The emotive quality of experiences

The conscious Ego as a sensitive experiencing subject

Evidence shows us that the Ego is not a mere recorder of the experiences produced by life events, but is more or less intensely involved in what, in the absence of a more suitable expression, we can define as the emotional quality associated to every experience: in some way we could compare this quality to the particular flavor produced by a cocktail of psychic reactions that the Ego feels, on the whole, as pleasant or unpleasant to a different extent. With regard to the experiences determined by the human psyche, it is possible to establish a ranking based on the level of attraction, interest and pleasure with which the emotional quality of the experiences involves the Ego: neutral and boring routine experiences are preferable to painful conditions involving suffering and reduced physical efficiency, and experiences entailing fun, enthusiasm and pleasure are rated higher than the neutral ones. However, the involvement of the conscious Ego in the emotional quality of the experiences of organic life is essentially determined by its identification with the dynamics of the human psyche in which it is ensnared, as a consequence of the functioning of its organism over time. In fact, it is precisely through the nervous system with which every human organism is equipped that the emotional effects experienced by the Ego are produced, to the point that, according to the psychic interpretation of many people, the Ego itself would be a product of the brain activity. Anyway, it is evident that the conscious Ego experiences life events in relation to the way its organism works and the environmental and social conditions in which the organism finds itself as time goes by.

The dynamics of this game of life, determined by the fragmentation of consciousness, by the resources available to each organism to a different extent, and by the socio-cultural conditions in which the organism is born and raised, produce an enormous number of variations, which make it difficult and rash every attempt to frame the human experience in an interpretative scheme that is valid for every living human being, today as in the past. If we find it difficult to understand the causes why we ourselves function in a certain way, and not in another, all the more reason we should be very cautious in evaluating the causes of other people's behaviors. We can however affirm with sufficient conviction that every human being is endowed with a conscious Ego, who – being subjected to the psychic experiences that organic life entails – identifies itself more or less completely, but to a very different extent from one person to another, with the psychic dynamics that involve it: the more the conscious Ego identifies itself with its own psychic dynamics, the more its decisions and the behaviors of its organism are determined by particular attunements of the human psyche, to the point that many people can be considered as human automata. Yet it must be recognized that even if the Ego identifies itself completely with the psychic dynamics that involve it, it can still suffer or rejoice at what it happens to experience, to the extent that its sensitivity allows it. However, this same sensitivity varies from one person to another, especially if it is considered under its aspect of empathy, that is, in the ability to perceive and share the joys and sufferings of others: in fact, due to the circumstances of life and the resources of the organism, the sensitive core of the Ego can be covered with a kind of psychic cuirass that makes it more or less insensitive and indifferent not only to the emotions of others, but also to its own.

The Ego is mainly a construction of the human psyche, which having to protect the sensitivity of a particularly vulnerable spiritual core, progressively covers it with layers of psychic material that over time become more and more rigid, to the point of creating an impenetrable barrier that prevents the spiritual core to manifest itself to consciousness. In the absence of a connection with its own spiritual core, the Ego identifies itself with what its consciousness allows it to perceive, that is, with the psychic dynamics of the outer shell, often particularly thick and hard, which encloses and hides the spiritual core. Although the spiritual core exerts an influence from within on the deeper layers of the shell of psychic material that encloses it, transforming the psychic energy into spiritual energy, the duration of this process depends on the power of the core, but it can take some decades before the conscious Ego indirectly perceives its effects, since the process remains unconscious until these effects reach the more superficial layers of the shell of psychic material with which the Ego identifies itself. It must also be taken into account that, as the organism proceeds in its life, new layers of psychic material accumulate on the pre-existing ones, preventing the spiritual core from transforming the psychic energy with a speed sufficient to reach the outer layers of the psyche accessible to the consciousness of the Ego. Only when the organism dies, or experiences a particularly intense shock, does the psychic shell crumble or undergo breaks and cracks deep enough to allow the energy of the spiritual core to come into direct contact with the conscious Ego. It can thus happen that even the Ego of a hardened criminal, completely indifferent to the suffering that his actions can cause to others, at a certain point in its life is involved in an inner process of conversion, the effects of which can transform in a short time a wicked one in a completely different person.

The normal sensitivity of the Ego has a psychic origin, not spiritual, which largely derives from the needs of its organism: the fragmentation of consciousness into a plurality of living organisms causes the conscious Ego associated with each organism to experience suffering, satisfaction or pleasure regardless of what happens to another organism with which it is not connected by particular affective ties, and therefore it not infrequently happens that an action that gives satisfaction to an Ego causes damage or suffering to another one. Robbers or rapists feel a form of satisfaction with the success of their actions, the more intense the more they can remain indifferent to the negative psychic reactions that their victims have to endure. These psychic dynamics can become so complex and twisted as to determine forms of sadism, at the point that even in the closest emotional relationships, such as those between parents and children, adults are able to feel satisfaction or pleasure while abusing defenseless youngs in various ways. Therefore the sensitivity of the conscious Ego bound to its own organism is different from that of the spiritual core associated with it: the latter, while exerting a more or less indirect form of influence – depending on how it manages to reach the consciousness by overcoming the barriers of the psychic shell that encloses it – is not conditioned by the same psychic dynamics that involve the Ego, who can only feel what its consciousness allows it to perceive and experience. If the spiritual core is endowed with its own form of consciousness, the barrier formed by the psychic shell, more or less thick and hardened, generally prevents the consciousness of the Ego from tuning itself on that of the spiritual core. As can be seen, the condition of the conscious Ego in the context of organic life is very different from that in the Spirit dimension, to the point that we could even ask ourselves how well-informed the Spirit is about the risks which the Ego undergoes in the course of human life: risks from which, obviously, the spiritual core remains unscathed by its very nature.

Obviously, in this energy balance, the price to be paid so that the spiritual core can transform a part of psychic energy into spiritual energy is represented by the sufferings that the conscious Ego must endure: in fact those aspects of organic life that determine positive and advantageous psychic reactions for the Ego, making its life pleasant and enjoyable, do not involve any problem, while the pain and mental suffering deriving from the functioning of the organism and the need to keep it alive can cause in the Ego a psychic reaction of enduring injustice, especially when the different individual destinies of the living organisms and the particularly heavy burden of suffering that many humans have to endure are compared. When organic life ends and the conscious Ego enters the Spirit dimension, the problem of human suffering is automatically solved by the merging of the Ego with its own spiritual core and – as can be deduced from the testimonies of many NDEs – by its liberation from any suffering and the erasing of the memories of the pains suffered during this life: therefore, in the timeless condition in which the spiritual Ego finds itself once the temporal experience of organic life is over, all the problems, the pains and the sufferings of this life vanish, so to speak, into thin air, taking away from human life much of that reality that we attribute to it as long as we are linked to our organism. Indeed, we can already experience the effects of a similar process during this life, when a period of sufferings and troubles is followed by a period of relative well-being and good health, which makes us soon forget the pains of the past and not only does it make life pleasurable again, but it can induce us to look to the future with confident (and maybe naive) optimism. After all, what most dishearten us in this life is the continuity of the hard conditions in which we can find ourselves and the chronicity of certain diseases from which our organism is unable to heal, among which we can also include the aging.

The needs of the organism and the spiritual Ego

The NDEs, the accounts of which amount to many thousands in the last half century, insert a completely new element into the interpretative framework of human life, as the Ego returns to the conscious state of organic life after experiencing a completely different condition, which we call spiritual as it is free from the needs of an organism, towards which the Ego usually loses all interest once it is separated from it. Devoid of its organism, the Ego can no longer interact with the dimension of organic life, but it does not lose its consciousness: on the contrary, the perceptive, sensitive, emotional and cognitive mental faculties are often remarkably increased when they are stimulated by the experiences that the Ego goes to meet in this new spiritual condition of its. Then, when the spiritual Ego feels that it can access the Spirit dimension, it almost always feels the intense and unequivocal emotion of having finally come back home, that is, to that place to which it undoubtedly feels that its true essence belongs. The reality of these experiences is considered indubitable by practically all those who have lived them, who often declare that it is the reality we are used to in the course of our organic life that appears evanescent and almost dreamlike to them, if compared with the one they have experienced in the Spirit dimension. Furthermore, the number of NDE reports providing coherent testimonies of such experiences is now so high as to make any hallucinatory interpretation about their origin untenable. These are experiences by which the conscious Ego is, in most cases, substantially changed, when it returns to the condition of human life after being reconnected to its own organism.

There is almost always a strong resistance on the part of the conscious Ego – in its spiritual condition – to return to the organic dimension that characterizes human life: once reconnected to its own organism, the Ego often feels an intense regret and yearning homesickness towards that dimension that is now truly perceived as a paradise lost, to which it hopes and trusts to be able to go back as soon as possible. What was previously considered, also due to the current cultural conditioning, as the supreme good, that is organic life, is now – at least in a lot of cases – perceived by the conscious Ego as a period of exile and tiring commitment in an environment that is not very congenial to it, after it has experienced the Spirit dimension. However, it should be recognized that there are also cases in which the Ego feels that it is returning to organic life reinvigorated and full of enthusiasm for this particular experience, which it is now able to savor in its various aspects, seizing on the fly the opportunities that are offered to it, without worrying too much about the needs of the organism and the precautions to be taken to protect it, since it is now considered only as a useful tool of experience, even if temporary, and therefore neither unique nor irreplaceable. In any case, having directly experienced the Spirit dimension implies a substantial difference in the importance that the conscious Ego attributes to its organic life: the NDEs almost always constitute a clear dividing line between a before, characterized by a more or less instinctive or culturally conditioned vision of human life as a unique and absolute source of experience, and an after, in which this life is considerably relativized in the light of the possible and much more intense experiences which are now part not only of the memories, but also of the heritage of knowledge of the Ego. The accounts of the NDEs of children under the age of three or four, not yet subjected to cultural conditioning programs regarding the interpretation of human life, can be particularly interesting.

Whether it is sent back, against its will and with deep regret, by a form of higher will that seems to come from the same energy of the Spirit, or whether it is called back to human life by the efforts of all the people who engage to get its organism revive, the conscious Ego is once again in the position of having to face the difficulties of life, although – as we have seen – with a very different orientation. It must also reinterpret its own experience in the spiritual dimension, of which it now almost always keeps a very sharp memory, not only in relation to the needs and limitations – and therefore to the difficulties – that organic life entails, but also in the light of what can be considered the imposition by the Spirit of a task or mission to be carried out in this dimension. In this regard, it is advisable to carefully read a good number of NDE reports, many of which are available online in the sites dedicated to such experiences, especially that of the IANDS and that of the NDERF, to understand the feeling of intense regret, sometimes almost of desperation, with which in many cases the decision that it must go back to the dimension of organic life is received by the conscious Ego: even if in not a few cases this decision is shared by the Ego for the needs determined by the care of other people, in particular in the case of mothers or fathers who have to help their children to grow up, or by the need to carry out some of the tasks undertaken in this life, not infrequently not even these motivations – however intensely felt – are able to compensate for the painful feeling involved by the separation from the Spirit dimension, to which the conscious Ego is now certain to belong in its most intimate essence. For these reasons, the return to organic life can be particularly difficult for the Ego, which can find itself in a state of depression for a period of several months, and sometimes years.

The number of those who have experienced the Spirit dimension and have returned to this organic life with a clear memory of their experience, in order to be able to communicate it – even with all the limits of language – to other human beings, even though it is now quite high in absolute terms, remains low in percentage. However, the attention given to such experiences by the popular media, and the interest of most humans in the possibility of a continuation of the conscious Ego's existence even after the death of its organism, means that that relatively low percentage of NDEs exerts an influence not to be underestimated on the dynamics of the human psyche that involve us in this life. From the point of view of our knowledge, it is not clear whether this phenomenon corresponds to a project wanted by the Spirit, nor is it well understood what this project is aimed at: if it were aimed at improving the human psyche in a positive sense, it would seem more appropriate that the direct experience of the Spirit dimension was extended at least to all those whose organism has been reanimated after an episode of clinical death, and indeed it would all be much clearer and more effective if the conscious Ego had, since its human formation, a clear memory of its spiritual origin and of the commitment undertaken in exploring the dimension of organic life. Instead, one gets the impression that what on the one hand is prevented, for causes that are currently unknown to us but which will certainly have their own reason for being, is then granted – albeit to a limited extent – to offer help and to encourage the conscious Ego in its path among the difficulties of human life. It does not seem realistic, however, to believe that the bipolar character of the energy of the human psyche can be significantly and permanently modified by a phenomenon that is currently still marginal, whose developments will only be verified over time: the previous spiritual experiments in the history of humankind, including Christianity, do not seem to have produced significant results, so much so that even today our culture is largely pagan, that is, based on the needs of the organism and on the opportunities it can offer in terms of pleasure and human happiness.

The attraction of the negative pole of the human psyche

Although there are reports of distressing NDEs – which sometimes involve experiences whose environmental, emotional and representational features can be defined as infernal – such experiences, as we have seen, always present subjective elements of a more psychic than spiritual nature, and lack that coherence that unites the large number of NDEs that involve the experiencing of the Spirit dimension by the conscious Ego. There are therefore no reliable elements, based on experience, to argue that there is a negative counterpart of the Spirit, by which the Ego of some particularly wicked people (at least according to the psychic judgment that we, as human beings, attribute to their behaviour) may feel attracted. There is no doubt, however, that one of the poles of the human psyche has negative characteristics, and that it is able of exerting a considerable power of attraction on the conscious Ego of many people. We have already examined the reasons that can induce the conscious Ego to orient itself according to the psychic dynamics determined by the functioning of its own organism, in accordance with the pursuit of pleasuring emotions and the need to avoid or remove everything that can cause physical pain and mental suffering. We have also seen how the primary cause of pain is to be found precisely in the functioning of the organism's nervous system, in relation to both environmental conditions and program errors to which the formation, development and maintenance of the organism are subject. Finally, we found that some features deriving from the functioning of organisms according to the laws of nature make so that the damage – and therefore the pain or the bad – caused by the actions of our organism to another organism (human or animal), can be perceived, interpreted and felt by our Ego as an advantage, and therefore a good.

Faced with what are considered the natural causes of suffering (such as earthquakes, floods, fires and diseases of all kinds), the positive polarity of the psyche induces humans to organize and collaborate to reduce and prevent as much as possible the negative effects determined by such events: what cannot be avoided is nevertheless accepted with that resignation that has historically been associated with the feeling of the human impotence towards preponderant natural forces. In the complexity of the interactions between human organisms, a part of the suffering can be attributed to the behaviors and actions of some people, or some organized human groups, towards other people or other human groups. In this case, the positive polarity of the psyche induces the victims (that is, those who endure the damage and the resulting suffering) to believe that the deceptive, wicked and violent actions are due to the influence of the negative pole (the evil), and induces organized social groups to take more or less adequate and effective measures to prevent such actions or to punish those who committed them. But in the primitive naivety that still today characterizes the relations and interactions between organized social groups, even at the level of nations that consider themselves as sovereign, it happens not infrequently that what a group considers to be advantageous, and therefore positive, causes a damage, and therefore is negatively judged, by another human group. In this case the psychic dynamics and the resulting behaviors are intrinsically conflictual, as happens in the competitions of all kinds, be they sporting, political or economic, which almost always see the losers next to the winners, and at times can turn into armed conflicts without holds barred. Individual or group self-interest can therefore become the motive that justifies the oppression, enslavement or elimination of a person or another human group, towards which any feeling of identification and empathy gets lost. Furthermore, the reciprocity of the psychic dynamics can determine a feeleing of hostility towards a person or a human group to be feared in advance, causing a sense of mistrust and apprehension, and consequently a need for defense, towards potential enemies.

The conflict determined by the bipolar character of our psyche has been consciously experienced since the beginning of human history, and many philosophers have been well aware of it: however, the psyche's power is still decisive today, linked as it is to the needs of organic life. It is naive to think that information on the experiences in the Spirit dimension can solve the problems of this world, in which some billions human organisms currently live, whose survival depends on the exploitation of the planet's resources through the technological organization. As has already happened in the past, the experience of the reality of the spiritual dimension helps to relativize the importance of this human life and therefore to alleviate the concerns for the very survival of the organism, given that the latter is considered a demanding tool, burdensome and somewhat difficult to manage, especially if we consider the quality of the experiences that the conscious Ego can access in its spiritual form, once freed from its organism. But the Spirit is not yet able to substantially influence the dynamics of the human psyche, probably because it cannot or does not want to intervene directly in the dimension of organic life. We reach a point in which the same mental faculties available to our consciousness are completely insufficient, I do not say to understand, but even only to imagine the complexity of the creative design which includes the Spirit, the human psyche, the organic life and the splitting of consciousness into a plurality of individual entities subject to transitory and evanescent experiences. Perhaps the experiences in the Spirit dimension and the knowledge that will be offered to us will enlighten us about the relationships between the various elements of this creative design, but as long as our Ego remains confined into the ridiculous and almost insignificant dimension of our organic life we can only yearn for an understanding that we do not have the possibility to access.

But to come back to the reasons why the Ego can not infrequently be attracted by the negative polarity of the human psyche (obviously if it identifies itself with the psychic dynamics that involve it), it must be observed that, in addition to the needs determined by the organic life and to the psychic reactions stimulated by having been the object of oppression and abuses of various kinds, in some cases the Ego is solicited by the desire to acquire power, wealth, fame or glory, to the point of stopping at nothing in order to get the results it aims for. Faced with cases of this kind, the ambiguity of the psyche is openly manifested in all those cultural programs that exalt the courage, audacity and valor of leaders and conquerors, even if their exploits have caused pain and suffering to many other humans. The psychic motive that fascinates the Ego, to the point of making it insensitive to the evil that its choices can cause, is called ambition, and constitutes one of the most refined resources available to the psyche to ensnare the conscious Ego. When the Ego is willing to harm and make others suffer in the name of its own ambitions, it does not submit to the call of the negative polarity of the psyche because it is forced by the urgent needs of its own organism, nor because the psychic dynamics in which it is involved have been heavily distorted by particular atrocities suffered and experienced (even if sometimes the ambitious person can have a complex personal history), but because it is fascinated by the desire for success and power that the psyche represents and shows it, in one or in the other form. There is a subtle and atavistic psychic call to being a recognized, appreciated and even feared charismatic leader, a call to which the Ego of some people is particularly sensitive, not only in those few who have the resources to directly affirm themselves as successful persons, in one or another field of human action, but also in those many who are willing to recognize, follow and value someone else's leadership role, subjecting themselves to their will, determination and arbitrary power.

As usual, it is not the positive aspect of the psyche – which can reasonably manifest itself also through ambition – that makes problems, but the negative one, due to which some persons or human groups, to achieve their goals, do not hesitate to trample on the rights of others, or even to force other people to submit to their will by any means. However, the bipolar nature intrinsic to the psyche's energy means that not infrequently ambitious people, feeling motivated by positive intentions, are then willing to resort to strategies contaminated by the negative aspects of the psyche in order to get what they aim for: a dynamic that is summarized by the well-known aphorism attributed to Machiavelli (who never expressed himself in these terms) «the end justifies the means». Most human beings are attracted, to a varying extent also in relation to the phase of life in which they are, by some aspects connected to the negative polarity of the psyche, which can manifest themselves through tensions determined not only by sufferings endured, often unjustly, because of the behaviors of others, or because of the basic needs of the organism that they are unable to satisfy, but also by urgent desires that, when they show up, involve and ensnare the Ego, forcing it to act even before it is able to evaluate the possible consequences that its actions may have for itself and for others. Sometimes the same difficulty that the adaptation to the complex sociocultural dynamics of this life entails, rather than being perceived and positively interpreted as an interesting challenge in which to commit one's resources, induces the conscious Ego to abandon itself to forms of self-pity and even self-destruction of its own organism – or at least of indifference towards the drift it goes through – which can be associated with an intense influence of the psyche's negative polarity. Even in this case, however, there is a more or less complete identification of the conscious Ego with the psychic dynamics that involve it, from which it lets itself passively overwhelm, unable to independently react.

Lastly, there are cases of sadism or cruelty as an end in themselves, in which the conscious Ego is completely dominated by the negative polarity of the psyche, either because it derives some form of pleasure from it, or because it cannot resist the impulse that drives it to perform certain actions precisely because of its identification with the psyche. It is always difficult, and sometimes impossible, to be able to unravel the intricate tangle of psychic dynamics that determine evil and cruel behaviors, especially when such behaviors are not due to an occasional loss of control of the conscious Ego in particular and extreme circumstances, but become a constant feature of the human personality. Here we do not want to absolve the Ego a priori from letting itself be ensnared by the negative polarity of the psyche, but to understand if, in the organic conditions that destiny has assigned to it, the Ego has the necessary resources to separate itself from the psychic dynamics with which it naturally tends to identify. Before being able to evaluate the consequences of its own decisions, the Ego must be able to have a knowledge that the human psyche does not offer it, especially in the context of a culture like our current one, all centered on what it is convenient to do, individually or socially, according to the exclusive needs of our organic life. Only after an adequate knowledge (such as that shown in the pages of this site) had been made available to the Ego, it could be held fully responsible for the choices determined by its involvement in the negative dynamics of the psyche. Even in this case, however, the Ego could rightly argue that its will is not to do wicked actions, but that it is unable to avoid being driven by the negative psychic impulses which dominate it: this is what some of the convicted of certain crimes affirm, obviously assuming that they are in good faith.

The evaluation of the results of one's life

Already in the course of this life, especially if it reaches the final phase of its natural course, the Ego can proceed to a re-enactment and an evaluation of its behaviors, decisions and actions, starting from the first memories of the childhood, related to the phase of formation and development of consciousness. During this re-enactment, it often notices that what seemed appropriate or otherwise justifiable to it when it made a decision or behaved in a certain way, is now evaluated in a very different way. This difference is determined not only by the fact that the experience of what happened as a result of one's own decisions and actions shows that the results were different from expectations (which could not have been known at the time the action was performed), but also by a different and much more complex knowledge of the dynamics of life and by the significance we attribute to our decisions and the consequences deriving from them. This form of knowledge can go far beyond the mere accumulation of experience, as evidenced by the remarkable shifts in orientation that occur in those who return to the dimension of organic life after experiencing the Spirit dimension during an NDE. In those cases in which these experiences involve a process of life review, often the conscious Ego directly experiences not only its own emotions, but also – with the same intensity – the feelings and emotions of those with whom it interacted: therefore the fragmentation determined by organic life is replaced by a form of superconsciousness deriving from the interconnection among all the different individual consciousnesses involved in the dynamics caused by the human psyche. Obviously, the knowledge determined by human experience alone does not involve such a direct perception of the emotions and feelings of others: at most, particularly sensitive people may arrive at an empathic participation in what the conscious Ego of the other directly experiences. But in the light of what is learned in the Spirit dimension, what is done to others is done to ourselves.

This difference in knowledge between what is learned in the Spirit dimension and what is normally experienced in the dimension of our organic life represents a problem of no small importance for the conscious Ego, at least as long as its existence is connected to that of its organism: the knowledge of the substantial oneness of consciousness, as it is experienced in the Spirit dimension, is in contrast with what the Ego normally experiences during its human life, due to the plurality of the individual organisms and the psychic tensions that derive from their interactions, especially if one takes into account the fact that the information relating to this form of cosmic unity is given to us, so to say, with the dropper. In fact, as all those who have experienced a particularly intense and profound NDE do not fail to point out, there is a substantial and unbridgeable difference between what the conscious Ego has directly experienced in the Spirit dimension and what can be communicated through language: therefore what we can learn and interpret through the reports of the NDErs is only a rather poor surrogate for a direct experience. As has already been said, even if the number of people who have had a direct experience of the Spirit dimension is increasing and begins to be significant, it still remains clearly minority in percentage terms, and the effectiveness of communicating such experiences essentially consists in creating a resonance that brings to the light of consciousness something that is already part of the very essence of the Ego. Anyway, one gets the impression that in the transition from the Spirit dimension to that of organic life, characterized by a one-way linear perception of the energy of time, substantial changes occur which – when they are perceived by our consciousness linked to the characteristics of our organism – seem to be the subject of experiments organized by the Spirit, and involving the Spirit itself, the psyche, nature and consciousness: these experiments are differently interpreted and understood by the conscious Ego, depending on whether it is in the one or the other dimension.

If we believe that the conscious Ego is in any case an emanation of the Spirit, all the differences that are found in the various degrees in which the Ego is involved in the dynamics of the human psyche, including its more or less spiritual orientation or its subjection to the negative polarity of the psyche, should be attributed to the fragmantation of consciousness into a plurality of organisms, each with the destiny that life assigns to them. In this context, the cancellation of any direct knowledge by the Ego of its spiritual origin would be determined precisely by the need to let the Ego be intensely involved in the dynamics of the human psyche, in order to induce it to engage in organic life to the best of its ability, almost as if that were the only possible way of conscious existence. The understanding of the spiritual origin of the Ego would thus be reserved for those few who, with a considerable mental commitment in the techniques of meditative asceticism, could gain an intuitive direct knowledge of the Ego's true essence. But the reports of the NDEs substantially change this framework, making available to many people – through the spreading capacity offered by current technological resources – the information related to the experiences of the conscious Ego in the Spirit dimension. This change – which some people naively attribute to a prevalence of the Spirit over the psyche – influences the dynamic structures of the human psyche, based on a dialectical and often conflicting relationship between its polarities. For us, who live in a dimension characterized by the linear and one-way perception of the passage of time, it is difficult to understand the profound meaning of these experiences that involve both the Spirit and the human psyche, and in which the conscious Ego seems to have a role almost of subjection, or rather, of a sensitive instrument that allows to verify the effects of the experiment. Yet it is precisely this condition that makes the Ego particularly precious and irreplaceable, even for the Spirit itself, since obviously the task entrusted to the Ego in experiencing this organic life is to act as a bridge between the two dimensions.

The Ego, through its functioning as a sensitive instrument, capable of bearing and consciously recording pain and suffering, as well as experiencing the forms of pleasure and happiness offered by the human psyche, carries out a very specific task and performs a real work, also in the energetic sense of the term, verifying the compatibility of the transformation of psychic energy – a transformation that bears some resemblance to organic processes such as the assimilation and digestion of food – in relation to the Spirit's needs. For some reason that is not known to us for now, the Spirit cannot or does not want to intervene directly in the process of transformation of psychic energy, and so it sends into the dimension of organic life those particles that manifest themselves in the form of conscious Ego, destined to return to their mother house once the vital functions of the organism with which they are associated are exhausted. The interpretation according to which human life would be a school or a gym to which the Spirit would send these particles – emanated by itself, and therefore composed of its own substance – so that they can learn, like schoolchildren, improving their knowledge and practicing those virtues that the good education required by the Spirit-parent imposes on them, while containing a core of truth, is rather naive: first of all it is not clear why this school cannot have its seat in the same Spirit dimension, with a form of teaching that proves effective for every conscious Ego, in the light of the remarkable resources available to the Spirit; moreover, as is evident, the very circumstances of the organic life produce very different experiences on the conscious Ego, who can feel abandoned in the stormy sea of the human psyche, without having the resources to learn, or to verify, what has not been adequately taught. Indeed, if human life were to be considered as a school organization, it should be evaluated as a low level institution, with rather poor programs and teachers, able to attract only poorly gifted and somewhat listless students, with some rare exceptions!

The work carried out by the Ego in the dimension of organic life is important, not only for the Ego itself as a spiritual entity, but also for the Spirit, which through the sensitivity and fragmented consciousness available to the Ego manages to recover a part of the psychic energy to transform it into spiritual energy. What we sometimes perceive or interpret as a merit acquired by the Ego in living its life in the right way is nothing more than, so to speak, the right remuneration for a job well done or – even better – the value attributed by the Spirit to an energetic contribution of superior quality. Each of us, by the mere fact of experiencing organic life, implements a program of assimilation and transformation of psychic energy, which however does not always produce significant results in terms of quality: as we have said, the conscious Ego of most humans often identifies with the psychic dynamics in which it is involved, for good and for bad, and therefore the harvested energy that it brings with it at the end of its organic life consists of its own conscious experiences, which not infrequently are configured as psychic energy of an unrefined quality, but not for this reason devoid of usefulness and value. However, we have to ask ourselves whether these sparks emanated by the Spirit, who awaken associated with an organism, in the process of formation and development of a conscious Ego devoid of any memory of its spiritual origin, are then in any case capable of finding the way to return to the Spirit dimension once their organic life is over. On the basis of the reports of some NDEs, one gets the impression that this return journey is in some cases difficult and not risk-free, like an odyssey that exposes the conscious Ego to even tormenting experiences until it is able to perceive that one far light that, like a lighthouse, directs and guides it on the path towards the Spirit dimension.

If every conscious Ego is a spark emanated by the Spirit, its very essence should be able to guide it back to the Spirit dimension, by which it feels attracted, once the story of its organic life is over. As I have already noted, I do not believe that there is currently enough information to argue that some people's Ego may have been emanated from an entity other than the Spirit, for example an intrinsically evil entity, because even in those cases where the accounts of some NDEs tell us of distressing experiences, or experiences contaminated by infernal elements, the Ego – in its spiritual condition – is absolutely not attracted to them, but instead feels an intense need to escape by all means from the sufferings that such experiences cause it. Probably those NDEs are caused by a difficult and troubled transition between the dimension of the psyche and that of the Spirit, during which the Ego, devoid of orientation and experience, remains entangled in some manifestations of the negative polarity of the human psyche, from which it does not manage to extricate itself while wishing to do so with all its resources. An intrinsically evil Ego, on the other hand, would feel irresistibly attracted to a possible Evil dimension, which it would recognize as inherent to its own spiritual essence, if it had been emanated by it. It is always advisable to remember that good and evil, as we experience and interpret them in the course of our organic life, are manifestations of the bipolar energy of the human psyche, with respect to which the Spirit proves to be an energy with completely different features: in any case the Spirit does not coincide with what we commonly consider as the good, that is the positive polarity of the human psyche, even if the spiritual origin of the conscious Ego can influence the same psyche, making the Ego more prone to orient itself towards the positive polarity of it.

The Ego's emotional sensitivity always remains connected to those dynamics of the human psyche that the Ego interprets and evaluates – often incorrectly – as beneficial and advantageous for itself. The features of the psyche's negative polarity mean that this evaluation often does not take into account the emotional reactions that our actions can cause to others, especially to those who become victims of them: thus the Ego of the thief or the robber feels that it benefits from the theft, the Ego of the rapist gets satisfaction in the rape, the Ego of the scammer or the deceiver is pleased with its ingenuity when their plans are successful, and the conqueror's Ego feels the thrill of victory and domination, always without any of these Egos feeling worried and troubled by the negative emotional reactions felt by their victims. As we have said, this state of affairs is determined by the fragmentation of consciousness into a plurality of individual organisms that very often feel alien to each other – contrary to what the Ego experiences in the Spirit dimension – and was well summarized, in its extreme form and in a not so distant past, by the ancient Latin saying mors tua, vita mea (your death, my life). It is however important to understand that the conscious Ego is intrinsically oriented towards the search for something that it feels as a good or an advantage, in relation to the conditions in which it finds itself, due to the necessities imposed by organic life and the often distorted dynamics of the human psyche. The conditions imposed by destiny are such that not infrequently the advantage searched for by the Ego simply consists in the elimination, or at least in the reduction, of the sufferings that it is forced to endure due to the most diverse causes. Ultimately, in the course of its organic life the Ego goes (more or less intuitively) in search of a good that it misses, and – failing to find it – naively tries to obtain some of those surrogates that life can offer it, and which make it feel a more or less intense, but always temporary, form of satisfaction and happiness.

In the light of what is attested by an increasingly significant number of NDEs, it is evident that the conscious Ego, once freed from the constraining demands of organic life and from the conditioning of the human psyche, finds in the Spirit dimension that supreme good which it missed and sought for as best it could, living in this world in the more or less confusing state generated by the psychic dynamics with which it was induced to identify by its naive weakness and lack of knowledge. But precisely this surprising lack of resources in having to face a condition and a dimension as difficult as that of human life, so alien to its spiritual essence, induces the Ego, in most cases, to intensely desire to be able to remain in the Spirit dimension without having to go back to the organic state. And almost always, in the NDE accounts of which we are aware precisely thanks to the fact that those who have been able to experience the Spirit dimension have then been forced by a higher will to come back to this organic life, the commitment of the Ego in facing this condition is supported not only by a surplus of energy of spiritual origin, but also – above all – by the certainty that the time of their organic life is limited, and at the end of this experience they will be able to return for good to the Spirit dimension. As it is evident, this is a very different condition from that in which the Ego, conditioned by the programs imposed by the human psyche, clings with all its resources to its organic life trying to make it last as long as possible, even in spite of the psychophysical decline that old age involves. We find once again this disconcerting weakness of the Ego which, relegated to its role as a human automaton, often fails to advance its consciousness in order to be able to use the spiritual resources to recognize its own authentic essence: a condition that, unfortunately, lasts until death for the Ego associated with many human organisms.

If we admit the hypothesis that what happens in this world is well known in the Spirit dimension, where all the information on the experiences lived by each conscious Ego are recorded, we are led to recognize that the different way in which each Ego interprets its own life is due to the interaction between the sparks emanating by the Spirit, endowed with a certain amount of energy that also manifests itself in the form of sensitivity, and the psyche's energy that manifests itself through the functioning of the psychophysical system of every human organism, in relation to the environment with which it interacts. In the dynamics of this alchemy it is not only possible, but indeed probable, that the psyche's energy prevails over that which a single spiritual spark can be endowed with, taking into account the fact that this process takes place in the context of the organic dimension of this world, and therefore it is subject to those socio-cultural variables, conditioned by the human psyche, that we perceive in their historical (and thus temporal) and geographical (correlated to the environmental conditions) development. In this context, it is reasonable to think that at the end of its organic life every spiritual spark can be recalled and welcomed again in the Spirit dimension, towards which it feels attracted by a cosmic force similar to the gravitational one, in order to be purified from the slag of psychic energy that it brought with it, because – we could add – this was the task that had been assigned to it and the very reason why it had been emanated by the Spirit and sent into the dimension of organic life on this planet. In the same process, the psychic energy is also influenced, albeit with alternating phases, by those sparks of spiritual energy with which it interacts: this influence manifests itself over time in those transformations – more or less slow, and not always positive due to the intrinsically bipolar feature of the psychic energy – occurring in the sociocultural conditioning programs through which the psyche exerts and affirms its control over human organisms.   

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