MEDIATION AS REJUVENATING FACTOR. UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTERS

Orlin Baev

web | Transpersonal psychology. Sacred sexuality

The Elderly Man Kolyo

I had a friend - an elder from Varna called Kolyo. We were really good friends; I was renting a room in his house on Emanuil Manolov Street in Varna. He was a living disciple of the Master Beinsa Douno. Every morning he did visualizations, repeated formulas, did yoga and meditated. When he had time, he read lectures by the Master - with his strong glasses. Before sleep in th evening he read again a prayer. He had a radio set that could broadcast only the Varna radio broadcast - and this was all his modern technology. He washed his clothes with cold water and with no soap but wasn’t unclean. He cooked simple meals and dishes. Almost every day he used to go to his vineyard at the crossroad between Varna and Vinitsa quarter - this was an orchard and a vineyard. He walked by foot passing along a path through the woods about 10 km. We were friends during the period when he was in his from 85 to 90 while I was between 21 and 26. We understood each other perfectly - by inner sense. Once we were digging out trees from his orchard. He taught me to do it - with a pick and an axe. You dig up with the pick a broad and quite deep circle around the tree. With the axe the roots are been cut off at the bottom. The elder Kolyo worked next to me and was swinging the axe like a young boy. Well, a bit lower and lighter, but in truth, more effectively. I love this man and will never forget him. Often, passing by the window of my room, he left some grapes, peaches, plumbs and apples from his garden... He said, "I am a vegetarian and follow the path of the Master! Men the same age like me who ate meat to be strong and healthy are here no more. A vegetarian should have a garden and care for it. It cares for him too and gives him health!"

The atmosphere around the elder Kolyo was always calm and harmonious and I loved to sit with him and have a glass of warm water together. He of course had no money to buy tea... Until his last days he managed alone and took care of himself not burdening anyone. Only during the last month of his life he kept the bed and passed at the age of ninety.

Old people have been very much respected in Bulgaria. They have always been honored and valued. In all the Eastern countries old people are highly respected! If one does not respect old people and particularly his own parents he harms himself enormously; he shortens his life and brings forth sickness in the future. The Jewish Book states: "Honor thy mother and thy father to have a healthy life." There is a close connection at energy level between parents and children; the parent’s destiny directly and imperceptibly affects our own. Elderly people are being wisdom, experience. Each of us will get old and will experience during his older years what he has thought and done to elderly people.

The elder Kolyo’s garden was always smiling and had its own character - a garden with character! When the grapes around were sick by manna or other defects, when their trees were plagued by pestilence, the trees of the elder Kolyo continued to be smiling and strong, with good presence and healthy. And this because he loved them, he sang them songs and related to them as friends. Not that he was a great singer or prayed with words learned by heart. No, he just hummed a melody by the Master and his prayer was his good aura, the harmony of his optimism and his state of mind.

The elder Kolyo had acquired wisdom in life and my talks with him were happiness to my soul.

Ann Kap McNamara

Another colorful individual, whom I will never forget, is the American of British origin - Ann Kap McNamara. I met her during my two-years stay and work in the rocky mountains in the province British Columbia, Canada.

When I first met Ann Kap, she was 92 years of age. Usually people in their sixties already manifest symptoms of the degenerative processes they are doomed to experience. As if they are put into the gas camera dooming them to be mortal may flies, people get wrinkled, and fatally wear down. It is as if the air is gradually sucked out of their lungs and their energy exhausted by their powerful mistress - Death. The interesting phenomenon is that even in our humanly courts there is a chance of a different sentence and mercy. But in the court of the virtual reality called life in which we are being damped, the sentence is only one: "Your are sentenced to Death with no right to appeal."

Ann Kap McNamara but seemed an exception from the rule; or, perhaps benefited a postponement. At her 92 years of age she used to run for a walk with her Canadian dog, with whom twice a day she walked around the pristine woods surrounding the small town. She was completely on her own, bright and active - physically and mentally. Until her last days she worked her favorite work - translating books from French into English. Ann used to begin her day with formulas and positive affirmations, light exercises, breathing in the open and meeting the sunrise. She said that sun fills her with youth and life. Perhaps she was right. The phenomenon Hira Manek is well known, as well as not a few similar examples of people who literary do not feed on anything but sun Light! Hira Manek has constant medical supervision for many year and the only substances he takes in are water or tea. According to his own words he just shortens the nutrition chain with one unit and receives his energy from the basic source of energy for our planet - the Sun!

Ann took no heed of her age. She said she felt as if she was nineteen and every next year makes her even more strong and happy. Exceptionally assertive woman, she knew what she wanted and how to acquire it - in spite of her 92 years of age and her wrinkled face she had the vitality and sparkling eyes of a twenty year old girl.

Old Age and Loneliness

When I was in my early twenties, I dreamed to be an old man. I related with old, wise men, I respected them. Old age is in fact the most favorable time when the spirit is safe and lively. Body gets old - but what does it matter? Some sickness now and then - but what does it matter? During old age you can completely devote yourself to working for improvement of your mind and uniting with nature and infinite beauty. No vanity of social engagements, contacts, strive for survival, passions have resided. Old age is the most wonderful time of life!

And why would you feel lonely? I understand, yes, I can imagine an individual with other type of mentality... But if flowers are your friends, if you have got a small garden to care about, if natural powers are your little friends, if you relate to natural beauty on a daily base, then why would you need people and their dull world? Except for the cases, of course, when you willingly go on helping them. There are psychologists who have been working actively even in their nineties!

The emotional whirlpools of youth are much harder than old age! A wise, enlightened, happy old age! Mind but is immortal!

There is wisdom in old age. Life has taught you that you are small and you are capable of nothing, you know nothing. It has humbled you! And then Wisdom comes forth! You understand you have no control over your body - it is gradually going away - you are humbled. And then the true control comes forth - control of the spirit!

It comes forth but if you look for it since youth. If your consciousness is like a seed bursting open, striving to break up the soul of limited knowledge.

A Different Perspective

In old age you lose everything you have valued before. You lose the beauty of your body, its strength. You lose sex as a main source to give the ego feeling of harmony and happiness, you do not get delight in food - you have no teeth, nor healthy digestion. You lose the simple pleasure of living - the fresh energy welling up. The brain degenerates. You don't dare to experience strong emotions - the heart is weak. Joints are aching, muscles are weak, you have varicose veins, eyes don't see, ears don't hear. You are aching, you are sick. Ache is all over. The body gets rusted and oxidized within - free radicals get it eaten up! If you have been vegetarian and have a healthy gene and led a life with no excess, you have the chance to slow down the process of wearing and death at least for a while. Anyway, slower or faster, you have been dying even since the end of your coming of age.

Your strength, that had streamed forth as a spring of water gradually lessens in flow, leaks weaker and weaker until it completely runs dry. Then you get dry like a dolphin in the sun - you die brutally and wickedly!

We have got accustomed to death so much - at least other people's death - that we do not see its ugly uncanny nature.

And still...

Since we continue to be what we are - imperfect prisoners within the dying flesh, we would better look at old age from a positive perspective, and benefit its good aspects. As for death - let us accept it as a part of life. At least life such as we know it. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that we get old and have what to learn from death. In the vanguard branches of psychology Life is thought as something more than the rough concepts shared by the mass of people and reductionism in science. If you don't believe, you may ask the subatomic physicists...

Prince Siddhartha (Buddha), Addictions and Neurotransmissions

When Guathama Buddha first stood against the imperfections of this world, he was struck by three instances - old age, sickness and death! Three damnations killing everyone! The prince was so overwhelmed by the absurdity of such a doom that he could not stop looking for answers to the questions: why do we get old, get sick and die? And he found them out - he understood empirically through individual experience that passion and suffering are one whole; that the cause of suffering is addiction to passion, caused by ignorance! He found out that aging and death could be overcome by appropriate way of life, mental discipline, self-control and the superlogical wisdom of meditation leading to knowledge.

The discoveries of Prince Siddhartha could be translated in the words of modern psychology like that: Addiction, passionate drive towards excessive pleasurable experiences bring forth dependency, which causes aging, sicknesses and death. And the beginning of this process is activated by lack of knowledge, ignorance as to the Reality of Life, our Essential Nature and the Wholeness of Life. But the main purpose of our little self is pleasure. The difference between the savage man striving to receive pleasure as fast and directly as he can, and the civilized individual who can postpone the process of receiving pleasure is in the ability of the self to control the reception of pleasure in a way that suits his body, his, mental health and social functioning. Pleasure could be received in its rough form as rude passionate satisfaction which quickly makes extinct the libido flame leaving one robbed and exhausted. Pleasure but could be acquired in sublimated form too; so that it could help the psychological and physical health and man's social life. This ability to sublimate our basic drives (the basic dichotomy) - passion and hatred - in their higher equivalents, turns us into Human Beings!

Actually, the mechanisms of dependency or the passionate drive (Trishna - in Sanskrit), which Guatama Buddha talks about, are very much similar to every kind of addiction - drugs, food, alcoholic drinks, social, sexual, conceptual addictions etc. Behind each addiction there is a specific biochemical, neurotransmitter and hormonal mechanism which degenerates the healthy state of the organism and mind and gradually drives them to sickness and death. Addiction could be not only dependency on drugs but also there are emotional, social and conceptual addictions - dependency on limited convictions and lack of emotional intellect leading our mental and physical organism to death as a result of the enforced ignorance related to our narrow beliefs and the resulting affective life and behavior.

With appropriate way of life, emotional intellect, conscious awareness, subordinated to wholesome harmony, longevity could be prolonged to a certain extent. With modern scientific achievements in the field of gerontology and psychology and medicine in the near future human life will be prolonged up to more than hundred years. These are good new especially in case we add not only year to life but also life to the years.

Meditation

There are people known in the world who live much longer than the average 80 to 100 years of statistics. They do not show up and leave their knowledge only to the worthy for it.

The main method which such people use to control their psychophysical system is meditation. This is too broad a concept. Generally speaking, there are two basic approaches: they may be conditionally called Up-down meditation and Bottom-up meditation. Both are usually combined in one school of meditation.

Bottom-Up Meditation

In the approach from bottom upwards the first task of the practitioner is to control his energy, his libido impulses with the help of the active participation of the mind. Once the libido energy is involved in inner building it emphasizes on sublimation of the emotions. The practitioner is taught to be aware of his emotions. Instead of fighting them and repressing them he is offered the method of sublimation. One gets aware and channels his emotions towards what the transpersonal and integral schools call Super consciousness. These schools subdivide the human unconscious in two topical systems (generally speaking) subconsciousness and superconsciousness. They compare them to the roots (subconsciousness) and the branches and flowers (superconsciousness) of a tree. When the disciple has learned to control his sexual energy, which is the spring of his youthfulness, to direct it in such a way that it can serve an intense and harmonious hormonal exchange, he is being taught the above mentioned method of emotional sublimation. The ability for such a sublimation is a main component of emotional intellect. Afterwards the disciple is being taught cognitive control. Here is the beginning of the other approach.

Up-Down Meditation

In this method from the very beginning of learning meditation the disciple begins with control of the mind - he is being taught to disattach his thoughts so that he recognizes them and watches them from the perspective of a distanced observer. This observer is his true Self - the Self who controls all other mental components and tendencies. The individual learns to dissociate himself from his thought process, from his emotions and bodily impulses. This state is known as "Direct Awareness" and leads to manifestation of the unused brain potential. After reaching up to such a state of mind, the disciple in meditation finds out that his meditation reaches down to his emotions, to his heart. Emotions are being naturally sublimated and harnessed in the state of pure consciousness and direct vision - without the crutches of logic. After harnessing the emotional nature the level of meditation extends deeper and reaches down the energy the so called center "hara" in the East - to human libido. With the help of pure consciousness and emotional calm as a result of emotions channeled to super-consciousness, the libido energies do not cause drives of passion and cognitive imbalance as usual but naturally and obviously heighten the whole energy state of the practitioner, serving to restore the spent energy to the state of a 16 year old youngster (in the word of the Dao Yoga practitioners). The libido is harnessed in the process of restoring the meditative and hormonal balance, in the process of regeneration of the bodily systems, leading to real rejuvenation of the living organism.

Usually in the different systems of meditation - in India, China, Naples, Tibet, Japan etc. one of the approaches is emphasized. At a certain level of practice but they combine and interweave. I want to emphasize that meditation is by no means speculative fiction. Behind each stage of progress on the way of meditation specific cerebral structures the synapse meditation and the hormonal synthesis, the activity of the vegetative system changes the processes in quality and quantity.

Meditation, the Cerebral Processes and Correlatives

When word goes of control over the process of Up-down meditation we mean the following:

The cortex active zones activate not only the logical process of thinking but mostly the attention and concentration. The concentration is on the mental energy, the libido energy. Libido, unlike the Western psychological schools is not perceived as an abstract concept but as real substantiality, which as objectively experienced and harnessed into an extensive system of innate psychological energy channels. This process gets automatic in time like driving a car and then it is necessary only observation of its mental movements and not conscious control. As somatic projection the libido refers to the sexual organs and cerebrally - to the older structures of the brain trunk and the cerebellum. There it is being stored and accumulated. When the disciple achieves knowledge in the processes of accumulation and directing the libido energy, he is taught the process of emotional sublimation. The body correlative of emotions is in the heart. There they are perceived by each conscious individual. Cerebrally emotions refer to the middle brain - thalamus and hypothalamus and the oldest section of the cortex - the limbic system, the amygdale, septum etc. When the disciple learns to harness his emotions whatever they are towards his superconsciousness a constant current between the unconscious and superconscious flows. Biologically the limbic system and the middle brain are the high representatives and controllers of the vegetative nervous system while the conscious control over the affective components changes optimizes and harmonizes in quantity and quality the whole hormonal chain thus stopping or at least slowing down the process of aging. In the East there are known a lot of cases of obvious rejuvenation - not hypothetical but real empirical rejuvenation.

When the disciple in meditation gains control over his libido processes and learns to sublimate his emotions he is taught to cognitive control and high meditation which leads to clear awareness. At this level the associative cortex points correlate somatically. This approach here flows into the other one. It is generally thought that the method, through which first the libido energy is gained control over, is more dangerous and requires an experienced guide. Unlike it, the second approach, "up-down" is thought to be more natural and safe and appropriate to be practiced by every one even without a teacher.

The up-down meditation in relation to its biological correlates goes on as follows:

In this approach the individual relies on direct connection to his higher Self - the silent observer of all mental and biological processes taking place in one's life. The practitioner sets in a state of mental silence and despite the lack of thought flow, the self-awareness is maximally vigilant. The bodily correlate of this state of mind is suspending the conventional bipolar logic formal operational activity in the brain cortex and turning into superconsciousness, intuiting and direct penetration in the essence of things. This state is "brought down" to the sphere of emotions - the limbic system and the middle brain, respectively the heart, while completely naturally a process of sublimation takes place. While during the former approach the sublimation was led by the conventional intellect, now the affects whatever they are - anger, passion, jealousy etc. are sucked into the state of superconsciousness as if attracted by vacuum. In the East the state of meditation is associated with emptiness because of such subjective perceptions. In fact emptiness is empty only from the perspective of convention since the superconsciousness could not be perceived by logic but only intuited and experienced. Thus the superconsciousness integrates the usual intellectual activity and emotions turning them into the light of intuitive wisdom direct knowledge without the mediation intellect, while emotions - in calm happy harmony. Afterwards it reaches the libido. The Sanskrit semantic equivalent of the Western concept of libido is Kundalini. The Chinese term is Dzin Tsi - the sexual energy. Biologically this experience correlates with the region of the sexual organs and the stomach, while in the brain, as I mentioned already - with the old brain structures of the trunk and cerebеllum.

We could never separate the two approaches. But whatever method or system we follow, the only important thing is the self-confidence and integration of the unconscious components with the superconscious ones led by a self-consciousness extending its scope - the individuation in Jung's terms. Meditation involves the whole biological organism of man by way of direct conscious influence upon the affective, energy (behavioral, instinctive, praxis) and cognitive cerebral structures which on their turn control the hormonal secretion and vegetation of the whole bodily system. This is the reason why the long term practitioners of meditation have a great chance to positively stimulate their longevity and quality of life keeping clear cognition up to its very end. An example of this for me are the two cases I described of old people, my unforgettable friends, as well as many other elderly people engaged in developing their minds. They differ significantly from the people the same age - if their age people are still alive. Their optimism and serenity are stunning and their wisdom is like a deep unending well!

© Orlin Baev
© Galina Markina - translated from bulgarian
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© E-publisher LiterNet, 29.12.2010
Orlin Baev. Transpersonal psychology. Sacred sexuality. Varna: LiterNet, 2010.