Each life is just part of an ongoing process for the soul if you believe in reincarnation; this is just one blip on the screen of eternity. You have to see life as a continuing, expanding, and total experience, to see the wholeness in which each part of your life has its own unique value when it’s rightly blended with all the others.
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. I like this thought from Aging on the Pathway of the Soul, and the thought is, “Many older persons still see themselves as vigorous individuals. Stopping work entirely would be boring for them. Their inner consciousness seeks more growth. For them, a mind that shuts down at sixty-five or seventy is an invitation to premature death.” I think that’s a thought worth thinking about because I think one of the worst things we do is to subconsciously, or even consciously, say to ourselves that we’re at a particular age and therefore we should be behaving in a particular way, and that’s very wrong. In fact, the World Goodwill booklet Aging on the Pathway of the Soul mentions a phenomenon called the “age wave,” and I’d like Sarah and Dale to speak about that. What is that?
Sarah: The age wave is a kind of a metaphor for the growing proportion of older people on the planet. The United Nations, as we’ve mentioned in previous programs, is focused on this problem. I don’t mean by the word “problem” that it’s a bad thing. Its a condition in humanity that people are living much longer today. The UN has found out that the fastest growing age group in the world—in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere and in poor as well as wealthy societies—is people over eighty. So, the United Nations declared 1999 as the Year of Older Persons, and in April, they are having a follow up conference on aging, which will be held in Madrid.
Dale: Yes, and the age wave also refers to the baby boomers. That’s actually where it began, I think, and it’s now called the “gray wave,” another term they use because the baby boomers have reached this stage where they’re beginning to gray. But it started back in 1946 through 1964 when the boomers were born and began growing, and this great phenomenon of baby boomers has affected every segment of society from the day they were born until today. As they have grown up, they have affected the housing markets, food production, the clothing, education, culture and medical care. The music and culture that we enjoy is often influenced by the predominant number of people in that age group, which happened to be the baby boomers. So, as they go along, they affect everything in society.
Sarah: Well, it sounds as if we’re talking about two different waves: the wave of the baby boomers and the other wave of people, the growing number of very old, the eighty- and ninety-year-olds, the hundred-year-olds—there’s been a huge increase in the number of people who live past one hundred. So, it sounds as if there are these two waves that society everywhere is having to cope with and it’s a real challenge. But it’s a wonderful thing!
Dale: Yes, it’s a fairly new thing because of all the medical treatments that we have now, the better diets and the better emphasis on exercise; people are living longer.
Sarah: And vaccinations. I just read a book about the flu that came after World War I in1918 that killed, I think, sixty million people, far more than were killed in World War I itself. The flu used to wipe out vast numbers. So, it’s all of these causes that are creating these waves in society that need attention and right social policy.
Robert: I view the Lucis Trust organization as a spiritual philosophy organization. How can spiritual study and meditation be helpful to our aging population?
Sarah: Well, it’s a time of life when in most cases the concerns of the family that one might be raising, one’s career, one’s ambitions in the world in terms of self-development, have probably been dealt with and resolved satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily, but when you become a certain age you find your attention is turning toward a more abstract level of life, and that is ideal for really focusing on and developing the spiritual consciousness. Not that the soul can’t be contacted and known at any time in life, and we’ve mentioned that many children today seem to have such a sense of the spiritual realm at a very young age, but the older person is free from a lot of the concerns of business, family and so on, and they can develop the spiritual life. The problem is that at the same time that one’s consciousness is being freed up for spiritual pursuits, one’s body is probably getting older and beginning to creak and moan and put up little cries of demands for attention. There is kind of a crisis created as the body ages, which depends on how much attention you’re going to give it. Certainly, you have to give your physical body right medical care and right diet and rest and vitamins and all of that, but there is, I think, a point where you have to decide that it’s going to creak and groan on its own, and you have other things to think about. If it isn’t something that can be corrected or isn’t terribly serious, you have to learn to override its increasing demands, and this is what gets in the way of spiritual development for a lot of people.
Dale: It’s where your focus is, and if your focus is strictly on your physical ailments, then that’s where all your energies are going to be directed, and it’s going to really pull you down right to that physical level. But putting an emphasis on spiritual study and meditation, for example, can really lift the focus of your consciousness and your daily life onto another level.
Sarah: And free it from all the demands of the body.
Dale: Absolutely, yes, you can free it from that. I was just struck by one of the comments in this pamphlet that we’re giving away, Aging on the Pathway of the Soul. A gentleman who now lives in California, he’s eighty-eight years old, and he’s experienced this very thing that we’re talking about. If I can just read this little passage here, he says, “Through constant, unbroken meditation, my thinking is clearer and I grasp solutions to problems more quickly. My attitude towards people is more loving and understanding and their attitude toward me is reflected back. I have also found that I am better able to cope with round the clock custodial care of my wife, who is in advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and at the same time carry on a cheerful relationship with our neighbours. I find increased happiness in all of my associations.” So, here is a man that has applied spiritual teachings to his life and it has really been a liberating force to him.
Sarah: I think the secret to this man’s realization is that, whatever stage we’re in in life we have to make the most of it, and whatever stage we’re in is one that offers some gain to the life of the soul if we look for it. If we are young and raising a family, that’s where our consciousness should be, on our loved ones, on our family relationships. If we’re developing a career, that offers an opportunity for real contribution and service to the world, which is deeply spiritual. But when we’re older, as this man seemed to realize, we don’t probably have quite such a place of influence and authority on the worldly level if we aren’t working any more or involved in our children’s lives so directly. We might be a little bit more in the background. We might feel—if we mind that—that the world is passing us by. But the positive side of that is that we can use that opportunity to cultivate a kind of an abstraction from the outer world, which is really productive to the life of the soul. Learning to abstract your consciousness, to withdraw it from the outer level of form and personality and the material plane is absolutely necessary if you’re going to develop a sense of the soul, the indwelling divinity within you, and within everyone. So that period of withdrawal, of abstraction, of being more on the sidelines, is a wonderful opportunity for the soul if we want to make it so.
Dale: Absolutely. I agree with everything you said there, especially about providing a channel for that soul to come through, those soul values. It’s always there; it’s not something that’s been way off in space somewhere. It’s part of you; it’s what you are, essentially. It’s allowing that inner self to really come through and take charge of your life.
Sarah: And it’s an opportunity for service. Whatever stage of life we’re in, we can serve. We might think that we have to be active in the world to serve, and that is one way of serving, but this abstracted withdrawing from life gives us the chance to serve mentally through meditation and prayer. And think of the spiritual Hierarchy, the Masters who stand behind human evolution. They don’t interfere with human actions and decisions, but they radiate energies of light and love and the will to good to affect human consciousness, to uplift it, to stimulate it. We can serve in that same way, and the elderly in particular, because they’re not so engrossed in worldly concerns, they have free minds that can work in this way, radiating energies into human consciousness to help prompt right decisions, right choices.
Robert: I think what both of you saying is so important because I think this society teaches us that old age is totally negative, and what I’m hearing you say is that there is great joy to be found in old age and we should not really accept the subliminal teachings of our society. You’re giving me hope, Sarah and Dale, as I enter old age, of looking and discovering that joy in old age and offsetting some of the negativity our society has.
Dale: Oh, come on, you’re not there yet. (laughter)
Robert: Well, we’re all on the same conveyor belt, I guess. (laughter) What things can elders do to help themselves through their later years?
Sarah: I saw a television program about a study of the very, very old a few years ago that found there are certain characteristics that they all seemed to have, and by the very oldjus is meant people who reach one hundred or more, and as I mentioned there are more and more of those people worldwide that live past the century mark. They found that one of the distinguishing characteristics was the ability to accept loss. Of course, living that long they had endured great losses of loved ones, of career and so on falling through. They knew very well what disappointment and pain were, but they seemed to be able to roll with the punches, to grieve, to suffer and then to go on, with the willingness to live. One example was a lady who was over one hundred, who just the day before she was interviewed had lost her daughter, seventy-five years old, to a heart attack. Here was this extremely old lady having lost her only child, and she said, “I just knew I had to give her back to God with the same love that I accepted her with when she was born.” Another characteristic was seeing life as an ongoing project, not as a done deed. Even when you’re one hundred, it’s still an ongoing project; they seem to understand this. I remember they interviewed a one hundred- and three-year-old lady who said, “Every day I try to be a better person.” God bless her; if she’s one- hundred and three and still trying to be a better person so can we all keep trying. That touches on a very spiritual quality which is: persistence. Persistence in pursuing the life of the soul, of the spiritual path, never giving up, and applying a rhythmic effort, every day making that effort, no matter how you feel or how discouraged you might be. The third quality was a kind of gratitude for life and a joy in simplicity. They interviewed a woman who was single, had never married, who lived in the South, in a boarding house, in a single room and sold tickets at the movie theatre. That was her job in life and she was over one hundred, and I remember the interviewer asking her if she enjoyed her life and she said, “Yes!” and her eyes were shining. She didn’t need a lot to enjoy her life.
Dale: Yes, and another thing that many elderly people have found very valuable is doing what they call “journaling.” In other words, keeping a journal or writing down your thoughts, your impressions, particularly of your life. It doesn’t have to be a long autobiography, but go through the events in your life and write them down and reflect on what your thoughts were at the time, and your relationships with other people at the time, and your thoughts and your feelings, and particularly what your innermost spiritual thoughts might have been and see how you worked through that stage of your life, and be very honest with yourself. You don’t have to show this to anybody but it’s a way of giving yourself a life review because, in a sense, this is what the soul does after the time of death. The soul has what is called a “life review,” and it reviews life very quickly.
Sarah: That’s what they mean when they say “My life passed before my eyes”— people who nearly die.
Dale: That’s right. And you know, speaking of that, I remember people describing their near-death experiences that they’ve had, and one lady I remember described it as a movie going backwards very quickly, very rapidly, but it was her whole life.
Sarah: And the high points are right there for you to see. EEK! (laughter)
Dale: It’s not so that you beat up on yourself or denigrate yourself because of all the bad things you’ve done. It’s to look at yourself objectively and those experiences objectively and see how you could have handled that better and see where you could have brought more balance into your life, because this will help you after you make that transition.
Sarah: I think one of the most important qualities to carry with us into old age that we can all begin to cultivate now is something from the books of Alice Bailey that applies specifically to these times, which are so tumultuous and so difficult to discern where we’re headed. She wrote that we should cultivate plasticity or pliability, learn to bend and adapt. She said, “In these days you will need to ponder on this matter of the form, for with the coming in of a new era comes a period of much disruption until the forms can adapt themselves to the new and higher spiritual vibration,” and that applies to our own forms, our own being. She said, “In that adaptation, those who have cultivated pliability and adaptability, progress with less disruption than those who are more crystallized and fixed. So, she said, “Cultivate responsiveness to the Great Ones, aim at mental expansion and keep learning. Think whenever possible in terms abstract or numerical [which is interesting] and by loving all, work at the plasticity of the astral body. In love of all that breathes comes capacity to vibrate universally.”
Robert: I was just thinking about what you have mentioned before and the way I view what you’re saying is that successful old age is really a quality of mind. I remember my Norwegian aunt who lived to one hundred and ten and she thought like a thirty-year-old. There was always a zest for life, and what am I going to do tomorrow? What’s next? Do you have any more examples or comments from your group of elders?
Dale: In this booklet that we’re giving away, Aging on the Pathway of the Soul, in the back there are a number of comments by elderly people. Some of them have been involved in spiritual work a good part of their life, and so they’ve kindly written a few comments. One of them is from a lady who was eighty-nine years old at the time and she says, “With retirement came a priceless gift. What a joy it was to have time to read widely, to reflect, to study world news in depth, to expand my horizons, to keep in touch with the widely scattered family…” Another lady who is eighty-four remarks in a very humorous way, “It is so much easier to laugh at diminishing physical energy and loss of immediate vocabulary recall, with others who find themselves in just the same situation.” (laughter) So, you could commiserate with your other elders about your pains. Then there is this thoughtful one from another man who was only seventy-two; he was a child actually in comparison: “One may regret the prospect of discomfort in the process of death, but as the time approaches one includes the physical body among all the things that are marked ready for the discard.” So, he has made that distinction between the physical needs and purely spiritual needs and he’s ready to move on.
Sarah: I suppose what all of these people have in common is an interest in life. They aren’t always looking back at what was, but they’re fully in the present, which is a very Buddhist attitude. We can prepare for the future, but really all we have is the now. The ability to be content, happy, interested and grateful for the present moment, I think is absolutely vital to the soul. I was mentioning in another program the book by Ram Das, who wrote Be Here Now. His latest book is Still Here. He had a stroke and was critically ill, but he’s making a recovery; he’s in a wheelchair. His book is wonderful because it shows that even with that severe limitation, he still really enjoys life and he still feels very vitalized spiritually. It reminds me of the comment of one elderly coworker of ours who said that you have to see life as a continuing, expanding, and total experience, to see the wholeness in which each part of your life has its own unique value when it’s rightly blended with all the others. Instead of compartmentalizing our lives, we have to see each stage as just part of a whole. And of course, each life is just part of an ongoing process for the soul if you believe in reincarnation; this is just one blip on the screen of eternity.
Dale: This is an interesting short verse in a poem that one of these elderly people was familiar with and was inspired by. It’s a poem by Longfellow, and this little verse goes like this: “For age is opportunity no less / Than youth itself, though in another dress, / And as the evening twilight fades away / The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.”
Robert: Well, 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 the 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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