SYNTAGMA » Saturday Ramble: The ageing mind is more resourceful than you might think

Saturday Ramble: The ageing mind is more resourceful than you might think

Posted in Immortality, Neuroscience, Psychology, Religion, Science, Spirituality, The Eternal Quest for Immortality on April 23rd, 2011
By John Evans - leave a comment!

Immortality Some years ago, as her eldest child it fell to me to secure my mother’s welfare when she developed a species of Alzheimer’s disease in her mid-70s. She had suffered a series of mini strokes which cruelly diminished her competence over a four-year period before her death.

Although I did my best in the circumstances, I was painfully aware of my deficiencies, until, that is, I discovered a strange property of the damaged mind and its wonderfully resourceful powers.

Regular readers will know that I’m a sort of mystical contemplative with a deep interest in all matters relating to the psycho-spiritual aspects of the brain, mind and soul. While my own dying mother could hardly be a case study, I was ever alert to the wider implications of her situation.

One day, the doorbell rang. Outside was a man with rather odd eyes. Whether he was blind in one, or had a false eye, I couldn’t tell, but he had a peculiar way of looking at you. I can’t now remember whether he was selling something or had another purpose. At that time, my mother was confined to her bed after another episode of her illness.

Later, she said something that rocked me back on my heels: “A man with strange eyes just called.” It was spoken as if she herself had answered the door.

I realised then, that in some way her waning mind had found a way of understanding the world around her through mine. It was a weird feeling, but perhaps a mirror image of childhood.

When we are new to this world, we often use our parents’ minds to make sense of what is happening around us. We don’t know we are doing it because we have no experience of anything else, but we absorb attitudes and opinions that we couldn’t possibly attain for ourselves. What, then, is more natural than the reverse process occurring in later life?

There were other examples too. One sleepless night, I remembered a girl I knew at university, called Victoria. I wondered idly what had become of her. Next morning my mother asked if someone had been with me overnight. No, I said, who did you have in mind? Victoria, she said.

These incidents became quite frequent until I just took them for granted as part of the natural order of things. But as psychic phenomena they are powerful indications of mind over matter and its tendency to slip its moorings when necessary. Dr Rupert Sheldrake’s “extended mind” seems ever-present in the elderly.

We should never write off the deeper abilities of the apparently comatose or confused, nor ever interfere with the moment they choose to pass on for our own selfish ends.

John Evans

John Evans is the author of The Eternal Quest for Immortality: Is it staring you in the face? Available from Amazon and all good booksellers.