Maggie said to me: "It is not me, who's multidimensional, it was my mother."
For when her mother suffered through the late stages of Alzheimer's, her brain deteriorated, but her mind became more alive than it has ever been before. Here is their incredible story...
For when her mother suffered through the late stages of Alzheimer's, her brain deteriorated, but her mind became more alive than it has ever been before. Here is their incredible story...
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Maggie La Tourelle is a writer, therapist and teacher and has worked in the field of holistic health care for over thirty years, integrating psychotherapy, NLP, kinesiology and energetic healing. After helping to care for her mother who had Alzheimer’s she wrote the book, The Gift of Alzheimer’s. Another of her books, Principles of Kinesiology, after twenty years, continues to be a classic in the field. She lives in London but remains close to her Scottish roots, and loves designing and making things. Visit her websites at
thegiftofalzheimers.com and www.maggielatourelle.com
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thegiftofalzheimers.com and www.maggielatourelle.com
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Episode One: Maggie LaTourelle
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Viktória: Welcome to the Podcast featuring Multidimensional People. Here we are talking to people who have visited and taken glimpses of worlds beyond the physical and who have also found a way to live in both worlds simultaneously, creatively, successfully. Those are our multidimensional people.
Today we have Maggie La Tourelle as our guest. Maggie, welcome! I've read your book which I found was a fascinating and really-really important source for an extraordinary experience that you had with your mother. For those of our listeners who have not yet read the book I just want to say that it's about your mother, who was suffering at the end of her life from the dreaded disease of Alzheimer's. You were scared as well, naturally, when it started, but then despite all the difficulties you found that there was something valuable; something that you ended up calling the "Gift of Alzheimer's." So, Maggie, could you tell me a bit more about this experience, and the book, how you ended up writing it. What was it that made this dreadful illness into a gift?
Maggie La Tourelle: Well, first of all, Viktoria, I want to thank you for inviting me.
Viktória: Thank you for being here!
Maggie La Tourelle: This is something very close to my heart. My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at the age of 85. I was living in London and my parents were living in Scotland. So, to begin with I was managing quite a lot of the arrangements from a distance, and visiting my parents for about one week in four; that became more frequent, as my mother's condition, you know, physical condition, deteriorated. Although my book is called "The gift of Alzheimer's," I just want to say that on this Earth, it was not a gift: she suffered just like everyone else who has this disease, (although it takes different paths with different people). She went through all the normal stages of suffering at the beginning and it was an absolute nightmare - for us as a family. It got to a point, where she was a danger to herself and those around her. She was falling, getting up at night, falling, injuring herself, turning on the gas-hob and not lighting it and so forth. So, within two years of having been diagnosed, she went into a residential care-home. The care-home happened to be right next door to our family house. So, although it was devastating and I can remember sitting at the edge of her bed weeping, as I thought she's never coming back to her beloved home, on the other hand, it felt almost as if she was living in an extension of our house, where she was being properly cared for and safe. The staff - it was an independent care-home - was very loving and she, having been very belligerent, became very compliant and happy. It was as if she surrendered to her situation. I just want to say that two years seems like a very short period of time, but it is quite possible that she had this disease for some time before, but we didn't recognise that, because she was quite a difficult person. And if I just give you a little background to her life: she had an extremely difficult and traumatic life. She suffered from post-natal depression after I was born, and I don't think it ever left. She spent her life talking about having one nervous break-down after another. She suffered from chronic depression: this lead to attempts or threatened attempts on her life. As a child I was witness to that, and that set up quite a difficult relationship between us. So, that was, you know, what we were starting from, when she was a resident in the care-home.
Viktoria: Yes, I got it from your book that she must have felt very restricted in that social order in which she was.
Maggie La Tourelle: Absolutely.
Viktória: She sounded like a very energised person. She was a dancer wasn't she, and a physical education teacher. She sounded very outgoing and probably wanted a career she couldn't have in that old-fashioned world.
Maggie La Tourelle: That's absolutely correct. It was provincial Scotland. My father was very conservative, and my mother was a kind of Isadora Duncan type. And it wasn't just my father, the whole society. You know, if you were a middle class professional family, you know, the wife didn't go out to work. She stayed at home, and my mother found this intolerable. Of course, it didn't help her mental state, nor her relationship.
Viktória: Sounds like a really frustrated life...
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes.
Viktória: But that changed, so what happened in those years?
Maggie La Tourelle: Well, it changed when she got Alzheimer's. It changed when she got into the care-home. I think there were some factors which contributed to this. Seeing her in this very frail, diminished state I felt compassion for her. And it's hard to imagine, how anyone close to a family member couldn't look at them when they have Alzheimer's at this stage and not feel compassion. You know, she was frail, she was losing the place, she got confused, she was repeating herself. Anyway, my feelings of compassion lead to feelings of love. And she said to me one day, she said: "You love me," and I got "Is this a question or is it...?" (laughter) It wasn't clear, but I reassured her that I loved her. I did! And immediately after that, she said: "I'm a bad person." And I got: "O, dear!" I think I know where this might be coming from, given her history. I might even have prompted this, by being present with her, having reminded her. It makes me think of what Carl Jung said. Jung said that forgotten or repressed material surfaces in a state of diminished consciousness. And I think that this happens - it certainly happened with my mother - and I think I it happens generally with people when they have Alzheimer's. If people recognise that this is what's happening, it might explain some of what is considered bizarre behaviour, what they say about people who have Alzheimer's. I also discovered, after my mother passed on, I was curious to find out more about some of the things that I had felt intuitively, and had, you know, discovered through my own experience. One of them was to do with emotions and memory. I found some research by Professor Oliver Turnbull of Bangor University, U.K. He did research into Alzheimer's and memory, and he found that although short-term memory disappears as, you know, brain cells die off, and people are repeating themselves, and can't remember what they've just said, emotional memory remains intact. Not only that: people with Alzheimer's can continue to learn emotionally. This happened with my mother, and I think this is really important for people to be aware. It is very easy, if you see somebody in a very diminished state, and confused etc, that nothing is going on, but actually a lot is going on. I also discovered in my quest for more information, I discovered research that was carried out at the University of California, Memory and Aging Center. They found that people with Alzheimer's, as cognition decreases, empathy increases. So again, you know, although people may not be able to converse and express themselves with the same clarity as they once did, that doesn't mean that they are not sensing and taking in what's happening. They are very sensitive to nuances of expression, of our voice-tone, our facial expressions, probably more so than the actual words that we use. The same researchers also found that when people are empathising in this way, the more cognition decreases, the more empathetic they become. So, I think this opens a whole new vista to our understanding of people with Alzheimer's. They found that not only are they feeling empathetic, but they are do something with that. They mimic what they are sensing from us and then they feed that back to us. The term they use is emotional contagion. So, you know, when I was feeling loving and generous in spirit towards my mother, she sensed that, even if I wasn't saying anything. She said that back to me, she said at one point: "I see love coming from your eyes." And she said another time something like: "Love is flowing between us."
Viktória: Yes, I found that quite touching, when I read in the book, that she said: "You're the only one who's listening to me."
Maggie La Tourelle: She did, and I'm glad that you reminded me of that, because she said that just a few weeks before she passed on. She said: "You listen to me. Nobody else listens to me."
Viktória: It's quite obvious that other people did - physically - listen to her, as well, but what she must have referred to is that you had the ability to tune in to that non-verbal, non-cognitive, more emotional, more psychic, more empathic type of communication, which she became every day stronger and stronger at.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, and also, I ... and this is something useful for people to pay attention to ... when you're with someone with Alzheimer's, you need to almost set aside your life and your way of being somewhere, and move into their world with them. Start to explore, be curious about the meaning of their world. And that's what I did. So, when my mother said ... near the beginning of this journey together ... she said, it's difficult living, but then she corrected herself, she said, working between two worlds. And I thought: Wow!
Viktória: And after that you were quoting an astonishing number of really surprising episodes of being psychic, of clairvoyance ... when she was tuning into troubles that you had, and she was actually saying it out loud. I remember you once you said that you had some financial issues to sort out, and you deliberately didn't want to tell her not to burden her with it, but then, didn't she actually mention it?
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, I was in London, dealing with a lots of paperwork I had to take to our family solicitor in Scotland. I was travelling up the next day, and I was feeling very uncomfortable about it all. I mean ... I haven't discussed it with her ... I arrived in Scotland, I got off train, went straight to the care-home; and she's sitting in the communal lounge and waves me over: "Margaret is busy with funds and finance. Margaret is a little confused." (Laughter.) And I thought, I'm totally transparent! Nothing I can hide from her! It was, I mean, she wasn't reprimanding me. I was wondering previously whether she was reading my mind, because she said lots of things. In my book...
Viktória: It's amazing how many examples you are giving!
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, in my book, I think I'm giving eight examples: mind reading or telepathic or clairvoyant examples, which she didn't had in her life before. I think what's happening is that ... I give you a little tutorial of what I think is happening here. When people reach the stage of moderate to late-stage Alzheimer's - I'm not talking about the beginning, when they maintain control and it's a nightmare for everybody - I'm talking when they just can't do that any longer and they surrender. They lose their sense of self, so their ego is no longer driving them. Also, the part of the brain, the left hemisphere that processes bits of information sequentially, that part of the brain is no longer working. So, they lose a sense of linear time, and that means that past and future all roll into the present.
Viktória: They are in the now, aren't they? I think you even mentioned Eckhart Tolle, that they reached that state where meditators want to get, where they have no time and no ego.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes! That's my hypothesis. It's certainly opening a lot of eyes in the Alzheimer's world, because I don't think anybody has looked at it like this before. But just for people's information, when my mother started saying things right at the beginning, like "you love me, I am a bad person," I started to record our conversations. She was also talking about deceased relatives, visiting her and she said: "Is it all right if I go next week?" and I rather reluctantly said: "Yes." I thought, she was going to pass on very soon: she was being very frail, but actually, she lived for another three and a half years. So, I got more and more fascinated by what was going on between us. So, I have actual recordings of our conversations for three and half years. That time span gave me the opportunity to reflect on what was happening and come up with that hypothesis, which I really do believe is what is happening: when people are in the now, without an ego, they are in an altered state of consciousness. My question is: what is happening in that altered state? How might we effect that? How might we accommodate that? I think these are really important questions, because... I think, I had been a soul-seeker and a seeker of consciousness from my early twenties. Although I haven't been diligent with my meditation throughout all these years, certainly that learning that I had in my early twenties ... I belonged to an esoteric group that studied the work of Ouspensky... talking now about times when the Beatles were doing things like this, too, but it was all very hush-hush, people weren't talk about it ... but coming from a Presbyterian background, these teachings turned my whole understanding upside-down.
Viktória: Upside-down, yes.
Maggie La Tourelle: I had a new way of thinking and being in the world as a result. I brought my personal history along with being a psychotherapist and healer, I brought all this to this situation with my mother, when she had Alzheimer's. When she was in these altered states, or even, when she wasn't in the altered states, I was able to hold the space for her, you know, with knowing, with awareness. And she recognised it. You know, when people are tuned in, they know when to trust somebody and when not to trust them. So, she knew that I knew.
Viktória: Yes, yes...
Maggie La Tourelle: So, she trusted and she felt safe, and in that safe-holding I think she was able to traverse into other realms, other dimensions, and she told me what she was experiencing. She told me, just as if we were having a normal conversation.
Viktória: Absolutely, and it seems that she had a serious learning experience in the other world, as well, didn't she?
Maggie La Tourelle: She did. It started when she said: "I had a big operation" and I got interested...
Viktória: Yes, what kind of operation?
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, instead of just dismissing these things as just delusions or as hallucinatory, I asked her about them. So I said: "Where have you had your operation?" and she said: "My mind." I asked: "Who did this?" and she said: "Two women, they're very skilful. I feel much better."
Viktória: And she did feel much better, didn't she?
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes.
Viktória: So, what a change in her personality!
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, and I thought this sounds to me like psychic surgery. It sounds to me like energies interacting with her energy field, and helping to heal the mind, the mental part, and emotional part of her field, which was enabling her to move forward.
Viktória: This is extremely interesting, because we read about those experiences that occur in-between lives, when people go, have a regression, and then they remember times when they were in-between physical lives, and they talk about finding helpers, healers, who help them, you know, to understand the mistakes of their lives, but also help them to correct them and to look forward to a more positive future and rebirth.
Maggie La Tourelle: My mother had a number of experiences.
Viktória: Exactly! It sounds like she had those even before she physically died.
Maggie La Tourelle: Exactly: if we look at this, what's happening here ... I like the analogy of a radio. It seems to me there was one frequency which was the pain and discomfort of having Alzheimer's, you know, in her physical reality, but she also tuned into other frequencies. And these frequencies may be the frequencies we move to when our physical body is no longer functioning, is passed on. But she was able to move, you know between this life and these experiences. I think what's really significant is that this was possible because she had Alzheimer's. It would have never had happened for her without Alzheimer's. But because she had Alzheimer's and the layer was very thin, and because I had some understanding of this, I was able to accommodate her and validate her. She also had what some would call a life review. She said: "I remember all the difficult times with all the people." She had about three of these, and we processed that. I said to her, what she found very helpful, what others might find helpful as well: "We all do what we can at the time. If we could have done something different, we would have done. And it's easy in retrospect to look back and ask, how could I have done that, but actually at that time, it was the best we could do." My mother was very happy with that.
Viktória: Yes, it is so therapeutic, isn't it?
Maggie La Tourelle: It sounds so simplistic...
Viktória: It's not! It's not...
Maggie La Tourelle: She also had out-of-body experiences. I've had a spontaneous out-of-body experience, which was quite as what she said. She said something like: "My head's not attached to my body." That sounds to me: it's either a very disassociated state or she is having an out-of-body experience. She wasn't disassociated, far from it, so I put that down to an out-of-body experience. She also had astral travel or out-of-body travel, and I asked her where she wanted to go. She said: "I like to float across the oceans." Anyway, sometimes when she told things like that, we would have a little chat and I talked to her about astral travel, you know, as a matter-of-fact. The following day she said to me: "My brother (who was deceased) asked me to visit him and I did," and I said: "Brilliant."
Viktória: I'm thinking, how fortunate that you were open to this.
Maggie La Tourelle: To me, it was everything I wanted and needed, and I was been given such a gift.
Viktória: Just listening to what you are saying must be so humbling for so many people, who believe so much in the body, and the health of the physical body, and the brain. They think, if that begins to shut down, we can forget it. Actually, this just shows: that is when something incredible is beginning to happen.
Maggie La Tourelle: It seems to me, while our cognition is intact, our chattering monkey-mind doesn't leave space for so many more things to happen. As the Alzheimer's disease progresses and the brain slows down, the mind and the thought process can actually expand, and this leads into theories of morphic resonance (Rupert Sheldrake), of non-locality of mind, the extended mind, and I'm in absolutely no doubt that consciousness is not located in the brain.
Viktória: No, it's not. I totally agree with your view and I think that the radio analogy is very good here, as well: that our brain is like a radio receiver, the actual little object, but you can destroy a radio, and the programs are still out there. You can get another radio, and you can start to listen to the programs again. You can destroy the physical brain, but you could have new body and a new brain, and you can tune into the same things, and continue to listen with a new receiver. Obviously, the brain plays a very important role, but to me also, it's a receiving thing, a receiver and a processor. But we don't need the brain for the mental functioning to be intact.
Maggie La Tourelle: No, and I was interested in something she had to say. She said: "The thought process is amazing." Now in esoteric wisdom tradition, there's a lot said about thought and that thought continues. My mother said something like: "I have no brain cells left, but I think a lot." Again, I think this is a wake-up call for us that people with Alzheimer's, some of them might be in some kind of locked-in syndrome, that, you know, their brain isn't functioning properly, so they lost their ability to speak, they lost their ability to process information sequentially, they can't remember, but that doesn't mean, that nothing is happening.
Viktória: Absolutely not. I read about a very interesting phenomenon, and then I experienced it myself. That was when sometimes people meditate or even dream, or have an OBE, and then they gain information from the other world that is very profound and they have that sense that it is something important, but when they want to remember it, they actually cannot because the brain is not evolved enough to process that level of information. It's a little bit like you're trying to run a very sophisticated software on an old computer. (Laughter.) You understand, what I'm trying to say? Our brain is too old and too simple: we evolved a brain that is evolved from the "monkey," and that is a tool we evolved to open the coconut or whatever, you know, to make simple tools. It's good for certain things, at a certain level, but then we can - I heard it from other people and experienced it myself - receive information in an altered state of consciousness, you feel is profound, but then you come back into your physical brain, and you have a sense a frustration, where you can't put it into words, you can't formulate a theory, you can't share it with anyone, because the brain is not sufficient.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, I think that's really interesting.
Viktória: It must be the same kind of thing your mother was experiencing, and the gap was probably bigger, because she must have accessed all that otherworldly information that is normally just accessible in the in-between-lives state. But then she had that brain that got even worse than the average brain, so how big must the gap have been!
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, I mean, we were very fortunate that she retained her faculty of speech. I think there was a master plan her (laughter), because she had been a teacher. Right at the beginning, when she was talking about her difficult working between two worlds, and she said: "We're learning, we are immortal. You must tell other." So it's my job, I've been assigned this job to make this information available to others. And I think, this is all the more believable, because it came through somebody who had Alzheimer's, who couldn't remember, you know, this wasn't learned information.
Viktória: Yes, you couldn't say, she read it in a book, because she would have forgotten.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, and she came from provincial Scotland, she hadn't been exposed to these things.
Viktória: Yes, that is amazing!
Maggie La Tourelle: So, I think that also, as I said, I was able to bring certain amount of knowledge and information to move this things forward, and as a writer I was able to formulate in a way that makes it readable and understandable to others. In addition to two-thirds of the book being dialogue, along the dialogue I comment on what is my understanding of what is happening. So, I think this is important for others to know. It certainly changed my belief about death, and you know, when you no longer fear death, you can live more fully.
Viktória: Absolutely.
Maggie La Tourelle: That's my message when I'm giving talks: I want people to lose their fear of death and be able to live more fully.
Viktória: And it's probably fair to say that you no longer have a belief, but you have a knowledge. Would that be fair to say? Yes? There is a big quality difference, isn't there: between simple religious belief that is a kind of hope and the knowledge that is rooted in experience?
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, and I had three and half years of this with my mother and then I was writing it, so I was revisiting it, writing it in the first person in the present time. That really embedded it and yes, it was a process that I needed it, I think, because prior to that - although I was "believer" - most of the time it was fine, but every now and then, I just had that little nagging doubt. Then I had to come back to centre and it would be fine. I don't have that nagging doubt any more.
Viktória: And this might actually be going on all of the time, because I remember I had an out-of-body experience long time ago and I there was a spiritual guide there. He said to me "The reason why you're experiencing this is because this is how it feels to die, and we want you to know that this is how it feels to die" ... and this is why I'm telling this to you now, because he said ... "so that you can tell others." It was the same message: tell others! We want ... and this might be a historic things, that's why I'm telling this now, we might be at times, when it might be a call of the time, to tell people, that it is no longer a belief. We are getting knowledge, we are getting actual experiential knowledge about the fact that life continues... and we have to be prepared for that, and we have to take the responsibility that comes with that. So, that strikes me as extremely important, and very uplifting as well.
Maggie La Tourelle: For me the key to unlocking this was love, is love.
Viktória: What would you say is love? (I know it's impossible to define, and I'm not asking for a definition, because I believe that's impossible, but how could you tune into love more, because throughout the pages of your book one can feel that there was so much love and you were generating so much love... what made this possibility for you?
Maggie La Tourelle: I think being open and it was my mother's vulnerability that evoked love and compassion in me. Through this process that I have described of me expressing compassion and love, her sensing and empathising, feeding it back to me...
Viktória: A feed-back loop, wasn't it?
Maggie La Tourelle: ... an authentic, loving relationship. And because she was learning emotionally, despite her Alzheimer's, that's just got stronger and stronger. I asked her once: "Describe love!" She said: "it's light floating," and I thought she really does know. That's such a lovely description: so that's like floating. Then she said: "You must tell Russel," that was her husband. After my mother had passed on, my father lived for another three years, and I went through a similar journey with him. He didn't have Alzheimer's, and his transformation happened in a much shorter period of time during the end of his life, nevertheless, it happened to him, too: man, Scottish, conservative, no-nonsense. But in the probably last six months of his life he had out-of-body experiences, he went to other realms, and he knew that I was the only person he could tell. I remember arriving in the care-home, one day, because he was in a care-home, too, and he was frantically waving me over, and he just could not wait to tell me. As I sat down, he said: "I know you will believe me, but nobody else would," and then he told me about this experience he had. I knew, I knew he had met people at the other side, I knew he was probably close to the end of his life here, in his physical body, but he trusted me. He knew that I would believe him. That was so reassuring for him. You know, the more people can take this on board and be open ... even if people don't believe ... it's real for the person ... so validate what they're experiencing as real for them, and keep an open mind. Maybe there's something there to discover for us, too.
Viktória: Yes, that is a great approach. And Maggie, because you were so open, what would you say surprised you the most?
Maggie La Tourelle: I'd say everything.
[Together:] Everything? (Laughter.)
I think all the things I was talking about, were full of surprises, because, you know, I had no knowledge about Alzheimer's when my mother was diagnosed. I was commuting between London and Scotland, you know, I was trying to maintain my own health practice here in London and teaching. It was a very-very busy time for me and there was not a lot of information available online, like there is now. So, I didn't have a lot of time to research, but ... surprise ... I was surprised about the other world. I didn't expect ... I was surprised and delighted. Everything to do my mother's other-world-experiences: she talked about television. That was marvellous, I could go there and ask her all my questions. Now, when I speak with psychics, they describe seeing and processing information as if it were a television set. I think her mother was receiving information through her third eye.
Viktória: Yes, yes...
Maggie La Tourelle: And you know, her out-of-body experiences, her numerous extra-sensory perceptions of me, her references to past lives, I don't know which century, her contact with deceased relatives. The more frail she got, the more lucid she became at times. It was as if she saw everything. And was able to sum that up, in just a few words, that were absolutely spot on - and this, by the way is not exclusive for people with Alzheimer's. Peter Fenwick, I don't know whether you know his work, he was an expert on near-death-experiences. He has done a lot of research into end-of-life experiences. Peter's research has shown that many people at the end of life have the experiences my mother had: they have out-of-body experiences, they have contact with deceased relatives, they have what they call terminal lucidity. So, my mother's experiences were not exclusive, they are out there, if people are open to them.
Viktória: Yes, and how very important it is that everybody has a witness they can talk to... so that they can learn to take these things seriously and trust them.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, I belong to a group called Spiritual Companions, which is a U.K. based group.
Viktória: Oh, beautiful!
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, so people if they want to find out more, they can just google that: spiritual companions. It was set up by William Bloom. I think it is a very-very good organisation, because people are given a very thorough training. It's not just that you go online, sign up and you are a registered member. Even though I'm a psychotherapist and a healer and been doing this for over thirty years, when I wanted to join, I had to attend a group for a year, rather than going through the thorough training, which is, you know, a few years ... you know, to ensure that I wasn't projecting my beliefs on to anybody, and acting responsibly. There are very clear guidelines for people to follow. The guide-lines may actually be online, well worth looking at them, because there is a responsibility, there's ethics here. There is a responsibility to behave in ways that are going to enhance the person's experience, and not in any way limit it.
Viktória: As you say, not moulded into somebody else's beliefs, for example...
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes.
Viktória: And if you're talking about other people: so, you had this really-really enlightening experience, and you said you even had the mission to talk about it to others, so how would you some up: what are the key things people need to know in order to find a positive way forward?
Maggie La Tourelle: I think, just to be aware that the person is not the disease. They're still that person, their essence remains. To have an open heart, just let love ... love is there, be present and open to that. Have an open mind. Seek meaningful communication.
Viktória: That's very interesting. Maybe you can generalise that. Would you agree, it's not just that the person is not the illness, maybe this applies to all sorts of life situations, maybe you can generalise this to life, whatever problem or challenge someone is in, that is not the person.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes...
Viktória: That is such an empowering thought, isn't it, that even if you see a homeless person, that is not the person. That is that person in that present situation, in that whole cycle of life and death. But you can never identify the soul with that situation. I think that would enable all of us, if we thought like that, it would enable us to be much more democratic (laughter) - in a spiritual sense, if that makes sense.
Maggie La Tourelle: Coming back to the open heart: I believe love is the gateway between the physical and the non-physical realm. That is, in terms of chakras, the heart chakra: the mid-way between your lower chakras and the higher chakras. Another important thing is to be totally present. My mother taught me to be totally present. As her brain slowed down, she stared at me often...
Viktória:... and there was no escape into the past or the future ...
Maggie La Tourelle: no escape! Exactly! (Laughter.) You know, I've done exercises like this in groups, but we're not talking about a group exercise here. We are talking about someone who sat very firmly and still and, looked into my eyes, and I decided to stay with that. And that was a learning for me, because sometimes, you know, I'd be busy, I'd be buzzing, wanting to escape and she'd say: "What's stopping you?" She taught me to be present.
Viktória: She was very much down to the point, wasn't she?
Maggie La Tourelle: She was. I read that people with Alzheimer's are, because the filters we have...
Viktória: ... they are not working any more!
Maggie La Tourelle: ... between our thoughts and what we say. If we said everything we thought, we would be in trouble! People with Alzheimer's don't have that filter. So, they just say what they are thinking, straight out. Another thing is to be really flexible, be curious. Join in their world, and - as I said before - validate their experience as being real for them. The other world is wonderful. She didn't tell me anything about the other world that was bad, or difficult, it was just really wonderful. And keep communicating, be aware, if we're talking Alzheimer's, it can be a bit up and down. People get infections, they have their bad days, and have to see their way out of it. Don't discount everything, just keep trying to communicate, and you'll probably find that in a day or two things are better again and can continue. And to appreciate what they are giving us. You know, my mother was so delighted when I validated and thanked her for what she was telling me. It was as if no one had ever done that in her life before.
Viktória: That is something, isn't it?
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, appreciation, love and appreciation, are very important. Because I am focusing on Alzheimer's: Alzheimer's is a protracted end-of-life experience, and that has given me time to take an overview and be aware that dying can be a very intelligent process. My mother described various stages and phases she went through, she talked about programs, about supervision and tests. She had at least three of these, and I wonder if with each of these she could have passed on at the end, but because there was more to do here, she stayed on. That's my personal belief of what was going on.
Viktória: Yes, it triggers the truths, that this is again something very often happening in the inter-life period as well, you know, that you have those programs, some people call it courses, and then you do have learning happening, you do have teachers, you have to pass tests.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, and she talked about book!
Viktória: Books! [together] Yes. [Laughter.}
Maggie La Tourelle: I mean, are these the Akashic Records? You know, I validated her books and she said, I read four and I got four more, something like that. So, this is a time to heal relationships. Not only was the relationship between my mother and me healed, the whole family healed. It was absolutely miraculous: given her mental instability, we were quite a dysfunctional family, I hesitate to say that, but ... in the end, through her Alzheimer's, everybody was healed, in the most miraculous way. So, it's never too late to heal the past.
Viktória: Was that the greatest gift for you, would you say? Or what were the greatest gifts?
Maggie La Tourelle: Oh, now you're asking a question!
Viktória: Coming back to the beginning, you know we said this phrase: "the gift of Alzheimer's" and you immediately elaborated on that, how it's a controversial thing to say. As you said, it wasn't a joyride...
Maggie La Tourelle: No, no... well, who on Earth would say, Alzheimer's was a gift. On this Earth, it wasn't a gift, but in a dimension, you know, outside the physical dimension, it was. In that other dimension, there is universal love. There is no fear of death, no pain, no suffering, and that's what she taught me. These are gifts for us all to know that.
Viktória: Absolutely. Absolutely... well, I'm immensely grateful to have had this conversation with you.
Maggie La Tourelle: Thank you.
Viktória: It was absolutely beautiful and I got goose-pimples all the time, while you were talking. So, thank you very-very much for being here today.
Maggie La Tourelle: Thank you, Viktoria, I really enjoyed speaking to you.
Viktória: Me, too. Thank you so much. I wish you all the best to go on and spread this really important message. Thank you so much.
Today we have Maggie La Tourelle as our guest. Maggie, welcome! I've read your book which I found was a fascinating and really-really important source for an extraordinary experience that you had with your mother. For those of our listeners who have not yet read the book I just want to say that it's about your mother, who was suffering at the end of her life from the dreaded disease of Alzheimer's. You were scared as well, naturally, when it started, but then despite all the difficulties you found that there was something valuable; something that you ended up calling the "Gift of Alzheimer's." So, Maggie, could you tell me a bit more about this experience, and the book, how you ended up writing it. What was it that made this dreadful illness into a gift?
Maggie La Tourelle: Well, first of all, Viktoria, I want to thank you for inviting me.
Viktória: Thank you for being here!
Maggie La Tourelle: This is something very close to my heart. My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at the age of 85. I was living in London and my parents were living in Scotland. So, to begin with I was managing quite a lot of the arrangements from a distance, and visiting my parents for about one week in four; that became more frequent, as my mother's condition, you know, physical condition, deteriorated. Although my book is called "The gift of Alzheimer's," I just want to say that on this Earth, it was not a gift: she suffered just like everyone else who has this disease, (although it takes different paths with different people). She went through all the normal stages of suffering at the beginning and it was an absolute nightmare - for us as a family. It got to a point, where she was a danger to herself and those around her. She was falling, getting up at night, falling, injuring herself, turning on the gas-hob and not lighting it and so forth. So, within two years of having been diagnosed, she went into a residential care-home. The care-home happened to be right next door to our family house. So, although it was devastating and I can remember sitting at the edge of her bed weeping, as I thought she's never coming back to her beloved home, on the other hand, it felt almost as if she was living in an extension of our house, where she was being properly cared for and safe. The staff - it was an independent care-home - was very loving and she, having been very belligerent, became very compliant and happy. It was as if she surrendered to her situation. I just want to say that two years seems like a very short period of time, but it is quite possible that she had this disease for some time before, but we didn't recognise that, because she was quite a difficult person. And if I just give you a little background to her life: she had an extremely difficult and traumatic life. She suffered from post-natal depression after I was born, and I don't think it ever left. She spent her life talking about having one nervous break-down after another. She suffered from chronic depression: this lead to attempts or threatened attempts on her life. As a child I was witness to that, and that set up quite a difficult relationship between us. So, that was, you know, what we were starting from, when she was a resident in the care-home.
Viktoria: Yes, I got it from your book that she must have felt very restricted in that social order in which she was.
Maggie La Tourelle: Absolutely.
Viktória: She sounded like a very energised person. She was a dancer wasn't she, and a physical education teacher. She sounded very outgoing and probably wanted a career she couldn't have in that old-fashioned world.
Maggie La Tourelle: That's absolutely correct. It was provincial Scotland. My father was very conservative, and my mother was a kind of Isadora Duncan type. And it wasn't just my father, the whole society. You know, if you were a middle class professional family, you know, the wife didn't go out to work. She stayed at home, and my mother found this intolerable. Of course, it didn't help her mental state, nor her relationship.
Viktória: Sounds like a really frustrated life...
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes.
Viktória: But that changed, so what happened in those years?
Maggie La Tourelle: Well, it changed when she got Alzheimer's. It changed when she got into the care-home. I think there were some factors which contributed to this. Seeing her in this very frail, diminished state I felt compassion for her. And it's hard to imagine, how anyone close to a family member couldn't look at them when they have Alzheimer's at this stage and not feel compassion. You know, she was frail, she was losing the place, she got confused, she was repeating herself. Anyway, my feelings of compassion lead to feelings of love. And she said to me one day, she said: "You love me," and I got "Is this a question or is it...?" (laughter) It wasn't clear, but I reassured her that I loved her. I did! And immediately after that, she said: "I'm a bad person." And I got: "O, dear!" I think I know where this might be coming from, given her history. I might even have prompted this, by being present with her, having reminded her. It makes me think of what Carl Jung said. Jung said that forgotten or repressed material surfaces in a state of diminished consciousness. And I think that this happens - it certainly happened with my mother - and I think I it happens generally with people when they have Alzheimer's. If people recognise that this is what's happening, it might explain some of what is considered bizarre behaviour, what they say about people who have Alzheimer's. I also discovered, after my mother passed on, I was curious to find out more about some of the things that I had felt intuitively, and had, you know, discovered through my own experience. One of them was to do with emotions and memory. I found some research by Professor Oliver Turnbull of Bangor University, U.K. He did research into Alzheimer's and memory, and he found that although short-term memory disappears as, you know, brain cells die off, and people are repeating themselves, and can't remember what they've just said, emotional memory remains intact. Not only that: people with Alzheimer's can continue to learn emotionally. This happened with my mother, and I think this is really important for people to be aware. It is very easy, if you see somebody in a very diminished state, and confused etc, that nothing is going on, but actually a lot is going on. I also discovered in my quest for more information, I discovered research that was carried out at the University of California, Memory and Aging Center. They found that people with Alzheimer's, as cognition decreases, empathy increases. So again, you know, although people may not be able to converse and express themselves with the same clarity as they once did, that doesn't mean that they are not sensing and taking in what's happening. They are very sensitive to nuances of expression, of our voice-tone, our facial expressions, probably more so than the actual words that we use. The same researchers also found that when people are empathising in this way, the more cognition decreases, the more empathetic they become. So, I think this opens a whole new vista to our understanding of people with Alzheimer's. They found that not only are they feeling empathetic, but they are do something with that. They mimic what they are sensing from us and then they feed that back to us. The term they use is emotional contagion. So, you know, when I was feeling loving and generous in spirit towards my mother, she sensed that, even if I wasn't saying anything. She said that back to me, she said at one point: "I see love coming from your eyes." And she said another time something like: "Love is flowing between us."
Viktória: Yes, I found that quite touching, when I read in the book, that she said: "You're the only one who's listening to me."
Maggie La Tourelle: She did, and I'm glad that you reminded me of that, because she said that just a few weeks before she passed on. She said: "You listen to me. Nobody else listens to me."
Viktória: It's quite obvious that other people did - physically - listen to her, as well, but what she must have referred to is that you had the ability to tune in to that non-verbal, non-cognitive, more emotional, more psychic, more empathic type of communication, which she became every day stronger and stronger at.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, and also, I ... and this is something useful for people to pay attention to ... when you're with someone with Alzheimer's, you need to almost set aside your life and your way of being somewhere, and move into their world with them. Start to explore, be curious about the meaning of their world. And that's what I did. So, when my mother said ... near the beginning of this journey together ... she said, it's difficult living, but then she corrected herself, she said, working between two worlds. And I thought: Wow!
Viktória: And after that you were quoting an astonishing number of really surprising episodes of being psychic, of clairvoyance ... when she was tuning into troubles that you had, and she was actually saying it out loud. I remember you once you said that you had some financial issues to sort out, and you deliberately didn't want to tell her not to burden her with it, but then, didn't she actually mention it?
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, I was in London, dealing with a lots of paperwork I had to take to our family solicitor in Scotland. I was travelling up the next day, and I was feeling very uncomfortable about it all. I mean ... I haven't discussed it with her ... I arrived in Scotland, I got off train, went straight to the care-home; and she's sitting in the communal lounge and waves me over: "Margaret is busy with funds and finance. Margaret is a little confused." (Laughter.) And I thought, I'm totally transparent! Nothing I can hide from her! It was, I mean, she wasn't reprimanding me. I was wondering previously whether she was reading my mind, because she said lots of things. In my book...
Viktória: It's amazing how many examples you are giving!
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, in my book, I think I'm giving eight examples: mind reading or telepathic or clairvoyant examples, which she didn't had in her life before. I think what's happening is that ... I give you a little tutorial of what I think is happening here. When people reach the stage of moderate to late-stage Alzheimer's - I'm not talking about the beginning, when they maintain control and it's a nightmare for everybody - I'm talking when they just can't do that any longer and they surrender. They lose their sense of self, so their ego is no longer driving them. Also, the part of the brain, the left hemisphere that processes bits of information sequentially, that part of the brain is no longer working. So, they lose a sense of linear time, and that means that past and future all roll into the present.
Viktória: They are in the now, aren't they? I think you even mentioned Eckhart Tolle, that they reached that state where meditators want to get, where they have no time and no ego.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes! That's my hypothesis. It's certainly opening a lot of eyes in the Alzheimer's world, because I don't think anybody has looked at it like this before. But just for people's information, when my mother started saying things right at the beginning, like "you love me, I am a bad person," I started to record our conversations. She was also talking about deceased relatives, visiting her and she said: "Is it all right if I go next week?" and I rather reluctantly said: "Yes." I thought, she was going to pass on very soon: she was being very frail, but actually, she lived for another three and a half years. So, I got more and more fascinated by what was going on between us. So, I have actual recordings of our conversations for three and half years. That time span gave me the opportunity to reflect on what was happening and come up with that hypothesis, which I really do believe is what is happening: when people are in the now, without an ego, they are in an altered state of consciousness. My question is: what is happening in that altered state? How might we effect that? How might we accommodate that? I think these are really important questions, because... I think, I had been a soul-seeker and a seeker of consciousness from my early twenties. Although I haven't been diligent with my meditation throughout all these years, certainly that learning that I had in my early twenties ... I belonged to an esoteric group that studied the work of Ouspensky... talking now about times when the Beatles were doing things like this, too, but it was all very hush-hush, people weren't talk about it ... but coming from a Presbyterian background, these teachings turned my whole understanding upside-down.
Viktória: Upside-down, yes.
Maggie La Tourelle: I had a new way of thinking and being in the world as a result. I brought my personal history along with being a psychotherapist and healer, I brought all this to this situation with my mother, when she had Alzheimer's. When she was in these altered states, or even, when she wasn't in the altered states, I was able to hold the space for her, you know, with knowing, with awareness. And she recognised it. You know, when people are tuned in, they know when to trust somebody and when not to trust them. So, she knew that I knew.
Viktória: Yes, yes...
Maggie La Tourelle: So, she trusted and she felt safe, and in that safe-holding I think she was able to traverse into other realms, other dimensions, and she told me what she was experiencing. She told me, just as if we were having a normal conversation.
Viktória: Absolutely, and it seems that she had a serious learning experience in the other world, as well, didn't she?
Maggie La Tourelle: She did. It started when she said: "I had a big operation" and I got interested...
Viktória: Yes, what kind of operation?
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, instead of just dismissing these things as just delusions or as hallucinatory, I asked her about them. So I said: "Where have you had your operation?" and she said: "My mind." I asked: "Who did this?" and she said: "Two women, they're very skilful. I feel much better."
Viktória: And she did feel much better, didn't she?
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes.
Viktória: So, what a change in her personality!
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, and I thought this sounds to me like psychic surgery. It sounds to me like energies interacting with her energy field, and helping to heal the mind, the mental part, and emotional part of her field, which was enabling her to move forward.
Viktória: This is extremely interesting, because we read about those experiences that occur in-between lives, when people go, have a regression, and then they remember times when they were in-between physical lives, and they talk about finding helpers, healers, who help them, you know, to understand the mistakes of their lives, but also help them to correct them and to look forward to a more positive future and rebirth.
Maggie La Tourelle: My mother had a number of experiences.
Viktória: Exactly! It sounds like she had those even before she physically died.
Maggie La Tourelle: Exactly: if we look at this, what's happening here ... I like the analogy of a radio. It seems to me there was one frequency which was the pain and discomfort of having Alzheimer's, you know, in her physical reality, but she also tuned into other frequencies. And these frequencies may be the frequencies we move to when our physical body is no longer functioning, is passed on. But she was able to move, you know between this life and these experiences. I think what's really significant is that this was possible because she had Alzheimer's. It would have never had happened for her without Alzheimer's. But because she had Alzheimer's and the layer was very thin, and because I had some understanding of this, I was able to accommodate her and validate her. She also had what some would call a life review. She said: "I remember all the difficult times with all the people." She had about three of these, and we processed that. I said to her, what she found very helpful, what others might find helpful as well: "We all do what we can at the time. If we could have done something different, we would have done. And it's easy in retrospect to look back and ask, how could I have done that, but actually at that time, it was the best we could do." My mother was very happy with that.
Viktória: Yes, it is so therapeutic, isn't it?
Maggie La Tourelle: It sounds so simplistic...
Viktória: It's not! It's not...
Maggie La Tourelle: She also had out-of-body experiences. I've had a spontaneous out-of-body experience, which was quite as what she said. She said something like: "My head's not attached to my body." That sounds to me: it's either a very disassociated state or she is having an out-of-body experience. She wasn't disassociated, far from it, so I put that down to an out-of-body experience. She also had astral travel or out-of-body travel, and I asked her where she wanted to go. She said: "I like to float across the oceans." Anyway, sometimes when she told things like that, we would have a little chat and I talked to her about astral travel, you know, as a matter-of-fact. The following day she said to me: "My brother (who was deceased) asked me to visit him and I did," and I said: "Brilliant."
Viktória: I'm thinking, how fortunate that you were open to this.
Maggie La Tourelle: To me, it was everything I wanted and needed, and I was been given such a gift.
Viktória: Just listening to what you are saying must be so humbling for so many people, who believe so much in the body, and the health of the physical body, and the brain. They think, if that begins to shut down, we can forget it. Actually, this just shows: that is when something incredible is beginning to happen.
Maggie La Tourelle: It seems to me, while our cognition is intact, our chattering monkey-mind doesn't leave space for so many more things to happen. As the Alzheimer's disease progresses and the brain slows down, the mind and the thought process can actually expand, and this leads into theories of morphic resonance (Rupert Sheldrake), of non-locality of mind, the extended mind, and I'm in absolutely no doubt that consciousness is not located in the brain.
Viktória: No, it's not. I totally agree with your view and I think that the radio analogy is very good here, as well: that our brain is like a radio receiver, the actual little object, but you can destroy a radio, and the programs are still out there. You can get another radio, and you can start to listen to the programs again. You can destroy the physical brain, but you could have new body and a new brain, and you can tune into the same things, and continue to listen with a new receiver. Obviously, the brain plays a very important role, but to me also, it's a receiving thing, a receiver and a processor. But we don't need the brain for the mental functioning to be intact.
Maggie La Tourelle: No, and I was interested in something she had to say. She said: "The thought process is amazing." Now in esoteric wisdom tradition, there's a lot said about thought and that thought continues. My mother said something like: "I have no brain cells left, but I think a lot." Again, I think this is a wake-up call for us that people with Alzheimer's, some of them might be in some kind of locked-in syndrome, that, you know, their brain isn't functioning properly, so they lost their ability to speak, they lost their ability to process information sequentially, they can't remember, but that doesn't mean, that nothing is happening.
Viktória: Absolutely not. I read about a very interesting phenomenon, and then I experienced it myself. That was when sometimes people meditate or even dream, or have an OBE, and then they gain information from the other world that is very profound and they have that sense that it is something important, but when they want to remember it, they actually cannot because the brain is not evolved enough to process that level of information. It's a little bit like you're trying to run a very sophisticated software on an old computer. (Laughter.) You understand, what I'm trying to say? Our brain is too old and too simple: we evolved a brain that is evolved from the "monkey," and that is a tool we evolved to open the coconut or whatever, you know, to make simple tools. It's good for certain things, at a certain level, but then we can - I heard it from other people and experienced it myself - receive information in an altered state of consciousness, you feel is profound, but then you come back into your physical brain, and you have a sense a frustration, where you can't put it into words, you can't formulate a theory, you can't share it with anyone, because the brain is not sufficient.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, I think that's really interesting.
Viktória: It must be the same kind of thing your mother was experiencing, and the gap was probably bigger, because she must have accessed all that otherworldly information that is normally just accessible in the in-between-lives state. But then she had that brain that got even worse than the average brain, so how big must the gap have been!
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, I mean, we were very fortunate that she retained her faculty of speech. I think there was a master plan her (laughter), because she had been a teacher. Right at the beginning, when she was talking about her difficult working between two worlds, and she said: "We're learning, we are immortal. You must tell other." So it's my job, I've been assigned this job to make this information available to others. And I think, this is all the more believable, because it came through somebody who had Alzheimer's, who couldn't remember, you know, this wasn't learned information.
Viktória: Yes, you couldn't say, she read it in a book, because she would have forgotten.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, and she came from provincial Scotland, she hadn't been exposed to these things.
Viktória: Yes, that is amazing!
Maggie La Tourelle: So, I think that also, as I said, I was able to bring certain amount of knowledge and information to move this things forward, and as a writer I was able to formulate in a way that makes it readable and understandable to others. In addition to two-thirds of the book being dialogue, along the dialogue I comment on what is my understanding of what is happening. So, I think this is important for others to know. It certainly changed my belief about death, and you know, when you no longer fear death, you can live more fully.
Viktória: Absolutely.
Maggie La Tourelle: That's my message when I'm giving talks: I want people to lose their fear of death and be able to live more fully.
Viktória: And it's probably fair to say that you no longer have a belief, but you have a knowledge. Would that be fair to say? Yes? There is a big quality difference, isn't there: between simple religious belief that is a kind of hope and the knowledge that is rooted in experience?
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, and I had three and half years of this with my mother and then I was writing it, so I was revisiting it, writing it in the first person in the present time. That really embedded it and yes, it was a process that I needed it, I think, because prior to that - although I was "believer" - most of the time it was fine, but every now and then, I just had that little nagging doubt. Then I had to come back to centre and it would be fine. I don't have that nagging doubt any more.
Viktória: And this might actually be going on all of the time, because I remember I had an out-of-body experience long time ago and I there was a spiritual guide there. He said to me "The reason why you're experiencing this is because this is how it feels to die, and we want you to know that this is how it feels to die" ... and this is why I'm telling this to you now, because he said ... "so that you can tell others." It was the same message: tell others! We want ... and this might be a historic things, that's why I'm telling this now, we might be at times, when it might be a call of the time, to tell people, that it is no longer a belief. We are getting knowledge, we are getting actual experiential knowledge about the fact that life continues... and we have to be prepared for that, and we have to take the responsibility that comes with that. So, that strikes me as extremely important, and very uplifting as well.
Maggie La Tourelle: For me the key to unlocking this was love, is love.
Viktória: What would you say is love? (I know it's impossible to define, and I'm not asking for a definition, because I believe that's impossible, but how could you tune into love more, because throughout the pages of your book one can feel that there was so much love and you were generating so much love... what made this possibility for you?
Maggie La Tourelle: I think being open and it was my mother's vulnerability that evoked love and compassion in me. Through this process that I have described of me expressing compassion and love, her sensing and empathising, feeding it back to me...
Viktória: A feed-back loop, wasn't it?
Maggie La Tourelle: ... an authentic, loving relationship. And because she was learning emotionally, despite her Alzheimer's, that's just got stronger and stronger. I asked her once: "Describe love!" She said: "it's light floating," and I thought she really does know. That's such a lovely description: so that's like floating. Then she said: "You must tell Russel," that was her husband. After my mother had passed on, my father lived for another three years, and I went through a similar journey with him. He didn't have Alzheimer's, and his transformation happened in a much shorter period of time during the end of his life, nevertheless, it happened to him, too: man, Scottish, conservative, no-nonsense. But in the probably last six months of his life he had out-of-body experiences, he went to other realms, and he knew that I was the only person he could tell. I remember arriving in the care-home, one day, because he was in a care-home, too, and he was frantically waving me over, and he just could not wait to tell me. As I sat down, he said: "I know you will believe me, but nobody else would," and then he told me about this experience he had. I knew, I knew he had met people at the other side, I knew he was probably close to the end of his life here, in his physical body, but he trusted me. He knew that I would believe him. That was so reassuring for him. You know, the more people can take this on board and be open ... even if people don't believe ... it's real for the person ... so validate what they're experiencing as real for them, and keep an open mind. Maybe there's something there to discover for us, too.
Viktória: Yes, that is a great approach. And Maggie, because you were so open, what would you say surprised you the most?
Maggie La Tourelle: I'd say everything.
[Together:] Everything? (Laughter.)
I think all the things I was talking about, were full of surprises, because, you know, I had no knowledge about Alzheimer's when my mother was diagnosed. I was commuting between London and Scotland, you know, I was trying to maintain my own health practice here in London and teaching. It was a very-very busy time for me and there was not a lot of information available online, like there is now. So, I didn't have a lot of time to research, but ... surprise ... I was surprised about the other world. I didn't expect ... I was surprised and delighted. Everything to do my mother's other-world-experiences: she talked about television. That was marvellous, I could go there and ask her all my questions. Now, when I speak with psychics, they describe seeing and processing information as if it were a television set. I think her mother was receiving information through her third eye.
Viktória: Yes, yes...
Maggie La Tourelle: And you know, her out-of-body experiences, her numerous extra-sensory perceptions of me, her references to past lives, I don't know which century, her contact with deceased relatives. The more frail she got, the more lucid she became at times. It was as if she saw everything. And was able to sum that up, in just a few words, that were absolutely spot on - and this, by the way is not exclusive for people with Alzheimer's. Peter Fenwick, I don't know whether you know his work, he was an expert on near-death-experiences. He has done a lot of research into end-of-life experiences. Peter's research has shown that many people at the end of life have the experiences my mother had: they have out-of-body experiences, they have contact with deceased relatives, they have what they call terminal lucidity. So, my mother's experiences were not exclusive, they are out there, if people are open to them.
Viktória: Yes, and how very important it is that everybody has a witness they can talk to... so that they can learn to take these things seriously and trust them.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, I belong to a group called Spiritual Companions, which is a U.K. based group.
Viktória: Oh, beautiful!
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, so people if they want to find out more, they can just google that: spiritual companions. It was set up by William Bloom. I think it is a very-very good organisation, because people are given a very thorough training. It's not just that you go online, sign up and you are a registered member. Even though I'm a psychotherapist and a healer and been doing this for over thirty years, when I wanted to join, I had to attend a group for a year, rather than going through the thorough training, which is, you know, a few years ... you know, to ensure that I wasn't projecting my beliefs on to anybody, and acting responsibly. There are very clear guidelines for people to follow. The guide-lines may actually be online, well worth looking at them, because there is a responsibility, there's ethics here. There is a responsibility to behave in ways that are going to enhance the person's experience, and not in any way limit it.
Viktória: As you say, not moulded into somebody else's beliefs, for example...
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes.
Viktória: And if you're talking about other people: so, you had this really-really enlightening experience, and you said you even had the mission to talk about it to others, so how would you some up: what are the key things people need to know in order to find a positive way forward?
Maggie La Tourelle: I think, just to be aware that the person is not the disease. They're still that person, their essence remains. To have an open heart, just let love ... love is there, be present and open to that. Have an open mind. Seek meaningful communication.
Viktória: That's very interesting. Maybe you can generalise that. Would you agree, it's not just that the person is not the illness, maybe this applies to all sorts of life situations, maybe you can generalise this to life, whatever problem or challenge someone is in, that is not the person.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes...
Viktória: That is such an empowering thought, isn't it, that even if you see a homeless person, that is not the person. That is that person in that present situation, in that whole cycle of life and death. But you can never identify the soul with that situation. I think that would enable all of us, if we thought like that, it would enable us to be much more democratic (laughter) - in a spiritual sense, if that makes sense.
Maggie La Tourelle: Coming back to the open heart: I believe love is the gateway between the physical and the non-physical realm. That is, in terms of chakras, the heart chakra: the mid-way between your lower chakras and the higher chakras. Another important thing is to be totally present. My mother taught me to be totally present. As her brain slowed down, she stared at me often...
Viktória:... and there was no escape into the past or the future ...
Maggie La Tourelle: no escape! Exactly! (Laughter.) You know, I've done exercises like this in groups, but we're not talking about a group exercise here. We are talking about someone who sat very firmly and still and, looked into my eyes, and I decided to stay with that. And that was a learning for me, because sometimes, you know, I'd be busy, I'd be buzzing, wanting to escape and she'd say: "What's stopping you?" She taught me to be present.
Viktória: She was very much down to the point, wasn't she?
Maggie La Tourelle: She was. I read that people with Alzheimer's are, because the filters we have...
Viktória: ... they are not working any more!
Maggie La Tourelle: ... between our thoughts and what we say. If we said everything we thought, we would be in trouble! People with Alzheimer's don't have that filter. So, they just say what they are thinking, straight out. Another thing is to be really flexible, be curious. Join in their world, and - as I said before - validate their experience as being real for them. The other world is wonderful. She didn't tell me anything about the other world that was bad, or difficult, it was just really wonderful. And keep communicating, be aware, if we're talking Alzheimer's, it can be a bit up and down. People get infections, they have their bad days, and have to see their way out of it. Don't discount everything, just keep trying to communicate, and you'll probably find that in a day or two things are better again and can continue. And to appreciate what they are giving us. You know, my mother was so delighted when I validated and thanked her for what she was telling me. It was as if no one had ever done that in her life before.
Viktória: That is something, isn't it?
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, appreciation, love and appreciation, are very important. Because I am focusing on Alzheimer's: Alzheimer's is a protracted end-of-life experience, and that has given me time to take an overview and be aware that dying can be a very intelligent process. My mother described various stages and phases she went through, she talked about programs, about supervision and tests. She had at least three of these, and I wonder if with each of these she could have passed on at the end, but because there was more to do here, she stayed on. That's my personal belief of what was going on.
Viktória: Yes, it triggers the truths, that this is again something very often happening in the inter-life period as well, you know, that you have those programs, some people call it courses, and then you do have learning happening, you do have teachers, you have to pass tests.
Maggie La Tourelle: Yes, and she talked about book!
Viktória: Books! [together] Yes. [Laughter.}
Maggie La Tourelle: I mean, are these the Akashic Records? You know, I validated her books and she said, I read four and I got four more, something like that. So, this is a time to heal relationships. Not only was the relationship between my mother and me healed, the whole family healed. It was absolutely miraculous: given her mental instability, we were quite a dysfunctional family, I hesitate to say that, but ... in the end, through her Alzheimer's, everybody was healed, in the most miraculous way. So, it's never too late to heal the past.
Viktória: Was that the greatest gift for you, would you say? Or what were the greatest gifts?
Maggie La Tourelle: Oh, now you're asking a question!
Viktória: Coming back to the beginning, you know we said this phrase: "the gift of Alzheimer's" and you immediately elaborated on that, how it's a controversial thing to say. As you said, it wasn't a joyride...
Maggie La Tourelle: No, no... well, who on Earth would say, Alzheimer's was a gift. On this Earth, it wasn't a gift, but in a dimension, you know, outside the physical dimension, it was. In that other dimension, there is universal love. There is no fear of death, no pain, no suffering, and that's what she taught me. These are gifts for us all to know that.
Viktória: Absolutely. Absolutely... well, I'm immensely grateful to have had this conversation with you.
Maggie La Tourelle: Thank you.
Viktória: It was absolutely beautiful and I got goose-pimples all the time, while you were talking. So, thank you very-very much for being here today.
Maggie La Tourelle: Thank you, Viktoria, I really enjoyed speaking to you.
Viktória: Me, too. Thank you so much. I wish you all the best to go on and spread this really important message. Thank you so much.
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To read further:
- click on the book's picture to order Maggie's book or - read the article published in the Telegraph written about her story. Click here... |