Hinduism has a particular view of the spiritual path as coming in stages of the life. The older person is one who has withdrawn, not in the sense of withdrawing from life. Not at all. But withdrawing from the appeal of the material world.
Robert: Welcome to Inner Sight. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present but not yet fully recognized. You have within you the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way with new eyes. So, stay with us, and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Our topic for today is aging on the pathway of the soul. Our opening thought for today is a quote from Aging on the Pathway of the Soul, taken from one of the World Goodwill Commentaries. We like this thought. Let’s pay close attention to it because it’s one that really requires some thought. “Instead of regarding physical age as a period of withdrawal, a time when life is closing in, becoming limited, quiet and restricted, people should realize that what is really happening is that spiritual opportunities are multiplying. The vistas of the soul are spreading in increasing glory as the barriers of small daily duties fall away, leaving them free to live as souls.” I’d like to give some credit to the founder of Lucis Trust. All of the dialogue on this show emanates from the works of Alice Bailey. She is the founder of the Lucis Trust organization. She’s written twenty-four volumes of spiritual philosophy literature and we would like you to really pay attention to our themes that all come from her works. Now, to speak with Sarah and Dale about this topic: What do you think about the efforts to extend the length of life well into old age?
Sarah: Well, it seems to be a growing phenomenon that medical science can prolong the body well past the limits of even a few decades ago. This is a worldwide phenomenon and yet I think spiritually many of us believe that the duration of time on earth is known to the soul from the beginning and that every lifetime has a duration that is, in a sense, fixed in terms of the soul’s plan for that lifetime. So, I’ve always wondered when you take extreme measures to prolong the life of the body into old age, past a time when there is enjoyment or growth, maybe it’s not really serving any good purpose. I would think the better focus would be on making the most of the years you have. And that is increasingly an issue that is gripping many societies because people live so long, not because of any particular efforts they’re making, but just good health, nutrition, medical care enable us to live into the seventies, eighties and nineties in huge numbers. In fact, the United Nations, a couple of years ago, held a yearlong focus on the needs of older persons. That was in 1999 and now, in April, there’s going to be a follow up conference in Madrid on what societies and governments should do to make the older person a contributing member of society and make the last years abundant and fruitful.
Dale: I think this preoccupation that some people have with prolonging the physical life and prolonging the life of the physical body, to me implies a tendency to hold on to all that is physical, when perhaps it might be a better and more healthy attitude just to adopt a let go policy. It’s a time to be letting go, I think, especially of that which is physical because this is just a very temporary vehicle—as sometimes the term is used—for the short duration of the soul in the world. So, I think that all this preoccupation with trying to preserve and keep the physical body going as long as it can may be counterproductive.
Sarah: Well, I think the keyword is “extend”. Your question was, “What do you think about the efforts to extend the length of life?” That sounds like kind of a forcing process, doesn’t it? Some people—many people actually—are genetically disposed to living very long lives, and that’s wonderful because that’s natural. We’re not talking about that kind of phenomenon, but the extreme efforts of having people on machines to keep them breathing and giving them water and food intravenously and so on over a long period of time when the body probably would have given up on its own auspices. I think that’s what we’re talking about.
Robert: Well then, of course, we’ve got other extreme measures, such as Walt Disney and many others. There was a documentary on the other day about the number of people going to cryogenics and their intention is to come back maybe a thousand years in the future.
Sarah: Well, that’s for people who believe their whole essence is tied up in a particular physical body, which thankfully I don’t believe because I’m not that thrilled with mine. I’ve never been able to understand why you’d want to keep this carcass around forever and ever. Anyway, we digress.
Robert: Some people say that the spiritual life can be pursued at any time of life. Others say that old age is the best time. What do you think?
Sarah: Well, the Eastern part of the world, especially the Asian countries, hold old age in great veneration and their religious teachings view the old, aged person as wise and gifted spiritually. But then there’s another view that says, why shouldn’t you be able to develop spiritually at any time of your life, because the whole of life is a time for gaining spiritual insight. So, I think that there is no time in the life when the soul can’t make its will known to the physical and mental person if they are responsive to it. For example, some children come in with a very developed spiritual consciousness even as very, very young children, but there are others—probably the vast majority—who live their early years pursuing material things—a career, talents, abilities that have to do with the material realm—and that’s right for them, and it isn’t until much later in life that they might turn their thoughts to the spiritual realm. Everybody’s different. Hinduism has a particular view of the spiritual path as coming in stages of the life. One goes through the stage of childhood, the stage of being a student, then there’s the householder stage when you are married and you develop your career and you take care of your family and then, after all of that has been done, then you become what used to be called the “Forest Dweller.” People would, I guess, actually leave their homes and go out into the forest and wander free of all responsibilities to develop their spiritual consciousness and then return to the community as a Sannyasin. I’m not sure how the word is pronounced, it’s a Sanskrit word, but it means one who has gained in wisdom by giving up or renouncing everything of the material realm. So, they saw life as a series of stages or cycles. I think my own view is that it ought to be a little more free-form in the sense of each soul having a different plan.
Dale: I think it depends, yes, on the society that one grows up in, whether this study or pursuit of the spiritual life can take place. In a very industrialized society like we live in, it tends to get pushed aside because we’re so caught up in the daily life of the material world and making money and making a living and all of that. So, any attention to what we might consider a spiritual life tends to get pushed aside for a time and then, as usually, as one gets into older age, those kinds of interests begin to come into play, I think. It may have to do with, like you said, the plan of the soul, when at a certain stage in the life then the soul is more able to make an impact on that outer life.
Sarah: I think another difference contrasting the Eastern and Western views of old age and spirituality is that in the East, in the Hindu society one had to leave the community and the home and go off and wander in the forest. I even read about a branch within Hinduism, the Jain movement where they went out completely naked. Can you imagine? They were completely free of all material ties. (laughter) I find that really fascinating to think about. But in the West, I think the goal is not to leave the home and society, but to transform your life where you are within your community, within your home. The writings of Alice Bailey say that to this person in the West, the call remains the same, but the “disciple goes not out.” He remains where he is and yet his attitude toward life is fundamentally altered. His whole inner life becomes a kind of a withdrawing, and that’s what I think the real meaning of the Sannyasin is. The older person is one who has withdrawn, not in the sense of withdrawing from life. Not at all. But withdrawing from the appeal of the material world, withdrawing the consciousness onto a more abstract level, not being so fixed on the outer level, where career and wealth and even family are found, but developing the inner spiritual and mental life.
Dale: Right. There’s another little matter here that popped into my head: that as we age, we sometimes think that we are the one that is aging. In other words, there is a difference here. What is aging is simply our physical body. But the real you, the real self within that body, your body…
Sarah: It might be getting younger and younger!
Dale: It has no age at all actually. The soul doesn’t think in terms of age as we understand it. We say, “I’m getting old,” “I’ve got arthritis,” “I’ve got pain,” “I’ve got this and that kind of creakiness,” and it isn’t “I” at all. The identity is so closely identified with the physical body. We have to be able to differentiate between those two.
Sarah: That reminds me of that wonderful line from the Bob Dylan song: “Ah, but I was older then, I’m younger than that now.” I love that! You have to be a certain age to know that he really was hitting on something. “I’m younger than that now.” I was never so old as when I was a kid.
Dale: Well, a lot of people have this expression, “I may be sixty-five years old, but I feel like I’m thirty-five.” So, they’re beginning to identify with that inner self that has no age and that’s what really keeps you young.
Robert: Does old age necessarily bring wisdom?
Sarah: Well, that’s a good question. It brings to mind that old cliche, “There’s no fool like an old fool,” which I’m beginning to realize has a certain sting to it. When you’re very young and you make mistakes, you think well, okay, I’ve never experienced that before; give me some time and I’ll get my act straight. But as you get older and you find yourself making the same mistakes over and over, you begin to realize there are some things probably I’m never going to learn in this particular lifetime. So, you don’t necessarily get wiser as you get older. You can though; it’s a matter of choice. I think you have to choose wisdom, you have to choose humility, which is a direct component of wisdom, I think, because the humility of facing yourself and learning from experience is what opens you up to wisdom. If you go through life with a certain fixed attitude about yourself and a sense of being always right, then you don’t face your mistakes and you don’t learn.
Dale: No, it’s a matter of applying the experience and the knowledge that you’ve gained in life—assuming that you have gained in life, and most people have just by simply being and living—and applying that with love. In fact, it’s said in the Bailey books that wisdom comes after the knowledge gained in life. Knowledge precedes wisdom and it takes the combination of applying knowledge with love to express wisdom. So, it’s really based on loving understanding.
Sarah: I think there are certain factors that we can all cultivate that might bring wisdom in old age. One would be cultivating a habit of looking back at your life and trying to see patterns and trying to identify certain cycles. I’ve known people that seem to be able to break down their life in terms of ten-year cycles or seven-year cycles. When they do this they can see definite changes and new levels reached at each cycle. It’s quite interesting to examine your life in that way. The seven-year cycle is quite frequently used on the spiritual path. If you identify yourself at the age of seven, fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, thirty-five and so on, you can see real expansions of consciousness, probably real crises in the sense of turning points that are reached, that can help you to see that you are in fact gaining in wisdom, and that can be deeply encouraging. There are certain years within the life that the Ageless Wisdom says are really crucial. One is the twenty-eighth year. Now, that’s not hard and fast; you could say that could be between twenty-seven and twenty-nine. You can identify quite often a real turning point there and at the age of thirty-five or so. Another point is around the age of fifty-six, fifty-seven, and another at sixty-three. These are critical points in the evolution of any soul.
Dale: Yes, and these are stages that have been developed through what we call the Ageless Wisdom, which is kind of an interesting term; we’re talking about age and here is the wisdom of these teachings in the books of Alice Bailey which are described as being ageless because they are applicable to any time. They are applicable now and will be in the future and were in the past, so they don’t have an age to them. I think that’s the great thing about wisdom—that there is an ageless truth to it.
Sarah: Yes, the aging factor again—coming back to this point—is the body, and there’s no denying that as one gets older the body does begin to lose some of its vitality and its elasticity, in all senses of that word. But if you have cultivated a detachment toward your body, toward the outer material world, if you’ve cultivated a habit of lessening your desires for material things, including your own material appearance, and so on, then you can begin to see that the wisdom of life is the realization that there’s so much more to life than the outer realm. There is something that happens as people get older that makes them especially open to the inner, subjective view of the world.
Robert: Can spiritual disciplines such as meditation and study help to prepare one for old age?
Sarah: Yes, I think they can be a tremendous preparation, and anyone at any stage of life can develop the practice of meditation and spiritual study. All of that effort does lead toward a really meaningful old age. But there are specific techniques, such as developing the continuity of consciousness when one falls asleep, for example, that can help one to prepare for death, it’s said. But I would say to our listeners, please don’t call us up and ask us for these techniques. They are techniques that one learns through deep study and meditation and can’t be simply handed out to a beginner. But there are practices that can enable one to disengage one’s focus and one’s concentration from the outer realm and the brain component and begin to withdraw to the more abstract levels, and at the time of death that abstraction is complete and total.
Dale: Also, I just want to mention that in the back of the booklet we’re giving away today, Aging on the Pathway of the Soul, there are excerpts from a number of aged people who have kindly written out their impressions of their old age, particularly having to do with this question of study and meditation. All of these people have spent a good part of their life in study and meditation and they express how much that has helped them through these later years. Their lives are fuller and their minds are still active and they have deepened their life experience by spiritual study and this is very, very important to them. There are fascinating excerpts in the back of this commentary from these wonderful people.
Sarah: And what struck me in reading them was what joy these people felt in looking back over their lives. We know some of them personally and we know that their lives were not particularly blessed with freedom from problems—not at all. Many of them endured real crises, but they looked back at their life with joy because they could see the pattern of the soul unfolding. There was meaning in their lives and I think that comes from meditation and study. You’re looking for the pattern, you’re looking for how you fit into the larger whole. You’re not just focused on your own individuality but how you built relationships with others and how you served God’s Plan. This is what comes through meditation and study, and they were able to identify that. Their testimonials are really touching to read and encouraging.
Dale: Yes, I just might mention one lady here. She was eighty-four years old and she had done everything in her life, and she said, “You come to the conclusion that, as Saint Paul put it, ‘having done all to stand.’” That’s about pretty much what many people at the close of their lives have to do.
Robert: That’s about all the time we have for our discussion today. You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we’d like to close with a world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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