We read about nice, mild-mannered people suddenly killing their parents or spraying a supermarket with bullets.
Their friends and neighbors might say they never suspected that that was in this person. They’re like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (1)
What does that depiction actually point to?
Well, as far as I’m aware, it refers to the situation that vasanas or core issues bring about.
We’re the gentlemanly Dr. Jekyll until we’re triggered. Then we erupt and become Mr. Hyde. When we’re not triggered, we return to being Dr. Jekyll.
I distinctly see myself having played this pattern out. As I said on another occasion, all that’s different is the lengths we go to. I don’t hack people to pieces; Mr. Hyde does. But I was antagonistic and unpleasant.
We all may turn out to have a little of Jekyll and Hyde in us in the sense that, until Ascension, we won’t be entirely rid of our vasanas.
Only Sahaja Samadhi, only the love that’s released in a full and permanent heart opening, is sufficient to burn the seeds of future actions/karma – or vasanas. (2)
I watch myself either doing or on the verge of doing my metamorphosis from Jekyll to Hyde these days but now I’m aware of the “number.”
I notice I always have an excuse, justification, and denial ready. But in the end I just go ahead and do whatever the heck I want anyways, excuse or no excuse.
Everything I knew as Dr. Jekyll goes out the window. Mr. Hyde has no measure, balance, compassion. He sees matters through an us-against-them filter. Conflict results. Relationships break down. And I justify it all.
Then Jekyll returns and I wonder what all the fuss was about.
For me, this was a mundane story. This was not just a rare occurrence but, in different forms and degrees, routine stuff.
I also don’t want to exaggerate. I was an everyday Jekyll and Hyde. I was filled with repetitive upsets and incompleted issues. Who am I to point the finger at someone else?
This is not a life and I remember wondering to myself, over and over, “Is this all? Is there not more?”
In the last analysis, our vasanas, in my opinion, are all that stand between us and enlightenment (Ascension being only one stage of it).
Given that, what subject could be more important to us than cleansing ourselves of them and the habitual behavior they give rise to?
Footnotes
(1) From a Robert Louis Stevenson novel of similar name.
(2) “The flame of illumination … is kindled by discrimination between Atman [Self, Christ, Buddha nature] and non-Atman. [It] will burn away the effects of ignorance [i.e., the vasanas], down to their very roots.” (Shankara in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher lsherwood, Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination. Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1975; c1947, 39.)
“The old vasanas pertaining to the body, (mind and so on) are destroyed. Being free from body-consciousness one never has the sense of doership.
“Since such a one has no sense of doership, his karma, it is said, is completely destroyed [in practical terms, no more vasanas]. As nothing but the Self exists, no doubts arise for him.
“Once the knot [of ignorance] is cut, one is never bound again. This is considered the state of power supreme and peace supreme [i.e., Ascension from the Third to the Fifth Dimension].” (Sri Ramana Maharshi in Vasistha Ganapathi, ed., Sri Ramana Gita. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanashramam, 1977, 49-55.)