The remarkable and mysterious phenomenon of human life

The experience of our organic life

Although this site is mainly devoted to those phenomena that validate the possibility that the conscious Ego may continue to experience and express itself creatively after the death of the organism to which it is bound during human life, the writings that compose it were still written by a person whose organism is still alive (and in rather good conditions of efficiency), even if it is already in the final phase of its adventure in this world. Obviously, even the interest in a possible continuation of the Ego's existence in an inorganic or spiritual dimension must be included among the experiences of organic life: in particular, the prospect of the organism's death – which approaches as the years already lived increase – entails for the Ego a commitment to face both the experiences of the final phase of organic life, and the experience of death itself, aware of the fact that it is about to abandon a way of life which it had become accustomed to and a psychic dimension whose dynamics intensely involved it. Our normal perception of time in this dimension causes the Ego, as long as its organism is alive, to be bound to the experiences of this life: NDEs are an exception, precisely because the Ego manages to experience a different dimension, of which it retains a particularly clear and indelible memory, to then return to the ordinary routine of organic life. In a less intense form, dreams and other non-ordinary states of consciousness also constitute temporary interruptions of the flow of consciousness of that waking state through which the Ego experiences the normal functioning of its own organism, in the various environmental conditions and social situations in which the latter may find itself. Therefore, as long as the organism has a chance to go on living, the Ego must continue to experience this organic life, and only the definitive death of its own organism can offer it the opportunity to permanently experience new and different dimensions.

I have already dealt with the issues relating to the formation and evolution of the Ego in the paragraph The conscious Ego as a result of human life in the post of October 2022, and in the pages on What we are (April 2022) and Learning from life (May 2022). The variety of human experiences always warns us against the claim to want to understand – let alone explain – the complexity of the different ways of existence and functioning that we can attribute to the plurality of Egos. Through direct experience I can refer to my Ego, and in the light of memory I can trace back my personal history and recall my past experiences, thus identifying an evolutionary path for my Ego. But when I try to establish a contact with someone else's Ego, I usually don't feel at ease, because I have to face the barrier of the psyche's dynamics with which the other Ego often identifies, and the behaviors determined by acquired cultural programs. In most cases, I have the impression that the other's Ego doesn't even have full awareness of its own existence and essence, but just plays what I call a human automaton role. I am well aware of the fact that my consideration for the needs of the Ego can be judged by other people as useless and vain – not to say elitist and even conceited – if we take into account the difficulties that organic life entails, difficulties which the Ego must face, in one way or another, if it wants to safeguard the survival and well-being of its organism. Anyway, I can serenely say that I too have had to deal with that amount of problems, difficulties and sufferings that my personal destiny did reserve for me, therefore – with all the limits imposed by the fragmentary and partial nature of an individual life – I can speak of the human condition of the Ego from direct experience. As I have repeatedly argued, the fundamental aspect of the Ego's orientation in relation to the challenges that organic life poses to it and the opportunities it offers, consists in its level of identification with the dynamics of the human psyche that continuously involve it, and from which it cannot escape but by renouncing to live in this dimension: the bipolar character of the psyche's energy then determines all the individual singularities which, in their interactions, make up the complexity of the phenomenon of human life.

Under these conditions, the separation of the conscious Ego from the dynamics of the human psyche that involve it is the best way to correctly discover and value the Ego's authentic essence. This separation does not involve, except in extreme cases, the renunciation of human life: organic life always consists in experiencing a certain range of attunements of the psyche, and the fact that the Ego perceives them as positive and or as negative is an integral part of the human adventure. But there is a sharp difference between the condition of the Ego which identifies itself with the psyche's dynamics that involve it, and that of the Ego which registers their effects without allowing itself to be fascinated or intimidated by them. It is by virtue of this separation that the Ego can become aware of the phenomenon of the human psyche in its global complexity, provided that the necessary precautions are taken in order not to succumb to the power it has over the organism to which it is bound: however it must have developed the full awareness that its organic life can end at any moment, and that it may not have sufficient resources to avoid being afflicted by the psyche's negative dynamics. If the Ego manages to progress enough along this path, it should be able to experience a serene and in some ways even pleasant old age, and a peaceful, natural and non-traumatic transition into death. Actually, the opposite usually occurs: due to a sort of magnetic attraction that the organism exerts on the Ego, and the involvement of the Ego in the events of its personal history which consolidates as the time of a person's life flows from future to past, the Ego becomes more and more ensnared in the vicissitudes and habits of organic life, and can stiffen in those mental schemes with which it has identified itself and has faced, with more or less success, the difficulties, obstacles and unforeseen events of its life. Thus it happens that, over the years, the events of people's life, the choices they make based on the dynamics of their own psyche, the cultural conditioning they assimilate and the roles they must adapt to, transform the still ductile and malleable material of the Ego of childhood and youth in a multitude of adult and mature individual characters, so very different from each other in terms of resources, behaviors, determination and social role.

If, on the other hand, the conscious Ego manages to differentiate itself from the dynamics of its own psyche, then it can consider its life for what it is: a series of experiences, which takes place over time like billions of other possible series of experiences, more or less interesting, more or less fascinating and engaging, more or less lucky or unfortunate, more or less instructive or insignificant, but still limited not only by the life span of the organism that makes them possible, but also by the resources that organism is endowed with. The Ego, if it deems it important, can also seek an answer to the question of why it should experience human life with one organism rather than another, just as it can question itself about the powers that determine the organic bonds and the environmental conditions in which every organism is formed, grows and develops its potential, thus living its personal destiny. However, it soon realizes that all forms of organic life have an end, and therefore an answer to these questions can possibly be found, or can be given to it, only once its human experience is over. The process of differentiation from the psyche's dynamics also allows it to realize how its individual existence depends not only on the bonds that link it to an organism, but also on the fragmentation of consciousness into a multitude of individual personalized cores. Each of these cores, as a conscious subject, experiences and records the events of the psyche that involve it and with which it usually identifies; as a sensitive subject, perceives many effects of the dynamics of the psyche through a positive or negative, enjoyable or unpleasant, exciting or painful evaluation scale; as a subject endowed with will, makes decisions and elaborates behavior strategies, almost always indulging the dynamics of its own psyche; as a creative subject, it can intervene not only on physical reality, modifying it in accordance with what the psyche suggests to it, but it can also use its own resources to differentiate itself from the same psyche, or at least from those cultural programs developed by the collective psyche for the purpose to carry out an effective conditioning and control function. As for the way of interpreting human life, the Ego is free – at least in front of itself – to consider it as a more or less exciting adventure, as a training gym, as a school of learning, as an exam test or as a dutiful commitment which it cannot and must not shirk: however, it can also use the creative resources at its disposal to discover and unveil what goes on behind the stage scenes.

The differences between the Egos

Before proceeding with these considerations on the most interesting aspects of human life, it is convenient to deal with the problem of the possible substantial differences existing between one Ego and the other, and the related causes: that people can be very different from each other it is a self-evident fact, to the point of being taken for granted in evaluating the character of individuals, the resources they have and the dynamics of human interactions. However, when we attribute these differences to individual organisms, and therefore to the functioning of their brains, or to the environmental conditions in which the same organisms grew up and act, we ultimately recognize that the differences are due to that range of psyche's attunements which involves and controls the conscious Ego of every organism. By separating the Ego from the dynamics of the psyche with which it usually identifies, the issue of the differences between one conscious Ego and another takes on a different and deeper meaning, as the Ego is now considered as an entity distinct from the qualities (or defects) of the organism from which it originated and to which it feels temporarily bound, and from the environmental circumstances – historical and territorial – in which its organism functions and interacts with other organisms. Even with these premises, however, some obvious differences there remain between one Ego and another: the first is constituted precisely by the Ego's level of identification with the psyche's dynamics that involve it and that continuously try to control it. In any case, given that this identification is more intense when the Ego is still in the juvenile and experimental phase of its human life, it is necessary to leave it the time needed to undertake its own evolutionary path: however, the differences between those who at some point feel the need to differentiate themselves from the dynamics of their own psyche and those who identify with them throughout their lives are easily discernible. Usually, the more convinced people are of the validity of their motivations, the more they identify with their own psyche's attunements.

Another difference to take into account is that there are some people whose life is particularly interesting, pleasant and, as they say, successful, not only because they are endowed with a particular talent for some human activity, but above all because their psyche's attunements cooperate harmoniously enough, often since their childhood, with what their Ego feels to be its purpose or mission in this life. On the other hand, the existence of other people can be very tormented due to the disharmonies between the psyche's dynamics, those that the Ego feels as its true and legitimate aspirations, and the needs determined by the collective psyche that establish what can be socially and culturally valued and what not. In most cases humans are caught between these two extremes, in a range of nuances that becomes all the more diversified the more complex, dynamic and multiform the social environment in which we live is. In an attempt to find a reasonable explanation for these differences, some people resort to the hypothesis that a spiritual entity – on the basis of its level of evolution – can determine the talents and resources that the organism with which it will be associated as a conscious Ego will be able to use, and consequently also the psyche's attunements to which that Ego will be subject. It is one of the variants of the ancient theory of subsequent reincarnations, considered as necessary for spiritual evolution: however, from the point of view of the conscious Ego, the only entity about which we can try to say something sensible and reasonable during this life, this explanation is far from convincing. Indeed, one can hypothesize the influence of an inorganic entity on a person's organic system, and consequently also on the mind, and the Ego can to some extent consciously perceive this influence, without however being able to identify it with precision among the various psyche's attunements that involve it. The phenomenon of people gifted with an exceptional talent or creative genius has significant analogies with that of mediumship: even particularly gifted mediums are rare, and what is most striking is the fact that they are often in a state of intense trance – and therefore their Ego is completely absent, as devoid of any consciousness – while the most extraordinary phenomena occur. It is evident that the organisms of mediums must present some particular requirements outside the norm, which however we are unable to understand and investigate with the scientific resources we currently have at our disposal. At the same time, in order for mediumistic phenomena to occur, it is necessary that the medium's organism be taken out – in whole or in part – of the control of the same medium's conscious Ego, to be used by inorganic entities through operating methods of which we humans are completely unaware.

For what concerns the limits, resources and efficiency of every single human organism, that is the one which is formed inside another organism, is born, develops, and is certainly destined to stop functioning and decompose after a longer or shorter time, it seems to me more sensible to speak of a lottery effect rather than a planned and organized programming, case by case, in relation to the evolutionary needs of each spiritual entity. In fact, it should not be forgotten that what we investigate and study as the natural laws that rule the development and evolution of organic life, in particular as regards higher mammals, are valid – in their complexity – both for humans as well as for horses or dolphins: if humans are able to communicate with each other by exchanging information, transforming their environment, inventing and creating increasingly complex artefacts and devices, seeking the meaning and purpose of their existence, while the life of horses or dolphins remains limited to the needs of the relative organisms, this depends on the ability of the human brain to receive and interpret particular attunements of the psyche, transforming them into action. Furthermore, as we have already observed, scientific and technological progress has not occurred uniformly in all human cultures, and has undergone a consistent acceleration in the last two or three centuries: we are still very far from knowing the causes of these events with sufficient precision, to attribute them with certainty and exclusively to the functioning of our natural organisms and to the resources they are endowed with, yet recognizing that these resources undoubtedly play a very important role in the reception and processing of the psyche's attunements. It would be important for us humans to know what really happens behind the scenes of the phenomenon of life (and of the psyche) but, at least for now, this knowledge remains inaccessible to our mental resources, therefore scientific research concentrates on the aspects it manages to investigate, that is the electrochemical functioning of the cells of the cerebral matter and the possible computer processing of neural networks. For all the other aspects concerning the psyche's functioning, we still remain in the ambit of interpretative speculations based on empirical observations.

If we want to take into account the needs of the conscious Ego referring to its evolution with respect to the experiences of human life, many NDEs and some communications of mediumistic origin show us how the Ego aspires to a better condition than the one this life has offered it: once this condition has been experienced, the return to organic life is felt as a regression or, at most, as a task or a mission to be carried out, through that form of commitment which is usually called sacrifice, since its implementation does not in itself involve happiness, joy and satisfaction, but rather dedication and renunciation, sometimes associated with suffering or pain, inspired by a sense of duty. We recall that when, in the course of some NDEs, the Ego is sent back to organic life after having experienced the Spirit dimension, this form of regression is not infrequently felt and interpreted by the Ego as an imposition which does not take into account its will, and not as its own free choice. In such circumstances, the only comfort left to the Ego consists in the fact that, having experienced the Spirit energy as pure, unconditioned and unlimited love, it can attribute a positive value to its temporary destiny based on its trust in the Spirit, and on the certainty that, at the end of its organic life, it will definitively return to that dimension. In a certain sense, forced as it is to experience organic life, the Ego finds itself between a rock and a hard place: on the one hand it has to deal with the psyche's dynamics that involve it, for better or for worse, trying to get it to fully identify with them, while on the other hand it feels obliged to follow an itinerary that is sometimes difficult and even painful, without a guide who can enlighten it in a clear and unquestionable way on the meaning and purpose of this experience. Also in relation to what the Ego can experience as positive, fascinating and gratifying in the course of its human life and under the psyche's influence, beyond the differences between one Ego and another due to the different duration of individual lives, to the resources available to the Ego and, ultimately, to everyone's personal destiny, there is always something that remains outside what the Ego has or has not been able to experience: whether it be experiences related to sexuality and eroticism, the intoxicating and passionate state of falling in love, the experiences induced by non-ordinary states of consciousness or by psychoactive drugs, beyond the fact that there is always someone who hasn't had the opportunity or the ability to experience what someone else has experienced, some experiences remain beyond the possibilities of the Ego bound to its organism, as those who have experienced the Spirit dimension during an NDE are well aware, to the point that sometimes they attempt suicide in order to return to it.

Ultimately, if we consider the Ego as a conscious subject, a fundamental aspect that differentiates one Ego from another is the quality of consciousness, meant as the ability to highlight and evaluate in depth the different aspects of the human psyche, progressively expanding the amplitude and power of the range with which consciousness brings them to light. In this respect, obviously, the duration of organic life and the experiences it entails are of fundamental importance: this is the reason why a person's Ego can transform and evolve in the course of its life, not so much because its essence changes, but because the expansion of consciousness and the improvement of its operational capabilities allow the Ego to being able to have a more complete and more satisfactory cognitive and interpretative framework, also as regards the knowledge of its own essence. However, even this process of development of what I would like to call smart consciousness, requires that the Ego be endowed with the necessary resources, and therefore it does not occur in the same way in all humans, nay, in a good number of them at a certain point it stops, so much so that even the prolongation of their organic life does not involve further significant progress in the evolution of their consciousness. Once again, we find ourselves having difficulty interpreting a process which – although rather well understandable in its entirety – remains enigmatic as regards the reasons which determine the substantial differences between one individual and another, reasons which are hidden from us. These differences, as well as the metamorphoses that occur during our organic life, and the temporary and therefore impermanent nature of the latter, still leave some shadow of doubt regarding the absolute reality of our human experience, which seem rather to belong to a form of relative reality, in which the subjective elements are inextricably intertwined with the objective ones.

The charm of human life

Undoubtedly, human life presents various fascinating aspects for the Ego, despite the difficulties that living often entails. In the initial stage, that of the formation and development of the Ego, interest in life is stimulated by the very experimentation of the various dynamics of the psyche which involve the Ego, and by the spirit of adventure with which the Ego may feel attracted by the possibilities that life offers it: mainly, the Ego experiences the desire that attracts it towards what gives it pleasure or what is felt as a value, or urges it to change the conditions in which it lives for those negative aspects that generate various forms of suffering in it. Again, this attempt to present a generally valid picture of the Ego's condition in childhood, adolescence and youth does not take into account the enormous diversity of the various individual cases, starting from those in which organic life is prematurely interrupted, or those in which the organic system has functional defects that can influence even the Ego's ability to be aware of itself. We are therefore forced to settle for this mediocre standardized framework, which – as is inevitable – refers above all to our personal experience, in order to be able to outline the various forms of involvement of the Ego in the adventure of human life to the best of our limited abilities. First of all, we can recognize that the Ego's interest in organic life originates from the recognition – by the same Ego – that its existence has been determined by that of the organism in which it was formed and to which it feels bound: in this consists the very essence of human life. Only after a more or less long time, following the experiences of life, can the Ego eventually become aware of the possibility of continuing to exist even once the organism in which it was formed and to which it is still bound has definitely ceased to work: and, in many cases, this extension of consciousness does not even occur.

Regarding the human condition and the illusion that the Ego is always able to understand its own state and to influence its destiny and evolution, we cannot forget the enormous distortions that various socio-cultural programs of psychic origin produce – particularly when they take the collective form of religious or nationalistic fanaticism – subduing the Ego through an intense indoctrination since childhood, and not infrequently determining its blind identification with the most absurd programmatic instructions that the power of the moment transmits to it. Unfortunately for the Ego of those who live in our time, it is not just a historical condition belonging to the past of a now evolved humankind, but a way of functioning of the collective psyche that is still operating in a large part of the social systems of our world. We understand how it is practically impossible to hypothesize a valid evolutionary path for each Ego, as long as the very conditions of organic life are able to impose these absurd, senseless and cruel forms of enslavement and identification on the Ego of a remarkable number of people. With these premises, in full awareness that suffering and pain are always part of the integral experience of organic life, and therefore cannot be forgotten or removed, we also want to recognize the value and effectiveness of all those life experiences that generate feelings of admiration and wonder in the Ego, provided that it has already reached a sufficient level of evolution of its consciousness and sensitivity. Of course, we cannot refer to those forms of madness, determined by the dynamics of the collective psyche, through which even very large groups of people (and in this case the term human automata would certainly be more appropriate) feel exalted and inebriated by the victory – always to the detriment of a counterpart, itself human too – in wars, conflicts and competitions of all kinds, in the economic, political and even sports fields: the latter would be the least serious case, were it not for the fact that today's sporting competitions often involve remarkable economic interests, and any means is considered acceptable in order to win, that is, to prevail over the opponent.

First of all, we should recognize that human life offers the conscious Ego the possibility of forming, of learning to know itself and of evolving: without this premise the very experience of organic life would remain completely incomprehensible to our Ego, precisely because of the bipolar, contradictory and conflictual nature of the psyche's energy that rules the events of this world. This is one of the reasons why I think that human life should represent the initial level of a long evolutionary path for the conscious Ego: indeed, I don't see why an entity that has already experienced a more evolved level, more suited to its own needs and abilities, should want to regress, freely and on its own initiative, moreover forgetting its own previous experiences. Then, it is this same world that is interesting and fascinating for the Ego, both in terms of the evolution of the phenomenon of life, even in its conflicting aspects, and in terms of the emotional resonances that the beauty and grandeur of nature's landscapes and manifestations generate in our mind, inducing many of us to investigate them to reveal and learn about their mysteries and laws, or stimulating our creative resources to represent them through an art form. Even more phantasmagoric and bewildering in its immensity is the universe that surrounds us and of which our planet too is a part, a cosmic dimension whose charm is increased by the mystery of everything that exists but that we are not, at least so far, in the conditions to know, due to the enormous distances that separate the worlds and the difficulties to be overcome in order to obtain data and information on what happens in spaces inaccessible to us. The intense desire to be able to explore this universe stimulates our intelligence and our creativity to deepen the knowledge of the laws that govern it and to try to build the most suitable technological means to be able to transfer our organisms, or at least tools capable of transmit information to us, in places in space far from our world. Here too lies what could be defined as the fascination of the future, that is, that stimulus that drives humankind to develop in order to always be able to move forward in time, in spite of all the sufferings of the past (and of the present), and all the difficulties that humans – as individuals and as groups – must face day by day, so that humankind can progress (in the sense, precisely, of proceeding towards the future time, while not knowing whether or not it will conform to our hopes).

Another very interesting aspect of this life is represented by the complexity of human interactions, which determine a large part of the psyche's dynamics in which the Ego is involved. Among the various forms that these interactions take on, organizational ones, aimed at achieving certain goals, and those relating to affective or sentimental dynamics – which can lead to very intense emotional reactions, either positive or negative and conflicting – have a particular importance. Also in this case, the interest aroused by such interactions can stimulate the desire to know, to interpret and to understand the causes that determine the observed effects, opening up those vast fields of study which include the history of human events, the formation and development of various cultures and the interactions between them, the organizational institutions which rule the relationships between the members of a society, and – unfortunately – also all the atrocities committed by humans against other humans, as a consequence of the identification of the Ego with the negative dynamics of the bipolar psyche. If in some human beings the need to investigate and to know prevails, others are driven by the desire to act and experience firsthand, under the impulse of the psyche's energy, often regardless of the consequences, and sometimes – as we use to say – whatever the cost. The charm of human life also lies in the ability offered to our mind to use our organism to actively intervene in the transformations of this world, creating increasingly complex artisanal or industrial products. A non-secondary aspect of this process, especially in our time, is the creative ability to organize the work of even very large groups of people, optimizing the results obtained. The motivations for which people are committed to their work can be the most diverse: even if they often do it only because they are driven by the need to secure resources in order to survive, it is always interesting to study how people can be selected, programmed and motivated to effectively carry out their role within a production system or a social organization. Historical events also play an important role in evaluating the results of the functioning of various organizations, from small companies to the institutions of big national states, given that everything in the temporal dimension is subject to change: periods of growth and expansion of certain activities, experienced as positive and exalting, are followed by others of decline and contraction, which can often be compared to forms of agony, in some cases artificially prolonged.

Among the possibilities offered by organic life we should also mention the ability of the mind to control the body, which allows some particularly gifted people, capable of engaging in forms of training that require perseverance and devotion, to get exceptional results in the artistic field or in various sports activities. In the case of music, for example, it is not only the optimal control of the body's mechanical resources that makes a concert player or a singer exceptional, but also the interpretative quality of their performance. However, it is true that nowadays it is increasingly possible to create quality music with computers, and in the future the mechanical control skills of concert performers may become progressively less important. An activity in which the gymnastic and athletic abilities of the human body merge with the pathos generated by music is dance, in all its forms, even in those that currently fall under sports disciplines, such as figure skating for instance: in dance it is the very human body, male and female, which becomes an irreplaceable and highly evolved instrument of expression, and the control of this instrument by the mind can represent one of the highest forms of interpretation of organic life by the conscious Ego. Finally, among the important aspects of this life, we must certainly include the phenomenon of human creativity, as it is expressed not only in the various forms of what is considered as art or craftsmanship, but also in every new invention in the technological and industrial fields, as well as in solving problems and in the search for new methods of investigation in scientific, medical or humanistic disciplines. Indeed, human creativity gives us the impression that there is a transmission field through which a purely mental, and therefore non-physical, reality can exert its effects in this physical world of ours through the human brain and organism. Of course, not all humans are equally gifted in this respect, and consequently the designation of creative genius is reserved for those who show to be endowed with a particular innate talent that allows them to attune to this source of mental creativity. Ultimately, precisely creativity and the ability to translate the mental elaborations of thought into the activities of our organisms represent the most evolved, interesting and fascinating aspects of human life, which distinguish it from that of any other living animal species on our planet.

A large amount of organisms in different conditions

Each Ego experiences human life based on the features and resources of its own organism, and on the psyche's dynamics tuned through the nervous system, also as a reaction to the environmental conditions in which this organism forms, develops and acts. But due to the large number of human organisms that currently live (or that lived in the past), and the genetic, functional and cultural differences that can be found between one organism and another, the interactions between organisms and the way in which they influence each other through the psyche's dynamics take on a particular importance. Thus human life also becomes a choral phenomenon, in which the Ego lets itself be influenced – more or less willingly and often automatically – by the dynamics of the collective psyche. However, the differences between one organism and another remain, and the way in which each Ego experiences its own life depends to a large extent precisely on the conditions in which its organism is: for example, the Ego of a young person, endowed with a healthy, well-developed organism full of vital energy, will experience the thrilling fascination of living, without even taking into consideration the future decline of its own organism, still distant, or the prospect of dying. The vital charge of the human organism is made up of an energy that manifests itself in a self-referential way, at least until an organism is adequately endowed with it, and the mind's philosophical and cognitive elaborations are worth very little in front of it, however reasonable they may be. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a young, healthy and fit person, even if endowed with a good intelligence, in reading the pages of this site, would find the topics dealt with boring and unattractive: indeed, I would be surprised otherwise. It is also quite understandable how taking care of the body's shape and proper functioning has become very important in the culture of our society, which is not surprisingly sometimes referred to as welfare society: however, it is necessary to carefully distinguish between the welfare considered as a mere search for forms of pleasure at the request of the psyche's dynamics, even to the detriment of the proper functioning of our organism (as happens, for example, for some forms of obesity), and that meant as satisfaction for the optimal fitness of one's organism and the good performances that derive from it. As often happens, the functioning of the human psyche leads to a lot of confusion regarding both our welfare and that of other people.

The dissatisfaction that the conscious Ego can feel towards human life is always correlated, in one way or another, to the functioning of its own organism, or to that of other organisms to which we feel linked by emotional bonds. For instance, even when a parent suffers for the serious illness or the loss of a son, this happens because the son's organism has stopped functioning or is in danger, and this fact is reflected in the functioning of the parent's organism, even if the latter is in good physical shape. In the context of organic life, the psyche influences all relationships and interactions between our organisms. In many people the level of satisfaction with organic life and the interest it arouses in the Ego are such that, if they could, they would never want to be separated from their own organism, prolonging the latter's life as long as possible. This attitude does not only depend on the belief that the very existence of the Ego is solely determined by that of the organism to which it is linked, but also on the fact that a form of existence to which the Ego has by now become accustomed, and which is experienced by it as satisfactory enough, could be replaced – at the death of its organism – by another uncertain and insecure existence, on the experiences of which the Ego does not know what control resources it may have. If the death of its organism does not occur quickly and unexpectedly before old age, the Ego can be forced to experience a state of degradation and progressive inefficiency of the functions of its own organism, due to old age or a serious illness: in some cases it considers better to die – despite the uncertainty about what could happen to it after death – rather than continue to live in demeaning, painful and wholly unsatisfactory conditions, while in other cases it fights to the end to continue living or clings to the illusory hope of being able to heal, even miraculously. The efforts made by medicine to prolong the duration of human life are motivated by an instance of the psyche determined by a need of the organism, which does not want to die: there is no doubt, in fact, that if the existence of the conscious Ego can possibly continue even after the death of its organism, the latter's life is due to end definitively and forever. Until now, death has been a certainty for any human organism, but it is evident how the most advanced research and technology are doing their utmost to develop devices and techniques capable of prolonging the life of the organism, without excluding the goal of attempting – in the remote future – to transfer the conscious Ego inside more or less evolved cyborgs.

The training of the conscious Ego in distancing itself from the dynamics of the human psyche which directly involve it is also useful to prepare it for the definitive and inevitable separation from its organism. Given the amplitude and variety of the range of possible individual experiences, the Ego can certainly be interested in techniques for freeing itself from those dynamics of the psyche that it feels and interprets as negative, such as physical pain and various forms of mental suffering, but is usually reluctant to give up those emotional and sentimental experiences that can give it satisfaction, happiness and pleasure: as I have already observed, vital energy is self-referential, and when it manifests itself positively the Ego is certainly fascinated by it. After all, it is not clear why the Ego should not be allowed to enjoy the pleasant and interesting aspects of this life, through the functioning of its organism, if these forms of enjoyment do not harm anyone else and do not determine future negative consequences for the same Ego, as not infrequently happens. Each Ego can feel free to do as it pleases in this respect, once it has well understood how the human psyche often uses a tasty and attractive bait to hide the hook to which the Ego can get hooked. For this reason, if there are no serious reasons to consider one's organic life as completely unsatisfactory and hopeless, many of the topics covered on this site can be more understandable and more interesting for those who already have a large part of their life behind them, and in some cases prepare themselves to face the decline of their organism and the experiences that precede death. In any case, a spiritually oriented Ego neither despises nor neglects its own organism, but rather admires its complexity, its functions, and the extraordinary possibilities that it offers to manifest its own creative, expressive and control abilities in this physical dimension: therefore the Ego not only takes care of its body, but does everything possible to improve its performance and to keep it healthy, vigorous and efficient even in old age. In this respect I believe that the spiritual orientation of disciplines such as yoga or some martial arts, which enhance the body's functions, is more harmonious and more evolved than some archaic ascetic forms, also present in the Christian tradition, of contempt, neglect and ignorance towards the so-called flesh. It is well that the Ego never forgets that its organism, despite all its limitations and defects, is the result of an extraordinary creative and evolutionary process that lasted billions of years, and still represents the manifestation of a power of transformation of matter and energy resources of this physical world, which certainly should arouse wonder, admiration and respect even in a spiritually advanced Ego.  

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