The Enemy within: Encountering and Conquering the Dark Side

The dark side. The synthetic self. The not-self. The Gnostics called it the counterfeiting spirit and the Theosophists called it the 'dweller-on-the-threshold'. There exists within all of us a collective consciousness of all our misdeeds, momentums of many lifetimes, which emerges as a pseudo-identity that wields human power and causes us to do those things we so often regret. The encounter with the enemy within has been vividly portrayed in classic works of literature such as Sir Bulwer-Lytton's "Zanoni", Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and in modern movie masterpieces such as "Star Wars". From time to time, we contact the tip of the iceberg in our tendency to fear, to be jealous or to get angry and we see those who have become one with their dweller committing rape and mass murder.