New Dimensions; Senior Actualization and Growth Experience; Part 2

<v Gay Luce>Who is really delightful, said the other day, well, he knew he had <v Gay Luce>less energy now and he had five years ago when we started, but he didn't feel as <v Gay Luce>though he had less energy. But when he's riding his bike for miles a day, all the younger <v Gay Luce>people pass him [laughter] <v Gay Luce>Um, some people have actually cured symptoms that they thought were <v Gay Luce>fixed. One physician, retired physician, has cured his cataracts <v Gay Luce>through nutrition and exercise, and many other people have dropped their <v Gay Luce>blood pressure by doing all the genic exercises at home <v Gay Luce>so that in sense they are controlling one of the problems. <v Gay Luce>Growing up, as we have in our culture, we take a pill. <v Gay Luce>If somebody in authority says, well, this will help you. <v Gay Luce>Well, these have the ultra genic effects. <v Gay Luce>So lots of the people who came to us initially had things like loss of memory, <v Gay Luce>and they thought that was because they were getting old. <v Michael Toms>When you say iatrogenic, what does that mean? <v Gay Luce>Iatrogenic means caused by the medicine.

<v Gay Luce>So when they learn how to relax and they no longer need to take the <v Gay Luce>valium. After a month or so of valium, the memory returns. <v Gay Luce>When memory returns, life in a group is a whole lot more pleasant. <v Gay Luce>And a person who thought they were shy, unable to mix, might turn out to be quite <v Gay Luce>gregarious and add a really nice raconteur like one of our more <v Gay Luce>famous members, Mac. <v Gay Luce>So there are lots of compounded problems that people think come from age. <v Gay Luce>I don't think they come from age, really. <v Gay Luce>We've got to break down all these barriers and start fresh. <v Gay Luce>I don't think I mean, old people. I don't think I'm any different. <v Gay Luce>Well, I mean, I'm a little more inhibited and probably uptight than I was when I was 15. <v Gay Luce>But I don't think I'm a different person. <v Gay Luce>Some of my dreams I'm not quite as daring about, and <v Gay Luce>that's what I hope the group will help me with. <v Gay Luce>And lots of these older people have done extremely daring things once

<v Gay Luce>they got out of the self-image that was holding them back. <v Gay Luce>Several people have said to me, oh, life begins at 76 or 81 or whatever <v Gay Luce>age you happen to be. And one woman who was on the very- in <v Gay Luce>very first group moved to Seattle and started her own series of groups. <v Gay Luce>You know, using this kind of idea as as a jumping off point, <v Gay Luce>others are helping people in the rest of the country. <v Gay Luce>Start groups like this. <v Gay Luce>So in a sense, what's happening is new careers are happening out of it and people have a <v Gay Luce>sense of usefulness. And I love to say that and I know it always gets instant approval <v Gay Luce>because new careers and social usefulness is what people <v Gay Luce>think all people want. <v Gay Luce>I'd like to also say that an awful lot of people, because of this inner work, are <v Gay Luce>doing something that is private. <v Gay Luce>That's just as useful. <v Gay Luce>Only it's not going to make credit because it's not institutional. <v Gay Luce>One woman, for example, who has meditated a lot and really become

<v Gay Luce>a healing force is now helping all the people in her senior residents. <v Gay Luce>Quietly, another woman is leading a meditation group. <v Gay Luce>Some of the people who are concerned with this kind of thing have formed <v Gay Luce>a healing group that's been working together all year. <v Gay Luce>Trying to see how to work in dimensions that we haven't even <v Gay Luce>approached before. I mean, I don't think we've begun to find out what SAGE can do. <v Michael Toms>Yeah, has anyone at AGW, Office of Aging, taken notice of the Sage Project? <v Gay Luce>Well, we were for three years actually supported by our National Institute of Mental <v Gay Luce>Health grant. And this year. <v Gay Luce>We really thought we were going to get grants from AOA and MIMH. <v Gay Luce>But policies have changed in and the government budget is much more constricted. <v Gay Luce>So we find ourselves facing a deadline that is rather serious. <v Gay Luce>We won't have any money after till after June 31st. <v Michael Toms>So what kinds of things is the Office of Aging Funding?

<v Michael Toms>I mean, it doesn't seem they could fund anything more appropriate than SAGE. <v Gay Luce>People are really looking at aging somewhat differently. <v Gay Luce>What we're talking about is the quality of life and what we keep getting asked <v Gay Luce>for is cost effectiveness. <v Gay Luce>And people keep looking at transportation and food and <v Gay Luce>environment and services and professional training and so on. <v Gay Luce>They never really think that what health is about is the quality <v Gay Luce>of our inner experience. I mean, I could be sitting in a wheelchair and be happy <v Gay Luce>and I could be jogging down the road and be miserable. <v Gay Luce>But somehow the way things are set up. <v Gay Luce>We're so focused on the externals that a program which is devoted <v Gay Luce>to the quality of experience seems like a luxury. <v Jeff Mishlove>It strikes me that what you're doing is essentially revolutionary. <v Jeff Mishlove>It's it's completely changing our concept of the role of elderly people. <v Jeff Mishlove>It reminds me a bit of what happened in the classical period in India when

<v Jeff Mishlove>it in classical Hinduism, there were there were six stages of life development. <v Jeff Mishlove>And after you'd been a householder and a warrior and a merchant, then <v Jeff Mishlove>you left your family. Then you went into the woods and practiced yoga. <v Jeff Mishlove>That was the period of the great sages, and your sort of- Jean <v Jeff Mishlove>Euston told me about SAGE back in 1973. <v Jeff Mishlove>She said Gay Luce is starting a program which is going to <v Jeff Mishlove>restore wisdom to the age. <v Jeff Mishlove>They already have it. <v Jeff Mishlove>You must have a much different perspective now than you did going into it years ago. <v Gay Luce>Oh, let me say to that. You're so right. <v Gay Luce>I mean, I don't think it's revolutionary. It's ancient. <v Gay Luce>What are we doing? We're making it because of our industrial society <v Gay Luce>where we don't nurture one another. We don't touch one another. <v Gay Luce>We don't live with one another. <v Gay Luce>We have no rituals. We have no means of communicating <v Gay Luce>so that we're one with each other and with God.

<v Gay Luce>We're trying to create a program to do that. <v Gay Luce>And the people already have the wisdom. <v Gay Luce>But they I mean, it's it's all there. <v Gay Luce>We were at the Western Jarrin, a logical society the other day, a group of us <v Gay Luce>and one of the women who was in a group of mine two years ago <v Gay Luce>started talking about where she's at now three years later. <v Gay Luce>And I sat there, her acceptance, her unconditional love, <v Gay Luce>her ability to appreciate the world and not have to control <v Gay Luce>it. So exceed my ability at this point, I thought, my <v Gay Luce>god, the sages are really here. <v Gay Luce>If we just give them a little nurturing and tell them that they're <v Gay Luce>here, they can teach us. We don't have to go to India. <v Gay Luce>We really don't. <v Speaker>[Song: It's Up To You by John Denver]

<v Speaker>[Song: It's Up To You by John Denver]

<v Michael Toms>We're talking with Gay Luce, the author of a book called Your Second Life <v Michael Toms>and one of the founders of the SAGE Project. <v Jeff Mishlove>I've been feeling just so much emotion listening to you speak. <v Jeff Mishlove>And I think- I think a lot of listeners must be feeling the same way. <v Jeff Mishlove>So many people come to me and talk about my- my father. <v Jeff Mishlove>Somebody close is growing old and the society offers so, so <v Jeff Mishlove>little support. I know that in the case of my own grandfather, <v Jeff Mishlove>he was labeled senile and he went to a place where senile people go. <v Jeff Mishlove>But when- when I went to visit him, he- <v Jeff Mishlove>he didn't seem senile to me, actually. <v Jeff Mishlove>And he- spent he used to say, 'Listen, listen.' He said, 'You <v Jeff Mishlove>can hear the sound of the universe.' [Other speaker: Wow]

<v Jeff Mishlove>He was tuned into some very, very profound spaces. <v Jeff Mishlove>He told me that I've made up a new word said 'illions.' He said 'llions, it's <v Jeff Mishlove>it's bigger than billions or millions or billions.' [laughter] He <v Jeff Mishlove>said, 'You might be interested in knowing, he said, how a little man like <v Jeff Mishlove>me has become so absorbed in the vastness of the universe.' <v Jeff Mishlove>But living where he was in Milwaukee, where that was, that was crazy, that <v Jeff Mishlove>was senile. <v Jeff Mishlove>I see that there is such a thin, thin line between <v Jeff Mishlove>regarding people in that spaces as our teachers <v Jeff Mishlove>and regarding them as old kooks. <v Jeff Mishlove>I just wish to God that there were SAGE programs all over the country. <v Jeff Mishlove>And I think people all over the country, if they could hear this program, would feel the <v Jeff Mishlove>same way. <v Gay Luce>Well, I- I wish to God there were grandfathers like yours all over the country,

<v Gay Luce>too. Because I think that we will discover that <v Gay Luce>what we're missing is what we're calling and saying that's the only sanity. <v Gay Luce>We spend all our effort on our body, which is the part of us that dies <v Gay Luce>and leave to the last part of our life. <v Gay Luce>And then neglected and then call it names, the part of us, which <v Gay Luce>is as big as the universe. <v Gay Luce>That's where we're crazy. That's where we're totally, uh- We've <v Gay Luce>become- I don't know [laughter] maybe plastic teacups. <v Gay Luce>I don't know what we've become. But I mean, it's like these <v Gay Luce>these places that are so fearful where older people are left because <v Gay Luce>they can't live with their families, walk in. <v Gay Luce>And some people are just withdrawn and apathetic and neglected. <v Gay Luce>And that's called senile because they no longer bother to make contact.

<v Gay Luce>And other people are making that transition. <v Gay Luce>And if they dare tell you that they have talked with the people on the <v Gay Luce>other side, they're given a vallium or something. <v Gay Luce>That's what really disturbs me when I hear- I go in there. <v Gay Luce>And I do feel that that's going to change. <v Gay Luce>I really do. I mean, I I hope and pray enough people hear this <v Gay Luce>that they begin to listen with their hearts instead of their heads. <v Gay Luce>It's that which is misleading us. <v Gay Luce>We've listened with some kind of logic that doesn't- doesn't <v Gay Luce>have anything to do with the real nature of life. <v Gay Luce>And I believe also that <v Gay Luce>the only people who are really going to make contact- maybe children. <v Gay Luce>I've often wanted to work with children because they're very psychic. <v Gay Luce>And to go into institutions like this and not use words at all

<v Gay Luce>and make telepathic <v Gay Luce>contact with the people who are supposedly senile and withdrawn <v Gay Luce>and simply give them love and acceptance <v Gay Luce>and acknowledge that they've made contact. <v Gay Luce>I have a feeling that would make an enormous difference. <v Gay Luce>And if we do would allow children and pets in these places, that would happen <v Gay Luce>because children respond at that level and so do <v Gay Luce>animals. <v Jeff Mishlove>You started out, I think, years ago with one group of 12 people. <v Gay Luce>Yes, that's true. We started out in 1974 with one group of 12 people <v Gay Luce>and now we've had 10 groups that have gone, well, I guess <v Gay Luce>a year to 2 years. Some people have been working with the program <v Gay Luce>for almost 5 years. We're now five years old and 90 or so professionals

<v Gay Luce>and students have trained with us in our internship program. <v Gay Luce>I gather you'd like to know a little about the organization. <v Gay Luce>We really have grown enormously there. <v Gay Luce>25 people on the staff from a- half of them are people from the first groups <v Gay Luce>who are older people. So it's a nice partnership. <v Gay Luce>And institutions, 12 of them in the Bay Area and a couple in Chicago have <v Gay Luce>invited us to come in and teams and see how our program works. <v Gay Luce>And we can really see now that with some support, if we can get a financial <v Gay Luce>base, we had to cut out our institutional program this year. <v Gay Luce>We couldn't support it with some backing. <v Gay Luce>We would like to even extend what we're doing because we realize that we need to <v Gay Luce>encompass not only everybody who works in an institution in the <v Gay Luce>process because it's a self nurturing process. <v Gay Luce>It means that, well, I, who work as a professional <v Gay Luce>with an older person, am allowed to relax and receive nourishment <v Gay Luce>from that contact instead of being a do gooder and a provider.

<v Gay Luce>In other words, to bring the whole staff and the environmental <v Gay Luce>institutions, like maybe there's a college nearby and so on. <v Gay Luce>A lot these institutions are isolated from life and bring the families in and allow <v Gay Luce>people to relax into a relationship again. <v Gay Luce>The horror of it is that everybody's out of relationship. <v Gay Luce>Nobody's making contact. <v Gay Luce>And if we can be the catalysts for that kind of human contact, <v Gay Luce>and it doesn't have to be at the level of, you know, petty squabbles. <v Gay Luce>I think one of the nice things at the at the latter end of life is that <v Gay Luce>those don't mean very much anymore. <v Gay Luce>They may be habits and people may be very angry at finding themselves in in nursing <v Gay Luce>homes and in convalescent hospitals and may express that anger. <v Gay Luce>But if that anger is accepted, then something else can happen. <v Jeff Mishlove>It seems as if- as if we have this image of what is beautiful, almost <v Jeff Mishlove>like Hollywood. And I like death.

<v Jeff Mishlove>Aging is like death. We try to hide it to pretend that it doesn't exist. <v Gay Luce>It is like death. It is a natural part of our lives. <v Gay Luce>And even the process of dying is something <v Gay Luce>that can- can be. <v Gay Luce>As everybody knows, a beautiful process, a transcendent, luminous process. <v Gay Luce>It can be an ascension or it can be a a battle not to have it happen. <v Gay Luce>I think the minute we start accepting the reality of our lives, as <v Gay Luce>has just that. <v Gay Luce>Well, a lot of our pain is our resistance. <v Gay Luce>How can we not accept death? How can we not accept death? <v Gay Luce>It's a fact. <v Gay Luce>The death of the body. <v Gay Luce>Not accept? What is there to not accept? <v Gay Luce>Do I not accept this room in this conversation? <v Gay Luce>And this audience listening to us in the sage program. <v Gay Luce>It's part of our experience and it's given to us this as

<v Gay Luce>an important part of the kindergarten that we're living in. <v Gay Luce>[laughter] Can we not acc- how can we not accept? <v Gay Luce>It's like when we talk about health as <v Gay Luce>though what hurts in my- in my intestine is separate <v Gay Luce>from me, isn't related- or my thoughts and my feelings at this time don't <v Gay Luce>color your thoughts and feelings. How can that be? <v Gay Luce>That they could be contained within my skull? <v Gay Luce>You know, if these radio waves can go through the walls, I'm sure my thoughts <v Gay Luce>can go out of my head and into your head. <v Gay Luce>And so we're all one anyway. How can we not accept that? <v Jeff Mishlove>I gather that we feel it must be like- like hell and that we want to block <v Jeff Mishlove>it out. For that reason, its people <v Jeff Mishlove>have this notion it miserable people, for example. <v Jeff Mishlove>It's quite common. People don't like to admit that they're growing older. <v Jeff Mishlove>We say women, this is the stereotype.

<v Jeff Mishlove>Women will hide their age, for example, and we have facelifts <v Jeff Mishlove>and we have wigs and false teeth and in all sorts <v Jeff Mishlove>of things that that are that we do to <v Jeff Mishlove>prevent the world from seeing. <v Gay Luce>And we adore- and when we say we adore older people who act like adolescents. <v Gay Luce>Well, that's crazy. Why should I act like an adolescent now? <v Gay Luce>I don't have the same interests. I don't want to go around having everybody on the street <v Gay Luce>with. Let me. That doesn't interest me anymore. <v Gay Luce>I mean, it's that's part of a social game that I have played <v Gay Luce>and enjoyed. And that's not something that I want to do over. <v Gay Luce>Do I want to have babies at this age? <v Gay Luce>I mean, it's like a somehow as though the seasons that are <v Gay Luce>part of our lives are as though they were bad. <v Gay Luce>I think that's Hollywood. I think that's. <v Gay Luce>I think it's artificial. Just as I think this whole business of now you're <v Gay Luce>an adolescent and now you're adult.

<v Gay Luce>We don't have rites of passage very much, but we put people in boxes. <v Gay Luce>Now you're old. Well, yes, in some ways people get old. <v Gay Luce>I've seen people get younger. <v Gay Luce>Their bodies fail, but they've gotten younger even to the point where they died. <v Gay Luce>And, um, I just- That part <v Gay Luce>really pains me. It's- it's horrifying to me to <v Gay Luce>think that we have to go through life resisting the very <v Gay Luce>process that is. <v Gay Luce>It's not as though we even have the choice of contradicting it. <v Gay Luce>It is. <v Gay Luce>And if we could accept that it is and work with it <v Gay Luce>and realize that we are our fullness in it, and that <v Gay Luce>is a celebration. I mean, we be giving thanks to God every second of our lives. <v Gay Luce>If we could stop resisting. [laughter] It's like when I- <v Gay Luce>you know, [laughter] it's like when I stop resisting the pain. <v Gay Luce>It isn't so bad.

<v Gay Luce>I just put my mind on it and look at it from a distance. <v Gay Luce>Oh, all of a sudden I see that I have a sensation in my leg. <v Gay Luce>It's not I don't have to scream and cry and kick and fight it all the time. <v Gay Luce>Which is not to say there's not a lot of bad suffering in this world. <v Gay Luce>I do feel that it comes out of our our resistance and our social patterns <v Gay Luce>of resistance. <v Michael Toms>I think pain is related to fear in some way. <v Gay Luce>Oh, absolutely. Tension. <v Gay Luce>I know I've been thinking a lot about health recently because I see the people in <v Gay Luce>SAGE getting healthier. It doesn't mean they are not going to be infirm, doesn't <v Gay Luce>mean they're not going to die. <v Gay Luce>What it does mean is that the quality of their inner life is getting more and more <v Gay Luce>luminous and relaxed and that however they express it. <v Gay Luce>Some of them would say horse muffins to what kind of language I use a spiritual language <v Gay Luce>doesn't please them at all. But. <v Gay Luce>But what? But what actually does happen is that they stop <v Gay Luce>resisting. When you stop resisting, you're healed.

<v Gay Luce>All the ancient healing centers were built on that metanoia. <v Gay Luce>That change of heart. That change of mind. <v Gay Luce>Well, I think that that's the basics of health in homeopathy. <v Gay Luce>That's what they say that at the center is one spiritual health. <v Gay Luce>And to me, spiritual health is. <v Gay Luce>Do I have to control whether it rains today? <v Gay Luce>I mean, you were at a wedding today where, you know, it might have <v Gay Luce>rained. Do I have to control whether it rains or not? <v Gay Luce>If I have to- If inwardly even, there is some thought that I have to keep controlling <v Gay Luce>things. My inner- my body's tight. <v Gay Luce>My chemistry is different. <v Gay Luce>And that in itself is going to change my health. <v Gay Luce>I mean, if you wanted to real common sense kind of link. <v Gay Luce>Ask anyone to imagine a lemon and see what happens to their salivary <v Gay Luce>glands. And you see here's a glandular change just from imagined biting <v Gay Luce>into a lemon.

<v Gay Luce>So these thoughts, which are constantly going on in the back of our heads, <v Gay Luce>are obviously influencing our bodies. <v Gay Luce>I think there again. I think that's what I like about SAGE in a way is without being <v Gay Luce>artificial and forcing a kind of dogma on ourselves, we have no one <v Gay Luce>thing that we give preference to. <v Gay Luce>We allow the group energy to create a positive <v Gay Luce>kind of like a bath for our mind, and however long it takes <v Gay Luce>for us to work out some of our negative concepts and so on. <v Gay Luce>That's OK. That bath is there. <v Gay Luce>It's warm and it's gentle. <v Gay Luce>And I think that's part of what the group process is doing. <v Gay Luce>But we don't have any kind of. <v Gay Luce>There isn't any um- Everybody at- all the teachers at SAGE believe differently. <v Gay Luce>It is the most heterogeneous group. <v Gay Luce>We don't have any religion. We don't have any one set of exercises or <v Gay Luce>one curriculum that we do.

<v Gay Luce>We rely heavily on relaxation, but there isn't any one thing. <v Gay Luce>If people are our main thing, our main advice to people is consult yourself. <v Gay Luce>If it feels right for you and good for you, do it. <v Gay Luce>And if it really doesn't? Don't. <v Gay Luce>And don't try to emulate instructors. <v Gay Luce>There is no concept of doing something well or performing or anything. <v Gay Luce>The whole idea is what does it do for you? <v Gay Luce>I mean, and so people are their own reference in that. <v Gay Luce>And there's no competition, and there's no performance. <v Gay Luce>They select their own curriculum, their own practices. <v Gay Luce>Their inner wisdom eventually takes them to what they really need. <v Gay Luce>And as long as we're patient and willing to be around. <v Gay Luce>I think I think one of the things I I have a feeling about now after <v Gay Luce>five years of this is that there's some wisdom in having the process along. <v Gay Luce>So we really create extended families with each other, with each group. <v Gay Luce>And most of the people who've experienced that never want to be without it.

<v Gay Luce>[laughter]Certainly me, <v Gay Luce>I look forward to my Thursday healing group like a breath of really fresh <v Gay Luce>air after being, you know, surrounded with other things. <v Michael Toms>Yeah, I guess you're touching on one of the- the gaps that <v Michael Toms>exists in many of our lives, and that is the coming in touch with <v Michael Toms>with the deeper meanings of life and coming in touch with real values <v Michael Toms>and understanding the essence of life and- and spending <v Michael Toms>small pieces of time with with people you really enjoy being with. <v Michael Toms>And then suddenly one is thrust out into another reality where <v Michael Toms>none of those things are really supported, but a whole different kind of reality is <v Michael Toms>put. How do you- how does one take that, that sustenance <v Michael Toms>and recreate it so it works out there in that other reality, which <v Michael Toms>so many of us are surrounded by?

<v Gay Luce>I think we are all doing it in different ways, but I think what has to happen <v Gay Luce>is we have to spread and make this our reality. <v Gay Luce>Why should we live in a meaningless reality? <v Gay Luce>What I've realized out of this and what a lot of people have said is it's so hard not to <v Gay Luce>get involved because of the fear we have a real heart to heart contact, of <v Gay Luce>really saying what's in our hearts and exposing ourselves, being that vulnerable. <v Gay Luce>One of the hard things is to go out and not get involved in chit chat, superficial chit <v Gay Luce>chat. And yet, if you look at people at parties, most of the time, <v Gay Luce>they're making out fabulously. <v Gay Luce>They're bored. <v Gay Luce>They're putting on an act. And someone else is putting an act. <v Gay Luce>And to act or meeting each other and there's nobody there. <v Gay Luce>And I think that's the one thing about Sage. <v Gay Luce>It isn't boring. It might be stressful at times. <v Gay Luce>People do have to take risks. <v Gay Luce>But what they know is if they just hang in there that support <v Gay Luce>groups around them and it's all forgiving because- <v Gay Luce>this is just part of a process. We're all learning together.

<v Gay Luce>I wish we could spread this throughout our lives. <v Gay Luce>I find it very boring now to deal with just social, purely social situations <v Gay Luce>where I can't really be myself. <v Gay Luce>I think I tend to avoid them. I understand why- Gregory Bateson said something wonderful <v Gay Luce>the other day, he said, 'As I get older, my litmus paper gets <v Gay Luce>more sensitive.' [laughter]My litmus paper to whether there's real meaning there or <v Gay Luce>not [HOST: that's great] <v Michael Toms>We're talking with Gay Luce. You're listening to KQED F.M. <v Michael Toms>in San Francisco. This is New Dimensions. <v Speaker>[Song: The Kiss by Judee Sill] <v Speaker>[Song: The Kiss by Judee Sill]