The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky: The Creator of El Topo

9. Work on the Essence

And he hugged her tightly in his arms, because he knew that this person, condemned to death, was the woman of his life.

SILVER KANE, VERDUGO A PLAZOS

(EXECUTIONER ON CREDIT)

When I saw her at the Ethnology Museum of Mexico, Reyna D’Assia was explaining the Aztec solar calendar to a group of Americans, men and women dressed in an Eastern style, like the figures in the paintings of Jean-Léon Gérome. That same morning, in the conference hall, I had given screening of my film El Topo for a group of journalists. In a humorous mood, I had dressed as a cowboy: black leather pants and overcoat, black silk shirt, large hat, and a belt with a white-handled revolver in its holster. When the screening was over, the critics treated me to insults: pernicious, foreign vermin; raving egomaniac; donkey murderer; and so forth. I left the room, wandering the halls, trying to calm my rage.

From afar, I was attracted to Reyna D’Assia’s outlandish group. Her eyes met mine and held them. She let out an exclamation of surprise, opened her arms, and ran toward me. I actually thought she was running toward someone else until she embraced me with great warmth. I was disconcerted. In spite of her crazy turban, her lacy blouse, her bangled vest, her multilayered gauzy skirt, and her frizzy hair, which spread out like an aura of black tar, she was a woman of irresistible charm, with proud breasts, a luxurious bottom, and two azure wells for eyes. Holding onto me, she spoke with a deep voice and warm breath.

“Three days ago, I saw your film in New York. I fell in love with El Topo, that bandit who is at heart a visionary rabbi. I decided to come to Mexico. My excuse was to teach my group about the secrets of the Aztec calendar, but my real goal was to meet you. So you see? When your mind formulates a wish with true passion, it appears before you in the mirror we call reality.”

Her strongly perfumed skin stirred up a kind of madness in me. I allowed her to take me by the hand out into the street, where she hailed a taxi. During the drive, she kissed me with passion. When we arrived in her hotel suite, she undressed hastily, kneeled on all fours with her back turned to me, and lowered her head to the floor, forbidding me to undress. Then she asked me to penetrate her still dressed in my leather cowboy outfit, hat, and boots.

With mad excitement amplified by the intense wetness of her vagina, I entered her with a fierce thrust of my thighs. I was about to begin the back-and-forth when I was paralyzed by a sudden cry of, “Stop! Don’t move! I want you to serve as the axis of my passion!”

With amazing agility and a precise use of my own body for support, she turned around so that she was facing me, her thighs around my waist, her feet crossed behind my back, and her own forehead pressed against mine. In this new position, I was overcome once more with the desire to thrust inside her Eden, but she nipped this in the bud with a “Stop!” so imperious I had no choice but to obey.

A minute passed; it seemed longer than an hour. My whole pubic zone was trembling, aching to move inside her. In this tormenting immobility, the walls of her vagina suddenly began to shake with a gradually increasing tempo. Finally, her entire vagina was convulsing, squeezing, and vibrating like a quivering glove. Inside this muscular tempest, I had no more need to move. A few seconds later, my semen flooded her. I had three successive ejaculations.

I told her that I had never before met a woman of such mastery. She confided: “I had a great master myself. I wish you to know that I am the daughter of Gurdjieff.^*23 In 1924, the master visited New York with a group of disciples for a demonstration of his sacred dances. My mother, who was thirteen years old at the time, brought him some food that he had ordered from a Russian restaurant. He seduced her and taught her these vaginal techniques, which I learned from her. Gurdjieff said that through laziness, most women have a dead ‘Athanor.’ From childhood on, girls are taught that only the phallus is powerful, active, and vital and that what they have between their legs is a mere receptacle, a kind of swamp whose function is to be filled by sperm. People take it for granted that the vagina is a passive organ. But there is a world of difference between this kind of passive nature and that of a deliberately trained vagina. Gurdjieff taught my mother to awaken and develop her soul by developing a living vagina.”

Deciding to offer me a demonstration, Reyna spread her legs, contracted the lips of her vulva, and, with a soft airy sound, began to pump air into her vagina. Then she expelled it with a powerful hiss.

“Phase one: learning to breathe in and eject with the vagina, as if it were a lung. When this is mastered, a woman can go much further. .”

She set four olives in a row and, scooting up to them with her perineum on the floor, she swallowed them one by one. Then she lay on her back and expelled them with such force that they bounced against the ceiling. She lit several candles and blew them out with one gust from her vagina. She drew a thread up into her organ and then deposited it, knotted, in my hand.

“My vagina has the same agility of movement as my tongue. What’s more, I can will my lubricant secretions to increase or diminish.”

She concentrated with effort. Then, from the base of her lips, she expelled an oval of small, transparent jets of fluid, which covered her thighs.

Finally, kneeling and concentrating with a queenly air, her knees spread far apart, she inhaled a very large quantity of air into her vagina. When she expelled it, a quasimusical sound was heard, both metallic and organic in tone, which recalled the song of whales. My hair stood on end as I thought of the legend of the sirens of Homer’s Odyssey, who attracted sailors with their wails in order to shipwreck them. Fascinated and overwhelmed, I lay my head on her lap and began to whimper like a child remembering a lost paradise.

In a very soft voice, she said, “In the most ancient times, women chanted lullabies with their vulvas to make their babies sleep, but as this art became lost and forgotten, children ceased to feel they were loved. An unconscious anxiety settled in the souls of human beings. That whimpering of yours expresses the pain of having a mother with a mute vagina, but we are going to resolve that.”

She undressed me with precise, delicate movements, had me lie on the bed, and began by embracing the soles of my feet, moving all the way up my body — countless, deep kisses given with all her soul, patiently, over every square inch of my body. For two hours, from my foot to my head, without neglecting the slightest place, she bestowed upon me that ineffable caress, murmuring each time: “You are loved.” I had been kissed by women in many ways, but never over the totality of my skin. I surrendered to it.

When she finished with a final kiss on my nose, I gave a great sigh of happiness mixed with deep sadness. “You have shown me nirvana. . but I would have preferred you to say ‘I love you,’ instead of ‘You are loved.’”

Her blue eyes flashed with utter disdain.

“As I multiplied my kisses, I perceived you moving back through time. From thirty years you went to twenty, to fifteen, to ten, to five, and suddenly you were six months old — a baby marveling at having found a universal mother. That is what you are feeling right now. Should I accept such an unworthy role in saying ‘I love you’? What do you want? By soliciting my love, what you are really saying is: ‘Because I never had the tenderness of a mother, I’m confused and lost in my life. You are my only emotional refuge. That’s why I cling to you. Be authoritarian, guide me, possess me, ground me, nourish my soul. Never abandon me, satisfy my desires constantly, amuse me when I’m bored, make delicious food for me, forget yourself, and admire me more than anyone else. Become my audience.’

“You deceive yourself by seeing me as a projection of that inner woman that you call ‘soul’—but in no case will you accept me as the portrait of your mother. When you say, ‘I love you,’ which one of your multiple selves is speaking? The mental I, the emotional I, the sensual I, the moral I, the cultural I? What is the profound I that is independent of age, sex, nationality, or beliefs? When you define yourself, which part of yourself is making this definition? Can you say, without dividing yourself in two: ‘I am what I am’? Do you realize that you are not an individual organism? Do you realize that this body that you believe is yours is all men — all who exist, have existed, and will exist — and that I am all the women from the beginning to the end of Creation? Your essential self is the cosmos manifesting itself through you. When you enter into contact with me, it is for you to unite yourself with the totality of time through our minuscule present.

“By wishing to have me, centering yourself in possession, you go astray. Love is an infinite energy that surges within you and has nothing to do with the image you have of a separate self. In the we there is no me. Love goes beyond all desire of possession. When you prefer ‘I love you,’ to ‘You are loved,’ you fail to realize that the only reason you are in this world, born in a body of flesh and bone, endowed with consciousness, is because that mysterious force that creates the universe every instant loves you. You are obeying a divine destiny. Right now, every moment, cell by cell, atom by atom, you are loved — you, just as you are, with your particular form, your style, your limitations, and your irreproducible aura. The universe thirsts for this consciousness that your organism can produce. A grain of this consciousness has been given you so that you can make it bear fruit to prevent it from disappearing without leaving a trace in time.

“My blessed father said: ‘Whoever does not create a soul lives like a pig and dies like a dog.’ You have been taught that you were no one, that no inner god lives in the center of your dark psyche. Your parents, seeing you as only a projection of their selfish plans, never saw you. Not seeing you, they never knew you and forbade you to be who you are and permitted you to be only who they wanted you to be. They did not love you. This is why you brew all this emotional muddle around women, who will never be able to love you as you would prefer. In a state of perpetual neediness, your ‘I love you’ actually means: ‘Mean mommy, you don’t love me. I search in vain for your look. If you don’t want to see me, then I don’t want to see me and I must be as you imagine me to be. If you do not tell me who I really am, then I am not. I remain a child. I cannot become an adult, because in order to do that, you would have to see me as I really am — and that’s impossible, for then you would have to be able so see yourself as you really are, which in turn is impossible because your parents — my grandparents — never saw you. Because I am afraid you will abandon me, I’ll distance myself from you first, before you can do it.’”

Suddenly, losing control of my rage, I seized a chair and smashed it into a mirror. Walking heedlessly over the broken glass, trying to hide the limp from my injured foot, I dressed, lashing out at her with insults. “You insolent, didactic charlatan! You’ve read a handful of books on psychoanalysis and think you can pass yourself off as a master! Daughter of Gurdjieff? Don’t make me laugh!” I was still hurling these insults as I opened the door, a shoe still in my hand, and I was so furious that my voice rose to a scream at the last phrase.

At that precise instant a blind tourist passed in the hallway with a guide dog. Startled by my scream, the dog sensed aggression and began to bark loudly. The blind man was frightened and began to call for the hotel police. I jumped from the corridor back into the room and closed the door.

Reyna D’Assia received me with hilarious laughter. “You see? You can’t escape so easily. A blind man’s dog stopped you. In English, dog spelled backward is god. The god of the blind, the ignorant like you, obliges you to listen to me.

“Now open your ears: We always fall into a rage for reasons other than what we believe. You think mistakenly that I have offended you. The truth is that during these hours in this room, you have received something from me that you have never before received in your life. It has brought to the surface all the hatred you feel for your mother. You are reacting as a psychological barbarian might react. You have aspired to a relation between man and woman that is as simple as that between animals, never imagining that love between a man and a woman is also the expression of a neurosis of two genealogical trees.

“You must understand this: The only true couple is not a symbiosis, but a collaboration between two free, conscious beings. Cease to beg for love! I am not your solution, still less your crutch. The purpose of our meeting is not to share the sublime pleasure of an existence that is neither mine nor yours. An alchemical text says: ‘From one substance, two are made and from these two, one is made that bears no resemblance to the first substance.’

“You and I shall establish a meeting of soul and soul so that this androgynous energy expands into the eternal and infinite present. It is marvelous to meet someone who exists at your own level of consciousness! This has not yet happened for you. Your intellect is like a wild horse that you have never tamed. It does as it pleases, dominating you, directing you under the influence of insane ideas implanted in it by your ancestors ever since your birth. Instead of being the slave of its desires, you must teach it to obey and develop it into a machine without limits.”

“Your theories are just words,” I retorted. “You brag about this power, but it’s impossible for you to demonstrate it to me!”

“It is possible, and I will demonstrate it! Psychological barbarians such as yourself find it entirely natural to spend hours training their body in sport, yet it never occurs to them to train their mind. My blessed father rarely had the time to come see me himself, but he appointed one of his major disciples, Alfred Orage, to take charge of my education until I was thirteen. This remarkable man taught me psychological exercises that permitted me to realize what you shall now hear and see.”

Then, like a monkey entranced by a cobra, I watched a fascinating spectacle. Standing on her left leg, Reyna D’Assia traced a figure eight in the air continuously with her right leg. Meanwhile, her left hand continuously traced a square and her right hand a triangle. All the while, she recited a seemingly chaotic succession of numbers. In continuous movement, Reyna paused only briefly in her reciting, explaining the different exercises. They were so complicated that I could not remember all of them, though I do remember a few. I heard her recite, very fast and seemingly nonsensically, the multiplication tables from 2 to 22. For example, 8 × 1 = 8; 8 × 2 = 7; 8 × 3 = 6; 8 × 4 = 5. . 8 × 12 = 6; and thus onto 8 × 100 = 8. It sounded to me like a computer gone haywire.

“Listen carefully: 2 × 8 = 16. If I add the 1 and the 6, I get 7, you understand? No? Another example: 8 × 12 = 96 and 9 + 6 = 15 and 1 + 5 = 6. Therefore, 8 × 12 = 6. How much is 7 × 7?” Without giving me time to think, she replied, “7 × 7 = 4.”

I was feeling dizzy. Relentlessly, Reyna continued the exercise and then complicated it even more. While continuing to recite the table in ascending order, she interspersed it with an alternating descending order:

“8 × 1 = 8; 8 × 100 = 8; 8 × 2 = 7; 8 × 99 = 9; 8 × 3 = 6; 8 × 98 = 1. .”

As she continued her reciting and movements, I did manage to verify one part with a laborious mental calculation. Multiplying 8 by 98, I obtained 784. 7 + 8 + 4 = 19; 1 + 9 = 10; 1 + 0 = 1. Indeed, 8 × 98 = 1. .

For an interminable hour, Reyna held me spellbound with further mental juggling. Some of it was absurd, such as mixing two tables together: 7 × 1 = 12; 12 × 1 = 7. . 7 × 2 = 24; 12 × 2 = 14; 7 × 3 =36; 12 × 3 =21; 7 × 80 = 960; 12 × 80 = 560. . And she went on like this to 7 × 100 = 1,200 and 12 × 100 = 700. As if this was not enough, she once more interspersed it with alternating ascending and descending tables: 7 × 2 = 1,188; 12 × 99 = 14. . 7 × 3 = 1,176; 12 × 98 = 21. . 7 × 4 = 1,164; 12 × 97 = 28. .

A feeling of terror began to grow in me as this woman began to dance as a sinister machine — with very complex and sinuous movements that had not the slightest hint of seduction — to a music that did not exist for me. The more complicated the dance became, the more insanely complicated her numerical exercises became.

In her trance, she shouted, “Number 1 is Tom, number 2 is Dick, number 3 is Harry!” And then she counted: “Tom, Dick, Harry, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, Tom-0, Tom-Tom, Tom-Dick, Tom-Harry, Tom-4. .” and so on, substituting, for example, 5-Harry-Tom for the number 531. . Then, to complicate things further, she yelled, “Now I’m changing! Tom = 2, Dick = 5, Harry = 7!” This meant: 1, Tom, 3, 4, Dick, 6, Harry, 8, 9, 10, 11, 1-Tom, 13, 14, 1-Dick, 16, 1-Harry. . and on and on.

I felt as if my brain and my entire body would explode from all these complications. When I could stand it no more, I leaped up, grabbed her, and halted her gyrations.

“Get hold of yourself, you lunatic! Your problem is that you’ve never been trained to develop your soul; you’ve been taught to be only a kind of circus performer. It is like the story of the juggler who presented himself to the king. After twenty years of training, he had achieved the feat of juggling a hundred chickpeas at once without letting a single one fall. As a reward, the king gave him a barrel full of chickpeas.”

“So! I see that you do not understand the importance of these exercises. You are an artist established in the habit of pulling from your navel all sorts of garbage — which then are qualified as works of art. Yet they are only the expressions of a pack of contradictory egos that you call I. Your mind creates one thing, your emotional center wants something else, your sexual center demands still another thing, your body is going its own way, and meanwhile, that which should be your soul is an egg that no one is hatching. You are a chariot pulled by four horses straining in different directions, and the coachman has fallen asleep at the reins. Of course, the inner jewel is still there, but veiled by a cloud of contradictory thoughts, feelings, desires, and actions. There is no real will, no unitary goal — only a chaos of changing objects under which is buried an unchanging subject. You cannot hear the beating of your heart in a city roaring with traffic. .”

“What arrogant presumption!” I retorted. “How do you know I have not attained inner unity? Every morning, I meditate for two hours with a Zen master.”

“What are you seeking?”

“Awakening!”

“Then you’re a dreamer. You seem to think you’re climbing a ladder with only one rung, but it has many more. You sit motionless on your butt in this zendo, hoping to attain a mysterious state that they’ve taught you to name ‘awakening.’ You’re like a parrot that salivates when it sees clouds, because it’s been taught that they’re also called ‘banana.’ You imagine that awakening is like obtaining a piece of gold or a precious object that you can then keep, like a halo around your head. It’s ridiculous. Only when your stagnant ideas become fluid will you experience your first explosion of consciousness. And of course you think that will last forever, but you are mistaken — in this dimension of reality, the only permanence is impermanence. That which does not change stagnates. Acquiring fluidity can be likened to a large stone falling into the middle of a lake. The shock creates a circular pattern of waves that covers the entire surface of the water. The expansion of consciousness is infinite, but the lake of the mind is finite. Once the process begins, you will go from awakening to awakening, from smaller to greater surprises, never ceasing to be astonished before the newness of the world. Do you understand? You have been searching for a static awakening, whereas there is only continual change. .”

She grabbed me by the shoulders, pressed her face to mine, and cried: “Stagnation is not only mental! It is also emotional, sexual, and physical! Break down your dams!”

A dense anger made my heart pound. “I agree to be your lover, not your pupil!”

“Then why are you so angry? I only want to give. .”

“Giving has nothing to do with obliging someone to receive! Give me only what I ask for!”

“Very well.”

“Then shut up and let’s fuck again!”

With an astounding agility, she shoved me so that I fell onto my back on the bed, and she immediately began caressing my penis. Her hands were like butterflies fluttering from testicles to glans without ceasing. Her fingers moved so fast that they seemed to become transparent and multiply. Soon, she interrupted this delight to administer a series of small, authoritarian taps that went from high to low and back again. Then came the deep caresses, spiraling, stretching my organ out toward infinity and then making it soft and burying it in my pubis as if to change it into a vagina, squeezing it like a fruit, moving it from one hand to another, cradling it tenderly like a mother cradles a baby. Finally, after a multitude of different kinds of caresses, she seized it firmly and began masturbating it with a superhuman rapidity for a very long time and with increasing vigor and no sign of fatigue until I could resist no longer and the white fountain shot out.

Seeing that I was exhausted and mute with pleasure, she assumed the schoolteacher role again.

“What you have just experienced is the first technique that every woman should develop to satisfy her lovers: the manual technique. The three other techniques are the oral, the vaginal, and the anal. My blessed father associated these with the intellectual, emotional, sexual, and corporeal centers. The manual technique corresponds to the body, the vaginal to the sexual, and the oral to the intellect. Therefore, it is through the anal technique that we can control the emotional center. Would you like to try it?”

When we did, I went crazy. The dam that had been holding back my emotions, created by the absence of maternal caresses, burst into pieces. Convinced to the marrow of my bones that I was totally in love with her, I begged her not to leave Mexico and stay with me forever.

She laughed. “As I told you before, you are a psychological barbarian. You are weak, because you lack a true will of your own. The result is that any strong emotion can make you change your ideas or even corrupt you. You do not dominate events; they just happen to you in such a way that you have no control over them. A few expert anal contractions and you are ready to be my slave. This is not because you are foolish, it is simply because you have made an error: you have been using your meditation practice to construct a big, fat ego disguised as the Buddha, which serves only to hide instead of reveal your impersonal essence.

“In India, they worship an elephant, Ganesh. He is always accompanied by a mouse who eats the offerings. This image reveals the hidden situation: the real god is not Ganesh; it is the mouse. The elephant, swollen and covered with gold with a great jewel upon its forehead, stretches out its four arms toward symbolic objects. It makes an impressive disguise, hiding the truth that the mouse is really the master. No one can see a true master. He is invisible, like the mouse. He has no favorite disciples, for he teaches all of humanity. He has no church, for the planet and the entire cosmos are his temple. He often hides inside a seemingly unimportant figure. He is the tiger skin upon which the Buddha meditates, the donkey that Christ rode, the black bull that gave Mithra his strength. . This truth is a difficult one for you to understand, because you have been trying to transcend the body, whereas you should be submerging yourself within it to become so small that you arrive finally at that inner offering that is our birthright — that indefinable diamond that we call ‘soul’ but which is beyond words.

“Please don’t answer me, don’t try to argue with me. I see your ego. I see how you waste your energy, believing that you are who you think you are — a jumble of learned behaviors that began at the cradle. My blessed father called this jumble the ‘elephant,’ and he divided it into two categories: the stinking elephant and the perfumed elephant.

“The first type is unbearable, living only for appearances, ready to do anything for fame, reward, and recognition. He has contempt for the wise, because he is terrified of their level of consciousness. Convinced that he is master of himself, he has no qualms about assuming or stealing the virtues of others. He is like a pathetic beggar disguised in the suit of a millionaire.

“The second type is bearable and is able to balance his needs and desires. With humility, he kneels before his own essence and recognizes that he does not belong to himself. ‘Belong to the Holy Spirit, not to yourself,’ says the Bible. The domestication of the ego consists of converting the stench into perfume. In Japan, this process is represented by a series of drawings showing a black ox that, little by little, becomes white. In China it is a horse; in India it is an elephant.

“My blessed father realized that animals were our first teachers. On a trip to Bangalore, he went to live in an elephant reserve to learn about their domestication. The first thing he learned was that the trainers, the mahouts, of these great beasts commanded them in a language of two basic words: ara and mot. To make an elephant move, they would repeat with authority: mot, mot. To stop him, they would repeat ara with the same tone of authority. This seemingly insignificant fact became the inspiration for the basis of my father’s teaching. The two pillars of his temple were called Mot and Ara.

“The stinking elephant is the situation of individuals trapped in the jumble of insane demands that they call ‘reality.’ They desire, feel, think, and act constantly inside it, forgetting their immortal essence. In order for human beings to recall this essence at any moment, even when they are totally trapped by the world, they must be able to command themselves: Ara!. . or, in other words, Stop! Then, in stillness, they can observe the torrent of useless ideas, infantile illusions, impotent desires, and purposeless plans in which they are submerged, and, like Christ driving the money changers out of the temple, they can free themselves of this absurd swarm in which their stinking elephant has been acting as though it was immortal instead of their true essence. This act of stopping is unity in the midst of multiplicity, which leads them to realize that the only permanent thing is impermanence. Thus, little by little, the elephant becomes perfumed. Only when the garbage can is empty can they perceive the jewel inlaid in its very bottom. Only then can their will command Mot! The perfumed elephant moves consciously. Then, thought can describe the world without mistaking itself for the world, feelings can form attachments with knots that can be untied, and desires are in harmony with what is possible. And finally, realizing possibility after possibility, we attain the impossible.

“It is like the legend in which the god Pan uses a sheepskin to disguise himself as a cloud in order to sneak up on the moon and possess it. Every action we perform is useful, provided it develops our consciousness. Who are we, here and now? The intellect that seeks only to know more and fill itself with abortions from the past must empty itself to attain ignorance. The heart that craves to be loved is never satisfied, for it feeds on the future. It must accept what can be given, its daily bread, cutting its illusions and vain quests at their root. This sexuality — which invades the present by confusing its animal appetites with life, its children, and its conquests with immortality — must learn by ceasing its doing and discovering how to die in peace.

“Tell me: what is your ultimate desire in life? To be happy? To be famous? Rich? Loved? To live to an advanced age?”

“Well, to be quite honest — all of the above.”

“My goodness, you desire so little! Do not content yourself with such modest hopes. Raise your thinking to the level where all living beings desire to be free! You have not transcended personal goals. Your life is that of a separate person, not the life of humanity. Give priority to seeing what is called God face to face, without dying and without fear. When you free yourself of all your afflictions, your unconscious and your subconscious become your allies. You must become your own healer and, thereby, the healer of others’ sickness. You can acquire such spiritual strength that you will not be taken by surprise; demolished; or defeated by misfortune, disasters, or enemies. You can know the whole cosmos, its past, present, and future. In the dimension of dreams, you can learn how to resurrect the dead. You can develop your consciousness to the point that it is able to pass through countless deaths without disintegrating and live as long as the universe.

“By your simple presence, you can learn to raise the consciousness of any living being. You can teach human beings to use the energy of the divine presence trapped in matter. You can cleanse the planet of industrial filth, speak words that calm dangerous animals, be immune to deadly venoms, and see at a glance into the depths of the heart and soul of a man or woman. You can foresee inevitable events, offer immediate and effective consolation and advice, prevent setbacks from becoming deviations from the path, transform problems into challenges and master them, tame love and hate, enrich yourself without harming others, and become the master of your fortune instead of its slave. You can thrive in poverty without misery or abjection, master the four elements, calm storms, make the sun appear through dense clouds, and bring rain in times of drought. You can learn telepathy, healing at a distance, and being in several places at the same time. No doubt, these and so many other things seem fantastic to you at the moment, but if you take the trouble, you will succeed in attaining them, little by little.”

“Reyna, you are telling me fairy tales! Such goals are 100 percent utopian — and even if they were true, what is the first step on this path?”

“Whoever wishes to attain the supreme goal must first change his habits, conquer laziness, and become a morally sound human being. To be strong in the great things, we must also be strong in the small ones.”

“How?”

“We have been badly educated. We live in a world of competition in which honesty is synonymous with naïveté. We must first develop good habits. Some of them may seem simple, but they are very difficult to realize. Believing them to be obvious, we fail to see that they are the key to immortal consciousness. Now I shall offer you a dictation of the commandments that my blessed father taught me:

“Ground your attention on yourself. Be conscious at every moment of what you are thinking, sensing, feeling, desiring, and doing. Always finish what you have begun. Whatever you are doing, do it as well as possible. Do not become attached to anything that can destroy you in the course of time. Develop your generosity — but secretly. Treat everyone as if he or she was a close relative. Organize what you have disorganized. Learn to receive and give thanks for every gift. Stop defining yourself. Do not lie or steal, for you lie to yourself and steal from yourself. Help your neighbor, but do not make him dependent. Do not encourage others to imitate you. Make work plans and accomplish them. Do not take up too much space. Make no useless movements or sounds. If you lack faith, pretend to have it. Do not allow yourself to be impressed by strong personalities. Do not regard anyone or anything as your possession. Share fairly. Do not seduce. Sleep and eat only as much as necessary. Do not speak of your personal problems. Do not express judgment or criticism when you are ignorant of most of the factors involved. Do not establish useless friendships. Do not follow fashions. Do not sell yourself. Respect contracts you have signed. Be on time. Never envy the luck or success of anyone. Say no more than necessary. Do not think of the profits your work will engender. Never threaten anyone. Keep your promises. In any discussion, put yourself in the other person’s place. Admit that someone else may be superior to you. Do not eliminate, but transmute. Conquer your fears, for each of them represents a camouflaged desire. Help others to help themselves. Conquer your aversions and come closer to those who inspire rejection in you. Do not react to what others say about you, whether praise or blame. Transform your pride into dignity. Transform your anger into creativity. Transform your greed into respect for beauty. Transform your hate into charity. Neither praise nor insult yourself. Regard what does not belong to you as if it did belong to you. Do not complain. Develop your imagination. Never give orders to gain the satisfaction of being obeyed. Pay for services performed for you. Do not proselytize your work or ideas. Do not try to make others feel for you emotions such as pity, admiration, sympathy, or complicity. Do not try to distinguish yourself by your appearance. Never contradict; instead, be silent. Do not contract debts; acquire and pay immediately. If you offend someone, ask his or her pardon; if you have offended a person publicly, apologize publicly. When you realize you have said something that is mistaken, do not persist in error through pride; instead, immediately retract it. Never defend your old ideas simply because you are the one who expressed them. Do not keep useless objects. Do not adorn yourself with exotic ideas. Do not have your photograph taken with famous people. Justify yourself to no one, and keep your own counsel. Never define yourself by what you possess. Never speak of yourself without considering that you might change. Accept that nothing belongs to you. When someone asks your opinion about something or someone, speak only of his or her qualities. When you become ill, regard your illness as your teacher, not as something to be hated. Look directly, and do not hide yourself. Do not forget your dead, but accord them a limited place and do not allow them to invade your life. Wherever you live, always find a space that you devote to the sacred. When you perform a service, make your effort inconspicuous. If you decide to work to help others, do it with pleasure. If you are hesitating between doing and not doing, take the risk of doing. Do not try to be everything to your spouse; accept that there are things that you cannot give him or her but which others can. When someone is speaking to an interested audience, do not contradict that person and steal his or her audience. Live on money you have earned. Never brag about amorous adventures. Never glorify your weaknesses. Never visit someone only to pass the time. Obtain things in order to share them. If you are meditating and a devil appears, make the devil meditate too.”

That first night together (interspersed with demonstrations of Reyna’s erotic expertise), we talked until dawn. It was more of a monologue than a conversation, for Gurdjieff’s daughter was keen to relate her father’s teachings with great rapidity.

She analyzed several tales of Mulla Nasruddin. She maintained that the notion of masculine and feminine thinking was obsolete and described what she called androgynous thinking. She criticized the vulgarity of human beings who live by using their senses in a negative way. “They curse what they see, what they hear, what they feel, taste, and touch,” instead of blessing everything they perceive. She taught me exercises for learning to love, exercises for giving birth without damaging the seed of the fetus’s soul, and exercises to develop creativity. All of this was founded on the principle “Never struggle with yourself.” She said, “When the world is not as you like, it is because you want the world to be not as you like.”

I wanted to see if Reyna had a true mastery of the secret of symbols. Taking advantage of our intimacy, I asked her about the meaning of the “game of the goose” in which the poor bird has to advance on a path full of traps: it falls into a well, goes to prison, goes to the hospital, goes to the cemetery, is always having to retreat and begin again, and so forth.

“What is the goose seeking with such obstinacy? For years I have puzzled over this without finding the answer in any book.”

“I know the answer!” she replied. “How much will you pay me for it?” Offended, I made a gesture that I intended to be exalted, representing our intertwined bodies. But she would have none of this. “How much?” she insisted. Angrily, I grumbled, “Twenty pesos.” She began to laugh. “Is that how much you value the secret? You’ve searched for it for all that time, and now that you find someone who has it, you become stingy. You believe that knowledge should be free, but you are mistaken: if you do not pay for it, you give it no value and it will be useless. Give me everything you have! It’s the only fair price.”

I glanced at her with the same hatred with which I sometimes regarded my mother because of her lack of affection. From a pocket of my pants lying in a heap beside the bed, I retrieved five wrinkled bills.

“That’s all I have.”

“Liar! I know you’re lying. You have a big wad of bills in another pocket. So much the worse for you — keep it. I’m going to reveal the secret to you anyway.”

She put her lips to my ear and whispered: “The goose braves all those dangers because she is desperately looking for a mate.” I gave a huge sigh and fell asleep.

When I woke up, the raucous calls of a flock of thrushes living in the courtyard were invading the room. Reyna yawned, then spoke to me with a smile that seemed condescending:

“What do you think about the things I’ve told you?”

“Reyna, I’ll be frank with you. The things you have told me are a revelation that will surely change my life. But there’s one thing that makes me wonder about you: Why would a woman as wise as you waste her time with a psychological barbarian like me? And there’s another doubt I have: The pain you have undergone in order to live in accord with what you believe to be your realization is enormous. Yet how can we really live in peace while making such strenuous efforts? Where is everyday tranquillity in all this? The simple pleasure of eating a piece of bread next to a river, of doing nothing, or walking in the street, smelling the wet asphalt after a rain, watching a flock of sparrows fly without wondering where they’re going? What about simple weeping in grief as we scatters the ashes of a loved one in a beautiful landscape, or speaking of ordinary, unimportant things with a child, an old woman, or a madman?. .”

“What bad taste! That’s quite enough! Do you wish to belong to the anonymous herd of sheep, abandoning yourself to an empty happiness, sitting like a clam with your bread beside the river, sniffing the wet asphalt like a dog, thinking yourself a poet because you admire the flight of a few scrawny, ugly sparrows, reveling in your grief as you scatter ashes that testify that you are mortal, with the misfortune of some becoming the happiness of others, wasting your time discussing trivialities with people of limited intelligence? If so, you are putting off till later — perhaps much later, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years — something important. And what you are putting off is the blooming of cosmic consciousness.

“Please realize this: The universe is a being in the process of evolution. Degree by degree, it is rising from inert matter to pure thinking. The consciousness of the human race is a minuscule light in this immensity, a light that is the result of the effort of the entire cosmos. Call it God if you like, this will to go beyond the limitations of form. Then at least you can accept the idea that you are a part of this alchemical process, a process in which, for reasons we don’t yet understand, God has imprisoned himself in matter and has been trying since the very instant of his fall to liberate himself. As for us, we are here in this fleeting present in order to help God escape from the organic cell. To fail to develop your consciousness is to betray God.”

“But. .”

“Don’t interrupt, don’t argue with me, put aside your reason for a moment and just listen. Why did I seek you out? It was because I perceived that you are an artist who will create a different film more ambitious than the first. My blessed father transcended his personal interests in order to become a benefactor of humanity, one who awakens those who are asleep. What ordinary mortals call ‘death’ did not stop him in the great work that he took upon himself. Dissolved in his ideas, he continues to act. In making love with me, you have been touched by him. Now, whether you like it or not, you carry him embedded in your soul. He will guide you in the creation of your next work. Through cinematic images, you will unite with him to bring consciousness to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.”

At this time I had not yet even begun to think of the adventure of making the film The Holy Mountain. In it, a master similar to Gurdjieff promises to reveal the secret of immortality to his disciples. Therefore, what Reyna was telling me seemed to be delirious raving. My analysis was that, in spite of her astounding mental and corporeal techniques, she had not yet overcome her incestuous desires. However much she wanted to appear to me as a mature adult, she was really a little girl in love with her mythic father. With the cynicism of a retarded adolescent, I decided to humor her in her neurosis to take full advantage of learning as much as possible about her four sexual categories. .

We had a copious breakfast together and then lost ourselves in a battle of sexual caresses that lasted at least five hours. Exhausted, we fell asleep like two satiated stones.

When we woke up, it was midnight. I felt a kind of indigestion, like a child who has eaten too much candy. I tried to leave on the pretext that I needed to change my clothes.

“Out of the question. The seeds of my blessed father’s teachings have been sown only in your intellect. Now we need to undertake an act that will show your unconscious mind how the work of initiation can conquer time, accelerating the unfolding of the soul. Wearing your barbaric costume as a disguise, you must come with me to a sacred place: Monte Alban, a six-thousand-foot mountain whose peak was flattened by the Zapotecs for their ceremonies. I will call the hotel desk right now so they can find us a limousine with a chauffeur. Monte Alban is about 380 miles from here. If we stop to eat, we’ll need at least six hours to arrive there. During the trip, we can continue our conversation or perhaps practice certain oral techniques I haven’t yet shown you. You can decide.”

This promise won me over, and I agreed without protest to this adventure. An amiable chauffeur, don Rodolfo, agreed to drive us all night in his gray Cadillac. In the shadows of the backseat, Reyna showed me how the larynx can perform astonishing movements if it is vibrated simultaneously with the aid of certain Tibetan mantras. After being subjected to this ecstasy several times, I was overcome by a sensation of intense, organic emptiness. I fell asleep like a log in the arms of my lovely torturer.

The day was under way when the car finally arrived at the foot of the mountain. We declined don Rodolfo’s offer to accompany us on foot. Hiding a yawn, he settled himself in the Cadillac for a well-deserved siesta.

As we climbed, Reyna told me: “It is called the white mountain — white in the sense of being sacred. Five centuries before the birth of Christ, the Zapotecs were able to cut off the head of a mountain. You understand the meaning? We must dethrone the intellect, transform the brain into a field, in order to see the totality of the horizon. When you live down below, you see only in fragments what confines you, giving a limited image of yourself and the world. From above, you live in communion with all of nature, a circular horizon that is the wedding ring that unites earth and heaven. These pyramids — labeled as tombs or temples by those necrophiles who call themselves archaeologists — are observatories. They have a dual meaning: god-demon entities that the initiate must climb — in other words, master — in order to dance freely at the summit in communion with the stars. Here, there are nine principal constructions, which refer to the nine points of the enneagram:^*24 acceptance — criticism; humility — pride; sincerity — vanity; contentment — craving; detachment — greed; courage — fear; sobriety — gluttony; innocence — luxury; and conscious action — self-forgetfulness. . Come! Let us climb to the highest part. It is there where, as they say, thousands of human hearts were torn out!”

It was early enough in the day so that there were no tourists. Once at the level top, Reyna led me to the pyramid built upon one side of it and had me kneel with her at the base.

“Help me dig. We must free a stone.”

Plunging our hands in the earth, we touched the stone foundations of the pyramid. By exerting all our strength together, we were able to pull out a stone. With a handful of grass, Reyna cleaned the rectangular stone. Its surface was covered with some light fissures. Deeply moved, Reyna placed the open palm of her right hand next to the stone’s surface.

“In this life that is a continuous miracle, how can we speak of accident? Compare the cracks in this stone to the lines of my palm. They are identical. This stone has been waiting for me for more than two hundred centuries. Destiny had already chosen me to bring it out of darkness. Without me, it would have remained down below for thousands of years. Now we are going to allow this stone to be placed at the very summit of the pyramid. This is a symbol of all my blessed father’s teachings: if we make the effort, we can take a leap through time, accelerate our evolution, reach the highest consciousness, the meeting point of earth and cosmos, matter and spirit, the sacred space that is an eye of God.

“Climb with me now. Slowly, very slowly, with small steps, in a ceremonial ascent. Support me from behind, holding my shoulders while I carry the stone against my belly with the feeling of gradual gestation. When we arrive at the top, we shall put it in the center of the platform. It shall be the ruler of all the stones that support it from below. When the sun becomes hot, perhaps it will even open and release a phoenix. . Yes, I fervently believe that these pyramids are life-generating monuments. That is why they have platforms instead of points at the top: so that there will be a space for a conscious being to take wing, a being to which this space will someday give birth.”

We climbed extremely slowly, step by step. Chanting as if it were a magic mantra, she recited an exercise: 2; 4; 8; 16; 32;. . 128;. . 512;. . 134,217,728;. . 8,589,934,592;. . and so on, arriving at an incredible series of figures recited with dizzying speed.

Finally, we were at the top. It was square, about six feet on each side. The stones were covered with a sort of mortar. Silently, with tears in her eyes, Reyna went to the center of the square. There, she tossed the stone upward as if she wanted to dip it in the sky. Then she kneeled and tried to place it, saying: “After so many centuries, you reach the central place to give your life to the pyramid. . You are the chosen one. . May our souls do as you do. .”

She was about to prepare a place in the center for the stone when I suddenly grabbed her arm, preventing her from doing this.

“What are you doing?” she said. “Why do you interrupt such a beautiful act?”

“Look carefully — there is something even more beautiful!” Through a crack in the very center of the earth, a tiny flower was blooming. “You see, the pyramid doesn’t need your help in order to produce life. A stone opening to release a phoenix is only a poetic vision — but this little flower, so real, so pure, so fragile, it gives meaning to the entire monument. Reyna, I remain convinced that you give too much importance to effort. Stop carrying so many heavy stones! Allow something to be born in you that is not a product of your will. .”

She threw the stone straight at my head. If I had not ducked, it would have fractured my skull. Then she let herself collapse slowly into a sitting position, as if she was an ice-sculpture melting. Finally, she spoke.

“What monstrous vanity. To believe that I, this ephemeral little earthworm, am capable of helping a pyramid! And the pyramid, with the almost imperceptible gesture of producing that little flower, has shown me that I am like a mosquito perched upon the horn of an ox, believing it is helping the ox to pull the cart. I see it now: the very foundation of my theoretical edifice is rotten. I have taken a wrong path. In order for my efforts to bear fruit, I must find another way.

“It turns out that someone told me about a curandero, don Prudencio Garza, who lives in a small village only a few miles from here. I had been afraid of undergoing the terrifying experience that he offers, but after this miraculous sign, I must do it if I am serious about dismantling the castle of illusions that I have taken so long to build.”

“What experience are you talking about?”

“He is a sorcerer who has pupils eat little mushrooms that produce real, physical death. In the beyond, if you succeed in crossing the river of acid without your essential consciousness dissolving, you come to life again. If not, you actually die. No, stop shaking your head — no one can stop me from undergoing this definitive trial. I am taking the limousine. Either you accompany me there or you leave me and walk six miles to Oaxaca, where you can catch the train back home.”

“You are engaging in madness. I feel obliged to accompany you.”

We descended the mountain fast, almost running. When we reached the limousine, we were shocked to see that all its wheels were gone! Don Rodolfo was snoring loudly in the front seat. When we woke him and showed him the disaster, he lost all his aristocratic demeanor of tourist chauffeur. “Sons of whores!” he shouted over and over. Finally, he knotted his large handkerchief to make a headscarf to protect him from the sun and walked off toward Oaxaca, still railing against the thieves and the hot sun.

Reyna, as stubborn as her blessed father, was determined to walk however many miles it took to find the sorcerer. Trying to conceal my own anxiety that the village might be much farther than she thought, I asked her its name.

“Huapancingo or Huanotzcan — I don’t remember exactly. But stop worrying. All problems are mental illusions. Give yourself to the reality of this moment. We are only a short distance away from something incredible, whether it’s a thousand or ten thousand steps from here. Let’s go!”

We had been walking for four hours. The sun was beating down more and more harshly and the caresses of the wind had become like knives, cracking our lips. My dry, hard shoes tortured my feet. Reyna walked like a zombie, murmuring mathematical exercises. I sat down on a fallen tree trunk. I had to shout for her to come out of her trance and stop.

“Somebody gave you bad directions. This road doesn’t go anywhere. We’d best turn back now.”

“O man of little faith! Accept the here and now and stop thinking about the future. Free yourself from the domination of your mind; use the pain in your feet to awaken your consciousness of being and the miracle will happen. Let us go on!”

“Out of the question. Go on if you want to. I’m going back. Your madness is not my madness.”

I got up, and with a sudden irrepressible rage, I kicked at the tree trunk. Part of the bark flew off and a swarm of small black spiders surged out. I jumped back in alarm and beat a retreat.

Reyna came up next to me, laughing. “Coward! It is your resistance that produces failure. If you lack fervor, you will miss the incredible transformation.”

“This road is very long and it passes only through fields of alfalfa. Perhaps I can be of help to you?”

The voice of the old man resonated in our ears with a friendly seriousness. We had not noticed him come up. Probably he had been resting in the shade of a tree nearby. His deep-set eyes surrounded by many wrinkles and his pupils barely visible within cataracts made us think he might be blind.

Anxiously, Reyna asked him: “Do you know a curandero named. .”

“. . Prudencio Garza?” he interrupted her. “I am he, my dear girl. The wind blew me the fragments of your shadows, so I came down here to wait for you. Follow me.”

We crossed through a pine forest on a winding path between hills, which finally brought us to a small valley. Near a black boulder covered with grass there was a cabin. Its door was framed with vultures’ beaks. Not far away, three goats made awkward movements: each had one hind leg tied to those of the others goats. A black dog gnawed at the remains of an iguana, and a pig was snuggling its belly comfortably into a freshly dug hollow in a humid patch of ground.

The dog dropped its prey at our approach and circled around Reyna, emitting ear-splitting barks. It stood up on its hind legs and put its paws on her chest. Fearlessly, she stroked its head.

“Calm down, Mictiani. Let the lady alone.”

Obediently, the dog moved several yards away, but it still stared at Reyna with eyes full of love.

“Welcome to my humble abode, and please make yourselves at home.”

The interior was divided into living room and kitchen by a fragile wall made of old cardboard. In the center of the living room, under a lantern hanging from the smoky ceiling, there was an altar with a plaster statue of Santa Muerte (St. Death), a skeleton covered with a cloak like that of the Virgin of Guadalupe. There were also some yellow flowers, a small box of cigarettes made of dark tobacco, a bottle of strong liqueur, four stoneware cups full of corn beer, thirteen black candles, and some human bones. Among them was a brilliant, silver-plated gourd cut in a circular fashion to make a kind of coffer.

The curandero made Mictiani lie down at the doorstep, offered me a small bench several feet away from the altar, and invited Reyna to sit on the rug woven of palm branches.

“Sit in front of me, my girl. I perceive that you have decided to visit the land of the dead. It is not an easy thing. The mushrooms will bring you death for three days. You will wander in the four petals of the flower of shadows. In the eastern one, a thousand vultures will devour your flesh and bones down to a dark residue. In the northern one, a boiling river will eat away your memory. In the western one, hordes of the dead will empty your soul. In the southern petal, gluttonous goddesses will devour what remains of you: your vision. If you can withstand all this, you will arrive at the center as one who is blind. In that place, inner and outer are the same. There, you will meet Talocan, your inner God. If you are worthy of him, he will cause you to be reborn. If he considers you unworthy, you will not come back to life. Did you notice the pit I dug when you arrived here? It was for you in case you do not come back to life.

“As for you,” he said, addressing me, “because you came here as her protector, you are allowed to stay — but on one condition: that you remain absolutely silent. If you say so much as one word, your friend will wake up as a demon and drink your blood.”

I was frightened. I felt like running out of that place, forgetting Reyna and the sorcerer forever. Yet, whether through pride or curiosity, I accepted this trial, telling myself that Reyna could not become a vampire nor could this friendly old man really be a murderer. Probably, the poor fellow was just trying to earn a few dollars by taking advantage of a tourist’s desire for exotic experiences.

I made a sign that I agreed to the conditions. Don Prudencio had Reyna undress and lie down on the mat. She did so without the slightest embarrassment.

Then, to our great surprise, don Prudencio seemed to become an entirely different person. No longer was he a bent, humble old man with cataracts. The elder man seemed to dissolve as his back straightened. His movements became elegant and feline as he put on a woolen cape embroidered with Aztec designs. He brandished a green obsidian dagger as he lit three black candles and recited a prayer to Santa Muerte.

“Santa Muerte, because you were created by divine commandment in order to renew life, please have the kindness to rid the soul and body of this poor woman of all trace of suffering, shame, anguish, and fear, which come from the cruel treatments she received as a child.

“Santa Muerte, may the heavenly scythe that you wield cut the roots of bitterness, pain, anguish, despair, resentment, sadness, loneliness, confusion, and other afflictions caused by the venom that has been poured into the mind of this poor woman. Through you, may she thus be allowed to know the one who sees all and can do all.”

With the assurance of a high priest, he opened the silver gourd and took out a patty of cow manure upon which were growing about forty mushrooms crowded together. They were white and looked like tiny phalluses. The energy that radiated from these fungi seemed to fill the entire room. With his green dagger, the sorcerer cut them patiently, one by one, placing each mushroom into Reyna’s mouth. When she had swallowed the last one, she began to sweat and tremble. A few minutes later, she vomited. The sorcerer examined her vomit, counting the mushrooms there.

“The body knows its own measure. It has rejected only six of these little children. She is a strong woman — she has kept the largest possible number in her stomach.”

He kneeled before the altar and recited praises before the plaster statue as Reyna became more and more pale and lethargic.

“Praise to you, Santa Muerte, for your divine beauty is God’s reward to the just. Praise to you, Santa Muerte, for without your help, human beings could never free themselves of their pride. Praise to you, Santa Muerte, for your perfection is like that of the life that God has you renew.”

The curandero continued reciting prayers and praises until very late into the night. Reyna seemed like a wax statue. Flies buzzed around her, and it seemed that she would never breathe again. I was uncomfortable and trembling from a cold that was not so much from the temperature as from anxiety. Hypnotized by the droning voice of the sorcerer, I finally fell asleep.

Near dawn, I was awakened by the raucous calls of a flock of vultures. Reyna was still dead. The sorcerer was outside, shouting imprecations. I stood up with difficulty and walked out of the cabin with cramped legs. Don Prudencio had a big stick with which he was striking at the vultures who were swarming over the dead body of his dog, Mictiani. The animal’s eye sockets were empty, bloody pits. Its guts were spilling out on the ground. Finally, the blows of the stick prevailed, and all the vultures flew away.

“No, it wasn’t these devil’s messengers who killed him. He let himself die. Help me put him in the grave.”

He was a big dog. The curandero grabbed him by the neck, I seized his back paws, and we tossed him into the pit. Little by little, he covered the dog with the dirt piled up at its side, talking to him.

“I never imagined I was digging this grave for you, my brother. You are so good that you decided to die for the foreign visitor. In the after-world, you will protect her soul. Praise to you! You have sacrificed your own happiness in order to lessen the suffering of the foreigner. Praise to you! You have given everything in exchange for nothing!”

Taking a deep breath, he chanted a final “Amen,” which seemed to last interminably.

He looked at me, smiling, but his eyes were sad. I saw his cataracts reappear. His back bent slowly until he had once more become the kind old man instead of the formidable sorcerer.

“Thanks to Mictiani, your friend is no longer in danger. Yesterday, she passed through two petals. Today, she will pass through the last two. Early tomorrow morning, she will arrive at the center of the flower and come back to life.

“Look — somewhere over that way, I have some tortillas, goat cheese, and many prickly pears. Have something to eat — but quietly.”

That night was very long. Don Prudencio knelt before the altar again, chanting his interminable series of prayers to Santa Muerte. Lying on the floor, Reyna was still not breathing and her skin was terrifyingly white. I also lay on the floor, my head against the little bench. I wanted to sleep, but no matter how I tried to empty my mind, a river of words flooded it. I thought I had solved the koan known as stepping into the abyss; I thought I had realized what the Chinese monk Dazu^*25 was speaking of in the poem he wrote on the day of his death:

El Topo reawakens under the mountain. From El Topo.

One of the four masters before his duel with El Topo. From El Topo.

El Topo confronts the colonel. From the Jodorowsky film El Topo.

El Topo rides off with his son, leaving vestiges of their past life behind. From El Topo.

The female gunfighter and his former companion gun El Topo down. From El Topo.

Gay cops at a wedding. From El Topo.

Captured monks watch a bandit read the Bible. From El Topo.

The lineup. From El Topo.

The Sex Machine. From The Holy Mountain.

A parade of Santa Claus at the factory. From The Holy Mountain.

The war monster berates the corpse. From The Holy Mountain.

Christ carrying the cross. From the Jodorowsky film The Holy Mountain.

Christ for sale. From The Holy Mountain.

The tiger ascends the mountain. From The Holy

In face of the real, words and reflections are obliterated.

In true identity, seeing and hearing are gone.

Such is the place of calm peace.

All other study is mere verbal rambling.

I also thought I understood what the philosopher Seng Zhao^†26 wrote after the king sentenced him to death by beheading:

As the naked blade approaches my head,

it will be like beheading the spring wind.

Yet Reyna’s courage in putting her life in the hands of a primitive curandero brought about an intense crisis in me. When Ejo told me “Learn to die, intellectual!” was he saying that I must stop identifying myself with my thoughts or was he saying I must learn to accept physical death as my friend was now doing? In any case, was this cataleptic state true death? Could the visions produced by a hallucinogenic mushroom be considered a true exploration of life beyond death? Who was Reyna now, during this long, long night? Was she this inert body or was she a spirit voyaging in a mythic world?

In our readings of the secret book of koans, Ejo and I came across one that might apply to the present situation:^*27 “There was once a woman named Seijo, whose body and spirit separated. One fled her home to marry her lover, Ozu, whereas the other Seijo — sick, silent, and wasting away in bed — remained with her parents. Master Goso Hoen asked a monk: ‘If the body and spirit of Seijo are separate, which is the real Seijo?’ The monk replied with this question: ‘Which of the two is real?’”

At first, it seemed to me that the monk made it clear that it was not a question of the reality of one Seijo or the other Seijo, but of the concepts of body and spirit. Later, I realized that the monk was referring to the spirit and body of Goso Hoen himself. He was saying: “At the moment when you ask me this koan, trying to trap me in the metaphysics of body-spirit duality, which of the two are you? In reality, you are one. No matter how many different names you give to this unity, it does not change.”

In his own turn, Goso Hoen answered the monk’s question with another question: “What is Seijo’s state of being?”

The answer:

Lamentable, desirable, odious, enchanting. .

Though my golden ring has grown by an inch,

I will tell others I am not in love.

Being cannot be divided into parts. It is everything at once.

Maitreya, the true Maitreya,

divides his body into thousands, a hundred hundred thousand fragments.

From time to time, he appears to people subjected to time.

Those subjected to time do not perceive him.

The model of reality is not reality. The growing ring symbolizes growing love, but it is not real love. The word that describes the world is not the world. Existence can be spirit and body united or it can be neither spirit nor body. It is what it is and not what our intellect analyzes and perceives it to be. This cold body lying on the floor is not separate from its spirit and the spirit is not wandering in another dimension. They are one and the same. Tomorrow, when Reyna wakes up, will she really believe she has been traveling in another world in which she arrived at the center where a mythic God reigns? And what if she does not come back to life? Perhaps this old man is really crazy and has poisoned her!

Don Prudencio interrupted his prayers, went to the kitchen, and returned with a little jug full of milk.

“It is from my goats. Drink it and you will fall asleep quickly. Your thoughts are making a lot of noise.”

As soon as I drank the delicious milk, I fell into a profound sleep.

I didn’t wake up until midday. Reyna was dressed and waiting for me, ready to depart. The curandero had disappeared.

“Don Prudencio has left to put his goats out to pasture. It’s time for us to go now.”

We walked for three hours without her saying a word. I respected her silence. She seemed changed — even her face was not the same. Before, it had been mobile and ready to grimace. Now it was like a smooth, polished surface from which a mask had been torn away. Her body movements were different too. She walked so softly that her steps, though very energetic, made almost no noise. Her spine was very straight, her chin slightly lifted. She gave the impression that she was wearing a crown.

When we caught sight of Monte Alban and its pyramids, she spoke at last.

“As you have no doubt noticed, I am the same yet not the same. Do not suppose that I believe I have died and been resurrected. I have traveled to myself, entered into the underworld of my reason, and tried to arrive at the center of the unconscious. The process unfolded as the sorcerer said it would: At first, the mushrooms made me lose all sensation of my flesh and bones. I realized then that I had always lived in my body as if it were a prison. As I began to lose it, I felt an intense love and compassion for it.

“Then my memory was gradually erased. As my emotional bonds disappeared, I understood how attached I had been to people, places, actions. Every being, every thing, every act had been grafted onto me to become confused with my essence, thereby covering it. In forgetting all this, I was able to be myself. But even this “I am” was annihilated. I lost all form, all content, all definition. I possessed nothing. I was no more than an impersonal point of view.

“And even that did not last long. The perceiving eye was no longer separate from the world. There was no more perceiving self or other, only being. . I regained original innocence and purity. I was both the naive creature about to be born and the wise creature after death. Light and darkness were one, all opposites were harmonious. In love with myself, I became a sun. Then, with frightening clarity, I saw that the Other, my body, was waiting for me. The moment of return had arrived.

“It was easy. I simply opened my eyes. I found myself lying on the floor, naked. My legs were spread and don Prudencio had inserted his penis into my vagina. I pushed him away. The old man took it very calmly. Zipping up his fly, he extinguished the thirteen candles. Then he held his open hand toward me. I gave him a wad of dollars. He simply put them in his sack and then left to go take care of his goats.”

“That old rascal! He gave me some milk laced with a sleeping potion. Let’s go find him! I’ll teach him a lesson!”

“No. Hold on there! I don’t know what to think about it. It is strange that he was ejaculating just as I came back to life. He may have been doing it in order to revive me. Let us leave him in peace. Everything happened because it had to be that way. I regret nothing. This experience has freed me. I will never be the same.

“The teachings of my blessed father were the boat that helped me cross the river. Now that I am on the other side, it would be stupid to try to continue to live in that boat. The past is dead, and you are part of that past. Let us agree that our adventure has come to an end. I will disappear for a time. One day, I will write you. . From now on, let us not speak to each other.”

Thus we continued, like mutes. We mingled with a group of tourists and took a bus to Mexico City. We sat far apart on the bus. When we arrived in the city, we did not even say good-bye.

I never saw her again. A few years later, an envelope arrived with a Bali postmark. It contained a short note and a photograph: “Me with Ivanna, my daughter. I don’t know whether her father is you or don Prudencio.”