If they are Catholic, for example, they see Christ with great emotion. If they have some form of morality, the messages in their dreams will corroborate it. I remembered having a conversation with a psychoanalyst friend who gave me examples of dreams: the patients of Freudian analysts had dreams with sexual symbols in them, Jungians had mandalas and shape shifting, Lacanians had word games, and so on. That is to say, they dream in accordance with their analysts’ theories, which for them have the power of dogma. I realized that something similar happened with lucid dreaming: a pretentious writer will direct her consciousness within the dream like a pretentious person; a mythomaniacal ethnologist will create adventures in his dream world in which he holds the nontransmissible secrets of indigenous magic. I examined my vision of the creative center. When I became one with it, I had eight gates. That is, a double square. Tocopilla! Toco: double square. Pilla: devil consciousness. Was it a coincidence? Had the Quechuas dreamed my same dream? Does the eternal creator, Pillán, communicate with other creators through his eight bridges? Either that or the name of my hometown had influenced my images. Why not nine gates, or ten, or a thousand?

  I decided to proceed with the greatest of caution. I had reached the peak of the mountain: I had blended myself into mad universal creation. What more could I want? For what purpose was I trying to modify my dreams? If I wanted to achieve something useful, I would do better to modify the dreamer, the being who is awake, who introduces himself into the dream world in order to try to control it. To do this, I had to undertake some other experiences, following a different path in the dream.

  I observed that remaining conscious during the lucid dream required a considerable effort. Ultimately, the great lesson I learned was less about the extraordinary world I was able to create than about this requirement of lucidity. Without lucidity, nothing was possible. From the moment that I let myself be drawn into events, feeling the emotions they aroused in me, the dream absorbed me, and I lost the clarity. The magic only worked at a distance; what made the game possible was the clarity of the witness, while fusion with events narrowed the field of possibilities. I told myself, “Dreams have a reason for being. As products of universal creation, they are perfect; there is nothing to remove from them or add to them. The spider in itself is not terrible; it is only so to the fly. If I have overcome fear, the dream world does not have to affect me. And if I have conquered vanity and I see sublime images, they should not alter me either. In fact, the person who wakes up in the dream is not a superior being endowed with fabulous powers, it is a consciousness whose role is to become an impassive witness. If one intervenes in dreams, in the beginning one does so to experience an unknown reality, but later vanity can lead one into a trap. The microbe that is conscious of the Caribbean is not the Caribbean. Divinity can be me and continue being itself; I cannot be divinity and continue being myself.” I decided then to set aside my will and surrender to the lucid dream as an observer. I should mention that being the observer does not mean removing oneself from the action, it means to live through it indifferently; if a beast a
ttacks me, I defend myself without fear. If it wins, I let it devour me and observe what it means to be mauled. At the beginning of these new experiences, I found myself in situations where I could kill. I did not. While awake I am not a criminal, so why should I be in the dream? As a result of my work, which extended over several years, many things in my primitive personality were vanquished. By deciding not to intervene in the events in my dreams, I ceased having nightmares altogether. The distressing, disgusting, and perverse images also stopped. It seems that the subconscious, knowing that I was open to all its messages without wishing to defend myself or adulterate it, became my partner.

  Whether or not to wake up within a dream becomes a secondary consideration. One reaches a level of consciousness where one knows that one is dreaming in all the dreams that occur. The dream images are experiences that transform us just like events in real life. Indeed, sleep and wakefulness go hand in hand so much that when speaking of them we refer to a single world. One stops searching for detachment, for lucidity, and humbly accepts the blessing. Lucid dreams become happy dreams. But this cannot be achieved all at once; one must pass through different stages. In my case, once I stopped playing the magician and had tamed my nightmares, turning every menace into an ally, into a gift, into positive energy, I began to dream of transforming myself into my own therapist. I healed emotional wounds and alleviated deficiencies. For example: