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.”