The powers that influence human events

Human events and personal experiences

Those who study history or are interested in the contemporary events may have the impression that mankind is, as we use to say, left to cook in its own broth, also because its confinement on the surface of this planet – a tiny drop of water in the immense ocean of the universe – does not affect cosmic balances that much. In fact, as far as our vicissitudes are concerned, everything is determined by the way in which humans react to natural (environmental and organic) events, and by the way in which they interact with each other, collaborating to organize themselves in an increasingly complex way and to produce more and more ingenious artifacts, or by harming and fighting each other to prevail over other human groups, or to defend themselves against aggressions. Obviously, a humanity composed only of good people, well-intentioned to collaborate with each other to mutually pursue shared goals and to help each other in the face of natural dangers and adversities, would be much more harmonious and less problematic than it is the real mankind, which also includes individuals and organized groups that are aggressive, abusive and inclined to domination: the presence of these not-good people, and their activities, also force good people to organize defense systems which, in case of conflict, have to deal with the aggressive systems of the wicked on their own level, causing contaminations that seriously compromise the possibility of living in serenity, peace and concord. On the other hand, by refusing to fight evil with its own weapons, good people take the risk of being enslaved and forced into behaviors and actions that can harm other people, or to give up their life, suppressing or letting suppress their own organism.

Furthermore, natural dynamics and historical processes have always shuffled the cards, therefore it is not that all good people are on one side and not-good ones are on the other, as often national propaganda programs or political parties try to make us believe (with disconcerting success!): within the same socio-cultural system both good and not-good people interact and operate, and their integration is such that – in most cases – in each of us there are present in different percentages both an altruistic part, supportive and inclined to collaboration, and a selfish part, ready to take advantage of the collective dynamics even at the expense of others. Even the defense mechanisms of those benefits that we have gained, often with effort, can easily be transformed into tools of preventive attack due to the competitive dynamics on the basis of which each organizational structure tries to gain some advantage over competitors. There is therefore a gamut of human behaviors ranging from the most disinterested dedication and service in favor of others to deceptive, coercive, violent and criminal activities aimed at exploiting others or submitting them to one's will. Obviously, the energy that determines these behaviors manifests itself through the psychic attunements that involve the conscious Ego, winning its cooperation all the more easily the more the Ego identifies with them: probably due to the natural mechanisms aimed at the defense of its own organism, the Ego – however critical, distrustful and reactive it may be towards the psychic dynamics that determine the behavior and forms of thought of other people – is almost always very weak and submissive towards its own psychic dynamics, to evaluate which it does not have any reliable criteria, apart from a generic and arbitrary presumption of value, on which, in fact, it should not place excessive reliance.

Therefore human events are determined by the various roles that fate and the psyche assign to each individual organism, and as long as the Ego identifies itself with the psychic dynamics connected to the needs and conditioning of the organic life, its role – be it that of a leader, a simple worker or a criminal – remains that of an executor of commands coming from its psyche. But, from the point of view of inner experience, the way in which the Ego experiences the consequences of the events, can induce it to deepen its knowledge of human psychic dynamics, disengaging itself from those which it considers as unknown forces that ensnare it, soliciting it through a system of rewards or punishments, without leaving it the necessary resources to better understand its own essence and the authentic meaning of its own existence. The Ego can also attribute a profound meaning to its social role, but this can only occur once it has freed itself, at least in part, from the conditioning that lead it to consider that role as advantageous or as inevitable on the basis of the prevailing cultural programs, especially if it were forced to sacrifice the possibilities of the cognitive evolution of its consciousness to that role. By letting it experience its own personal destiny, the Ego is given the opportunity to discover and understand the meaning of an individual – and therefore unique – adventure that cannot be evaluated or judged on the basis of pre-established mental schemes (and least of all of dominant cultural programs), but only in the light of the results of the spiritual evolution that the conscious Ego manages to achieve, thanks not only to its own efforts and commitment, but also (and above all) to the clarity and efficacy of teachings that are imparted to it, and the ability of the teachers to transmit this knowledge to it and to help it understand the value of such teachings.

Actually, the Ego can do nothing but base its knowledge on the information provided, but the interpretation of this information is determined by the resources of inner sensitivity and processing ability that the Ego uses when it decides to strive to improve the cognitive faculties of its own consciousness. For example, the accounts relating to NDEs constitute an important source of information regarding the experiences that the Ego can encounter in the spiritual dimension, once its organic life is over: without this information, the Ego could only hypothesize or imagine some possible form of spiritual existence, of which it could also reasonably doubt, given that the experiences it actually knows are those determined by organic life. Therefore the NDEs substantially modify the framework of the available information, expanding the Ego's knowledge: in this respect, they can be considered as teachings, the interpretation of which however remains largely subjective. As always happens in human affairs, with regard to the interpretation of information and the transmission of teachings, most people rely on other people, generally attributing this role of teacher and guide to scholars who are devoted with particular commitment to deepen their knowledge in one or another field of knowledge: but, in the end, these figures of teachers and communicators make use of their sensitivity and processing skills to develop and make public a more or less convincing interpretation of the available information. This is how, from the depths of the human mind or from the spirit itself, those interpretative ideas and forms of thought arise, that can then be more or less successful in their cultural diffusion, also taking into account the communicative and propaganda skills of the popularizers, their charisma and their social position. Therefore the teachers themselves receive teachings from an inner source, which is stimulated and activated through their commitment.

But what tools does the conscious Ego have at its disposal to evaluate the origin, the meaning and the importance of those mental elaborations which, in the form of creative ideas and thoughts, spring from the very depths of the psyche and often fascinate first the same Ego by whose mind are they generated? First of all, we can observe that the more the Ego identifies itself with its own psyche, the less it will be induced to consider this issue and to doubt the validity of what is produced by the psyche through those mental elaborations that the Ego itself has stimulated: after all, each of us is fascinated – to a greater or lesser extent – by the experiences and psychic elaborations deriving from our own mental activity. The fact that such ideas and thought forms can then successfully been shared by a number of other human beings to whom they are communicated, reinforces their value. But if the Ego manages to train its consciousness until it reaches a sufficient level of lucidity and critical intelligence, it will be led to evaluate with great caution what its own mind processes and its psyche proposes to it, well aware of the fact that the psychic dynamics are almost always determined by unknown and mysterious forces, whose power of involvement and control over the Ego is far superior to the capacity of the Ego to free itself from this subjugation. In accepting the human condition as a form of teaching, the conscious Ego must therefore also take into account the quality of the teaching that is provided to it from an inner source, and the value of the teacher who can make it well understand the meaning, importance, consistency and also – why not? – the elegance of the teaching offered: the Ego's commitment in learning the teaching must also correspond to a critical function in relation to the ways in which such teaching is given and the ability of the teacher to carry out this task in the most effective way. Obviously, this critical function of the Ego cannot in any case be used as an excuse to escape its role as a student and the commitment it requires: I will now try to better clarify this aspect with an example taken from the NDEs.

The life review experience

One of the most interesting and important experiences that occur in the course of many NDEs is that of the review of one's life, which – albeit in different ways – offers the conscious Ego the opportunity to re-examine its behaviors from early childhood and to evaluate the consequences of its choices, its actions (including verbal communications), and even its thoughts. A comprehensive exposition of the importance of the life review, at least for those who have experienced it, is contained in Kenneth Ring's book Lessons from the Light - What we can learn from the near-death experience (1998): in chapters 6 and 7 the author – who has been intensely engaged, since 1977, in the collection of NDEs accounts and in the study of such experiences – presents several examples of life review and illustrates what is in his opinion (and in the interpretation of the experimenters) their deeper meaning. For an in-depth study of such experiences, you can therefore consult Ring's book and the abundant literature available on the subject. What seems important to me to highlight here is the modality of experimentation by the conscious Ego, which often relives episodes of its human life, feeling again and intensely not only the emotions and moods by which it was involved when those events happened, but also the emotional reactions with which other people involved in the story reacted to the behavior, actions and words manifested through its own organism. The Ego thus becomes aware of the interconnection between the causes and their effects, overcoming the dividing barrier which, in the dimension of our organic life, bound it to the limitations of the individual consciousness: it is as if our personal consciousness, resulting from the plurality of living organisms, be replaced by a single all-encompassing super-consciousness, which can include at the same time all the experiences of the interconnected individual consciousnesses.

This form of consciousness which, while remaining anchored to an Ego, extends to include the psychic experiences of other people who have interacted in this life with the organism connected to that Ego, expands the experimental knowledge of the latter making it much more aware and empathetic towards other people's emotional dynamics and moods, especially if determined by its behavior and verbal expressions. This broadening of consciousness that takes place in the Spirit dimension almost always involves a self-criticism – and sometimes a real feeling of repentance and pain – by the Ego itself, when it becomes aware, through direct experience, of the negative psychic reactions that its actions have determined. Such revision process can also extend to the consequences produced by those impulsive and inadequately considered actions and behaviors, determined by young age, lack of experience and a still underdeveloped consciousness. These critical phases of review of one's life usually take place in the presence of one or more entities that perform a function not of judgment – a role that the Ego takes on – but of support and understanding towards the unavoidable human weaknesses, as well as unconditional love, sometimes associated with a feeling of pleasant humor inspired by the oddity of many human situations. The Ego can therefore feel regenerated to such an extent by this process of widening its own consciousness, and above all by its immersion in that energy source that radiates love, represented by the divine Light which – so to speak – recharges its batteries, that when it finds himself living again in the organic dimension – not infrequently to its regret – it would like to take advantage of what it has experienced in the spiritual dimension, behaving towards others in such a way as to arouse positive reactions in them, avoiding negative ones. In this respect, we can say that a certain teaching has been imparted to the Ego, to which it feels the need to conform.

However, in order to be more effective, this teaching should also be explained and interpreted: it may be that it is explained to the Ego in the Spirit dimension, as some of those who have been able to access that dimension say, without however being able to carry with them the memory of that explanation upon their re-entry into organic life. The most plausible interpretation for us humans is that the information received through the NDEs, and the orientation that derives from it, favor that path of spiritual evolution that can lead the Ego to move into the Spirit dimension, once its formative task has been fulfilled. On the other hand, the interpretation – shared, among others, by Kenneth Ring in his aforementioned book – according to which we are spiritual beings sent on a mission to this planet to improve, through love, the conditions of human life, conquering it to the cause of the divine Spirit, seems to me to be more naive and less convincing: although a spiritual essence can certainly form and develop in us, the needs and conditions of organic life place limits and conditionings which the Ego is not subject to in the spiritual dimension, also involving it in the insidious dynamics of the human psyche. These energies are endowed with enormous power that should not be underestimated, in relations to which the call of the divine Spirit can exert a liberating action towards the conscious Ego, welcoming it in the dimension that is proper to it once the experience of the organic life is over, but it will be very difficult to change this world for the better, transforming it into a kind of utopian earthly paradise. It should also be remembered that already two thousand years ago, within the first Christian communities, an analogous experiment of transformation of human life was carried out, in the light of an orientation of interpersonal relationships based on the love radiated by the divine Spirit, with the results that anyone can see: if on the one hand the good has managed to temper and to some extent to control the evil, on the other hand the bipolar character of the human psyche has remained more or less unchanged, generating contrasts and conflicts even among those who wanted to contribute to the success of that experiment.

The fact is that when the Spirit dimension is considered as the essential value that gives meaning to our organic life – which, in its temporary and impermanent character, cannot be compared with the eternal universality of otherworldly existences – death can appear as an event that is not only unavoidable, but even desirable, as it frees the conscious Ego from the limits and conditioning of its own organism. Instead, in order to concentrate one's energies, with the utmost commitment, in the activities required by organic life, in particular within the complexity of our current social organizations, it is necessary to exorcise death, valuing human life as the fundamental – if not the sole – opportunity for our conscious experience, despite all the contradictions imposed by our psyche. In these conditions, the teaching offered to the conscious Ego lacks a fundamental element, which it seems to me that the Ego itself must provide, on the basis of its own spiritual evolution, or by resorting to the suggestions offered by its own spirit guide: how should the experiences in which the Ego could be involved in the various dimensions be linked? In other words, can the Ego determine its own path of experiences? And to which goal should it go? In the continuity of human life, the Ego relies on the identity of its own organism and mind, on the memories of its past and on the desires, aspirations and hopes for its future, in the light of the directives offered to it by the cultural programs and the attunements of the psyche in which it is involved. At the end of this life, it usually entrusts it to the same mysterious powers that have determined its human existence, or to other no less mysterious entities that regulate the forms of afterlife, to guide it on the path it must take, avoiding suffering and painful experiences and allowing it to access the Spirit dimension: however one can have at least the intuition – if not the certainty – that the Ego is able to find in itself the resources to detect and walk the experiential path that is most congenial to it, according to the level of evolution reached by its own smart consciousness.

The powers the Ego has to deal with during human life

When one compares the experience of the Spirit dimension, as described in many NDEs, with the various psychic dynamics to which the Ego is subject in the course of human life, it is immediately evident that there is a substantial difference between the two conditions: in the Spirit dimension the Ego feels perfectly at ease, loved, appreciated and, so to speak, nourished by a higher energy to which it feels intensely similar, to the point of being able to merge into it. But even in those cases in which it continues to maintain its own individual form, the Ego can experience the presence of landscapes, colors, sounds and personalized spirits that completely satisfy its every intimate need for harmony and beauty: it is therefore not in the least surprising that the Ego wishes to remain in that dimension for eternity, since it feels that its very essence belongs to it. Even if there are cases of distressing NDEs, which involve painful or even hellish experiences, I do not think that the Ego of those who have suffered them would not want to be able to access the Spirit dimension: indeed, almost always the problem of these people, once they return to the dimension of organic life, is to discover why they had to endure such a painful experience rather than having a heavenly one. Can there be cases in which the essence of the Ego consciously rejects the Spirit dimension, feeling more attracted to another one, perhaps even evil? I am not able to answer this question: based on the NDE accounts we have, I would be inclined to answer no, because it would be necessary to find at least one NDE in which to the description of the experiences in that dimension should correspond the Ego's will to stay there forever, even after having experienced the Spirit dimension.

It is clear that wickedness exists in our human dimension, at least if meant as the submission by the Ego to the psychic dynamics that cause suffering to other people. But to what extent can the Ego's identification with these aspects of the human psyche be considered as a permanent contamination? Of course, the Ego of some people remains coherent and stable until the end in its involvement with the psychic attunements of evil, convinced either of its own annihilation at the death of the organism, or of the value of a challenge that it has nevertheless faced (not infrequently with courage), or of the importance of claiming its own autonomy towards love and good, conforming to the requests and commands of a powerful entity from which evil is radiated. It would be necessary to know if – after death – even the conscious Egos of these people, freed from all the slag of the human psyche, are welcomed into the Spirit dimension, perhaps after having wandered for a long time through other non-human psychic experiences, or if, as a result of the choices made during their human life, the access to the Spirit dimension is forever closed to them. According to the reports of some NDEs, it would seem that even the Egos of those who have been cruel and bloodthirsty tyrants in this world are then welcomed by the Spirit, however the lessons that can be drawn from the NDEs in this respect are far from clear, especially for the testimonies relating to distressing or infernal dimensions, among other things reported by people who, in this life, were in no way inclined to wickedness. There is always the risk of being misled by the subjective elements of certain psychic experiences which, although concerning dimensions alien to those of human life, lack that clarity that characterizes the encounter of the conscious Ego with the divine Light.

What information can we draw from the NDEs regarding the relationship between the Spirit, as an entity from which absolute love radiates, and the powers that direct the human psyche, with its bipolar character made up of good and evil, of pleasure and pain, of selfish advantages and altruistic self-sacrifice spirit? Beyond the fact that the conscious Ego experiences the human psyche through its organism, and the Spirit dimension in its spiritual form, we do not have – in our condition as human beings – a coherent, clear and convincing teaching. Someone is led to attribute to the Spirit, considered as a supreme divine entity, a control over this world and the human psyche, claiming that «everything is love», but then immediately having to correct himself by affirming that the psyche prevents the conscious Ego to recognize this truth (indeed, it is a new form in which the ancient Hindu concept of Maya is re-proposed). Since the conscious Ego knows from direct experience that in the human psyche not everything is love, this would mean that the Spirit wants things to remain in these terms, otherwise it would have already intervened since a long time on the psyche to make human life more inspired to mutual love, harmony and concord. According to this point of view, a spiritual entity would be associated with a human organism to train – as a conscious Ego – in the gym constituted by the psyche's bipolarity, choosing between good and evil on the basis of the free will granted to it. It is a completely unsatisfactory teaching, if we believe that the conscious Ego, in its spiritual form, has already experienced the Spirit dimension: what sense would it have, then, to consciously choose to act according to evil? But, above all, what consequences would the choices made by the Ego as a result of its involvement in the psychic dynamics have, if the Spirit accepts it again once the organic life is over? Somehow the Ego, by consciously opting for evil, would show either its own weakness or its own evil inclination.

Some interpretations of spiritual orientation propose that the Ego, as a spirit, is tempered through a series of successive experiences such as that of the organic life, in this or other worlds, progressively perfecting itself. But if some mental elaborations of this process, such as the one proposed by Theosophy, offer a complex and more or less psychically convoluted theoretical framework of what is the path of the Ego, in its soul or spiritual form, the NDEs do not confirm these elaborations, and give us very different information, corroborated by the coherence of many of the events perceived as real by those who have experienced them. If we therefore stick to the reports of those NDEs that refer to the acceptance of the Ego in the Spirit dimension, we can only record how the Ego feels perfectly at ease in that dimension, considered as its own perfect abode, and shows no inclination to return to the organic life, as it feels the attraction of the Light as its only goal. Therefore the ultimate purpose of the existence of the conscious Ego seems to be to reach the dimension of the divine Spirit. But if – as it seems it can be argued from the NDEs and the high percentage of those who are welcomed into that dimension, regardless of the events of their human life – the conscious Ego, after the body's death, is in any case destined to reconnect to the Spirit dimension, perhaps after a more or less long and tortuous path of unpleasant experiences, why should it want to endure again the difficulties, limitations and sufferings deriving from the association with an organism like the human one? Indeed, if we understand very well the advantages represented for the conscious Ego by the qualitative leap from the human condition to the Spirit dimension, the reasons that would induce the spiritual Ego to undergo the reverse path are rather obscure.

Always referring to the NDEs, in order to have something concrete on which to base ourselves and avoid relying on more or less weird speculations, in some cases it is left to the Ego the choice between remaining in the Spirit dimension or returning to live in the organic condition, with the warning that – should it decide to stay – it would have to start a new human life sooner or later, because it has not yet completed the mission that had been entrusted to it. As you can see, this is not a free choice, but a conditional decision, by virtue of which – since NDEs are always told to us by people who have reconnected to their organism – the Ego decides, perhaps reluctantly, to complete its current life which, according to an accounting of which we are not aware, has not yet reached the deadline set for its conclusion. According to other testimonies of NDEs, the spiritual Ego, before starting its human adventure, would have signed a contract – which would include, among other things, the oblivion of its own existence in a spiritual form – which commits it to experience life as a conscious Ego connected to an organism through which it acquires information and programs, and is confronted with various psychic experiences. It would be as if a person, deprived of memory, were locked in a dark room in which there is only one computer – connected to a network of other computers – and could acquire information and operational programs only through that computer, from which however also receives positive or negative energy discharges which she cannot avoid. It would remain to be understood whether a contract that provides for an existential condition of this type is requested and signed by this hypothetical spiritual Ego by its free choice, or if it is imposed on it by some authority, or if the Ego is persuaded to accept it because it is, so to speak, in its interest. Perhaps the spirit-Ego is driven to experience the human condition by curiosity, spirit of adventure, or the desire to know other dimensions by direct experience, and therefore – after having remained in the Spirit dimension for a period equivalent to the time necessary to recharge its batteries – it would feel it is ready to dive into a new organism: it could also be that, in the spiritual dimension, the Ego identifies itself to such an extent with the will of the divine Spirit that it feels ready for anything, just to satisfy this will. But indeed this would only happen after an adequate period of rest and refreshment, and in a dimension in which the perception of time seems to be very different from our human one.

The fact remains that, once awakened in the human condition devoid of any memory of the contract and its clauses, the Ego progressively experiences the psychic attunements that this condition entails, and while having a certain endowment of vital energy, which manifests itself more or less intensely in the youth and early maturity age, involving it in one or another aspect of human vital dynamics, also through a true «zest for life», it is progressively enveloped and encrusted with psychic slag of all kinds. Having to deal with the demands that its organism and the human psyche impose on it, usually the Ego is unable to make its smart consciousness advance to the point of making it an effective tool for freeing it from that psychic slag, and thus ends the experience of its own human life by gazing at the traces and the legacy that it left, in relation to the accomplished works and also the organisms it has possibly generated. This inevitable contamination of the conscious Ego by the human psyche, however, forces the Ego to confront itself more or less dramatically with some aspects of the evil present in the world, as evil constitutes one of the poles of the psyche, and it is evident that the Ego not infrequently comes out of this confrontation with broken bones, even when it is does not end up in evil's service. The forces – of whatever nature they be – that control the human psyche and determine its dynamics, for better or for worse, are almost always far superior to the resources available to the Ego: often, everything that the Ego can manage doing, individually or in collaboration with others, is trying to develop defense strategies against the psyche's negative manifestations. Under these conditions, if we want to consider human life as a school that the spiritual Ego should attend to learn certain teachings, or as a gym in which it can train, I must recognize that – if the evolutionary scheme of this teaching process is clear to the divine Spirit – it remains obscure to us human creatures. Instead, I think that the process by which the Ego – formed in the womb of the organic dimension and involved in the bipolar dynamics of the human psyche – is able to make its consciousness advance until it successfully completes the transition into the Spirit dimension, is much more understandable.

It seems important to me that the conscious Ego, in experiencing the psychic tunings determined by its organic condition, can count on the help and support of one or more spirit guides who, from the Spirit dimension, follow its human path and are able to influence its choices. Obviously, the reception of the signals transmitted by the spirit guide is often hindered by the background noise produced by the human psyche: it is still a matter of overcoming the barrier between two separate dimensions. Opening a channel that facilitates this form of communication requires commitment on the part of the conscious Ego as well as on the part of the spirit guides. The latter probably do what thay can, but do not necessarily have the resources to enlighten the conscious Ego, due to the distance of the Spirit dimension, and the distorting and confusing effects induced by the human psyche. When those who have experienced an NDE feel that their spiritual Egos are being sent back and must reconnect with their organism, often with the motivation that their time has not yet come, that they have a mission to accomplish in this world, or that they must take care of other people, one almost gets the impression that the Spirit has its own project towards this world and the psyche: as if it wanted to conquer mankind (and therefore the human psyche) to love, with the power of love. What seems strange is that in the world people of all ages – who are not sent back – die all the time, due to the most diverse causes, and therefore it should be assumed that they are welcomed into the Spirit dimension: why therefore the conscious Egos of those who long to be able to remain in the Spirit dimension should be sent back despite themselves, if not to communicate and spread the testimony of their own spiritual experience? In this case, if each conscious Ego could take advantage of the memory of its own previous experience in the spiritual dimension, it is not clear why this memory should be fully erased at birth.

The physical dimension in which we find ourselves during human life presents unavoidable aspects: we live on a planet whose axis is inclined by just over 23° with respect to the ecliptic plane, with very hot areas, some of which arid, and others extremely cold and unlivable; the natural heritage of our organism exposes it to injuries deriving from its vulnerability and the aggression by other organisms – in particular microorganisms, such as bacteria and viruses – within that complex system of generative and disruptive balances that we commonly call Nature. In this framework, already difficult in itself, the historical events are inserted, deriving from the interactions between human organisms, both individual and organized in groups, which together constitute a heritage that conditions any possible progress, and of which it is anything but easy to get rid. The dynamics that influence the way in which humans function, determining their behaviors and actions, are under the control of forces that are enigmatic for us – to which we refer under the generic label of human psyche – which are grafted onto the natural balances and the resulting events. As we can see, it is a dynamic and dramatic picture, far away from the radiant serenity and the intense and complete bliss that the conscious Ego experiences in the Spirit dimension. We can therefore assume that the teaching transmitted – to us who live in the organic dimension – by the NDEs that testify to the existence of the Spirit dimension, is a message of comfort, hope and love, which aims to support and help the conscious Ego in its evolutionary transit path through human life, up to the liberation represented by the death of its organism, by which the spiritual phase is activated. In this way the Ego awakens, discovering its own authentic essence and the attraction exerted by the Spirit, from which it cannot escape precisely by virtue of its spiritual core.

The limits of the Spirit's power of intervention in human affairs

If it is true that in the Spirit dimension – as it is described in many NDEs – the absolute and unconditional love radiated by the divine Light is perceived as a universal energy that permeates every aspect of creation, in the dimension of our human life there are precise limits to the direct intervention of te Spirit power. The most evident effects of the interference of the Spirit in our organic life are represented by the so-called miraculous healings, and by other events – including mediumistic phenomena – that are incomprehensible to us in the light of the physical and biological laws we know. In some of these cases, however, there may be forces of non-physical origin at work – distinct from the divine Spirit experienced in NDEs – which use the psychophysical energies of mediums and sitters to interact with the physical world. I have already dealt with the limits of paranormal phenomena in the page devoted to this topic: but as regards the divine Spirit it is difficult for us humans to understand the reasons why an entity endowed with universal power should not intervene, if it has the faculty to do so, also in the events of this world, by making at least the most negative and wicked aspects of the human psyche disappear once and for good. Those who trust in the progress of mankind as a whole, believe that this process – which we could define as the conquest of the human dimension by the divine Spirit – takes place over time: in this case we can be sure that it will take a very long time if compared with the duration of human life, given that even in the twentieth century – and in various parts of the world also today – there have been events that for cruelty and wickedness have little to envy to the worst crimes of the past. Therefore, if the good tries to intervene, the evil certainly does not stand by! But, as we have often pointed out, in this respect good and evil represent the two poles of the human psyche, while the Spirit is certainly an energy of a different nature.

There is a substantial lack of interest on the part of the spiritual Ego regarding its involvement in the events determined by the organic life and the human psyche: in fact, the progress of consciousness to the recognition of the spiritual essence of the Ego involves a loss of interest in a large part of the activities of this life, except those that allow for a manifestation of the spirit, such as creative and contemplative artistic activities, or the pursuit of knowledge, or the need to show compassion towards the sufferings of others. But when it comes to dealing with evil, the spirit is alien to fighting it with the same weapons it uses: in this regard, one cannot help but remember the evangelical exhortation, «Turn the other cheek to those who gave you a slap», with all the consequences involved by it. It is evident that the human psyche does not work like this: the evil's success lies in its determination to achieve the objectives it sets itself by every means, while the good often does not prove to be as determined, precisely because in fighting the evil it is forced to use the same weapons of the latter, remaining to some extent contaminated by it. The alternative, however, would allow the evil to have a free field, something that the positive pole of the human psyche cannot allow. This conflict within the psyche is well represented by the way in which the achievements of science and technology are reflected in the evolution of weapons, which are in any case instruments of damage and destruction, not only of natural resources and human works, but of our own bodies, even if you think you can use them as a deterrent or just for defense. The divisions determined by our organic condition, which are reflected in the way in which human social organizations behave, cause each social group to perceive its own good as the ability to resist and oppose the possible evil represented by a different social group, in the complete exchange of the roles according to the social group which we belong to. So if my potential opponents possess a weapon, I too must have one – if possible even more efficient than their – otherwise they might be tempted to use it against me.

Therefore, if the divine Spirit actually wanted to transform this world once and for all, replacing with love, harmony and mutual trust the psychic dynamics that currently influence and condition our interpersonal relationships, it would have to deploy many other resources than those determined by the NDE accounts. It is more plausible that the Spirit dimension remains separate from that of our organic life, in which the human psyche continues to play a dominant role, it being understood that the information about the experiences of the conscious Ego in that dimension anyway represent sort of a compass that helps the Ego to orient itself already during its human life, so as to then be able to access the Spirit dimension, if this is what it aspires to. Ultimately, although the conscious Ego – both in its individual form and as a person belonging to an organized human group – is induced by the psychic attunements that influence it to flaunt a certain degree of confidence in its own resources and in the ability to face the powers that – often in conflict with each other – condition the events of human life, in most cases what it manages to do is build a beautiful and comfortable house, but lacking solid foundations and therefore destined to fall down at the first earthquake shock. This is why it is important to be able to rely on the help that can come to us from the Spirit dimension, especially if we can understand that this is the dimension which the spiritual Ego feels it belongs to and in which, so to speak, it can deeply breathe, while in the organic condition it often has to act with a limited air reserve, if not even in apnea. It is advisable that the conscious Ego builds a solid foundation already in the course of this life, with the help of its spirit guide, so that any home it builds upon it, however modest, will be able to withstand the blows of destiny.

We can see that those who have experienced an NDE in which they had access to the Spirit dimension, then show an absolute confidence in the fact that that will be the final destination of the conscious Ego at the death of their organism. Accustomed as we are to being wary of the illusions and deceptions of the psyche, as a result of the experiences we have encountered in the course of our human life, we can feel comforted by the fact that – at least – we have the evidence of a dimension in which the conscious Ego is not deceived, but rather is welcomed, helped and regenerated by virtue of its very essence and not for its particular merits. Those who believe that even these particular and meaningful experiences should be ascribed to certain unidentified alchemy of the brain, remain somehow trapped in the distrust generated by the very dynamics of the human psyche, forgetting however that at the death of the organism the control of the psyche over the conscious Ego vanishes anyway. Wanting to interpret the reality of the Spirit dimension, as experienced by many of those who have had an NDE, based on the dynamics of the psyche that the conscious Ego experiences in the course of its organic life, makes no sense: each of us will have to patiently wait for the definitive death of our own organism to know what experiences our conscious Ego will encounter once freed from the vehicle of the human organism. The NDEs' accounts can help the conscious Ego to rebuild, already in the course of this life, that trust in its essence and in its spiritual destiny that the dynamics of the human psyche have seriously compromised: this will be the topic of the next post.

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