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Attain your prime; then welcome old age, striving by
turns in the contest of life. May the Ordainer, maker of good things,
be pleased to grant you length of days! Keen of mind and keen of sight,
free from sickness, free from sin, rich in children, may we see you
rise as a friend, O Sun, till a long life's end!
Rig Veda 10.18.6 & 10.37.7. VE, P. 609; 319

Monday
LESSON 232
Some Truths About Aging
Growing old. Let's talk about it. There is a false concept that stops people from living the long, full life described in the Vedas.
Old age is as much a state of mind as of body. Today young people are
taught that when you become old and gray, you are in the way. Not a
nice thought! It is the older folk, the wiser folk, the experienced
elders, who have lived longer and therefore can see further, to whom
youth should be listening. But in our present times, young people have
become the spokesmen, and they are allowed to learn by their own
mistakes. What a perverted way to learn! They should be learning, if
they ever become open to it, from the mistakes of their elders, that is
if elders are willing to admit them. There is no excuse for ignorance.
Yet, looking around, we find it to be all pervasive, like the Hindu
God, equally distributed all over the world.
We are not
getting old. True, the physical body does change. It has done so from
birth, but it has a future. It really does. We live in it like we walk
in our shoes. My satguru said, "Live in your body as loosely as
your wear your sandals." It is not wise to accept the forebodings that
we are headed toward a doomsday, end of the world, end of the physical
body, absolute, total oblivion, and that is that. Think no more about
it.
Aging is an interesting process. Even though we are told
that all the cells in the body change and renew themselves every three
or four years, aging can be really scary, especially for those who
identify themselves as their body. But not for those of us who know
that we are not the body, we only live in it. It is our Earth suit in
which to function on this planet. In fact, we don't live in it
twenty-four hours a day. At least eight hours, while we are sleeping,
we are living in our astral suit, traveling here and there in the
Devaloka.
When we correctly look at aged people, we look at
minds that have been developed year after year after year. We look at
souls that have matured because of their sojourn on Earth. We see them
having gone through many birth karmas, prarabdha karmas
-- those we bring with us to live through -- and prevailed. We look
upon their situation as wonderful and enlightening, their wisdom as
useful and worthy to make part of our lives. After all, if we hear from
them, it is in our prarabdha karmas to have had that knowledge passed on to us. Only the ignorant would object. And they usually do.
The
mind never gets old, though the brain may. The mind never deteriorates.
Consciousness was never born and never dies. The mental body, which
works through the astral body and the Earth suit, does not age, does
not get weak, as modern people think of aging, as weakness, disability.
It becomes stronger and stronger, more mature and more expansive, as do
the emotions if they are understood and controlled from stage to stage.
Age is not an obstacle; it is a legacy. The most senior among us should
have faith in the future, not be led to think that turning fifty or
sixty or eighty is some morbid milestone. It's not. Take heart. When I
met Satguru Yogaswami, spiritual king of Jaffna, he was seventy-seven,
still walking twenty miles a day, still meditating hours a day, and he
would go on dynamically for another fifteen years. Some die young, of
course. Sankara was just thirty-two and Vivekananda thirty-nine. Others
die old. Sri Chandrasekharendra passed on in his hundredth year, and we
recently read of the passing of a 116-year-old yogi. The US
Census Bureau reported that from 1900 to 2000, the number of people in
the United States 85 and over grew tenfold, to four million, while the
overall population grew less than fourfold. The bureau projects that
the 85-and-over population will exceed 13 million by 2040. The number
of centenarians is expected to grow to more than 834,000, from just
63,000 in 1900. And many live surprisingly active and healthy lives,
even remaining in their careers after age 100.
Tuesday
LESSON 233
Secrets to Longevity
There is no requirement to die at any established
time, even if your doctor tells you that you have only two years to
live, even if your astrologer predicts it, even if your enemies hope
for your early demise. I was told that in Africa if a powerful medicine
man tells a person he is going to die, the fear and belief are so
strong that within hours he succumbs. Mind over matter? It's not much
different when everyone around us is chanting the senility mantra -- when your wife, kids, friends and boss keep saying, "You're not getting any younger, you know."
There are high laws to invoke, as age advances, to sustain the pranas, to strengthen the force of life within. Those who know wisdom's ways have overcome the "I'm getting old" syndrome, a mantra
no one should ever repeat, even once. They know how the mind works, and
by applying the laws, they have lived long, useful, happy and healthy
lives. The redundancy system of one part of the body failing and
another part taking over, especially within the brain, should be
understood by the aging person, to know that all is not lost. If memory
loss is experienced, things can often be memorized again and shifted
over to another part of the brain. These are simple techniques that are
based on the truth that the mind is constantly maturing; so are the
emotions, and so is the intelligence and accumulated knowledge. Most
importantly, the wisdom of how to use the knowledge and to judge
whether it is worthwhile at all -- that, too, is maturing from decade
to decade and life to life.
The psychological secret is to
have a goal, actually many goals, in service to humanity to accomplish.
People helping people, people serving people, that is what the Hindu
Dharma is and has been proclaiming for some 8,000 years or more. Good
goals and a will to live prolong life. It is even more life giving when
the goal of human existence, in helping people to fulfill dharma, is strengthened by daily sadhana. When pre-dawn morning pujas, scriptural reading, devotionals to the guru and meditation are performed without fail, the deeper side of ourselves is cultivated, and that in itself softens our karmas and prolongs life.
Life
is eternal on the inner planes, in the refined bodies of the soul. But
a physical body these days is hard to obtain. We have to go though the
embarrassment of birth, being slapped on the bottom, talked to in baby
talk, and learning to walk, read and write all over again. It takes
years and years before we get back to, if we ever do in the new life,
the wisdom years that we attained in the previous birth.
So,
take care of your physical body. No need to know too much about it, for
it knows what it needs. Listen to its messages, respond quickly, find
an ayurvedic doctor who can help you through the many changes
the body will naturally go through, and face each one positively. This
body is impermanent, true, but it is the only one you have, so make the
best use of it. You have good work to do, and knowledge born of
experience to pass along to the coming generation.
The older you get, the more disciplined you should get, the more sadhana
you should perform as you drop off the extraneous things of the world.
If your children leave home and cultivate other interests, find new
eager children to teach, new ways to serve. Be useful to others. Keep
planting the seeds of dharma. Maybe they will be annuals
instead of perennials, but keep planting for the future. Others might
be saying, "old and gray and in the way," but we say, "old and gray and
here to stay."
Wednesday
LESSON 234
Renewing Life's Plans
When the body reaches middle age, a change of pace
occurs. One feels like sitting rather than walking, sleeping more than
one did before, and it is more difficult to make long-term plans, ten,
twenty, thirty years ahead. At middle age, the question "What am I
going to do with my life?" has long been answered but still should be
asked, because at middle age, around forty, there is still a long life
ahead. It should be planned out as carefully as the life span that has
already been lived, based on the experiences gained from it. Many
people plan out their lives at eighteen or twenty, and others don't.
Nevertheless, when the change of life at middle age comes, both for men
and women, it is only wise to regroup one's thoughts, analyze one's
desires, motivations and educational skills, physical, mental and
emotional abilities. It is time to plan another forty years ahead with
as much enthusiasm and dynamism as can be mustered up. After all, they
say life begins at forty. A lot of people die at fifty or shortly
afterwards because they feel that everything is breaking down. That is
because they misinterpret what is happening. They think the death
experience is coming, whereas only a change of life, of life
experience, has occurred, which began at forty. If they took it as a
new passage in life, they could be on smooth sailing until eighty.
Forty
years of age is well known as a change of life. Seventy years of age is
the prime of life. Eighty is the fulfillment of that prime. An
eighty-year-old person, who has fulfilled the prime of life, holding a
new-born infant makes a complete circle of life. As one nears eighty
years of age, this is again time to revamp one's life, motivations,
desires, and to plan for the next forty years, which recognizes a
natural life span of 120 years. It is interesting to note that the
muscular structure of the physical body does not start to deteriorate
until after age seventy-two, and then only slightly, unless one
neglects to exercise. Mystics say that eighty years of age is a
difficult time to get through psychologically, physically and
emotionally, because it is definite that your are old when you are
eighty. Therefore, a new plan for motivation for the future should be
made well in advance, at least at age seventy-two, so that when eighty
rolls around it is well impressed in the subconscious mind that, this
might be time to start slowing down and preparing for life after the
life of the physical body.
It is at this juncture that one
should give one's wisdom to the younger generation, be dedicated to and
interested in children and their welfare, manage orphanages, set up
endowments and scholarships for educating the young, see into the lives
of promising people and encourage them to greater heights. This is the
time also to perform sadhana and intense tapas. This is where the yoga marga naturally
comes in a lifetime. The physical forces are fading, the muscular
structure diminishing. Great spiritual progress in burning out the last
prarabdha karmas, even those that did not manifest in this life,
can be accomplished at this time. If retirement is thought of, it
should be at eighty-one, eighty-two, eighty-three, eighty-four, around
that time. This should be the slowing-down period, yet still being
active in the mental, emotional, sociological, political, ecological
arenas. Here, now, is a time to practice hatha yoga and pay close attention to ayurveda.
There
is another forty years before the natural life span of 120 is reached,
plenty of time to fulfill the Sanatana Dharma, to get out there and
give of the wisdom that has been accumulated through the past eighty
years. This is the real fulfillment of a life well lived. Or if your
life was not well lived, you can teach people, from experience, what
they should not do, and explain if they don't follow that advice,
things won't work out right. If you did do what you should, you can
teach people that you did and how it worked out well. Nine times nine
is eighty-one; eight and one are nine. This is the beginning of the
final cycle toward the fulfillment of the Sanatana Dharma -- toward mukti.
Thursday
LESSON 235
Mentalities On Aging
Society in the Western world has no tolerance for
the aged, only for the young. Therefore, the aged and the aging must
look out for themselves and guide society into a new and mature outlook
as to their value to society as senior citizens within society. In the
Western world, the elderly are not respected. They are shoved aside,
considered useless, as they interfere with the pursuit of the life and
liberty of the younger people by giving advice and direction based on
their experience. That's why Western people have to learn by their own
experiences, because they have relegated the older generation to
obscurity. It has become part of the culture. Not so in Asia. In Asian
cultures traditionally the aged are venerated more and more each year
for their knowledge, their guidance, their wisdom, their compassion,
their existence. So much are they venerated in life, that when they
have given up their Earth suit they are still venerated and invoked for
their guidance, because of their accumulated wisdom and their new-found
powers in the inner world, so that the family, which makes up society,
moves forward uninterrupted by chaos or contention, wars and famine.
These ancestors in the inner world guide and correct and hopefully are
born again into the same family as a fresh, knowledgeable influence.
This is how Asian families progress as institutions from one stage of
development to another because of ancestor worship.
It might
not surprise you to hear this, but everyone is getting older. A
three-year-old will soon be a six-year-old; a twelve-year-old will soon
be eighteen. There is a great difference between the eighteen-year-old
and the six-year-old, and it all happened in twelve years. Society and
parents are adjusted to the differences between a six-year-old and an
eighteen-year-old. But Western society, and even modern Asian society,
is dearth in adjustments to understand the differences between the
forty-year-old and the eighty-year-old, their needs, their wants and
their desires.
Western psychology says the older you get, the
less planning you should do for the future; you should make short-term
plans. This philosophy does not take into account that no one is ever
too young to die, no matter how long-term his plans have been.
"Agedness" is a state of consciousness of settling down, giving up and
having nothing ahead in the future more than six months or one year. At
seventy-five, I myself have a ten-year plan. I'm going to have another
ten-year plan, then another one and still another one. Life is
willpower. Life is not only physical. Death can be foreseen as an
astrological time of trauma, and if given into, hey, you lose your
Earth suit -- no doubt about it! But if anticipated and known about,
that and other lows in the cycles of the energies of life can be
overcome with a strong mind and indomitable will, both of which never
age, never weaken and are constantly, day by day, month by month, year
by year, accumulating in strength and power.
Anyone who
passively gives in to old age simply does not understand the process.
He looks at his physical body and it looks different. But the
twenty-year old looks different than he did when he was ten, and that
was only ten years ago, and he is happy to look different. If the
twenty-year-old is aloof from the world, having fun, and is frivolous
and absents himself from the responsibility of the reality of the
material world, he is forgiven, coached along. If the seventy-year-old
were to be frivolous and absent himself from the realities of the
world, he'd be dubbed senile. That would be the end of him.
Friday
LESSON 236
Fears and Preparations
Society does not adequately explain the transitions
that one goes through in life. Children are smart at the age of four,
five or ten, and should be told what will happen through their whole
life, as a picture book. When they are going through adolescence, the
changes they experience should be explained to them. When they are
forty and are experiencing the withdrawal of the vitality of the
physical forces into a keenness of mind and shorter-term physical
goals, this should also be explained.
Before fifty your goals
are simply for the future, not knowing what that is. When the forces
turn around at fifty, you start to withdraw. The body does not throw
off the toxins like it used to. It does not heal itself like it used
to. It does not regenerate itself like it used to. Then at sixty the
forces tend to even out.
Two things people are often worried
about and need to firm their minds against are the youthful fear "Who
is going to take care of me?" and the aged fear "Who is going to take
care of me?" These fears are very similar. The truth is, if you are not
driven to fulfill dharma, you get old. You get old attitudes.
You get set in your ways -- bigoted, opinionated, communal, divisive.
You seek division rather than amalgamation, become racist, basically
self-centered and old by clinging onto your old ideas and not keeping
up with the changing times. And, having perfected grossness and
subtlety of selfishness, you become ignorantly dominant as an elder,
manipulating sons, daughters and relatives for travel, comforts and
other kinds of considerations. This is not the Sanatana Dharma. This is
the "asanatana dharma" of the lower nature. Elders beware! You
cannot hide behind your old age. The mind does not get old. Nor do the
emotions. The astral body does not deteriorate. Neither does the body
of the purusha, the soul. It is only the physical body that is slowly dissolving into the essences from which it came.
It
is well known that even certain advanced souls on the planet may do
well when they are young but at their still unperfected stage of
evolution have the propensity of deterioration in spirit, mind,
emotions as the body sinks, through age, into the substances from which
it is created. This is not Sanatana Dharma as emulated by spiritual,
devotional, happy, religious men and women who have experienced the
frailties of the physique and added greater zeal, power and joy to the
now dominant energies of the intellect and the soul. Let there be no
mistake that admittance to old age is to admit failure on the path to
enlightenment. Admittance to old age is to invoke another birth.
Admittance to old age means being set in one's ways, not wanting to be
interfered with by the young, unable to learn anything more or new,
holding an inflexibility that cannot be challenged.
In the
West, growing old is something people take for granted, something they
do not look forward to, and yet it happens. And since it does happen
and they don't look forward to it, they try to squeeze everything out
of what presents itself to them. In the East they look at growing old
in a different way, more in the line of becoming full, becoming mature,
becoming satisfied.
But very few people become satisfied in
the West. They are too self-centered. And the balance between husband
and wife is reversed. The woman is trying to live the part of a man and
the poor man, he doesn't have a chance. Consequently, old age sets in
very quickly, and nothing is left to do but sit and grumble about the
instinctive nature: "She didn't bring my food in on time. Somebody made
a noise and I couldn't sleep," and all the various things that people,
as they get older and older, find to complain about. There is nothing
profound, which is too bad, because each and every one has profundity
within them.
Saturday
LESSON 237
Growing Old Gracefully
A short while ago I had the privilege of visiting a
rest home for elderly ladies. Being experienced in looking at people
and discerning the type of lives they had lived, seeing these ladies
who sat grumbling, I could see the types of lives they lived in their
marriages. I would say that all but two in the entire group had hung
divorce over their husband's head all through life. That is how they
got their way: "If you don't give me what I want, I will divorce you!"
But there were two souls sitting there who were also suffering, but
they were happy. They had an inner joy. The conditions weren't too good
-- they never are in such places -- but these two souls sat happily
observing, and I could see that they were understanding what they
observed. That is the secret of growing old, being able to understand
what you observe.
To grow old gracefully -- and to get away
from the habit of just growing old naturally and thus physically and
emotionally losing the spirit entirely -- you have to plan ahead. You
have to know where you are going. Everyone who goes on in life is going
to get old, believe it or not. But we can pass through those years
beautifully, providing the balance is right. You get that right balance
by following good advice and conquering the mistakes that you have made
in the past and making them right.
When we are selfish,
self-centered and flare up and lose control of ourselves, we are like
animals. When we reflect understanding, have control of ourselves and
use our will to conquer our lower nature, we are using the Godly part
of our mind. That's why I say people do just exactly what they want to
do. It is either the spiritual being that is stronger, or the animal
within them that is stronger. If they control the animal nature, then
what happens? The spiritual being automatically takes over.
If
they live according to the rules of the animal nature, then what
happens? They snuff out the spirit, they snuff out life, and they
decay. Decay immediately sets in. It is terrible to think about, but
that's the rule. That's what happens. That's why we have basic laws and
basic principles to live by. If we live by them, automatically good
things will happen. You don't even have to wish or hope. Good things
will just automatically come along. And if you don't live by the laws,
automatically things that aren't too palatable present themselves
before you, and you get entangled in them quite automatically.
So,
let's think about the years to come. Let's see if we are laying the
foundation for our mature years to rot away, or to become beautiful and
content and happy with ourselves. Look into your home right now. Look
at your life. What are you doing now? What have you done? What are you
going to do? Do you have a foundation for a future that is real and
permanent and full and joyous and happy? Or is your life like a child's
sandbox? These are the things we have to face as we look ahead to our
own advanced age.
So, don't come to me this morning and say, "You gave a very nice upadesha,
Gurudeva. I really got so much out of it." Rather, come back in ten
years and let me see by your radiant face how much you got out of it.
That will make me happy. Let me see by your tomorrows and how you meet
challenges -- when various things come up that you should do and you
are given advice on what to do -- how you face them, how polite you
are, how kindly you are, how understanding you are. That will show your
sincerity, your reality, your character as individuals.
Sunday
LESSON 238
Real Security Lies Within
It is a fast-moving age. Many people are now either
on tranquilizers, alcohol, anti-depressants, nicotine, stimulants or
high-powered vitamins of one kind or another to stabilize their
emotions enough to get by, just to get by, to get through all the
various things that present themselves that they can't cope with due to
the rickety foundations that they have in their home. What they really
want and need is to get within, to get quiet enough to get an answer
within themselves that will give them a little security. But there is
no narcotic, no stimulant, no tranquilizer, no high-powered vitamin
that is going to take you within. The only way is to sit down and
become quiet, and not throw your energy into concentrating on how you
are going to out-do or out-smart somebody else, get a little bit better
control over your husband's finances or anything like that. That is not
going to do it. That will bring sure misery, a fine hell on Earth,
really. That's where the only hell is anyway. No, the way to true
security is getting in touch with the divine spirit within you.
Try
to feel it permeating you. Find out what life is. You are going to give
up this physical body someday. Find out what's going to happen to you
when you die. You can find out. Find out whether you are immortal or
not. You will be able to go within yourself and find that out if you
become quiet enough. Then you will not fear death. Then you will be
somebody within yourself. A great new life force will permeate you. At
first you won't know where it comes from or where it's going, but it
will be there, and you won't have to try to be positive or think
positively or make affirmations about this and that. You will be Mr. or
Mrs. Positive. That is spiritual life.
There comes a time when
you have to buckle down and do the right thing, because we are all
faced with growing old. Growing old can be decay or it can be full,
joyous and beautiful. Think about that. Where are you headed? Are you
headed for decay and misery, to drop back into the animal mind and
complain about how little the five senses have to offer when you get
old? Are you headed for complaints, suffering over old memories that
pop up through the subconscious mind that you no longer have the will
to even try to penetrate and understand but still have to live with? Or
are you going to become full and beautiful by adjusting your life right
now so that you will have an alive, alert mind to the end? The choice
is yours. You must start now.
Aging is inevitable. The years
go by. They go by so quickly, we hardly notice them. We can go on in
our old habit patterns, becoming stronger and stronger in the negative
ones; and the positive ones eventually will turn to negative ones, too.
That's a certainty of evolution we don't want to look forward to. But
there is another way. Become a spiritual being. That is your goal, your
liberation, for as the years go by you can live in heaven, or you can
live in your own self-created hell, and you don't want to do that.
Think about it and create a heaven right now by living with Siva.
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