Consciousness and the Ego

Consciousness as the foundation of existence

On this site the term consciousness has always been used to indicate the state of being conscious, and even self-aware, as opposed to the condition in which one is not aware of anything, as adequately explained on the Definitions page. Consequently, the conscious Ego has always been referred to as a subject endowed with consciousness, which can perceive and feel alive precisely because the function of consciousness, in addition to allowing it to experience representations of physical reality and a certain range of attunements of the psyche, also offers it the certainty of its existence (at least temporarily) as a real subject. It is appropriate to distinguish between existence as an object or representation (to use Schopenhauer's term) on the part of a conscious subject, and the recognition of its own existence on the part of a subject that is aware and knows it exists. The existence of an object (a tree, the moon, a horse, etc.) always requires a conscious subject capable of perceiving its mental representation: although we, as conscious subjects, can hypothesize the real existence of something from which come those signals and stimuli whose processing will give rise to our mental representations, direct and indubitable knowledge of what Kant called the thing in itself remains precluded to us. However, we ourselves, through our mental processes, are able to hypothesize a condition of existence even in the absence of any form of consciousness that can be aware of and know such existence, objectively or subjectively. For example, we know that the Sun existed long before human consciousness could recognize its objective existence, and if we assume (without being able to say anything certain about it) that there is no other form of consciousness than the human one, then we must conclude that a form of existence in the absence of any form of consciousness, not only subjective but also objective, is possible. But is it correct to define this form of being, in the absence of any conscious subject, as existence?

The fact of asking this question obviously depends on our mental processing ability, which leads us to ask ourselves questions and to reason about various issues, and this ability depends fundamentally on our being conscious subjects. Therefore, in light of our ability to reason, existence is determined by the fact of being either a conscious subject or an object of perception and knowledge by a conscious subject. It is not possible to make any sensible statement about anything that does not fall into one of these two alternatives and which, therefore, remains completely unknown. Of course, the conscious subject does not necessarily have to be a human being, even if human consciousness is what we usually refer to, because it is what we have direct experience of and what we attribute to all human beings – albeit with varying degrees of intensity – and, to a lesser extent, to the more highly evolved animals. But if we decide that the objects of our perception and our knowledge can exist in themselves, even if they lack an autonomous consciousness that makes them conscious subjects, then we should conclude that anything could exist, since existence would be completely independent of consciousness. At present, however, whenever we affirm that something exists even when we do not perceive it, we are still referring to the persistence through time of something of which we are nevertheless conscious. For example, if I am sure that the Sun continues to exist even at night, when I cannot see it, my certainty depends on the fact that I see the sun during the day and establish its existence as an object of my perception, and then, through experience and my intellect's capacity for reasoning, I know that the rotation of the Earth means that, over time, the sun alternately illuminates and does not illuminate the place where I am. However, I think that if we wanted to indicate the fact that something can exist or can operate without being either a conscious subject or an object of perception by a conscious subject (a fact that we cannot exclude), we should use a term other than existence: for example, automatism.

But there is also a remarkable difference between existing as a conscious and knowing subject and as an object of perception by a conscious subject, if one supposes that the object of perception is not itself a conscious subject. In this case, the existence of the object is determined by the subject, who attributes it only to the extent that the objective qualities of the object are perceived, interpreted, evaluated and known by the subject. But the conscious subject, which we humans tend to identify with ourselves, may not be able to know with certainty whether the object of perception is endowed with its own consciousness or not: this happens, for example, in the case of animal organisms, to which we can attribute some form of consciousness that is less developed than that of humans, and which, in our opinion, is all the more rudimentary the simpler and more primitive the nervous system of the organism is. However, in the case of complex plant organisms, such as trees, we are unable to know whether they are endowed with a form of consciousness of their own, and consequently we are inclined to consider them as things, that is, objects of our perception devoid of an autonomous consciousness. Therefore, based on the above considerations, we can conclude that the most important and most intrinsically true form of existence is the one we attribute to the conscious subject, especially because we believe that it is also aware of its own existence. When referring to our consciousness as human beings, however, we must highlight its limits: in fact, in addition to showing significant differences from one individual to another in relation to its intensity and power (which determine the depth and breadth of the stream of information and data that it can transmit to the conscious Ego in a certain period of time), our consciousness is unable to give us direct information about the existence of forms of consciousness other than itself. The very existence of another human being's consciousness is inferred rather than directly experienced, to the point that we may always be in doubt as to what the other's Ego is actually experiencing in terms of thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations, etc. But when it comes to non-human forms of consciousness, we are usually groping in the dark.

The change in the state of the conscious Ego during NDEs

During many NDEs, a very strange thing happens, whose interpretation poses considerable difficulties, at least in light of the resources of our human consciousness: the conscious Ego feels itself abandoning its organism more or less rapidly, sometimes almost instantaneously, and perceives its own existence as completely separate from that of the body and from all the sensations (even the most painful ones) that it experienced through the body until a few moments before. The sense of identity of the conscious Ego does not change in the slightest, yet the Ego perceives and feels that it exists in a form and environment completely different from that experienced through the connection with its own organism. As an example of this change, I reproduce an excerpt from the narrative of an NDE, the full version of which can be read on this page (Lavette H) of the nderf.org website, or listened to on this YouTube page.

«I was unable to swim when I was pushed into a pool at the deep end. I sank like a rock: when I touched the bottom of the pool my "self", as I call it, came out of my body. I was instantly up and to the right of my body behind the right shoulder. I was very aware that the body I saw drowning was mine. Yet I had no sympathy for it as I watched it drown and struggle for life, I was completely unattached to it. I questioned immediately how can I be there and here at the same time? I put my hands out in front of me and touched them together. As I felt the touch and recognized that they were my hands. I could not understand how this could be, I took a deep breath and said, "Wow I can breathe under water!" I was distracted by the voices of those at the poolside discussing the fate of my body as it drowned. I could clearly hear their words and was aware of their emotions concerning my drowning body; but I still did not care about it and returned my attention to the fact that it did not hurt at all to die. I was amazed at how much more real and vibrant the colors and light around me were. This is real and that body there was just a coat I had been wearing. It felt good to be out of it. I felt free from pain, confusion and all the heaviness of the weight of life on one's shoulders. My entire perspective on life was changing as fast as I could think. As I was basking in the wonder of it all at the same time the one who pushed me in jumped in to get me. I watched as she pulled the body to the top of the water. As fast as myself came out of the body, it went back in and I was instantly very angry about it. I could now feel the experience the body had while I was separate from it. It had been terrified and angry, scared and afraid. I had not experienced any of that yet now I was being forced to feel the state the flesh felt even though I wasn't there with it when it happened. I never saw through the body's eyes, I could only feel what it was feeling about what had happened to it.»

In June 1977, the protagonist, Lavette, then twenty years old, had gone to a party with friends, and while she was sitting on the edge of a swimming pool, a friend of hers had pushed her into the water as a joke, not knowing that Lavette was unable to swim. On that side the pool was deep enough for Lavette's body to sink, but the girl's consciousness detached itself from the body almost instantly, tuning into a new entity, perceived as her own self. From the account of the experience it is clear that there was no interruption in the sense of identity of the conscious Ego, which continued to feel that it existed as such, even if separate (and detached) from its own organism, which now appeared to it as an external object. It is therefore not a case of a split consciousness, but rather a true separation of the latter from the organism to which it had always been connected up to that moment. Furthermore, the protagonist's conscious Ego is well aware that the body it sees drowning was the one it had been connected to (her body), which is struggling and suffering to continue living, while the Ego feels no involvement in what was happening to that organism. However, the conscious Ego feels that it is somehow connected to another bodily form, since it holds out its hands in front of itself (and therefore within its field of perception) and recognises them as its own, even if it cannot explain how this can happen. As we have seen, the protagonist refers to this corporeal entity as her self, which has separated from her physical organism. At the same time, she cannot understand how this separation was possible, given that until a moment before her conscious Ego had identified itself with its own organism, as normally happens.

The identification of the conscious Ego with its own body is first and foremost a cultural fact: the educational practices prevalent in our societies lead us to consider the Ego as a function of the organism to which it is linked through something not clearly defined that is thought to reside in the brain. It must be recognized that this identification is based on two important observations: the first is the almost complete dependence of the Ego on the psyche and on the latter's reactions to many of the events in which the organism is involved, while the second derives from the fact that each of us, as an Ego, perceives and interprets others through the behavior of their organisms and the impressions and communications they convey to us, which we evaluate from our own personal perspective. Thus we learn to make no distinction between the Ego and our organism and to refer to the latter simpli as "I", rather than using the expression my organism (or my body). We do the same with others, even though we know that each of us has a conscious Ego and a more or less complex inner life. It is therefore quite understandable to feel surprised when realising that the conscious Ego can exist separately from its own organism, not only retaining all its mental faculties, but being able to observe that same organism, to which it had felt so intimately bound until a few moments before, as an external object devoid of any particular interest, whose reactions, pains and worries do not involve it in the least. The protagonist of our NDE, referring to her friends, correctly says that they were «discussing the fate of my body as it drowned»: she no longer uses the term I to indicate her own organism. Since this is a real experience for the protagonist's Ego, we must recognize that the conscious Ego can actually experience a state of existence that is completely separate and unrelated to that of its own organism.

The condition of the conscious Ego during dreams

In the section on non-ordinary states of consciousness, various aspects of the dream state have been examined, in which the conscious Ego experiences a condition of existence different from that of the ordinary waking state. On the page on the Quality of dreams, a classification of the different varieties of dream experience and of the more or less intense involvement of the conscious Ego in such experiences has been presented, highlighting the fact that the dream Ego is endowed with a form of awareness that generally cannot be considered to be on the same level as that of the waking state, with the exception of some lucid dreams and those that I have defined as conscious dreams. It is important now to make a distinction between the conscious Ego when it remembers a dream and relives, so to speak, its events and emotions in the waking state, perhaps trying to interpret the dream in light of its own condition and its own experiences in what it considers real life, and the dream Ego while it is inside the dream, whether or not it is aware of the fact that it is dreaming. We can say that the dream Ego lives within the dream as if what happens there were real, through a form of consciousness that can be more or less dim, if compared to that available in the waking state, but can also be very intense, as all those who have experienced a nightmare from which they suddenly woke up, only to find their organism in a state of alteration and agitation, know well. During sleep, the body's musculature is almost compltely inhibited, with the exception of muscles necessary for survival, such as the heart and respiratory muscles, and consequently the movements of the dream Ego are not transmitted to the organism, which remains quiet and inert. But sometimes this blocking system doesn't work, and the body can make sudden movements or enter a state of agitation and distress related to what the dream Ego is experiencing.

Consciousness plays a fundamental role in relation both to the intensity and lucidity of what the dream Ego experiences during the dream, and to the ability to transfer to the conscious Ego in the waking state the memory of what its dream counterpart experienced. The role of the brain in determining the quality and content of dreams and their recording in memory has not yet been clarified, especially with regard to certain particularly vivid dreams and the causes behind them. In any case, nowadays most people consider dream experiences almost as a by-product of the activity of the conscious Ego in the waking state, forgetting their dreams and consequently not paying any attention to what the dream Ego experiences: given the frenetic pace of life imposed by current conditions, the hours dedicated to sleep and rest are often considered a waste of time or a luxury that cannot be afforded, causing the conscious Ego to disregard the resulting stress. The result is that the conscious Ego of the waking state is usually identified, in a unilateral, arbitrary and improper way, as the only possible condition of existence, while experience should lead us to consider it as one of the experiential modalities determined by our consciousness. Even without going into further detail on the various forms of experience determined by dream activity, already discussed in the pages on dreams in the section on non-ordinary states of consciousness, we can conclude by stating that in the ordinary course of organic life each of us experiences at least two distinct conditions: that of the conscious Ego in the waking state and that of the dream Ego during dreams.

The function of consciousness in the waking Ego is almost always related to the actions required of the organism in the various circumstances in which it finds itself, therefore it is not so surprising that the conscious Ego can separate from the organism when the latter suffers a serious trauma or finds itself in critical conditions that put its survival at risk. When this happens, many who have experienced an NDE report that the new state of existence of the conscious Ego separated from its organism is more real than the ordinary waking state, to the point that even the latter now appears as a dreamlike condition, a sort of long dream from which the Ego has awakened. Certainly this new condition in which the conscious Ego, while maintaining the continuity of its own identity, experiences a new reality about whose existence it has no doubts (whereas it begins to have many doubts about the real existence of what it experienced during its organic life), calls into question the hypothesis that the Ego-consciousness is determined exclusively by the functioning of the brain. While during organic life several experiences and experiments confirm and support the dependence of consciousness on the functioning of the brain, especially with regard to the waking state, NDEs present too many anomalous aspects compared to what we experience in that state. That such events cannot be explained in the light of the functioning of the brain has been demonstrated by serious and highly competent researchers, such as American psychiatrist and psychologist Bruce Greyson (born 1946). Furthermore, we must never forget that everything we experience in the course of our organic life, including the very existence of our organism and brain, is always related to the mental representations generated by our mind: such representations imply the existence of a source that stimulates our sensory organs and determines our mental interpretations, but – as we have already observed – we have no reliable knowledge about the real nature of this source.

A strange existential dualism

We are now in the position of having to acknowledge at least the possibility, if not the certainty, of an existential dualism that leaves the conscious Ego perplexed and incredulous as long as it is connected with its own organism in the ordinary waking state, while leading it to perceive as almost dreamlike those same experiences of human life that it had interpreted as absolutely real while it was connected to its organism, once freed from the latter. Since these are two existential conditions that refer to the same subject, that is, the conscious Ego, that does posses neither the capacity nor the means to determine one or the other condition with its own will, we must admit that the organism is endowed with a particular form of energy that binds the Ego, at least until the vicissitudes of organic life themselves weaken this force of attraction, which manifests itself above all through the dynamics of the psyche. In some NDEs, it happens that the conscious Ego simultaneously experiences the state of its own organism which is suffering and strenuously fighting to survive following a traumatic accident or an event that puts its life at risk, and a state of peace and tranquility in which it contemplates the activity and efforts of the organism from the outside, without feeling involved. Even in the previously mentioned NDE, in which the protagonist's conscious Ego had separated from the body almost instantly, once it had re-entered the organism the Ego had perceived the anguish and suffering experienced (unconsciously?) by its own body in the critical condition of drowning, as if such emotions had been recorded, probably somewhere in the brain. One thus gets the impression that the consciousness of the Ego can connect alternately (and in some cases simultaneously) to the nervous system of the organism or to an inorganic entity that apparently retains some of the features of the organism (such as the hands that the protagonist saw before her).

During organic life, and in particular in the ordinary waking state, the conscious Ego does not experience this existential dualism, as it remains connected to its own organism and, through the vicissitudes and events of the latter, is intensely involved in the dynamics of the psyche that derive from them and in the interpretations that the psyche itself suggests to it directly or through socio-cultural conditioning programs. However, in particular cases the Ego experiences an alternative existential condition, which therefore involves experiences (such as some conscious dreams, OBEs and, obviously, NDEs) which don't concern all human beings, but only a minority of them. The Ego of people who experience these states of non-ordinary consciousness may ask itself, once it has returned to the normal waking state through the reconnection with its organism, whether and to what extent those anomalous and extraordinary experiences were determined by the functioning of the brain. What experts in one or another field of human knowledge who have not directly experienced one of these non-ordinary states of consciousness say about this is usually irrelevant, because they express beliefs – determined by the human psyche – relating to the organic condition in the ordinary waking state, without knowing what happens to the conscious Ego in the alternative dimension. We can certainly say that the experiences described in most NDEs cannot be determined by the functioning of the brain in the normal waking state, and that to date no one has been able to explain in a convincing and conclusive way which brain areas and which functional processes could cause them.

In particular, what leaves one perplexed is the absolute indifference with which the conscious Ego, once separated from that organism with which it had identified itself until a few moments before, looks at that very organism, entirely indifferent to the (often dramatic) events in which the organism is involved and of the consequences of such events which seriously threaten its survival. The very fact that the protagonist of our NDE was able – once back in her body – to experience the memory of her body's suffering as it struggled to survive the lack of air caused by drowning, demonstrates that such suffering and the resulting emotional state had been registered by her brain, as one might logically expect. There appears to be no valid reason, related to the survival of the organism, why the brain should simultaneously bring about a condition in which the conscious Ego separates from the organism and moves into another dimension, after having considered the organism as a foreign entity towards which it feels complete indifference, being now convinced that its existence no longer depends on the life of the body. If anything, it would be more logical to assume that if the brain were to manage the organism's difficult situation with the resources at its disposal, it would cause a blackout of consciousness, turning off, so to speak, the Ego, until the final outcome of the critical process. Instead, the conscious Ego finds itself involved in experiences whose complexity, intensity, and sense of reality defy the wildest imagination. Whatever conclusions each of us believes we can reach, the fact remains that the mystery of the existence of the conscious Ego in an alternative dimension is nothing but the other side of the coin of the mystery of the existence of the conscious Ego in the dimension of organic life, with all the limitations that the latter entails.

It is very important to highlight the significant change in the perception of time that occurs in most NDEs, which is also inexplicable in light of how the brain functions in the normal waking state. The perception of a unidirectional flow of time in which the present flows inexorably towards a planned, imagined, and often uncertain future, which progressively transforms into an immutable past that can be remembered but to which there is no return, is an essential experience of the human condition in organic life: for this reason, since Kant's time, time has been considered a modality determined a priori by the functioning of the mind, and therefore of the brain. The perception of time in NDEs changes radically, transforming into something similar to an eternal present in which every event and every experience seems to happen simultaneously, while retaining their own distinctive character and apparent duration which is sometimes interpreted as if they were years in terms of human time. I simply cannot understand on what basis and what evidence one can attribute to the functioning of the human brain the creation of a way of perceiving time so different from that of the ordinary waking state. Even in the dream state, dreams maintain a precise sequence of events: it is true, however, that dreamers may perceive the passage of time differently than they do in the waking state, in the sense that a dream that seems very long to them in terms of its storyline and events may have a duration, measured by someone who is awake, of just a few minutes. But dreams lack that sense of eternal present in which every past or present event (and not infrequently future events as well) is already recorded in a timeless reality of which the conscious Ego can contemplate one aspect or another, without perceiving any temporal flow that determines a precise succession of events.

A different way of feeling and evaluating

In the final two chapters of the page on Mental Entities of the Blog 2022 I had already pointed out that in the course of human life, alongside an organic Ego that coincides with the vital needs of our organism, a psychic Ego prevails which normally identifies itself with the drives and dynamics determined by that particular band of attunements of the human psyche which are activated through the functioning of the brain. The spiritual Ego, which also does exist, usually plays a marginal role in this life, and manifests itself openly only in a relatively small number of people, always willing to devote themselves generously to the service of others, especially those who suffer, sometimes risking the very survival of their own organism. Since I do not belong to this meritorious category of people, I have often wondered what the deeper reasons are why the psychic Ego so often prevails over the spiritual Ego. For a long time, now that I'm 80, I have been reluctant to force myself to be better than I am through an act of will, because I have found that what one tries to keep out the front door comes back, so to speak, through the window in a disguised, unexpected and difficult-to-manage form, as Carl G. Jung correctly pointed out in his psychological system. I prefer to be what I am, while doing everything I can to improve myself, taking full responsibility for it both in this life and in a possible future existence, also because people who want to force themselves to be better than they are, are not infrequently prone to gloominess, some form of existential melancholy and even illness. For these reasons, I have a predilection for the path of knowledge, which has at least allowed me to explore the dynamics of the human psyche and to know enough about my conscious Ego and the resources it has at its disposal.

It seems evident to me that the greater or lesser influence of the spiritual Ego on the conscious Ego, which almost always coincides with the psychic Ego during human life, depends on how strogly the organism attracts the Ego, and probably also on the level of evolution of the spiritual Ego, which determines the resources it can use to influence the conscious Ego. In light of what is reported in many NDEs, it is only when the organism is in critical conditions, or in a few other particular cases, that the conscious Ego is freed from its confinement in the organism, so to speak, and consequently consciousness can tune into a different dimension, which in many ways we can consider akin to the spiritual Ego (for example, the intense emotional feeling of having finally returned home). But, in my personal experience, as long as the organism is alive in the ordinary waking state the Ego's consciousness remains attuned to the dynamics of the psyche, without being able to create a direct connection that enables the conscious Ego to perceive what the spiritual Ego feels. The latter is probably endowed with its own consciousness, which, however, the conscious Ego is normally unable to access. The wide range of manifestations that this strange cocktail of sentient entities entails is there for all to see, at least as far as human life in this world is concerned: on the one hand we have a complex organism whose formation and growth depend on a particular genetic makeup and on the environmental and socio-cultural conditions in which the development process takes place, on the other hand we have a conscious Ego that progressively develops and consolidates, experiencing and undergoing all the dynamics of the human psyche (be they positive, neutral or negative) determined by the various events in which the organism itself is involved, by choice of the Ego or against its will, in the course of what becomes the personal history of each human being.

Added to this already rather complex picture is the probable influence of a spiritual entity with which the conscious Ego can identify once separated from its organism, as happens in many NDEs, without this transition taking the form of a more or less traumatic transformation, given that the conscious Ego maintains a more or less intact sense of its own identity and of the continuity of its existential experience, even though it now feels indifferent towards the events in which its organism has been or is involved. That this process of associating consciousness with the spiritual Ego has significant consequences – however strange and incredible it may seem to every Ego still imprisoned in its own organism – is demonstrated by the permanent personality changes recorded by those who have returned to organic life after experiencing the spirit dimension: evidently, even the functioning of their brains was influenced more or less radically by what happened to the conscious Ego when the latter felt free from the constraints of the organism. It must be remembered once again that these experiences do not consist of arbitrary mental constructions produced by brains that are in a more or less dreamlike state due to the critical conditions of the organism to which they belong, since they are consistently and reliably recorded in a truly impressive number of NDEs. Furthermore, there are many cases in which NDErs have accurately reported perceptions relating to events that would have been beyond the sensory and interpretative range of their brain, even if the latter were awake and in optimal operating conditions.

When the conscious Ego passes from its more or less coercive connection with its organism to the expansion of consciousness that is permitted by the freedom of its spiritual state, the perceptual and interpretive resources of its mind also change significantly. What once seemed of vital importance, so much so as to require a constant commitment of attention and energy, now becomes evanescent like a dream that progressively fades after waking up, while other experiences and other events attract and involve the Ego with increasing intensity. This transformation is a consequence of the Ego's liberation from its involvement in the attunements of the human psyche, by which it could have been ensnared precisely because of its attachment to the organism and organic life. However, in my opinion we must not make the mistake – frequent in many religions, especially in the past but to some extent also today – of devaluing the experiences of organic life as if they were an absolute misfortune for the spiritual Ego: evidently, the human organism is like a diving suit or a spacesuit, that is, an indispensable protective device for the conscious Ego to experience the events of organic life and, above all, a range of attunements of the bipolar energy of the human psyche, so different from the energy that pervades the dimension of the Spirit. Obviously, every conscious Ego should be able to evaluate how important and instructive the experience of its human life has been for it, both during life itself and – and above all – once it has ended. It may be that a phase of organic life, whether long or short in terms of our time, is essential for the Ego to form and then be able to access the dimension of the Spirit, even if it is difficult to understand how this could happen for children whose organisms die before they reach the conscious age.

In their effort to understand how things really are (assuming this is possible with the inevitably limited intellectual resources at our disposal), human beings, or at least some of them, have formulated various hypotheses, among which is that the Ego, in the dimension of the Spirit, would voluntarily subject itself to the experiences of human life, consenting to become incarnate in an organism, despite the risks and consequent suffering that it knows it may face. To be fair, it must be acknowledged that many NDE accounts are consistent with this hypothesis, especially because the Ego intensely feels that it has returned home when it manages to access the dimension of the Spirit, and not infrequently it is convinced that it has already existed in that dimension, even if, as we have seen, the perception of time is completely different from what we humans are used to. In this case, what consequences would this decision of the spiritual Ego have for the conscious Ego, as we experience it during human life? Obviously they would be highly diverse, considering the very wide range of existential conditions that the conscious Ego experiences during organic life, and the fact that the Ego is, so to speak, abandoned to the mercy of the dynamics of the human psyche which, like Schopenhauer's will, is absolutely free to operate according to its own whim. Thus the so-called free will that the conscious Ego seems to have at its disposal during its human adventure is nothing other than the effect of those energies which, reflected in the environmental conditions of organic life and in the dynamics of the human psyche, determine what we can call the personal history of every human being. I wonder to what extent the spiritual Ego can be aware of what it will encounter when it decides to immerse itself in the adventure of organic life, assuming that things actually are this way! Obviously, the Ego can obtain an answer to this question only from the perspective of the Spirit dimension.

From the perspective of human life, the conscious Ego can only know its own inner experiences, whatever they may be, and thus no one should ever evaluate the condition of someone else's conscious Ego according to any fixed standard of judgment, so to speak, precisely because both the conditions of life and the very sensitivity of the Ego and the resources at its disposal are so variable from one human being to another. Even the need, so widespread in many sensitive and good people, to want to put oneself in other people's shoes, to share their sufferings or their joys, is more an expression of a particular tendency of the human psyche aimed at strengthening social relationships, rather than to an effective improvement of living conditions: indeed, those who suffer should find no relief or advantage in knowing that their suffering is the cause of further suffering for others, while those who are content and happy may be interested in sharing their joy with others, if this is possible, but should never expect others, with all the problems they may have, to simulate joy or happiness merely to gratify their Ego. From the point of view of improving the general conditions of organic life, much more effective is the work of those who calmly and with as cheerful a spirit as possible devote themselves to discovering or creating something useful to everyone. In any case, the fragmentation of consciousness – that occurs during organic life – into a multitude of individual attunements, each focused on its own sensitive center of perception, interpretation and mental processing that we call Ego, entails experiences for this conscious subject that are very different from those of the spiritual dimension, at least according to what many NDEs reveal to us.

The most disconcerting aspect of the human dimension does not lie so much in the differences between the various conditions in which the life of each individual takes place or between the range of attunements of the psyche determined by this variability, but rather in the desire, felt to a greater or lesser extent by the Ego, to make the attunements of its own psyche prevail over those of other Egos, whereas in the dimension of the Spirit no trace of this need is found. This process of affirming the attunements of an individual's psyche over those of others can occur through a form of consensus, that is, through the recognition by a certain number of Egos of the value and quality of the mental elaborations that arise from the psyche of a particular person, also in relation to the various problems and difficulties that each Ego must face as a consequence of its subjection to the dynamics of its own psyche. Often, however, a person's power of assertion is manifested through forms of coercion, subtle or more or less explicit, exercised over others. It is evident that the human psyche functions in such a way that the intense drive, experienced by some individuals, to make the attunements of their own psyche prevail is matched by the equally strong need, experienced by many others, to be guided by the attunements of someone else's psyche, often deceiving themselves into believing that they can choose the ones that seem most advantageous to them. The need to live within a herd led by some human beings, regardless of whether this task has been entrusted to them or whether they have earned it by imposing themselves on others, is a peculiar characteristic of the human psyche, which usually justifies itself with the advantages (real or presumed) that life in the herd provides compared to the autonomy of the single individual, given the risks and dangers inherent in the state of nature.

The Ego of those who live in today's complex societies is now so conditioned by this aspect of the psyche that it would be naive, and even ridiculous, to believe that it could follow a different course, also because it would hardly be granted the right (and the necessary space) to experiment with alternative forms of existence: in this respect, the human psyche is not willing to make concessions, especially now that our planet is populated by more than eight billion human beings, many of whom are concentrated in small areas. Furthermore, the resources offered by the planet are what they are, and the competition among the various human groups to secure them is becoming increasingly fierce. However, the cultural traces left by human beings who sought isolation in order to engage in forms of spiritual asceticism that evidently held a certain appeal on their conscious Ego have not yet been completely erased. The fact remains that, from the point of view of the conscious Ego in its condition of subservience to the dynamics of the human psyche, the only objective that seems to make sense – or at least that is proposed to it as important by the psyche itself – is that of so-called progress, understood as the achievement of progressively better and more interesting living conditions, but still tied to the needs and resources of the organism and the resulting attunements of the psyche. Since this process takes place over time, and each human generation experiences only a small segment of the unilinear flow of time, he psyche finds it easy to keep pushing the goal further into the future, especially if we keep in mind that among its prerogatives there is the (fundamental) one of making what until yesterday had seemed fascinating, interesting and advantageous – for the achievement of which the Ego had to devote all the energy at its disposal – unsatisfactory, obsolete and boring today. Thus, as we approach the end of organic life, our conscious Ego finds itself in the same condition as all the Egos of those who have lived before us: the hope (never the certainty) that future generations will live in a better world than the one in which it lived.

Naturally, it is the flow of time itself, as we perceive it during organic life, that allows us to unmask the illusion of progress, essentially through two observations: the first is that human generations follow one another, and the dynamics of the psyche mean that what was an aspiration and a goal for one generation may appear obvious, outdated and even irrelevant to the next generation; the second is that all those who lived in the past had no idea of the subsequent developments of humankind, just as we cannot know or even plan what will happen in two or three thousand years, and consequently what is pursued as progress turns into an erratic and tortuous path conditioned by the dynamics of the human psyche. Obviously, everything is constantly changing and continuously modified, and it is undeniable that some aspects relating to the needs of our organism and the satisfaction our psyche leads us to feel for the advantages achieved are actually perceived as an improvement in the conditions of organic life, but this does not mean that we humans know the final destination of this journey that has required and still requires so much effort and sacrifice: we are always under the dominion of the dynamics of the bipolar energy of the human psyche, in dealing with which we feel our resources are limited and seldom adequate. If the Ego, as a result of its own experiences and through the expansion of its consciousness and the resources of its intellect, succeeds in making coherent sense of all these aspects of that organic life in which it itself was formed, developed and eventually evolved, it will begin to feel more and more intensely the need to free itself (or to be freed) from its subjection to the attunements of the human psyche with which it has identified itself and which have determined its personal history. And this is what happens in the dimension of the Spirit, in accordance with what is consistently reported in NDEs.

The different state in which the conscious Ego finds itself in the two dimensions, that of the Spirit and that of organic life dominated by the human psyche, is clearly highlighted by the fact that the Ego is almost always reluctant to re-enter its own organism: it often resists returning with all the energy and resources at its disposal, and when it consents, it does so with a spirit of sacrifice and out of love for someone it has left behind and who still has to live in our physical dimension. In any case, since all those who tell us about their NDEs necessarily returned to organic life, it is evident that even in those cases in which the Ego absolutely did not want to return, it was forced to do so by an entity greater than itself. However, the Ego never forgets the ineffable feeling of finally being home that it experienced in the spiritual dimension. It may also happen that, once freed at least in part from its subjection to the attunements determined by the human psyche, the Ego is able to live the experiences of organic life in a serene and even happy way, regardless of the changing circumstances affecting its organism, and with a certain detachment from all the events that continue to happen in this world as a result of the negative polarity of the psyche. This state of serenity and relative cheerfulness can be achieved even by those who have not experienced an NDE, as a result of the process of liberation of the Ego from the negative dynamics of the psyche which, especially due to the conditioning prevalent in our culture, always force it to attribute unpleasant moods and physical and mental suffering to external causes, preventing it from recognizing that what makes it suffer is determined by the functioning of its organism and in particular of its nervous system, and is therefore under the dominion of the psyche. But in order to detach itself from the psyche without eliminating its own organism, the Ego must first be able to free itself from all the socio-cultural conditioning through which its mind has been programmed to function as it does.