Alzheimer's

When artist Harlan Carl Scheffler's wife Barbara developed Alzheimer's disease, he determined to learn as much as possible about the condition and to understand what was happening to his life-long partner. A Bahá'í since childhood, he turned to religion as well as to science to provide insights into this physical disease of the brain. His conviction that there is a spiritual principle at work as well as a physical one is based on his study of the Bahá'í texts, and particularly the talks of `Abdu'l-Bahá in which He describes the spiritual reality of what appears to be a wholly physical world. Here Scheffler reflects on the implications of that spiritual reality and on the need for science to acknowledge that reality in order to meet the challenge of Alzheimer's.