Mister O

sapiens

Mister O

A trascendental journey

Author’s preface

Immanence and transcendence, two existential conditions that create embarrassment to most of us, are treated in these pages with the simplicity of a naive dreamer, in the indulgent illusion to give a modest contribution to unravel the tangled skein of human dimension mystery.

Like all dreamers, some rhetorical images assume the significance of evocations to support our thesis, at least until someone, depositary of the truth, can dispel it.So, in the ocean of our own existence, in primitive belief that something does not die with the body, the life of our body takes on the guise of a small boat buffeted by waves, or a tiny candle flame dangerously swinging with every breath of wind. The vessel’s desperate desire to be not submerged, renewed at every breaker, or the stubborn yearning of a flame to stay on, ruthlessly attacked and reduced exhausted from unknown and threatening dark, depicts very well our human dimension. The flame verticality desire symbolically expresses the will to rise, domain and conscience, of courageous consistency of intent in our daily lives, as the stubborn and heroic stand of tree under the gusts of wind, almost conscious, to the stars of heaven. And in the immensity of the existence ocean, with its unpredictable waves, so different in their appearance, so unequal in their dangerously aggressive, our life journey through a world of loneliness and detachment, inextricably tied to his body as a vessel, where the throb of candle flameis confused with beating heart. Beyond any comparison, the boat in a storm and the candle flame, are two large paintings, which evoke images that induce meditations, feelings, thoughts and values, capable of inspiring wallpapers and background music, on which to baste our personal truths. In front of a candle flame many of us tend to ramble quiet into a thousand fantasies, others catch with pain life’s brevity: - Soon the flame will go out and will be dark, nothingness will wrap us …

Against this pessimistic darkness, which does not allow seeing the grandeur of the world where we live in, the following pages offer a different vision, a delicate perfume of life renews itself each spring after a long winter hibernation. To direct the tale is Mister O, an evolved consciousness that try to shake our distrust talking about transcendence and existential mysteries, made only from unjustified fears of our mind.

How many times in our lives have we experienced the sensation of déjà vu, the feeling that we have already lived, seen and felt something, without, however, finding confirmation when we look back our experiences? It is an inexplicable sensation. How many times have we been surprised when reading a book or an article to find the concepts it expresses perfectly reflect the baggage of our own mental labors, our convictions? We feel that we not only share the same beliefs, but we express them in the same way, in the same sequence.

Different schools of thought maintain that our creative, ideational and intuitive activities liberate forms of energy, which contain our efforts our work in order to transmit it over the airwaves, to speak. It is therefore put at the disposal of all those who are in harmony. If we accept this theory, we have to acknowledge the fact that we all have access to information and results, which are fruit of the research of one specific subject, who, in turn, has received elements of thought from the same information channel.

The protagonist of reflections contained in the following narrative, whose provenance might be from collective thinking provided in form of dreams, is a real character and imaginative at the same time, assuming deliberately the impersonal identity of Mister O. The mysterious thinker was coming from the community of those who feel capable of deep introspective analysis. He formulates thoughts as flights of fancy, usually suffocated by confrontation’s fear. Turned out with energy, imposing to me a long period of total attention, forcing to me a writing work accompanied by a daily appointment claim: at four o’clock in the morning. The human dimension, which offers Mr. O, mysterious in its genesis, becomes inspired by reflections on topics that belong to us. The different world views, the expansion of our boundaries, beyond Earth, within which, according to him, we will have to face in the near future, the communication method selected, the obligation of submission without compromise with strict rules of expression, on topics sometimes difficult to understand even for minds evolved, impose a premise apparently taken from the statement.

Mister O claims, in these pages, that body and soul remain bound together after death, at least until persists a vital energy in the decaying corpse. The thread that binds the two entities will break only after all the force that connects them will be exhausted, leaving free the soul to reincarnate in a new process of conception. The union of soul and body are a necessary condition to exist. The two dimensions of transcendence and immanence are aspects of a single reality, which we have chosen only the most reassuring facade, rationally acceptable. Mister O exposes in these pages an overview of our existence, referring mainly to his life experience in a universal world. I wanted to mention, at the opening of each chapter, the wisdom of an extraordinary Teacher. Anthony de Mello knew capture the nuances of life and exposed with parables of great simplicity and understanding. I thought some of these in line with the contents of Mr. O’s revelations.

Our meeting

A common, very ordinary mortal

-That man says things without sense-

said a visitor

after hearing the words of the master.

A disciple replied

- You would also say things without sense

if you tried to express the inexpressible- .

When the visitor questioned the very master

on the subject, he received this reply:

- Nobody is immune from saying things without sense,

the problem is when you do it with solemnity- .

(Anthony de Mello)

It was six o’clock in the morning when I finally heard the first voices, after an enormous effort to descend that endless, dark tunnel, at the extremity of which burnt a light so bright that I was forced to close my eyes to protect them.

- It is a boy, madam, a beautiful boy! He must weigh at least three kilos… After so many girls, it was time for a boy to brighten up the group… What are you going to call him? - said the petulant obstetrician, a short, plump, middle-aged woman whose eyes sparkled with vivacity.

I started so the lively great torment of my life, just with the choice of an appropriate name. I had, in previous lives, many fine-sounding names, hideous and he talked others, borrowed from family circumstances of my occasional parents. In previous lives? Well, you. Among the few certainties of the first life hours, existential continuity through repeated reincarnation was dominant. A certainty that I was not in doubt, given the reiteration of the happy event of my return in our paradise, as mere mortals. On the other hand, everything that had followed my birth fully will confirm this certainty.

Still soaked in amniotic liquid, eyes wide open, I tried to understand where I had ended up this time, in which family, with which parents. That large woman, who held me firmly in a cloth, rubbing me violently, could not be my mother. There were no males in sight, banned from the birth in that era as it was considered a question for women only. The other two female figures, who were very young, seemed too terrified by the event that they had witnessed to be taken seriously.

- What are you going to call our little brother, mummy? - asked the two girls who turned out to be my older sisters.

My mother was too exhausted to focus her attention on a name for her seventh child; her main concern was trying to get her strength back as soon as possible.

- We will think about that later… - she said in a whisper.

Meanwhile, wrapped in a towel, I too tried to contribute to the choice of name, to avoid being lumbered with a sad or insignificant one for the rest of my life. However, all I managed was the classic - ueh- of babies, which, of course, got me nowhere.

- Don’t be ridiculous, they will not understand you if you continue to scream without articulating words. You have just been born and your phonatory organs have yet to develop, even then, you will have to learn their language before you can speak. Do not frighten them by accelerating the time allowed for growth. Calm down, relax and enjoy this magic moment and most of all do not worry about the name you will be given. It is merely a convention, without large influence into the course of your life… - said a little impertinent voice inside me.

At that magical moment of my birth, I did not realize that someone inside me was intervening in personal questions, nor did I dwell on the reasons behind certain phenomena.

I came from a dimension where the dialogue between people, between souls, took place in silence,without uttering a word. A dimension where everyone understands without having to change language.

I was still weighed down by the baggage of previous experiences that I carried with me, but, above all, I noticed that the curiosity about the new life adventure was superior to any other problem. On that occasion, was comfortable one partner with whom talking without speaking, would keep me company in early days of adaptation. It was a normal circumstance for my old soul back to incarnate in a child.

- I will be a discreet companion and I will intervene only when you ask me to. However, always remember who you are, do not try to identify yourself with a name or a profession, do not exalt more than is necessary your rational ego, which is merely a vain ephemeral power.

Therefore, it was how I discovered as for a teacher would accompany many of us, the return among ordinary mortals, a counselor, in the common condition could be called consciousness. I understood immediately that, even when not required, it would be assumed the right to intervene in the decisions, choices suggest, to criticize my life style, in short, to determine my future. A talking cricket, just like the one in Pinocchio, sometimes useful, but often impertinent, the Master did not like to show explicitly, was hidingin some kind of body meander. He argued that would be my secret partner, atrusted adviser, who would protect me from great dangers, but would not intervene until the physical pain if I misunderstood them eaning of new life. Just be cause he had not aspecific dimension, a physical or biological where to stay, becausehe felt superior to the reason, inside of my self I feel him as an alien, a person coming from a different world, speaking of transcendence, of what was beyond the limits of any rational knowledge.

From childhood I was inundated with the transcendental without knowing the real meaning of the term; very early on I was told about the existence of a soul, a spirit, a personality, an Ego, external, invisible presences, conscience, to indicate something which is different, neither material, nor biological. Instead, it belongs to a mysterious sphere of our existence, that fine distinction which makes us superior to animals. What a mess!

From the very first months of life, my mother, as many other parents spoke to me about the soul in a religious sense, maintaining that after death it goes to heaven to be united with God. Thus, the transcendental theme is simplified by attributing it to a religious creed not to be questioned, but accepted as a mystery of a professed faith. Not long afterwards, I also heard about spirits, presences that do not have a biological body, which are blessed with great powers, capable of producing visual effects typical of our human lives, offering us a transcendental dimension very close to the physical one. In this way, I discovered that the Catholic Church itself acknowledged the existence of these forces and the destructive energy released by certain evil spirits, against which the Church’s weapon was exorcism.

At I was aware that for us, children, at the return to the life similar arguments were discounted, no mystery, but not in terms of the parents education, before and school later tried to explain. My Master, in our continuing transcending dialogue during the first life months repeated almost obsessively:

- It is not permissible for a child to face this very sensitive issue, although its purity could provide the key to the most appropriate. Children know all about transcendence, coming from that world, but do not know how to communicate with adults. They do so only with the reassuring smile, looking on, but nobody can really understand them. Then they too grow and inevitably lose those certainties. The rule of reason during the biological life is still very strong, is capable of ridicule speech from some fundamental topics coming from past memories...

As the months passed, I realized a slow and continuous change. The curiosity about the new world, the discovery of verbal communication meaning, overwhelmed inexorably throughout the body of knowledge that I brought below, slowly erasing the memory.

However, in many other circumstances, the education I received forced me to dwell upon the conscience, upon that ethical-moral ambit which imposes behavioral rules, thus suggesting the attitudes to assume and answers to give. My parents bombarded me with phrases such as Lay your hand on your heart or Sooner or later, you will have to come to terms with your conscience, to the point that they became part of my daily language, suggesting an acceptance of a transcendental ambit, which accompanies us along the path of our biological lives.

Finally, in yet other educational and cultural contexts, another figure emerges which is not strictly related to our physical sphere: our Ego, our most intimate personality.

I am tempted to ask myself:

- How many people live inside me, in my body and how much do they influence my choices in life?

I was thus obliged to make a classification, a distinction to qualify the different transcendental categories, which accompany us in order to satisfy the questions, which burned inside me.

I learned to talk about soul, instinctively associating the word with the ambit of our religious creed. This obliges us to accept blindly its existence and thus our union with it during life and its separation from the body after death, in order to reach an undefined place. A place enlightened by wisdom and spirituality, where things are blessed with immortality and embraced by our God. I accepted the existence of the soul that fed on transcendence, for which the dominant theme was the divine religious veneration.

However, this mystical presence opposed to rational, social and collective needs, to define my behaviors consistently with dominant ethic that compelled me to adapt the way my think to a sort of common coding to fight evil, understood as deteriorating aspect of relations between individuals.

I felt that the manager of everyday life was the Ego, mind, expressing the contours of the personality, which affected my creative and intellectual capacity. The Ego spoke a language practice, arguing rationally about things, whatever their religious beliefs, slip into all aspects of social participation in the choices and affect my decisions. Instead of the soul, the Ego seemed to have need of my body, of the input from the senses. I was sure that without the mind the body could not speak, would not have been able to go beyond the vital functions, in creative activities. I was convinced that the Ego also had the gift of immortality and life continuity, beyond the biological. It appeared as guardian of my memory growth. Intimately I had assigned the custodian job of my secrets, my emotions and aspirations. I associates it with the classical consciousness, my ability awareness; I assigned him the Master role of my choices.

I was frequently surrounded in the mist of my doubts, absorbed by the desire to know, to understand, when after many years of silence the master voice, like the first my life days, heard again, with peremptory and menacing tone.

- Do not continue to escape as you are usually. I tried to talk but you not listen. What good are my suggestions if you think can find yourself all explanations? You seem rather confused, but you reject suggestions ... Maybe it is time to stop, to listen the silence ... Yes, the silence ... It's always more loquacious of the words...

- How to listen to the silence? What does it mean?

- Do not talk... Sss ... Do not think … Do not look with your eyes ... Do not touch nothing ... listen ... with your ears... Enter into the Void, into absolute vacuum...

After many years of silence or lousy listening on my part, the friendly voice of my life first days, that fellow who had offered to teach me the life secret, suddenly re-emerged to begin a dialogue with arguments and reflections series, soliciting memories of recent past events that had assumed a clear message: I am here too! I finally, I had to take note of the request, and in an attempt to assign a sounding pompous name to my partner, he suggested a simple title, but appropriate Mister O, as mystery. The teacher began to talk about their arrival on Earth, about the origin place of men primitive world, the contribution offered to cultural humanity growth and purpose. He order me the way to communicate, to write, the topics addressed the cadence. The story that follows is a kind of diary chronologically consistent with its imperative action. The items contained in the expressions do not belong to my language. I carry-over with highest possible fidelity. He forced me, first, to produce breaking rational constraints and thought liberation.

Lucid Dreams

A disciple said to a newcomer

at the monastery: - I have to warn you

that you will not understand a single word

of what the master says

if you are not in the right frame of mind- .

- And what is the right frame of mind?-

- That of a student

eager to learn a foreign language.

The words the master says

have a familiar sound, but do not be deceived:

they mean something completely different-.

(Anthony de Mello)

It all began very stealthily, almost without my knowing, at night, with images of modest intensity, at the usual hour: four o’clock in the morning. Master communicated with messages, not well structured, but with captivating contents, repeatedly evoking the idea of planning. I called them lucid dreams because they seemed to belong to that category of dreamlike visions, with only one difference: they remained perfectly impressed in my memory and I could remember them as if they were scenes from a film I had just seen.

In the last years, the frequency of these lucid dreams had become insistent, demanding more and more attention, although in some circumstances this was not always clear. They came to me unfailingly at the same time, at four o’clock in the morning. Even when extreme tiredness plunged me into a deep sleep, the time of the encounter was merely put off for a quarter of an hour, or, at most, half an hour.

I searched for a logical explanation in my frequent trips abroad, to Indonesia, in the seven-hour time difference, but the answer did not convince me, it seemed weak. Four o’clock in the morning. Even at a young age, was the moment when a logical explanation materialized for all the serious problems I could not resolve whilst awake, including those of trigonometry, a subject that I found decidedly irksome. At four o’clock in the morning, as if by magic, as if someone had prompted me, the solution became clear. I listened to the suggestion, got up and wrote down the answer. In this way, I learned an efficient method: when I felt tormented by problems seemingly without a solution, I went to sleep, knowing that I would find the right answer. I naturally attributed the result to the famous saying night-time brings advice, as if the night could liberate us from our daily ties and the brain reached the height of its analytical capacity.

Over the years, the time of four o’clock in the morning produced different effects: in my lucid dreams, there were no particular problems to resolve, anxiety to eliminate or suffocating worries, merely ideas of plans formulated with excessive productivity. I was continually in contact with people who communicated with me in a simple, easy to understand. They tell their stories, talking about things that did not belong to our common daily life. Upon awakening, however, I did not remember details of our conversations.Until one night, as if bewitched, I heard Master’s voice inside me, loud and clear, which was speaking to me. At first I thought that my body, my mind, was about to degenerate into a schizophrenic state; I looked around as if searching for the person who had spoken. I thought that ghosts haunted my old house. I looked around, out of the corner of my eye, every nerve alert. The voice I heard was firm, but persuasive:

- I need you to dedicate this last phase of your life to me, at least to compensate for the help I have given you recently.

- Who are you? What do you want from me? Leave me alone...

- Why do you pretend you do not know me? It is a lifetime that we have been living together, that you have been taking advantage of my suggestions, pushing me to the back of your mind, using me only when it suits you, telling me to be quiet. Now that I am speaking to you openly, you seem more surprised than I expected...

I understood immediately what it alluded the Master. Really, I had the feeling that manytimes to solve my problems had been another person. However, I was still very slow to fully grasp the extraordinary opportunity. So, slowly, dream after dream, overcoming all resistance, I prepared to listen more carefully, accepting his dialogue rather unusualas you listen to the sermon of a test. Night after night, I realized that I gave to the game. I followed his wishes, I wanted to find out where he meant to take me.

The appointment at four o'clock in the morning was an important moment of my day.I went to sleep early to recover energy, to release, before the meeting, my dream fraught with every day needs. The Master arrived on time, in a loud silence and began to speak, even to communicate. My curiosity grew exponentially. I wanted to discover, to rationally understand what he was referring to the unknown world. His invitation to participate was soothing and reassuring. He asked only focus, clarity of reason but especially the use of potential sensory of which,according to him, I could. He said that I had nothing to lose, that I would be rewarded with new experiences, that together we would embark on an apparently imaginary journey in a reality that you can only understand with introspection, with what is commonly defined as sixth sense.

Therefore, from that night onwards, at the same time of four o’clock in the morning, the events followed one another with increasing insistence, details becoming ever clearer and more understandable, new lucid visions, in some ways disturbing, which often left me holding my breath. What he proposed was not an easy journey to embark on. He urged me to follow him in his meditation and the ever more pressing forms I encountered intensified the anxiety I had felt the first time and simultaneously the curiosity of someone who discovers that life still has surprises in store for him.

It took seventy years for me to enter consciously into his dimension, to learn to speak his language, so different from our usual one, so complex. His presence deep inside my body was never very defined and clear until I began to regard him as a stable rather than a chance companion. I gradually began to understand even his most difficult speeches and communicate with him, asking questions about complex issues which surround and go far beyond our existence.

It was impossible to depict Mr. O in any way, but I had the impression that he often laughed slyly at my perplexity; he did not pronounce words, instead he expressed an array of blocks of thought. He invaded my logical and rational space rendering uncertain all my certainties, which I had so painfully defined through the many experiences in my life. What is more, he kept for himself the final command behaving like a know-all, or better, a wise man. He suggested taking notes, putting down on paper even just a brief summary of the content of our talks, assuming that the fragility of my body and the weakness of my memory left no alternative but the pen.

The curiosity I felt towards my new interlocutor continued to grow, although I did not feel at ease speaking to a man who was invisible, but so much part of my daily life. I asked him for explanations of his presence deep inside my most intimate self, of his need to interfere in my choices in life, in my role as a biological man and in my social judgments.

- You are the most curious man I have lived with, but also the most intuitive, the easiest to tame... - Mr. O used to say to me, smiling.

- What... I am certainly not your slave... Anyway? What do you mean by the most curious man you have lived with? Are you trying to tell me that you travel from one man to another aimlessly, just for the pleasure of tormenting or taming them as if we were dogs or any animal incapable of expressing an intelligent autonomy?

- Hey, calm down! You have just begun to talk and you are already showing signs of rebellion, unease and a sense of frustration. I do not intend to offend you; on the contrary, I have taken a liking to you. You are the first man who I have the honor of speaking openly to, of telling about myself, without the fear of being misunderstood... Is that better?

I brightened up when I realized that, finally, Mr. O's patience and perseverance in this last period had produced their first result. We were speaking to each other! Moreover, I understood perfectly what he was saying.

- Do you know how frustrating it is not being able to tell you about our experiences, our lives, our tragedies, or simply describe the aspects of our world? We have tried to communicate with you in all ways, in so many circumstances, without achieving any recognition or desired results, apart from on a few isolated occasions...

- But you use us as if there were a lot of you, and I do not understand whom you are referring to, as if you were part of a separate world, completely different from our human one. It is difficult to imagine that two levels of intelligence can live on earth in the same person, when they are so diverse in structure, belonging to different social classes, far apart in organization, communication and all the rest. Explain yourself...-

- I do not know whether I should tell you the story of my life or not. It is still dangerous, at your present state of awareness, to propose alternative scenarios of life to the dimension you have always been used too. All the men who have had access to our information, in the past, but also in the present, are considered different, outcasts, sometimes destabilizing and dangerous for your society, and as such are attacked with every means, in the past even burnt at the stake. It is true, however, that today people are more tolerant, but only on the surface. The conservatory tendencies of your society throw suspicion on the capacities and creativity of the man who proposes new, unrepeatable horizons in life, in other words those not backed up scientifically according to the criteria of your present awareness.

- Please... Put yourself in our shoes and try to understand us. We have the five senses which guide us and which enrich our experiences. These senses enlighten our daily lives, they allow us to recognize the repetition of events and give us stability in the form of references that mark the milestones of our growth. Why should we suddenly change our attitude, leave our certainties and plunge into a world whose parameters are so different and far from ours, assuming that these very parameters are real in the sense of our understanding of the phenomenon reality? We recognize clear boundaries, which separate the real from the unreal, even though most people refuse to accept this imaginary sphere...

- You see, it is all very simple and elementary, if you just look at things the right way, if you put them into the correct framework, if you measure them with universal and cosmic criteria. They seem to be obscure words, but if you manage to follow your latent perceptive capacity, your instinct and your imagination, if you separate yourself from the scientific rationale of your knowledge, everything will appear simple and natural, including our dialogue.

- Of course, now that I have access to understanding your world and its dimension, I experience a state of unease when I think rationally about what is happening to me. I have to make an enormous effort to follow your arguments and render them intelligible to my degree of knowledge and awareness. I listen to you, it's true, but I do not always understand: Therefore, I beg you, explain even the most minute details, in a simple way so that I can understand them, starting from your presence in my body and in that of many others, as you claim to have been...

- In the first place, you have to rid yourself of the collective idea of man, which sees him as superior to other animals on earth. As a biological animal there is absolutely no difference between species: the only thing that separates you is the presence of that awareness which makes you capable of self-determination, but also the growth as a result of our meeting, of our living together, of our willingness to show you the way, the times, the methods and the objectives to aim for. The exchange between two different universal consciousness, one more primitive, and the second more advanced; perhaps it is the consequence of a universal creative design. Maybe we forced over-time of growth in the road ahead, the ways, and the objectives to be achieved.

- Thus, you are the creators of our confusion. It is true, we are confuse. No longer able to recognize from one generation to the next, so fast the knowledge growth...

- Without our contribution, you men would still be as we found you not so long ago, about ten thousand years ago to be precise, according to our calculations, primitive, but intelligent animals, with an elementary level of imagination and creativity, at the first stage of awareness. You called yourselves Homo sapiens, but really, you knew nothing of the world, which surrounded you, nothing of yourselves. Furthermore, on the subject of time, in order to understand what I am going to say, you will have to distance yourselves from this conventional measure and free yourselves of scientific preconceptions, which only define your biological time, attributing it to every living being on Earth and beyond. This is the first obstacle which separates us.-

- Hey, calm down! I do not understand. What does time have to do with this? Anyway, how could I distance myself from the only parameter, which connects us with the space element. The initial stage you mentioned now of your meeting with man, when he was just strongly more evolved than an animal, is measured by just that element which you would like to occlude…

- You see, time is your biggest handicap, fruit of great presumptuousness and a deep-rooted inability to distance yourselves from your biological state. Let us try to imagine that all living organisms on Earth are asked to define a common unit of time that can satisfy the demands of all species.

- An extemporary congress of all animated beings?

- Plus or minus. Obviously the conventions used by man, to measure his time in minutes, hours, days and years, could upset creatures which only live for a few hours, or a few days, during which time all their vital phases manifest themselves: birth, reproduction and death. It seems obvious that relating the dimension of time to one’s own vital cycle would lead to a total misunderstanding among the various living species. The need to overcome the tight link between conventional time and the vital cycle of every being would immediately emerge.

- Unacceptable… even simply as a hypothesis…

- What would happen if we were to change the present criteria used to measure time and adopt one that was compatible with all forms of existing life on Earth and beyond? What effect would the adoption of a different unit of measurement have on your awareness?

- I do not understand this reasoning at all. What time and its conventional measurement has to do with what you are going to tell me?

- The convention of time is the key to the understanding of our dialogue. You must rid yourself of this limiting concept because it is strictly linked to biological duration. As a rational man, you instinctively accept only that which happens within the period at your disposal, within the average duration of your life or at least your life expectancy. Everything is placed inside this time range and any imaginary projection towards the future shatters against the great wall of the death of your body. It does not go any further, it cannot go beyond it. Thus, everything is measured within your time scale, which assumes the function of certainty and reality.

As a child I had already sensed that a great presence, an extraordinary awareness would have conditioned my life enormously, but not to this extent.

I was born in a large family of ten children, but even from the first years of my rational independence. So, I discovered that I was apt to tell colossal lies, incredible ones which make adults question the stability of the child they are talking to: I used to say to all those who asked me my age that I was 3500 years old. I honestly believed it!

Most people smiled at my delightful way of replying, considering it merely an interlocutory reply to an adult who occupies some of the child’s time without asking too many questions. Instead, my answer was serious; it was a conviction that came from deep inside me. There was absolute truth in what I maintained; or rather what my conscience maintained, only today I have to correct the indication of time: it was not three thousand five hundred conventional years, but three thousand five hundred light years!

This time I am the mysterious one, who fails to communicate with others according to rational cannons and coherence with respect to the world of man and his rules. I will put off throwing light on the matter until later, just like what happened to the little liar.

The overwhelming presence of a dominating conscience caused me several embarrassing situations as a child, especially concerning adults' judgment of me.

I came from a classical, middle-class post-war family, which in the post war period strove to rise above the general poverty of that difficult moment. My father, the only breadwinner in the family, surprised me with his ability to transmit optimism and serenity, whilst I marveled at my mother’s capacity to make sure this rabble of youngsters, all busy with their studies, did not go without the essentials. In the eyes of our neighbors, we were an exemplary family, climbing the cultural ladder, as it was generally conceived. Monotony had no place in our house, the vitality of the family environment being at its height for that era, and there was no doubt as to the soundness of emotional ties.

In spite of these positive aspects which ran through the team made up of my siblings, I knew that I was different, to the extent that I declared, showing no signs of emotion, that I did not have any parents or siblings and that I was a war orphan.

I reacted like this whenever anyone asked me who my parents were, as if it were the only way to understand someone personality and place in the social class he belonged to him. I felt that the information requested prevented the little boy from expressing himself, his thoughts, his most genuine qualities. From then on, I detested the hypocrisy of people whose interest was satisfied merely by the qualification of an individual in the ambit of his relationships. I used to ask myself why they always formulated the same questions to identify a person: what do you do for a living?

Personal identification has always been my biggest problem. During my childhood, I paid particular attention to the behavior of adults in order to go beyond their way of presenting themselves: I used to ask myself who was the personality behind the doctor, the engineer, the teacher, the secretary, the headmaster, the locksmith, the carpenter, the shepherd, the man without a job, and so on.

In this way, in order to overcome all the questions which tormented me regarding personal identification, both of others and of myself, I threw myself into all the activities which my young age would allow, with or without the consent of my parents: from the mechanic to the artist, from the man of letters to the ecologist. As a child, I began to take apart all the clocks in the house to understand what was inside and how they worked. There was one problem; however, I was never able to put the alarm clock back together!

In the immediate post-war period, a hold radio came in my parents' house, a much-valued article at the time, with a burnt transformer. Up until then the only music in the house came from my sisters who sang, not particularly well, as they did the housework. In an attempt to hear something else, my parents tried desperately to have it repaired, summoning various electrical technicians, but all in vain. We all experienced frustration at the silence of an object designed to have a voice. Therefore, at the age of seven, with great presumption, I decided to undertake the task that had baffled the technicians. I recruited my brother help, who was a little older than me, more to share responsibility than the possible glory. This was his designated role in our relationship: I played a prank and he bore the wrath of my mother as the sole culprit behind the disaster.

We began our research of the problem hidden behind a bed, in an attempt to avoid being caught red-handed. The pungent smell of burning drew our attention to the current transformer. With a makeshift soldering iron, consisting of the metal handle of a kitchen knife, heated over a gas flame, we separated all the wires, noting down every operation as we went along. With great care, but above all great trepidation since we knew we were going to get into trouble, we dismantled the various layers of the transformer, saving the insulator and counting the turns of the coil, until we arrived at the interruption point of the electric cable. We then fearlessly presented ourselves to a shopkeeper who sold electrical material, two kids with no money, but what is more, with no understanding of the subject. We managed to win over the grumpy man and convince him to give us the material necessary to repair the coil of the transformer free of charge. As he handed over the precious pieces, he smiled at us as if he was