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

7. From Skin to Soul

“Every man you hang requires a different technique. It all depends on his physique.”

SILVER KANE, VERDUGO A PLAZOS

(EXECUTIONER ON CREDIT)

The forty days that my master was absent made me realize how important his presence was for me. I needed him near me to verify all my words. Without his counsel, I had the feeling that my footprints were already erased before I even took my steps.

None of us students were really sure that he would return from Japan. Considering the poverty of his life in Mexico (he lived mostly on vegetables, fruits, and fish that he scrounged from leftovers at the market) and the small number of his disciples, it sometimes appeared absurd that he would come back. Nevertheless, to remain in communion with his spirit, we continued our daily practice at the zendo.

Considerably irritated by Ana Perla’s assumption of the role of sensei, or teacher (on the pretext that she was the only one able to sit in the full lotus position) and her presumptuousness in directing the meditations, I retaliated by coughing and clearing my throat constantly. No one seemed to notice me. Everyone had surrounded themselves with small and medium-size Buddha statues, vases with flowers, and reproductions of Mayan objects. Ana Perla, a 100 percent lesbian, wore Tibetan bracelets that could not hide the large scars from the numerous suicide attempts that resulted from her unhappy love affairs. Now, having shaved her head, she seemed to believe she had become saintlike, immune to such passions. To guide us all in the sublimation of hormones, she had us engage in chanting endless repetitions of the famous mantra from the Heart Sutra (Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha^*17), like frogs croaking at the moon on the edge of an ancient lake. And she offered a translation that was as original as it was deceitful: “I thrust, I thrust, deeper inside, deeper into the depths, orgasm, blessing.”

Convinced that Ejo had disappeared for good into his native land and disgusted by the idolatry of his disciples, I decided to leave the community. I wanted to take the cat with me but realized that it would provoke a serious scandal. They had elevated the feline to the rank of a representative of the master. Ana Perla swore that she could see a golden aura around its head.

Once again, I found myself walking down Insurgentes Avenue fuming with rage. At an intersection, I noticed the boy that I had attacked several months earlier. This time, he was accompanied by several others who, like himself, were dressed in tight jeans and sleeveless shirts and who attempted to attract the attention of men in passing cars. I thought of changing sidewalks but did not. One of Ejo’s koans came to me: “Why do you not see what you do not see?” And I thought: “What I see, I see only from my point of view, depending on my good or bad mood. The world is an extension of my mind. If I totally ignore them, these kids will ignore me. I will walk past them, invisible.”

But either I had not been able to erase them from my mind or else my interpretation of the koan was wrong. As soon as I drew near them, they all leaped upon me, knocking me to the ground, and kicking me repeatedly. “You macho turd! We’ll teach you some respect!”

What could I do, with five against one? I protected my head as best I could and allowed my body to receive the punishment without protest, taking refuge in my spirit. The blows did not prevent me from remembering another koan: “A monk asked Master Ummon:^*18 ‘What happens when the leaves wilt and fall from the tree?’ Ummon answered: ‘An autumn wind blows from my heart.’”

What is irremediable deserves to be loved. With this in mind, I accepted the beating that I could not avoid — partly because I deserved it and also because I felt my life was not in danger, though I would have some bad bruises to deal with later. These boys would not take the risk of committing a serious crime, but my calm evaporated when they started to drag me into an alley, pulling down my pants. In the stinking shadows of the place, I could see their penises were out. My hair stood on end. No koan could convince me to let myself be raped! I started kicking back and screaming, but they immobilized me, holding me flat on the ground, my face against the pavement and my legs spread. Accompanied by a chorus of mocking hoots and insults, a deft hand was rubbing saliva into my anus — but their laughter died suddenly at the sound of a female voice.

“Leave him alone! He belongs to me!”

Obeying this order instantly, the aggressors desisted and left, making the sign of the cross as if confronted by the Holy Virgin herself.

I had thought that all my Zen meditation had rid me of the pride of ego, but as I lay in that stinking, dark alley, my pants down to my knees, limp and crumpled as a dead mollusk and shaking with nervous tension and pain, I found myself suddenly sobbing like a humiliated child.

“Don’t be ashamed, my boy. Don’t give so much importance to being penetrated. These kids aren’t evil. I know them well. They always come to me when they get sick. They attacked you because you offended one of them. Anyway, they’re professionals — even if they had done it to you, they wouldn’t have hurt you. Perhaps they wanted to make you accept your yielding side, which men suppress beneath their hairy chests because of their contempt for women. Come now; get up and come with me. I live very close by, near the taco shop. Look, your knees are raw and bleeding. I’ll disinfect them for you.”

The woman before me was dressed with stark simplicity, and the dignity of her bearing and gestures made me trust her. As we walked toward the taco shop, she spoke to me.

“That day, when you attacked that poor boy, you were talking out loud to yourself without realizing it as you walked down the street. You walked right past me, but you didn’t even see me. I heard you insulting yourself [here she produced a perfect imitation of my voice and accent]: ‘I’m a spiritual whore, inviting the Buddha to possess me and offer me enlightenment as payment.’ You despise yourself and you despise those boys — but you don’t understand that they, just like you, are offering a service. They help their clients (most of them husbands and fathers) to discharge their homosexual impulses, and you serve the goddesses. By meditating, you develop consciousness, and that is what the goddesses created us to have. Their divine game is for the entire material universe to become conscious. At the end of time, this cosmos is to become pure spirit. In making your body more subtle, you help the supreme Mother Creators accomplish their task. You were right when you said [and again, her imitation was perfect]: ‘I’ve had enough! Meditating, immobile as a corpse, serves no purpose!’ When you transform your body into a statue, you are following the wrong path. It is one that the goddesses have already exhausted: the materialization of spirit. All that your eyes see, all that you hear, taste, and touch are petrified divinities. Within every stone, plant, and animal, a consciousness is trapped and must be liberated — not through destruction, but through mutation. You may not believe it, but what you call reality is essentially a song of love. Everything — even excrement — must have wings. You must realize that even these prostitutes are, in a sense, saints — as saintly as that beggar woman sleeping next to the garbage cans. The Other is the one you see in yourself.”

Next to the taco shop, between high, peeling walls, an alley appeared. At its end we arrived at a dilapidated spiral stairway. Filling my nostrils was a greasy cloud of smoke that came from the chimney of the taco kitchen, where tortillas were cooked over coals. I began to cough. The stench was unbearable. Without seeming to notice it, doña Magdalena climbed the stairs with the dignity of a queen. We arrived at a steel-plated door. It was so low that we both had to bow our heads in order to enter. I heard her murmur: “Humility is the key that opens all doors.”

In her small apartment, a sweet perfume filled the air, banishing the greasy odor. “It is copal,” she explained. “It is used in temples and also in tombs.”

The room was rectangular, with one small window and bare white walls. Instead of electric light, there were long, thick wax candles placed in each corner. In the center, under a small awning, was a massage table. Behind a curtain, there was a small toilet. Behind another, there was a small kitchen. A medium-size wooden case served as a closet.

Doña Magdalena invited me to sit on the massage table. No sooner was I sitting upon the cotton padding than she was rubbing the bruises on my face with a cream that smelled of benzoin. My pain was soothed quickly.

She seemed to have changed personality. I felt as if she came from another world. Her deep, pure regard had an intoxicating effect on me. I no longer heard the noise of the streets outside; voices and odors faded and reality became like a dream. She spoke in a slow, careful monotone, as if dictating to me.

“For the moment, you do not know who you are, but you are searching for yourself with such intensity that we have decided to help you. . we, the elementary particles of eternal consciousness. What we are going to teach you is not just for yourself. Seeds are given to he who sows in order for him to fructify the earth. What you will be given will also be for others. If you keep it, you will lose it. If you give it, you will finally be able to have it. Until now, you have worked by immobilizing your body, considering as ephemeral everything that does not belong to you, thinking to find in a corpse the immortal spirit that you are. Yet, my son, your mind is also on loan to you, and it too is doomed to disappear. Just as the body does, it must abandon all hope of immortality. They both must cease to live as separate beings and must unite the male and female, free from the tyranny of time, plunged into a now without end, giving totally to the work of creating a sublime state of happiness. When you dissolve the opposites that you have coagulated and, having been two, become one, then a star will shine in the dark night. . This happiness in being alive nourishes the divine eye that has been watching you from the center of your ephemeral existence. If your joy is authentic, if you have burned away all hopes, if you cease to be a body carrying a mind or a mind carrying a body, if you are at once dense and transparent matter, you will be received in the heart of the goddess like a lost sheep who returns home. Your individual luck will be the same as the luck of the cosmos. Until now, you have been traveling the way of the intellect, but we shall guide you in the way of the body.

“If you are in agreement with this, return to see me tomorrow at noon.”

As I left the alley for the street, I was overwhelmed with a fatigue so profound that I could barely lift my arm to hail a taxi. At home, I collapsed on the bed without having the energy even to remove my shoes. I slept from four in the afternoon until eleven o’clock the next morning. Leaping out of bed, I washed myself and brushed my teeth in minutes and ran out of the house in order to arrive on time. As soon as I knocked at the steel-plated door, my anxiety vanished and I was filled with a strange calm.

Doña Magdalena, completely naked, opened the door. Normally, my reaction to a naked woman was either arousal if she was beautiful or disgust if she was ugly, but the naked Magdalena seemed to be dressed in her very soul. Her calm, dignity, and harmony of movement and the even brown of her skin made her seem like an ancient idol made of baked clay. She was so natural that I felt ashamed of my own embarrassment, aware of the contempt I carried in my own body and the sexual labeling I projected upon my flesh. The truth was that I had always considered my body as a kind of tumor of my intellect, doomed to degenerate into a wrinkled shell, a nest of maggots.

“That’s enough, young man. Stop torturing yourself. We shall begin the work with the ornaments that cover you. Your costumes are your dark night, and by removing them, you will see the first gleams of dawn. Now take off that watch and stop measuring time!”

The authority of her command put me in a sort of trance. I lost any sense of haste and was filled with the slowness of a dream. Floating as gracefully as a dust mote in a sunbeam, Magdalena began to remove my leather jacket. She opened it inch by inch, as if peeling off a skin, making each second an eternity. As the articles of my clothing came off piece by piece, they took on diverse forms, like black amoebas. I was aware of the multitude of movements that were involved in taking my arm out of a sleeve. Undressing at this extremely slow pace became an art, a combination of dance and sculpture that gave a sense of the sacred to the clothing itself.

“You arrived covered with the remains of a murdered animal. Its pain has mingled with your body, invading your flesh and settling in your soul. The entire skin is an eye that absorbs the world. Be careful of the materials you use to cover yourself. Every object has its own history. Linen, silk, cotton, and wool are pure materials that will not stain your mind. The others are full of a guile that attacks your cells, unbalancing your nervous system and injecting suffering into your blood.”

Entranced by her extremely slow gestures and her voice, as delicate and deep as a lake, I felt that I was becoming lost in a labyrinth of clouds. . When I awoke, I was standing naked. Magdalena finished arranging my clothes, folding them with as much care as someone making origami figures.

“Clothing used without consciousness is a mere disguise. Holy men and women do not dress in order to appear, but in order to be. Clothes possess a form of life. When they correspond to your essence, they give you energy and become allies. When they correspond to your distorted personality, they drain your vital forces. And even when they are your allies, if you do not care for them and respect them, they will retaliate by disturbing your mind. Now do you understand why we fold our garments so carefully, as we might fold a flag or a sacred vestment? Follow me; I’m going to give you a bath.”

“But Magdalena, I washed my entire body before I came here.”

“Which one? You have seven, and the one you take for real is a corpse. . so come with me and behave like a corpse!”

I didn’t know how to respond. I did as she asked, abandoning my own will and collapsing on the floor. She took hold of me in a very precise way and, lifting me up with no difficulty, carried me into the other space behind the curtain, and put me into a bathtub full of lukewarm water.

“Your ancestors followed the custom of washing their dead before burial. This was not because they saw them as dirty, but was followed in order to free their physical and six nonphysical bodies from distorted attachments to matter.”

She rubbed me vigorously with soap and rinsed me from head to toe seven times. She did this with such strength and meticulous care that I felt lighter with each washing and breathed more easily. Then she took me out of the bath and applied a perfumed oil that smelled of incense.

“This is galbanum, my boy. Jewish priests used it to anoint their golden altars. Every human body is an altar.”

I stood on my tiptoes, filled with a sense of happiness. I felt like dancing.

“Don’t celebrate your victory yet. You feel good now, but you’ll feel much better when I’ve finished scraping you.”

Scraping me? Ignoring my astonishment, she had me sit on the massage table. She took a bone knife and, using its dulled point, she proceeded to scrape my skin, inch by inch, as if removing an invisible crust.

“Over the years, countless fears have condensed under your skin in the form of tiny grains: the fear of dying, of seeing loved ones die, of losing your identity, your territory, work, health. . Also, the auras of the six subtle bodies have been inhibited in their expression, which makes them fold in on themselves, forming an invisible armor attached to the skin, preventing us from union with the true world — not the world we think of, but the one that thinks us. This armor encloses you and separates you from others, from the planet, and from the cosmos. It makes you live in the darkness of hell instead of the light of the soul, which is union. You will come to realize that the human soul is immense. This scraping will take at least three hours — and even then, one session will not be enough to rid you of fear and free you from your fleshly prison. We will have to do this at least nine times.”

Humming a lullaby and with infinite patience, she scraped my entire body, including my scalp, teeth, tongue, palate, ears, nails, penis, testicles, and anus. She was so sure and precise in her actions that I never felt the slightest tickle, even on the soles of my feet. She dug the knife in with confidence at just the right depth to dissolve the grains. It was painless, neither too soft nor too hard. Her hands seemed like those of a master sculptor who removes only what is unnecessary in order to reveal the work of art already contained in the material.

It was night when I returned home. I had only a mango for dinner, and I was so full of energy that I did not fall asleep until dawn. I arose at eight o’clock the next morning, feeling not the slightest lack of sleep.

For the next nine days, doña Magdalena repeated the scraping, digging a little deeper each time with the dull point of the knife. My opacity was disappearing; I began to feel more and more transparent. I saw the city and its inhabitants in a different way. I had ceased to criticize, ceased to feel my own guilt. Like a huge breath of wind, the joy of life had swept away my habitual anguish.

Every time I visited her, Magdalena’s personality — and even her physical appearance — changed like the clouds. I was incapable of grasping her mind. Once, I heard her say: “I am an empty chair.” With her hands, she infused me with the sublime, injecting her humble wisdom into my heart. I thought of certain insects who place their larvae in the body of others so that they can feed on their blood and emerge later into splendid offspring. After a total of ten scrapings, she cleaned my ears with a little stick, anointed them with perfume, and finally rubbed honey in them.

“Now I can really speak to you, for your ears are softened to hear my words. Concentrate yourself. Realize how you treat yourself: like a machine or a donkey to be punished. We allow our body to see, hear, feel, and savor things — but its touch stirs up unwholesome associations. Even when we are naked, we are wearing gloves. Civilization has turned our hands into tools, weapons, fingers made to push buttons. Like clever animals, we serve words, but our words serve only concepts. They have ceased to communicate soul. My son, you do not have two hands; you have two guilt-ridden pairs of pliers. Whenever you touch, you steal. You must relearn to feel your hands. Let me see you open them. . spread out your fingers, stretch out your palms fully. You see? You can’t do it completely. You have trouble letting go of what you think is yours. You are lugging around an invisible corpse: your security, your fears of possessing nothing, of losing what you think is necessary. You content yourself with a handful of coins, not realizing that all the money on the planet belongs to you.

“Open your hands so wide that you feel they are losing their limits, that they contain the whole earth, the infinite sky, the eternal universe. . Don’t try to hold on to anything, to possess anything. Accept giving away everything and receiving everything. See how your hands breathe in and out, following the rhythm of your lungs. Feel the ebb and flow of your blood, let your hands participate in the beating of your heart, let them nourish themselves from the warmth of life. It is a life without end, for its essence is pure, imperishable love. . Now close your fingers. Feel the noble, transcendent force in your wrists. They are like two warriors, ready to the end against death, and then unfold your hands like two sacred flowers, opening their palms from which springs the perfume of a new life. . I beg you, my son: Recover your memory! Now feel your hands growing smaller. . smaller and smaller. . more. . They are becoming very tiny, the hands of a baby, a fetus. Feel the sensations of a fetus in your tiny hands. Feel the divine fluid around you in your mother’s belly, feel the innocence, the immense tenderness that resides in every cell of your body, the recognition of the mystery that formed it, the pleasure of energy that once more is offering the gift of matter to the world, the soul coming into the midst of your flesh. . Become the mother of your hands, promise them the world, teach them to go beyond density, help them understand the secret poetry of space. Create sculptures in the air. Visualize the forms you are creating little by little so that your touch is not alone in knowing these forms.

“Now let yourself grow up. Let memory return; remember that from these hands your first caresses were born. At that time, you had no sensual experience; everything was new. You groped to discover what distance meant, you knew no separation, you knew that you could touch the stars with your hands. In those hands, you now carry your entire past. Feel them — they are still claws, hooves, even tentacles. Go deeper, all the way back to when they were earth, stone, metal, primordial energy. Now come back, grope in the direction of the future, feel your fingers growing longer, becoming transparent, becoming wings, luminous waves, angelic singing. .

“Do you now understand the power that you can transmit? If you can get rid of those mental gloves, your hands will radiate a golden aura.”

Then Magdalena opened her own hands in front of my face. I saw that they were indeed surrounded by a golden aura. She pressed them against my heart. I began to weep. I realized that what I was receiving did not come from her. With this apparently simple yet magical gesture, she was transmitting a knowledge that my heart had lacked ever since my parents conceived me: the knowledge of divine love.

“You don’t yet have a frame — you are like a man without a skeleton. How can you caress without bones?”

She had me lie on the small bed and began to palpate me. I felt as if her fingers were digging into my flesh and taking hold of my bones. I had always preferred to forget this essential part of my body, because of my fear of death. She worked upon all my bones, pressing into the most hidden corners, tracing forms, making me feel their medullar strength. Never again would I move in my old ways. Until then, my movements had always been superficial, centered in the flesh. Now my movements had a solid base full of life. In the whiteness of my bones, I no longer saw death, something to be swallowed by the earth, but a concentration of time — I had a skeleton. It was like other skeletons yet different, for it was now impregnated with a personal soul.

“You know how to ask; you have done so since you were born. Open your arms, stretch out your hands, and open your mouth to the sky, waiting for manna to fall into it from heaven. My son, you forget that the earth teaches us to turn as the galaxy, the universe turns. If you lack an axis for turning, you become a festering swamp, a morass of hopes that never rise up, like a vine that has no wall to climb upon and grow. Your bones develop by being used as an axis for turning. Both leaning and moving in all directions have their origins in rotation.”

Her hands working like pliers, Magdalena grasped and moved one bone after another with endless patience — the fibula, the humerus, the cubitus, the femur, the patella, the tibia. . Slowly and relentlessly, she made them all turn outward, as if opening a coffin that had been closed for ages. At first, I was tense and felt a number of minor pains. Then I began to feel as if I had been freed from a shell that began in my bones and reached all the way up into my mind.

“Without realizing it, your arms, legs, and spine have turned inward upon themselves from fear of others. This goes all the way back to fetal memories. Your skeleton has learned to react as a porcupine reacts, rolling up into itself at the least sign of danger. But the clock cannot be turned backward — you cannot again become a fetal ball, separated from the world. Your bones know that someday they will float in the cosmos. Your skeleton, attracted to the future, has the capability of opening as a flower that you have kept closed like a bud. Enough of walking with a black wall in your back, carrying the darkness of the world in your neck! Turn your head and let your eyes shine into the unknown. . more, do it again. . to the left now, like that, until you forget you even have a neck. . now to the right. . You see, you don’t move forward when you drag darkness behind you. Your body has no front, no back, no sides. . It is a shining sphere.”

Little by little, Magdalena had me turn my head around until there was no place I could not see. I ceased to feel threatened by an enemy hidden in the night that I had harbored in my back.

“Now another matter: If bones are beings, then joints are bridges across which time must pass. Every one of your ages continues to live in you. Infancy is hidden in your feet. If you leave your baby stuck there, he will impede your walk, dragging you into a memory that is both cradle and prison, cutting you off from the future and trapping you in a demand that cannot give or act. Let the energy accumulated in your soles, toes, and the underside of your toes rise up into your legs so that you become a child: dance, play, kick your feet around as if they are a giant you control — but don’t remain there. Invade that seemingly impregnable fortress of your knees. In front, they present an armor to the world, but behind, they offer the intimate sensuality of an adolescent. Knees conquer the world, allowing you to claim your territory as a king claims his. They are the fierce horses of your carriage, but if you don’t persist in rising and maturing further, you will be stuck in your castle. Now move the energy up through the length of your thighs and become an adult. In the joints between your humerus and your pelvis, discover the capacity of opening your legs.

“Now, my hero, you are in front of the sacred column. Every vertebra is a step that leads you from earth to sky. From the grandeur and power of the lumbars, climb toward the emotional dorsals until you arrive at the lucid cervicals to receive the cranium, a treasure chest which culminates in ten thousand petals opening to the luminous energy pouring down from the cosmos. . Now that you have learned to open, don’t go back to being closed.”

At this point, she began to pinch many parts of my skin, stretching it: my chest, shoulders, legs, arms, back of the neck, head, eyelids. . even the scrotum. I felt this last open like a large fan, releasing its blocked energies. This little sack that had always been wrinkled up like bark seemed to let go of its anxiety to protect its sperm and open joyously to the world in an immense smile without fear.

“Toward the outside, now: Stretch into the air, with its hidden perfumes; feel how it reaches into infinity. Let your shoulder blades become wings, offer the skin of your belly like a magnetic cup, absorbing mortal destiny without fear. You skin is not a prison separating you from the world. You do not live enclosed in the illusion that you call ‘inside.’ Let ‘inside’ merge with ‘outside’ so that the hell of separation is finished. Let your body reach out to the six directions: in front, where plans dwell; behind, where ten thousand holy hands are pushing you into life; to the right, where numberless suns arise; to the left, which is both setting and promise of return; below, to the abysses illuminated by the inextinguishable torch; and above, beyond the stars, to that luminous absence where all words fail. Continue to stretch yourself in this way to arrive at the boundary that dissolves into invisible will. Now you feel like an expanding sphere and you discover your center. Recognize this diamond, this eye of fire, the mystery that feeds both good and evil according to how you use it.”

I lost all sense of time. When she had finished stretching my skin, I felt as light as a cloud. I noticed with surprise that it was already midnight.

“This is the hour when the owl’s vision becomes perfect. The earth appears to it like a living creature made of waves of love. One of these waves is food. The mouse knows this and offers itself to the owl without trying to escape. Its essence is immortal; being devoured only changes its form. Like a raptor, you will see the world of love offering you all kinds of nourishment for both body and soul. Accept them without demanding to know what they are, for they come from the deepest part of yourself. On the path, do not speak to anyone. Be content with listening to yourself.”

I left, walking down Insurgentes Avenue. The entire neighborhood was dark due to a power failure, yet I felt no fear. Some thugs walked past me like strips of black velvet, without noticing me. My reality was no longer theirs. In contrast, a huge moth as large as my hand flew up and settled on my chest, beating its wings as if trying to get inside. Was it because it saw my heart shining like a small star?

When I returned the next morning, doña Magdalena was heating a jug of thick liquid immersed in a larger pan of hot water. When the liquid began to boil, she poured into it some plants that she had ground in a mortar. While the liquid cooled, she stirred the mixture until it became solid.

“This is Vaseline to which I have added savory, ylang-ylang, sage, rosemary, and especially marijuana. With this balm, I shall conquer your willfulness. You do not yet want to let go of the rage of your painful memories. They accumulate in your muscles in the form of contractions and these give you the sensation of existing. If you let go of them, allowing your demand to be loved to disappear along with your fears of abandonment and your bitterness, you will feel yourself disappearing. My sad child, you believe that your suffering is who you are. My balm will give energy and pleasure to your skin. You will know physical wellbeing, which will bring peace to your soul. The world will finally cease to be your enemy, you will feel inviolable, you will accept matter as a friend and feel the cosmos is your cradle. Now forget the male; allow the female to appear. . Surrender yourself; do not resist. . cease all activity; become water molded by the form of my hands.”

I was naked and lying on my side as she massaged the balm into my muscles one by one.

“Now be aware of the real sensation of your muscles. Stop seeing them through a mental image of yourself. Every time you catch yourself returning to your mind, return instead to your body sensations. You are not a character in a movie. If you flee the body to take refuge as an mental observer, the mind immediately becomes a dungeon. Come now. . come in further. . more than that! Come into your flesh and stay there to learn humility. You understand? Until now, you thought that humility meant lowering your values, hiding them behind a mask of submission. You must realize that you have been walking through the world without seeing it directly, distracted by what you believed was worthy or unworthy. My child, humility means ceasing to defend your beliefs and prove to others that you have a right to be alive. Let it all go; you have no need to prove anything! Go into your body, uncover it once and for all, relinquish your doubts and defenses, surrender yourself — even if vultures devour your entrails, even if you rot, even if you turn to ashes, let go; every one of your muscles is like a closed box, and I’m going to open them.”

The Vaseline mixed with herbs gave me a physical well-being I had never felt before. With her skillful fingers, Magdalena went over every inch of my muscles, massaging them as if they were the tissues of the fetus of a higher being about to be born. Using her thumbs to push down as she lifted from beneath with her fingers, she stretched them to their sides, as if removing the invisible shell of a huge prawn. This sensation of opening spread throughout my body, causing me to break into sobs. I had kept my most painful memories locked up in these muscles. In my calves I hid the vicious kicks my mother gave me under the table to make me shut up when my grandmother came to eat, because everything I said was apparently some sort of expression of disrespect to this caustic old woman. My right arm harbored the rage against my father, the suppressed punch in the face I had wanted to give him, covering his face in blood for having terrorized me for so many years under the pretext of teaching me courage. In my back, between the spine and shoulder blades, I kept the unbearable absence of caresses during my childhood. And in my ankles, like slashes from a scythe, I hid the sadness of being uprooted from my native village when I was nine years old. In one day, I lost all my friends, my favorite places, the cloudless sky, the smell of the sea and the arid hills, the perpetual caress of the dry air — and acquired a tension in my legs that transformed my agile, light-footed steps into foot-dragging through the streets of strange cities.

“Do you see? You were full of closed boxes that contained all your sadness, suffering, anger, frustration. . When I revived your bones, it made you go deeper inside. When I stretched your skin, it made you go farther outside. In opening all of your muscles, I have pushed you to the sides, toward both dawn and dusk. Now that I have emptied you of these memories trapped in your tissues like flies in a spider web, your viscera will appear. These are your ignored friends, always working for you in darkness, day and night, without the slightest thanks from you. Now feel them as I insert my fingers into the upper part of your abdomen, like this, on the right side. Feel as I palpate, caress, and move my fingers around; feel its large and generous form. This, my son, is your liver. It is a powerful, honest, faithful organ. It is vibrating, because it knows that you acknowledge it. Listen to its deep voice: ‘I am the doorman, the one who works to prevent the passage of toxins — not only those you ingest with your mouth but also those that infect your mind. Every cruel word makes me work to combat it, every repressed anger eats away at me, and unexpected attacks from the outside world strike me. I do my best to keep you alive, sending little pains or increased bile to get your attention. I also store vitamins. I wish you to live in innocence; I wish for words to descend from your ears to your soul like pure water; I wish for you to uproot criticism so that your blood flows like a limpid river. Allow me the strength to forbid entry to the demons of gluttony, jealousy, and deceit! Do not become my enemy, attacking me with substances I cannot assimilate. Not only are you what you eat but also you eat what you are. If you allow my temple to be invaded by substances, thoughts, feelings, or desires that are alien to you, they will be transformed into toxins.’”

When Magdalena spoke as the liver, her voice seemed to me like the purring of a black panther. Little by little, her repeated manipulations and caresses caused me to feel this great, soft organ, flat like a fish, pulsing all over with waves of faith and energy, like the love of a dog. I realized that my body, distorted by the icy indifference of my parents, had always received a rejuvenating elixir from this valiant organ, fatiguing it greatly. For the first time in my life, I felt pity for my liver. I asked Magdalena to liberate it from its suffering so that it could rest.

“My dear soul child, what you ask can be obtained only by going into your heart. Second after second, this friend, like a waterwheel of pure devotion, causes life to circulate in you. It beats in a rhythm that originates the instant the ancient ancestral spirit first manifested. If you concentrate, you will feel that primordial word in your breast, the resounding thunder that brought forth all existence, the dance of matter obeying the incessant demand of multiplicity. Under your ribs you bear a stubborn motor, as vigorous and sure of itself as an arrow flying through the empty sky like a giant bird bearing you toward eternity. This is why you must never go against it, no matter the frustration that may cause one or another of your muscles to contract — for the heart is the king of all muscles and it feels their slightest tensions, accumulating them over time. Little by little, this can cause it to lose interest in leading you to the divine portal. Then it will begin to punish you. It will weaken, beat out of rhythm, stutter, and get stuck. This wrong rhythm announces that the celestial doors are beginning to close for you. Allow my massage to give your heart confidence again, and have faith in it so that it has faith in you. Send your blood to it full of love. Do not reject it by trying to ignore its presence. Do not treat it as a clock that ticks out the minutes until your death. The heart never threatens; nor does it keep accounts. Its essential work is to circulate hope through your arteries and veins. Allow it to palpitate; imagine it as an eagle; climb onto its back; see how it opens its immense wings, carrying you toward a miraculous future.

“You are so used to living like a victim that the happiness you are now receiving makes you cry. You must finish once and for all with this orphan’s suffering. I am now going to awaken the consciousness of your lungs. They know the pleasure of air, of singing, the victory of having emerged for good from the sea. Three lobes on the right are male, two lobes on the left are female. They inhale the transparency of the world, inviting you to rise up beyond the stars. Allow all the air to come in and go out; never indulge in thinking you are suffocating; enjoy feeling these two friendly sponges, even when they are empty, and you will understand little by little that they love infinite space. Let them relax; don’t strain to breathe — be as calm as possible, as you observe your skeleton, your flesh, and your skin also drinking in this invisible nourishment. Gently let this vital oxygen, this exquisite food, enter into you. Now hold it as long as you can, transforming it into an elixir that penetrates your every cell, enriching its nucleus of consciousness. Then breathe out slowly, and feel how you are feeding the world: when the lungs receive the gift of the sky, you give back air to the energies of the earth. You are a bridge between them; for you the angels come and go, arise and descend as in the dream of Jacob.”

I now felt myself to be an essential part of the world. My breathing gave life to plants and to the earth, my heart rhythm was part of the total rhythm of animals everywhere. There was no separation between me and the clouds. Inhaling and exhaling, I could even create stars in my hands.

Seeing my face flushed with ecstasy, Magdalena began to laugh joyously.

“You understand? You have lived your whole life unconscious of the immense pleasure, the miraculous exchange involved simply in breathing. When you purify your mind, the air you exhale purifies all beings and all things. Your passage through this world will be a continuous fertilization.

“Now listen closely, my dearest soul child. There are two ways of sculpting: the way of artists and the way of the gods. Artists take a block of material and shape their creation from the outside to the inside, but the gods begin inside, from the center, the original source. From there, they concentrate and develop their creation of the body, from the inside to the outside. The viscera that spoke to you today are properly called viscera, not organs, because they live in the interior of your body. If they were on the surface, they could be called organs. For us women, our internal sex is visceral. But for you men, this viscera has become an organ. We feel our vulva as a creative center, whereas you feel your phallus as a sort of companion, a pleasurable tool, and you separate it from your emotional center. Now lie down. I am going to show you the roots of your sex.”

The massage that Magdalena now gave me had absolutely nothing to do with masturbation or erotic caresses. She had warned me before beginning: “Don’t misunderstand. Look at how I am massaging this foot — feel the quality of my hands. They are full of tenderness, you see? I am holding it as a mother holds her baby. . Now feel how I hold your genitals, and how the quality has not changed. It is the same maternal tenderness, protecting and caring. Don’t be afraid; let go of your defenses and any sense of shame. It’s perfectly normal to have an erection. Allow yourself to be handled, but do not seek pleasure. Instead, seek understanding.”

Magdalena took my penis with her right hand and pressed the index finger of her left hand onto the hole of the urethra. She exerted a vibrating pressure concentrated in the tip of her finger. I had the feeling that she was creating a tiny sun there that did not burn but radiated life. She then moved her finger down the upper part of the glans, tracing a line down to the pubis and up the body to my navel. Then she moved up to the solar plexus and continued upward the whole length of my body, finally stopping at the crown of my skull.

“That is the first root of your organ. It goes up to the summit of your skull, and there it absorbs the nourishing energy pouring down from the heavens.”

Then she returned her finger to the urethra, took several moments to re-create the intense point, and moved her finger down the lower part of the glans and penis, passing over the barrier of the foreskin to the testicles, down the perineum, then up between the buttocks to the sacrum and the spine, up the vertebrae to the back of the neck, and finally, again, to the crown of the skull.

“The first root absorbs luminous energies, but the second one enters into the night that dwells in your back, arriving at the will constructed in the back of your neck and finally meeting up with the other root at the highest point, which links you to the stars. These two are the main roots, but I also want you to feel the multiple other sexual roots embedded in different parts of your body.”

Tirelessly, Magdalena now began to trace out lines all over my body, always beginning at the head of the phallus. They went to the palms of my hands, the soles of my feet, my ribs, the base of my throat, my eyes, my ears, my forehead. . Little by little, I perceived that between my legs was something like a tree, with powerful roots passing through my body and leaving through my feet and my head to reach to the center of the earth and every star in the universe.

“My beloved soul child, a woman does not need to search for her roots, for she feels them already at her birth. Instead, she needs to make them branch, pushing from the ovaries, in order to grow a labyrinth of energy toward the vastness of the world. In order to be in union with his sexual organ, a man must make it move its roots toward the primordial seed, whereas a woman must make hers spread into branches that reach toward the ultimate fruit. Just like your phallus, you have been living apart from the roots of your body. You believe that ultimate freedom is liberation from the flesh, detaching consciousness from the body as we remove a hand from a glove or a sword from its scabbard. At first, of course, the body, with its mysterious life, its sensations, its uncontrollable urges, appears like a heavy curtain blocking contact with the light of the soul. But are you merely flesh that possesses consciousness — a consciousness exuded by that flesh? Are you not also consciousness that exudes flesh? The sky symbolizes spirit, the earth symbolizes body. Between sky and earth is the human being, like the god Set of ancient Egypt, separating sky and earth at the beginning to realize finally that the stars above and the roots below are part of the same tree. Certain energies decrease as others increase. If there is no individual self after death, then consciousness and the body are an ephemeral unity that must accept the marriage, the coagulation, with joy. When you meditate, sitting motionless, you go toward the branches. When you abandon yourself to my massage, you enrich your roots. But is this body you offer me a whole or a fragment? Recognize that you have been living it as a fragment. You concern yourself with the matter you can feel, but never with your aura.

“Now come, stretch yourself out on the ground. Concentrate. Feel all your matter, push down from under your skin, move through it, spread out upon the ground like an invisible pool of blood. I begin by massaging your chest and move toward the ribs. Feel how my hands follow the energy down to the floor, caressing it, because your aura is also stretched out there, about six feet out, though you cannot yet feel this. Refine your sensitivity. If my pressure on your invisible body is prolonged, it means you are feeling it, and this will bring you serenity. By entering into the invisible pool of your aura, I feel knots, confusions, and tensions. It feels like tangled hair that has not been brushed for years. Now stand up. I am going to comb your aura so that it will be smooth and orderly.”

Using her hands like combs, Magdalena passed them repeatedly all around me. Though she never once touched me, I felt my mind coming more and more into order and harmony. Old resentments dissolved and disappointed hopes were dispersed. My habitual, constant state of anxious expectation — as if my life were always in the future instead of now — was calmed. Like a squid floating tranquilly in the ocean, my mind surrendered to the present, to the world that is instead of the world I thought.

“Now that your aura is well combed, I shall have to wash your shadow.”

She opened the only window. The afternoon light flooded in. She had me stand with my back to the light so that my shadow was projected inside the brilliant rectangle of light on the floor.

“My son, stand very still and do not move for any reason. Here you see your companion, the one who — though you never condescend to listen to it — tells you what you actually are: a sundial. Every instant, your body tells the time — and this is important, because every hour has a soul, a different energy, that demands that you use it in a different way. If you force your hours by doing what does not suit them, then you live badly and you become ill. Most people care nothing for their shadow, dragging it around as if it were a dirty animal. This poisons their steps.”

Magdalena was now kneeling and washing my shadow vigorously with lavender-scented water and soap. She brushed it, wiped away the water and suds with a sponge, dried it, and then seemed satisfied. But still she forbade me to move, inviting me to look at my shadow as if at a work of art.

“There — it’s all clean now. Look how beautiful it is! Now return home while there’s still plenty of sunlight, so you can feel your shadow. I’m sure you’ll notice the change.”

As I walked with the sun to my back, I felt my shadow as a pleasant companion. Even more, I began to see it as an ally worthy of respect. It pleased me to watch it, to observe how this black stain flitted like an immaterial bird over objects, people, and walls, leaving an invisible trace that bestowed purity and joy upon the tortured material of the city. I saw that the other pedestrians were totally unconscious of their own shadows. This neglect made their shadows seem like heavy, black rags, filthy and sad, dragging on the steps of their owners, adding more impurities to the objects they fell upon.

My experience with Magdalena lasted forty days. With patience and devotion, she overcame my resistances little by little, showing me different ways of massaging the body.

“Darling child of my soul, you don’t live in a body; you live in a unique wound. In order for you to feel the spiritual matter that you truly are, I must give priority to healing you. You remind me of one of those blackened shrimps they sell at the taco stand down below. You are enveloped with suffering — not just yours, but that of your parents, your brothers, your uncles, your grandparents, and distant ancestors. It is the carbon that hides your diamond. I shall heal you. I am woman and I am serpent. I can give to you not only with my hands, but with my whole body.”

And Magdalena began to undulate in waves, adhering to me, wrapping herself around me, slithering from my feet to my head, rubbing me with her hair, her face, her breasts, her back, her belly, her legs, her feet. Using precise pressure, she focused on certain points and then joined them to other points, covering me with meridians and circuits. I had the sensation of becoming like a tightening net, with each node linked to all the others. She pressed her lips upon these points one after another, sucking at them and then vigorously spitting out some mysterious, toxic energy. Then she blew upon each point with such extraordinary intensity that her stream of air cut like a knife. After rendering them extremely sensitive by biting them with her teeth, she used a sweet and powerful voice to inject them with words from the Mayan language. Were these the names of their androgynous gods or words of love? It made no difference.

Then she used all her weight — increased perhaps by the weight of entities from other dimensions — to crush me completely against the ground so that I became an amorphous mass.

Vibrating me with a shifting combination of rhythms — fast, slow, trembling, explosive, delicate, and brutal — she caused me to relive my fetal memories. I felt my eyes, mouth, and limbs growing and felt the palpitating center that must have been my heart. Above all, I saw my soul. It was like a rose opening abruptly, emanating its immense, anguished desire to live.

Then she brought me through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, old age — and onward to a sort of millennial androgyne, an angel, a limitless god.

She awakened my vital energy by causing my navel (which she called Eden) to spout four intangible rivers branching into thirteen centers in my body, which she called temples. Through mysterious pressures, she opened these like jugs, giving a list of the different gifts that they were able to pour out.

The forty days had come to an end. “That is enough,” she said. “You have received it all. You no longer need to receive. What I have given you, you can give to others.”

She placed her palms on the back of my hands with such firmness and assurance that I felt as if we shared a single skin. Then she directed me in self-massage. The more confident I became, the more she relaxed the pressure of her hands until, without my even realizing it, her hands seemed to have flown away like a pair of doves. Everything she had been teaching me came back little by little: I palpated my bones, stretched my skin, made contact with my viscera, planted my feet in the ground after having calmed my shadow, combed my aura, traced out meridians and circuits, centered myself in my spinal column and from there sent out energy to the sides with the sensation of unfolding two immense wings.

“Yes, fly, my son! Spread your wings; your body doesn’t stop at your skin. It extends out into the air, filling all space. It grows with the cosmos, embracing the divine creation. The earth is yours, the galaxies are yours, you are eternal and infinite. In the shadow of your reason live countless goddesses, and they are also yours. Humans, animals, plants, the unborn, the legions of the dead — they are all yours. Make your decision! Become master of your life! You are a flower whose numberless petals open and close every instant, surging like an explosion of light from the black matrix that is neither matter nor energy but the creative womb. And you live in all this, in the corolla that is collective consciousness, like a diamond scintillating with rays of love from conscious beings. Other diamonds form a necklace that shines eternally around the mystery that none can name.”

As I walked the streets, I no longer felt that the weight of my body was a burden. Instead, it was a link of union with this mirage I called reality. Every step was a caress, every breath of air was a blessing. These sensations were so surprising that I felt as if I were living in a new body and a new mind. The thought of receiving any further massages from Magdalena was distinctly unattractive — a bird does not need extra air to fly, a fish does not need extra water to swim without limits. I allowed a week to pass, during which my eating habits changed. I could no longer tolerate meat, coffee, or dairy products. Rice best suited my stomach. It also reminded me of Ejo Takata. On the same day his image came to mind, I received from Ana Perla a postcard with a Hindu-style Buddha on it announcing the imminent return of the master.

I bought a bouquet of white roses and went to say good-bye to Magdalena. Her door was open, but the room was empty.

I went downstairs and asked the taco merchant where she had gone. The people working there only shrugged their shoulders. Noticing one of the boys offering himself in the street nearby, I asked him about her whereabouts.

“Doña Magdalena is like the wind,” he answered. “She arrives bearing her seeds, sows them, and then leaves. No one can pin her down.”

I murmured to myself: “Under the motionless clouds, the wind carries away the city.”

The curandera Pachita

Maria Sabina, the mushroom priestess

Chilean singer Violete Parra

Spanish writer Francisco Gonzalez Ledesma, who used the pseudonym Silver Kane

Mumon Yamada, the master of my Zen master. He was an elegant Buddha.

My own master, Zen monk Ejo Takata, after his arrival in Mexico

“Intellectual, learn to die!” Myself, about thirty years old

Me with Ejo Takata. I’m reflecting on the austere staging of my theater production Zarathustra, based on Nietzche’s work.

During Zarathustra, my Zen teacher agreed to sit motionless on stage, meditating during the entire two-hour performance.

Surrealist painter and artist Leonora Carrington

Carrington’s husband, Chiki, who wore this beret day and night

The actress Maria Félix

Leonora Carrington’s painting of Maria

I acquired a dubious notoriety because of my relationship with the Tigress, before we had a major falling-out.

The Tigress with her tiger, Salgari

Later, the Tigress produced a performance of Lucretia Borgia in competition with my own. She was naked on stage with her pubic hair painted green. This performance ran successfully for two years.

A poster for my own production, which ran for only four months

The only known photo of doña Magdalena

In my film El Topo, I played the title role.

“I am the daughter of Gurdjieff,” Reyna D’Assia told me. Here, as a child, she is pictured with her father.

I went with Reyna to Monte Alban, a Zapotec ceremonial center built on a plateau more than sixty-five hundred feet high that was located on a mountain that had been leveled to build the center.

In an envelope sent from Bali by Reyna D’Assia, I found this photo with these words: “Me and my daughter, Ivanna. I don’t know whether her father is you or don Prudencio.”

I played the title role in my theater piece Hamlet Gonzalez — an apocalyptic version.

Me and producer Allen Klein, after our reconciliation.