I do not know what really happens. As you know people get all sorts of illnesses. People may say it is due to karma but I think it is the luck of the draw. I do not think people deserve what they get. You hear about the nicest people getting illness and nothing happens to awful people. We live in a harsh world. Nature does not care what happens to people or the environment. I do not think these people will be spiritually harmed in any way.

Sally

Hey Dusty,
I have thought about similar things not only dementia but other types of mental illness that cause people to react in extreme ways.
One thought was that perhaps these conditions are extreme egos that develop extensivly that have such a drowning effect on the consciousness that all possibility of awareness is gone. Or like sally said it could be a karmic consequence
From that you would think after death when split from the personality they would be freed from the confinds of that particular defect then to either start again with the chance that the ego could develop in the next life or to go through the wheel..
I do not know for sure but i guess its possible...

"...other types of mental illness that cause people to react in extreme ways."

- A stroke can do that to people too.

I was working for someone and their neighbor, who recently had a stroke, came out of his yard screaming and yelling about the property line. He was wrong, and even handed me the survey plat that proved he was wrong, as he kept maintaining he was in the right all the while. He even called the police and they wouldn't come because they'd been there before. He spent the rest of the day (seriously, like 5 hours) yelling from inside his house.

I couldn't help but chuckle, though it was still kinda sad. There was no connection to reality within his own sphere of perception and he was completely incapable of existing in reality because of a clinical problem with anger.

What I don't know is if people in cases such as this one always had that connection to anger and it took a short circuit in the brain to bring it out, or if it was just a result of the stroke to begin with. I hope we are not really just a robot for whatever the physical brain tells us to do in these cases. We would like to think we have some sort of control over it...

Hi Everyone,

My father had a primary brain tumor that started to change his behavior also. Especially after the radiation treatment and the resulting senile dementia, I was able to see what I now label as ego based behaviors and thoughts.

I think it's what Chris said:

One thought was that perhaps these conditions are extreme egos that develop extensivly that have such a drowning effect on the consciousness that all possibility of awareness is gone.

Knowing these two people intimately makes me think this is very true. They were both unspiritual people, very rooted in the physical life. Especially my father. He refused to see anything beyond the physical.

Apakhana, I think it's the egos that caused the physical symptoms, not the physical problems causing the psychological symptoms. Or, perhaps it's the egos knowing that the physical body is going to die and they come out full force to feed & grow stronger before they lose that physical body, totally smothering any bit of consciousness that may had been free.

It seems to be basic cause and effect, if the above is true.

Dusty

Makes sense based on my observations. It could be a doorway that's been opened into the psyche and those behaviors come out.

What do you think about Tourette's Syndrome?

That's funny you asked that because I posted something about it in the GW forum.

I "think" that's a defect that those people have to deal with because of Karma. It does kind of seem like an uncontrolled ego in the motor center, but the trials they have to go through to live in society with it seems more like Karma. With senile dementia, there's no consiousness that has to deal with anything...there seems to be nothing there but pure ego.

Dusty

Going by the cases of senile dementia I've seen (not really that many, and some are only in the early stages) I don't think I would say that there's nothing there but egos. Seems to me the same parts of the person as before can be present at different times, but jumbled, and confused, more scattered, possibly amplified somehow. Perhaps part of the problem is that the decline in memory leaves the person out of control about where and when and who they are, and how things work, and things they have experienced. I've known of people who again and again forget being told their parents have died (decades before) and who then have to go through that same grief over and over again. Obviously a tragic condition... But I honestly don't know the role of consciousness in it, if any, in the advanced stages.

I don't know much about the condition (less than I should actually) but it could be that the root of the problem is deterioration of the physical brain, which then leaves the person in a different state of vulnerability to the egos than a person with a biologically normal brain. It doesn't have to be the case that the egos started it off, though they obviously know how to use it to their advantage...

Hi Elisabeth,

I've lived with two of them and I can say that there is nothing left but ego based behavior. They become very animalistic near the end. And who really knows what causes what, like what came first, the chicken or the egg?

Dusty

Yes we can't really know, can we. I just thought I'd put forth the possibility of there still being some consciousness in there somewhere (taking into account that it doesn't play that big a role in people's lives in the first place) so that we don't write these people off altogether. Anyway I meant no offense :-) For what it's worth, I'm sorry to hear about your experience, it's a very sad thing to watch people deterioriate like that.

Liz

Hi Elisabeth,

No offense taken. Sorry my post was short, I'm getting that way now, not on purpose. I just wanted to share my experience of living with two people like that. I was physically taking care of my father as well. Giving him baths, feeding him like a baby, changing his diapers, putting him to bed, getting up with him at 2,3,4 in the morning to try and make him more comfortable. (They can't sleep anymore. I wonder if that's the egos trying to get all the energy they can.) Maybe there is some consciousness left, but I was just too overwhelmed by the circumstances to see it.

My mom lived with me with her husband and I watched her go through the same thing and watched him act in the similar ways.

taking into account that it doesn't play that big a role in people's lives in the first place (about consciousness)

lol, that's the truth.

Dusty