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He was a wealthy Turin citizen, born in 1903 A.D. and dead in 1994 A.D., known for the alleged paranormal phenomena of which he showed throughout his life, without however allowing a scientific verification.
Precisely for this reason his detractors claim that these were vulgar tricks of prestidigitation and mentalism.
From the various testimonies and reports of the reporters, the figure of an incredible man emerged, out of time, apparently endowed with unlimited powers (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, bilocation, translation, travel through time, levitation, healing, elasticity of the body, telekinesis , materialization and dematerialization of objects, crossing surfaces, electrocution and others) who lived a reserved life, immersed in the search for knowledge, surrounded by books, encyclopedias and valuable antiques, in a house-museum full of Napoleonic memorabilia (Rol was in fact an admirer of the French emperor).
The most well-known phenomena made use of playing cards, which Rol did not touch, and of reading closed books.
Rol's personal theology is classifiable as a type of anthropocentric animism. Animism in the broadest sense because for Rol everything has its own spirit, within the framework of a vision of the world pervaded by a universal harmony.
Anthropocentric because Rol claimed for man, and only for man, an animistic duality: in addition to the soul man would also have an intelligent spirit. The soul, once left the body, would return to God, while the so-called intelligent spirit would instead distinguish itself in continuing to be present on Earth, even after death.
The spirit that pervades man would be intelligent, in the sense of being endowed with consciousness and creative abilities, differentiating himself from the spirit of all other things.
Rol claimed that he could get in touch with intelligent spirits, and that they participated in his experiments, during which he interacted with them "spontaneously, almost under the impulse of an unknown order". He further explained that "the universe is permeated with psychic ether, and telepathy and clairvoyance are waves of this ether.
There is a psychic form, which in its time created the universe, capable of generating matter and dissolving it by forming the atoms and breaking them up". This powerful immaterial energy can be revealed through phenomena that "completely escape the laws of this world".
Gustavo Adolfo Rol was an admirer of Rudolf Steiner as perhaps the first man to free himself.
Among the famous people he met (and with whom in some cases he had a long friendship) one can remember Benito Mussolini, Charles De Gaulle, Albert Einstein, Federico Fellini, Franco Zeffirelli, Cesare Romiti and Giovanni Agnelli.
Among the books in favor of Rol one can remember Rol il Mistero, by Renzo Allegri, published by Musumeci Editore, while among those against one can remember Viaggio nel mondo del paranormale, by Piero Angela, published by CICAP.