老年——意识拓展与灵性成长的“第二青春期”

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衰老是一种不必要的“流行病”

为何拼命要保持年轻，却老得更快？

年轻和年老都有它们应在的位置，并且在你们人类的架构内各自扮演着重要的角色。

你们习惯于从遗传的角度来思考问题。从物质的角度看，而且以一种不同于你们所想象的方式，遗传是很重要的。然而，某些世间经验依赖于时间的持续，是心智在漫长的人间岁月中玩转其经验的结果。

有一些特定的功能十分自然地运作起来了，而你们的科学家几乎没有注意到，更不用说理解了。当身体里面的心智清楚地看到它在地球上的时间即将结束时，心智与灵性上的加速就发生了。这种加速在很多方面就像青少年在他们创造性活动爆发时的体验，伴随着问题的产生，还有为一种全新人格的成长和完成所做的准备。

这种加速现象本来会是相当明显的，如果不是因为你们目前的信念体系，老年人不得不通过这个体系来诠释其经验的话。许多意识扩展的例子，以及心智和灵性成长的例子，都被你们诠释为衰老之象。没有人研究这两者之间的重要关联：老年人的主观经验——特别是在“老糊涂”的状态下的经验，以及其他年龄的人有关意识扩展的经验（无论是自然的还是药物诱导的）。

任何这样的感觉都会立即被老年人压下去，因为他们害怕被诊断为“年老糊涂”。然而，这些经验会影响大脑的右半球，从而将能力释放出来，以一种多少与青春期相同的方式。

那么，当时候到了，一个人就会开始看到世俗生活之外的东西，开始打开觉察的多个维度，按你们的说法，那是当他仍高度专注于正常成人生活的以物质为导向的焦点时，所无法做到的。不幸的是，人格通常没有可以支持这种扩展的信念体系。自然的治疗，无论是身体还是精神上的治疗，都被否定了。药物常被用作镇静剂，蒙蔽了那些看似扭曲的清晰视象。这却是你们生命中最具创造性、最可贵的一个面向。相反的，你们的社会让老年人感到自己很没用。当然，他们自己也常常是这么认为的，而且他们在你们团体中的经历并没有让他们做好面对那种主观经验的准备。

没有老师指导他们说，老年是人生极具创造力的一段时光。人们往往以一种贬损的方式将老年和童年联系起来，但人格却是在一种同样富创造力的状态里。当然，我现在是从总体上说的，因为你们的各种生活状况如此扭曲了自然的情况。

甚至所发生的化学与荷尔蒙的改变，也对那时候的精神及灵性成长有所助益。因为你们的信念系统，老年人本来可以得到的喜悦的肯定被剥夺了。

从某些方面来说，“幻觉经验”在你们有限的参考架构内是无法解释的——不是因为这种“若有所悟”的现象不能解释，而是因为你们目前的信念体系太过局限。

因此，无论在什么年纪，一个启示都是很难跟别人讲的。不过，当你在比较老的年纪时，没有一个人会对此感兴趣，但就像在青春期一样，它就在那儿——那最伟大的创造力可能露了出来，却没被发现。这段时期可能比任何其他时期都更有利于个人、有利于人类，如果人们认识到它是怎么一回事并理解了的话。

所发生的奇特的化学变化往往导向更广阔的概念和经验，但这些与你们所认为的实际应用毫无关系。那么，有一个触发器被启动了，产生了一个原动力，人格试图借此将自己从“时空取向”中解放出来，而不必再以“成人”的方式去参与其中。

再说一遍，那时人格以最纯粹的方式来看待经验的本质。在一些早期的文明里，这是在一个自然的架构里完成的，在那个架构中，老年人的身体被照应到了，而他们说的话被非常仔细地倾听。

“智慧老人”的概念，以及类似的传说在这里一样适用，强大老妇人的神秘观念也是如此。在老年人自然的发展过程中，如果不加干涉的话，老年人会很好地理解他们自己的“幻象”，而身与心能非常好地共同运作。

你们对年龄的信念会形成你们的经验——对所有别的东西也一样，而你们的群体信念会影响你们的文明。在你们社会当前的观念下，男人和女人从年轻时就害怕老年。如果青年期被认为是生命、幸福和成功的缩影，那么老年则被视作截然相反——一个失败和衰退的时期。

用你们的话说，这与你们对“显意识”和“无意识”心智的扭曲概念有一些关系。一般来说，在西方社会，显意识心智被认为是在青春期时开始繁盛的，那时候自体从童年无意识的底层升起，进入其批判性的觉察和分化。对“区别”和“差异”的理解被认为是意识最重要的特性之一，于是，意识的这些方面被重视起来了。而在另一方面，同样重要的意识的吸收、结合和关联的特性却被忽略了。在学术界，以及许多根本非学术性的圈子里，都只把理性思维等同于批判的能力，所以你越能下判断，就被认为是越有智慧的。

在西方的成年时期，意识最密切地聚焦于一个活动和物质操控的特定领域。从孩提时代起，心智就被训练去使用它好辩的、好分别的特性。创造力只被允许流经某些高度受限的、可被接受的渠道。

当一个人年纪大了——比如退休了——这种特定的意识聚焦就不再那么随时可得了。心智实际上变得更是它自己，开始更自由地运用更多的能力，它被允许溜出限制区域之外，去吸收、承认和创造。

然而，正是在这个时候，这个人被告知要小心任何这种意识的走神，并将这种行为视为精神退化的征兆。那些遵循集体信念的人会发现，他们心目中的自我形象已经改变了。他们担心自己的年龄，或者说担心他们在时光中的存在背叛了他们。他们视自己为残余物，是更好的自己的晦暗遗迹。而在他们自己的价值判断体系里，他们因自己在时间中继续存在这个事实而谴责自己。如果他们以前曾信任过自己身体的健全性，如今也不再信任了。他们开始按照别人所写的剧本来演出这场戏，不过那是他们已经默许了的。

Youth and old age both have their place, and within the framework of your race each play important roles.

You are used to thinking in terms of heredity. In physical terms, and in a different way than you imagine, this is important. Certain earth experiences however are dependent upon duration in time, and result as a consequence of the mind playing upon its experience through long earth seasons.

There are specific functions brought into operation quite naturally that are scarcely perceived by your scientists, much less understood. As the mind within the body clearly sees its earthly time coming to an end, mental and psychic accelerations take place. These are in many ways like adolescent experiences in their great bursts of creative activity, with the resulting formation of questions, and the preparation for a completely new kind of personality growth and fulfillment.

This would be quite apparent were it not for your current belief systems, through which the old are forced to interpret their experience. Many instances of expansion of consciousness, and mental and psychic growth, are interpreted by you as senility. No important correlations have been made between the subjective experiences of the old, particularly in "senile" conditions, with those of other ages involved in expansion of consciousness, whether natural or drug induced.

Any such sensations are immediately repressed by the old for fear that "senility" will be the diagnosis. The experiences, however, affect the right hemisphere of the brain, and in such a way that abilities are released in somewhat the same manner as an adolescent's.

The individual, when it is time then, begins to see beyond temporal life, to open up dimensions of awareness that in your terms he or she could not afford while involved in the intense physical focus of normal adult life. Unfortunately the personality has no system of beliefs, as a rule, to support such an expansion. The natural therapies, both physical and mental, are denied. Drugs are often used as depressants, clouding the clarity of what seems to be distorted vision. This is one of the most creative, valuable aspects of your lives. Instead the old are made to feel useless in your society. Often of course they share this value judgment, and their experience within your communities has in no way prepared them to face subjective experience.

There are no teachers to guide them. Old age is a highly creative part of living. The connections between it and childhood are often made in a derogatory fashion, but the personality is in just as creative a state. I am speaking generally now, of course, for your living conditions so distort the natural situation.

Even the chemical and hormonal changes that occur are those that are conducive to spiritual and psychic growth at that time. The joyful affirmation possible is denied to the old because of your system of beliefs.

In certain terms, "psychedelic experience" cannot be explained within your limited frameworks of reference—not because such illuminations are beyond explanation but because your present systems of belief are too limiting.

So at whatever age, a revelatory episode is difficult to relate to others. In older age, however, no one is interested, and yet it is here, as in adolescence, that the greatest creativity may emerge but go unrecognized. This era could be more advantageous to the individual and to the race than any other period, were it recognized for what it is and understood.

The peculiar chemical changes that occur are often precisely those that lead to greater conceptions and experience, but these are free from what you think of as practical application. There is a trigger set off then, an impetus in which the personality tries to free itself from time-space orientation released from the usual necessity to participate in "adult" terms.

The personality, again, looks at the nature of experience in its purest terms. In some previous civilizations this was done within a natural framework, in which the old were cared for physically while their words were listened to most carefully.

Ideas of the "wise old man," and similar legends apply here, as do the mystical concepts of the powerful old woman. In their natural progression, and left alone, the old understand their own "visions" quite well. Body and mind operate beautifully together.

Your beliefs about age, like everything else, will form your experience, and your mass beliefs will affect your civilization. With the current concepts held by your society, men and women fear old age from the time of youth. If young adulthood is considered the epitome of life, blessedness, and success, then old age is viewed as the opposite — a time of failure and decay.

Some of this has to do with distorted ideas of both the conscious and unconscious minds, using your terms now. Generally speaking, in Western society the conscious mind is seen as coming into its own in early adulthood, as the self rises from the bed of childhood unconsciousness into its critical awareness and differentiation. The appreciation of distinctions and differences is considered one of the greatest characteristics of consciousness, and so those aspects of it are valued. On the other hand the equally significant assimilating, combining, correlating characteristics of consciousness are overlooked. In scholarly circles, and many that are not scholarly at all, the intellect is equated only with the critical faculties, so that the more diagnostic you are the more intellectual you are considered.

During Western years of adulthood, consciousness is focused most intently in one specific area of activity and physical manipulation. From childhood, the mind is trained to use its argumentative, separating qualities above all others. Creativity is allowed to flow only through certain highly limited, accepted channels.

When an individual becomes older — and retired, for example — the focus for that particular kind of concentration is no longer so immediately available. The mind actually becomes more itself, freer to use more of its abilities, allowed to stray from restricted areas, to assimilate, acknowledge and create.

Precisely at this time however the individual is told to beware of any such straying, and to consider that kind of behavior a symptom of mental deterioration. Those following mass beliefs will find that their own image of themselves has changed. They fear that their very age, or existence in time, has betrayed them. They see themselves as leftovers, dim vestiges of better selves, and in their own system of value judgment they condemn themselves through the very fact of their continued existence in time. If they ever did, they no longer trust the integrity of their bodies. They begin to act out the drama in a script written by others — to which, however, they have acquiesced.