Example?
The other day, when you came to visit me at my home, you noticed I had changed everything. I was tired of the old decor. I bought new furniture, and everything in the house that I did not want anymore I put out on the street. My cleaning out turned into a kind of neighborhood party; people began to help themselves. . Some days later, the neighbors heckled me, “Ah! We know you!”
“Go on,” I replied. “How do you know me? By my comics, my films?”
“By your garbage!” they replied. “We recovered incredible things from in front of your house!”
In short, I not only changed my decor, but I also transformed a bit of the atmosphere of my neighborhood.
All the same, Alejandro, it is easier, if one has money, to change the furniture than to transport oneself among the African elephants.
No, the fundamental principle is the same; this all takes place in the head, in our conception of reality! One can see reality as a nightmare, and God knows that in the worst situation, anything can happen. But it is in this same reality that one can develop lucidity and accomplish responsive acts to transform the negative into positive.
Some might say this is a question of the purse: if you have a large sum of money, you can effectively take a jet and go to Africa or New York.
Yes, but one must attract life! Your life corresponds to the conception that you make of it. Well, for example, I have never been a millionaire or even very wealthy, but I have always applied the lucid dream principle to my daily life: why not go there? Thus, I have attracted favorable circumstances when I have had real need. The other day, I had the desire to treat myself to a little escapade. I had been invited to a film festival in Chicago, so I went there secretly for three days. I left on Friday; I came back on Sunday. No one knew. (Laughter.)
I remember one day, a billionaire friend asked me, “What are you doing this weekend?”
“Nothing,” I told him.
“You want to go to Acapulco?”
And there it was! His private jet brought us to Acapulco for the weekend.
As you tell this, it seems very simple, but not everyone runs with billionaires.
Listen, you are trying to make me a liar, but you know as well as I do, from your own experience, that each person creates his own reality.
I needed to leave for the other side of the world for the weekend. I was intimately convinced of the flexibility of reality, and this sent me a billionaire with a private jet. That’s all! As for you, what you loved in life was meeting sages and listening to rock ’n’ roll. You really wanted to reconcile these two seemingly rather different aspects of your existence. And then, since you did not have a rigid idea of reality, you attracted the adequate circumstances, and you finally found, in Arizona, a true sage who, not content with having created an ashram, is also leader of a rock band. Without a doubt, he is the only such person on the planet. He was then very little known in the United States and totally unknown in Europe, but the magic of life sent him to you all the same. (See Gilles Farcet’s L’Homme se leve a l’Ouest: Les nouveaux Sages de l’Occident [The Man Rises to the West: The New Wisdoms of the West].)
Also when you were a youngster, you went to see my films and collected articles about me; and then, here we are! Friends! And we amuse ourselves making books together. In your innocence and determination, you attracted these statistically improbable circumstances.
Fine. .
Listen, let me tell you another story. In 1957, long before I theorized all this, I asked my wife, “Where do you want to go for vacation?”
“I would really like to go to Greece,” she replied.
“Very well,” I replied. “We will go to Greece.”
“But how? We don’t have a penny.”
“We are going to Greece!”
At that moment, someone knocked on the door of the garret where we lived. It was a friend and member of Francisco Marín’s well-known (at the time) South American music group, Los Guaraníes. He said to me, “Listen, we have to leave on tour to Greece in three days to give a show at a folk festival, and one of our dancers has fallen ill. Would you replace him?”
“But I do not know these dances. .”
“It doesn’t matter. My wife is going to teach you!”
Right away I learned two dances, Bailecito and Carnavalito. Then, sure as you please, we left for Greece. After that, how can I not consider reality like a dream that belongs to me to create as I go along?
I agree on the principle; but your anecdotes and the way in which you express them appear to me to be open to confusion. After all, the earth is populated with people who don’t ask for anything but to realize their dreams without effort. Experience shows that to desire is not enough; one must also merit it.
What you say here appears very important. Of course, these things that I’m telling you happened to me, so I can say that my life is commensurate with my craziest dreams. I truly believe in the magic of reality. But for this magic to operate, it is befitting to cultivate in oneself a certain number of qualities that are at times contradictory, at least in appearance: innocence, self-control, faith, bravery. . Putting this magic into motion requires a lot of audacity, and also purity, and a lot of work on oneself. So I insist that I devote my existence to perfecting myself, to knowing myself, and to making myself internally accessible. It is important to never lose sight of all the discipline without which this approach to existence would be but an illusion. Life is not there for satisfying the desires of the first sloth that was created! Life is wonderful to us when we abandon ourselves to it and when we overcome our egocentrism.
Does this asceticism work then include an application of lessons received by means of the lucid dream? Because, in brief, asceticism requires a great deal of effort, unlike the lucid dream where it is enough just to hold the intention for something to be achieved.
Believe me! To remain conscious within the dream requires a considerable effort.
In addition, the perceived emotions during the dream are very real. If you are terrorized, you really are; you perceive the terror, and it is difficult to face up to things. Finally, the greatest lesson of the lucid dream does not reside as such in the demand for lucidity. So, do not forget that without lucidity, nothing is possible. Thus, as I said, from the instant when one lets oneself be caught up by the experience one crosses into, the dream absorbs us, and the lucidity that was the only guarantor of this initiation dimension ends. The magic we have called forth does not operate except by detachment. What makes the game possible is the lucidity of the witness, whereas identification with consensus reality, on the contrary, shrinks existence and reduces the realm of possibility. In dreams, as in daily life, the same laws operate: The more one is detached, the more one can enjoy perceiving all of existence as a vast playground. The less one is detached, the more life turns into a dead end. Dreaming thus taught me, paradoxically, to wake up and maintain a lucid current as a thread of existence, even if this requires a major effort. Because God knows how marvelous life can be when one is, above all, open to its magic! The danger of identification is the temptation to let oneself be captured by the spell as one opens up. On the other hand, lucidity strengthens itself with practice.