The Fountain of Youth –– or at least a Spring
In the midst of writing a new book, I have come across some stories which might be of interest to older people as well as those a few years behind — but aging nonetheless.
First, I was pointed to the story of King David in his latter years. The Old Testament tells that the King’s servants were unable to keep the aged man warm at nigh even piling blankets over him. Wise beyond many in times then and now, they said to themselves, “Let us search for a young virgin for our lord the king, to attend to him and care for him and lie by his side to keep him warm.”
They found a young woman named Abishag and brought her to the king. The text says that Abishag became his nurse and not his concubine. But, she ministered to him such that some of her youth and substantial vitality was overflowed into the energy body of the King. To warm, vitalize and strengthen him.
In ancient days, this practice was not uncommon. The Greek physician Galen reckoned it as the most certain of remedies for the elderly, failing with bodily weakness to lay young persons on or beside old ones. Simply living with the young has been long recommended for restoration of the old. Into the 17th century, the English physician Thomas Sydenham routinely ordered similar “prescriptions” for his elderly patients.
We might wonder whether in the modern era service dogs produce some of these effects for their masters while we have more and more separated elders from the young. The German physician Hufeland wrote in the 18th century of benefit for lameness of placing a “freshly opened animal, or the laying of a living animal upon any painful affection.”
This writer is reminded of a 92-year-old friend who wrote him some time ago. She reported that her two little great-grandchildren had visited her and demonstrated an abundance of energy. My friend moaned, “Oh, if I only had some of their energy.” Ah, but she as well as others could. If we merely recognized the nature of human energy transfer. Those little ones could share some of their abundant energies with their great-grandmother, given the opportunity to do so.
On the other hand, ill effects have been noted when some young people have been placed in the same bed with elderly ones for too long. Some elders have been recognized as “energy sappers” and it has been found necessary to separate youngsters from their beds and sometimes their general environs. Of course, the sapping of energy is not limited to being done by an elder upon a youngster. The reader may have even experienced being “drained of energy” in the presence of particular people.
If we study this phenomenon closely, there is the potential for much value to come of the practice of placing robust and vital beings at close hand to the elderly and ailing. It may, in fact, be one spring through which “the fountain of youth” can be re-discovered. One of the benefits of “going to the doctor” may sometimes merely be the overflow of health from the young and hardy into the auras of the sick and enfeebled.
The potential benefit of surrounding the aged and infirm with robust, youthful energies was once a universal practice. Living together and even merely breathing upon another person can produce good as well as ill effects. A weakened constitution can be restored thanks simply to energies circulating in, around, and through healthy ones.
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