The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography

by Alejandro Jodorowsky

  Psychoshamanic sex change operation (Mexico, 1997). My assistant is an actual surgeon.

  An older woman had lumps of fat on many parts of her body. Upon studying her family tree we observed that her maternal grandmother had suffered from the death of a pair of twins during childbirth, a girl and a boy. She had never recovered. Our patient’s mother had watched her own mother being consumed by inconsolable sorrow for many years. When our patient was born, her mother had given her the name of the dead female twin, unconsciously wishing to relieve the grandmother’s suffering. Her grandmother had effectively raised her, but in an atmosphere of sadness: the male twin had never been replaced. When we told her that the lumps of fat were the representation of the dead child within her she said, “I always thought I had a twin brother somewhere.” We proceeded with the operation. We pretended to push all the lumps into one location, in the belly. Then, as if they were all in a single packet, we pushed them up toward her throat and, with implacable authority, we ordered, “Vomit the twin! You do not need him in order to be loved!” I put a plastic bag under her mouth. She retched strongly and began vomiting. When finished, we tied the bag shut and told her to go with her mother to bury it by her grandmother’s grave. In a letter, she told us that she had done this and that her lumps of fat had begun to disappear. But she wondered if it was because of the operation or because she was following a strict diet . . . How difficult it is to be grateful!

  A young man, twenty-five years old, asked us for help because he felt incapable of loving. He had come to the course accompanied by his mother. We had asked him to do so because he had a symbiotic relationship with her. His father, a weak man and an alcoholic, had been expelled from the home, and the son, very young at the time, had taken on his role. He and the mother had been in Lacanian psychoanalysis for five years, which had enabled them to become aware of their Oedipal bond but not to solve the problem. We told the mother to wrap a thick red silk cord around the man’s neck seven times, as we knew that he had been born with the umbilical cord wrapped seven times around his neck. We had him write on a piece of paper, “Mama, you are the only woman I will ever love in my life. Yours forever . . .” and his signature. We slathered this contract with gum arabic, slid it under his shirt, and stuck it over his heart. We wrapped him from head to toe in a wet sheet and tied him up with the remainder of the red silk cord, wrapping it around him. Then we gave his mother a pair of tailor’s scissors and told her to start by cutting the red silk, saying “Free!” with each cut, louder every time. Then we tore off the sheet, as if removing a noxious aura, and removed him from the cocoon. The man, almost motionless, in a kind of trance, let himself be carried. Simulating a huge effort, we removed the sticky contract. He shouted with physical and mental pain and wept like a child. Then we asked his mother to cut the seven rings of silk that were wrapped around his neck, saying, “Ring one: for you, my son, pure love and love of life. Ring two: for you, my son, love of the mother and love of the father. Ring three: for you, my son, love of yourself and love of another. Ring four: for you, my son, love of the family and love of humanity. Ring five: for you, my son, love of all living beings and love of the planet. Ring six: for you, my son, love of the stars and love of the universe. Ring seven: for you, my son, love of all creation and love of the Creative Consciousness.” When she had finished reciting these words, which we had been whispering in his ear, the mother and son fell into each other’s arms, sobbing and forgiving one another. After a while, they separated, happy, both feeling liberated.

  A couple asked us for help. They quarreled continuously over futile causes, but once they started, they could not stop: they kept on intensifying their insults and raising their voices. He was exasperated with her because she would not stop shouting until he started to strangle her. He was afraid he would kill her someday. She felt attached to him and, despite the danger, could not leave. Studying their family trees, the wife mentioned that her three brothers had raped her when she was twelve years old. To stop her from protesting, they had held her down, strangling her. The husband recalled having seen his father strangle his mother during their fights. Now he had to struggle against his own desire to strangle women, while his wife had to struggle against her desire to be strangled. We proceeded with the operation. We asked her to choose three men from among the attendees to represent her brothers. We explained to her that after the rape, she had remained possessed by them. The three men clung to her, holding her by the neck. All the women in the course, about twenty of them, had to make them release their prey by shouting insults and ordering them to leave this “girl” alone. The men pretended to resist, then finally let her go. The victim’s sobs were convulsive. We laid her down and proceeded, metaphorically, to remove her vagina and replace it with another one. We painted her outer labia and pubic hair bright silver. For her husband, who said that he felt he had the hands of a murderer, ten men and ten women “detached” his “father” and “mother” from him, then “cut off ” the hands that he so detested and put on “new” hands, painting them gold. From their letter of thanks, we learned that their fights had ceased.

  These operations, due to their extremely unusual nature, produce a state of attention so intense that therapists, patients, and observers enter a psychological dimension in which their sensations of time and space change, as was the case with Pachita. They are entirely “there,” in the “moment.” The actions and reactions are intertwined in a perfect form, and because all are a product of this intense moment, there is no possibility of error. The world is concentrated on the operation. One can compare this to moments that occur in a traditional bullfight. In that deadly ceremony, at a given moment the bullfighter and the bull enter the ring, they merge, they join, the charge and the deception become a single thing, and this dance becomes a magnet that irresistibly attracts the attention of the public. The healer’s hands are rooted in the world. It is not an individual who operates; it is all of humanity. It is not the bullfighter that makes passes; it is the very audience. In one case, life is given, in the other, death. The essence of that similarity must be discovered.

  Fundamentally, every illness is a lack of consciousness saturated with fear. This unconsciousness is rooted in a prohibition imposed without prior conviction, which the victims must accept without understanding. It requires the child to be what she is not. If she disobeys, she is punished. The greatest punishment is not being loved.

  The psychoshaman, like the primitive healer, should operate by circumventing not only the patient’s defenses but also his or her fears. Purely rational education prohibits us from using the body to its full extent, making the skin the limit of our being, making us believe that it is normal to live in a reduced space. This education strips sex of its creative power, giving us the illusion that we live only for a short time, denying our eternal essence. By means of a devaluing philosophy, sublime sentiments are extirpated from our emotional center. We are instilled with a fear of change, and we maintain an infantile level of consciousness in which we venerate toxic security and detest healthy uncertainty. By all means possible, supported by political, moral, and religious doctrines, we are made ignorant of our mental power.

  If reality is like a dream, we must act in it without suffering from it, as we do in lucid dreams, knowing that the world is what we think it is. Our thoughts attract their equivalents. The truth is what is useful, not only for us but also for others. All the systems that are necessary in a given moment will later become arbitrary. We have the freedom to change systems. Society is the result of what it believes itself to be and what we believe it is. We can begin to change the world by changing our thoughts.

  The skin is not our barrier: there are no limits. The only definite limits are those that we need, momentarily, in order to individualize ourselves while at the same time knowing that everything is connected. Separation is a useful illusion, as when the healer places a loop of rope around the patient’s neck in order to tell him to take responsibility for his dise
ase and not propagate it. Miraculous healing is possible, but depends on the patient’s faith. The psychoshaman must subtly guide the patient to believe in what he or she believes in. If the therapist does not believe, no healing is possible.

  Life is a source of health, but this energy comes forth only where we concentrate our attention. This attention must be not only mental but also emotional, sexual, and corporeal. The power does not lie in the past or in the future, which are the seats of illness. Health is found here and now. Toxic habits can be abandoned instantaneously if we cease to identify ourselves with the past. The power of the “now” grows with the sensory attention. The patient must be led to explore the present moment, to become aware of colors, lines, volumes, sizes, shadows, spaces between objects. One should feel every part of one’s body in order then to unite the parts into a whole; breathing should become pleasure, and one should capture its warmth and energy flowing in and out and understand that to love is to be happy with what one is and with what others are. Love grows to the extent that criticism decreases. Everything is alive, awake, and responding. Everything gains power if the patient bestows it . . . A mother using a phytotherapeutic treatment to heal her baby, in which she had to give him water to drink with forty drops of a mixture of essential oils added, found that the disease continued. I told her, “What is happening is that you do not believe in this medicine. Since your religion is Catholicism, say the Lord’s Prayer every time you give him the drops to drink.” She did this, and the boy was quickly cured. If we do not give spiritual power to medicine, it does not act.

  Here, it is necessary to emphasize the importance of imagination. In a certain way, I have undertaken an exercise of imaginary autobiography in this book. This was not in the “fictional” sense, since all the characters, places, and events are real, but by virtue of the fact that the profound history of my life is a constant effort to expand the imagination and widen its boundaries in order to grasp its therapeutic and transformative potential. Along with intellectual imagination are emotional imagination, sexual imagination, physical imagination, sensory imagination, and economic, mystical, scientific, and poetic imaginations. It acts in all areas of our lives, even those considered “rational.” It is for this reason that one cannot tackle reality without developing the imagination from multiple angles. Normally, we visualize everything according to the narrow limits of our conditioned beliefs. We perceive nothing more of the mysterious reality, so vast and unpredictable, than what is filtered through our limited point of view. Active imagination is the key to a broad vision: it permits us to focus on life from angles that are not our own, imagining other levels of consciousness that are higher than ours. If I were a mountain, or the planet, or the universe, what would I say? What would a great teacher say? And what if God spoke through my mouth, what would the message be? And what if I were Death? The Death that revealed a dog to me that deposited a white stone at my feet, that separated me from my illusory “I,” that made me flee Chile, that drove me to search with desperation for a meaning in life—that Death has changed from a dreadful enemy to my amiable companion.

  Alejandro Jodorowsky, age 72. Photo: Roger Farin.

  To conclude this book, I would like to return to my youth, sitting once again on the branch of a tree next to my poet friend, and, as on that memorable occasion, deduce from the many things that we do not know what precious little we do know:

  I do not know where I’m going, but I know who I am going with.

  I do not know where I am, but I know that I am in myself.

  I do not know what God is, but God knows what I am.

  I do not know what the world is, but I know it is mine.

  I do not know what I’m worth, but I know not to compare myself.

  I do not know what love is, but I know that I rejoice at its existence.

  I cannot avoid blows, but I know how to resist them.

  I cannot deny violence, but I can deny cruelty.

  I cannot change the world, but I can change myself.

  I do not know what I make, but I know that what I make makes me.

  I do not know who I am, but I know that I am not the one who does not know.

  APPENDIX I

  Psychomagical Acts

  Transcribed by Marianne Costa

  1. A young man would like to work in the tourism industry, going to Hong Kong and other legendary cities. But this professional desire seems impossible. He doubts himself. After questioning him, A.J. found that the client’s mother had died and that during childhood his brother had captured all the maternal love.

  Response: On one side of a can of sardines stick a picture of your mother, and on the other side, a picture of your brother. Walk along the right-hand side of Champs-Élysées, from the Obelisk of Luxor to the Arc de Triomphe, kicking the can along in front of you until you reach the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Then leave without looking back.

  2. After this young man, a young woman came in to consult. She is his girlfriend, but their relationship has not gone beyond the platonic. She also doubts her professional abilities, and her psychological problems are similar to those of her boyfriend: an older sister favored by the parents, a distant and perhaps incestuous father.

  Response: Do the same thing your boyfriend was advised to do, but instead of a can of sardines buy a fake phallus in a sex shop. To avoid being bothered by the police wrap it in a bag, along with a picture of your father. Walk with your boyfriend, each of you kicking your own item along. Face each other before leaving the Arc de Triomphe, with your faces an inch apart, and roar in anger until you are exhausted.

  3. An Algerian woman is possessed by great sadness. The Tarot shows that this pain is that of her mother, who died in exile, separated from her homeland.

  Response: Since you cannot go there, have someone in Algeria send you a bag containing seven kilos of earth from the village where your mother lived. Go to the cemetery and deposit this soil on her grave. Then, to celebrate this event, go to the Grand Mosque and drink seven cups of mint tea.

  4. Another sad woman; she does not know the joy of living. When her mother was six months pregnant with her, her father left to go and live with another woman.

  Response: Go to see your father, disguised as if you were six months pregnant. Ask him to kneel before your belly and ask forgiveness from the fetus he abandoned.

  5. The client, a vegetarian pacifist, admits to having such rage against his mother that he wants to kill her.

  Response: How can you realize your desire without killing an animal? Buy two watermelons to symbolize your mother’s breasts and destroy them with your fists. Put the pieces of watermelon in a flesh-colored sack that you will make yourself. At midnight, throw the sack into the Seine and leave without looking back.

  6. A young man who is professionally disoriented says he does not know what profession he should go into. When questioned, he confesses that he studied law and political science at a good school but failed to get his diploma.

  Response: Fabricate a diploma identical to what you would have received, but thirty centimeters larger in width and length. Frame it, hang it on the wall of your bedroom, and put a boxing champion’s cup under it. Then go find the job you want.

  7. A thirty-year-old woman doubts herself. She is greedy, materially and emotionally.

  Response: If you live insecurely asking for things, it is because your parents, blinded by their own projections, did not see you as you truly were. Buy two nice red apples. Keep one in your bag and carry the other in your hand. Take the metro and observe the passengers. If a person, man, woman, or child, awakens in you the desire to give them the apple, do so. Keep riding the metro until you get that urge, even if it takes several days. When you have given someone the apple, leave the subway and walk along the street savoring the other apple, which you have kept in your bag. Thus you will understand that to give is to receive.