IF – A Bridge Between Heaven and Earth

A Bridge Between Heaven and Earth

IF — What if…?

Renato Rossi

IF

A Bridge Between Heaven and Earth

IF — What if…?

Rewritten from a lost paper manuscript dating from around the year 2000

Working edition 2026

A Gift

IF is written for everyone who still dares to doubt, to search and to dream. My wish is simple: that these pages may offer a little room for your own questions.

IF — What if…?

Renato Rossi

To the Reader

This book does not begin with an answer. It begins with two letters that have been with me for more than twenty-five years. To me, IF means: what if? It is a small question with room enough for a whole life.

I share memories that have shaped me, questions that have stayed with me and dreams that helped me begin again. You do not have to adopt my thoughts. Read them as an invitation not to lose your own sense of wonder.

My experiences are the thread running through the book. Pyramids, megaliths, lost civilisations and remarkable thinkers stand beside them like windows. Together, they build a bridge between what we know and what we still dare to imagine.

If this book allows you to think more freely for even a single moment, IF will have fulfilled its purpose.

The Path Through IF

1 The Question That Remained

2 The Child Who Could Float

3 The Sky Above Liège

4 The Pyramid Between Earth and Heaven

5 Stones and Lost Worlds

6 People Who Dared to Think Beyond

7 Coincidence, Intuition and Numbers

8 Marco and the Bond That Remains

9 The Thousands of Conversations

10 What We Give Back to the World

11 The Open Bridge

IF — What if…? Eleven chapters and one hundred and ten pages in the Dutch edition, centred on one open question.

The Question That Remained

The manuscript disappeared, but the two letters IF continued to live within me.

IF — What if…?

The Lost Manuscript

Around the year 2000, I wrote a book on paper. I gave it the shortest English title I could think of: IF. Two letters, one open door. The manuscript was later lost.

I searched for it, but I never found it again. Yet the thought behind that book proved stronger than the paper on which I had written it. The first question sounded simple: what if the world were round? That sentence was not a geography lesson.

It was an image for everything that once seemed impossible until someone dared to think differently. What seems obvious today often began as doubt, imagination or a question for which there was not yet any room.

Two Small Letters

With IF, I do not want to tell anyone what to believe. I want to open a quiet space in which a person can let their thoughts be free for a while. Not every suspicion has to become a conclusion immediately. Not every dream asks for an explanation.

Sometimes the question itself is valuable because it invites us to look again. The Renato rewriting this book today is older than the man who wrote the first manuscript. Since then, I have built and lost, loved and said goodbye. I have had to live with the loss of Marco.

I have seen the Glass Pyramid come into being and disappear. I have had thousands of conversations. All of this has given IF greater depth today. The original question remained the same, but my life has added to it.

Looking at the World Again

This book forms a bridge between doubt and reality. On one side lies what we can see and touch. On the other live our dreams, intuitions and experiences for which words sometimes fall short. On that bridge, we do not have to choose which side we wish to stand on forever.

We may walk, pause and look around. In My Life, I described the path that shaped me: my Italian roots, my childhood, my family and the years in which I sought my place as an entrepreneur through setbacks and new beginnings. It was a life of building, trying, losing and starting again. Behind every project were people.

Doubt as an Open Space

Behind every decision lived the hope of bringing something good into being for my family and for those I met along the way. Readers of that first book will also remember Marco’s place in my life. He was my son, but also someone with whom I shared ideas, worked and could discuss things for hours. We recognised ourselves in each other’s curiosity about technology and what might still become possible.

His death left a silence that work and new plans could not fill. Yet my interest in the invisible did not begin with that loss. It was already there when, as a child, I had experiences I could not explain.

My Life Between Then and Now

Later came other events, dreams and observations that continued to occupy my thoughts. While everyday life revolved around family and work, questions remained in the background for which I could find no simple answer. In this part, I give those questions more room. What is consciousness?

Why do certain experiences stay with us for a lifetime? How do we carry our love for someone who is no longer here? And how do we find the courage to go on living, with our sorrow and uncertainty? Between Heaven and Earth grows out of the same life I described before.

The memories of my parents, my bond with Dorina, my children and grandchildren, my work with Marco and the difficult years remain present here.

Dreaming Without Obligation

They form the ground beneath my search. The reader will recognise the person who spoke in the preceding life story. I describe my unusual experiences, my interest in numerology and the many conversations in which people shared their own questions and sorrow with me. In doing so, I want to keep distinguishing between what I remember and the meaning I personally give it.

I cannot explain or prove everything that has touched me deeply. The reader may see it differently. I do not ask for agreement, but for attention to a personal testimony. My life story and my spiritual search belong together.

The Bridge Begins

In both, I seek what keeps a human being standing: love, connection, responsibility and the ability to begin again. If these pages have taught me anything, it is that my attention to the invisible must also find meaning in caring for the people beside me today. That is why I take you from My Life to Between Heaven and Earth. With the memories I carry, the questions that have remained and the hope that a shared story may offer another person a sense of recognition.

This book grows out of my life. Out of the people I have loved, what I have built and lost, and experiences for which I did not always find the right words.

A Question for the Reader

Some memories carry a date. Others live on mainly as a feeling: wonder, peace, longing or a suspicion that there is more to discover than we see at first glance. In My Life, I wrote about my family, my Italian roots, my childhood in Belgium, my work and the people who shaped me. With this book, I want to show that same person from within.

The entrepreneur who kept starting again, the father who misses Marco and the child who marvelled are not separate people. They belong together. Their experiences form the bridge I am trying to describe here.

What If

On one side of that bridge is the earth: our everyday existence, our responsibility, our relationships, our bodies and our care for one another. On the other are the questions I associate with the word heaven: what is consciousness, what does love mean, what remains when someone dies, and how do we make room for something we experience intensely but do not fully understand? My search lies between those two sides. I do not write because I can answer every question.

I write because staying silent about what has touched me would also leave part of my life untold. My experiences need not be understood in the same way by everyone. One reader will recognise something in them. Another will seek different explanations.

Both are welcome as readers. That is why, in these pages, I allow my story and further reflection to exist side by side. First I tell what I remember. Then the questions that arise from it receive more room.

Sometimes an experience connects with what others call an out-of-body experience, a meaningful coincidence or intuition. That recognition is the beginning of a conversation. It does not settle the explanation once and for all.

IF — What if…?
Which question from your own life deserves room again?

The Child Who Could Float

My first experience of the invisible came before I knew the words for it.

IF — What if…?

A Childhood Memory

My first questions about the invisible did not begin in a library. They began in my childhood bed. I knew no difficult words and needed no theory. I experienced something that, to me at the time, felt like a game.

Only many years later did I begin to wonder what others would call it. The child within me was freer than the adult who later sought explanations. That child did not judge the experience. He felt calm, lightness and wonder.

When I look back on that memory now, I want to preserve something of that simple openness. The intense night after the crisis of 1981 also showed me that an experience can be both inexplicable and truly meaningful.

Above My Own Bed

The peace I felt then did not come from reasoning. It was simply there. Its influence remained in my later life and in the courage with which I began again. IF therefore asks not only what might have happened.

It also asks what an experience can change within a person. Perhaps part of its reality lies in what it leaves behind: more love for life, less fear and the desire to stand up again. Some childhood memories have faded. This one has remained.

I was still a small boy; I no longer remember my exact age. Perhaps five or six, perhaps a little older.

The Older Woman

When I lay in bed at night, I could feel as though my body was growing lighter and lighter. It seemed to me that I left it and floated above it. I saw my room, my bed and myself lying there. It happened many times.

I knew the feeling that came before it and sometimes tried to bring it back. For the child I was, it was a game. I was not afraid. I felt freedom and a deep calm.

During one of those experiences, I remember an older woman. She did not speak and I did not know who she was. Her presence did not frighten me; she seemed to radiate calm.

The Freedom of a Child

Whether she belonged to a dream, my imagination or something else, I cannot say today. At the time, I knew no expression such as out-of-body experience. I had read nothing about consciousness or near-death experiences. Only much later did I discover descriptions in which I recognised something: above all, the peace and the absence of fear.

Other accounts were nothing like what I remembered. As an adult, I have often wondered what was happening. Was I dreaming? Was I between sleep and waking?

Was it a child’s imagination? I have no final answer. What is certain for me is how natural and peaceful it felt. Perhaps this memory helped nourish my curiosity: my desire to look beyond what is immediately visible.

The Night After the Crisis

It made me receptive to questions about consciousness, intuition and the meaning of our existence. When I think back to that little boy, I see above all the difference between then and now. The adult man seeks an explanation. The child was playing.

I want to preserve that memory without making it greater or more certain than it is. It too belongs to my life. After the crisis of 1981, I was in one of the hardest periods of my life. During the day, I tried to find solutions.

I had to start again. I wanted to remain strong for my family. But at night, I carried the tension with me. During that period, I had an experience that has never left me.

It began with an explosion.

Peace Without Conditions

I saw its force throw my body several metres away, where it fell. But I felt no pain. On the contrary. At that same moment, I experienced an incredible calm.

A feeling of bliss I had never known before. I was outside my body. Weightless. As light as a feather.

From above, I saw people approaching my body. Doctors were also trying to resuscitate me. I saw everything they did. I called out that I was all right.

That I was not lying there. That I was above them. But no one heard me. I tried to touch them.

My hands passed straight through their bodies. They felt nothing. I kept calling, but to them, at that moment, I did not exist. Then the experience changed.

I began to fly.

Back in My Body

Free as an eagle, I moved above the world. I travelled at a speed I cannot describe. Yet there was no fear. Only freedom.

Only peace. The earth looked different from everyday life. The sky was an exceptionally intense blue. The grass below me was a bright, almost fluorescent green.

I saw colours for which I knew no names. Everything was purer, sharper and more alive than what our eyes usually perceive. I felt completely happy. Not the kind of happiness that comes when something goes well.

It was happiness without conditions. A deep peace in which there was no fear, pain or worry. I had never felt anything like it. And I have never fully found that feeling again.

The Strength to Begin Again

Eventually, I felt myself returning very gently to my body. Like a light feather slowly descending and finding its place again. Then I woke up. I was crying.

Not from sorrow. I cried because the experience had felt so intense and so real. Part of me did not want to lose that sense of peace. Another part understood that I was back in ordinary life, with all the worries waiting for me there.

Was it a dream? An experience between sleep and waking? Was my consciousness creating another reality under the pressure of that difficult period? Or had I briefly touched something we cannot yet fully understand?

I do not know.

What an Experience Leaves Behind

I do not want to pretend to a certainty I do not possess. But I do know what I experienced. It has become deeply embedded in my memory. I will carry it with me for the rest of my life.

It also gave me something I badly needed then. Strength. After the crisis, I had to learn to believe again that a fall need not be the end. In my experience, I saw my body fall, but my consciousness rose.

Perhaps that was neither a prediction nor a message from outside. Perhaps it was my own inner world allowing me to feel that, after the devastation, there was still room. Room to start again. Room to live.

Whatever the explanation, the peace I felt changed how I looked at life and death. I did not begin to seek death. Instead, I came to value life more intensely. For when a person can glimpse a little light even in their deepest darkness, that single memory may be enough to help them stand up again.

IF — What if…?
Which memory changed the way you look at life?

The Sky Above Liège

Four silent objects in the evening sky left a question that never disappeared.

IF — What if…?

February 1982

In February 1982, above Liège, I watched four silent, disc-shaped objects for a long time. I struck my own face to make sure I was awake. The objects remained visible. That evening did not bring me a complete explanation, but it did leave me with a lasting question.

I know how easily people judge one another when someone tells an unusual story. That is why I waited a long time before daring to share this experience fully. The memory did not disappear. The shape, the light, the silence and my astonishment remained within me.

IF gives experiences like this a place too.

Four Objects in a Row

Not to turn an observation into a theory, but to tell honestly what someone saw and felt. The reader can then follow their own thoughts. Freedom works both ways: I may tell my story, and someone else may see it differently. Perhaps the sky above us is not only a space we measure.

Perhaps it is also a mirror of our curiosity. As soon as we look up, we realise how small our familiar world is and how many questions remain open. What I saw above Liège in February 1982 was not simply one vague light in the sky.

The Silence Above the City

It was around 5.30 in the afternoon, at sunset. I had finished my working day and was driving to see my brother Mario, who lived on the third floor of an apartment building in Liège. I was about five hundred metres from his home. There was a clear patch of sky between the clouds.

There, I suddenly saw four objects. Four separate flying objects. They were beside one another in a row. They were round, disc-shaped objects that seemed to be made of shining metal.

Twenty Minutes of Watching

The setting sun reflected off their undersides, giving them different colours. I could see shapes that looked like windows or openings. I estimated that the objects were about twenty metres in diameter. I heard no engines.

They made no sound at all. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I stopped my car. To make sure I was awake and not imagining things, I struck my own face.

But the objects remained suspended there. Four large, shining metal discs. Side by side. Completely silent.

I kept watching.

Carrying an Experience Alone

It felt as though the observation lasted about twenty minutes. During that time, the rest of the world seemed to disappear. It was as though I briefly became detached from everything around me. My sense of time changed.

I saw only those four objects. What particularly struck me was how they moved. As long as I was moving, they seemed to adjust their position to my movements. When I changed position, theirs changed too.

When I went faster, they seemed to move faster as well. It was as if they were responding to my presence.

Telling Without Judgement

As if they knew I could see them. Their movements were unlike those of an aeroplane. They could change direction suddenly. They made sharp turns in a way I had never seen a flying craft do.

There was no gradual curve. No audible acceleration. No engine noise. And then they disappeared.

Not slowly. Not because they flew behind a cloud. Not because they became smaller in the distance. In a fraction of a second, the four discs were gone.

I was left wondering what I had just seen.

The Unknown Sky

The next day, I searched the newspapers. I expected that other people must have observed the same thing. Surely four objects that size could not simply appear unnoticed above Liège? But I found no report at all.

No one seemed to be writing about it. That made the experience even more puzzling. There was also something that had happened at home about a month earlier. In different places, I had seen four round stains.

They all had the same shape, but had been made by different substances. One seemed to be ink. One coffee. One wine.

Room for Another View

I no longer remember what caused the fourth. At the time, I could give them no meaning. Only after seeing the four discs above Liège was I struck by the resemblance between those four round marks and the shape of the objects in the sky. Was it a signal they wanted to send me?

I do not know. I do not claim I can prove a connection. But I do not want to remove it from my story either. It happened.

Just as the observation above Liège happened in my own experience.

What If We Are Not Alone

When I later saw Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it affected me very deeply. I recognised something of my own wonder and helplessness in the story. The feeling of having seen something outside the ordinary framework, while words and evidence fell short. More than forty years later, I still do not know where those four discs came from or exactly what I observed.

The memory of their shape, their silence and their sudden disappearance has remained. And after about twenty minutes, they disappeared in a fraction of a second. I do not need to convince anyone. But I no longer want to diminish my own experience to make it easier for others to accept.

I simply tell what I saw with my own eyes. Four discs above Liège. An event for which I have found no explanation to this day.

IF — What if…?
What would you tell if you were not afraid of being judged?

The Pyramid Between Earth and Heaven

For me, the pyramid became a form in which building, searching and looking upwards come together.

IF — What if…?

The Shape That Called to Me

The shape of the pyramid has always attracted me. It rests broadly on the earth while reaching upwards. To me, it became an image of a person who must stand firmly while allowing their thoughts to reach further. When I built the Glass Pyramid in Lummen, it grew out of my work and my desire to make new technologies visible.

Yet the building also carried something of my inner search. In glass, light and space, I saw a connection between the concrete and what had not yet been realised. Marco was part of that world. We shared ideas and could think together about what technology, images and imagination might make possible.

The pyramid therefore became more than a building.

The Pyramids of Egypt

It became a place where our shared thinking took shape. Ancient pyramids raise different questions. Looking at their scale, order and endurance makes us feel how short a single human life is. Centuries pass, civilisations change, and yet those shapes remain standing.

They bring us back to a simple thought: what do we want to build that will last beyond our own moment? My interest in the invisible began long before Marco’s death. As a child, I knew the experiences I described earlier: the feeling of being outside my body, without fear. With the years came questions.

What is consciousness? What do our dreams mean? How do we understand something we experience intensely but cannot explain?

A Building Full of Questions

During my busiest working years, those questions sometimes moved into the background. There was work, there were projects, and my family needed me. Yet they remained. After losing Marco, they touched the deepest part of my existence.

Where does love go when someone dies? How do you go on living with so much absence? I began to read, search and listen again. In different philosophies of life, I recognised themes close to my heart: love, hope, compassion and connection.

I found no answer that resolved all the other questions. I did find words and thoughts that helped me carry my grief. Gradually, spirituality acquired a very concrete meaning for me. It had to bring me closer to life and to other people.

My Glass Pyramid

What is the point of speaking about the invisible if I do not truly see the person in front of me? My search gained value when it helped me listen, judge less quickly and love more attentively. That does not take away my belief in a deeper connection. I cannot prove how Marco exists after death.

But my bond with him has remained part of everyday life. I recognise something of him in Chiara and Laura, in the stories we tell and in the curiosity we shared. There are also feelings and experiences that I live through and interpret in my own way. I do not have to explain everything to find meaning in it.

Building in Lummen

The questions remain, alongside love. What this search has given me above all is the desire to live more consciously: to pay attention to those who are here and preserve the memory of those I miss. It is in that spirit that I tell the following experiences. I ask the reader to make room for my story, just as I want to leave room for their own convictions.

There is one shape that has attracted me for a very long time: the pyramid. My interest did not begin with a single book or theory. It grew out of the simple wonder that, thousands of years ago, people could erect buildings that still leave us silent today. When I look at the pyramids of Egypt, I do not see only stone.

Together With Marco

I see human will, knowledge, organisation and a desire to build something that would outlive time. To me, the Great Pyramid of Giza is the strongest symbol of that mystery. The historical account places it in ancient Egypt, in the world of Pharaoh Khufu and the royal funerary complexes. But even knowing that historical context, my wonder remains.

How did people move such enormous quantities of stone? How was that precision achieved? What did the builders know about shapes, proportions, stars and directions? Every explanation answers something while opening new questions.

Perhaps my interest grew stronger because the pyramid also appeared in my own working life.

Light and Technology

In Lummen, we built the Glass Pyramid: a place where ceramics, presentation, technology and a vision of the future came together. It was a modern project, but its shape carried a much older image. Its tip pointed upwards while it remained firmly grounded on the earth. Without fully describing it that way at the time, it became for me a symbol of the bridge I am trying to describe today.

Marco was part of that world too. We talked about technology, innovation and what might still become possible. The pyramid represented our drive to look beyond what already existed. Today, that shape has another meaning for me as well.

What Remains Standing

The broad base reminds me of everything we need here on earth: family, work, responsibility and trust. The tip reminds me of the desire to grow, to search and to approach something of the invisible. My interest in these subjects sometimes resembled an obsession. When a question touched me, I wanted to read everything about it and compare different explanations.

I looked for similarities between buildings, ancient stories, numbers, shapes and human experiences. Not every connection proved equally strong, but the search itself taught me to look. I recognise that attitude throughout my life. As a sales representative, I wanted to know not only what a tile cost, but also how it came into being.

The Tip and the Base

With machines, I wanted to understand what lay beneath the exterior. With software, I wanted to see how an idea could become visible before it was actually built. My attention to pyramids and lost worlds comes from the same source: I want to know what lies behind the visible story. I am not looking for a single answer that must displace all the others.

I seek a language in which history, human knowledge, dreams and spirituality may meet. A dream can give direction. A legend can preserve ancient wisdom. A building can still raise questions thousands of years later.

Their value lies not only in what we can measure, but also in what they awaken within us. That is why pyramids, megaliths, Atlantis, Lemuria and stories about the Hollow Earth belong in my bridge between heaven and earth. They speak of the human need to look further: upwards, downwards, into the past and within ourselves. As long as that search makes us humbler, more curious and more caring, it remains meaningful to me.

IF — What if…?
What have you built that makes something of your inner world visible?

Stones and Lost Worlds

Megaliths and ancient stories open a space in which history and imagination meet.

IF — What if…?

Stones That Keep Speaking

Great stones have no voice, but they can keep a person listening for a long time. In different parts of the world stand megaliths that have outlived generations. Their weight and placement reveal how much patience, cooperation and conviction people once brought together. Atlantis, Lemuria and stories about a world beneath our feet live on in a different way.

They belong to imagination, tradition and the human need to suspect another history behind what is known. I do not seek them out to fix them within a single explanation. I listen to what they awaken in us. Perhaps lost worlds tell us above all about ourselves.

Megaliths Around the World

We dream of knowledge that was lost, of harmony we want to find again and of civilisations that lost their balance. In those stories, we recognise both our hope and our responsibility. When I read about these mysteries, I feel again like the boy who wanted to know what was hidden inside a machine. My curiosity changed its subject, but not its source.

I want to understand how something came into being and what human dream preceded it. My fascination does not stop in Egypt. All over the world stand enormous stones that earlier peoples erected, moved or carefully placed on top of one another.

Cooperation Across Generations

Stonehenge, the temples of Malta, the long rows of stones at Carnac and countless dolmens and menhirs show that people felt the need to create monumental places very early on. When I see such structures, I try to imagine those who worked on them. They had no modern cranes, lorries or computers. Yet they brought communities together around a plan larger than a single human life.

Perhaps some places served for burials or rituals. Perhaps they followed the sun, the seasons or important points in the landscape. Whatever their exact purpose, the stones tell us that our ancestors were not concerned only with survival. They also sought meaning.

Atlantis

That touches me. A megalith is heavy and motionless, yet it sets our thoughts in motion. Who chose that stone? Who decided where it would stand?

How many hands were needed? What words did the builders speak as they worked? We see the final result, but behind every stone lies a vanished world of people, beliefs and cooperation. Sometimes there is talk of forgotten techniques or knowledge that was later lost.

I do not know how much of that can ever be recovered with certainty. For me, the mystery does not have to disappear entirely either. It may remind us that people in the past were not simple or ignorant.

The Mirror of a Civilisation

They possessed skills, patience and a connection to their surroundings that we easily underestimate. No story of a vanished civilisation has touched my imagination as strongly as Atlantis. The name reaches us through Plato, who tells in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias of a powerful island realm that eventually disappeared into the sea. Over the centuries, Atlantis became far more than one ancient story.

It became a symbol of a great civilisation that lost its knowledge, its balance or perhaps its humility. What fascinates me is not only the question of where Atlantis might have been. More important is what the story tells us about humanity.

Lemuria

We can build, discover and reach a high level of development. But when power becomes greater than wisdom, even an impressive world can fall. In that sense, Atlantis is not a closed story from a distant past. It is a mirror in which every generation can look at itself.

I have often thought that the appeal of Atlantis comes from a deeply human feeling: the suspicion that part of our origins has been lost. Perhaps we are not only searching for a sunken island. Perhaps we are searching for forgotten possibilities within ourselves: a different relationship with nature, greater connection and knowledge used for more than domination.

The Hollow Earth

Lemuria also found a place in my search. The name arose in the nineteenth century in an attempt to explain the distribution of certain animals, long before the movement of continents was well understood. Later, Lemuria acquired a very different life in spiritual stories. It was described as a lost land or as a civilisation in which consciousness, nature and mutual connection played a major role.

It is that later image which speaks to my imagination. Not because I can point to a map showing where Lemuria certainly existed, but because the story expresses a longing. A longing for a society in which people do not stand apart from the earth, but feel themselves to be part of it.

What Lost Worlds Preserve

A world in which knowledge goes hand in hand with care, and in which progress is not measured without asking what it does to people and nature. Atlantis and Lemuria are often mentioned together, as if they represented two memories of vanished possibilities. Atlantis evokes for me the power and danger of great development. Lemuria evokes gentleness, intuition and connection.

Perhaps these stories tell us above all about what we miss today and hope to find again. The idea of a Hollow Earth belongs to the boldest stories I have encountered. It speaks of hidden spaces, unknown passages and sometimes even civilisations deep beneath the earth’s surface.

The Journey Within

Science describes the earth in terms of crust, mantle and core, studied through seismic waves, gravity and heat. Yet the image of a world beneath our feet retains extraordinary power in stories, drawings and dreams. What attracts people to it? Perhaps the same curiosity that makes us look at the stars.

Above us lies the universe; beneath us is a depth we ourselves have barely reached directly. We live on a thin outer layer of an enormous planet. That awareness alone is enough to awaken the imagination. For me, the Hollow Earth need not be read only as a literal place.

It can also be an image of the hidden world within a person. We too carry rooms that others do not see: memories, fears, desires and strengths whose existence we may not yet know ourselves. Those who dare to travel within may encounter an unknown landscape.

IF — What if…?
Which ancient story still makes you dream?

People Who Dared to Think Beyond

Imagination becomes powerful when it helps a person look beyond the limits of their time.

IF — What if…?

The Freedom of the Mind

Some people give their contemporaries a new window. They do not necessarily see the whole future, but they dare to imagine something reaching beyond the habits of their surroundings. Their freedom helps others think more freely too. Jules Verne took his readers to places that seemed unreachable to many.

He did not prove that every imagined thing would become real. He did show that a story can prepare our minds for possibilities that later seem less strange. Dante Alighieri described a journey through worlds that cannot be entered on ordinary feet. His journey speaks of fear, insight, love and a person’s passage through darkness towards light.

Jules Verne

Centuries later, readers still recognise something of their own inner journey. Giordano Bruno dared to imagine a universe wider than the boundaries imposed by his age. His name reminds me how difficult it can sometimes be for new ideas to be received. Yet an idea can keep travelling even when the voice that expressed it has been silenced.

Nikola Tesla saw possibilities in the forces of nature that others could not yet put to use. His work connected imagination with technology. That touches me because I too have always tried not only to dream an idea, but to make it visible and useful. I do not place these people on a pedestal in order to adopt every detail of their lives.

Travelling Before It Was Possible

I mention them because they gave the human mind room. They show that imagination and reality do not have to fight each other. Imagination can be reality’s first workshop. As a boy and later as an entrepreneur, I was always drawn to people who wanted to look beneath the surface.

With a coffee machine, I wanted to understand why every component was exactly where it was. In ceramics, I wanted to know how colour, fire and material came together to form a tile. With software, I wanted to make a space visible before it was built. I recognise that same movement in the four names in this chapter.

Dante Alighieri

Jules Verne spoke to my imagination because he took his readers along without first asking whether the destination could be reached. During the reading, the journey already existed. That is a power we should not underestimate. A person who can imagine something begins to look differently at the limits of their own time.

A story does not build a machine or lay a railway line. But it can awaken the desire to investigate. It can make a child feel that the world is larger than their street. It can encourage an inventor to look at a problem from another angle.

An Inner Journey

Sometimes a long road emerges from dream to design, and from design to reality. With Dante, it is above all the image of the journey that touches me. A person descends, confronts himself and then seeks the light again. My life has known such movements too.

After a crisis, a loss or a failure, I often had to pass through my own darkness before I could build again. We do not have to enter Dante’s world literally to recognise something of that passage. Everyone knows moments of being lost in guilt, sorrow or fear. Everyone can also long for understanding, forgiveness and a new direction.

Giordano Bruno

Imagination makes visible an inner reality that would otherwise be hard to describe. Giordano Bruno evokes for me the courage not to make the universe smaller than our minds can bear. When we think everything is already settled, one new thought can open the space again. History shows that such a thought sometimes meets resistance.

Yet the question keeps travelling from person to person. We need that freedom today as well. New knowledge often begins with someone who sees a connection others do not yet see. Not every thought stands up to examination.

But without the freedom to explore it, we would only repeat what was already known yesterday.

A Larger Universe

Tesla appeals to me because his imagination remained connected to making things. He thought in forces, movement and applications. His ideas ultimately had to work. I recognise that from my own entrepreneurship.

A dream carries a different responsibility once people trust it, work with it or attach their future to it. That is why I do not want to separate dream and reality. The dream opens the direction. Knowledge, work and perseverance build the road.

Sometimes we reach the destination. Sometimes, on the way, we discover that the idea must change. Even then, the first act of imagination was not useless. These four men were different.

Nikola Tesla

One wrote novels, another poetry, a third philosophised about the universe and the fourth worked as an inventor. What brings them together in my thoughts is their willingness to look beyond what is immediately visible. They remind me that a free mind can also be humble. The further we look, the more clearly we realise how much we still do not know.

That awareness does not close the door. It makes us more attentive to new possibilities. IF wants to preserve that attitude. The book does not ask us to call every dream true.

It asks us not to reject a dream merely because it does not yet fit our usual way of thinking.

The Workshop of Reality

First, we may listen to the question it awakens within us. When imagination goes hand in hand with humanity, it can mean a great deal. It can help us develop better technology, but also understand another person more deeply. We can only truly put ourselves in someone else’s place if we try, for a moment, to feel how the world looks through their eyes.

Free thought is therefore more than an intellectual right. It is a form of openness. It makes room for art, science, spirituality and personal experience. It allows different paths to exist side by side without requiring one person to possess every answer.

Perhaps the greatest value of these thinkers does not lie in the predictions later attributed to them. For me, it lies in the movement they created. They encouraged people to look, read, investigate and ask questions again. With IF, I too want only to begin such a movement.

The reader need not accept anything after this chapter. It is enough if one thought begins to breathe again, and if they allow themselves the freedom to ask what might still be possible.

IF — What if…?
Which thought from another person gave your imagination more freedom?

Coincidence, Intuition and Numbers

Some coincidences do not call for a quick conclusion, but they do deserve our attention.

IF — What if…?

There Is No Such Thing as Coincidence

Over the years, I learned that people have different ways of searching for connections. Sometimes we notice a meaningful coincidence. Sometimes our intuition speaks before we can name all the reasons. Sometimes we see a pattern in numbers that helps us look at our own lives.

My date of birth, 5 June 1948, led me, in my own numerological method, to the numbers 11, 22 and 33. To me, they became mirrors of intuition, building and service. They did not dictate my life. They helped me find words for strengths and contradictions I already knew.

The number 11 fits IF in a special way. Two ones stand side by side like two pillars with an opening between them. I see the bridge again: the visible on one side, what we suspect on the other, and between them the space in which a person searches. There is no such thing as coincidence is a conviction that often returned in my life.

By that, I do not mean I can fully explain every event. I mean that I want to pay attention to encounters and coincidences that teach me something. Meaning emerges when I listen to what they touch in my life. “There is no such thing as coincidence” is a thought that belongs to my way of seeing.

It invites me to pay attention to encounters and events that affect me.

A Meaningful Coincidence

I use it here as a personal motto, not as a law proving that every event was arranged beforehand. Sometimes meaning only emerges when I look back. The round stains took on a different place in my memory after the observation above Liège. The year 1981 also touches me because of the correspondence between my age of 33, my numerological calculation and the crisis I was going through.

I am not claiming that a number caused that crisis. The difference between cause and meaning matters to me. With cause, we ask what made something happen. With meaning, we ask what it awakens in us and what place it takes in our life.

An event can become deeply meaningful without our having demonstrated a hidden cause. Not every important decision in my life began with a calculation. Sometimes there was a feeling first. An almost inaudible signal.

Or a quiet confidence telling me to explore a particular path. That is what I call intuition. To me, intuition is not a magical voice that is always right. Nor is it an excuse to ignore facts.

I see it as a quiet voice arising from experience, love and attention. Everything we have lived through leaves something within us. Conversations. Glances.

Mistakes. Disappointments. Moments when we were right to trust someone.

The Quiet Voice

And moments when we later realised we should have been more careful. Our reasoning minds cannot keep naming all those impressions one by one. Yet they are stored somewhere within us. Sometimes they come together in a feeling that arrives faster than a complete line of reasoning.

I often experienced this during my career. I would meet someone and feel almost immediately whether there was room for genuine cooperation. I would listen to a new idea and notice something awakening within me. Or I would sit in a meeting where all the figures seemed correct on paper, while an inner unease still prompted me to ask one more question.

Not every feeling proved right. My intuition did not protect me from every wrong decision. I trusted people who did not deserve that trust. I believed in certain projects for too long.

And sometimes I mistook hope for certainty. That is precisely why I believe intuition must always stand alongside honest investigation. We should listen to our feelings. But we must also examine the facts.

Ask questions. Make agreements clear. And be willing to revise our first impression when reality shows us something different. Intuition is not a judge delivering a final verdict.

It is more like a faithful adviser who quietly says:

Looking, Then Looking Again

“Look again.” “Listen more carefully.” “There is something here you do not yet fully understand.” I believe the best intuition grows from attention to people. Someone who truly listens notices more than words alone. A silence at the wrong moment. A look that does not match what someone says.

A voice that suddenly changes. Or, instead, the calm and simplicity with which an honest person speaks. These are not proofs. But they are signals that may invite us not to move on too quickly.

After Marco’s death, intuition took on another meaning for me. There were moments when a memory would suddenly surface. A thought. A feeling of closeness.

I cannot prove where such moments come from. Perhaps it is my memory. Perhaps it is the love that lives on within me. I do not have to find a final explanation.

It is enough that those moments help me live more attentively and humanely. For intuition should never remove us from other people. When it has real value, it makes us more sensitive to what someone else needs. It helps us notice that a person is hiding sadness behind their smile.

That an employee has not only made a mistake, but may also be afraid. That a friend is not asking for advice, but for presence.

My Date of Birth

And that sometimes a child needs above all to hear that they are loved, even when not everything goes well. The older I became, the more I came to value silence. Not because silence automatically provides answers. But because, in silence, we can hear more clearly what is drowned out by noise.

Our fear. Our hope. Our conscience. And sometimes that gentle inner question:

“Am I acting out of love, or out of fear?” That may be the most important question intuition can ask us. It does not always tell us which path carries no risk. Such a path usually does not exist. But it can help us feel which choice stays closest to the person we want to be.

That is why I kept listening to that quiet voice. Not blindly. Not without thinking. But with the respect we owe to everything life has taught us, often without words.

For most people, numbers are practical signs. They tell us the time, what something costs, how old someone is or on which day an event took place. For me, numbers acquired a deeper meaning over the years. Numerology is neither a game nor an infallible prediction of the future.

I see it as a person’s spiritual DNA: a symbolic blueprint of talents, tensions, tasks and possibilities. A blueprint is not a prison.

The Numbers 11, 22 and 33

We retain our freedom and remain responsible for our choices. But just as physical DNA tells us something about our predispositions, I believe numbers can reveal something of the inner structure with which we move through life. My own date of birth, 5 June 1948, is the clearest example for me. The day, 5, stands for movement, curiosity, freedom and change.

I recognise in it my need to discover new worlds: technology, espresso, ceramics, software, artificial intelligence and spirituality. The number 5 does not like standing still. I too spent my whole life seeking what could be better, different or still possible. The month, 6, stands for family, care, responsibility and harmony.

In it, I recognise the other great force in my life. However far my work took me, my deepest motivation remained my family. Dorina, Marco, Michael and later my grandchildren formed the centre around which everything else revolved. The tension between 5 and 6 is recognisable too.

The 5 wants freedom and new paths. The 6 wants to protect, hold on and take responsibility. My life has often unfolded precisely between those two forces. In this calculation, my birth year carries the master number 22.

This number is often called the master builder. It connects vision with the task of bringing something concrete into being on earth. Here too, I recognise my life’s course. I did not only dream.

The Number 11

I built businesses, brands, relationships, presentation systems and, finally, together with Marco, the Glass Pyramid and Piramedia. Not every structure survived. But every attempt left behind experience, knowledge and human connections. The shadow side of 22 is the tendency to carry too much responsibility and to believe for too long that every problem can still be solved.

I recognise that as well. Perseverance was one of my greatest strengths, but sometimes also a burden I carried alone for too long. When I bring together the day, month and year of my birth, I arrive at 33. In numerology, 33 is a master number of love, responsibility, service and passing on understanding.

That number touches me because helping runs like a thread through my life. At first, I helped customers with technology, coffee and entrepreneurship. Later, people came to me with other questions. They asked for a numerological analysis of their character, their current situation or tensions with other people.

Some returned year after year. Not because I could predict their lives for them. But because the combination of calculation, intuition and attentive listening helped them recognise patterns. The 33 also shows me a limit.

Someone who feels called to help others may forget themselves. They may take on responsibilities that are not entirely theirs. They may keep giving until their own strength is nearly exhausted.

A Mirror, Not a Cage

I have had to learn that lesson more than once as well. When I combine only my birth day and birth month, 11 appears. In the method I used, I called this my soul number: the number of intuition, sensitivity, inspiration and the search for what lies behind visible reality. It does not surprise me that 11 appears in my calculation.

As a child, I knew the experiences in which I thought I left my body. Later came the experience between life and death and many moments when my intuition asked me to look more attentively. I do not use the number 11 as proof that my interpretation is the only right one. It does show how strongly the question of the invisible has always been present in me.

The 11 also has its tension. Sensitivity can bring insight, but also unease. Intuition can give direction, but must not replace sober judgement. That is why I have always tried to remain open without giving up my freedom of thought.

When the letters of my full name are converted into numbers according to the numerological system I used, the sum is 54, which reduces to 9. The number 9 is associated with humanity, compassion, wisdom through experience, completion and the desire to pass something on. Here too, I recognise why material success never had the final word for me. People remained more important than the product.

Attention to Connections

The encounter mattered more than the contract. And as I grew older, the question of what I could leave to my children, grandchildren and the generations after me became stronger. This book is one answer. For me, one of the most remarkable correspondences lies in 1981.

That was the year I turned 33 and went through a severe crisis at the same time. In that very year of the master number 33, I was forced to let go of a great deal, take responsibility and start again from almost nothing. Shortly afterwards, I had the experience between life and death described earlier in this part. I am not claiming that the number caused those events.

But neither can I deny how deeply the correspondence affects me. The calculation and the course of my life seem to meet there as in a mirror. The number 99 has a special meaning for me: three times 33. I recognise in it a symbolic completion of a story in which building, falling, helping, searching and starting again recur.

The number does not make my story more truthful; the experiences must do that. It is a personal way of looking at the connections in my life. When people asked me for an analysis, I always began with the calculation. But the real meaning only emerged in conversation.

The figures opened a door. Behind that door stood a person with their own history, sorrow, hope and free will. Numerology helped me give words to talents and contradictions that people often already felt deep within themselves. I used it to explore together why two strong characters kept clashing at the same point.

IF — What if…?
Which coincidence stayed with you because it touched something within you?

Marco and the Bond That Remains

My love for my son changed shape after his death, but it did not disappear from my life.

IF — What if…?

My Son and My Friend

No question in my life has become as deep as the question of what love means when someone dies. Since Marco’s death on 27 August 2009, I have carried that question every day. The answer did not come in a single sentence. It grew in memories, in longing and in the feeling that our bond could not simply disappear from my life.

Marco and I regularly went to Scherpenheuvel together. We would light a candle there. That simple gesture brought together silence, hope and closeness.

Our Shared Curiosity

Today, I cannot think of that place without also feeling his presence in my memory. Later, through a medium, I received two handwritten texts that took on a very personal meaning for me. I regard them as part of my experience and of my lasting connection with Marco. Their value for me lies not only in the words, but also in the moment they reached me and in what I recognised in them.

Together to Scherpenheuvel

I often feel that Marco helps me write my books. Perhaps that help lives in my memory of our conversations, perhaps in the love that keeps driving me forward, perhaps in a way for which I have no words. For me, that question does not have to be closed. IF leaves the door open.

After a farewell, love can take another form. It can become visible in what we preserve, pass on and try to mean to others.

A Candle in Silence

When I write, I speak with my own voice, but I also carry something of Marco with me. When I write about him, I seek room for the whole person he was. The absence belongs to my life, but so do the collaboration, the ideas and the curiosity we shared. My love for him encompasses more than the moment when we had to say goodbye.

That is where a bridge lies between memory and presence.

The Two Handwritten Texts

A memory can lead to a conversation with his daughters, to preserving a photograph or to paying attention to someone who is missing a loved one too. In that way, a bond from the past continues to shape how I try to live today. The spiritual meaning I give it remains personal. Even someone who does not share my belief can understand how important it is for a loved one to keep a name and a story.

Writing With Marco in Mind

We can meet on that human ground without agreeing on every explanation. As I reach the final page, my thoughts return to the people with whom this story began. My parents, who left their familiar world behind. Dorina, with whom I have shared a life.

Marco and Michael, who gave me the privilege of being a father. My grandchildren, my family and the friends who stayed beside me along the way. I have not found an answer to every question about life and death.

Love After Goodbye

But I do know how much one person can mean to another. Love does not have to explain everything to sustain us. Sometimes it is a hand on a shoulder, a memory we preserve together or the courage to be there for someone again after a difficult day. Marco, your place in my heart remains.

Going on with life does not mean leaving you behind. It means carrying what we shared into caring for those who are still here.

The Bridge Remains Open

Michael and my grandchildren also have their own irreplaceable place in that love. To you who have read this book, I therefore want above all to say this: do not wait too long to tell someone you love them. Listen, seek one another out and pass on the memories that would otherwise be lost. If these pages open a conversation, comfort someone or set a small act of love in motion, their meaning lives on.

The gold with which this book began, I place at the end once more with the people who have carried my life. With my parents, Dorina, Marco and Michael, my grandchildren and all those who shared their warmth with us. Their love and courage are the riches I want to pass on. To them belongs the gold of these pages.

I close this book with gratitude. In the name of all my people. Renato

IF — What if…?
How does love for someone absent live on in your daily life?

The Thousands of Conversations

People did not come only with questions. Above all, they came with a longing to be heard.

IF — What if…?

Listening Before Speaking

My search never remained mine alone. Over the years, thousands of people told me about their questions, sorrow, dreams and the coincidences they could not forget. Often, they did not come for a grand answer. They wanted someone who would listen first.

I discovered that attention is sometimes more important than explanation. When a person can tell their story without immediate judgement, they sometimes hear for themselves what lives deep inside. My numerological calculations often opened a conversation, but the person behind the figures always remained the most important thing. Books and other people’s testimonies also helped me examine my own path.

I read about Edgar Cayce, Jozef Rulof, Robbert van den Broeke, Giorgio Dibitonto and Pier Giorgio Caria. I did not accept everything without question. I listened to what their stories awakened within me, while keeping my own experience as my starting point. IF wants to offer that same attitude to the reader.

A story does not have to become yours to touch something within you. You may take one thought with you, let another rest and return to it later. Free thinking also means that each person keeps their own pace. Looking back today, I realise there were not merely a few hundred conversations.

Over the years, there must have been thousands. Conversations about numerology. About spirituality.

The Person Behind the Number

About the strange combinations of circumstances we sometimes call coincidence. About loss. About grief. About love.

And very often about Marco. Those conversations almost never took place in our home. Dorina did not want people coming to the house for spiritual conversations or numerology. She herself does not believe in spirituality.

She also preferred not to speak openly about Marco. I do not fully know why that was so difficult for her. And because I do not know, I do not want to attribute reasons or feelings to her that she never expressed herself. Two parents can lose the same child and yet deal with their grief in completely different ways.

I needed to speak. To share memories. To try to understand what had happened. Dorina did not seek that public openness.

Where I needed words, she preferred silence. Where I sought contact with people asking similar questions, she kept her feelings to herself. Neither way makes the loss any smaller. But the difference between us was sometimes difficult.

For me, speaking about Marco was not an attempt to remain in the past. It was a way to keep him close. Marco and I had shared so much. Our interest in technology.

Our work together. Our dreams. Our endless conversations and discussions.

Grief Searching for Words

We could disagree wholeheartedly. But it was often precisely those discussions that gave rise to our best ideas. After his death, all of that suddenly fell away. There was no longer anyone I could talk to in quite the same way.

No one who understood exactly which dreams we had cherished together and how many years of our lives had become woven into them. Perhaps that is why I kept seeking contact in other ways. Because these conversations could not take place at home, I had them elsewhere. During spiritual activities.

At gatherings. In cafés. On walks. On the telephone.

And later, increasingly, through the internet. WhatsApp became an important way to communicate with people. Some conversations began with a single short message. Before I knew it, however, people were telling me their entire life story.

Sometimes someone wrote in the middle of the night. Someone in pain. Someone feeling alone. Or someone who did not dare say anywhere else what was truly troubling them.

Many contacts also arose through a website where I spoke about Marco. I told of his life. Our work together. His dreams.

But also his death and the questions I was left with as a father. Over the years, I also shared hundreds of photographs and videos of Marco and our family on different social media platforms.

The Experiences of Others

To some people, perhaps they were simply images. To me, they were fragments of a life. A smile. A journey.

A celebration. A moment at work. A memory of who Marco really was. I did it for one very simple reason:

I did not want him to be forgotten. I did not want his whole life reduced to its final day. Knowing only how Marco died does not yet mean knowing who he was. He was a son.

A father. A brother. A friend. An entrepreneur.

A person full of ideas and enthusiasm. Someone who could laugh, dream, argue and inspire others. By sharing his photographs, videos and story, I tried to keep all those sides of him alive. The digital world therefore became far more than a technical tool to me.

It became a place of remembrance. A place where I could keep telling people about Marco. And at the same time, a place where people from everywhere came to me with their own stories. Many of those conversations began with numerology.

Someone sent me a date of birth. Someone else spoke of numbers that kept recurring in their life. Another person tried to find meaning in an event they could not explain. Over the years, I made numerological calculations or analyses for hundreds of people.

I never asked for any payment.

Edgar Cayce

Not once. I did it because I wanted to help people think about their lives. The figures were often only the beginning. They opened a door.

But behind that door there was always a person. A person with questions. With sorrow. With hope.

With fears. And with a story that wanted to be heard. Alongside those personal conversations, I took part in hundreds of spiritual activities over the years and organised many myself. Through them, I met people from very different backgrounds and beliefs.

Some were deeply religious. Others doubted everything. Others were mainly curious. I never thought it necessary for someone to believe the same things as I did.

I did not want to convince anyone. I wanted to understand. And I wanted to make room for questions that often find little space in everyday life. What moved me again and again was the trust people placed in me.

Sometimes they told me things they had never shared with anyone before. Grief that had remained hidden for years. Fears they did not dare voice to their own families. Experiences for which they feared being judged or laughed at.

I have always regarded that trust as a special privilege. The personal stories people entrusted to me are not mine to tell others. Their names. Their secrets.

Their pain. Those remain with me.

Jozef Rulof and Other Voices

What I may share are the lessons all those encounters taught me. I never claimed to hold the truth. On the contrary. I saw myself as someone walking beside another person for a short distance.

And, thinking of Dorina, I am not writing because she should experience things the same way I do. I write because I hope she may understand more clearly what has been going on inside me all these years. Why I kept speaking about Marco. Why I kept sharing his photographs and videos.

Why I sought contact with so many people. Why numerology and spirituality became so important to me. And why I felt that Marco’s story had to keep being told. Perhaps this book can reach her in a way that a website, a WhatsApp message or a social media post never could.

Perhaps between these lines she will recognise something again of the bond Marco and I shared. Of our common interests. Our collaboration. Our discussions.

Our dreams. And the enormous silence left within me after his death. The thousands of conversations I later had with others could not fill that silence. But they meant I did not remain entirely alone within it.

They taught me to be humbler. More patient. More careful in my judgement.

Keeping My Own Path

And more sensitive to the invisible struggle each person may carry. Above all, they confirmed a truth in which I have always believed: every person needs someone at least once in their life who listens not only with their ears… but above all with their heart. The page on Edgar Cayce opens a reading path around his readings and the spiritual subjects associated with them. For this book, what matters most is the opportunity to compare: how do different traditions speak of consciousness, dreams and the meaning of a life?

The material on Cayce does not establish what caused my own experiences. In Jozef Rulof’s work, questions of the afterlife, the soul, and cause and effect come together. Our page also contains the necessary critical context for his work. My own starting point remains the equal worth of all people.

I do not accept, as an explanation of their suffering, an account that makes victims guilty of the injustice done to them. The page on Robbert van den Broeke places his own story alongside critical sources. Its connection with this book lies in the questions testimonies can raise. Learning about a story is a different step from independently establishing a supernatural explanation.

For Giorgio Dibitonto, the story Angeli in astronave takes centre stage. It offers a reading path in which a contact account acquires religious and spiritual meaning.

Freedom for Every Reader

Alongside my memory of Liège, this creates a comparison between experiences and the language narrators use to try to understand them. The pages on Pier Giorgio Caria and the Amicizia case collect contributions about ufology, contact accounts and spirituality. They can help us read different testimonies side by side. None of those accounts determines, after the fact, what I saw above Liège.

Even when an explanation remains open, we can pay attention to the people telling their stories. I want to give the reader the same room I need myself. A thought may be explored, valued, doubted or set aside. Wonder obliges no one to agree.

Critical questions need not diminish a narrator’s human dignity. My own measure remains how a thought works in life. Does it help me listen more carefully? Does it make me more sensitive to another person’s pain?

Does it leave room for freedom and responsibility? At that point, the different reading paths meet the personal journey I describe in this book. A personal search can make room for the stories and beliefs of others. That is why different authors, speakers and witnesses have received their own pages on the website.

They form a collection to explore further. That does not mean that each of them explains my experience or that I adopt every statement they make. Their relationship to my own story is mainly thematic. Questions about consciousness and survival connect with my memories and my longing for Marco.

Testimonies about unknown phenomena offer another setting in which to think about Liège. But my memory remains my memory, and another author’s conclusion remains their conclusion.

What We Give Back to the World

For me, a thought acquires meaning when it becomes visible in the way we live.

IF — What if…?

The Boomerang Law

To me, free thinking never means that our actions have no consequences. On the contrary. The wider our thoughts become, the more important it is to ask how we treat others. A spiritual thought only gains value when it becomes visible in respect, care and responsibility.

I have often called the law of cause and effect the boomerang law. What we send out returns to us in one way or another. A harsh word can linger for a long time. A small gesture of understanding can give someone courage again on a difficult day.

Forgiveness plays a special role in this. To me, forgiving does not mean that everything is undone. It means I do not want to allow old pain to keep governing each new day. I also had to learn to be gentler with myself.

A moment of light need not be grand. It may begin with listening, a telephone call, a visit or a candle. Such actions connect the world of our convictions with everyday life. They make the bridge walkable.

Cause and Effect

For me, that bridge begins in very ordinary moments. In the willingness not to win a conversation, but truly to listen. In the courage to give trust again after disappointment. In paying attention to someone who feels alone, even when we cannot solve their sorrow.

We do not have to explain the invisible before we can do something good. A thought about love gains meaning only when someone experiences that love. A belief in connection becomes visible when we care for one another, for nature and for the world we pass on. Here too, IF’s question can be heard.

What if one small gesture travels further than we will ever know? What if a kind word helps someone not to give up? We do not have to see the answer to choose what is good. Everything we do sets something in motion.

Sometimes we see the effect immediately. Sometimes only years later.

Responsibility

And very often, we will never fully know how far the influence of one word or action has reached. Over the years, I came to call this the law of cause and effect. Not as a simple accounting system in which every good person automatically receives happiness and every bad person is punished immediately. Life does not work that way.

I have seen good people suffer. I have seen honest businesses disappear. I have experienced how effort and love were not enough to prevent a loss. No person is to blame for every sorrow that befalls them.

A victim must never be made responsible for an injustice another person inflicted on them. Cause and effect means something different to me. It means that we carry responsibility for what we ourselves bring into the world. A word can humiliate someone.

But a word can also give someone courage again. A promise can build trust.

Forgiveness

And breaking that promise can leave a wound that lasts far longer than the person who caused it will ever realise. A helping hand can bring someone back to their feet at a decisive moment. And years later, that same person can reach out a hand to someone else. In that way, an action travels on.

From person to person. From family to family. Sometimes even from one generation to the next. My father left Italy to give his children a better future.

The consequences of that decision reached far beyond what he could foresee at the time. They touched my life. The lives of my children. And today, those of my grandchildren too.

One choice became a series of new possibilities. My mother also set something in motion every day. Not with grand speeches. But with care.

With perseverance. With the love with which she held her family together. That love did not disappear when her life ended. It lives on in the way we try to care for others ourselves.

Care for Body and Spirit

That is cause and effect in its most human form. Not an invisible punishment or reward. But the simple truth that our way of living leaves traces. I experienced that law in my working life as well.

When you work honestly for years, trust grows. Not in one great movement. But in hundreds of small moments when you do what you promised. When that trust is betrayed, it can collapse in an instant.

But even then, a choice remains. Do I let disappointment determine who I become from now on? Or do I try to grow more careful without losing my humanity? Other people’s actions have consequences for us.

But how we go on living afterwards ultimately becomes our own responsibility again. That does not mean we must accept everything. Boundaries are necessary. Honesty sometimes asks us to step away.

Forgiveness does not mean giving someone the same power over us again. But we can refuse to pass on endlessly the harm that was done to us. Someone who has been hurt can hurt others.

A Moment of Light

But they can also decide that the chain stops with them. That is one of the hardest and bravest choices a person can make. I often think of the thousands of conversations I have had. Sometimes, afterwards, someone would tell me that a single sentence had stayed with them.

Often, I could barely remember which sentence it was myself. That taught me how carefully we must handle words. We never know which ones will come to live in another heart. That is why no sincere act of humanity is truly small.

A telephone call. A visit. An apology. A listening ear.

A simple: “You are not alone.” Each of those gestures can begin a new movement. Perhaps we will never see the result. But somewhere, it lives on.

I therefore do not believe that we always reap exactly what we ourselves have sown. Life is too complex for that. But I do believe that what we sow grows somewhere. In trust.

In memory. In courage. Or in pain. That awareness makes every choice important.

A Small Gesture

Not because we must live perfectly. No one can. But because every day, we can try again to set something in motion that makes the world a little more human. And when we ourselves have made a mistake, we can also create a new cause.

By taking responsibility. By asking forgiveness. By doing things differently next time. We cannot erase the past.

But we can prevent it from endlessly producing the same pain. That is where the long road to forgiveness begins for me. In difficult times, I also want this search to offer a place to people who need relief, love, compassion and understanding. That desire connects with what I so often saw in my conversations with others: a person can receive a great deal simply when someone truly takes the time.

A moment of light need not be a grand answer. It can be a sentence that makes room, a shared memory or the decision to postpone judgement a little longer.

The Bridge in Everyday Life

In this way, the word light finds a place in the ordinary life of this book. I know from my own history how heavy a period can become when many things fall away at once. The crisis of 1981, the loss of loved ones and the difficult years belong to the person I am today. I do not have to make those events beautiful to acknowledge that they changed my attention towards others.

Someone who wants to help does not always have to find the right words. Sometimes it begins with asking whether another person wants to talk. Sometimes with a visit or a message. Sometimes with a willingness to remain quiet while someone searches for words.

I do not want to use positive thought to push sorrow away. Hope can exist alongside grief. Gratitude can exist alongside longing. A difficult day does not have to disappear before there is room for a kind gesture.

That is where the bridge comes into view again for me. What I have experienced as peace or connection in an extraordinary moment, I want to carry into contact with others. Its value grows when someone feels heard or sees a small possibility again. Perhaps today you can let one person know that their existence matters.

Without a grand story, without having to solve anything. Simply with attention. That too can travel further than we will ever know.

IF — What if…?
What small gesture of yours could bring light today?

The Open Bridge

At the end of this book, the question remains. That is not a shortcoming, but its purpose.

IF — What if…?

The Renato of Today

When I wrote the first IF around the year 2000, I did not know what path the book would still follow. The paper disappeared. The question remained. Today, I understand that a thought is not lost as long as it continues to work within a person.

My life gave those two letters new content. IF now carries the child who seemed to float above his bed, the man who experienced peace after a crisis, the witness beneath the sky of Liège, the builder of the Glass Pyramid and the father who continues to love Marco. It also carries all the people who placed their trust in me.

What Life Added

Their stories taught me that doubt need not be emptiness. Doubt can become an open space in which we listen more carefully and come closer to our own truth. Reality is greater than one person can take in. We know part of it through our senses, part through knowledge and part through experience.

Alongside this, room remains for imagination, faith and hope. IF wants to breathe in that space. Perhaps, after the last page, a reader will have no new answer. Perhaps they will have found the desire to take up an old dream again, to listen to someone without judgement or to look at the stars with different eyes.

That is enough.

Between Knowing and Feeling

The question remains open. From now on, it belongs not only to me, but to everyone who dares to ask it. What if? This book grows out of my life.

Out of the people I have loved, what I have built and lost, and experiences for which I did not always find the right words. Some memories carry a date. Others live on mainly as a feeling: wonder, peace, longing or a suspicion that there is more to discover than we see at first glance. In My Life, I wrote about my family, my Italian roots, my childhood in Belgium, my work and the people who shaped me.

Doubt That Makes Room

With this book, I want to show that same person from within. The entrepreneur who kept starting again, the father who misses Marco and the child who marvelled are not separate people. They belong together. Their experiences form the bridge I am trying to describe here.

On one side of that bridge is the earth: our everyday existence, our responsibility, our relationships, our bodies and our care for one another.

Reality Keeps Growing

On the other side are the questions I associate with the word heaven: what is consciousness, what does love mean, what remains when someone dies, and how do we make room for something we experience intensely but do not fully understand? My search lies between those two sides. I do not write because I can answer every question. I write because staying silent about what has touched me would also leave part of my life untold.

My experiences need not be understood in the same way by everyone. One reader will recognise something in them. Another will seek different explanations. Both are welcome as readers.

Daring to Dream Again

That is why I allow my story and further reflection to exist side by side in these pages. First, I tell what I remember. Then the questions that arise from it receive more room. Sometimes an experience connects with what others call an out-of-body experience, a meaningful coincidence or intuition.

That recognition is the beginning of a conversation. It does not settle the explanation once and for all. Numerology has gained a special place in that conversation. Numbers helped me reflect on my own path and opened the door to other people’s stories.

But the person behind the calculation remained more important than the number. That applies to this book too.

A Gift to the Reader

My life cannot be reduced to a formula, and neither can the reader’s. My longing for Marco runs through many of these chapters. Remembering him means continuing to see his life: his ideas, his enthusiasm, our collaboration and the conversations we could have. At the same time, Michael, my grandchildren, Dorina, my parents, my family and my friends belong to the love that connects me to life.

I want to carry my attention for those I miss towards those who stand beside me today. My hope is that this book becomes a meeting place. A place where someone may ask a question without being judged immediately.

IF

Where grief is not a failing. Where curiosity and careful thought can help one another. And where a thought only gains real value when it changes something in how we treat one another. This book began with the question of how my life and my inner search touch each other.

Along the way, the child, the father, the entrepreneur and the listener kept coming together. The experiences differ, but the person trying to understand and to love runs through every chapter. New stories will be added. Perhaps I will be able to put some memories into clearer words.

Perhaps a conversation will make me look again at a thought that had become familiar. I want to preserve that room. What I hope to pass on is the courage to live attentively. To leave a question open without leaving the person who asks it alone.

To take responsibility for what we ourselves set in motion. And to carry forward in our own gestures the love we have received. Growing in connection and awareness. Renato Rossi

IF — What if…?
What meaning do you give to the words “what if”?