These people, drawn from the masses and not theatrical artists by any stretch, were supposed to become enlightened monks by the end of the film. Searching for magical sites, we had climbed all the Aztec and Mayan pyramids that had been largely rebuilt for the tourism industry. Thus we arrived at Isla Mujeres and contemplated the magnificent blue and turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea — at last, something authentic. There, I decided to arrange a fundamental experience: after having all of us shaved, myself included, we went out on a small shrimp boat. After an hour, we were on the high seas. A resplendent blue-green circle surrounded us. The beautiful ocean, with its gigantic but gentle waves, stretched all the way to the horizon. I gathered the actors around me and, in a state of trance, said, “Let us jump and submerge ourselves in the ocean. The individual soul must learn to dissolve in that which has no limits.” I do not know what happened at that moment. They looked at me with childlike eyes, offering me a faith that in fact I did not deserve. I then gave a karate-style scream and jumped, pushing the group into the sea. As soon as we fell, I received an enormous lesson of humility. We had jumped in wearing the costumes of Sufi pilgrims. We had on heavy boots, baggy trousers, sashes at the waist, roomy shirts, and long coats, as well as broad-brimmed hats. The hats were not a problem, they just floated; but the costumes became dangerously heavy as soon as they filled with water. I felt myself sinking into the depths of the sea like a stone, a descent that seemed to last for an eternity. Suddenly the whole sea was pressed against my body, with its incommensurable power, its unfathomable mystery, its monstrous presence. I was trapped in its superhuman belly, feeling smaller than a microbe. Who was I in the midst of this colossal being? I moved as well as I could, not sure that I would be able to save my life; perhaps I would continue sinking into the dark depths. I never thought to pray or beg for help; I had no time. Then the enormous mass of water threw me up to the surface. The dive had lasted only a few seconds, but we came up about fifteen meters from the boat. On land fifteen meters are barely anything, but offshore, such a distance is like kilometers. I had not considered that sharks and other carnivorous creatures might live there. On the boat the fishermen, taking us for crazy gringos, set about improvising a rescue. For our part, trained by those months of initiatory exercises, we waited calmly. The individuals bobbing on the waves became a collective being. The Native American, slapping gently at the water, said that she did not know how to swim. The Nazi, who turned into a champion swimmer, held her by the chin and helped her float. Corkidi, the photographer, completely forgetting that his task was to film transcendental moments such as this, cursed while helping to throw us a lifesaver attached to a long rope. The millionaire, who was closest to the boat, threw the lifesaver to the nearest person, the bird communicator, who reciting a mantra threw it to another, and so on until we were all joined, clinging to the rope. Without this tranquillity, we might all have drowned.
We boarded the ship in religious silence. We undressed and wrapped ourselves in towels. We began to shiver. When they recovered the use of their jaws, the actors, as well as the photographer, his assistants, and the shrimpers, began to insult me. Only two remained silent. The comedian, who in the film had the role of a thief, a symbol of the primitive and egotistic Self, had behaved as such in the water: without any concern for the group, he had simply emerged from the depths and swum with all the strength of his well-developed muscles toward the boat. The other silent person was my wife, the only one of the group who had not jumped. She had remained on the deck, watching us, paralyzed or simply disbelieving. Because of this, something between the two of us was cut off forever. In that moment, we realized that our paths were going in different directions. I realized that in order to become my true self I had to cleanse myself of this leprosy that was the fear of abandonment and accept my solitude in order to one day achieve genuine connections with others.
The actors, however, declared that they did not give a damn about becoming enlightened monks and that all they had wanted was to become film stars. The dip in the Caribbean Sea was a mistake that had taught them a lesson: they would never again obey my follies as a director. To begin with, they demanded a good breakfast with orange juice, eggs, toast, cereal, butter, and jam, plus no more improvisation beyond what was in the script. Otherwise they would quit. For me, this was an essential experience. I knew that from then on I would have the courage to face the subconscious without letting myself be invaded by terror, knowing that the ship of my reason would always throw a rope out to save me.
But let us return to the lucid dream. I had just thrown myself into that gigantic being of light, and just like in the Caribbean Sea, I experienced the immensity of its power. But this time, prepared as I was by the previous experience, I did not struggle to come to the surface as if escaping from the jaws of a monster, but let myself slide toward the bottom. I had the sensation of falling slowly while dissolving, as if the light was an acid. Finally, shouting with a mixture of euphoria and peace, I let go of my last crumb of individual consciousness. I was integrated into the center. I exploded into a succession of inconceivable shapes, thousands of them, millions, and they formed worlds that evaporated, oceans of color, words, phrases, conversations in countless languages intermixed like colossal labyrinths, and as time became an eternal instant, palpitating, opening itself into endless possible of futures, I was the creating nucleus, detonating unceasingly, never stopping, never silent, in countless metamorphoses. I was shaken by a kind of violent earthquake, and eight gates opened at my inconceivable extremities, or eight bridges, eight tunnels, eight mouths — what can I call them? And from them, other universes began, also exploding with delirious creations, joining in turn with the other universes until they formed an astral mass like a colossal hive.
How long did this dream last? I do not know. The concept of duration had been abolished. I was lucky, or unlucky, that a torrential rain accompanied by gale force winds assaulted the city that night. The blinds on my windows started banging, making a racket. I woke up thinking that I was still in the dream. It took me a long time to recover my reason. The wall that separated me from the subconscious had partly crumbled. Although I knew I was an individual, in my brain I could still feel the incessant creation of images.
My brain continued to produce worlds; it was an immense hurricane of creative madness. The “I” lived within a multifaceted demented god. Reason was a small boat sailing an infinite ocean, rocked by every storm, traversed by every entity, angelic or demonic, there was no distinction; by every language, living, dead, or as yet uncreated; by the inconceivable multitude of forms; by the absolute dismembering of unity.
After this extreme vision, which in certain ways I used to create my Incal books, I did not dream again for a long time. Lucid dreams started to become a popular topic, first in the United States, then worldwide. There was even an American who tried to sell machines that could produce them. Several books were published, some of them serious, others less so, as in the case of one author who claimed to have magical powers. I read the books avidly. They helped me to understand something fundamentaclass="underline" people who describe their lucid dreams describe things that correspond to their level of consciousness and to their beliefs. If they are Catholic, for example, they see Christ with great emotion. If they have some form of morality, the messages in their dreams will corroborate it. I remembered having a conversation with a psychoanalyst friend who gave me examples of dreams: the patients of Freudian analysts had dreams with sexual symbols in them, Jungians had mandalas and shape shifting, Lacanians had word games, and so on. That is to say, they dream in accordance with their analysts’ theories, which for them have the power of dogma. I realized that something similar happened with lucid dreaming: a pretentious writer will direct her consciousness within the dream like a pretentious person; a mythomaniacal ethnologist will create adventures in his dream world in which he holds the nontransmissible secrets of indigenous magic. I examined my vision of the creative center. When I became one with it, I had eight gates. That is, a double square. Tocopilla! Toco: double square. Pilla: devil consciousness. Was it a coincidence? Had the Quechuas dreamed my same dream? Does the eternal creator, Pillán, communicate with other creators through his eight bridges? Either that or the name of my hometown had influenced my images. Why not nine gates, or ten, or a thousand?