Dementia and Spiritual Awakening
From my perspective on human consciousness, I understand dementia as the other side of (spiritual) awakening. It is consciousness that falls asleep, it is the gradual transition into an increasingly expansive unconscious emptiness. And there are various reasons, triggers and also expressions of the path into the unconscious emptiness - and so there are also different forms of dementia, just as there are many different triggers, expressions and depths of awakening.
And just as awakening can be transmitted by ‘awakened people’, it can also be transmitted by people with dementia - and in the same way, disorientation can be transmitted by both awakened people and people with dementia. Those who accompany one or more people with dementia should be aware of this.
For many years, I have been recommending accompanying people with advanced dementia as spiritual practice – perhaps the transmission experienced there is more profound than some that one receives from a spiritual teacher. I, at least, probably received an ‘overdose’ of transmissions of the (unconscious) emptiness during my years in clinical supervision, but my consciousness was obviously able to steer the subsequent breakthrough in a conscious, transpersonal direction (even though I was confronted with dementia-like symptoms for several years afterwards).
But the parallels don't stop there, because people with highly developed spiritual awareness and/or profound awakening experiences can also experience dementia; in them too, consciousness can ‘go to sleep’ before it has finished its journey, perhaps out of exhaustion from the efforts their path has demanded of them. Conversely, people with dementia can also awaken (again), and many do so at the last moment, hours or days before their death. It seems paradoxical, and that is why it is called paradoxical lucidity.
Those who recognise spiritual awakening as a reality and consider it a worthwhile goal in their lives must also face their dark shadow. Waking up and falling asleep are merely two expressions of the one consciousness.
Even as orientated people, we know phases of confusion, forgetfulness and disorientation, and if you explore this state closely, then at that moment there is no personal self present that can give meaning and direction to life. And the older we get, the more often we experience such situations and also perceive it if we do not constantly try to repress it (which in my opinion is one of the biggest risks of dementia).
But how does this knowledge help people who occasionally experience confusion, increasing disorientation, or who have been diagnosed with dementia?
What I think it comes down to is finding out, who this ‘I’, which is embodied by me, really is
- both the previous personal identity, the previous history, which seems to be dissolving more and more,
- as well as who the ‘higher self’ or the ‘higher human being’ is, as Rudolf Steiner put it, that wants to find expression in this ‘I’, and how this expression can be fostered.
This is work, consciousness work, and can be exhausting in a way - mind training, consciousness training that goes far beyond Sudoku and crossword puzzles, which are often recommended as a way to prevent dementia - but does not contribute to its prevention.
However, embarking on this path, no longer avoiding this (consciousness) work for the rest of one's life, can be a possible way of preventing dementia. I use a variety of tools to support and guide people on this path: seminars, lectures, talks about dementia, coaching and, among other things, a method of determining one's own current ‘cosmic address’.
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