Yogini of the Rakshasa self
Photo: Hirapur Yogini by Richard Barz
Our attachment to our selfhood, the “I” ness, is a Rakshasa, a sub-human space of immense magnetism and cruelty. It holds the blood-thirsty ruthlessness of the Rakshasa and the grounded, swaying and kingly majesty of the elephant in the same moment.
The Rakshasa “I” is beauteous, abundant and gluttonous. Her head is engorged with stories and acquisitions that feed the many mouths of her multiple heads. The head points to the space of mental action (chitta), which is essentially the storying of life events so that it matches the needs of our self-interest.
We are nonchalant about the Rakshasa “I” at our peril—it is no caricatured, self-evident, blustering humanoid that can be easily identified with our simplistic moral frameworks. The Rakshasa is hard-wired into the foundations of our selfhood .
The Rakshasa “I” walks through life regally, with the noble gait of the elephant. With exquisite grace, the Rakshasa tears apart all other beings that stand in the way of our self-interest. In mythology, the Rakshasas destroyed rituals and practices undertaken by sages by uprooting trees and throwing them upon the ritual arrangements. So it is with our Rakshasa self— we are ruthless in wreaking destruction upon paradigms that challenge the sustenance of our many heads. In other words, radical change of any kind is a mortal threat to our selfhood.
In our times, we have conveniently “othered” the Rakshasa archetype—it has become a reviled and despised space. In our times, we interpret the attributes of this space as occult practices of blood-letting and human sacrifice. At the other end of the spectrum, Rakshasa has become a desirable subversion of the mainstream, an indulgence in all that we consider immoral or taboo.
Neither of the above approaches provides a meaningful and transformative approach to the Rakshasa as a contemplative practice. Rakshasa is neither to be reviled nor to be desired—it is an inquiry into the high walls of the fortress of our selfhood to protect which we will go to any lengths. The inquiry is to examine those moments in our lives when, overcome by the gluttony of self-preservation, we tear apart other lives. It is the inquiry into the moments when we uproot forests to raze any paradigm that may threaten our fortress selfhood.
The “I” sourced in the Rakshasa space can never arrive at action or thought that will bring harmony to all life because it cannot perceive beyond its own self-interest. No matter what story we tell ourselves, no matter if we carry our heads with the majesty and grace of the elephant, in truth we are carrions that scour the battlefields of life, so long as we remain in the fortress of the Rakshasa self.