Deities and Myths

Psychic experiences and their interpretation

The psychic experiences of the conscious Ego often involve the observation of the success or failure of the same Ego in obtaining what the human psyche requires it to desire and want, both as regards the needs of the organism and about other needs of psychic origin in which the Ego is involved, so that it engages the energies at its disposal in the activities that are required of it. In the course of human evolution many of these needs of psychic origin have been elaborated in the form of cultural programs – progressively updated on the basis of social needs – which are transmitted to each new member of that culture, in order to activate the psychic attunements that seem more suited to the needs of a social organization, according to the interpretation of those who manage it. The same psychic dynamics cause the Ego to feel gratified and often elated by success, that is, by having obtained results that conform to its expectations (also as a consequence of the actions planned and undertaken to get such results), while it feels disappointed and sometimes crestfallen when, despite its efforts, it does not get what it hoped to achieve. Through cultural programs, these psychic dynamics extend to entire social groups, and are at the root of armed conflicts and many human tragedies. In the historical development of the more complex social groups, the different way in which individuals reacted to these psychic dynamics and interpreted them, determined the formation of the main cultural roles assigned according to the particular resources each person had at their disposal: the organizer, the action man, the warrior, the religious, the businessman, the philosopher, the technician, the doctor, and so on. In one form or another, these cultural roles continue to determine human functioning even in our current societies.

Obviously, the more the Ego – depending on the level of development of its own consciousness – identifies itself with the psychic dynamics in which it is involved, the more it will be inclined to attribute to itself and to its own abilities and resources, the successes achieved. To be consistent, the same thing should happen in relation to failures, but in this case self-defense mechanisms often intervene that require the Ego to attribute the responsibility for them to someone else or to some particular event. However, there are people who vigorously react to their failures: without being discouraged, they plan and implement new enterprises as soon as possible. Other people instead interpret the negative blows of fate as a confirmation of their weakness, and at a certain point they are no longer able to react. The most interesting aspect of these dynamics consists in the fact that if – in the context of its own self-awareness – the Ego may be able to differentiate itself from the psychic dynamics that involve it, also attributing the resources at its disposal to that particular power that has determined its organic existence as a human (in a specific place and in a particular historical period), each of us is, for the others, a person, to whom merits and demerits are attributed and recognized en bloc and indiscriminately, without being able to make distinctions between its conscious Ego and the psychic dynamics that involve it (and with which, almost always, it identifies itself). In this way, from our limited point of view as human automata, we are often convinced that the movements of the pieces interacting on the life game's chessboard are determined by the pieces themselves: this is only in minimal part true, but the same dynamics that rule the game make sure that the avatars – that is, the pieces that move on the board – are convinced that themselves are the players (see also the post on The Avatar and the Gamer).

In the history of human cultures, the psyche's power to determine and direct people's destiny – involving the Ego of each one to consciously experience and elaborate a gamut of psychic dynamics – has given rise to different representations of more or less personalized divine entities. The divine character of these entities – for example, the gods of Greco-Roman mythology – expressed the power attributed to them to control and manage not so much the natural events per se, but the psychic effects that both the natural events and those generated by human interactions had for the conscious Ego. The immortality of these divinities, as opposed to the temporary duration of human life, expressed the permanent character of the psychic dynamics that continued to exert their effects from generation to generation, determining the collective human affairs and the destiny of single individuals. The submission (but in some cases also the rebellion) of the human being to the will of the gods interpreted the attitude of the conscious Ego towards the psychic dynamics that involved it, binding it to certain behaviors and the resulting consequences. However, under certain circumstances, this or that divine entity could manifest itself directly for some time in a human mind, through the phenomenon of enthusiasm (from the Greek enthousiasmòs, that is, feeling the god within oneself, a divine possession): in this case too, we deal with the interpretation of a non-ordinary state of consciousness that the Ego experiences, or of a particular state of trance – natural or induced by the assumption of psychoactive substances – through which the divine spirit can manifest itself in an organism, while the Ego is only partially conscious or is in a state of unconsciousness. The multiplicity of the divine pàntheon expresses the different aspects of the psyche, as they manifest both with regard to the organization of different human activities, and in relation to the orientation of the conscious Ego towards the events that can occur in the various stages of its life.

The psyche's bipolarity and the conflicts between deities

We have repeatedly observed how the human psyche shows intrinsic contradictions, which can determine conflicts both between people and at a social level or between nations: the psyche's power of involvement towards the conscious Ego has not been lost due to the mere fact that today we are much less inclined to believe in the influence of the gods. In the past, however, human conflicts – which today we are inclined to interpret in terms of economic interests, territorial control or, more simply, cultural dominance – were often attributed to the same personalized deities to which the warring parties referred. Even today, forms of religious fanaticism widespread in many areas of the planet make it possible to fight in the name of a divinity and a faith. The historical events of mankind show how the assimilation of the vanquished by the victors often entailed the formal acceptance, by the vanquished, of the cultural programs of the victors, including the latter's deities. Religious tolerance, which left the vanquished the freedom to continue to believe in their own divinities, even through the performance of public ceremonies, was almost always determined by political considerations, and was manifested more towards social groups that agreed to pay tributes than those openly hostile. Some differences can be observed in the cultural interpretation with which human conflicts were considered, which could be attributed to divergences between deities belonging to the same pàntheon, or to clashes between gods incompatible with each other. In the first case the conflicts were considered almost like a chessgame between the gods, who – being immortal – certainly could not be eliminated, while humans – as mortals – constituted the expendable pieces of the game. In the second case, a deity could also be annihilated by the elimination of all humans who believed in its divine existence.

The psychic elaboration of divine entities almost always originated from the experiences lived by some people in a non-ordinary state of consciousness: these experiences, although intrinsically subjective, must in any case be considered as facts, since they actually occur and exert their effects also on a person's behavior. On the other hand, while it is true that a subjective psychic event can also leave some doubt as to how it was actually experienced, elaborated and interpreted, the building of temples and cathedrals and the performance of ritual ceremonies in which many people take part are objective events, which cannot be questioned. The fact that a divinity exists or does not exist according to the effect of conviction that its psychic representation exerts on the conscious Ego should at least warn us about the expedients used by the human psyche to control the Ego: but, as we have repeatedly pointed out, many people – today as in the past – spend their whole life in a condition of human automata, as their conscious Ego identifies with the psychic attunements in which it is involved. The very fact that the Ego must experience, in the course of organic life, the psyche's power and the bipolar, coercive, fascinating and often violent character of the same, forces it to recognize its own weakness and to see in the psyche the manifestation of a divine power, by which it is dominated and to which it feels it must submit. Should this weakness of the Ego be attributed to the real vulnerability of the organism towards many natural events that occur on this planet, it does not change the psychic character of the experiences in which the conscious Ego is involved: psychic dynamics can elaborate a convincing representation of a deity who unleashes lightning storms or agitates the waters of the sea, of a god who makes the earth shake and volcanoes erupt, and of another deity who plagues humans with deadly diseases.

Polytheism, with its variegated pàntheon of divinities and the mythical elaboration of the conflicting relationships that intervened between them, offered a sufficiently adequate representation of the human psyche and of the power of involvement of the psychic dynamics towards the conscious Ego. Obviously, no particularly intelligent person – endowed with an evolved consciousness and critical spirit – has ever believed in the real existence of the gods, but their symbolic value as effective representations of the psychic dynamics was well recognized even by the most acute philosophers. On the other hand, the historical events and the elaboration of the cultural programs that underlie social organizations have always been determined by the dominant and most widespread attunements of the psyche, towards which intelligence and reason have had (and still have) an almost irrelevant role. The pluralistic nature of the mythological organization of the divine entities, with their fairly precise roles and the character conflicts attributed to them, underwent a process of transformation in some cultures in favor of a unitary vision in which the organization of the various functions, hierarchically differentiated, was headed by a supreme entity – the true and only God – to which an absolute power was attributed. This process, which represented a sort of self-recognition of the human psyche as a unitary phenomenon, did not bring concrete advantages in terms of eliminating the conflicts determined by the psyche itself, nor in terms of liberation of the conscious Ego from its subjection and identification with the psychic dynamics in which it was and is involved.

First of all, the belief in the existence of a single god immediately clashed with the fact that humans belonging to other social groups continued to believe in a different god or in a plurality of deities: therefore the need arose for religious proselytism, to be pursued with any means, including coercion by force. The inherent conflictuality of the human psyche could find fertile ground in the religion wars, which were not limited to attempts to forcefully impose the faith in one's god on those who believed in other deities (or did not believe in the real existence of any god), but often also brought into conflict those who, while claiming to believe in the same divinity, felt the need to bloody dispute about the attributes of this god or the interpretation of its will. As always, there was no shortage of those who, animated by the enthusiasm of divine inspiration, were ready to sacrifice their lives to the point of martyrdom in order to spread the faith in the true and only god to every part of the world. When then, a few centuries ago, the psyche began to inspire those who had some influence in the elaboration of the cultural programs of the most powerful societies, to get rid of the idea of the real existence of a god, many humans naively began to believe that in this way it was also possible to put an end to conflicts, in the name of the progress of all mankind. Much more simply, the psychic conflict shifted from the religious level to that of economic and social models, and the twentieth century did not make us lack its dose of hot and cold wars, with winners, losers, and – above all – a lot of victims. Obviously the human psyche always inspires the propagandists on duty to present historical events – and in particular the contemporary ones – as the necessary steps forward in an evolutionary path that will lead the same psyche to finally give up its intrinsic bipolar and conflictual character, allowing humans to live in peace and concord: but after 4,000 years of well-documented wars and massacres (always in the name of some god or the progress), the conscious Ego begins to have some doubts as to whether this process can be successful.

The liberation of the conscious Ego and the discovery of the afterlife

Among all the interpretative elaborations that have been developed and tested regarding the relationship between the conscious Ego and the human psyche, it seems to me that only two can have a concrete interest for the Ego who wants to get, already in the course of organic life, an understanding of the meaning of its own existence and evolution, based on real experiences and not on more or less imaginative speculations or cultural conditioning. The first of these elaborations is that process to which I have referred several times as the liberation of the conscious Ego from its identification with the dynamics of the human psyche in which it is involved: in its most complete form this process can be implemented through the practices of classic yoga, developed over twenty centuries ago. However, it is very difficult (even if not impossible) that a person raised according to the programs of our Western culture can consistently implement the practices needed by raja yoga, until reaching a total and uninterrupted state of samadhi. In fact, it is a question of progressively reaching a control of mental life that is independent of the needs that we are culturally programmed to attribute to our organism, and that for us become real in all respects. Raja yoga first of all envisages a neutralization of all the psychic dynamics that orient the Ego's will towards any form of action through the organism: a process which – if it is possible in the context of a simple culture that leaves ample margin for personal choices in the context of a still very natural environment – becomes much more difficult in a complex culture like ours, all oriented towards an active life. The compromise of practicing raja yoga for limited periods of time, then returning to normal active life, turns into a kind of Penelope's canvas, putting in contrast two orientations that have completely different purposes.

The action yoga (karma-yoga) and knowledge yoga (jnana-yoga) are more easily and profitably practicable in Western culture. The first commits the Ego to act according to the task it feels it has to fulfill by living, detaching itself from the positive or negative dynamics with which the human psyche tends to influence its choices through emotional gratifications or penalties. Obviously, in order for the Ego to achieve satisfactory and effectively liberating results through karma-yoga, a basic predisposition is needed that also guarantees the Ego the ability to orient itself among the actions to be performed: a mere sense of duty – in the name of which harmful or perverse actions could also be carried out in good faith, justified by the fact that the conscious Ego does not derive any advantage from them – is not enough. Knowledge yoga is that long process to which I have often referred in the pages of this site – which is, in some way, also a testimony of it – through which the conscious Ego acquires information processed by other human beings and further elaborates the acquired data about the meaning of human life and the discovery and enhancement of its own authentic essence: through this process the Ego's consciousness becomes more and more efficient in focusing on the psychic dynamics that involve the Ego and try to force it to identifying with them, and thus manages to reveal the bipolar character of the human psyche, allowing the Ego to free itself from the same energetic process by which it had been originated.

Another elaboration that shows some convergences with the process of liberation of the conscious Ego is represented by the experimentation of a dimension other than that in which human life takes place, a dimension in which the Ego perceives the vibrant presence of a divine entity that radiates an infinite and unconditional love. As we have seen, the real existence of this dimension is witnessed by many of those who have had an NDE, and to some extent by the states of mystical ecstasy that some humans manage to achieve. From a cultural point of view, this dimension can be compared to that heaven to which the Christian religion in particular refers: in considering the psychic importance of the mythical and divine elaboration of the figure of Christ (regardless of the historical reality of the human person to whom it is connected, about which we little know), we recall the numerous quotes attributed to him about the kingdom of heaven, and in particular the important statement «my kingdom is not of this world», which implies a clear separation between the experiences determined by the human psyche and those that the conscious Ego can access once this life has ended. Since NDEs are not a recent phenomenon – even if only for a few decades they have been systematically studied – it is plausible that even in ancient times some people were subjected to intense experiences, lived as real, in the course of which their conscious Ego came into contact with a a completely different reality from the ordinary one to which it was accustomed. These experiences were then re-elaborated – once the Ego had returned to the state of organic life – partly by the experiencers themselves, and partly in the context of small esoteric groups, from which cultural information was then transmitted in a mythicized form that spread in a more or less wide social milieu. Until a few centuries ago, the emotional and symbolic power of myths was still very strong, and prevailed over the cognitive search for the accuracy and value of the testimonies. In any case, as we have already recognized, NDEs, of which we have many thousands of testimonies today, must be considered as well documented facts, even if in their meaning of intrinsically subjective experiences.

In our days, these experiences – and the permanent alterations they cause in the psychic attunements of those who have lived them – lead to the discovery (or rediscovery) of the afterlife, understood as the dimension of the spirit in which the conscious Ego continues its own existence once – when organic life is over – it has been freed from the dynamics of the human psyche. Many NDEs are characterized by an intense feeling of homecoming, in the light of which human life appears as an exploratory journey into unknown territories, exposed to all sorts of hazards and dangers, in front of which the Ego must often see the limits of the resources at its disposal: in this process of re-elaborating its earthly experiences, the Ego is comforted and supported by the feeling of comprehension and empathy that emanates from the divine entity that welcomes and protects it by radiating an unconditional and absolute love, by the which the Ego feels revitalized and invigorated in its own authentic mental and spiritual essence. We, who are still immersed in the experience of organic life and subject to the dynamics of the human psyche, can also believe that the mythical features of NDEs reveal their peculiarity of subjective and illusory experiences, despite the repeated and convinced assertions by the experimenters on the absolute reality of what they have experienced. After all, most humans are not subject to a NDE, even when their organism is in critical condition, and not all NDEs are positive and spiritually rewarding experiences for the conscious Ego. Nevertheless, in at least 60% of cases, the testimonies of NDEs – which, as I have already said, are now a lot of thousands – agree in reporting: 1) the encounter with a divine entity that radiates an infinite love, 2) the intense and joyful feeling of having finally returned to the dimension to which the authentic spiritual essence of our Ego belongs, 3) the desire to want to dwell forever in that heavenly dimension, and 4) the painful affliction – sometimes accompanied by a feeling of despair and rebellion – with which NDErs accept the prospect of having to continue their experience of organic life.

It is a question, as we can see, of a range of psychic experiences completely different from those to which the conscious Ego has been accustomed (and has adapted) in the course of its organic life, during which it is as if it were locked inside a bubble made up of those tunings of the human psyche and the acquired programs, which together represent that particular cultural description of the reality of life to which the Ego almost always ends up submitting. This bubble serves to separate the Ego from infinity and eternity, and – in some way – protects it, allowing it to experience the temporal and limited experience of organic life, mediated by the narrow band of the psychic dynamics in which it is involved. Before trying to better understand what the value and meaning of human life can be in relation to a spiritual existence, it is advisable to highlight the wide range of psychic attunements that the conscious Ego can experience in our time, provided that it has the resources, thanks to the rapid spreading of information made possible by technological progress. This is an extraordinary opportunity, which many human beings still do not realize, either because they do not have the possibility to benefit from the most advanced technologies, or because of the limits imposed on them by the backward psychic dynamics with which they continue to identify. Even through the elaboration of information on the possible psychic gamuts alternative to those directly experienced, the conscious Ego can get to the end of its own organic life adequately prepared, with sufficient energy to allow it to break from within that bubble in which it has been locked up, which – like the shell of an egg that has already exhausted its function as a food container – now prevents it from transferring its existence into a new dimension.

The nexus between human life and the Spirit dimension

Almost all those who have experienced an NDE no longer have doubts that the death of the organism does not determine the end of the conscious Ego's experience, but only represents the transit towards the Spirit dimension. However, many people live their whole life – or a part of it (as happened to me too) – in the cultural conviction, asserted and shared in the past and even today by many scientists, that the very existence of the conscious Ego is determined exclusively by the functioning of the organism (and in particular by the brain). This belief is essentially based on two facts: the first is that the conscious Ego is formed progressively during the first part of life and does not usually experience any concrete memory of previous forms of existence, except for those who feel and declare – from early childhood – to have already lived another life; the second is that in various circumstances of life our consciousness fades, as a consequence of events determined by the organism's functioning. However, the complexity of the interactions between mind and brain, particularly with regard to conscious and well-memorable experiences such as NDEs, is still far from being elucidated, and the brain itself could be the instrument by which the conscious Ego, when organic life ends or is in a critical condition, is transferred to that dimension which is interpreted as the afterlife. It can also be imagined that in that mental and spiritual – and therefore not physical – dimension, there exists an energetic and computing processor analogous to the brain, whose function is to receive the conscious Ego, allowing it to experience a range of completely different psychic attunements.

In any case, the reality of the facts that we can already experience in this life shows us the existence of at least two dimensions that have very different characteristics: one, that of ordinary reality (perceived and interpreted especially during the waking state), is dominated by the bipolar and mutable features of the human psyche and by the unidirectional passing of time, involving a series of experiences and transformations for the conscious Ego, which can determine an evolution of the quality of its consciousness; the other, that of spiritual reality, is experienced as eternal, or anyway not conditioned by the passing of time, and is often characterized by the presence of an inexhaustible source of creative energy that pervades everything and every entity, manifesting itself to the conscious Ego under the form – more or less personalized – of an absolute, unconditional, unfathomable and infinite love. While the bipolarity of the human psyche – with all the conflicts deriving from it – involves the conscious Ego in experiences perceived as positive, but also – and quite often – as negative, in the form of physical pains caused by the imperfect functioning of its organism, or mental suffering due to conflicts, disappointments or failures, the energy that radiates in the Spirit dimension is unique, and welcomes the Ego, who feels that it has finally returned home in the form of mind and spirit, letting it settle at the most suitable level with respect to the degree of evolution reached by its consciousness. The negative experiences reported by a minority of NDEs are probably due to the legacies of the human psyche which the experimenter's mind is still impregnated with, without having the time to find the resources to get rid of them: often, in fact, they turn into positive experiences, but in some cases this transformation does not occur because the experience is interrupted by the return to organic life.

Positive NDEs – which are the majority of those we have a record of – show that the conscious Ego can experience a state of complete bliss, in which its most intense and only desire is to remain in the Spirit dimension, merging with that source – perceived as divine – from which absolute love emanates. Here we can recall in passing how in the texts of the Vedanta, among which some Upanishads dating back to over 24 centuries ago, reference was already made to this condition, which the conscious Ego can reach already in the course of this life, as the liberation (moksha) from the dynamics of the human psyche (maya) and the union of the free Ego (atman) with the source of everything (Brahman) in a state of absolute bliss. But since we humans still live the experiences determined by organic life and by the mental attunements that characterize our psyche, we can ask ourselves what is the function and importance of our life in terms of the eventual transfer of the conscious Ego into the Spirit dimension, at the body's death. A first answer, simple and rather evident, to which I have already referred, is that the conscious Ego is formed and consolidated – and can evolve – in the context of the organic life and as a result of the experiences determined by the human psyche: this life can therefore be considered like an egg within which a living entity finds the nourishment it needs to grow, until it is ready to break the shell of the egg, which has now become like a prison. The issue, however, lies in the fact that this evolutionary path of the conscious Ego is not the same for all human beings, nay, for the most part people do not even seem interested and involved in a process of spiritual evolution, not only because they do not have the necessary resources (probably due to their own destiny), but above all because human life can be interrupted at any time and at any age, without offering the conscious Ego the time and the possibility to undertake its own evolutionary journey based on the acquired experiences.

I must recognize first of all that – on the basis of the intellectual resources at my disposal – I have not been able up to now to find a fully satisfactory solution of the importance for the conscious Ego of experiencing the human condition, in addition to the one I have previously exposed, namely that this life is indispensable and fundamental for the very formation of the conscious Ego and its liberation. Therefore, those that will be presented below are interpretations developed by someone else, in relation to which everyone can independently assess to what degree they consider them satisfactory and convincing. However, I think a preliminary consideration is necessary: if our human condition is the effect of a creative process on the part of a divine entity (regardless of whether this divinity is imagined as absolute, that is, universal, or relative, as limited to our world), it is obvious that human intellectual resources – even at the level of the most gifted of us – are limited by the quality of our mind: our craving to understand can also determine, over time, a qualitative increase in the mental faculties we have, but ultimately we have to recognize that the intellectual resources with which we are endowed do not depend on our will, but are granted to us, almost like a grace, by the mysterious entity or organization on which our very human existence depends. We cannot escape this limit, and to believe – as some do – that our mind can already understand everything in this life, is a mere self-delusion. We must therefore take into account – albeit with regret – the fact that there may be aspects of human life that remain incomprehensible to us as unknowable to our mind, at least in the context of this life. As noted from the accounts of several NDEs, the divine entities met in that dimension answer the questions posed by NDErs about the meaning of human life in a comprehensive, precise and convincing way, but while the mental and emotional effect of such answers is remembered, the intellectual content of the same is regularly forgotten upon coming back into organic life. Everybody is also free to think that behind the creative and evolutionary process of life there is no divine entity or organization, but this does not mean that they will be able to intentionally increase the intellectual abilities of their own mind!

The intent of this site is to stick to the facts, avoiding – as far as possible – to indulge in mental speculations of suspected psychic origin. In our case, the facts are made up of the reports of many NDEs, which tell us of particularly meaningful, engaging, unforgettable and much more intense experiences than the ordinary reality of our organic life, to which the conscious Ego would no longer want to return. Obviously, in all cases that we know, the experimenter's Ego was instead forced to re-enter its own organism and tune back into the human psyche: however, experimenters almost always state that those experiences have deeply changed, in a sense that we could define more spiritual, their interpretation of human life and their behavior. Now, it does not appear that neither the fact of having lived an NDE, nor the particularly positive and numinous character of the experiences (and this also applies to distressing NDEs), depend on particular ethical or spiritual requirements, and – essentially – on the moral behavior of the life conducted by the experimenters up to the NDE time: we note instead, as I said before, that after the experience life can undergo a significant transformation also from the ethical point of view of comprehension and love for others. Testimonies of NDEs are reported by people of all ages and all conditions, regardless of their social status and whether they had a religious faith or considered themselves atheists or agnostics, and – above all – whether or not they believed in the possibility of the existence of the conscious Ego in another dimension after the death of its own organism. Does this mean that the conscious Ego of every human being, after death, will be allowed to experience a more or less heavenly dimension, regardless of how it lived this life?

Without pretending to be able to give a clear and exhaustive answer to this question, it can be observed that most humans do not experience, or do not remember having experienced, any NDE, regardless of whether their organism is in a critical condition or not. Furthermore, some NDEs are marked by distressing or morbid experiences, in some cases very painful, which recall conditions that the imaginary usually associates with a hellish dimension: these disturbing experiences usually turn into positive experiences when the conscious Ego asks for help, or hopes for the intervention of a divine entity to come and save it. However, there is no adequate correspondence between what we usually define human wickedness or malice, as the dominant feature of the experiencer's life, and the hellish and distressing aspects of the experiences. On the other hand, NDErs are almost always average normal people: some more altruistic and virtuous, others more selfish and with more character defects and weaknesses, some with a difficult life marked by suffering behind them, others more prone to a certain experimental hedonism which, in our age, often characterizes the youth years. More interesting is the fact that, in those cases where the life review occurs, the conscious Ego often judges its actions on the basis of the emotional effects and feelings experienced by those with whom it has interacted, and that during the review it can directly experience: the feeling of regret and repentance for causing suffering to others can be very intense, and the Ego can be sincerely grieved for some actions it performed, for which it is not blamed by anyone but itself. Often the divine entity that assists it – without ever judging it – in this process of life review, offers it comfort and forgiveness, thus mitigating the feelings of guilt and inadequacy by which the Ego feels afflicted and disheartened. In any case, once back to its organic life, the Ego almost always experiences the need and the impulse for a radical and positive change in its attitude towards others.

In passing from the dimension of organic life to the Spirit dimension – as reported by many NDEs – the Ego anyway experiences a liberation from the dynamics of the human psyche in which it had been involved and entangled up to then. The presence, often detected, of a divine entity willing to welcome and comprehend the conscious Ego, even to the point of forgiving it for the weaknesses and failures that the Ego has encountered in its confrontation with the human psyche, shifts to a quite different plane the ethical and justice requirements to which we are accustomed, always under the influence of the human psyche, in relation to the suffering that the behavior and actions of others can cause us. What seems really important in the Spirit dimension, is the effect that the presence of the divine entity that radiates absolute and unconditional love has on the sensitivity, the emotions and feelings of the conscious Ego, who experiences a substantial transformation with respect to the modalities through wich it operated with when it was ensnared within the human psyche. From this transformation also originate those reactions of inadequacy, shame and repentance that the Ego often experiences when – in those NDEs in which a review of its life occurs – it directly perceives the sufferings it has caused to others, sometimes without even realizing it. At the same time, it can record to its credit the positive reactions of others to certain gestures of affection and empathy, even very simple and spontaneous ones. Ultimately, everything seems to move on the level of the intimate relationship between the conscious Ego and the divine entity to which it feels inexorably attracted, once it has managed to reach that dimension in which the love radiated by that entity openly shows itself. However, while the Ego's aspiration to move into the Spirit dimension to remain there is well comprehensible, it is more difficult to understand for what reasons the Ego should again submit itself to the experiences of the human condition, once it had already reached that dimension.

On the basis of what can be learned from a careful examination of many NDEs, it is evident that, in order to remain in the Spirit dimension, it is first of all necessary for the conscious Ego to be able to reach it: since we, as organic beings, always consider things starting from a point of view conditioned by the human psyche, various mythical interpretations have been elaborated aimed at establishing a correlation between our behavior and attitude in this life, and our destiny in the afterlife. Some of these interpretations then find a particular resonance in the attunements of the human psyche and spread as religious norms and practices. However, according to NDErs testimonies, the access to the Spirit dimension is something that happens, not something that the conscious Ego wishes or seeks intentionally: only after having experienced it, does the conscious Ego feel that the Spirit dimension, characterized by the presence of a divine entity from which an infinite and unconditional love radiates, really exists, and once this reality has been known, it is transformed by it, and feels different even when it returns to the dimension of organic life. Many who have experienced an NDE refer to this transformation as a second birth. Once this transformation has taken place, the conscious Ego actually feels an intense desire to return to the Spirit dimension, and often has the certainty that it will be welcomed again once the experience of human life is definitively over. But the spread of information relating to NDEs, considered as excursions into the Spirit world, makes the conscious Ego of many people who have not directly experienced an NDE, feel more or less intensely the call of that dimension to which it believes it belongs, although it may have lost even the hope of ever being able to get there: in particular, the conscious Ego can feel a profound connection between its own spiritual essence, detached from the existence of the organism to which it is temporally connected in this life, and the divine entity that permeates every aspect of the Spirit world.

An in-depth knowledge of NDEs is undoubtedly of help to the Ego, if it decides to undertake a personal path of preparation for death, an event that sooner or later occurs for any human being, sometimes arriving suddenly, unexpectedly and prematurely, other times foreseen and even feared. Although the mythology of the dominant programs in our culture emphasizes its importance and value, human life still remains a temporary experience to which a meaning and a purpose can be attributed only in function of the destiny which the conscious Ego will meet once this life is over. NDEs show that the Ego maintains the continuity of its self-awareness when it separates from the body, and often experiences with surprise and disbelief that new condition in which it feels alive and well aware – able to perceive and sensually feel the experiences of a dimension which shows the requirements of a reality – even when it discovers that it no longer has an organism. In the light of NDEs, the transformation of the Ego into a spiritual entity occurs without traumatic blackouts, and without any loss of consciousness and continuity in the perception of its own identity. However, the transfer into the Spirit dimension, and the consequent perception of a completely different reality compared to the human one, transforms – often permanently – the conscious Ego. Some more or less mythical interpretations hypothesize that the conscious Ego, transformed into a spiritual entity, after having rested in the Spirit dimension, is incarnated again in a human organism, to begin a new series of experiences in the earthly dimension. In this process, it should as a rule completely forget its previous existence, agreeing to start over with the formation of a new conscious Ego whose actual memories will be those acquired in the course of the new human life. We will see in a future post if there are facts that can support this reincarnation hypothesis, and what consequences it can have for the Ego.

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