New Dimensions; Senior Actualization and Growth Experience; Part 1

<v Michael Toms>It is only through a change of consciousness. <v Michael Toms>As we bring mind, body, psyche and spirit into <v Michael Toms>harmony and unity, so also will the world be changed. <v Michael Toms>This is our responsibility as we create <v Michael Toms>and explore new dimensions of being. <v Michael Toms>[music] <v Michael Toms>Welcome to New Dimensions, [throat clearing] little frog in my throat there.

<v Michael Toms>My name is Michael Thoms. <v Jeff Mishlove>And I'm Jeff Mishlove. <v Michael Toms>And we're going to be your host this evening. <v Michael Toms>And we're going to be talking with a person we've been trying to get on for a long time. <v Michael Toms>And that's Gay Luce. <v Michael Toms>And for those of you who are not familiar with Gay, and I'm sure many of you are, <v Michael Toms>she's many things. She's a psychologist. <v Michael Toms>She's written a number of books, Body Time, a book entitled Sleep, another book <v Michael Toms>on insomnia. It's interesting combination of books. <v Michael Toms>Her most recent book, Your Second Life, is was inspired by a <v Michael Toms>project in which she was one of the initiating agents back about <v Michael Toms>five years ago. She got together with a number of other young people and a number <v Michael Toms>of other older people to form a wonderful organization <v Michael Toms>called, SAGE. We're gonna be hearing about Sage in a lot more. <v Michael Toms>Stay with us. We'll be here for two hours. <v Speaker>[Song: Midnight by Paul Winter]

<v Michael Toms>Well, certainly the best way and the only way to begin is to start day with telling <v Michael Toms>us about the SAGE Project, telling our listeners about the SAGE Project.

<v Michael Toms>Those are our listeners who haven't heard of it. <v Michael Toms>Tell us what it is, what it does. <v Gay Luce>I'd love to. <v Gay Luce>SAGE is an acronym, which is- which came <v Gay Luce>last. We thought of the word 'sage' because we realized that <v Gay Luce>we had banded together to prove what we knew at heart was <v Gay Luce>wrong, and that was that people were boxed by age. <v Gay Luce>And we didn't know what was going to happen when the first experimental group got <v Gay Luce>together, we had no idea what would actually happen. <v Gay Luce>But somewhere inside, we were totally convinced that most <v Gay Luce>of the negatives that we have in our heads and many of- I mean, I have many of them in <v Gay Luce>my own head, are simply wrong. <v Gay Luce>They are concepts of a culture at a certain time and there's <v Gay Luce>no reason for them to go on harming lives. <v Gay Luce>So it was an experiment and SAGE means senior actualization and <v Gay Luce>growth explorations. <v Gay Luce>And it really is that.

<v Michael Toms>It's a constant process. <v Gay Luce>It's a constant process. <v Gay Luce>Just today I heard someone say, well, it's very hard to move to retire <v Gay Luce>after 30 years in one place and move because I don't seem to make new friends. <v Gay Luce>And what I realized is that SAGE has created a process in which <v Gay Luce>we're able to realize that isn't true, but it does take a lot of energy and group <v Gay Luce>support. And the process is very simple. <v Gay Luce>We create an intimate, ongoing group <v Gay Luce>in which it's safe to be oneself and within which we can do <v Gay Luce>individual practices and experiment with new ways of being <v Gay Luce>and with expanding ourselves. <v Michael Toms>What moved you back there five years ago in January 1974, to find <v Michael Toms>yourself in a place where you were even thinking about doing something like this? <v Gay Luce>Well actually it started about two years before that and I wasn't thinking about working <v Gay Luce>with older people at all. I was planning a program for <v Gay Luce>my grown self to give to children who, like myself, had suffered

<v Gay Luce>from fear during their lives and had never been taught how to deal with it. <v Gay Luce>We'd never known how to deal with pain, who hadn't known that they weren't <v Gay Luce>alone in some of their anxieties and in trials and tribulations and had no group <v Gay Luce>to go to- to find that out. <v Gay Luce>And I was creating a program for children, and I was <v Gay Luce>learning a lot in the course of doing it. And my mother came to visit me. <v Gay Luce>And one thing and another, she began to show such joy and <v Gay Luce>eagerness for growth herself as she did some of the things that we were playing with. <v Gay Luce>I somehow got the message. I mean, many things happened. <v Gay Luce>For example, she went through a very bad car accident and the breathing exercises that <v Gay Luce>we'd been doing together kept her conscious and may have helped her save her <v Gay Luce>own life. And I just watched transformation take place and I said <v Gay Luce>that's a message. I don't think any of this is accidental. <v Gay Luce>You know that those of us who gathered in Berkeley

<v Gay Luce>in 1974 were just ready to do this and that it was a group <v Gay Luce>of older people who heard by word of mouth that this experiment was gonna happen. <v Gay Luce>And maybe if they took part in it, they could actually alleviate some of their own <v Gay Luce>symptoms. [laughter] <v Gay Luce>Or the fact that we're on the verge of becoming an older country? <v Gay Luce>I think the decade of the 80s is probably going to be the decade of aging, just as the <v Gay Luce>decade of the 60s was civil liberties. <v Michael Toms>What other things happened prior? Were there other things that had a bearing? <v Michael Toms>Y. <v Gay Luce>Yes, there were many, um- <v Michael Toms>What are some of the ones that stick in your mind particularly? <v Gay Luce>Well, I think the greatest blessing was- let's- let me talk personally. <v Gay Luce>The greatest blessing probably was that my mother and I have had a very difficult <v Gay Luce>relationship. In fact, I had done everything to get out of the house by the age of 13 <v Gay Luce>to avoid the conflict. <v Gay Luce>I went to boarding school, and then at 16, I was in college, and by 17, I was ready to be <v Gay Luce>married. And so I was out of- out of that path.

<v Gay Luce>But always somehow it was in me, my mother, myself. <v Gay Luce>And when she came to visit me after my father's death. <v Gay Luce>We began again to reopen the relationship, and what I saw <v Gay Luce>was the most difficult person in my life teaching me and <v Gay Luce>transforming in front of my eyes, not from my doing, actually her transformation <v Gay Luce>has happened far away from SAGE, but what it did was inspire me to look at this <v Gay Luce>whole process. And in the course of it, what I see is that the people <v Gay Luce>I started out thinking that I could help teach or guide in some way <v Gay Luce>are now my teachers. <v Gay Luce>My mother has gone through a process that's very mysterious to me. <v Gay Luce>I think sometimes that now when I look at <v Gay Luce>the pain of old age, I'm going to look at it differently <v Gay Luce>because there's absolutely no accident in that either.

<v Gay Luce>And what has happened is a transcendent process. <v Gay Luce>A wonderful woman, Alice Kent, said to me the other day, 'You build your soul <v Gay Luce>in proportion to the amount that you give up your body.' <v Gay Luce>And I think that probably there's some purpose in all this experience. <v Gay Luce>And once we no longer consider it so negative, once we begin to see that <v Gay Luce>there is some purpose in it, I'm not extolling paying mind to, but I am saying that <v Gay Luce>there is some mystery herem I don't understand at all. <v Gay Luce>I have gone along in SAGE helping as best I could <v Gay Luce>to find out how we can alleviate pain, how people can relax. <v Gay Luce>I mean, one of the miracles of the early program was that people after two or three weeks <v Gay Luce>of learning relaxation exercises would come in and they would be absolutely <v Gay Luce>ecstatic that they had conquered some illness they thought was with them forever. <v Gay Luce>And it was an illness of tension. And I'm wondering if maybe most of our illness isn't

<v Gay Luce>some very deep tension, the tension of not <v Gay Luce>accepting the universe, having to control it. <v Michael Toms>What are some of the principles that you have that you've uncovered in the process <v Michael Toms>of working with the SAGE Project over the years? <v Michael Toms>Some of the more exciting principles that you didn't know about before that kind of <v Michael Toms>emerged from the process? <v Gay Luce>Well, I think the power of a real human bond <v Gay Luce>of what of of a group without anything other than non-judgmental <v Gay Luce>love is totally <v Gay Luce>overwhelming to me. I mean, when we started, we thought that the yoga and meditation <v Gay Luce>and the exercise and the art and this enormous array of techniques that we had <v Gay Luce>to offer people as tools to work on themselves were very important. <v Gay Luce>And I think they are you know, they're very useful. <v Gay Luce>But what the real crucible is that group which is accepting, <v Gay Luce>which says it's OK to be yourself and um

<v Gay Luce>we will be patient and we will let you do your process at your speed as you need it. <v Gay Luce>That's enormously powerful. <v Gay Luce>And I think that's the- that's the ongoing process of SAGE. <v Gay Luce>I think I got a little bit off into the history and didn't really describe- We work <v Gay Luce>in groups. I think that the ideal group size for me is 12 to 15, <v Gay Luce>and we have been working in those small groups usually for about a year. <v Gay Luce>We meet every week for a good long session, three to four hours. <v Gay Luce>And then in between these sessions, people meet with each other in structured dyads <v Gay Luce>and triads. And then they do the kinds of things at <v Gay Luce>home, the kinds of practices that they particularly need. <v Gay Luce>I mean if I happen to be a person who needs to really work on <v Gay Luce>deep breathing, then that's what I would be doing, and that would be the basis for my <v Gay Luce>meditative exercises at home. <v Gay Luce>And for some of my limbering and more vigorous exercise.

<v Michael Toms>So one of the things I'm sure that I sense has come out of the SAGE Project is that it's <v Michael Toms>not- the principles are not just applicable to older people, but they're really <v Michael Toms>universal. <v Gay Luce>Absolutely. And I mean, I want to say that while SAGE is at this <v Gay Luce>point, um, really focused on helping older people <v Gay Luce>get out of the box of being considered as older people <v Gay Luce>often are in our society. <v Gay Luce>It's a myth. I don't think of myself as having an age, do you? <v Gay Luce>I mean, I don't sit here saying I'm Gay Luce aged 50 or think of myself- what is- <v Gay Luce>I mean, I will be 50 next year. <v Gay Luce>What is uh- That's meaningless to me. <v Gay Luce>I don't- I look in the mirror. I mean, I'm just me. <v Gay Luce>I'm not probably even Gay Luce. [laughter] I mean, I think about myself. <v Gay Luce>I think I'm me. [laughter] But I don't think about these labels that put on- <v Gay Luce>that are put on me from outside. Nor does anyone of 70 or 80 or 90 <v Gay Luce>or 110 or 170 for that matter.

<v Gay Luce>That's something that we put on from outside. <v Gay Luce>And I think that what we're doing is as applicable in kindergarten. <v Gay Luce>It's pacing. But there are different things at different phases in life. <v Gay Luce>I think the things that are different about this group, which is basically <v Gay Luce>intergenerational, is that it is looking at another transition. <v Gay Luce>It's not the transition into adolescence or the transition into motherhood and <v Gay Luce>fatherhood, but a transition into the beyond and a transition <v Gay Luce>out of finding one's meaning so- just <v Gay Luce>strictly with societal values. <v Michael Toms>Yeah you know, you touched on that conditioning just briefly earlier about- <v Michael Toms>I'm thinking as a young person, as a- as a child, you -you usually have a lot of respect <v Michael Toms>for your elders, your parents are authority figures, your grandparents are <v Michael Toms>authority figures. And at some point there's some kind of-of switch <v Michael Toms>or change that takes place where- where you <v Michael Toms>go past that or someh- somehow the attitude changes.

<v Michael Toms>And somehow I sense that, again, going back to the early years is when we form <v Michael Toms>these attitudes about aging and getting old and and somehow <v Michael Toms>we're gonna we're gonna be decrepit and we're gonna be useless in that kind of thing. <v Michael Toms>What have you discovered about that? <v Gay Luce>I think that comes, uh, from not living with our grandparents, not living with older <v Gay Luce>people. I don't think it comes from living with older people. <v Gay Luce>I think an awful lot of what we have is concepts in our head, like look at our silly <v Gay Luce>concept of love. I mean, you know, our concepts are kind of celluloid <v Gay Luce>romance, a lot of them. <v Gay Luce>And I think the same thing happens to come from what isn't a real <v Gay Luce>model. It's not human beings setting up the model for us. <v Gay Luce>It comes from some kind of cultural abstraction <v Gay Luce>that we see in magazines and movies and, you know, on television and so on. <v Gay Luce>And the other thing is that we live in a culture that's profoundly wedded <v Gay Luce>to information and information change and information isn't wisdom. <v Gay Luce>The interesting thing is, sure, things do go too fast for a lot

<v Gay Luce>of older people. And you can make younger people senile, <v Gay Luce>as people have demonstrated in experiments over one weekend by speeding things up <v Gay Luce>so that they simply can't perform the way they expect themselves to do. <v Gay Luce>Robert Kastenbaum took a bunch of college students and got them prematurely <v Gay Luce>aged in the course of 48 hours simply by accelerating things. <v Gay Luce>That's relevant to running computers and doing certain social <v Gay Luce>tasks. It isn't relevant to life. <v Gay Luce>And I think what we're missing out on, because of the strange pace of our society, <v Gay Luce>we're missing out on what older people know about life. <v Gay Luce>And that hasn't changed in a thousand years. <v Gay Luce>So we've got our conditioned attitudes and adolescence when we're, <v Gay Luce>you know, revving up to be socially acceptable <v Gay Luce>and we're looking at age from the point of view of, you know, we're gonna be successes, <v Gay Luce>but we're not getting that from grandparents and from real people

<v Gay Luce>about real age. <v Speaker>[Song: Oh Very Young by Cat Stevens] <v Speaker>[Song: Oh Very Young by Cat Stevens]

<v Michael Toms>We're talking with Gay Luce, the author of Your Second Life, one of the founders of the <v Michael Toms>SAGE Project. Gay, I wanted to return to that point you just sort of <v Michael Toms>leisurely traipsed over there, information is not equivalent to wisdom, <v Michael Toms>particularly at a time when more and more information is appearing on the scene and <v Michael Toms>more and more ideas- more and more concepts and technological <v Michael Toms>culture and the whole thing and media blitz and all of that. <v Michael Toms>And could you go deeper with that? What you mean, nformation doesn't mean wisdom? <v Gay Luce> Think of the newspaper that you get three weeks late, and what that means <v Gay Luce>to you. Our information is so temporal. <v Gay Luce>And it's, uh, I mean, it's the essence of what we call ?inaudible? <v Gay Luce>actually. All it is is part of a social situation <v Gay Luce>which we have agreed to create, which is totally momentary.

<v Gay Luce>But the facts of life don't change. <v Gay Luce>We grow as we start out. <v Gay Luce>Let's say a semi conscious beings, very young, are molded <v Gay Luce>to believe that our external focus is the real world, <v Gay Luce>knowing secretly that there's something more inside, that there's another dimension, <v Gay Luce>which is what this program's about, and which is beginning to be more apparent <v Gay Luce>to people. <v Gay Luce>And we spend most of our lives at that external foc-focus, <v Gay Luce>maybe even beginning to believe that it's real. <v Gay Luce>I know I've- I've been through that one, you know, going through my paces, achieving what <v Gay Luce>I'm supposed to achieve, running faster and faster, and finally <v Gay Luce>saying to myself, what is this all about? <v Gay Luce>It doesn't mean anything. And what is happening is <v Gay Luce>the body is getting chronologically older. <v Gay Luce>And in that maturation process, there's some realization <v Gay Luce>that there is an inner purpose to life that has nothing to do with all this stuff.

<v Gay Luce>And uh,- and that the real purpose is to find that. <v Gay Luce>And to do that, I must work on myself, not on the outside world. <v Gay Luce>And to do that in this society, I need help, and <v Gay Luce>I need the acceptance of a group that will make me that will allow me to do the <v Gay Luce>equivalent of what I did when I was a kindergarten kid. <v Gay Luce>It'll one it'll hold me when I'm terrified and I need to cry. <v Gay Luce>It will share with me when I think I'm all alone and have anxieties <v Gay Luce>that I think are my secret shame. <v Gay Luce>And I can discover that they're humanity's secret. <v Gay Luce>And not feel alone. It will give me the <v Gay Luce>real energy to go to another dimension, to take a chance <v Gay Luce>on something that's formless. <v Gay Luce>It will allow me to be silly and foolish in trying out a new way of being. <v Gay Luce>And it will have jointly that knowledge

<v Gay Luce>of an inner person and inner purpose, <v Gay Luce>which I need in order to grow. <v Gay Luce>And I think all of us do and we grow. <v Gay Luce>That's one of the reasons that we get together in groups to <v Gay Luce>do practices or to learn from one another. <v Gay Luce>As these energies evolve, the things I'm able <v Gay Luce>to do change, and they change their nature. <v Gay Luce>And instead of being directed toward power and emotionality, <v Gay Luce>I myself am being directed toward a more unconditional acceptance, <v Gay Luce>more unconditional love and the kind of sight that I didn't <v Gay Luce>have before. <v Gay Luce>These things are the human apparatus. <v Gay Luce>It is our- all of our- all of us have the apparatus to tune into the universe <v Gay Luce>at all time and all space. <v Gay Luce>And what we have to do is unlearn

<v Gay Luce>the blinders that we've been so busily putting on all our lives. <v Gay Luce>Now, for some people, that's a very new kind of concept. <v Gay Luce>[HOST: So part of the-] It was to me, what SAGE allowed <v Gay Luce>me to do was to evolve back to where I was when I was about 8, 8 <v Gay Luce>or 9 years old. <v Michael Toms>So part of the ideas for SAGE to create an environment that will allow that kind <v Michael Toms>of process to unfold. I'm just contrasting that with the normal senior citizens <v Michael Toms>center [laughter] that I've been in and that environment versus the environment you're <v Michael Toms>talking about. <v Gay Luce>The problem with the usual senior citizen environment, I think, is that it thinks that <v Gay Luce>externals will make a difference to people or that mere chit chat will make <v Gay Luce>a difference. And what I'm- I'm convinced of is that <v Gay Luce>we really we've been taught to follow our heads, to work with words <v Gay Luce>as though they were the music. And we have forgotten that it's our hearts that know <v Gay Luce>God. It's our hearts that know the inner purpose of life.

<v Gay Luce>And if we were to listen to our feelings, you see, I mean, <v Gay Luce>I really have all sympathy, especially for men in this society, <v Gay Luce>because the conflict between expressing feelings and feeling foolish <v Gay Luce>at even having those feelings, you know, is so ingrained <v Gay Luce>that to suddenly be allowed to stop, say, at 65, now you're a useless- <v Gay Luce>you told you're a useless old codger. Go vegetate on a golf course somewhere. <v Gay Luce>And really inside you still have all this apparatus, and you still know. <v Gay Luce>And how is it possible to make that a safe process? <v Gay Luce>Not a process of a heart attack? <v Gay Luce>Which is, if you think about it, what is in the 'heart attack' but a heart <v Gay Luce>that has been nourished. <v Gay Luce>I mean, it's- it's what's what I hope that we can do <v Gay Luce>is make this kind- it's a terribly simple process.

<v Gay Luce>We are not doing something esoteric, and the techniques we do are terribly <v Gay Luce>commonsense. <v Gay Luce>What we're doing at age 65 or at age 16 with <v Gay Luce>people at that age is the same thing. <v Gay Luce>And what I would say to anybody who wants to do this sort of thing <v Gay Luce>simply go deep into yourself and find out what is it you want for yourself. <v Gay Luce>If you look at yourself as an older person. <v Gay Luce>[long pause] What in your heart do you want? <v Gay Luce>Then we can see that maybe a clean, well-lighted place with lots of bingo tables <v Gay Luce>and a space to socialize isn't enough. <v Gay Luce>That when people really share their hearts something happens. <v Gay Luce>And I think the humiliation of our society is to be treated like a- <v Gay Luce>like a performer, like an information monger, and <v Gay Luce>have to live out that role and be left destitute

<v Gay Luce>when in point of fact the human being is so enormous <v Gay Luce>inside and so many people are hungry to know that. <v Gay Luce>But not to know that from being told or from reading it in books or, you know, hearing <v Gay Luce>someone preach at them, they need to know themselves, to know it for themselves, to know <v Gay Luce>their own magnificence. <v Gay Luce>And I don't think that- I don't think it's very hard to express. <v Gay Luce>It takes a little patience. <v Gay Luce>It takes the willingness to take some risks to realize that it's OK, <v Gay Luce>that, for God's sake, we were- we were put on this earth with <v Gay Luce>emotions, and they don't have to be destructive. <v Gay Luce>But on the other hand, we we mustn't flee from them because they're telling us something. <v Gay Luce>And so if we can allow ourselves to say, okay. <v Gay Luce>Emotions are emotions. <v Gay Luce>And right now, I'm crying. And in 10 minutes, I'm going to laugh. <v Gay Luce>And in another 20 minutes, I might be angry. <v Gay Luce>And that is all part of something- in other words, we've denied so much of ourselves,

<v Gay Luce>and I say this again because at SAGE we do simple things like learning how to cry. <v Gay Luce>Crying is a release for the nervous system. It's built <v Gay Luce>into us. [laughter] It's part of what we have, <v Gay Luce>the wisdom of our body and we've denied it at our own expense. <v Michael Toms>Yeah, I hppen to be married to a person, my wife Justine, who <v Michael Toms>cries at moving commercials, and, uh, it <v Michael Toms>is really beautiful to see her and to experience her cry at the- at her- <v Michael Toms>at a whim. But it's not really a whim. <v Michael Toms>It's like- it is like a release, and it is a beautiful one. <v Gay Luce>So what we're doing is really saying it's OK to be yourself and use all of yourself, <v Gay Luce>all of your apparatus, and that apparatus is <v Gay Luce>everything from survival, from blood and guts and and knowledge <v Gay Luce>and power to divinity.

<v Gay Luce>But let's use the whole thing. Let's not be a little box <v Gay Luce>that's OK on a magazine page. <v Gay Luce>And I think that once people have that in them, they can go. <v Gay Luce>I mean, lots of the people at SAGE after a couple of years have taken off and <v Gay Luce>gone on their own paths of development. <v Michael Toms>I was going to ask you if you've noticed physical changes in the people that you've <v Michael Toms>worked with. <v Gay Luce>Lots. Yes. What kind of change? <v Gay Luce>There is various- the people, of course. <v Gay Luce>Some people just have a lot more energy. <v Gay Luce>Others are less depressed. Some people have learned that by <v Gay Luce>a mental attitude and some relaxation, they don't have to have migraines or headaches or <v Gay Luce>back pain or arthritic pain. <v Gay Luce>And so that's enabled them to do things that they couldn't have done otherwise, like get <v Gay Luce>very limber and do quite vigorous exercise. <v Gay Luce>One 81 year old man who is really delightful said the other day, well, <v Gay Luce>he he knew he had less energy now than he had five years ago when we started, but <v Gay Luce>he didn't feel as though he had less energy.

<v Gay Luce>But when he's riding his bike 4 miles a day, all the younger people pass him.