Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 9 minutes ago
What if forgetting isn’t the end of the story? In this episode, transpersonal gerontologist Bettina Wichers joins Dr. Bernard Beitman to explore dementia as more than decline, but also as a doorway to transformation. Together they examine how ego dissolution, trauma, and aging might open us to deeper forms of awareness and connection.
Bettina Wichers is a Transpersonal gerontologist experiencing a radical spiritual transformative process in which she found answers on my professional questions about my professional topic: What is dementia and how does it develop?
Her research focuses on possible phenomenological parallels between dementia and spiritually transformative experiences or the experience of spiritual awakening: the experience of the dissolution of the self. Her professional experience as a clinical supervisor in the field of dementia, her own process following a spiritually transformative experience, and insights from interviews with relatives of people with dementia, as well as with people who have had spiritually transformative experiences, all feed into this research.
Her interest is in the altered state of consciousness that comes with dementia resembling the ego death in NDEs, many psychedelic experiences and in smaller ways, the connection between mind and environment suggested by synchronicities that loosens our sense of self.
bettinawichers.de
gofundme.com/f/forschung-zu-demenztranszendenz
paypal.com/paypalme/bettinawichers
Newest work: presentation at the Science of Consciousness Conference, Barcelona: bettinawichers.de/forschung-research/conference-contributions/science-of-consciousness-conference-2025
About Dr. Bernard Beitman, MD:
Yale- and Stanford-trained psychiatrist, founder of The Coincidence Project, and host of Connecting with Coincidence. He is the author of Connecting with Coincidence and Meaningful Coincidences, bridging science and spirituality to help people recognize the patterns that connect us all.
00:00 - 02:35 Welcome and Introductions
02:35 - 09:55 A Radical Awakening
09:55 - 16:45 Rethinking Dementia
16:45 - 26:45 The Self That Forgets
26:45 - 37:00 The Terror of Remembering
37:00 - 47:15 Spiritual Identity and Suffering
47:15 - 1:01:34 A New Way to Care
What if forgetting isn’t the end of the story? In this episode, transpersonal gerontologist Bettina Wichers joins Dr. Bernard Beitman to explore dementia as more than decline, but also as a doorway to transformation. Together they examine how ego dissolution, trauma, and aging might open us to deeper forms of awareness and connection.
Bettina Wichers is a Transpersonal gerontologist experiencing a radical spiritual transformative process in which she found answers on my professional questions about my professional topic: What is dementia and how does it develop?
Her research focuses on possible phenomenological parallels between dementia and spiritually transformative experiences or the experience of spiritual awakening: the experience of the dissolution of the self. Her professional experience as a clinical supervisor in the field of dementia, her own process following a spiritually transformative experience, and insights from interviews with relatives of people with dementia, as well as with people who have had spiritually transformative experiences, all feed into this research.
Her interest is in the altered state of consciousness that comes with dementia resembling the ego death in NDEs, many psychedelic experiences and in smaller ways, the connection between mind and environment suggested by synchronicities that loosens our sense of self.
bettinawichers.de
gofundme.com/f/forschung-zu-demenztranszendenz
paypal.com/paypalme/bettinawichers
Newest work: presentation at the Science of Consciousness Conference, Barcelona: bettinawichers.de/forschung-research/conference-contributions/science-of-consciousness-conference-2025
About Dr. Bernard Beitman, MD:
Yale- and Stanford-trained psychiatrist, founder of The Coincidence Project, and host of Connecting with Coincidence. He is the author of Connecting with Coincidence and Meaningful Coincidences, bridging science and spirituality to help people recognize the patterns that connect us all.
00:00 - 02:35 Welcome and Introductions
02:35 - 09:55 A Radical Awakening
09:55 - 16:45 Rethinking Dementia
16:45 - 26:45 The Self That Forgets
26:45 - 37:00 The Terror of Remembering
37:00 - 47:15 Spiritual Identity and Suffering
47:15 - 1:01:34 A New Way to Care
