The creative and organizational power of human psyche

Technological progress

The most surprising aspects of human creativity are under our eyes every day, so much so that habit often leads us to take for granted and normal every technological product, made through human ingenuity, which instead represents the result of a long and complex creative and organizational process conceived and developed by most intelligent part of the human psyche. Even at the end of the eighteenth century, the work organization involved some sectors, such as building, the construction of complex products (ships, carriages, armaments), the textile industry, metallurgy and the nascent chemical industry. Overall, however, craft skills – transmitted through apprenticeship – prevailed, which were organized into small groups of people, usually employed by a single master figure. Many workers were still employed in agriculture and cattle breeding, organized in a summary way, since the various roles could be easily reassigned, according to circumstances. Some products, in the field of cabinet-making, clothing, musical instruments, jewelry and artistic craftsmanship, were of very fine workmanship, and showed the creative and manual ability achieved by their manufacturers. From a technological point of view, the most complex and valuable products were clockwork mechanisms – such as those used in the construction of the famous mechanical automata – and precision scientific instruments.

Since then, the work organization in the most technologically advanced countries has radically changed, and the products that today many people can easily dispose of were unthinkable two centuries ago. Not only that, but the most substantial increase in technological production occurred in the last century: just think that a hundred years ago there was not even a material as widespread today as plastic, in its various forms. We are therefore witnessing an exponential increase in technological production, the causes of which are not all easily identifiable: certainly scientific knowledge has given a fundamental contribution to the development of technology, and moreover, starting from the end of nineteenth century, networks for distribution of energy and fast circulation of goods have been created, which are the indispensable prerequisite for technological development in industrialized countries. As it is logical to expect, every step forward in the evolution of technology has been made possible by the proven operation of an increasingly complex production system, not only in terms of already working machinery and instruments, but also in terms of availability of personnel endowed with knowledge and creative, organizational and implementation skills adequate to the objectives pursued and the functions necessary to achieve them. The fast increase in the number of currently living humans – tripled in the last 70 years – and the inclusion of women in the system of advanced technological production, have made available to production processes a remarkable amount of qualified human material.

The quality and complexity of the most advanced technological products, such as computers or smartphones, but also airplanes or ships, produces in us humans a reaction of wonder and also of pride in the ability we have shown – even if not directly, but as belonging to the great human family – in inventing and creating similar products, starting from the mere resources present in nature. Obviously, the path that leads from raw natural materials to a complex product like a computer has not been completed with a single step, but has required centuries of progressive organization for the realization of intermediate products and devices of increasing complexity. However, one gets the impression that, in certain phases of this progressive development, a real leap in quality has occurred, stimulated by a particularly creative impulse determined by the psyche. To the stimulus given by the more or less socially widespread desire to obtain something new, we must add the ability – by some individuals, alone or gathered in organized groups – to identify a process that allows to produce what was desired: In this way, for example, the automotive industry developed first and then the aeronautical industry. The people who engage as pioneers in these creative activities have, in addition to an uncommon intelligence, particular resources of will and tenacity that allow them to overcome the various difficulties that arise along the arduous creative and experimental path that leads them to the (never taken for granted) final success.

It must be recognized that, thanks to technological progress, the arms industry has also made great strides in the last century, producing increasingly effective and lethal instruments of destruction, both targeted and wide-ranging, thus confirming the bipolar character of human psyche: just think of the organizational project through which some of the brightest scientific minds residing in the United States were rounded up (and segregated) at a military base in Los Alamos to develop the first atomic bomb. The way in which the human psyche manifests itself on a collective level, especially in its turbulent bipolar conflict dynamics for which good must oppose evil by fighting it with its own weapons, always goes far beyond the understanding capacity of an evolved conscious Ego. In any case, technological progress goes on, and one of the fields in which it has achieved the most interesting results is that of rapid and intense circulation and acquisition of information, thanks to telematic networks through which people can communicate almost instantly, even at a great distance, transferring information to many other people at the same time. Much more complex is the question of verifying the reliability and truthfulness of the information transmitted: once again the bipolar character of the energy of the psyche emerges, which constantly shuffles the cards, using every new available resource to indiscriminately associate positive and negative elements.

Why refer to the human psyche?

The reason why I think it appropriate to attribute to the human psyche also the dynamics that underlie technological progress, rather than referring more generically to human mind or intelligence, is that from the point of view of the conscious Ego a process is anyhow experienced, which seems to develop over time and appears to us to have its own intrinsic orientation in pursuing certain cognitive and productive goals. Our own organism, that is, the psychophysical system with which our brain picks up the tunings of the psyche that determine our body's behavior and our ability to transform many aspects of the world, is the object of a cognitive process, precisely because – as a conscious Ego – we don't know why it is made as it is and it works as it works: in fact, it was not designed and manufactured by our creative intelligence, but by something else, a process with which the conscious Ego is in the condition of having to interact. Similarly, the historical development of various human cultures and their often conflicting interactions reveal themselves to the Ego's intelligent consciousness as an autonomous process, sometimes convoluted and contradictory, and in some respects incomprehensible and even cruel: a process in which the conscious Ego, in its vulnerability, was more often attributed the role of defenseless victim rather than that of conscious protagonist. Therefore, when particular collective dynamics, which tend to globally orient the functioning and behavior of humans towards common goals, manifest and consolidate, one gets the impression that something new and different is emerging within the human psyche.

What the conscious Ego experiences is a form of energy that determines not only the psyche's dynamics to which each individual is subject, but also – through these dynamics – the interpersonal relationships that rule the functioning and behavior of each person in their social context. The programs that bind each individual to their social role have been developed on the basis of the experiences of the psyche consciously elaborated by some individuals, before successfully spreading in a certain cultural environment. Let's not forget that psyche is a word, a label, which we use today to define an energy that remains mysterious to us, despite having such an important effect on human experiences. In other eras – and partly also today – this same energy has been attributed with the power of divine will, to which the human being must remain submissive. The advantage of using the term psyche, instead of God, lies in the fact that the concept of God, in its indeterminacy, is commonly associated with a personalized entity – endowed with its own consciousness, its own will and an absolute power – which, through the polarity of good and evil, determines the destiny of every human being; instead, the psyche is an energy on the intentionality and the purposes of which we are unable to know anything, but of which we experience some dynamics through our consciousness. Obviously, also the concept of God is a product of the human psyche, which, according to the times and circumstances, self-represents itself in one form or another to our consciousness, while remaining enigmatic in its essence, at least for the conscious Ego.

Although, even though endowed with a smart consciousness, we know almost nothing about the psyche's energy, let alone be able to tell whether the human psyche pursues a plan of its own, yet the conscious Ego experiences the power of a will that forces it to live, participating – in one role or another – in the collective dynamic process of human evolution. The term evolution, in this case, does not necessarily imply a progress, but designates the historical process through which human cultures are transformed over time. However, it is a fact that the psyche, when it manifests to the conscious Ego as an evolutionary process, creates at least the illusion that a progress actually may exist, that human commitment is useful for something, and that the direction of the collective process is oriented towards a more positive future human condition than that of the past. As long as the conscious Ego identifies with such dynamics, its role in life seems justified precisely by its participation in this project (the transformation of something negative into something positive), which is in fact the manifestation of the bipolar nature of the energy of the psyche. One of the most used terms in the social context – especially by politicians – is the adjective better: we want (or desire) a better world, a better life, a better future for our children, better working conditions, and so on. This term represents precisely the orientation that justifies the commitment that is required of us in this life. But as soon as the conscious Ego begins to detach itself from the psyche's dynamics that involve it – and with which it has so far identified itself – then this project too reveals what it is: a need on the part of the psyche to involve and control our conscious Ego.

Consciousness obviously constitutes a fundamental element for the transformation process of the human psyche, which – most likely – is lacking it and needs it. I would now like to explain why I often associate the term psyche with the adjective human: the functioning of the human brain determines our mental activity, and consequently the experiences of the psyche that derive from it, which are such precisely because they are perceived by each conscious Ego in their most varied forms. While much of the brain's activity occurs on an unconscious level, it makes no sense – as I see it – to speak of an unconscious psyche, since the psyche manifests itself as such precisely as it comes into contact with some form of consciousness. There certainly are various forms of psyche also in the animal world, provided that there is a conscious subject capable of perceiving them: sensations and emotions such as suffering or sexual arousal exist as dynamics of the psyche only insofar as there is a conscious subject who experiences them, otherwise they should be considered exclusively as programs that automatically determine the behavior and reactions of the organisms in which they operate. While we are inclined to attribute some dynamics of the psyche at least to a part of the animal world, we usually think that we cannot speak of psyche for plants, since in their organic structure there is no developed nervous system like that of higher animals: however, we are not able to know whether some of the plant organisms may be endowed with a different form of consciousness. Anyway, for a conscious subject to be considered a conscious Ego, it is necessary that it has acquired at least a rudimentary form of self-consciouness: that is, the subject must know that it exists as a being endowed with consciousness. We do not know for certain whether some form of self-consciousness is also present in the animal world.

The conscious Ego, having to live through an organism of animal origin, experiences both the psyche's dynamics through which nature organizes and rules the animal world, and those deriving from the cultural transformations determined by the human psyche through the interaction and mental communication system made operative by the functioning of our brains. Indeed, the same dynamics inherited from nature due to the animal origin of our organism, are transformed and shaped by the human component of the psyche according to the needs of cultural evolution imposed by the energetic power of the same. It is, in a certain sense, a colonization and resources exploitation process by a bipolar energy of remarkable intensity, in which the conscious Ego is involved precisely because it holds a fundamental resource for this operation to go on: consciousness. The involvement of the conscious Ego seems to be indispensable, to the point that the psyche makes use of every expedient in order to ensure that the Ego identifies itself with the dynamics in which it is involved, regardless of whether these come from the natural or the human psyche. The same conflicts determined by the different components of the psyche and by their intrinsic bipolarity are experienced by the Ego, through its consciousness, as if they belonged to it and were inseparable from its very essence. In this way the Ego is ensnared by the human psyche, and the consciousness at its disposal is progressively consumed in the course of life according to the needs of the psyche. The availability of consciousness is therefore subtracted from the Ego with a technique of a deceptive or illusory nature, based on the psyche's bipolarity and its power to enchant the Ego through emotional dynamics of gratification and pleasure or fear and suffering.

Already in the context of the animal psyche, the polarity between the desire to live and the satisfaction deriving from obtaining nourishment and being able to reproduce on the one hand, and the fear of death and the need to avoid pain on the other, openly reveals the energetic power of the natural psyche, completely indifferent – as has been already pointed out – to the fate of single organisms, destined in any case to be destroyed and consumed, in one form or another, in the organization of the natural process. This organization manifests itself – in the dynamics that have determined the evolution of life on our planet – as an increasingly complex system that rules, through intelligent programs in their computing operation, the interactions between the environment and those protected systems (protocellular, unicellular or multicellular) that we call organisms. This system seems to work perfectly, if observed from the outside, and the multiplication of organisms means that its operational dynamics involve over time billions and billions of living forms, which interact with the environment and with each other according to the system's programs: what can occur to every single organism is determined by the rules of the game, that is, by the system's programs and the resources that each organism has at its disposal, and precisely the complexity of the interactions of the various organisms with each other, and in environments that show different and changing conditions over time, entails the different fate of each individual organism. Faced with such a framework, one could possibly presume the existence of an intelligent conscious entity able to conceive and fine-tune the programs that determine the functioning of the system, and to get satisfaction from the observation of the (foreseen or unexpected) developments of the created game. But why should glimmers of consciousness emerge within some of the organisms that are part of the game? And why should these primordial sparks of consciousness develop over time, to reach the complexity that human consciousness, in its most advanced forms, can aspire to today? I intend to return to these topics in the future, but for now let us focus our attention again on technological progress.

Human commitment

After admiring the technological products that human ingenuity, under the psyche's drive, has been able to create, we can imagine a future in which new wonderful devices will make human experience more and more interesting, at least in some respects. However, it is also important to evaluate which human resources and energies have been committed and consumed to get these results, which certainly did not rain from heaven. As for what concerns the past, the process that led to industrialization during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century is characterized by misery, fatigue and human suffering, but this should not surprise us, because the very fact of finding oneself living in this world, in a complex society made up of millions of people who have to find a way to feed and survive in an environment that is often difficult, and sometimes hostile, involves a series of experiences that are difficult for the conscious Ego to digest, so that all that remains to it is the renunciation of human life or – under the drive of the survival instinct – the search for any solution that allows us to get by. It is the very fact of living that for many humans has represented, and still represents today, a condition of suffering and misery. However, it cannot be said that this condition is necessarily related to human life, since there are traces and historical testimonies of cultures that thrived in particularly favorable natural environments, where available resources and mild climate allowed a limited number of human beings to live a satisfying and relatively enjoyable life. But there is no doubt that this delicate balance is now definitively compromised by the multitude of human beings that populate our planet.

Therefore, the availability of abundant human material, programmed and conditioned in order to accept the challenges of life and also to feel satisfaction in overcoming the difficulties and in obtaining the desired results, means that many people feel stimulated to put their energies and resources available to carry out a part of a project within an organization. The distribution of work roles serves, as a whole, to make the social system work, which should guarantee everyone some fundamental rights, but which in fact works in a way that is anything but optimal. Anyhow, everyone tries to connect, in one way or another, to the economic system of a society – sometimes only to exploit its advantages – because otherwise their very survival would be at risk: normally this process of integration into the work world takes place in automatic way in the context of each sociocultural system, and the conscious Ego is involved in it to the extent that it perceives the instances of the psyche that influence and stimulate its behavior and action. Thus the inclination to play one role rather than another, the interest in a particular field of activity or knowledge, or the availability of resources to be put at the service of a certain social function, are all variables determined by the personal destiny that leads the Ego to make its choices – under the pressure of the instances of the psyche – at an age in which consciousness is not yet very evolved. The range of choices of our job role goes from the mere search for any paid activity that allows us to survive, to the ability to carry out an activity that offers our best resources the opportunity to express themselves and produce results in a way that makes us feel satisfied. We are therefore dealing with a collective mass game organized according to the dynamics of the human psyche.

In these conditions, the development of increasingly complex technologies and the production of perfectly functioning artefacts, also aesthetically appealing and sold at competitive prices, involve the dedication and commitment of many millions of people, who must be properly organized and motivated. At a basic level, the first motive is always represented by the need to live, which in the context of a complex, organized and competitive society translates into the need to find a paid job. At a higher level, there are other factors based on the resources that a person feels to have, such as creative, organizational and charismatic skills, which lead to seizing opportunities, facing risks, and competing with others, to get certain results: taken together, these dynamics manifest themselves in the form of personal ambition. At an even higher level, some people may feel the need to put their own resources and their own life at the service of an ideal perceived as a meaningful value, in terms of collective good, or even as a mission that has been assigned to them by a higher entity. However, this complex game of dynamics of the psyche, which determines the productive organization within a social system, does not occur in an intelligently harmonious, ordered and carefully planned way, but often shows dramatic and conflicting aspects that reflect on the destiny of the involved individuals. As mentioned, in fact, the abundance of available human material and the different distribution of human resources in single individuals determine dynamics of insertion, exclusion and role modification within the productive organizations, whose function remains anyway that of exploiting human resources in the most advantageous possible way.

As I have already explained on other occasions, this is not a matter of expressing judgments on the functioning of productive organizations or social systems, and even less of suggesting alternatives to pursue: this is continually done by various exponents of the political, economic and cultural world, each committed to spread and defend what their own psyche suggests them. My commitment simply consists in highlighting the effects that the inclusion in a productive organization and the dedication to one's role to obtain the required results may have for the evolution of the conscious Ego. Obviously, the subjective and fragmentary character of human experience is such that everyone knows very well the responses and reactions of the dynamics of their own psyche to the events that characterize their working life, also in relation to the fear of losing their job or seeing their own business go bankrupt: it is certainly not necessary for someone else to describe them. It is important, however, to understand that if the energies available to every human being are exhausted, day after day, only in the work activities and daily commitments required to survive in a decent way (eating, keeping our body clean and in good health), the consequence will be the transformation of human beings into perfect human automata, at the service of a project of which they know nothing, but to which they willingly devote themselves, in accordance with what their own mental programs suggest. Not infrequently the conscious Ego surrenders due to exhaustion to the dynamics of the psyche that involve it: while feeling that the energies that are subtracted by work and daily commitments deprive it of the resources to devote to the evolution of its consciousness, it succumbs to the fear, inspired by the psyche, to lose its job and its social identity, and therefore continues to get by its daily routine, giving up any pretense of being able to give a meaning to its life.

In concrete terms, however, there is on the part of the conscious Ego a renunciation of the autonomous search for the meaning of human life, and an acquiescence towards the social dynamics that condition and control its life and determine its choices. This happens, naturally and without the Ego even realizing it, due to the Ego's identification with the psyche's tunings that involve it: a phase that usually lasts for the whole first half of life and beyond, and which conditions the Ego to the point that even when, in the second half of life, it could have the opportunity to follow its own evolutionary path, it almost always gives it up, overwhelmed by habits, bonds and conditioning, but also due to lack of the energy needed to make it detach itself from the psyche's dynamics. However, among those who are fully committed to their work, in one form or another, there are some who believe they are so fulfilling a social duty, and that this dedication of theirs – which often involves sacrifices and renunciations – will somehow be recognized and rewarded by some higher entity once this life is over. It is therefore one of those forms of attribution of meaning to human life that is inspired by dedication to a project of collective evolution, desired by a higher power that the conscious Ego feels it must faithfully support. In some cases the conscious Ego feels attracted to an ideal so important that it is willing to follow it with all its devotion and energy, even without believing in survival after death: these forms of dedication, which sometimes border on fanaticism and – given the psyche's bipolar character – can also lead to inhuman behaviors, are due to the complete identification of the Ego with particular instances of the psyche, and not to a call from the spirit, which always takes into account the evolutionary needs of the conscious Ego, also with regard to the preparation for the dimension change at the end of this life.

By carefully examining the dynamics of the human psyche, one wonders why the production process and technological development should speed up time to the point of requiring the maximum possible commitment of human resources and energies, leaving almost nothing available to the conscious Ego for its own evolution, and thus creating an imbalance, in terms of lack of progress – if not regression – in the development of human qualities, and of exacerbation of the conflicting elements that intervene in interactions between people and in social dynamics. Two answers can be given, both centered on the Ego's weak condition towards the psyche. The first is the competitive nature of productive companies and the rules that regulate employment relationships, so that a more advanced product, or a product that costs less, cuts pre-existing products out of the market and puts the organizations that produce them in crisis: it is a forward race in which we cannot stop, for the fear that one of our competitors will surpass us by taking advantage of our condition of relative relaxation. Because of these conditions of mutual fear and mistrust that dominate the relations between productive organizations, all the workers involved, including managers, are obliged to use their time and resources to the maximum. The second observation is that most people, in their condition of human automata, do not know how to use their free time for the evolution of the consious Ego, and therefore waste it on recreational and leisure activities that contribute little to the Ego's liberation from its state of subservience to the psyche. As a matter of fact, many aspects of our culture privilege and encourage precisely those aspects of the use of free time that increase the Ego's subordination to the attunements of the psyche considered, depending on the case, as gratifying, enjoyable and positive.

The energy potential that people can have at their disposal varies from individual to individual, and in the final part of life it decreases until it runs out, like a bank account that dries up because it is no longer fed. Sleep and recreational activities are necessary to recharge our batteries, but in some cases the activities carried out for fun involve a waste of energy, especially in our mass societies where, at certain times, many thousands people bustle to do the same things. One gets the impression that only in a minority of human beings the conscious Ego succeeds in escaping the dynamics and conditioning determined by the collective psyche, directing its commitment and energies – or at least those which it can still dispose of once the tasks required to survive and to fulfill social obligations have been acquitted – towards the autonomous search for the meaning of its own life. It is a personal destiny, probably determined by a better efficiency on the part of the mental system of these people in picking up those signals that I attribute to the spirit's call, which determine in the Ego the need to refine its own consciousness, making it more sensitive and more intense, and expanding its range of action, so as to be able to disengage from the normal bipolar dynamics of the psyche with which it has always identified. Anyhow, a more balanced culture could promote a recovery of the energies available to the Ego in function of their use in the process of evolution of consciousness, rather than completely exhausting them in production processes and in more or less useless, and sometimes even deleterious, entertainment and leisure activities.

The progress of mankind and the Ego's evolution

If we consider mankind as a whole, we can hypothesize that – in the face of a more or less known past of a few thousand years, and a prehistory of a few tens of thousands of years – human life on planet Earth still has a long future, and although we are not able to know what events will characterize the future history of humankind, by extrapolating the technological progress of the last two centuries and the advantages we have benefit from it, we can imagine – with a dose of optimism not without a pinch of naivety – a framework in which humans will be able to live in concord and harmony, science will be increasingly advanced and technological development will make new exciting adventures and experiences possible. If, on the other hand, our forecasts are marked by a more concrete realism, we will imagine a humanity struggling with diverse and increasingly complex problems, faced in the light of the competition and conflicts that characterize the human psyche, with phases of relative well-being alternated with periods of decline, in a long and always tiring journey towards a distant and unknown goal. Finally, if we are oriented towards pessimism, nothing prevents us from imagining wars, cataclysms, epidemics and other misfortunes, in the light of what has already occurred in the past. In any case it can be retained likely that the history of mankind – for better or for worse – will not end in a century or so.

Throughout the first part of life, in youth but also in adulthood, often to maturity and beyond, people usually identify with the future of humankind, living as if they had a path ahead of them, if not almost infinite at least very long, and as if they could draw on an unlimited reserve of energies. This does not surprise us, because the human psyche must use the available energies as much as possible, and therefore each new generation identifies with the future of mankind, to which it is called to give its own contribution, in one form or another. The process by which the conscious Ego is, so to speak, ensnared in life, so that it puts its intellectual resources and its will at the service of what the psyche presents as both personal and collective needs, is based on the fact that in a first phase it is pushed to live by the same curiosity that leads it to explore the possibilities that life offers, and in a second phase – having become accustomed to this life – it feels the need to proceed along the path of experiences that destiny reserves for it, although it may not be very satisfied with what it already had to experience. In any case, there are also those who die before life ends its natural cycle, either by misfortune, or because they decide to voluntarily put an end to an experience that has become unbearable. In all these cases, however, the evolutionary endeavor by which the Ego can become aware of its own essence and its possibility of emancipating from the dynamics of the human psyche that involve, condition and dominate it, not only does not succeed, but often has not even be taken into account, and the very act of taking one's own life seems to be determined more by the conflictual alchemy of the psyche than by the free will of the Ego.

Sooner or later, at a certain point in life, the Ego becomes aware not only of the temporary character of its human existence, but also of the fact that the mental and physical resources at its disposal undergo an inevitable decline in the phase of old age: a decline that in the best of conditions can be kept under control and slowed down, but which cannot be avoided. From that moment on, the identification with the future of humankind loses its effectiveness, since the Ego feels that the end of the life of its psychophysical instrument will also mark the end of its participation in the human experience: mankind will certainly continue on its path – bright or tormented as it may be – but that particular fragmentation of experience constituted by the single individual Ego will no longer be part of it. Under these conditions, the Ego of most humans, addicted to the psyche's dynamics with which it has always identified, remains tenaciously attached to this life, to its memories and the emotional bonds that connect it to other humans, and thus loses the extraordinary opportunity that is offered to it: the possibility of strengthening its own consciousness, freeing itself from the coercive power of the human psyche, and of using death as a springboard towards the unlimited experiences offered by the spirit. By continuing to identify itself until death with the ordinary dynamics of the human psyche, the Ego behaves like people who, after decades spent in a vast prison that they now know very well and in which they have settled in and adapted well, are no longer able to get out of it even when the prison gates are opened, out of fear and insecurity about what they might find out there... conscious freedom, creativity and responsibility. And so they languish in prison until they actually die.

The energy field of the human psyche is very intense, and is intrinsically linked to our planet, to the point that most humans cannot even imagine conditions of existence and attunements of the psyche other than those we experience in this world, which is only one of the many billions of worlds existing in this universe: the isolation in which we live in our world leads us to believe that every other world must be associated with a field of mental energies similar to the one that controls planet Earth. The fact is that the conscious Ego was formed and brought up within this energy field: it was born, so to speak, inside the prison constituted by the organic system through which it connects to the human psyche and gets the food energies that allow the survival of its organism. But without an adequate evolution of its own consciousness it cannot be certain that the Ego would be able to overcome the barrier constituted by the energy field of the human psyche, even when death – that is, the liberation from the body's bonds – offers it this opportunity. The only resource on which the conscious Ego bases its very existence is consciousness, and therefore the process of strengthening and evolving our consciousness should constitute – in the second half of our life – the most important and most demanding activity, to which we should devote all our available energy and resources. In fact, a weak, uncertain, fearful consciousness, capable of picking up only the tunings determined by the human psyche, would not be able to transport the Ego beyond the energy field that controls the human condition, and therefore and therefore the Ego would be induced either to not believe in any form of survival, or to submit to the will of some possible higher powers – always represented in one of the forms established by the same human psyche – to whom to entrust its own destiny.

The strength of the bipolar energy field of the human psyche probably gave rise to the myth of reincarnation, according to which an undefined entity (sometimes identified with the spirit) goes through a series of life experiences – usually imagined as arranged in succession in time, one after the other – precisely because it fails to go beyond the force field of the human psyche, remaining subject to the attraction it exerts. Now, it is certainly true that the conscious Ego usually remains ensnared in the dynamics of the psyche with which it identifies in the course of its life, but it is equally true that in every new human organism a new conscious Ego is formed and consolidated, who, although in some rare cases may experience reminiscences belonging to other lived lives – as the researches of the Canadian psychiatrist Ian Stevenson (1918-2007) and his collaborators have shown – usually has no clear memories other than those formed during its lifetime. It is however possible that the psyche's energy field retains, in whole or in part, the main memory traces of the experiences lived by all humans, and that in some cases a person's consciousness tunes in some of these experiences, reliving them almost as if they were their own memories. However, it seems more interesting to me to consider the fact that some people are gifted with particular talents and resources to a much greater extent than the norm, and give the impression of living their lives (for better or for worse) with the determination and energy of those who follow an already marked destiny which cannot be derogated, as if it were a task assumed even before coming into this world.

Whatever the fate of the single conscious Ego, it experiences – through the physical and mental system to which it is linked – a particular bundle of energies of the human psyche for a limited time: this mysterious adventure does not involve it only as a simple spectator, but determines its formation, its growth and its possible evolution over time, up to the end of life, which can occur – for various causes – at any moment of the natural cycle that ends with old age and death. Since in the course of human life the arrow of time moves in only one direction, it is in the final part of life that the conscious Ego can eventually feel the value and meaning of this experience, in which it has found itself without knowing with certainty neither the causes that determined its immersion within this dimension, and its very existence, nor the purposes towards which this process is directed. If, at the end of life, the conscious Ego feels that its very existence will be annihilated upon the body's death, or if the mind itself will suffer a deterioration to the point that it can no longer even focus on a sufficient level of the Ego's self-consciousness, then the process of evolution of the conscious Ego will not be successful, and the Ego's future fate will be determined by some of those powers and entities, unknown and mysterious to us, that preside over the phenomenon of human life on our planet. In those cases where the Ego has instead managed to bring the process of evolution of its consciousness to a level sufficient to determine – at least in part – its future destiny, its detachment from the body can take place in full consciousness, with the mind still well functioning, and in a non-traumatic way, since the Ego will now feel free from the constraints and conditionings that had been imposed on it by the human psyche.

It is therefore understood how at a certain point in its life it is important for the Ego to separate itself from the attunements of the collective psyche that determine the (more or less uncertain) future of mankind, unless it decides consciously – and not simply because it is at the mercy of its own destiny – that the meaning and the task of its life consist in accepting to be at the service of the human psyche, in one of the positive or negative roles offered by the bipolar character of the latter. If the conscious Ego otherwise manages to undertake and follow its own autonomous path, first of all escaping the more involving influences of the collective psyche, it will continue to confront the personal dynamics that will still try to maintain a control over it, due to the same attraction force exerted by the psyche's energy: however, reflecting and meditating on its existence and its very essence – through the concentration of an ever more powerful and efficient consciousness – it will be able to sustain this confrontation at least on an equal footing, without succumbing to the dominance of the psyche, and above all without getting involved in the psyche's dynamics. In this way the Ego can allow its own consciousness to tune into other experiences, different from the usual attunements determined by the human psyche, so as to be able to evaluate how much they are in harmony with its most authentic nature. It is as if, having a tuner device (something like a radio), moving from a tuning that connects us to a station that transmits a clear and strong signal (the human psyche), we could perceive some weaker and more disturbed transmissions – almost as if coming from much more distant stations – which however can become intelligible to us, albeit with difficulty, provided their signal is not overwhelmed and obscured by that of the predominant station. Not infrequently these distant and disturbed stations transmit broadcasts far more interesting and meaningful than those offered by the human psyche. 

We can therefore follow with interest the progress of technology, and rightly appreciate the advantages it brings with it for the dissemination of information and knowledge. We can also feel admiration for the talent and creative capacity of all those who have contributed to this progress, devoting their commitment and their energies to overcome the difficulties and obstacles that gradually arose until they got the desired results, along a path that still goes on and whose future developments will not fail to surprise us. Without a doubt, technological progress enriches human experience, since it contributes to making us less subject to the constraints and limitations deriving from the natural origin of our organism. The circulation of information and knowledge within a global network that can now count on billions of computers, stimulates mental activity and is likely to produce changes in the functioning of our psyche over time. However, the same conscious intelligence that has determined technological progress can understand how it still falls within the dynamics of the human psyche, towards which the conscious Ego is satisfied to play a subordinate role as long as it identifies with them. At a higher level, one could hypothesize a collaborative role, and not simply a subordinate one, on the part of the Ego, and perhaps the future evolution of the psyche will allow us to go in this direction: but in order to be able to speak of a collaborative relationship, it would first be necessary to have a conscious idea of the goals of the project of the human psyche, which in the present state of our knowledge are still enigmatic. Above all, it is the psyche's bipolar character that does not offer sufficient guarantees to the conscious Ego, since any step forward on the path of progress can be used for both positive and negative purposes.

The results of production activities are tangible and concrete, and everyone can benefit from them provided that they give their contribution to the economic process that allows to cover production costs, or that they can find someone willing to contribute in their place. By comparison, the process of evolution of consciousness and the Ego's liberation from its identification with the dynamics of the human psyche may seem useless, arbitrary and unproductive in terms of tangible results: this, at least, is the prevailing message transmitted by cultural programs today predominant in our social system, despite the high costs it has to afford for healthcare, maintenance of public order, and the propaganda necessary to offer a picture of the future oriented to trust and hope. Yet the process of strengthening consciousness and separating from the dynamics of the human psyche in which the Ego is involved requires dedication, commitment and intelligence as well as the organizational and productive processes: it too presents difficulties and obstacles that must be faced, and when these difficulties are successfully overcome, tangible results are obtained in terms of the Ego's evolution, psychophysical well-being, interest in exploring the different aspects of knowledge of the world and the universe, and trust in the continuity of experience – intensified and expanded through the consciousness empowerment – beyond death. The fact that it is an internal and essentially subjective process does not diminish its importance or value, precisely because at the moment of death – and even before – the participation of the conscious Ego in the experiences determined by the human psyche and in the same mankind destiny is replaced by something different: therefore, unless we want to decide – as many people do – that the existence of the conscious Ego will be completely erased by death, the resources committed to prepare for this fundamental event are certainly not wasted.

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