Really a very interesting topic. 

My mother (83) has begun to have some dementia, coupled with depression (this is how the doctors have diagnosed it)  that began after my Dad died about two years ago.

She will sometimes forget that Dad has died, or forget how long it's been.  So she'll say things like "What do you mean, he died?  I just saw him there on the couch a few minutes ago!"  Or, "What do you mean it's been nearly two years?  It was just a month ago!"  Other times, she is perfectly "normal". 

I too ask myself if the conventional medical explanation is really correct - that her mind is "damaged".  Or, like Beau suggests, is her consciousness starting to let go of the physical, little by little?  And is dementia a beginning of a "return to innocence" as Bardo suggests?

When Mom's consciousness is in a state where she is letting go of the physical, could she not really be SEEING (with her consciousness) my Dad sitting on the couch?  And in letting go of the physical is she also letting go of time, moving back and forth between the present and the time he died?

I'm not trying to glorify or make more palatable the state of dementia.  I'm beginning to see just how difficult and heartbreaking this will be going forward, assuming it progresses. 

But I'm wondering if there might be something fundamentally incorrect in our typical perception of a person with dementia or other so called mental illnesses.  We are stuck looking at things from such a conventional and maybe narrow perspective because we are stuck in the physical and stuck in time.

Reminds me of Castanada and "A Separate Reality" a little...