Psychological Clocks – Bubba Free John – Adi Da Samraj

Aging
is not a matter of years but of bodily cycles or “clocks.”
Thus, some people age relatively slower or faster than
others. And the aging process may be slowed by various
rejuvenating habits or regimens that are native and natural
to the body-mind.

The usual human being, even by
virtue of birth itself, has or acquires “psychological
clocks,” tacit beliefs regarding how his health and vitality
are supposed to develop or degenerate according to his age.
These clocks are generally an “age mythology” that tends to
perpetuate itself from generation to generation. Our habits
and conditions of living tend to reflect our psychology and
beliefs, and human beings do in fact become, develop, and
degenerate in accordance with their subjective clocks. But
the “clocks” may be changed, if they are arbitrarily
established and negative in effect. Indeed, they must change
as we pass from stage to stage of growth, and as we operate
on new levels of energy and presumption.

If an individual lives a spiritual
life, founded in Truth and love, and practices a vitalizing
or regenerative regimen of diet and life-activity in
general, then he can change the clocks that are set by
conventional beliefs and habitual reactivity. To begin with,
he must simply and intelligently release all belief in the
old clocks – the assumptions of necessary disease and
degeneration. And, secondly, he must establish a habit of
life that is completely free of degenerative and reactive
practices.

Part of the belief psychology of
these “clocks” is that the body necessarily loses its
vitality with aging. Life, like sex, is felt always to move
toward a crisis of emptying, or of discharge of Life. There
is a stage of life, ranging from thirty to fifty years of
age, when people generally expect to pass through a
degenerative “crisis”: chronic health problems,
devitalization, loss of strength and stamina, menopause,
impotence, gray hair, loss of hair, arthritis, rheumatism,
eye problems, and so forth.

Menopause, in particular, is a
classic example of a psychologically “clocked” degenerative
crisis. Somewhere between thirty and fifty years of age, a
woman believes that she will become infertile, that either
she stops producing egg cells or the eggs become incapable
of fertilization, and that she will cease to produce
hormones for the reproductive process. When menopause does
in fact occur, it is a sign or “proof” of enervation and
degeneration, produced in accordance with clocked beliefs.
We are psychologically predisposed to expect and experience
the progressive failure of experiential life as the years
progress. We are convinced that aging will manifest a
progressively degenerative cycle until death. And we can
point to the experience of generations of human beings as
proof that we are only being “realistic” in our depressed
convictions.

The degenerative crisis and its
progressive cycle are, however, not necessary. They are
likely, unless there is a complete change in the disposition
and habits of the individual, but they are not necessary.
Practices can be engaged to prevent or at least minimize the
degenerative crisis that is socially clocked into us bodily
and psychically. These include simple practices of
appropriate regenerative diet and fasting, exercise, use of
herbs and other rejuvenating substances, vitamins, and
natural food supplements. Other practices are ultimately
necessary. These include the whole life of love and humor,
an intimate life in an environment, both physical and
cultural, that is natural and essentially peaceful. The
whole matter of sexuality must also be transformed, If the
conventional, degenerative orgasm continues as the obsessive
goal and practice of our vital feelings, it is quite natural
that the life cycle as a whole will remain oriented toward a
similar degenerative crisis. (The Eating Gorilla Comes in
Peace deals with certain basic aspects of sexual
relationship, but the full description of the regenerative
practice is given in Love of the Two-Armed Form.) Some of
the naturally regenerative practices available to mankind
are commonly known, if uncommonly practiced, while others
are hidden, or veiled to inexperience, within the esoteric
processes of spiritual life. Still others may yet be
discovered, such as sophisticated, scientific ways of
treating the cellular and molecular processes.

None of these practices will prevent
the normal processes of change from occurring. They will
simply prevent the progressively and negatively degenerative
pattern, and only in cases where the most complete
psycho-physical revision of belief and practice can be
realized. The body inevitably changes over time, but its
changes are not necessarily degenerative, In the normal
process of growth and change, the bodily being moves with
age from the elemental toward the etheric, and from the
gross to the subtle. The bodily being becomes less
vital-physical in orientation, but it need not become
devitalized. Its energy should only increase, but its food
and Fullness may become more and more subtle. Eventually,
the fully mature and aged individual should only become
suddenly “tired” in the physical body, and the physical will
simply “go to sleep. Death is merely the falling away of the
present elemental structures or extensions of the total
bodily being. The physical body itself becomes vulgar from
the point of view of the total being-and so it falls off. At
death, the manifest being is simply entering one of its
subtler dimensions of experience, wherein it is still
present as a bodily being fit for the food of the place
wherein it appears.