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Excerpt from the Gathering of February 12, 1996 at
Tumomama Sanctuary, Free Standing Man, Tape 7A
Avatar Adi Da: Elders aren’t valued. You are just
old. In other words, you are in-capacitated for doing what
human people do. So there isn’t a pattern of elderliness
that is integrated with the rest of the ages of life. You
become obsolete at some point or in danger of losing your
integrity within the pattern or purpose, something you are
needed for and all that. The body becoming chaotic, as it
does in cancer, which is just another part of that pattern
of not being integrated with all the surrounding pattern. So
the actual circumstance of losing your place, so to speak,
can be kind of triggered to break down socially,
psychologically, and physically.
There should be an older person’s place in the culture,
something to become more and more obsolete. You don’t go to
the pleasure dome anymore. No. You shouldn’t have to measure
up, so to speak to the expectations of the young. You should
have things to be doing that are something that is uniquely
an advantage to be older to do it, the knowledge, the
equanimity, the lack of demand for this and that that
younger people have, the perspective.
Of course it is also a time traditionally for not
retirement into obsolescence but now you have the time to
focus on meditation and use of solitude without other
obligations. And if that were culturally understood, then
some at, any rate, might, at a certain stage, become
something like formal renunciates. They would move perhaps
out of the community situation, move onto a sanctuary, at
least a community sanctuary, be in residence there, more
fully occupied with not only meditation and sacred matters
generally, but more hours in a solitary circumstance and yet
service done that uses a resource by the community somehow
for cultural understanding.
In other words, a something you do when you get to a
certain age should be built into the community. Some people
might be very functional in a community setting, in their
70’s, 80’s, 90’s, whatever. But others may move into a
renunciate pattern more. So this isn’t a matter of us
organizing the sanctuaries like Naitauba all over to
accommodate such people, it is a community matter. That is
another reason why it would have to be community sanctuaries
and enlarged community setting and financial accommodation
of people of that age too. They may still be financially
connected. If not, the traditional situation would be, since
the person is not producing income, they are taken care of
somehow, the community, family, whatever. But they are,
their needs are reduced, what it costs to take care of
people. People’s needs are reduced because they inevitably
choose some more simplified arrangement, either in the
community or on the Sanctuary, and whatever their needs are,
it has been accounted for in total community resource. The
individuals contribute over time to some kind of fund that
is then usable to older people, any number of approaches.
But it shouldn’t become a gradual obsolescence, people just
sort of putting up with you, you can’t really do anything
else.
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