For Perry, the last hidden facto r in his condition could be dehydration,
which starts to impair a person’ s judgment before he realizes that there is a
problem. Not drinking enough water every day is one of the commonest
conditions in old age, and although it has received almost no publicity ,
chronic dehydration is a major cause of preventable aging. Some authorities
go so far as to count dehydration among the leading causes of death in old
age. It is certainly an avoidable complication that leads to many problems. When body fluids fall below a certain level, the physiology begins to
enter a toxic state; vital electrolyte balance is thrown off, and eventually so
is the balance of brain chemistry . A host of difficulties can result—literally
anything from kidney failure and heart attack to blackouts, dizziness,
lethar gy, and full-blown senile dementia. As the person becomes less alert
and more forgetful about drinking water , a vicious circle gets set up. The
same is true for almost all these causes of false senility—the longer they go
overlooked, the harder it is for the person to see the problem. But Perry’s wife was concerned, even if he wasn’ t, and she promised to
remind him abou t these things. Some would be easier than other s: Since she
did all the cooking, she could be more careful with his diet (adding a
multiple vitamin  pill can’t hurt and on the off chance might help); she could
see that he drank more water and used his medications properly . This extra
attention could help lift his spirits, too, but I was most concerned about the
alcohol and the depression. In my mind, Perry was walking a thin line. His
prevailing self-image was conta ined in two disquieting words: “I’m old.” It
would be hard to imagine a phrase that is more crippling, or more likely to
lead someone into the escape of alcohol or the dead end of depression.Aging as a whole is a vicious circle. When someone expects to be
withdrawn, isolated, and useless after a certain age, he creat es the very
conditions that justify his belief s. Our deepest assumptions are the triggers
for physical changes. It would be naïve, then, to think that just listing a few
preventable causes for aging could actually prevent it. What good does it do
to tell someone like Perry to quit drinking if he feels despair? The whole
business of growing old is a morass of hidden feelings that people find too
difficult to face—if anything, drinking is a merciful anesthetic compared to
living with dread and lost hope. It is far easier to follow one’s internal
programming than to break through into new territory . But, over time, our
hidden programming robs us of choice more and more, making it harder to
break the bonds of self-destructive behavior . In this regard aging is much
like addiction: The person feels that he is still in control when in fact the
behavior is controlling him. From the outside, I could see this in Perry . He
was transforming himself into a dying man before my eyes, and the tragedy
was that he could not see that he was doing it to himself. Awareness, once it
becomes conditioned, assumes the shape of habit; unconscious repetition
reinforces the destructive patterns, and unless new learning takes place,
inertia will carry the body downhill year after year . Awareness and the Reversal of Aging
The bright side of Perry’ s case was that almost everything happening to him
could be corrected by creating a new mode of awareness. To do that, we
take advantage of the fact that awareness is always generating biological
information. With even the slightest change of awareness, energy and
information move in new patterns. The reason old habits are so destructive
is that new patterns aren’ t allowed to spring into existence— conditioned
awareness is therefore synonymous with slow dying. On the other hand, by increasing someone’ s awareness, bringing  it into a
new focus and breaking out of old patterns, you can alter aging. A brilliant
demonstration of this was offered in 1979 by psychologist Ellen Langer and
her colle agues at Harvard, who effectively reversed the biological age of agroup of old men by a simple but ingenious shift in awareness. The
subjects, all 75 or older and in good health, were asked to meet for a week’ s
retreat at a country resort. They were informed in advance that they would
be given a battery of physical and mental exams, but in addition one
unusual stipulati on was placed upon them: They were not allowed to bring
any newspapers, magazines, books, or family photos dated later than 1959. The purpose of this odd reque st became clear when they arrived—the
resort had been set up to duplica te life as it was twenty years earlier. Instead
of maga zines from 1979, the reading tables held issues of Life and the
Satur day Evening Post  from 1959. The only music played was twenty years
old, and, in keeping with this flashback, the men were asked  to behave
entirely as if the year were 1959. All talk had to refer to events and people
of that year. Every detail of their week in the country was geared to make
each subject feel, look, talk, and behave as he had in his midfifties. During this period, Langer ’s team made extensive measurements of the
subjects’ biological age. Gerontologists have not been able to fix the precise
markers that define biological age, as I noted earlier , but a general profile
was compiled for each man using measurements of physical strength,
posture, percep tion, cognition, and short-term memory , along with
thresholds of hearing, sight, and taste. The Harvard team wanted to change the context in which these  men saw
themselves. The premise of their experiment was that seeing oneself as old
or young directly influences the aging process itself. To shift their context
back to 1959, the experimenters had their subjects wear I.D. photos taken
twenty years before—the group learned to identify one another through
these pictures rather than prese nt appearance; they were instructed to talk
exclusively in the present tense of 1959 (“I wonder if President Eisenhower
will go with Nixon next election?”); their wives and children were referred
to as if they were also twenty years younger; although all the men were
retired, they talked about their careers as if they were still in full swing. The results of this play-acting were remarkable. Compared to a control
group that went on the retreat but continued to live in the world of 1979, the
make-believe group improved in memory and manual dexterity . They were
more active and self-suf ficient about such things as taking their own food at
meals and cleaning up their rooms, behaving much more like 55-year -oldsthan 75-year -olds (many had become dependent on younger family
members to perform everyday tasks for them). Perhaps the most remarkable change had to do with aspects of aging that
were considered irreversible. Impartial judges who were asked to study
before-and-after pictures of the men detected that their faces looked visibly
younger by an average of three years. Measurements of finger length, which
tends to shorten with age, indicated that their fingers had lengthened;
stiffened joints were more flexible, and posture had started to straighten as
it had in youn ger years. Muscle strength, as measured by hand grip,
improved, as did hearing and vision. The control group also showed some
improvements (Langer explained this by the fact that going on a trip and
being treated specially made them feel younger , too). But the control group
actually declined in certain markers such as manual dexterity and finger
length. Intellige nce is considered fixed in adults, yet over half of the
experimental group showed increased intelligence over the five days of
their return to 1959, while a quarter of the control group declined in I.Q. test scores. Professor Lang er’s study was a landmark in proving that so-called
irreversible signs of aging could be reversed using psychological
intervention. She attributed this success to three factors: (1) The men were
asked to behave as if they were younger; (2) They were treated as if they
had the intelligence and independence of younger people (unlike the way
they were often treated at home —for example, their opinions were elicited
with respect and actually listened to); (3) They were asked to follow
complex instruc tions about their daily routine. Because all three factors
overlapped, Langer ultimately was not certain which of them was the most
important. She speculated that a similar reversal of aging might have
resulted if the men had been given any complex task to perfo rm, such as
composing an opera—a task V erdi set for himself in his late seventies. I have been pondering Professo r Langer ’s results for several years, ever
since I first wrote about it in the context of personal time. The old paradigm
tells us that time is objective, but in fact our bodies respond to subjective
time, as recorded in memories and internal feelings. Langer enabled these
men to be inner time trave lers; they journeyed back twenty years
psychologically , and their bodie s followed. The simplest way I can explainthis is that two aspects of awareness were being shifted: attention and
intention. Awareness always has these two components. Attention focuses
awareness to a local perception. Intention brings about a change in that
localization. In Langer ’s experiment, the subjects had their attention sharply
localized on the context of the year 1959; this started a new flow of
biological information, because everything they saw, heard, or talked about
had to relate to that one specific localization. At the same time, they had to
act on an intenti on—intending to be just as they were twenty years earlier . There is no magic in either factor; we all pay attention to various things
throughout the day; we all carry out various desires and intentions. The magic is in how the body follows this change of awareness across
the barrier of time. It’s not feasible or realistic to try to live in the past, but
there are valuable clues that can be followed here: Again we see that the
quality of one’s life depends on the quality of attention. Whatever you pay
attention to will grow more important in your life. There is no limit to the
kinds of changes that awareness can produce. In our society , we do not use
the flow of attention to produce  results; we are not clued in to the energy
and information  that starts to be generated inside us anytime we experience
a change of awareness. In the following exercises, we will explore how to
consciously call upon the power of awareness and use it to our benefit, for
if we do not use it consciously , our awareness will be trapped in the old
conditioning that creates the aging process. OceanofPDF .comIN PRACTICE:
Using the Power of Awareness
The exercises below are designed to prove that you can consciously direct
the flow of energy and information in your body . There are major benefits
to be gained once you begin to consciously use your awareness:
•  You can tap into subtler levels of information in the form of bodily
cues you have been ignoring. Your body will tell you what it needs
when it needs it—this is the exact opposite of being driven by habit,
which will never precisely fit the body’ s actual wants. •  You can focus attention on parts of the body that are expressing
discomfort. Simply by localizing your awareness on a source of pain,
you can cause healing to begin , for the body naturally sends healing
energy wherever attention is drawn. •  You can activ ate desires and intentions to fulfill them more efficiently . An intention is basically a disgu ised need, and the mind-body system
is set up to meet all needs directly and spontaneously . (This is very
different from the addictive or compulsive desires that our old
programming has built into us.) When all three of these areas are operating properly , condition ing starts
to dissolve at the deepest cellular levels; this has to happen to prevent the
body from growing old. There are numerous spiritual teachings in all areas
related to the power of awareness, and the techniques of Native American
shamans might differ extremely from those of Tibetan monks or Hindu
yogis. In genera l, however , awareness is used as a healing power: It restores
balance wherever it is allowed to flow freely .Bringing awareness into contact with frozen patterns of old conditioning
starts to melt those patterns, for ultimately everything we can sense or think
about is simply an aspect of our awareness. The discomfort the body
manifests as pain, numbness, spasm, inflexibility , and trauma are all knots
that awareness can undo by itself. Through practice and dedicati on, you can
heal any imbalance in the mind -body system through awarene ss, once the
appropriate techniques of relaxation, release, and insight are learned. Below are some beginning procedures for localizing attention and
fulfilling intentions. We will progress to deeper , more powerful techniques
in later sections, but even at these stages, the connections being forged
between mind and body are extremely helpful for breaking out of the old
pathways that create aging. Exercise 1: Paying Attention to Y our Body
Although we all know how to pay attention to something outside
ourselves, and we all feel our attention drawn to a pain in the body, such as
a toothache or muscle spasm, there are many subtle cues that escape us in
everyday life. Awareness has many levels, and it must be allowed to flow
from one to the other , for flow is its natural state. In this first exercise, you
are asked to easily direct your attention to each area of the body; as this
happens, the act of paying attention releases deep-stored stresses. Like a
child, your body wants attention and feels comforted when it receives it. Sit with your eyes closed in a comfortable chair or lie down. (Choose a
quiet room that is free of distracting noises.) Place your attention on the
toes of your right foot. Curl them down until they feel tense, then release
the tension and feel the sense of relaxation that flows into them . Don’ t rush
either the tensing or the relaxing ; take time to feel what is happ ening. Now
let out a long, deep sigh as if you are breathing out of your toes, letting all
stored fatigue and tension flow away with your breath. Don’ t puff or blow;
just let the sigh release itself in one long exhalation, like a sigh of relief,
without holding back. If you let out a moan or groan, all the better—that is
a sign of deep release.Now repeat this procedure with the top of your right foot, first placing
your attention on it, then tensing the muscles (by arching  your foot
backward), and finally relaxing them. When the top of your foot feels
relaxed, let out a sigh as if you are breathing out through your toes. Once you have this basic technique down, take your attention to all parts
of the body in the following order . Remember that this is not just a muscle
relaxation techn ique; your attention needs to linger comfortably at each
bodily location. Right foot:  toes, top of foot, sole of foot, ankle (two stages: flexing
back, then flexing forward)
Left foot:  toes, top of foot, sole of foot, ankle (two stages: flexing
back, then flexing forward)
Right buttock and upper thigh
Left buttock and upper thigh
Abdominal muscles  (diaphragm)
Lower back, upper back
Right hand:  fingers, wrist (two stages: flexing back, then flexing
forward)
Left hand:  fingers, wrist (two stages: flexing back, then flexing
forward)
Shoulders  (two stages: flexing forward, then flexing upward toward
neck)
Neck  (two stages: flexing forward, then flexing backward)
Face  (two stages: screwing face into tight grimace, then tensing brow
and forehead)
This exercise sounds rather complicated when described verbally , but
flexing various body parts simply follows the natural way the joints and
muscles move. After one session, you will be able to feel your way around
your body ef fortlessly . Short version:  A complete circuit of the body  as described above takes
about fifteen minutes. If you are pressed for time, a short version involves
only the toes, diaphragm, fingers, shoulders, neck, and face.Exercise 2: Focused Intention
This exercise demonstrates that having an intention is enough to
accomplish a result. When properly focused—which means easily and
without strain—awareness has the ability to carry out quite specific
commands. An intention doesn’ t have to be a verbally expressed thought; in
fact, our deepest intentions are body-centered. Our most fundamental needs
—for love, understanding, enco uragement, support—permeate  every cell. The desires that arise in your mind are often clouded by ego motives, which
are not true needs; people get caught up in the pursuit of money, career
goals, and political ambitions in ways that are disconnecte d from the
fundamental need for comfort and well-being that every healthy organism
must fulfill. Many of us are so alienated from our basic needs, so
programmed to run after what the ego wants, that we have to relearn the
basic mechanics of how attention and intention actually work. There are many ways to get fulfillment besides the outward-oriented ones
our culture teaches us. The most valuable lesson in this regard is that
intentions automatically seek their fulfillment if left alone. Every cell in
your body is seeking fulfillment through joy, beauty , love, and appreciation. This is hard to realize when the mind sets up its own separate  agenda for
fulfilling other kinds of desires, ones that are loveless, without joy or
satisfaction. Yet millions of people have programmed themselv es to reach
only such goals. In the three related procedures given here, you will experience the
effortless way that intentions can get fulfilled, bypassing the ego and the
rational mind (for best results, do exercise 1 as a warm-up, in order to bring
your body into a receptive state). Even though the intentions being carried
out are simple, they give you confidence in your ability to direct your
awareness, whic h is critical if you want to change the deep-rooted patterns
of aging, for aging itself is an intention that your cells are obey ing without
your control. 1. Take a piece of string about twelve inches long and tie a small weight
at the end to form a pendulum (a lead fishing weight, household washer , or
one-inch bolt will work well). Hold the string in your right hand and brace
your elbow on a table or the arm of your chair so that you can hold thependulum steady . Sit comfortably and make sure that the pendulum is not
moving. Now look at the weight and project the intention that the pendul um move
from side to side. The simplest form of intention is to visualize how you
want the weight to move, but you can verbalize the words side to side  if you
wish. Keep your attention on the pendulum and keep the intention firmly in
mind, but make sure you hold your arm steady . In a few seconds you will be
surprised to see the pendulum start to move of its own accord. If it moves
erratically at first, don’t try to correct its swing—just wait until the desired
motion is found automatically . Now change your intention to direct the pendulum back and forth instead
of side to side. Again see this motion in your mind’ s eye and easily hold it
there. Typically , your pendulum  will hesitate for a few seconds, move
erratically , then take up the desired direction. After watching it for a few seconds, intend for the pendulum to swing in
a circle. Again it will pause, move erratically for a second or two, then
move exactly as you visualized. The harder you try to hold your arm rigidly
still, the faster the pendulum will move. Curiously , doing this exercise in a
group produces the greatest effect; I have observed several hundred people
sitting mesmerized while their pendulums instantly changed direction at the
touch of an intention, often moving in wide, fast arcs. Although this
exercise is very simple, the ef fect can be quite uncanny . 2. Sitting  comfortably , hold your right hand open, palm upward. Have the
intention that your palm should  get warmer . To aid in this, imagine that
your hand is touching a red-hot stove or burning coal. Hold the image in
your mind. Within a few seconds the sensation of warmth will start to
appear . Now hold up your left hand and aim the fingers of your right hand
at it, fingers out stiff and close together . Intend for the warmth to shoot out
of your right hand into the palm of the left. To aid in this, sweep your right
hand back and forth, as if painting your other hand with warmth (but don’t
let the two hands touch). Most people will feel warmth broadcast from one
hand to the other; others will feel a mild tingling or ticklish sensation in the
left palm. This exercise is most effective if you guide someone else through it. If
you are doing it alone, familiarize yourself with the instructions  first so thatyou can try the experiment without interruption. 3. Sit comfortably and hold an ordinary thermometer between the thumb
and forefinger of your right hand . Close your eyes and pay attention to your
breathing for a moment. As your body relaxes, continue to easily follow
your breath, then note the tempe rature on the thermometer . You are going to
change it through intention alone. The intention of cold. Breathing through your mouth,  feel the cool air in
your throat as it moves in and out. Think the word cool as you do this. Now
imagine that the thermometer is a piece of ice that you can barely hold
between your fingers. After a minute or so, look at the temper ature on the
thermometer—it will likely have dropped from two to five degrees. If you
notice no change, resume the exercise for another minute or two before
checking again. The intention of warmth. Breathing through your nose, feel the warmth in
the center of your chest for a moment. Now think the word hot and imagine
that the thermometer is a glowing red ember you can barely hold. After a
minute or so, look at the thermometer—it will likely have risen from two to
five degrees. If you notice no change, resume the exercise for another
minute or two before checking again. The last two exercises are based on classic experiments performed over
fifty years ago by the pioneer Russian neurologist A. R. Luria. Luria’s most
famous subject was a journalist he simply called S., a man who was gifted
with an almost flawless photographic memory . S. could attend a press
conference without taking notes and afterward recount every word spoken
by any number of speakers; he could memorize long strings of random
numbers and recall the details of any scene in which he had been present
down to the most minute detail. In addit ion, S. could use simple visualizations to change all kinds of
involuntary functions. If he imagined himself staring at the sun, his pupils
would contract; if he imagined himself sitting in the dark, his pupils would
dilate. He could  raise and lower the temperature of his hand s using the
procedure descr ibed above. Once you have mastered that, you can try his
method for changing his heartb eat. If he wanted his heart to beat faster , S.saw himself running after a train as it pulled out of a station; if he wanted to
slow down his heart, S. saw himself lying in bed taking a nap. Luria considered these achievements remarkable, just as future
researchers did a generation later when they observed Swami Rama
performing the same feats. However , in both cases what was being
demonstrated was biofeedback without machines. Instead of needing an
oscilloscope or a beep to indicate that an intention was being carried out, S.
and Swami Rama relied on their bodies’ own feedback loops. Although we are not ordinarily aware of it, the body is constantly
regulating temperature, heart rate, and other autonomic functions by
listening in to its own interna l messages. The slightest change in any
function register s, however faintly , in the awareness of the nervous system. As these exercises demonstrat e, such silent signals can be consciously
tapped. Awareness is a field, and by sending an intention into that field, you
shift the flow of biological information. This registers in the conscious
mind as a faint sensation, intuition, or just a silent knowing. The response
varies from person to person, but with practice one’s sensitivity to one’s
own awareness becomes stronger . As applied to aging, this sensitivity is necessary , because the new
paradigm tells us that aging begins as a distortion in the field of awareness. The smooth flow of information in the body becomes blocked by stresses,
memories, past trauma, and random mistakes. Although such breakdowns
are subtl e, they are not lost to awareness; the heart, liver, kidneys, and every
other organ know  when they are malfunctioning. Disturbances in cellular
intelligence eventually register in the mind as discomfort or pain or just
being out of sorts. What we are learning to do here is to refine such
perceptions so that they register at an earlier stage. The earlier it is detected,
the more easily a distorted function can be corrected using awareness alone. Full-blown aging is a very gross sign that the body has suffered a loss of
energy and information at some vital point, usually in the brain, immune
system, or endocrine glands. Cancer , diabetes, and senility are typical late-stage manifestations of
dysfunction. There are rare cases in which patients have used the power of
awareness to cure themselves of even the most serious disorders, yet it is far
simpler to correct the underlying problem at an earlier stage. The very firststage of any physiological disruption takes place in awareness itself; quite
naturally , the best way to move these disruptions back into balance is also
by using attention. Exercise 3: A T rigger for T ransformation
Every intention is a trigger for transformation. As soon as you decide that
you want something, your nervous system responds to reach your desired
goal. This holds true for simple intentions, such as the intention to get up
and get a glass of water , as well as for complex intentions, such as winning
a game of tenni s or playing a Mozart sonata. In either case, the conscious
mind doesn’ t have to direct every neuronal signal and muscle movement to
achieve its goal. The intention is inserted into the field of awareness,
triggering the appropriate response. When I go to sleep, my intention to sleep triggers a complex  series of
biochemical and neurological processes. Medical science cann ot duplicate
this connection; it is controlled at the level of intelligence. The connection
can be crudely manipulated only from the molecular level (for example, I
can go to sleep by taking a sleeping pill, but the kind of sleep  that results
will not be natural; there will be disruptions in the normal sequence of sleep
stages, particularly REM or dream sleep). When you have an intention, your brain can supply only the reactions it
has learned; if you are a good tennis player or pianist, your trained response
will produce very different results from those achieved by someone less
skilled than you. Yet the deepest skill resides in managing intention itself. The people who succeed best at any endeavor are generally following a
pattern of handling their desires without undue struggle with their
environment—they are in the flow. If you review the section on adaptability
(this page ) you will find a good descrip tion of how the most successful
people solve problems—they allow the solution to present itself, trusting
their own abiliti es to cope with difficult challenges. By creating  a minimum
of anxiety , conflict, worry , and false expectation, they promote highly
efficient use of their mental and physical energies. The result ing ease of
mind-body functioning is directly correlated to aging well—the morenaturally you exist in the flow of your awareness, the less wear  and tear on
your body . As is true of all abilities, people vary enormously in their use of
intention. When  Professor Ellen Langer and her colleagues provided a
group of elderly men with the challenge of acting twenty years younger
(this page ), the researcher s gave their subjects a common focus of intention. The key to reversing the age of these men was that their bodies responded
to external cues from the past. In the following exercise, you are asked to participate in a kind of
internal time travel using a visual image from your past; the purpose is to
experience how quickly your body adapts to this intention with feelings of
renewed youthfulness. Sit comfortably  or lie down with your eyes closed. Pay attention for a
moment to your breathing, easily following the rise and fall of your chest,
feeling the air as it passes in and out of your nostrils. Feel your arms getting
heavy at your sides. When you are relaxed, conjure up in your mind’ s eye
one of the most wonderful moments from your childhood. It should be a
vivid scene of joy , and preferably you should be the center of some activity . For example, one such scene for me took place while playing cricket
when I was a child. In summer my father took us to the hill stations in
northern India, and I vividly remember one of these, named Shillong,
nestled in the cool green mountains. I can see the flat meadow ringed by
hills where we played our game s. There was one instance where I made a
winning run, and this is the mom ent I choose to relive in memory . I feel the
weight of the bat in my hands and the hard smack when I hit the ball. I see
it soaring high, against the green and red roofs of distant cottages. I feel the
cool air and the excitement in my body as I start to run. My heart is
pounding, my legs straining with all their might. In my mind’ s eye I swing
my arms open wide, embracing this victorious moment. With every fiber I
am participating in it, not just recalling it, and the intensity of desiring to be
back there in my youth makes me feel light, expanded, happy , absorbed in
an experience so fulfilling that it stops time.Find your own moment and see how powerful it is for you. Details are
important; for that reason, intensely physical experiences are the easiest to
use. Feel the air and sunlight on your skin; sense whether you were hot or
cold. Observe colors, textures, faces. Name the locale and the people in
your scene. Notice how everyone was dressed and acted. But most
important, recapture the feeling  in your body as you rose up to blend into
and beco me that moment. By rejoining the flow of one magical instant, you
trigger a transformation in your body . Signals being sent from  your brain
are activated just as easily by memories and visual images as by actual
sights and sounds. The more vivid your participation, the closer you will
come to duplicating the body chemistry of that youthful mome nt. The old
channels are never closed, they are only unused. Therefore, by changing the
context of your inner experien ce, you can go back in time using the
biochemistry of memory as your vehicle. Exercise 4: Intentions and the Field
The new paradigm tells us that our underlying reality , the field, is
continuous and therefore equally present at all points in space-time. Your
awareness and every intention that springs from your awareness are
enmeshed in this continuity . This means that when you have a desire, you
are actually sending a message into the entire field—your slightest intention
is rippling across the universe at the quantum level. We have already seen
that when you have an intention related to your body , it gets carried out
automatically . The same thing should occur , then, with intentions you send
outside your body—the field has the organizing power to automatically
bring fulfillment to any intention. Everyone notices occasional instances when a desire unexpectedly comes
true, when something you wishe d for appears out of nowhere— a call from
an old friend, unexpected money or job offer, a new relationship. These are
the times when your connection to the field is clear . When your desires
don’t come true, your awarenes s has suffered some block or disconnection
from its source in the field. It is normal to have all desir es be fulfilled if
your awar eness is open and clear . It takes no special act of providence to
fulfill desires; the universal field of existence has been designed to operatefor that purpose; if it were not so designed, you couldn’ t wiggle your toes,
blink your eyes, or carry out any mind-body command. Ever y voluntary
action depends on the invisible transformation of an abstract intention into a
material result. Your body is the material result of all the intentions you have ever had. In
the last exercise, we called back  a moment from the past, using intention to
create a certain mind-body response. If you imagined your experience
vividly enough, all kinds of involuntary reactions—blood pressure,
heartbeat, respiration, body temperature, and so forth—started to conform
exactly to how you felt in the past. Y ou were reliving not just a visual image
but the entire physiological response that went with the image. Millions of
such holistic responses went into creating the physiology  you now
experience. But since you did not possess the skill consciously to use these
intentions for your benefit, your body contains stored impressions of
traumas and stresses that contribute to the aging process. In the next section I will describ e how to remove these old impressions,
but here it is important to learn the mechanics of intention that prevent
aging in the first place. An intention is a signal sent from you to the field,
and the result you get back from the field is the highest fulfillment that can
be deliver ed to your particular nervous system. When two peop le want the
same thing, they don’t always get the same result; this is because the quality
of intention changes as it is sent into the field and then reflected back as a
result. For example, if you have a strong desire to be loved, the love you
want and will receive is highly conditioned by your experience:  The love of
Saint Paul is totally different from the love known to an abused child. Nevertheless, whenever a desire comes true, the mechanics have certain
similarities for every person:
  1. A certain outcome is intended. 2. The intentio n is specific and definite; the person is certain about
what he or she wants. 3. Little or no attention is paid to the details of the physiological
processes involved. Indeed, paying attention to the details inhibits
the flow of the impulses of intelligence that produce the outcom e,slowing down or preventing success. In other words, the perso n
takes an attitude of noninterference. 4. The person  expects a resul t and has confidence in the outcome. There is no anxious attachment to a result, however (if you are
anxious about falling asleep, for example, that prevents the very
outcome you desire). Worry, uncertainty , and doubt are the three
primary obstacle s that prevent us from making efficient use of the
power contained  in every intention. The power is still there, but
we turn it against itself. In other words, when you doubt that a
desire will come true, essentia lly you are sending out a self-
defeating intention, which the field computes as canceling your
first desire. 5. There is a self-referring feedback involved. In other words, every
fulfilled intentio n teaches you how to fulfill the next intention
even better . When the result occurs, it confirms the power of
intention at a conscious level, increases confidence, and makes
success stronger—the effect is self-reinforcing. This changes
doubt to certainty . (People whose desires don’t come true also
experience feedback, but it reinforces failure.) 6. At the end of the process, there is no doubt that the outcome was
obtained by a definite, consciou s process that extends beyond the
individual to a larger reality—for some this is God or Providenc e,
for others it is the Self or the Absolute. I have been using a more
scientific term, the field, but without excluding any of these more
traditional spiritual names. In all cases, the material world is an
expression of an unmanifest, overriding intelligence that respond s
to human desire. These six steps display the most important characteristic of inner
intelligence—it has organizing power built in to it. This organizi ng power is
the link that connects intention  and result. Without it, there could be no
cause and effect. The “quantum soup” would remain chaotic, since without
organizing power there can be no patterns, orderliness, natural laws,
physical structures, or biochemical processes. To take advanta ge of this knowledge, you can use the following exercise
with any desire. Do not worry if you have not had much success in fulfillingyour intentions in the past. Gain ing clarity about the mechanics of intention
is the most important step in achieving anything. By going through this
exercise, you will be clearin g a path for greater success; just have
confidence that the field automatically fulfills all impulses sent into it. In
some form or other , every desire reaches its goal; it is only your limited
perspective in space-time that clouds your perception of the outcome being
produced. 1. Sit quietly and use any of the methods already given for relaxing
your body and feeling calm inside. 2. Intend the outcome you want. Be specific. You can visualize the
outcome or express it to yourself verbally . 3. Don’ t get bogged down in details. Don’ t force or concen trate. Your intention should be as natural as intending to lift your arm
or get a drink of water . 4. Expect and believe in the outcome. Know that it is certain. 5. Realize that doubt, worry , and attachment will only interfere  with
success. 6. Let go of the desire. You don’t have to mail a letter twice; just
know that the message was delivered and your result is on the
way. 7. Be open to the feedback that comes to you either inside yourself
or from the environment. Realize that any and all feedback was
elicited by you. This last step is extremely important. Being so conditione d by the
materialist world view , all of us tend to look for material results. However ,
someone who wishes for wealth  may actually be desiring the security that
he imagines wealth brings, and if that intention is dominant in his
awareness, the field might favor  an outcome that brought a sense of security
rather than material wealth. The feedback produced from an intention is
capable of manifesting in unexpected ways, but some result is always
produced, however faint. In regard to aging, most of us want to avoid mental and physical
deterioration; we might have a specific intention, such as not to contract
Alzheimer ’s or cancer , but these intentions might not be effective, sincethey are disguise d forms of deep er wishes, such as not wanting to suffer and
die. My suggestion is to inten d to remain at the most youthful level of
functioning possible. You can also intend, in both mental and physical
function, to improve every day, and to reinforce the results of that intention,
you can resolve to take notice of anything you are able to do better every
day. Do not set any restrictive expectations—perhaps one day all you will
notice is that you did the laund ry more cheerfully or appreciated a sunset. Awareness branches in a thousand directions, and keeping every channel
open is valuable. Here is one form your intention might take:
Today I intend to experience
  1. More ener gy
  2. More alertness
  3. More youthful enthusiasm
  4. More creativity
  5. Continued improvement in physical and mental capacity on all
levels
The following intention can be added as an all-encompassing wish:
I intend that my inner creative intelligence will spontaneously orchestrate
and guide my behavior , my feelings, and my response to every situation in
such a way that all five of the above intentions will automatically be carried
out. Finally , it is helpful to remind yourself that you can rely on this approach
because you are tapping into the fundamental nature of your physiology as
it operat es all the time: “My internal cues are my best feedback, and the
more I respond to them, the more I will amplify the force of my intention to
get the outcome I want.”
OceanofPDF .comPART 
THREE
Defeating Entropy
OceanofPDF .comTHE BASIC MATERIAL  of the human body is extremely fragile. If you isolate
a single cell and leave it outside on a balmy June day, it will wither and die
in a matter of minutes. Inside each cell is a microscopic wisp  of genetic
material, your DNA, which is even less sturdy . Despite the fact that they are
secreted away in the nuclei of the cells, your genes are damaged every day
by radioactivity , ultraviolet light, chemical toxins and pollution, random
mutations, X rays, and even the process of life itself. High ly reactive
oxygen atoms called free radicals are released when food is metabolized in
the cells, and among the many chemicals they bond to and damage is DNA. The world is a dangerous place for life to survive in, and if we look
beyond the localized dangers of our planet, a cosmic force stands ever ready
to destroy life. It is called entrop y, the universal tendency for order to break
down into disor der. Entropy came into existence at the instan t of the Big
Bang; starting with the creation of the universe, heat, light, and all other
forms of energy have been dissipating, spreading out over time as the
universe expands. This tendency to spread out, moving energy to less
concentrated areas, is entropy . Entropy is a one-way arrow . Whe n an old car
starts to rust and decompose, the process can’t reverse itself automatically . By the same token, an aged body doesn’ t automatically turn young again. Whenever matter and energy collect into orderly patterns, entropy is
defied, but physics has always held that these “islands of negative entropy”
are temporary , even though some of them—planets, stars, galaxies—endure
a very long time. Eventually stars burn out, planets lose their orbital
momentum, galaxies dissipate. The planet Earth is an island of negative
entropy that feeds off the borrowed energy of sunlight; when the sunlight is
no more, we will succumb to entropy , growing cold and lifeless. Entropy is
dragging the entire cosmos down to its end, when all energy will be evenly
distributed across the vastness of space. This ultimate “heat death” lies
billions of years in the future, but every molecule is being pushe d toward it. Some of the most fundamental building blocks of matter , such as the
proton, are so long-lived that it takes aeons for them to decay , while other
exotic subatomic particles, such as the meson, flash into physical existencefor a few millionths of a second before winking out of sight  again. The
breakdown of orderliness is inherent in the physical makeup of the
universe, and it is at the core of the reason why our bodies deteriorate and
age over time. If we want to defeat aging, we must first learn how to defeat
entropy . Opposed to Chaos
The human body exists in utter defiance of entropy , since it is incredibly
orderly and capable of adding to its order with even more complexity . Why ,
then, are we alive to begin with? What force works against chaos to assert
higher and highe r complexities of order? The creation of human DNA, with
its billions of precisely coded chemical bases, depended on the ability of
less complex chemicals (amin o acids and sugar) to remain intact over
billions of years and to persist in building more and more complex chains of
molecules. At any time these structures could have collapsed and dissolved
back into the quantum soup. The force of entropy does not make
exceptions; it is pushing all things into dissolution and chaos. In purely material terms, physics doesn’ t describe a force working
against entropy . Yet it is obvious  that the universe hasn’ t just expanded after
the Big Bang; it has evolved. The primordial hydrogen atoms that came into
existence soon after the Big Bang were not content with their simple lives;
they increased in complexity to form helium atoms, whose  orderliness
remained stable and then led to ever more complex atoms, all the way up to
superheavy uranium and plutonium. Evolution, or growth, creates more
complex structures from less complex ones. However , a huge hole was punched in the theory of evolution by
scientific insiste nce that the entire chain of evolution, beginning with
simplest one-celled algae and bacteria and extending to the most complex
organ in nature, the human brain, came about randomly . Although it may be
true that animal survival depends on random selection, the deeper flaws in
this explanation  are obvious. Whenever a baby is conceived, the fertilized
egg duplicates the process of cell division that has produced  billions ofbabies before it. The growth of one cell into two, two into four, four into
eight, and so forth, is evolution in action. There is nothing random about it;
therefore, why do we say that the process which created birth was random? Clearly , there is a counterforce pushing evolution along, creating life,
fending of f the threat of entropy . The counterforce is intelligence , which at the quantum level is far more
than a mental phenomenon. Intelligence holds together the bluep rint of each
cell in its DNA, and many scien tists now believe the same holds true of the
entire universe. In his book The Cosmic Blueprint,  British physicist Paul
Davies summon s many theoretical findings to support the new view that the
universe organiz es itself and reacts to its own internal events much as our
cells do. The cosmos is not just expanding like a balloon but growing like a
living entity . “The universe is revealed in a new, more inspiring light,”
Davies writes, “unfolding from its primitive beginnings and progressing
step by step to ever more elaborate and complex states.” Something that
progresses is showing signs of intelligence, however reluctant mainstream
science may be about using the term. Intelligence is a synonym for creative power . It reaches out into chaos
and from the quantum soup forms beautiful symmetries. It infuses dead
molecules with life and breath. When entropy gains an upper hand,
intelligence must wane. The two forces are in constant battle. Since both
have existed since the Big Bang, what determines the outcome of their
clash? A human baby is born, which is a monumental victory for
intelligence, but the baby one day starts to age, which is a victory for
entropy . It isn’t accurate to equa te aging with entropy—th ere is a subtle but
necessary distin ction to be made here. Creation and destruction coexist. In
every cell some chemical reactions are creative—producing new proteins,
for example, from building blocks of amino acids—while  others are
destructive—for instance, the process of digestion, which breaks down
complex foods into simpler compounds, or the process of metabolism,
which burns sugar and releases its stored ener gy. Without destruction, life couldn’ t exist. Therefore, aging isn’t simply the
destruction of the body . This is an extremely important point missed by
those who equat e life with nothing but the play of random material forces. Entropy is actually on the side of life; it performs as one player in acomplex balance of forces. Without intelligence, the balance would
immediately be thrown of f.
For instance, there is a terrible endocrine disorder called proger ia, which
is caused by a deformation in just one of the hundred thousand genes in a
newborn baby . An extremely  rare disease, progeria leads to rapidly
accelerated aging. Wrinkles, baldness, wasting of muscles, and hardening of
the arteries begin to appear in early childhood. By age 12, a child with
progeria may have suffered massive strokes or become a candidate for
coronary bypass, and death comes very early , usually before age 20. Progeria is entropy that has been drastically , horribly sped up, and that
happens because one gene, a minute speck of the body’ s pattern of
intelligence, goes awry . Forces of disorder are unleashed by tipping the
balance that each cell must maintain to remain alive. The same lesson
applies to normal aging. As long as the body can renew itself according to
its blueprint of orderliness, entro py is countered. As an old stomach or skin
cell breaks down, it gets replaced; whenever a particle of food is
metabolized, wastes are excreted and new food arrives. We can call this balance of creat ion and destruction dynamic non-change. In other words, change takes place within a stable framework. As far as our
bodies are concerned, this state of dynamic non-change is crucial. Tipping
the balance in either direction spells disaster—lack of change leads to
death; too much change leads to wild disorder (as when a cancer cell starts
dividing indiscriminately until it eventua lly takes over vital tissues and
causes its own destruction, along with that of the rest of the body). Every cell knows how to defeat entropy by bringing intelligen ce to the
rescue whenever disorder begins to intrude. The most critical example is
provided by DNA itself. Long  thought to be an inert chemical that sits
unchanged in the cell’s nucleus, DNA is now known to have a remarkable
capacity for self-repair . Under the assault of free radicals and other
damaging influences, at least seven different kinds of mistakes can appear
in a strand of DNA. (You can think of DNA as a computer tape whose
information gets confused when the tape is broken, twisted, or bunched up.) If your genes passively accept ed such damage, as every other chemical
would, the infor mation coded on the double helix would get more and more
garbled, making  orderly life impossible. But DNA has learned to repairitself. It can sense exactly which kind of damage has occurred, and via
special enzymes  the appropriate missing links are spliced back into place. This astonishing display of intelligence has been linked directly to human
aging. If you graph the life expectancy of various animals, starting with
short-lived shrew s and mice and proceeding through cows, elephants, and
man, the resulting curve is almost perfectly matched by how well each
animal’ s DNA can repair itself. The long-tailed shrew , for exam ple, has an
extremely short life span, usual ly less than a year, while humans have the
longest life span of any mammal, at a known maximum of between 115 and
120 years. In the early 1970s, two young gerontologists, Ron Hart and Richard
Setlow , exposed the DNA of various animals to ultraviolet light in order to
create a specific kind of damag e (adjacent molecules on the DNA strand
became unnaturally fused). They then measured how much repair took
place over a period of an hour, and in fact cells from the shrew repaired
themselves more  slowly than did cells from a mouse, which lives somewhat
longer . The rate of self-repair increased with cows and elephants,
culminating with humans, who have the fastest genetic-repair rate known. Later , Dr. Edward Schneider at the National Institutes on Aging verified
that older cells repair themselv es much less efficiently than do younger
ones. The overall conclusion is that aging results from the inability of DNA
to keep up with the constant damage being inflicted on it millions of times
per year . If this is how the balance of forces gives way inside us, why does Nature
allow it to go on? If a human cell is more than 99 percent efficient at self-
repair , why didn’ t evolution fill in the remaining deficit? This is a
perplexing question, for to answer it you must know the secret of life itself. What we can say is that over a lifetime, each of our cells unde rgoes more
damage than it can repair . Aging is the result of this deficit. If a cell
repaired itself perfectly every time, every cell would be as new as the day
we were born, and we would never grow old. This implies that by
preventing as many genetic mistakes as possible, we would be preventing
the result of those mistakes—the aging process. As seen from the level of intelligence, your cells want to be new at every
moment. But old cells are littered with past mistakes that have takenphysical form as toxic debris, clogged pigments, cross-linked molecules,
and damaged DNA. These rigid bits of matter no longer flow and change,
which is necessary to life. In this section we will look at the living blueprint
of the body , which is made of intelligence, to discover how it allows
mistakes to occur . There is no biological necessity for these mistakes, and
there are many techniques for correcting and avoiding them. Unlike the shrew , mouse, cow , or elephant, you are not imprisoned within
a fixed genetic-repair rate. According to the new paradigm, your entire
body is one field of awareness, and the activity inside your cells is directly
influenced by how you think and act. You are talking to your DNA via the
chemical messages sent from your brain, and these messages directly affect
DNA ’s output of information. One enduring legacy from the past twenty
years of mind-body research is that we have a very precise notion of how
the trans formation from intellig ence to physiology takes place. We are no
longer in doubt about the fact that invisible wisps of thought and emotion
alter the fundamental chemistry  of every cell. This knowledge raises the
hope that the mistake of aging can be abolished at its source, in the depths
of cellular awareness. OceanofPDF .comWRINKLES IN THE QUANTUM FIELD:
The Transformation of Messages into Molecules
To follow the trail of entropy from the visible to the quantum level, we can
examine a single symptom of aging: wrinkles. Sometime when you’re
standing in front of the bathro om mirror , consider the tiny wrinkles that
form with age at the corner of your eyes or around your mouth. The lines in
your face trace old, familiar emotions, and the map of anxiety , anger ,
frustration, fulfillment, happiness, and joy gets etched deeper into the skin
every year. “Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been,”
Mark Twain commented; but even if every wrinkle was the trace of a smile,
how do they form? To a cell biologist, the cause of wrinkles lies in the skin’ s struct ure. Your
skin is composed of many kinds of tissue—blood vessels, nerves, hair
follicles, muscles for giving us goose bumps and making our hair stand on
end, fat cells, and two layers of skin cells, the dermis and epide rmis—all of
which is surrounded by water and loose connective tissue. This connective
tissue is composed primarily of collagen, a protein that has the extremely
useful property of being able to bind with water . Collagen provides the skin with a soft, moist webbed cushion,  giving it
plumpness as well as the abilit y to stretch and fold as your body moves. Collagen itself isn’t made of cells, but nearby cells produce and repair it. The state of this connective tissue is therefore under the supervision of
DNA. As people age, their colla gen under goes change, becomin g stiffer and
less moist. As it loses resilience , collagen no longer snaps back when it is
stretched or folded. It starts holding creases, and once a crease is
permanent, a wrinkle has formed.The Free-Radical Theory
Many physical influences can hasten the aging of collagen: smoking,
excessive exposure to sunlight, vitamin deficiency , malnutrition,
dehydration, underactive thyroid, and genetic predisposition, to name but a
few. Yet there is no clear division between these influences and
psychological factors. A widow  grieving for her husband can become worn
and wrinkled very quickly . The skin of a cancer patient under going
chemotherapy can age prematur ely, both from the side effects of the drugs
and his state of emotional turmoil. What these diverse influences have in common is that all can promote a
specific kind of mistake in the molecular structure of collagen. Separate
collagen molecu les get attached to one another through a process known as
cross-linkage, a chemical reaction that permanently locks up the outer
atomic shells of the collagen . The cause of cross-linkage lies in the
destructive tendency of free radicals, the highly unstable oxygen atoms that
bind indiscriminately with many vital molecules in the body , including
DNA. In the mid-1950s, Dr . Denham Harman of the University of Nebraska
was the first researcher to theorize that free radicals are an important if not
primary cause of aging at the cellular level. Cross-linkage is only one example of the damage free radicals can inflict. They can also split up nearby molecules, break off pieces of molecules,
garble information in various parts of cells, clog cell membranes, promote
cancerous mutations, and impair the functioning of mitochondria (the
energy factories inside each cell). Some cholesterol researchers believe that
free radicals are responsible for the harm that cholesterol does to our
bodies. In labora tory settings it is next to impossible to get cells to take up
cholesterol in its normal form, but once free radicals react with cholesterol,
causing it to oxidize (the same process that turns fat rancid), cells readily
absorb it. Like sharks roaming the cell, free radicals will attack almost any
molecule; the extent of the damage they do is so wide that the free-radical
theory of aging has grown in popularity with each passing decade. Free radicals provide an excellent example of entropy at work, for the
changes they produce tend to be one way, irreversible, and permanent.Wrinkled skin is less orderly than unwrinkled skin, and normally it does not
repair itself. Likewise, when you break a dish, the damage to the plate is
irreversible. This is because entropy follows the arrow of time. Once
something orderly breaks apart, the dispersed matter and energy won’ t
automatically come back together again. The future holds only more
disorder: The bits of broken crockery will eventually get broken into
smaller bits, and the aging skin will eventually wither and die. Paradoxically , free radicals are necessary to life. Chemically the body’ s
free radicals are mostly unstable variations of the oxygen atom (hydrogen
peroxide and hydroxyl are two common examples) that vary from their
stable parent by having an extra  electric charge in the outer electron shell. This apparently minor change makes free radicals want to bind instantly
with nearby molecules in order to offset the extra charge and become stable. Thus a free radical is really a temporary stopping-point leading from one
stable molecule to another . The normal life span of such unstable particles
can be measured in thousandths of a second; millions of these fleeting
molecules are emitted in every cell as it processes life-giving oxygen
through the metabolism of food. If free radicals are so pernicious, why does the body produce them? Far
from being loose bullets careening around the cell, free radicals  fit into the
body’ s overall balance. In some instances, they are extremely good to have:
white cells in the immune system use free radicals to bond with invading
bacteria and viruses and kill these invaders. In that role, the free radical’ s
tendency to latch onto anything in sight saves your life. To protect itself from damage, every cell produces enzymes to degrade,
neutralize, and detoxify free radicals. These “free-radical scavengers”
include various antioxidants (such as superoxide dismutase and catalase)
that can bond to highly reactive oxygen ions and render them harmless
before they attack a vulnerable molecule. Once again, the balance of
creation and destruction is the real issue, not the molecules or the chemical
reactions involv ed. At the very origin of life, with the appearance of simple
bacteria, Nature had already figured out how to counter free radicals by
generating antioxidant enzymes. If this provision hadn’ t been  made, the
oxygen in our atmosphere could easily have destroyed the chances of lifeon Earth ; instead, thanks to the cellular intelligence that pushes against
entropy , oxygen made life possible. Millions of people have become acquainted with the free-radical theory
of aging thanks to the success of the 1983 book Life Extension  by Durk
Pearson and Sandy Shaw . The premise of their approach is that free radicals
are the body’ s enemy , and readers are therefore urged to dose themselves
with a wide variety of antioxidants. However , the eminent Japanese medical
investigator Dr. Yukie Niwa, himself a staunch proponent of the free-radical
theory , has demo nstrated in the laboratory that dosing a culture of cells with
antioxidants usually does little to decrease free-radical productio n. It would
be still less effective for a person to swallow these antioxidants. Many
would be nullified by digestive juices in the mouth, stomach, and intestines
long before they got to the cells they were meant to protect. Even so, life extenders swallow all manner of antioxidants in the form of
vitamins, food additives, and prescription drugs. Among the most touted are
vitamins C and E (two substances Dr. Niwa found particularly unsuccessful
when he applied them to test-tube cells). Ironically , life extenders tend to be
highly health-co nscious people, the sort who used to believe that food
additives should be banned from bread, crackers, cookies, cereals, and other
processed foods . Now , to follo w the dictates of life extensio n, the same
people find themselves taking food preservatives such as BHT and BHA in
massive amount s compared to the few parts per million neede d to keep a
loaf of bread from going stale on the grocery shelf. More exotic prescription drugs with antioxidant properties  include
Hyder gine, L-dopa, and bromocriptine, none of which was originally
intended to be taken for antiaging purposes. Each of these is a potent drug
rife with side effects; each can cause permanent damage if taken in
overdoses or for too long. The life-extension pharmacy hardly stops there. Throw in some  other favorite antiaging supplements—beta carotene, the
whole vitamin B complex, zinc, and selenium—and you are supposed to
have armed yourself with the best, scientifically validated defense against
the body’ s self-destruction through free radicals. But why should we believe that the body is self-destructive to begin
with? The whole life-extension enterprise, I believe, misses the point. The
damage caused by free radicals  is secondary , not causal, just as the bulletfired from a gun cannot take responsibility for pulling the trigger . In its
normal state, the body controls free radicals as a matter of course. Your body is not blindly fighti ng for its life against “bad” chemicals;
such a notion is far too simplistic. If you could view a cell as it produces its
myriad free radicals and myriad antioxidants at the same time,  you would
see the two floating around in the same environment, not like loose cannons
on the deck but closely monitored and controlled by DNA ’s superlative
intelligence. Both are kept in balance and used as they need to be. The main
reason why free radicals hold such a strong appeal for scientists is that they
are things;  they fill our need for physica l objects that can be weighed,
measured, labeled. There is no denying that free-ra dical damage occurs and is suspiciously
linked with aging, along with cancer and heart disease, the two leading
causes of death . Yet it has not been shown that older people necessarily
have higher levels of free radicals in their cells or lower levels of
antioxidants. What I’d like to suggest is that free-radical damag e is but one
type of imbalance that can occur at the level of cellular intelligence when
the balance tips toward entropy . If the body’ s intelligence is at full strength,
disorder and chaos do not attack a cell. The basic tenet of life extension—
preventing free-radical damage before it occurs—is sound. To do that,
however , we need to understa nd how to influence a cell’s intelligence
directly . Exercise: Working Against Entropy
One of the simp lest ways to prevent entropy is to give the body  something
to do. In physics, entropy is opposed by work, which is defined as the
orderly applicati on of energy. Without work, energy simply dissipates. We
have already seen that mental and physical neglect (the “disuse syndrome”)
promotes prema ture aging. No group is at higher risk for depression,
disease, and early death than people who are completely sedentary , and by
now the value of regular exercise for all age groups has been well
documented. Physiologists used to believe that exercise primarily benefitsus at young ages, when muscl es are in their prime developm ental stage. However , research with the elderly has conclusively demonstrated that
someone who takes up exercise at any age, including centenarians, will
receive the same increase in strength, stamina, and muscle mass. (This is
true for both men and women , by the way; in the past most exercise
research was conducted on men, but now it has been established that
women need to be just as active at every age.) One special advantage exercise delivers is that it can reverse the previous
effects of entropy .
_OceanofPDF.com_Ageless_Body_Timeless_Mind_-_Deepak_Chopra.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        For Perry, the last hidden facto r in his condition could be dehydration,
which starts to impair a person’ s judgment before he realizes that there is a
problem. Not drinking enough water every day is one of the commonest
conditions in old age, and although it has received almost no publicity,
chronic dehydration is a major cause of preventable aging. Some authorities
go so far as to count dehydration among the leading causes of death in old
age. It is certainly an avoidable complication that leads to many problems. When body fluids fall below a certain level, the physiology begins to
enter a toxic state; vital electrolyte balance is thrown off, and eventually so
is the balance of brain chemistry. A host of difficulties can result—literally
anything from kidney failure and heart attack to blackouts, dizziness,
lethar gy, and full-blown senile dementia. As the person becomes less alert
and more forgetful about drinking water, a vicious circle gets set up. The
same is true for almost all these causes of false senility—the longer they go
overlooked, the harder it is for the person to see the problem. But Perry’s wife was concerned, even if he wasn’ t, and she promised to
remind him abou t these things. Some would be easier than other s: Since she
did all the cooking, she could be more careful with his diet (adding a
multiple vitamin  pill can’t hurt and on the off chance might help); she could
see that he drank more water and used his medications properly. This extra
attention could help lift his spirits, too, but I was most concerned about the
alcohol and the depression. In my mind, Perry was walking a thin line. His
prevailing self-image was conta ined in two disquieting words: “I’m old. ” It
would be hard to imagine a phrase that is more crippling, or more likely to
lead someone into the escape of alcohol or the dead end of depression. Aging as a whole is a vicious circle. When someone expects to be
withdrawn, isolated, and useless after a certain age, he creat es the very
conditions that justify his belief s. Our deepest assumptions are the triggers
for physical changes. It would be naïve, then, to think that just listing a few
preventable causes for aging could actually prevent it. What good does it do
to tell someone like Perry to quit drinking if he feels despair. The whole
business of growing old is a morass of hidden feelings that people find too
difficult to face—if anything, drinking is a merciful anesthetic compared to
living with dread and lost hope. It is far easier to follow one’s internal
programming than to break through into new territory. But, over time, our
hidden programming robs us of choice more and more, making it harder to
break the bonds of self-destructive behavior. In this regard aging is much
like addiction: The person feels that he is still in control when in fact the
behavior is controlling him. From the outside, I could see this in Perry. He
was transforming himself into a dying man before my eyes, and the tragedy
was that he could not see that he was doing it to himself. Awareness, once it
becomes conditioned, assumes the shape of habit; unconscious repetition
reinforces the destructive patterns, and unless new learning takes place,
inertia will carry the body downhill year after year. Awareness and the Reversal of Aging
The bright side of Perry’ s case was that almost everything happening to him
could be corrected by creating a new mode of awareness. To do that, we
take advantage of the fact that awareness is always generating biological
information. With even the slightest change of awareness, energy and
information move in new patterns. The reason old habits are so destructive
is that new patterns aren’ t allowed to spring into existence— conditioned
awareness is therefore synonymous with slow dying. On the other hand, by increasing someone’ s awareness, bringing  it into a
new focus and breaking out of old patterns, you can alter aging. A brilliant
demonstration of this was offered in 1979 by psychologist Ellen Langer and
her colle agues at Harvard, who effectively reversed the biological age of agroup of old men by a simple but ingenious shift in awareness. The
subjects, all 75 or older and in good health, were asked to meet for a week’ s
retreat at a country resort. They were informed in advance that they would
be given a battery of physical and mental exams, but in addition one
unusual stipulati on was placed upon them: They were not allowed to bring
any newspapers, magazines, books, or family photos dated later than 1959. The purpose of this odd reque st became clear when they arrived—the
resort had been set up to duplica te life as it was twenty years earlier. Instead
of maga zines from 1979, the reading tables held issues of Life and the
Satur day Evening Post  from 1959. The only music played was twenty years
old, and, in keeping with this flashback, the men were asked  to behave
entirely as if the year were 1959. All talk had to refer to events and people
of that year. Every detail of their week in the country was geared to make
each subject feel, look, talk, and behave as he had in his midfifties. During this period, Langer ’s team made extensive measurements of the
subjects’ biological age. Gerontologists have not been able to fix the precise
markers that define biological age, as I noted earlier, but a general profile
was compiled for each man using measurements of physical strength,
posture, percep tion, cognition, and short-term memory, along with
thresholds of hearing, sight, and taste. The Harvard team wanted to change the context in which these  men saw
themselves. The premise of their experiment was that seeing oneself as old
or young directly influences the aging process itself. To shift their context
back to 1959, the experimenters had their subjects wear I. D. photos taken
twenty years before—the group learned to identify one another through
these pictures rather than prese nt appearance; they were instructed to talk
exclusively in the present tense of 1959 (“I wonder if President Eisenhower
will go with Nixon next election. ”); their wives and children were referred
to as if they were also twenty years younger; although all the men were
retired, they talked about their careers as if they were still in full swing. The results of this play-acting were remarkable. Compared to a control
group that went on the retreat but continued to live in the world of 1979, the
make-believe group improved in memory and manual dexterity. They were
more active and self-suf ficient about such things as taking their own food at
meals and cleaning up their rooms, behaving much more like 55-year -oldsthan 75-year -olds (many had become dependent on younger family
members to perform everyday tasks for them). Perhaps the most remarkable change had to do with aspects of aging that
were considered irreversible. Impartial judges who were asked to study
before-and-after pictures of the men detected that their faces looked visibly
younger by an average of three years. Measurements of finger length, which
tends to shorten with age, indicated that their fingers had lengthened;
stiffened joints were more flexible, and posture had started to straighten as
it had in youn ger years. Muscle strength, as measured by hand grip,
improved, as did hearing and vision. The control group also showed some
improvements (Langer explained this by the fact that going on a trip and
being treated specially made them feel younger, too). But the control group
actually declined in certain markers such as manual dexterity and finger
length. Intellige nce is considered fixed in adults, yet over half of the
experimental group showed increased intelligence over the five days of
their return to 1959, while a quarter of the control group declined in I. Q. test scores. Professor Lang er’s study was a landmark in proving that so-called
irreversible signs of aging could be reversed using psychological
intervention. She attributed this success to three factors: (1) The men were
asked to behave as if they were younger; (2) They were treated as if they
had the intelligence and independence of younger people (unlike the way
they were often treated at home —for example, their opinions were elicited
with respect and actually listened to); (3) They were asked to follow
complex instruc tions about their daily routine. Because all three factors
overlapped, Langer ultimately was not certain which of them was the most
important. She speculated that a similar reversal of aging might have
resulted if the men had been given any complex task to perfo rm, such as
composing an opera—a task V erdi set for himself in his late seventies. I have been pondering Professo r Langer ’s results for several years, ever
since I first wrote about it in the context of personal time. The old paradigm
tells us that time is objective, but in fact our bodies respond to subjective
time, as recorded in memories and internal feelings. Langer enabled these
men to be inner time trave lers; they journeyed back twenty years
psychologically, and their bodie s followed. The simplest way I can explainthis is that two aspects of awareness were being shifted: attention and
intention. Awareness always has these two components. Attention focuses
awareness to a local perception. Intention brings about a change in that
localization. In Langer ’s experiment, the subjects had their attention sharply
localized on the context of the year 1959; this started a new flow of
biological information, because everything they saw, heard, or talked about
had to relate to that one specific localization. At the same time, they had to
act on an intenti on—intending to be just as they were twenty years earlier. There is no magic in either factor; we all pay attention to various things
throughout the day; we all carry out various desires and intentions. The magic is in how the body follows this change of awareness across
the barrier of time. It’s not feasible or realistic to try to live in the past, but
there are valuable clues that can be followed here: Again we see that the
quality of one’s life depends on the quality of attention. Whatever you pay
attention to will grow more important in your life. There is no limit to the
kinds of changes that awareness can produce. In our society, we do not use
the flow of attention to produce  results; we are not clued in to the energy
and information  that starts to be generated inside us anytime we experience
a change of awareness. In the following exercises, we will explore how to
consciously call upon the power of awareness and use it to our benefit, for
if we do not use it consciously, our awareness will be trapped in the old
conditioning that creates the aging process. OceanofPDF. comIN PRACTICE:
Using the Power of Awareness
The exercises below are designed to prove that you can consciously direct
the flow of energy and information in your body. There are major benefits
to be gained once you begin to consciously use your awareness:
•  You can tap into subtler levels of information in the form of bodily
cues you have been ignoring. Your body will tell you what it needs
when it needs it—this is the exact opposite of being driven by habit,
which will never precisely fit the body’ s actual wants. •  You can focus attention on parts of the body that are expressing
discomfort. Simply by localizing your awareness on a source of pain,
you can cause healing to begin, for the body naturally sends healing
energy wherever attention is drawn. •  You can activ ate desires and intentions to fulfill them more efficiently. An intention is basically a disgu ised need, and the mind-body system
is set up to meet all needs directly and spontaneously. (This is very
different from the addictive or compulsive desires that our old
programming has built into us. ) When all three of these areas are operating properly, condition ing starts
to dissolve at the deepest cellular levels; this has to happen to prevent the
body from growing old. There are numerous spiritual teachings in all areas
related to the power of awareness, and the techniques of Native American
shamans might differ extremely from those of Tibetan monks or Hindu
yogis. In genera l, however, awareness is used as a healing power: It restores
balance wherever it is allowed to flow freely. Bringing awareness into contact with frozen patterns of old conditioning
starts to melt those patterns, for ultimately everything we can sense or think
about is simply an aspect of our awareness. The discomfort the body
manifests as pain, numbness, spasm, inflexibility, and trauma are all knots
that awareness can undo by itself. Through practice and dedicati on, you can
heal any imbalance in the mind -body system through awarene ss, once the
appropriate techniques of relaxation, release, and insight are learned. Below are some beginning procedures for localizing attention and
fulfilling intentions. We will progress to deeper, more powerful techniques
in later sections, but even at these stages, the connections being forged
between mind and body are extremely helpful for breaking out of the old
pathways that create aging. Exercise 1: Paying Attention to Y our Body
Although we all know how to pay attention to something outside
ourselves, and we all feel our attention drawn to a pain in the body, such as
a toothache or muscle spasm, there are many subtle cues that escape us in
everyday life. Awareness has many levels, and it must be allowed to flow
from one to the other, for flow is its natural state. In this first exercise, you
are asked to easily direct your attention to each area of the body; as this
happens, the act of paying attention releases deep-stored stresses. Like a
child, your body wants attention and feels comforted when it receives it. Sit with your eyes closed in a comfortable chair or lie down. (Choose a
quiet room that is free of distracting noises. ) Place your attention on the
toes of your right foot. Curl them down until they feel tense, then release
the tension and feel the sense of relaxation that flows into them. Don’ t rush
either the tensing or the relaxing ; take time to feel what is happ ening. Now
let out a long, deep sigh as if you are breathing out of your toes, letting all
stored fatigue and tension flow away with your breath. Don’ t puff or blow;
just let the sigh release itself in one long exhalation, like a sigh of relief,
without holding back. If you let out a moan or groan, all the better—that is
a sign of deep release. Now repeat this procedure with the top of your right foot, first placing
your attention on it, then tensing the muscles (by arching  your foot
backward), and finally relaxing them. When the top of your foot feels
relaxed, let out a sigh as if you are breathing out through your toes. Once you have this basic technique down, take your attention to all parts
of the body in the following order. Remember that this is not just a muscle
relaxation techn ique; your attention needs to linger comfortably at each
bodily location. Right foot:  toes, top of foot, sole of foot, ankle (two stages: flexing
back, then flexing forward)
Left foot:  toes, top of foot, sole of foot, ankle (two stages: flexing
back, then flexing forward)
Right buttock and upper thigh
Left buttock and upper thigh
Abdominal muscles  (diaphragm)
Lower back, upper back
Right hand:  fingers, wrist (two stages: flexing back, then flexing
forward)
Left hand:  fingers, wrist (two stages: flexing back, then flexing
forward)
Shoulders  (two stages: flexing forward, then flexing upward toward
neck)
Neck  (two stages: flexing forward, then flexing backward)
Face  (two stages: screwing face into tight grimace, then tensing brow
and forehead)
This exercise sounds rather complicated when described verbally, but
flexing various body parts simply follows the natural way the joints and
muscles move. After one session, you will be able to feel your way around
your body ef fortlessly. Short version:  A complete circuit of the body  as described above takes
about fifteen minutes. If you are pressed for time, a short version involves
only the toes, diaphragm, fingers, shoulders, neck, and face. Exercise 2: Focused Intention
This exercise demonstrates that having an intention is enough to
accomplish a result. When properly focused—which means easily and
without strain—awareness has the ability to carry out quite specific
commands. An intention doesn’ t have to be a verbally expressed thought; in
fact, our deepest intentions are body-centered. Our most fundamental needs
—for love, understanding, enco uragement, support—permeate  every cell. The desires that arise in your mind are often clouded by ego motives, which
are not true needs; people get caught up in the pursuit of money, career
goals, and political ambitions in ways that are disconnecte d from the
fundamental need for comfort and well-being that every healthy organism
must fulfill. Many of us are so alienated from our basic needs, so
programmed to run after what the ego wants, that we have to relearn the
basic mechanics of how attention and intention actually work. There are many ways to get fulfillment besides the outward-oriented ones
our culture teaches us. The most valuable lesson in this regard is that
intentions automatically seek their fulfillment if left alone. Every cell in
your body is seeking fulfillment through joy, beauty, love, and appreciation. This is hard to realize when the mind sets up its own separate  agenda for
fulfilling other kinds of desires, ones that are loveless, without joy or
satisfaction. Yet millions of people have programmed themselv es to reach
only such goals. In the three related procedures given here, you will experience the
effortless way that intentions can get fulfilled, bypassing the ego and the
rational mind (for best results, do exercise 1 as a warm-up, in order to bring
your body into a receptive state). Even though the intentions being carried
out are simple, they give you confidence in your ability to direct your
awareness, whic h is critical if you want to change the deep-rooted patterns
of aging, for aging itself is an intention that your cells are obey ing without
your control. 1. Take a piece of string about twelve inches long and tie a small weight
at the end to form a pendulum (a lead fishing weight, household washer, or
one-inch bolt will work well). Hold the string in your right hand and brace
your elbow on a table or the arm of your chair so that you can hold thependulum steady. Sit comfortably and make sure that the pendulum is not
moving. Now look at the weight and project the intention that the pendul um move
from side to side. The simplest form of intention is to visualize how you
want the weight to move, but you can verbalize the words side to side  if you
wish. Keep your attention on the pendulum and keep the intention firmly in
mind, but make sure you hold your arm steady. In a few seconds you will be
surprised to see the pendulum start to move of its own accord. If it moves
erratically at first, don’t try to correct its swing—just wait until the desired
motion is found automatically. Now change your intention to direct the pendulum back and forth instead
of side to side. Again see this motion in your mind’ s eye and easily hold it
there. Typically, your pendulum  will hesitate for a few seconds, move
erratically, then take up the desired direction. After watching it for a few seconds, intend for the pendulum to swing in
a circle. Again it will pause, move erratically for a second or two, then
move exactly as you visualized. The harder you try to hold your arm rigidly
still, the faster the pendulum will move. Curiously, doing this exercise in a
group produces the greatest effect; I have observed several hundred people
sitting mesmerized while their pendulums instantly changed direction at the
touch of an intention, often moving in wide, fast arcs. Although this
exercise is very simple, the ef fect can be quite uncanny. 2. Sitting  comfortably, hold your right hand open, palm upward. Have the
intention that your palm should  get warmer. To aid in this, imagine that
your hand is touching a red-hot stove or burning coal. Hold the image in
your mind. Within a few seconds the sensation of warmth will start to
appear. Now hold up your left hand and aim the fingers of your right hand
at it, fingers out stiff and close together. Intend for the warmth to shoot out
of your right hand into the palm of the left. To aid in this, sweep your right
hand back and forth, as if painting your other hand with warmth (but don’t
let the two hands touch). Most people will feel warmth broadcast from one
hand to the other; others will feel a mild tingling or ticklish sensation in the
left palm. This exercise is most effective if you guide someone else through it. If
you are doing it alone, familiarize yourself with the instructions  first so thatyou can try the experiment without interruption. 3. Sit comfortably and hold an ordinary thermometer between the thumb
and forefinger of your right hand. Close your eyes and pay attention to your
breathing for a moment. As your body relaxes, continue to easily follow
your breath, then note the tempe rature on the thermometer. You are going to
change it through intention alone. The intention of cold. Breathing through your mouth,  feel the cool air in
your throat as it moves in and out. Think the word cool as you do this. Now
imagine that the thermometer is a piece of ice that you can barely hold
between your fingers. After a minute or so, look at the temper ature on the
thermometer—it will likely have dropped from two to five degrees. If you
notice no change, resume the exercise for another minute or two before
checking again. The intention of warmth. Breathing through your nose, feel the warmth in
the center of your chest for a moment. Now think the word hot and imagine
that the thermometer is a glowing red ember you can barely hold. After a
minute or so, look at the thermometer—it will likely have risen from two to
five degrees. If you notice no change, resume the exercise for another
minute or two before checking again. The last two exercises are based on classic experiments performed over
fifty years ago by the pioneer Russian neurologist A. R. Luria. Luria’s most
famous subject was a journalist he simply called S. , a man who was gifted
with an almost flawless photographic memory. S. could attend a press
conference without taking notes and afterward recount every word spoken
by any number of speakers; he could memorize long strings of random
numbers and recall the details of any scene in which he had been present
down to the most minute detail. In addit ion, S. could use simple visualizations to change all kinds of
involuntary functions. If he imagined himself staring at the sun, his pupils
would contract; if he imagined himself sitting in the dark, his pupils would
dilate. He could  raise and lower the temperature of his hand s using the
procedure descr ibed above. Once you have mastered that, you can try his
method for changing his heartb eat. If he wanted his heart to beat faster, S. saw himself running after a train as it pulled out of a station; if he wanted to
slow down his heart, S. saw himself lying in bed taking a nap. Luria considered these achievements remarkable, just as future
researchers did a generation later when they observed Swami Rama
performing the same feats. However, in both cases what was being
demonstrated was biofeedback without machines. Instead of needing an
oscilloscope or a beep to indicate that an intention was being carried out, S. and Swami Rama relied on their bodies’ own feedback loops. Although we are not ordinarily aware of it, the body is constantly
regulating temperature, heart rate, and other autonomic functions by
listening in to its own interna l messages. The slightest change in any
function register s, however faintly, in the awareness of the nervous system. As these exercises demonstrat e, such silent signals can be consciously
tapped. Awareness is a field, and by sending an intention into that field, you
shift the flow of biological information. This registers in the conscious
mind as a faint sensation, intuition, or just a silent knowing. The response
varies from person to person, but with practice one’s sensitivity to one’s
own awareness becomes stronger. As applied to aging, this sensitivity is necessary, because the new
paradigm tells us that aging begins as a distortion in the field of awareness. The smooth flow of information in the body becomes blocked by stresses,
memories, past trauma, and random mistakes. Although such breakdowns
are subtl e, they are not lost to awareness; the heart, liver, kidneys, and every
other organ know  when they are malfunctioning. Disturbances in cellular
intelligence eventually register in the mind as discomfort or pain or just
being out of sorts. What we are learning to do here is to refine such
perceptions so that they register at an earlier stage. The earlier it is detected,
the more easily a distorted function can be corrected using awareness alone. Full-blown aging is a very gross sign that the body has suffered a loss of
energy and information at some vital point, usually in the brain, immune
system, or endocrine glands. Cancer, diabetes, and senility are typical late-stage manifestations of
dysfunction. There are rare cases in which patients have used the power of
awareness to cure themselves of even the most serious disorders, yet it is far
simpler to correct the underlying problem at an earlier stage. The very firststage of any physiological disruption takes place in awareness itself; quite
naturally, the best way to move these disruptions back into balance is also
by using attention. Exercise 3: A T rigger for T ransformation
Every intention is a trigger for transformation. As soon as you decide that
you want something, your nervous system responds to reach your desired
goal. This holds true for simple intentions, such as the intention to get up
and get a glass of water, as well as for complex intentions, such as winning
a game of tenni s or playing a Mozart sonata. In either case, the conscious
mind doesn’ t have to direct every neuronal signal and muscle movement to
achieve its goal. The intention is inserted into the field of awareness,
triggering the appropriate response. When I go to sleep, my intention to sleep triggers a complex  series of
biochemical and neurological processes. Medical science cann ot duplicate
this connection; it is controlled at the level of intelligence. The connection
can be crudely manipulated only from the molecular level (for example, I
can go to sleep by taking a sleeping pill, but the kind of sleep  that results
will not be natural; there will be disruptions in the normal sequence of sleep
stages, particularly REM or dream sleep). When you have an intention, your brain can supply only the reactions it
has learned; if you are a good tennis player or pianist, your trained response
will produce very different results from those achieved by someone less
skilled than you. Yet the deepest skill resides in managing intention itself. The people who succeed best at any endeavor are generally following a
pattern of handling their desires without undue struggle with their
environment—they are in the flow. If you review the section on adaptability
(this page ) you will find a good descrip tion of how the most successful
people solve problems—they allow the solution to present itself, trusting
their own abiliti es to cope with difficult challenges. By creating  a minimum
of anxiety, conflict, worry, and false expectation, they promote highly
efficient use of their mental and physical energies. The result ing ease of
mind-body functioning is directly correlated to aging well—the morenaturally you exist in the flow of your awareness, the less wear  and tear on
your body. As is true of all abilities, people vary enormously in their use of
intention. When  Professor Ellen Langer and her colleagues provided a
group of elderly men with the challenge of acting twenty years younger
(this page ), the researcher s gave their subjects a common focus of intention. The key to reversing the age of these men was that their bodies responded
to external cues from the past. In the following exercise, you are asked to participate in a kind of
internal time travel using a visual image from your past; the purpose is to
experience how quickly your body adapts to this intention with feelings of
renewed youthfulness. Sit comfortably  or lie down with your eyes closed. Pay attention for a
moment to your breathing, easily following the rise and fall of your chest,
feeling the air as it passes in and out of your nostrils. Feel your arms getting
heavy at your sides. When you are relaxed, conjure up in your mind’ s eye
one of the most wonderful moments from your childhood. It should be a
vivid scene of joy, and preferably you should be the center of some activity. For example, one such scene for me took place while playing cricket
when I was a child. In summer my father took us to the hill stations in
northern India, and I vividly remember one of these, named Shillong,
nestled in the cool green mountains. I can see the flat meadow ringed by
hills where we played our game s. There was one instance where I made a
winning run, and this is the mom ent I choose to relive in memory. I feel the
weight of the bat in my hands and the hard smack when I hit the ball. I see
it soaring high, against the green and red roofs of distant cottages. I feel the
cool air and the excitement in my body as I start to run. My heart is
pounding, my legs straining with all their might. In my mind’ s eye I swing
my arms open wide, embracing this victorious moment. With every fiber I
am participating in it, not just recalling it, and the intensity of desiring to be
back there in my youth makes me feel light, expanded, happy, absorbed in
an experience so fulfilling that it stops time. Find your own moment and see how powerful it is for you. Details are
important; for that reason, intensely physical experiences are the easiest to
use. Feel the air and sunlight on your skin; sense whether you were hot or
cold. Observe colors, textures, faces. Name the locale and the people in
your scene. Notice how everyone was dressed and acted. But most
important, recapture the feeling  in your body as you rose up to blend into
and beco me that moment. By rejoining the flow of one magical instant, you
trigger a transformation in your body. Signals being sent from  your brain
are activated just as easily by memories and visual images as by actual
sights and sounds. The more vivid your participation, the closer you will
come to duplicating the body chemistry of that youthful mome nt. The old
channels are never closed, they are only unused. Therefore, by changing the
context of your inner experien ce, you can go back in time using the
biochemistry of memory as your vehicle. Exercise 4: Intentions and the Field
The new paradigm tells us that our underlying reality, the field, is
continuous and therefore equally present at all points in space-time. Your
awareness and every intention that springs from your awareness are
enmeshed in this continuity. This means that when you have a desire, you
are actually sending a message into the entire field—your slightest intention
is rippling across the universe at the quantum level. We have already seen
that when you have an intention related to your body, it gets carried out
automatically. The same thing should occur, then, with intentions you send
outside your body—the field has the organizing power to automatically
bring fulfillment to any intention. Everyone notices occasional instances when a desire unexpectedly comes
true, when something you wishe d for appears out of nowhere— a call from
an old friend, unexpected money or job offer, a new relationship. These are
the times when your connection to the field is clear. When your desires
don’t come true, your awarenes s has suffered some block or disconnection
from its source in the field. It is normal to have all desir es be fulfilled if
your awar eness is open and clear. It takes no special act of providence to
fulfill desires; the universal field of existence has been designed to operatefor that purpose; if it were not so designed, you couldn’ t wiggle your toes,
blink your eyes, or carry out any mind-body command. Ever y voluntary
action depends on the invisible transformation of an abstract intention into a
material result. Your body is the material result of all the intentions you have ever had. In
the last exercise, we called back  a moment from the past, using intention to
create a certain mind-body response. If you imagined your experience
vividly enough, all kinds of involuntary reactions—blood pressure,
heartbeat, respiration, body temperature, and so forth—started to conform
exactly to how you felt in the past. Y ou were reliving not just a visual image
but the entire physiological response that went with the image. Millions of
such holistic responses went into creating the physiology  you now
experience. But since you did not possess the skill consciously to use these
intentions for your benefit, your body contains stored impressions of
traumas and stresses that contribute to the aging process. In the next section I will describ e how to remove these old impressions,
but here it is important to learn the mechanics of intention that prevent
aging in the first place. An intention is a signal sent from you to the field,
and the result you get back from the field is the highest fulfillment that can
be deliver ed to your particular nervous system. When two peop le want the
same thing, they don’t always get the same result; this is because the quality
of intention changes as it is sent into the field and then reflected back as a
result. For example, if you have a strong desire to be loved, the love you
want and will receive is highly conditioned by your experience:  The love of
Saint Paul is totally different from the love known to an abused child. Nevertheless, whenever a desire comes true, the mechanics have certain
similarities for every person:
  1. A certain outcome is intended.
Dehydration, which starts to impair a person's judgment before they realize there is a problem.
What is a major cause of preventable aging, and how does it impair a person's judgment?
The intention to get up and get a glass of water is an intention that gets carried out automatically, whereas the intention to avoid aging is a disguised form of a deeper desire, such as not wanting to suffer and die.
What is the main difference between the intention to get up and get a glass of water and the intention to avoid aging?
Worry, uncertainty, and doubt are the primary obstacles to the fulfillment of desires.
What is the primary obstacle to the fulfillment of desires?
The key to defeating aging is to learn how to defeat entropy by bringing intelligence to the rescue whenever disorder begins to intrude.
What is the key to defeating aging?
A cell that is not damaged by free radicals and has not undergone premature aging will have a different state of DNA, whereas a cell that has undergone premature aging will have a damaged DNA structure.
What is the main difference between a cell and a cell that has undergone premature aging?