some aspects of AVRT remind me of Eckhart Tolle and his concept about 'voice in the head'.
A quick summary is that he was 29 years old and suffered with depression & anxiety, he was going to kill himself, he couldn't live with himself any longer.
Saying that made him think, if I can't live with myself there appears to be two distinct people in that idea: "I" and "myself". He began to question who this "self" was he couldn't live with.
He calls that self the ego
I won't go on but if that interests you I have to say I got a lot from his books 'The Power of Now' and 'A New Earth'
“What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.”
I think that helped me grasp the idea of the beast
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose