衰老是一种不必要的“流行病”

毫不夸张地说，你住在你的信念体系里，你透过这个“信念体”来感知。你的信念可以提高，也可以降低你的视力。你的信念可以增强，也可以减弱你的听力，或任何感官功能。

举个例子，如果你相信到了某个年纪之后听力会退化，那么它就会退化。你将开始越来越少地使用这个官能，作为弥补，你会不自觉地把注意力转移到其他感官的运用上，于是你对耳朵的依赖会越来越少，直到功能本身萎缩为止。

就以上情形来说，身体的机能就是一种习惯。你只不过是顺着自己的信念，忘了如何去正确地听而已。听力所需的所有细微操纵都被无意识地抑制了。于是，身体实质的退化就真的随之而来。然而，退化不是先发生的，而是后来才出现的。

同样的发展可能发生在几乎任何生理范畴内。通常涉及的不止是一个信念。与“视力会减退”这个信念并行的是，你可能还有上述“听力会迟钝”的信念，而这两个信念可能又被这样一种信念所强化——那就是“人越老越不中用，渐渐变得连日常生活都应付不了”。请注意，这个信念会自动发生作用，以确保真的会实际显现。反过来，如果你的想法是：智慧会随着年龄而增长；对自己的了解会带来前所未有的平静；敏锐的心智能让人更好地评估环境；身体感官更能欣赏各种各样的刺激。如果你有这些想法，这些状况就真的会在实际生活中与你喜相逢，而整个身体也会随着你的信念常保康泰。

再说一次，你一定要明白，你的念头和思想并非像无实质的幻象或幻影般存在。思想和念头全都是电磁实相，会影响你的肉体存在，而且会被你的神经系统自动转化成你血肉中的东西，以及你体验到的东西。

身体本身总是处于一种变动的状态。你认为它达到了某个高峰，而后就开始退化或者变差，那是因为你并不了解它是你的存在在肉身中的表达。

它反映了大地和肉体的季节变化。它以极大的忠实和放任反映出你所认为的自己。在老年时，它也是在做同样的事。它显示出在肉身中的你，无论当你在进入它还是离开它，而在此你会看到巨大的变化。当然，许多人出于各种各样的理由停止创造他们的身体而英年早逝，但有些人死去是因为他们相信老年是可耻的，只有年轻的身体才是美的。

因此，你对于年龄的信念将影响身体和它所有的能力。如在本书前面提到的，你可能变得耳背，因为你坚信这一定会随着年龄的增长而发生。你身体的化学成分会根据你的信念而改变——根据你对生命各个阶段里身体活跃度的信念。

元素、化学物、细胞、原子与分子——这些部分地构成了你自己活生生的雕像，但你是那个指挥它们活动的人，透过你有意识的信念去指挥，这些有意识的信念然后启动了赋予你身体“生命”的所有那些伟大的创造力，并保证身体不断反映出你所认为的自己。

不幸信念的重担也许最沉重地落在人口中的老年人身上，因为那些信念已经相对畅通无阻地运行较长的时间了。

那些特定的信念实际上早在年轻人中扎了根，结果，似乎所有的生命都应该在青年时期开出最灿烂的花朵，然后从那个显赫的位置上跌落得越来越快，直至落入废弃与混乱之中。

这些观念不仅给老年人带来了严重困难，而且也在许多年轻人直接或间接的自杀行为中扮演着重要角色。对这些年轻人而言，人生的顶峰似乎就在眼前，只能短暂持续，然后又会被夺走。青春的美丽和年轻的建树被过度强调，以至于相形之下，生命中所有其他的活动仿佛都黯然失色。

通过经验获得知识被认为是不够实用的学习方法，因此随年龄增长而来的技巧与领悟很少被考虑在内。

同样，在某种程度上，宗教和科学——尤其是医学——似乎致力于鼓励人性最消极的信念。人们理所当然地认为，随着年龄的增长，所有精神、身体、心灵及情感上的满足感都会变得越来越少。人们理所当然地认为，记忆力会衰退、身体会虚弱、感官会迟钝，情感的活跃度会降低。在四、五十岁之后，甚至对性行为的想象都常常被认为是可耻的。

面对这样一种预期的未来，难怪许多青少年宁愿在看到退化的第一个迹象——第一条皱纹或第一丝白发——之前就死掉。这样的自然迹象一定显得多像灾难的先兆啊！而在天平的另一端，年长的父母被他们的成年子女如此对待，就像他们正陷入二度童年的怪诞版本里。许多人真的对老年人说话较大声，无论他们是否有任何听力问题。

你们整个贸易和广告、竞争和商业的世界，都加强了这种态度。这还不算娱乐业的巨大影响，它同样反映了对青春的赞颂，以及对变老的恐惧。

衰老有一些非常确切的、极好的边际效应，我们也会在本书中讨论到——但在这里我想向读者保证，基本上不存在单纯由衰老引起的疾病。

身体会用坏，往往由于用得越来越少——而那是因为很少有人研究健康的身体在晚年的真正能力。这个阶段还包含了某些律动，在其中，正常的疗愈过程被大大加快了，而生命力本身并不会在体内耗尽或减少。生命力的表达在任何时候都可能受到阻碍，但每个个体独特的能量并不会仅仅因为年纪而枯竭。

似乎很明显，老年人比较容易患病，这种易病倾向是一个关于生命的医学事实。然而，它却是一个在人类的生理实相中没有基本依据的事实，是一个由暗示所带来的事实。医生们看到了身体上的结果，那是相当明确的，然后那些结果被拿来当作证据。

即使在今天，在世界上少数几个与世隔绝的地区，老年人并没有疾病缠身，他们的生命体征也没有减弱。他们在死亡来临之前都很健康。

因此，你们必须承认，他们的信念体系是相当实用的，而且也没有医学人士围绕在他们身边。

衰老是一种身与心的流行病——一种不必要的病。你“染上”了它，是因为你在年轻时就相信老年人是不中用的。没有针对信念的疫苗，因此当有这种信念的年轻人老去时，他们就成了“受害者”。 

? 第二青春期与癌症

? 罗“奇迹般”的视力恢复，以及赛斯的评论

? 赛斯谈现代医院之弊

? 消除负面暗示的“静电噪音” 

? 医生的负面暗示，以及内在恐惧的运作

Quite literally, you live in the body of your beliefs. You perceive through the body of your beliefs. Your beliefs can increase your vision or diminish it. They can increase or diminish your hearing, or any sense function.

If, for example, you believe that after a certain time of life hearing will fade, then so it will. You will begin to use the faculty less and less, unconsciously transfer your attention to the other senses to compensate, and rely less and less upon your ears until the functions themselves do atrophy.

Functions in this particular regard are habits. You simply forget how to hear properly, following your belief. All of the minute manipulations necessary to hearing are unconsciously repressed. The actual physical deterioration then does indeed follow. The deterioration however does not occur first, but after.

The same kind of development can occur in almost any physical category. Usually more than one belief is involved. Parallel with the belief that vision will fail, you may have the before-mentioned belief that hearing will dim, and these two ideas may be reinforced by a belief that age automatically makes you less a person, turning you into an individual who can no longer relate in the daily pattern of environment. The belief, you see, would work to insure the materialization of that state. On the other hand you may believe that wisdom grows with age, that self-understanding brings a peace of mind not earlier known, that the keen mind is actually far better able to assess the environment, and that the physical senses are much more appreciative of all stimuli. And so those conditions will be physically met in your experience. The physical apparatus itself, following your beliefs, will continue in health.

You must understand, again, that your ideas and thoughts do not exist as phantoms or shadow images without substance. They are electromagnetic realities. They affect your physical being and they are automatically translated by your nervous system into the stuff of your flesh and of your experience.

The body itself is always in a state of becoming. You think of it as reaching a certain peak and then deteriorating, or becoming less. That is because you do not understand it as the expression of your being in flesh.

It reflects the seasons of the earth and of the flesh. In what you think of as you, it mirrors one condition with great faithfulness and abandon. In old age it does the same thing. It shows you in flesh, both as you come into it and leave it, and here you see great variation. Many cease creating their bodies and die at a young age for a great variety of reasons, of course, but some die because they believe that old age is shameful and that only a young body can be beautiful.

Your beliefs about age, therefore, will affect your body and all of its capacities. As mentioned earlier in this book, you may become hard of hearing because you firmly believe that this must come with age. You will alter the chemical composition of your body according to your beliefs about its activity through the various portions of your life.

Elements, chemicals, cells, atoms and molecules — these partially compose your living sculpture, but you are the one who directs their activity through your conscious beliefs, which then initiate all of those great creative powers that give your body its life, and insure its constant reflection of the self that you believe you are.

The weight of unfortunate beliefs perhaps falls heaviest on the older segments of the population, for the beliefs have had a longer period of time to operate relatively unimpeded.

Those particular beliefs actually take hold in young adults, so that it seems that all of life is meant to come to its fullest flower in young adulthood, and then from that prestigious position fall quicker and quicker into disuse and disarray.

These ideas do not only inflict severe difficulties upon older members of the population, but they also have a vital part to play in the behavior of many young people who commit suicide directly or indirectly. It seems to such youngsters that the pinnacle of life is just at hand, to last only briefly, and then to be snatched away. Undue stress is laid upon youthful beauty and youthful achievement, so that it appears that all of the rest of life’s activities must suffer by contrast.

Knowledge through experience is not considered a practical-enough method of learning, so that the skills and understanding that come with age are seldom taken into consideration.

To a certain degree, religion and science — and the medical sciences in particular — seem devoted to encouraging the most negative beliefs about human nature. It is taken for granted that all mental, physical, spiritual and emotional satisfactions become lesser with advancing age. It is taken for granted that memory fails, the body weakens, the senses stagnate, and emotional vividness dims. It is often considered scandalous to even imagine sexual activity after the age of even 40 or 50.

Faced with that kind of a projected future, no wonder many adolescents prefer to die before catching sight of the very first hint of deterioration — the first wrinkle or touch of gray in the hair. What forerunners of disaster such natural signs must seem! And at the other end of the scale, older parents are treated by their grown children as if they themselves were falling into a grotesque version of a second childhood. Many people actually speak louder to older persons, whether or not they have any hearing difficulties at all.

Your entire world of commerce and advertisements, of competition and of business, prolong such attitudes. This is aside from the impact of the entertainment industry, which reflects that same glorification of youth, and that fear of growing old.

There are very definite, excellent side-effects of growing older, that we will also discuss in this book — but here I want to assure the reader that basically speaking there are no diseases brought about by old age alone.

The body often wears out because it has been used less and less — and that is because little study has been given to the true capabilities of the healthy physical body in the later years of life. That period also contains certain rhythms in which normal healing processes are highly accelerated, and the life force itself does not wear out or lessen within a body. Its expression may be impeded at any time, but the unique energy of each individual is not drained away because of age alone.

We will have more to say concerning older people and their ways of life, and also discuss the many beliefs and ideas that can come almost immediately to their aid. The subject of suicide will also be discussed in a different context, and when I invite my readers to start over, I want it understood that you can indeed start over regardless of your age or circumstances.

It seems obvious that the elderly are more susceptible to diseases. That susceptibility is a medical fact of life. It is a fact, however, without a basic foundation in the truth of man's biological reality. It is a fact brought about through suggestion. The doctors see the bodily results, which are quite definite, and then those results are taken as evidence.

In a few isolated areas of the world even today, the old are not disease-ridden, nor do their vital signs weaken. They remain quite healthy until the time of death.

Their belief systems, therefore, you must admit, are quite practical. Nor are they surrounded by medical professions.

Senility is a mental and physical epidemic — a needless one. You "catch" it because when you are young you believe that old people cannot perform. There are no inoculations against beliefs, so when young people with such beliefs grow old they become "victims."