Beyond

Stepping out of the patterns of abuse and into a vaster world

Gene Roddenberry had it backward. The ultimate frontier isn’t space. It’s the human mind.

I believe that the possibility of a multi-layered universe, the many dimensions of the time-space continuum, was first revealed to our collective consciousness through the work of fiction writers. We first needed to collectively expand our imagination to encompass other possibilities within the human mind. This new perspective deconstructed reality in such a way that we were able to anticipate the physical world with a brand new perspective. Quantum physics is now an established sector of physics that involves some of the world’s most innovative minds as well as the biggest machines on Earth. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the exploration of matter and space as we know it was first made possible through the immensely popular works of a 19th-century writer whose work is known to every kid in the Western world. I’m talking, of course, of Robert Louis Stevenson and his Jekyll and Hyde.

Strange case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was born out of a nightmare. A joyous nightmare. Stevenson was very unhappy to be awoken from sleep by his wife, one night of 1885, as he was dreaming of Hyde. One can romantically imagine that it was one of those stormy, passionate nights that have made British storytelling so riveting. The story of Jekyll and Hyde was written in three days, burned, and rewritten again in three days, a phenomenal achievement for such a frail man.

Stevenson had always been fascinated by psychology; he was a contemporary of the researches of Charcot on hysteria and hypnosis, the secretary of the Edinburgh Society of Psychology and an associate member of the London Society for Psychical Research, until his death. His interest might very well have stemmed from the fact that he, himself, was having experiences of a double within himself, his “other companion” which, during one episode of fever, took possession of him. 1 In A chapter on dreams, he also talks about the Brownies2, who infiltrated his dreams and gave him his best ideas.

Born out of intuitive insight at the heart of the Victorian era, in the wake of Edgar Allen Poe’s dark worlds, Jekyll and Hyde has more to do with the overwhelming power of repressed emotions and with the seductiveness of the dark side of the human psyche, than with multiple personalities. Jekyll chooses to transform into his evil double and uses a potion to achieve his endeavor, something none affected by Dissociative identity disorder (DID) ever had to do. Jekyll also fakes his handwriting while the multiple personalities living within one person each have their own. When Shakespeare shows the horizontal emotional layers of his characters (devoured by ambition, Macbeth goes from barely decent to evil when his wife, ruthlessly wicked at first, shows a lot more vulnerability towards the end), Stevenson has created characters whose layers incarnated into full-blown personalities which stand side by side. Vertically, so to speak. Shakespeare’s Macbeth: multilayers of human emotion. An honest soldier at first, Macbeth sinks through his own veneer of decency to taste the intoxicating nectar of ambition which has always been oozing within. Push by his wife, entranced by the predictions of the witches, Macbeth will run back and forth throughout the play between the morality which structures him and the deep-inset thirst for power that he cannot escape. Shakespeare operates on a horizontal level, going through the many layers which encompass the human heart whereas, in Jekyll, Stevenson operates on a vertical plane. Hyde does not dwell under Jekyll, he lives next to him and crushes him further and further away until, just as Stevenson in his delirious fever, he possesses the body that society had labeled Dr. Jekyll entirely.3

Stevenson published the hugely popular Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886, the same year as Jean Moreas officialized the term ‘Symbolism’, a painting style which tried to go beyond visible reality. It is also the year that Sigmund Freud opened his office in Vienna and that Heinrich Hertz verified the existence of the electromagnetic waves4. this isn’t a coincidence: the world as a material construct had started to dissolve. Young Albert Einstein, born in 1879, grew up in a world were reality was beginning to be deconstructed into many dimensions.

“The artist is the point at which the growth of the mind shows itself”, says the artist and teacher I.A. Richards. I don’t have multiple personalities, yet many “I” inhabit my mind. Same as yours. The only difference between you and I might be that my alter egos have names, faces, bodies and a history of their own. All six of them. There used to be more…

In her book, When Rabbit howls5, the Troops (the many personalities inhabiting the body of Truddi Chase who have written the book together) explain how each of them was born out of a need for Truddi’s mind to survive the horrible abuses she was being subjected to by her step-father. There were many children alter egos within her, teenagers and grown-ups, of both genders. Only one of them never changed. He was the mastermind and the main reference for Truddi’s psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Phillips, the psychiatrist who followed her for years.

One must understand that the many personalities living in a fractured mind are often not aware of each other. As most recorded splits occurred before the age of six, before the personality is formed, a child can live for decades without ever being aware of his vari-peopled world. The therapeutic process, therefore, involves helping the alters to get to know each other and to share the memories of abuse that each one of them possessed. Instead of trying to force the personalities to fuse as quickly as possible, Dr. Phillips trusted the inherent wisdom of the Troops and enabled them to work together. He trusted the inherent wisdom of Truddi’s powerful, albeit divided, mind. He was confident that if someone so badly damaged could have managed to lead a functional life, there must be a powerful capacity for resiliency within her and he was wise enough, humble enough, to let himself be guided as much as he was the guide.

Roger, my Buddhist therapist, had the same wisdom. When I came up with the idea to create a room in which I could get in touch with my psyche, he immediately plunged in. The idea was not mine: I had gotten it talking with a friend who had been working with imagery for years. The difference laid in that, while it had taken her seven years of work to create her space, it took one session of hypnosis in a deep trance for Roger to implant the system within my mind. I called this space The Room. It was the mirror image of own room at the time, a small pleasant chamber that I would enter and see what was going on in my mind.

I could not suspect, as we were creating The Room, of the fabulous worlds which I would discover. I did not know that I would find dark passages and hidden chambers, hit on creatures of Heaven and of Earth, discover clusters of emotions hiding in closets, monsters, and innocents playing, working, and dancing in a waltz of infinite complexity. Patterns and programs swirling, enforced by emergency and running amok, furies clothed in silk red gowns, protectors and anchors, animals and systems, all attuned to a single objective: enabling one individual to survive.

I saw several battered little girls huddling in corners, the first time that I entered. There was one adult woman crouched on the bed. And there was The Awakened One, sitting by the window, her face indistinguishable, her voice very still. She presented herself as the anchor of the soul, the point of contact between the mind-body and the unlimited soul. Roger came to trust her long before I did.

The work was simple. I would go into a light trance and describe what I saw. The alter egos started to talk with Roger, each in their own voices and body attitudes and explain what was going on with them. I could hear everything and, at first, thought myself a very good actress indeed for switching energies so fast. It is only a few years later, as I was working as a dramaturg for a theater company, that I realized that I am actually quite ungifted as an actress and that the whole thing had never been acting at all.

Strange beings emerged as we kept on working with the alter egos. Snakes, mostly. I didn’t pay much attention the first time that I observed a huge python circling around The Room, although I am terrified by snakes. I did not think it was important. “Just fiction of my imagination”, I thought, without understanding the deep interrelation it signified with the movements of my mind. Other snake appeared, and others, a hill full of snakes all over The Room. Snakes, a mythical symbol of sexual energy. Snakes, my mind’s symbol for repressed sexual wounds. Members of the Buddhist community had to call Roger one weekend, as I was on the verge of suicide, my psyche literally being crushed under the weight of the snakes. I was hovering in the corridor, at the edge of madness, like a ghost.

Roger didn’t know what to do with this situation, but he knew someone who did. He called for the Awakened One.

Panther was born out of my need to deal with the sudden outburst of repressed sexual energy. She emerged from the floor of The Room, a sinuous character dressed in tight-fitting black clothes. Ruthless, fearless and absolutely undisturbed by men, she took care of the snakes. She opens a snake-chute in the wall, slitting the snakes open with her thumb fingernail. The chute was created to recapture the energy released by the snakes and feed it back to the system. It worked. At the end of this single session, I was myself again. Even Roger was amazed at the change. Something like Jekyll and Hyde.

We used the snake chute for almost a year.

I loved working with Panther. I loved her fearlessness. She was my first step into physical self-confidence. We eventually fused her with the skinny teenager, with Six, a little girl devoid of skin which we discovered in the closet. And with The Werewolf, the flesh-eating monster we found hiding in an even deeper closet.

The personalities in a fractured mind often don’t want to disappear. My alter egos had no such problems. The moment that we fused Panther in the Room, I saw a wave of energy which expanded in a circle so wide that it was encompassing several planets.

“This is getting really far-fetched”, I said as I came back from a trance.

Roger smiled. “This doesn’t sound so preposterous to me,” he answered, in true Buddhist fashion. Ten years later, a heilpraktiker6 in Germany would tell me that I was not healing myself only for me, but for my whole community, my whole lineage.

Healing, that is to say, cellular reprogrammation, will only go so far as the mind will allow. No mind lives in a vacuum, none of us is separate from the race. I am beginning to suspect that the liberation of one’s body-mind neurosis may affect others. How I cannot tell. My home province of Quebec is fertile in sexual wounds, thanks to our Catholic history. It would be nice if I could be of help…

I stopped visiting the Room after I moved to Germany. I had a lot to deal with and no therapist. After eleven years, I felt that I had dealt with pretty much everything. I wanted to invest myself in my new love relationship and just be normal. I didn’t feel the need to come back to it until after my father’s death, seven years later.

The set-up had not changed but were new people.

I met Bronco, a bad boy with tattoos and pirate-like bandanna, who enjoys smoking, drinking (and, I suspect, wenching) and who types on his laptop with frenzy. He’s my creative drive. I met Two, a lovely little girl with long reddish-blond hair and a wide smile, my unwounded child. I met Three, the wounded one, thin as a bone and often bleeding. Two is bigger than Three. She comforts her and plays with her. I met The Singing Bastard, the Protector, who sings Indian songs and plays with the little ones. And I saw the Awakened One again, the only one who hadn’t changed. Then, after some sessions of osteopathy released, to my surprise, the last remnants of the abuse still imprisoned in my body, I saw the birth of Carmen, the seductive woman.

My father’s death released deep stored emotions. The very structure of The Room changed. I visited it, forty days after my father’s death, only to find out that the desk had disappeared. In its place, there was an arch opening to the outside, to a garden filled with sunlight. There was a freshwater fountain surrounded with rose bushes. There were tall trees and a hammock. There was thick grass where the Little Ones could play. There was a garden table for Bronco’s espresso cup, cigarettes, and a portable computer. There was a chaise longue for Carmen to sunbathe in her red dress.

The garden is walled but you can feel the wind and see the stars. There is space for The Singing Bastard’s owl to soar.

It’s a lovely place. All mine.

I believe that working and exploring one’s multiple alter egos, much more complex and multi-layered than the so-called “dark side”, can be an immensely creative motor and a certain remedy against boredom. You will be awed, afraid, panicked, subjugated and amazed at every turn. Boredom cannot be part of the equation when you explore your own, private Universe.

Last night I walked into The Room. There was a knotted cord hanging over The Awakened one, hanging from an opening in the ceiling. I saw the Awakened One’ hands grab the cord and climb it. I saw her lifting herself higher and higher, hand by hand. The tunnel going up, is long and thin, like a tower or a well.

Higher and higher. To where?

The Universe is endless. Even more so, is the mind.

1 Letter of R.L. Stevenson to F.W.H. Myers, archives of the Society for Psychical Research (vol.IX), reprinted in Essais sur l’art de la fiction, Petite Bibliothèque Payot, 2007, p.416.

2 Brownies are fairytale beings popular in British and Scottish folklore. They are said to inhabit houses and help their inhabitants in various tasks, during the night. Although generally benevolent, they can become malicious if neglected or ridiculed.

3 Oscar Wilde will further use this principle of the evil double in The picture of Dorian Gray.

4 The year 1886 also saw the invention of the first gasoline-driven automobile by Karl Benz, of the first practical alternating current transformer, of the Folies Bergère, of an inexpensive method for refining aluminum and of Coca-Cola. The first African-American priest from the USA was also ordained in the Vatican.

5 Chase, Truddi, When Rabbit Howls: by the Troops for Truddi Chase. Dutton, 1987.

6 Litteraly “Health practionner”, heilpraktiker is a state-recognized profession in Germany, which encompasses many types of alternative medicine, such as homeopathy, acupuncture, plant-therapy and chiropracy. It is backed by a state exam, after six years of full-time study.