Transcending Dementia - The research project roughly outlined

The main focus of this research project is to examine possible connections between dementia and extraordinary experiences of consciousness, in particular experiences of emptiness or nothingness. These experiences are known primarily in spiritual, Eastern traditions (Buddhism, Hinduism), where they are generally desired as an expression of a highly developed spiritual consciousness or spiritual awakening; they are usually accompanied by a prolonged process of previously unknown physical, emotional and cognitive experiences that shake the entire self-image and worldview and result in an increasing dissolution of the self. In these contexts, the person who has such experiences has usually undergone a preparatory process of many years with special practices (meditation, physical exercises, etc.) under the guidance of experienced teachers, lamas, gurus, who intensively accompany both the path leading there and the subsequent integration and realisation. In traditional spiritual contexts, there is also usually a living space in which this process, which often lasts for years, can be experienced in a protected manner.

My assumption in this context is that such experiences also occur outside of these spiritual-traditional contexts and, if not understood and integrated, can lead to an increasing state of confusion that eventually manifests as what is defined in the medical context as dementia.

So far, I suspect that the triggers for these experiences include

• Intensive professional, everyday or leisure practices over a long period of time, possibly several years, which have a certain contemplative, meditative character, but not with the intention of achieving an extraordinary state of consciousness,
• unusual experiences of states triggered by traumas of various kinds (physical, psychological) that have not been integrated, or more generally the dissolution of the self at the moment of the traumatising experience,
• a gradual, gradual dissolution of the self in the ageing process, which could possibly be a default mode of ageing.

In all cases, there is the possibility that due to a lack of guidance or support and therefore a lack of understanding of the context and the dimension of the experience itself, coping with the emotional, cognitive and physical processes that are often triggered as a result is experienced as extremely frightening and confusing, and the subsequent integration of the altered self-image and world view is not possible. From this perspective, many of the so-called dementia symptoms can be understood as coping phenomena and - assuming a corresponding experimental willingness - can certainly be experienced phenomenologically "in the flesh", as will also be demonstrated in an individual case as part of the research project and possibly tested with test subjects.

This in turn includes the possibility that these experiences can lead to the permanent embodiment of disorientation - dementia - in the medium or long term due to the failure to integrate or become aware of the nature of this process, whereby the organic processes, decrease in synaptic connections and increasing loss of brain mass, as well as the associated cognitive symptoms such as disorientation, decrease in executive abilities, loss of everyday abilities, would thus be a consequence of the experiences described above, and not - as described in the standard biomedical model of dementia - dementia is the consequence of a reduction in the synaptic potentials of the brain for reasons that are still unexplained.

Through initial interviews with relatives of people with dementia, with whom I have tried to substantiate my previous thesis, I became aware that the "gradual self-dissolution over time" in particular could be regarded as an independent phenomenon, which could possibly also be considered without extraordinary experiences of the condition, and that another phenomenon, which I would like to approximate to date as "not fully realised I-identity over the entire lifespan with simultaneous cognitive maturity", could also be relevant. It is obvious that completely different phenomena can be expected in this spectrum of consciousness, which has not yet been scientifically researched from this perspective.

My assumptions have been developed, matured and repeatedly scrutinised and re-examined over the course of several years of phenomenological research:

• The dissolution of the I/ self - the dissolution of personal identity - is the default mode of ageing.
• In Western culture, the dissolution of the self is usually understood as a pathology, and reports of this experience are therefore also usually categorised as negative, derogatory and pathological.
• Dementia (in the sense of the currently dominant narrative) is possibly the result of a gradual or abrupt dissolution of the I/ self; the symptoms develop from the psychological and spiritual consequences of this experience, which dissolve the previous self-image and world view, from not understanding what has happened and the resulting inability to cope with the integration of the dissolution of the self.
• Dementia and spiritual awakening, experiences of emptiness, nothingness or "ajata" are based on similar or identical phenomenological experiences.
• When the personal being dissolves, there are two possible directions of development: the pre-personal, which is referred to as dementia, and the transpersonal, which in my understanding represents the evolutionary potential of ageing: the conscious dissolution of the self, the transcendence of this experience into the transpersonal dimension of consciousness, possibly up to unity consciousness.
• It is possible to make people aware of the process of conscious self-dissolution through (timely) information and education and to take appropriate measures to support people in at least halting, possibly even reversing, a process of pre-personal development that has already begun.

Scientifically testing these hypotheses requires a transdisciplinary, multi-professional approach - I can neither achieve this methodically, intellectually, in terms of time, nor financially on my own - and I also do not want to. Such a challenge must be tackled collectively so that synergies and mutual transmissions of knowledge and insight can flow in and lead to a comprehensive, higher collective realisation.
In the following, I will briefly explain three relevant concepts of my project, describe my professional and personal approach to the topic, and then outline some possible approaches to the research project, as they seem sensible to me at this stage.

One of the main symptoms of dementia (not initially differentiated here into the various forms) is increasing forgetting and increasing disorientation, usually identified in the diagnosis as disorientation in time, place, situation and ultimately in oneself. In practice, this manifests itself as an ever-decreasing orientation in the here and now, which is increasingly replaced by a misrecognition of the current experienced events with events from one's own history, combined with a self-perception that goes further and further back into the past; as a result, from the outside perspective, a self-narrative that goes further and further back into the past is often perceived, with the paradox of an increasingly childlike self-perception in a very old body.

The cause of (most) dementias has not been clarified, although there is a great deal of research, particularly on the plaque hypothesis in Alzheimer's disease; a neurophysiological malfunction is generally assumed to be the trigger, which subsequently leads to a breakdown of synaptic connections and a loss of significant amounts of brain mass. From this, the initially mainly cognitive symptoms such as increasing disorientation and forgetfulness, increasing limitations of executive functions, decreasing abilities for physical regulation and increasing loss of function up to complete incontinence and immobility are explained.

In addition, there are numerous other explanatory approaches, areas of research, treatment methods and discussions of various aspects of how dementia manifests itself in individual and collective life. I have provided a comprehensive view of dementia in my master's thesis in gerontology entitled "Entwurf für ein integrales Demenzia-Konzept" (2011)[1].

[1] Wichers, B. (2011). Draft for an integral dementia concept. Master's thesis. University of Erlangen. Download: https://www.bettinawichers.de/deutsch/bibliothek/downloads/

Extraordinary experiences of consciousness or spiritually transformative experiences refer to a broad spectrum of experiences of consciousness ranging from paranormal experiences, out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences to so-called spiritual awakenings, experiences of emptiness or nothingness. Often pathologised in classical psychology, these are areas of experience to which transpersonal psychology in particular, but also neuroscientific consciousness research, is dedicated. Extraordinary experiences of consciousness or spiritually transformative experiences can result in a prolonged psycho-spiritual crisis that can last for several years, even with competent professional categorisation and good support; if the experience cannot be categorised cognitively and/or spiritually by the person concerned and no psychotherapeutic or spiritual support is available, more serious psychological and somatic consequences can result.[1]

[1] Hofmann, L.; Heise, P. (2017). Spirituality and spiritual crises. Handbook on theory, research and practice. Stuttgart: Schattauer.

With the term dissolution of the self or dissolution of the I (or I-ness), I am not referring to "ego death" or similar terms as used in the esoteric or psychedelic scene, among others, but to the phenomenon when a person's "I", the sense of their own personal identity, dissolves abruptly or successively and this dissolution progresses or can no longer be reversed. This can take on different forms, transformative forms, as reported by numerous people with far-reaching spiritual experiences or experiences of spiritual awakening (cf. e.g. Bernadette Roberts, Adyashanti), but also the forms of increasing loss of a personal self known as dementia. While at the same time retaining the pre-personal or ego parts (here I am explicitly referring to what is usually attributed as the ego, the immature, often involuntary and unconscious part of the human experience of existence), which can still be perceived for a long time in dementia, as is also the case with most people who are far advanced spiritually or in terms of their own development of consciousness or ego. The careful differentiation of ego, I and self as well as pre-personal, personal and transpersonal identity will be part of the research project.

As a gerontologist in case supervision in geriatric psychiatric care, I have many years of experience in the perception and assessment of people with dementia at the level of behaviour and experience, and in "translating" my perceptions into suggestions for caregivers that help to relieve situations of so-called challenging behaviour between people with dementia and their caregivers.

In this context, I have experienced many situations with people with dementia, both in everyday situations, in challenging situations with great suffering for people with dementia and their carers, and also in situations of complete calm. The latter situations were particularly common in a care oasis, a care concept for people with advanced dementia who are permanently immobile. I was also able to observe and witness the progression of dementia in some residents of a nursing home over a period of up to eight years.

This gave me the idea that there is hardly any difference in the "radiance" of a person with dementia in a state of calm between them and a Zen monk in deep contemplation - the person with dementia seemed to me to be in a state of peace in these moments. From my current perspective, I would describe it as a state of "emptiness" that I perceived in the people in question, knowing that outside of a spiritual context where such states of consciousness are considered desirable, this emptiness can be perceived as irritating and have negative connotations (e.g. the comparison of people with dementia to the victims of "dementors" in the Harry Potter films in a non-fiction book about dementia)[1].

[1] M. Nehls: The Alzheimer's Lie. The truth about a preventable disease. Heyne Verlag (Munich) 2014

A few years ago, I myself had an extraordinary experience of consciousness, which I described at the time as being "out of the blue", an "experience of nothingness", which radically changed my life and subsequently triggered a dissolution of the self and thus a state that can be described as a spiritual crisis. In the absence of any affiliation to a spiritual tradition or guidance from a spiritual teacher or psychotherapeutic support experienced in these contexts, I had to cope with this alone over a long period of time until I finally found a transpersonal psychotherapist who supervised me, mirrored the normality of my process and my cognitive orientation and professionally categorised various other experiences of consciousness that I subsequently had, which contributed to my relief.

During the process, which lasted several years, I realised that my process, which included intermittent phases of fear, confusion and despair - but in my case with complete preservation of my cognition - could be very similar to the inner psychic processes that I, as a gerontologist, had been able to perceive or witness in the people with dementia that I had accompanied. I finally began to phenomenologically research and document my own process and to compare the resulting findings with neuroscientific findings about the processes in the brain during specific spiritual experiences and possible parallels to the processes in the brain in dementia.

At the same time, the upheaval processes in my thinking were so radical that I often had the feeling that I could not cope with them - combined with the awareness of the dissolving self when I was at rest and other very challenging state experiences that I had not been able to imagine as a real human experience despite a pre-existing interest in consciousness development. Meanwhile, I was fully oriented the whole time, but was also aware of the possible parallels with diagnoses of depersonalisation and psychosis, which is why I repeatedly asked friends and the psychotherapist to check and supervise me. I also studied reports from other people with so-called awakening experiences, of which there are numerous, who did not experience this experience as "blissful" (which is a popular expectation in spiritual circles), but rather "like hell"[1].

Another research interest was the observation that there are some spiritually highly developed, highly recognised personalities who developed dementia in old age, which, at least in one case known to me, could possibly be related to the meditation method he practised intensively and passed on to numerous students, which involves anticipating his own death (and thus the dissolution of the self). Here I see connections with the aspects outlined so far.

[1 ] For example, an expression used by Maury Lee in a personal email exchange (http://nomaury.blogspot.com/); Suzanne Segal (1998) reports on a years-long aberration in coping with the experience. Collision with the Infinite. San Diego: Blue Dove Press; also reports on spiritual crises in the relevant Facebook groups or in the SEN, Spiritual Emergence Network.

From the confluence of all these paths of knowledge and on the basis of my many years of experience with people with dementia, more and more evidence emerged in favour of the hypothesis that dementia (in this case Alzheimer's disease, an extension of the thesis to other forms of dementia is presumably possible) could be the result of an unconscious or at least cognitively unrecognisable experience of emptiness or nothingness (or so-called spiritual awakening), which subsequently sets in motion a process of dissolution of the self, which in the absence of knowledge and guidance then leads to an increasing embodiment of confusion in the brain, with the precuneus as the "embodiment instance" of the self or the perspective of action as the starting point of the somatisation process of dementia, together with the default mode network, in which certain parallels between dementia and certain spiritual state experiences are also evident from neuroscientific research. In addition to findings from research into non-dual meditation[1], for example, findings from the spiritual sciences on the nature of the bindu, the (secondary) chakra, which is anatomically located at the site of the precuneus, and which has also been passed down as the spark or seed of existence, speak in favour of the precuneus as the starting point of this process.

If one takes the experience of nonduality or so-called spiritual awakening as a spiritual, psychological as well as neurophysiological fact - which is assumed by a branch of consciousness research dedicated to the study of specific spiritual states[2] - then it can be assumed that many more people than previously known also have this experience without being on a spiritual path, triggered by experiences other than those of an explicitly spiritual practice, for which there are numerous sources[3], or that also those for whom such an experience has been induced, e.g. through a longer meditation practice, partly fail to recognise it due to the fact that it does not emerge as a state of rapture, but on the contrary as a highly confusing and unsettling state "without ego" - as documented by the autobiography of Suzanne Segal, among others[4].

Like her, other sources in this context also report many years of frightening and confusing experiences in which, in some cases, everyday functions were significantly reduced - experiences which, if not accompanied and above all understood over a longer period of time, can possibly lead to embodiment in the sense that one's own history and knowledge of one's own self are increasingly forgotten, which could then manifest itself in the familiar disorientation signs of dementia. However, other neurodegenerative or pathological developments are also possible as a result of the experience of the dissolution of the self, which is indicated by cognitive or neurological changes in numerous spiritually very advanced people, including dementia, stroke, brain tumours and ALS[5]: Spiritual awakening does not appear to be automatically beneficial to health.

[1] E.g. Josipovic, Z. (2021). Implicit-explicit gradient of nondual awareness or consciousness as such. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2021.

[2] Ibid; Sharp, P.E. (2011). Buddhist Enlightenment and the Destruction of Attractor Networks: A Neuroscientific Speculation on the Buddhist Path from Everyday Consciousness to Buddha-Awakening. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 18, No. 3-4, 2011; Wade, J. (2018). After Awakening, the Laundry: Is Nonduality a Spiritual Experience? International Journal of Transpersonal Studies.

[3] Wade, J. (2004). Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking Opens the Veil. Gallery Books; or also numerous reports in the podcast series Buddha at the Gaspump: https://batgap.com

[4] Segal, S. (1998). Collision with the Infinite. San Diego: Blue Dove Press.

[5 ] From previously unauthorised reports from members of spiritual communities, I know of the development of the consciousness of two leading spiritual teachers from different spiritual traditions into dementia or the complete loss of everyday consciousness in the last years of their lives; Suzanne Segal died of a brain tumour, the spiritual teacher Ram Dass suffered a stroke as a result of a particular spiritual exercise, and the Christian nun and mystic Bernadette Roberts died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

The trigger for a process that is described in the medical context as the progressive pathological course of a disease with the stages of early dementia, mild dementia, moderate dementia and severe dementia can be an extraordinary state experience, a spiritually transformative experience (STE), an experience of emptiness or nothingness - also called spiritual awakening in spiritual traditions - that induces an abrupt dissolution of the I/ self, or also an otherwise triggered, unconscious, not understood and subsequently repressed and not integrated experience of the dissolution of the self.

Furthermore, dementia can be a possible effect/late consequence of a very long and intensive spiritual practice, which also caused a dissolution of the self that can no longer be maintained at a very high, mature level of consciousness by the person affected in old age and then leads to a development that is at least very similar to dementia.

From this hypothesis, further hypotheses can be developed, especially in connection with the assumptions formulated at the beginning, which concern further potentials of the dissolution of the self.

The aim is to test the hypothesis with findings from various research disciplines and methods in the sense of integral methodological pluralism (Wilber), for which various methodological approaches can be combined

• (micro-phenomenological) interviews with people with incipient dementia (according to GDS-Reiss scale 2,3, possibly 4) or MCI about their experience of the phenomenon of dissolution of the I/ self and other extraordinary experiences of consciousness
• Survey of MMSE + Geriatric Depression Scale at different points in time
• Comparison of their experiences with reports of spiritual awakening and other transformative consciousness experiences
• Scoring of the level of self/consciousness development, at least at the beginning and end of the research period
• MRI, EEG, other medical parameters at various points in time
• Development of an approach to consciousness work for people with signs of dissolution of the self; verification with further measurements of the development of consciousness, if necessary also comparatively using methods of dementia diagnostics
• Source study of reports of neurological and psychiatric changes in so-called spiritually awakened people, comparison of the reported experiences with those of the study participants
• Interviews with people who have experienced a so-called spiritual awakening; diagnostics similar to the procedure described above
• Category formulation for spiritual awakening, dissolution of the self, dementia
• Interviews with people who accompany living spiritually highly developed people/ spiritual teachers/ lamas/ gurus/ priests with neurodegenerative changes or are at least in close contact with them, possibly in combination with gerontopsychiatric assessment or assessment of the development of consciousness of the persons concerned
• Comparison of neuroscientific findings on brain changes in the course of dementia with those of people with spiritual awakening experiences or long-term practitioners of dissolution of the self meditation techniques
• Interviews with carers of people with dementia in long-term care, possibly also with relatives on the perception of the phenomenon of dissolution of the self
• Documentation of my phenomenological findings from my own process and from the professional witnessing of states of consciousness of people with dementia
• Epistemological derivation of the thesis that dementia and spiritual awakening are phenomenologically very similar events

These methods stem from my initial reflections on what a broad research project might look like in this context, recognising that my single perspective alone cannot capture the spectrum of research and possible knowledge. Further methodologies or the inclusion of further scientific findings in accordance with Integral Methodological Pluralism (Wilber) are therefore desirable.

• Diploma in education, University of Göttingen, 1997
• Gerontologist, M. Sc., University of Erlangen, 2011
• Over 25 years as a freelance lecturer, counsellor, coach and case supervisor in gerontopsychiatric care and in the context of dementia, with intensive insights and personal encounters with many people with dementia, relatives and professional carers, which enabled me to become what I call a professional witness to the state experience and the development of consciousness in the context of dementia.
• Numerous additional training courses, fields of study, practical work experience, see CV
• Master's thesis "Draft for an integral dementia concept", 2011, see downloads
• Prior to this professional development path: five semesters of pre-clinical medical studies including a nursing internship

Transdisciplinary, transcending and including Gerontopsychiatry, neurophenomenology, neuroscientific consciousness research, Transpersonal Gerontology, Transpersonal Psychology; other fields possible (e.g. geriatrics, social work, psychology, but also completely different scientific contexts/cooperations are conceivable, e.g. Quantum Social Science).