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Alas, Aging

"Most of the time ... we find ourselves striving toward that which always seems to lie just beyond our reach." - Br. Anandamoy of SRF - Link

That sort of striving looks unrewarding and foolish, a bit akin to striving to look younger and fresher by cosmetic surgery in the pathetic end.

Go for Wide and Deep Balancing

You can counteract or reduce many of the sad effects of aging, if you know how to. You can learn to make aging go easier on you. You may come to like the charms of other stages of life than youth. A year has several seasons, and each may have charms, like "One purpose of life is to fight grossness." There is room for drastic talk too, like "People ask me what I'd most appreciate getting for my eighty-seventh birthday. I tell them, a paternity suit. [George Burns]" More Old Age quotations: [More]

To remain healthy (without harmed, stultified, cramped, neurotic, deranged or belittled libido) as you grow and the body in time declines, is just as beneficial. Health also depends on your libido (zest, desires) and its fit outlets.

Those of delightful libido hardly try to set themselves up as Christs, to my knowing.

Bottom line: The good thing to go for is a healthy life for long. It is in the long art of living through many stages of life.

None should be led to think that a few "parade examples" or anecdotal evidence is much proof of anything. Try to become professional.

The nymph Echo lost her full functions - all that was left was a reiterating voice [Gh]. Ideally, the voice you were given speaks for you, on your own behalf. A voice is much, but one's own, whole and undivided body that speaks and a lot more, is more.

Accommodations may cost much after some years, and have certain risks and costs. Some are long-range. Still try to make the best out of it, out of living. You find an encompassing theory onsite. Deep down it is the theory of yin and yang made serviceable for building a Tao. Tao is a complementary balance (or way) in between yin and yang. Tao can also be a set of fulfilling routines and ways of handling this and that, etc. Many articles here are structured according to it and marked by "Get Tao" and an ankh, ☥, in tables of contents, as the case may be. By these tokens you can find the table-essas more easily as you survey the pages. The integrative approach has cornerstone parts of general research, Taoism, and report writing "baked" into it, as you can see, and also includes how to become a success in the fairy-tale way, according to structuralists like Algirdas Greimas, former minister of education in France. [Sts]

Cave-Dwelling Babaji Getting Younger to Look At

In the guru Yogananda's teachings there is an old man called Babaji who lives on and on for centuries, according to Yogananda and his guru Yukteswar. In the long run it did not matter any longer if he was alive or dead, he decreed. The episode runs like this in Yogananda's autobiography:

Babaji said, "I am intending to shed my form and plunge into the Infinite Current."

His sister, nearly as old as he, an underground-cave-dweller: "Why should you leave your body?"

Babaji: "What is the difference . . .?" [Link]

The difference is normally that between being alive or not, in case you wonder.

As for "the Infinite Current", it is a play on words. Tip: When they talk of Infinity or Infinite, be on your guard. Infinity is a term that covers up this: "I have not found an end" - but the end is in your own dear heart. So do not be duped.

A real winner can look like a common man and conformist too. The hallmarks of a winner include being genuine. One may rise above looks. To be a real winner is to be steadily oneself, authentic. A culinary person is all right with fine children.

Climbing and diving are complementary endeavours.

Some forms of yoga are said to confer immortality. Yogananda mentions one Agastya of South India. "He worked many miracles during the centuries preceding and following the Christian era, and is credited with retaining his physical form even to this day." [Link]

To prolong life in a decent, fair way is hardly unfit. Nor is time for free play. There are good news here: In a study, those who had been regularly practicing the Transcendental Meditation program showed younger biological age, with a greater reduction in biological age the longer they had been participating in the program, writes International Journal of Neuroscience 16: 53-58, 1982. Biological age measures the physical condition of your body in comparison to your "chronological" or actual age. For example, you might be 55 years old, but your body could be functioning as if it were only 45 years old. In that case your biological age would be 10 years younger than your chronological age. In a study, people who had been practicing TM for more than five years had bodies that were on the average 12 years younger than their age.

Also, a follow-up study of a group of elderly people (average age 80.7 years) who were randomly assigned to either learn the TM program or to three control groups found that those who learned the TM program showed a significant increase in longevity (survival time) in comparison to the other three groups. Reference: Circulation 93: 629 (Abstract), 1996.

There are also studies that indicate that many positive effects of TM work against some forty not so good effects of aging. [▾More TM research] [Cf. Meb]

❖ Some things are researched, and others are not.

Observations

Someone: "Once, while visiting Notre Dame, Louvre and walking around in Paris, I saw it was stone on stone mainly, and far from enough to bring me any refreshing or lasting pleasure. Ramakrishna once talked of a similar experience in India.

"A castle of bone is worth more than a castle of stone." It is the life in a thing or being that matters. And the independence of a researcher is to be shielded and protected.

Yukteswar

You should guard your subtle joy and life-breath well, keep your word, and get proficient in what invigorates the mind-body. Deep meditation should help, and a life well lived (the art of living) too. It helps to get proficient too.

Yukteswar was marked by blunt, not very much appreciated assaults, and maintained his standards were good [Ha 416]. According to Yogananda he said to Yogananda: "I shall give you my hermitages and all I possess." [Ha 90]. But it did not come to pass. It seems Yukteswar of high standards failed to make those words come through, no matter what Yogananda says in the matter.

Also, according to Yogananda, Yukteswar (1836-1936) in 1937, some months after he had died, spoke these memorable words to Yogananda: "I am with you evermore". [Link]

Getting proficient in being with someone may or may not be for helping purposes, though. And getting proficient in hailing and wailing does not seem all-invigorating.

Literature  

Gh: Hjortsø, Leo. Græske guder og helte. 2. utg. København: Politiken, 1984.

Ha: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 12th ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), 1981.

Meb: Olsen, Per. Lægevidenskabelig og psykologisk forskning på yoga og meditation. Generelle virkninger og behandlingsmuligheder. 2. utg. København: Bindu, 1978.

Sts: Greimas, Algirdas. Strukturel semantik. Odense: Borgen, 1983.



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