When The Connect Between The 4D And The Ethereal, Shrivels

The Mind Shifts Towards Becoming A "Thing In Itself"?

- First-person accounts of people with Alzheimer's and dementia usually make depressing reading. Page after page, the narrator takes the reader slowly and inexorably down the precipice of futility and hopelessness. The journey is usually vivid with imagery of a challenge that is overwhelming and a surrender to that which is inevitable. "A slow descent into silence." "A man dying in slow motion." "Oh God, why? Why?" The vocabulary of human languages has more words, phrases and expressions to articulate feelings of negativity and gloom than it has for feelings of positivity and optimism.

_*
* 'My Journey into Alzheimer's Disease', by Robert Davis, Amazon.com. The writer, a pastor, was afflicted by the condition himself. The book describes his feelings and experiences as he struggled to cope, to adjust, and to come to terms with what was happening to him. This emic, or "insider's" perspective gives us insights into what goes in the mind of the Alzheimer-afflicted as they swing between denial and acceptance. Till such time that they can fully grasp what is happening with them.
Indeed, the "A" word and all associated dementias have become the most feared amongst the medical conditions. The realization that one has begun to lose grip over objective reality, and that one can now no longer engage with the world around them as coherently and cogently as they once used to, can be scary, especially in the initial days. Simple, day-to-day activities that were so naturally possible, begin to become such a chore. This is the time when the light in the brain cells begin to be snuffed out one after another. And it would be just a matter of time before the cells begin to be engulfed by the deathly deluge of plaques and get wrapped in the asphyxiating shroud of deposits. The feeling of disorientation and fogginess would soon reach the stage when we no longer remain conscious of our feeling of disorientation and fogginess. Once the brain begins to march towards its complete shriveling and self-destruction, there is - as of now - no turning back.

_*
* 'The Loss of Self: A Family Resource for the Care of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders' - Donna Cohen and Carl Eisdorfer, Amazon.com. This is an etic, or "outsider's" view of how the external world perceives the progress of the individual from crystal-clear cogency to nimbus-cloud incogency.
The impact of the moment on the individual, when they are told that the mild difficulties in managing basic cognitive load that they had been experiencing these past few years, have in fact been a precursor to the onset of dementia - varies from individual to individual. Usually, the emotions range from disbelief to denial to fear. After the import of the doctor's pronouncement begins to sink in, then - depending on how their psyche is constructed -, the individual either shores up their willpower, bracing themselves for the battle to conquer the "enemy" and lead a fulfilling life, come what may. Or they succumb to the condition, resign themselves to their fate, feel cheated somehow that such a circumstance has been thrust on them "when there was so much to do and so much of life to be lived", and generally feel overwhelmed by the experience.

_*
* 'Dancing with Dementia' - Christine Bryden (Boden), http://www.christinebryden.com/. The book is a first-person account of the author, who fought and has been successfully coping with the medical condition of dementia.

Gradually, the individual finds themselves subconsciously slipping into the role of a "patient", assuming the role that society expects them to perform. The sympathetic - pitying? - look on the faces of the near and dear ones doesn't help. The helpless sighs of the caregivers, as they watch their loved one's "slow descent into silence", don't help either. The gung-ho, can-do, enthusiastic, go-getter personality, the exuberant life-of-the-party... begins to transform into an apathetic vegetable before one's very eyes. Forgetting where things were kept last, extends to forgetting who the person who has been talking so nicely for so long to them really is. Withdrawing into the shell coincides with losing one's sense of identity. The shutdown is total when even the basic functions of the body have to be taken care of by others, while you recline on the bed, staring into empty space.

_*
* The Alzheimer's Project: "Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am?" With Maria Shriver, YouTube / HBO.
Of the myriad outputs generated by the brain, the one - and so far perhaps the only - parameter that biomedical instrumentation can detect and measure is the low-intensity electric signals and associated magnetic fields; generated when the nerve cells do a small jig while transmitting thoughts onward. Gumming electrodes at specific points over the scalp, the technician captures these faint signals, amplifies them, and observes and prints them out. It is a very exotic artwork that the brain's electricity draws. The artwork belonging to an Alzheimer brain is compared with the artwork printed from a "normal", non-Alzheimer brain in order to estimate the progress of the condition.

_*
* Predicting Alzheimer's With New EEG Test, www.aip.org. Electrodes are being affixed to the scalp. From the health of the squigglies generated on screen/paper, it can be estimated whether the brain is functioning normally, or is going the "A" way.
These comparisons have now become so accurate that you can even get to know of the chances of your own slide into silence, years in advance before it actually begins to happen. Indeed, the EEG has now positioned itself as a reliable biomarker for early detection of not only Alzheimer's but also a host of mild cognitive impairments.

_*
* Graph plots from an EEG Machine, when the brain is in different moods. Courtesy - Stay Sharp Mental Fitness Center, youcanstaysharp.com. The Alzheimer brain's output will have some perceptible differences from the healthy.
The connection between different entities in the world that we know of - and which our senses can perceive - is very linear. We have the 4D world - comprising the entire cosmos, this solar system, this earth and its environment and its living beings and their related dynamics. The entire system slides forward on the fourth dimension of Time without pause. And our body is embedded in this environment. Our body - with apologies to the apparel, cosmetic and fashion industries -, is ultimately just a vehicle which we use to move around and which helps us navigate through the ontological and phenomenological dimensions within this 4D world. A body whose master is the brain. It is the brain at which the physicality of it all ends. It is the last stop. After this, the realm of the ethereal begins. The brain is the connect between the 4D physical world and the ethereal mind. While the domain of physicality is sought to be rationalized by science, the domain of ethereality is sought to be explored by metaphysics. And while science ties itself in knots trying to figure out or explain what lies behind the brain, metaphysics gives it the label of "mind" and works on its various properties.


We know that when there is a cut or bruise in the body, an inbuilt mechanism - part of the brain's firmware - immediately gets into action to repair it. New cells are generated from the marrow to replace the dying and the dead cells at all times; these cells are the "routine" cells that the rest of the body requires. This regeneration is a continuous, non-stop process; it is happening in my body right at this moment as I am typing this, and it is happening in your body right at this moment as you are reading this. It is the no-nonsense, rapid regeneration that heals the cut and the bruise so that you look as beautiful and handsome and healthy and cheerful and glowing the next morning.


When something goes wrong with the nerve cells spread all over the body, right down to the little toe, the brain has the relevant software to regenerate these nerves, albeit the software is apparently cumbersome and takes a long time to do its job. But when its own neurons begin to die, then? No worries, the brain has its own fountain of rejuvenation that gushes forth fresh neurons that keep adding to the 100 billion strong mesh of cells already present. But does this fountain bring forth the full diversity of neurons that the brain requires for its functioning, or just a specific few? Does the brain's entire terra firma get irrigated as a whole by this fountain, or only small pockets? Nobody knows yet.


Let's take a step further back. This fountain of rejuvenation in itself is nothing but some very special cells of the brain. What happens when something happens to these cells, causing the supply of new neurons to stop? What happens when the function of neurogenesis itself is hampered? Who or what is there to take care of it?


Who or what can take care of the brain? If we hypothesize that it is the mind that is the master of the brain; that it is the mind under whose charge the brain functions, then logically, it becomes the bounden "responsibility" of the mind to "take care" of its charge. At some point of time, from the moment the mind "realizes" that dementia has set in and that the brain is no longer responding to its commands, till the time when the last cell switches off, does the mind attempt to perform some last-ditch, James-Bond-like-heroic act that can restore its connect with the physical world? Something that can kick-start the proverbial fountain to gush forth yet again? Something that can scrape away the plaques and brush away the debris? Or does it simply perform the role of a detached, mute bystander?


From the point when the brain is now completely out of its control, till the point when the person is officially pronounced clinically dead, just what does the mind "do"? Does it simply twiddle its thumbs, metaphorically speaking? This condition brings to mind another condition - a controlled condition, albeit -, which neurosurgeons bring on a patient when they perform something called a "circulatory arrest" to repair an aneurysm (ballooning of a blood vessel in the brain). In circulatory arrest, doctors lower the temperature of the body to 18 degree Celsius (normal body temperature is 36 deg C); they stop the heart from pumping; they stop the brain from functioning; and they even switch off the lungs from breathing. Blood too is drained out of the body completely, and kept in a jar by the side. This condition is virtually clinical death. This surgery is necessary and the only means to repair aortic and cerebral aneurysms. The patient is known to "survive" this clinical death for up to one hour, which is all the time the good doctors require to complete their work and take off their gloves. But what happens to the ethereal in the meanwhile? For the Alzheimer-afflicted, ensconced in a normal-temperature, heart-pumping, brain-alive, lung-heaving and blood-flowing body --- the mind and the body are at least bound together, howsoever tenuous the binding may have become. But in the case of circulatory arrest? Does the mind step out of the body, as it were, and stand by the bedstead, watching the procedure silently? Does it too twiddle its thumbs? Waiting for the surgery to get over, so that it can "get back in"?


There is an interesting contrast between the state of affairs of an Alzheimer-afflicted and that of the patient lying on the bed waiting to undergo circulatory arrest. The first act performed by the surgeons is to inject an anesthetic into the patient, so that they become "unconscious"; so that they become "unaware". The power of anesthesia begins to wear off only a few hours after the body's systems have been revived. But can we say the same about the Alzheimer-afflicted? That they are "unconscious" or "unaware"?


In late-stage dementia, when the connect between the 3D and the ethereal world is completely shriveled, the physical simply does not appear to matter, including the body. The body may be draped in the finest of attires, because some family member has put the body on a wheelchair and taken it to attend a wedding of another family member... or it may be stark naked, but it does not matter. It does not matter if the family member tucks in the warm quilt around the body at night to protect from cold, and it does not matter if they forgot the wheelchair - with the body - outside, in the rain, while they hurriedly ran inside the house because they smelt the burning of food in the kitchen. The blinking eyes take in scenes of people, events, things, but neither the Gestalt context nor the forms matter. Sounds of human voices speaking, of the chatter of birds on the tree outside, of the whistle of some engine --- waft through the window and beat on the eardrums, but they do not register anything. The taste of the food does not matter. Lack of control over the bladder or the bowel does not matter. The pain that used to throb in the right knee - years ago - no longer matters. The hurt of what somebody said or did - was that years ago? - no longer matters. The wrongdoing perpetrated on someone - no longer evokes guilt. Emotions don't matter. Feelings don't matter. Thoughts don't matter.


Thus freed from the burden of defining its existence through relating to all phenomena - including mental -, does the mind allow itself to shift gears and become truly - for want of a better word - a noumenon? An "entity in itself"? With its own set of properties? Does the mind identify itself now in relation to the rest of the ethereal universe, a universe which too is noumena?


Perhaps, when it becomes possible for science to repair the demented brain and reestablish the connect between the 4D and the ethereal; and when the Alzheimer-afflicted are completely cured and return to relating with phenomena, we will be able to hear it directly from their mouth, of what it means to be a "thing-in-itself".