In my quest for the secret of the fountain of youth I have come across this information. I will be posting it in several posts for my friends in the "Other" forum.


Why Grow Old
By Orison Swett Marden

"The face cannot betray the years until the mind has given it's counsel. The mind is the sculptor." `We renew our bodies by renewing our thoughts; change our bodies, our habits, by changing our thoughts."

Not long ago the former secretary to a justice of the New York Supreme Court committed suicide on his seventieth birthday. "The statute of Limitations; a Brief Essay on The Osler Theory of Life," was found beside the dead body. It read in part: "Threescore and ten ­ this is the scriptural statute of limitations. After that, active work for man ceases, his time on earth has expired... "I am seventy ­ threescore and ten ­ and I am fit only for the chimneycorner..." This man had dwelt so long on the so-called Osler theory ­ that a man is practically useless and only a burden to himself and the world after sixty ­ and the biblical limitation of life to three-score years and ten, that he made up his mind he would end it all on his seventieth b birthday.

Leaving aside Dr. Osler's theory, there is no doubt that the acceptance in a strictly literal sense of the biblical life limit has proved a decided injury to the race. We are powerfully influenced by our self imposed limitations and convictions and it is well known that many people die very near the limit they set for themselves, even though they are in good health when this conviction settles upon them. Yet there is no probability that the Psalmist had any idea of setting any limit to the life period, or that he had any authority whatever for so doing.

Many of the sayings in the Bible which people take so literally and accept blindly as standards of living are merely figures of speech used to illustrate an idea. So far as the Bible is concerned, there is just as much reason for setting the life limit at one hundred and twenty or even at

Methuselah's age (nine hundred and sixty-nine) as at seventy or eighty. There is no evidence in the Scriptures that even suggests the existence of an age limit beyond which man was not supposed or allowed to pass. In fact the whole spirit of the Bible is to encourage long life through sane and healthful living.

It points to the duty of living a useful and noble life, of making as much of ourselves as possible, all of which tends to prolong our years on earth. It would be a reflection upon the creator to suggest that he would limit human life to less than three times the age at which it reaches maturity (about thirty) when all the analogy of nature, especially in the animal kingdom, points to at least five times the length of the maturing period. Should not the highest manifestation of God's creation have a length of life at least equal to that of the animal? Infinite wisdom does not shake the fruit off the tree before it is ripe.

We do not half realize what slaves we are to our mental attitudes, what power our convictions have to influence our lives. Multitudes of people undoubtedly shorten their lives by many years because of their deep-seated convictions that they will not live beyond a certain age ­ the age, perhaps, at which their parents died. How often we hear this said: "I do not expect to live to be very old; my father and mother died young." Not long ago a New York man, in perfect health, told his family that he was certain he should die on his next birthday.

On the morning of h is birthday his family, alarmed because he refused to go to work, saying that he should certainly die before midnight, insisted upon calling in the family physician, who examined him and said there was nothing the matter with him. But the man refused to eat, grew weaker and weaker during the day, and actually did before midnight. The conviction that he was going to die had become so entrenched in his mind that the whole force of his mentality acted to cut off the life force, and finally to strangle completely the life processes.

Now, if this man's conviction could have been changed who had sufficient power over him, or if the mental suggestion that he was going to live to a good old age had been implanted in his mind in place of the death idea, he would probably have lived many years longer. If you have convinced yourself, or if the idea has been ingrained into the very structure of your being by your training or the multitudes of examples about you, that you will begin to show the marks of age at about fifty, that at sixty you will lose the power of your faculties, your interest in life; that you will become practically useless and have to retire from your business, and that thereafter you will continue to decline until you are cut off entirely, there is no power in the world that can keep the old-age processes and signs from developing in you. Thought leads.

If it is an age-old thought, old age must follow. If it is a youthful thought, a perennial young-life thought, a thought of usefulness and helpfulness, the body must correspond. Old age begins in the mind. The expression of age in the body is the harvest of oldage ideas which have been planted in the mid. We see others about our age beginning to decline and show marks of decrepitude, and we imagine it is about time for us to show the same signs. Ultimately we do show them, because we think they are inevitable. But they are only inevitable because our old-age mental attitude and race-habit believes.

If we actually refuse to grow old; if we insist on holding the youthful ideal and the young, hopeful, buoyant thought, the old-age earmarks will not show themselves. The elixir of youth lies in the mind or nowhere. You cannot be young by trying to appear so, by dressing youthfully.

You must first get rid of the last vestige of thought that you are aging. As long as that is in the mind, cosmetics and youthful dress will amount to very little in changing your appearance. The conviction must first be changed; the thought which has produced the aging condition must be reversed.

If we can only establish the perpetual-youth mental attitude, so that we feel young, we have won half the battle against old age. Be sure of this, that whatever you feel regarding your age will be expressed in your body.

Comments welcome. I will post more later.

Blessings, jeannie

NOT live past 100? Sheer idiocy! I intend to go out fully worn out, body in tatters, singing and yelling"WOO HOO, what a ride", slide into the grave and be gone! Timing is EVERYTHING!

Exerp from Wallace D. Wattles Book, The Science of Getting Rich.


To think health when surrounded by the appearances of disease, or to think riches when in the midst of appearances of poverty, requires power; but he who acquires this power becomes a MASTER MIND. He can conquer fate; he can have what he wants.

This power can only be acquired by getting hold of the basic fact which is behind all appearances; and that fact is that there is one Thinking Substance, from which and by which all things are made.

Then we must grasp the truth that every thought held in this substance becomes a form, and that man can so impress his thoughts upon it as to cause them to take form and become visible things.

When we realize this, we lose all doubt and fear, for we know that we can create what we want to create; we can get what we want to have, and can become what we want to be. As a first step toward getting rich, you must believe the three fundamental statements given previously in this chapter; and in order to emphasize them. I repeat them here:-

There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.

A thought, in this substance, Produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.

Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.

You must lay aside all other concepts of the universe than this monistic one; and you must dwell upon this until it is fixed in your mind, and has become your habitual thought. Read these creed statements over and over again; fix every word upon your memory, and meditate upon them until you firmly believe what they say. If a doubt comes to you, cast it aside as a sin. Do not listen to arguments against this idea; do not go to churches or lectures where a contrary concept of things is taught or preached. Do not read magazines or books which teach a different idea; if you get mixed up in your faith, all your efforts will be in vain.

Do not ask why these things are true, nor speculate as to how they can be true; simply take them on trust.

YOU must get rid of the last vestige of the old idea that there is a Deity whose will it is that you should be poor, or whose purposes may be served by keeping you in poverty.

The Intelligent Substance which is All, and in All, and which lives in All and lives in you, is a consciously Living Substance. Being a consciously living substance, It must have the nature and inherent desire of every living intelligence for increase of life. Every living thing must continually seek for the enlargement of its life, because life, in the mere act of living, must increase itself.

A seed, dropped into the ground, springs into activity, and in the act of living produces a hundred more seeds; life, by living, multiplies itself. It is forever Becoming More; it must do so, if it continues to be at all.

Intelligence is under this same necessity for continuous increase. Every thought we think makes it necessary for us to think another thought; consciousness is continually expanding. Every fact we learn leads us to the learning of another fact; knowledge is continually increasing. Every talent we cultivate brings to the mind the desire to cultivate another talent; we are subject to the urge of life, seeking expression, which ever drives us on to know more, to do more, and to be more.

In order to know more, do more, and be more we must have more; we must have things to use, for we learn, and do, and become, only by using things. We must get rich, so that we can live more.

The desire for riches is simply the capacity for larger life seeking fulfillment; every desire is the effort of an unexpressed possibility to come into action. It is power seeking to manifest which causes desire. That which makes you want more money is the same as that which makes the plant grow; it is Life, seeking fuller expression.

The One Living Substance must be subject to this inherent law of all life; it is permeated with the desire to live more; that is why it is under the necessity of creating things.

The One Substance desires to live more in you; hence it wants you to have all the things you can use.

Why grow old?
By Orison Swett Marde


It is a great aid to the perpetuation of youth to learn to feel young, however long we may have lived, because the body expresses the habitual feeling, habitual thought. Nothing in the world will make us look young as long as we are convinced we are aging.

Nothing else more effectually retards age than the keeping in mind the bright, cheerful, optimistic, hopeful, buoyant picture of youth, in all it’s splendor, magnificence; the picture of the glories which belong to youth – youthful dreams, ideals, hopes, and all the qualities which belong to young life.

One great trouble with us is that our imaginations age prematurely. The hard, exacting conditions of our modern, strenuous life tend to harden and dry up the brain and nerve cells, and thus seriously injure the power of the imagination, which should be kept fresh, buoyant, elastic. The average routine habit of modern business life tends to destroy the flexibility, the delicacy, the sensitiveness, the exquisite fineness of the perceptive faculties.

People who take life too seriously, who seem to think everything depends upon their own individual efforts, whose lives are one continuous grind in living-getting, have a hard expression, their thought outpictures itself in their faces. These people dry up early in life, become wrinkled; their tissues become as hard as their thought.

Ten Attributes of a Youthful Mind.

1. Humor: Older people who utilize humor seem younger in attitude,and they actually look younger. Laughter has been proven to be good medicine.

2. Optimism: Optimists age better, live longer, catch fewer infectious diseases, live longer and have stronger immune systems. ~ Martin E.P. Seligman, PH.D.

3. Curiosity: To recapture that sense of wonder and inquisitivness is th recapture part of your youth.

4. Adventure: If something intrigues you, look into it.

5. Maturity: The older you are, the happier you are. A study of 2,700 people from ages 25 to 75 conducted at Fordham University in New York City fount tha happiness increases with age.

6.Knowledge: Henry Ford perfectly captured the secret of staying young when he said, "Anyone who stops learning is old, whether 20 or 80. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

7. Enthusiasm: To grow younger as you age, you need a creative interest as well as daily meaningful interactions with others.

8. Compassion: Being compassionate doesn't mean that you compromise your ideals. You don't have to accept what people do, but you accept them. Instead of criticizing other, you can help them. Caring generates joy.

9. Open mindedness: Nothing can make you older than being stuck in a rut.

10. Faith: Find your own spirituality. Organized religion is not the only avenue to faith. Find your own way to celebrate your beliefs.

Perpetual Youth.


Marden also wrote about the power of language. There is no mention of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) in “Why Grow Old,” because it didn’t exist in the 19th century, but I found remarkable similarities between modern NLP and Marden’s writings of over a century ago. Marden talks about “hardening,” and “ossifying” with age. The brilliant NLP founder and hypnotherapist Richard Bandler often advises his clients to “soften.” “Soften your forehead, soften your face, soften your neck. Soften your body. Release. Let go.” I find it absolutely fascinating that Bandler used the word “soften” in age regression sessions, the very word that is the polar opposite of the “hardening” that Marden described almost 100 years ago in Why Grow Old.

We know today that language can have a biochemical effect on the body. The words you use when you talk to yourself and when you speak out loud can affect your body, your health and your life if spoken with belief, emotion, conviction and repetition.

Quantum physics today has revealed that our bodies are not solid at all

– they are a mass of molecules moving at a high speed of vibration. Science has also confirmed that our bodies are perpetually being renewed as old cells die and new ones replace them. Deepak Chopra MD, one of the great thinkers of our time, describes the process like this:

"It’s as if you lived in a building whose bricks were systematically taken out and replaced every year. If you keep the same blueprint then it will still look like the same building. But it won't be the same in actuality. The human body also stands there, looking much the same from day to day, but through the process of respiration, digestion, elimination and so forth, it is constantly and ever in exchange with the rest of the world."

Long before electron microscopes, Marden understood the process of aging on a cellular level:

“As a matter of fact, Nature has bestowed upon us perpetual youth, the power of perpetual renewal. There is not a single cell in our bodies that can possibly become old; the body is constantly being made new through cell renewal, the cells of those parts of it that are most active being renewed oftenest. If must follow that the age-producing process is largely artificial and unnatural”

Again, Marden was ahead of his time.

As long as you think old, hard, grasping, envious thoughts, nothing in the world can keep you from growing old. As long as you harbor these enemies of youth, you cannot remain in a youthful condition. New thoughts create new life; old thoughts – canned, stereotyped thoughts – are injurious to growth, and anything which stops growth helps the aging process.

Never go to sleep with the old-age picture or thought in your mind. It is of the utmost importance to make yourself feel young at night; to erase all signs, convictions, and feelings of age; to throw aside every care and worry that would carve its image on your brain and express itself in your face.

The worrying mind actually generates calcareous mater in the brain and hardens the cells.

Don't worry. Be happy.

Interesting! :D