The Third Age by James Brown
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616) Macbeth, V.v.19-28 (Macbeth)
William Shakespeare in his play As You Like It ( II.vii.139-166) enumerates the ages of man as being seven. In American culture, we rarely seem to look at our own lives as consisting of more than the two states of childhood and then adult. For myself, and I am sure for many like me, there is a distinct experience of life as being in three discrete stages of which I personally am venturing into the third. James Hollis (1993) refers to this transition point into the third age of life as the “middle passage” which at its heart is an invitation for us to become fully conscious human beings on our inevitable and unceasing trek to our death—which is perhaps our fourth and final stage of life or as Freud (1961) wrote, the aim of life. The middle passage is a time in which we reassess our acquired sense of self, reformulate our life questions, unveil the hidden (shadow) parts of ourselves, and redirect our energies toward connecting less with material sources of power—like time and money—with which we find little comfort in the unstoppable decline of the former or the acute vicissitude of the later. In American culture, this important life transition is often referred to as the mid-life crisis which carries with it copious negative connotations ranging from regression into infantile gratifications to a nihilistic future outlook based on the myth of decline in our later years of life which Shakespeare ( As You Like It, II.vii.139-166) paints in classic Western style as a “second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” Since we came into the world “ mewling and puking in the nurse’s arm,” it must have seemed to Shakespeare both ironic and poetic that we would somehow be characterized as leaving the world in the same manner. Unfortunately, this Western prejudice toward aging and the aged has marginalized a critical progression point in our lives and to a similar extent that part of our social structure that brings the element of eldership and wisdom that we so desperately need in our world at this very moment. If we are to work toward reinstating eldership as a valued quality for which people in our culture hold honoured positions and are treated reverentially, we must first value and understand what it means to be reborn into eldership or successfully achieve that conversion at this stage of life. It is not feasible in this short a space to specify the precise benefits to society of such an endeavour, only to begin a dialogue that could serve to reframe our conception of what the initiatory process into eldership might entail from a depth psychological perspective. From my own standpoint, anything that detracts from the idea that life is practically over at the age of 50 and all that we can truly hope for is a fast car, young spouse, and relatively pain free death is welcomed. Our society carries a cultural bound perception of human progression that is for the most part based on a Western oriented premise of individuation which consists of a consciousness of individuality (Sardello, 1995) and aspires toward a bounded, autonomous Self (Cushman, 1995). This view may run contrary in many ways to what is needed for navigating the middle passage to the third age. The calling of the third age is not a muster for fortifying our acquired sense of self and holding fast against life’s winds. It is not an enticement for our ego to remain as the unchallenged captain at the helm of life’s ship. This model may have carried us handily thus far on our journey, but we are not obligated to carry forth in kind. On the contrary, we are now being asked to give up our sense of the past and hopes for the future which our past experience may have produced; to put our years of accumulated sense of self into doubt and enter into the unknown (Sardello, 1995) where a looming and grand mystery awaits and our ego captain may falter. The process is more communal and less individual, more reductive than additive, deeper than broader, and what rests on the other side are qualities of a transpersonal rather than a private nature—all of which may help to counteract the mainstream ideal of our nature as “rational consumers” (Lorenz & Watkins, 2003) which we currently find ourselves inundated by in the United States.
The middle passage most often begins when we recognize that we know very little or possibly nothing at all about ourselves in relation to the world. Friction between our inner sense of self and our acquired personality may lead to divergence of our true nature and our actions in the world (Hollis, 1995). We may enter into a crisis where the rules and the strategies we have learned thus far in life do not apply (Lorenz, 2005); we become confused and paradoxes arise where before there was certainty. Hillman (1975) calls this work the soul-making process as images from our unconscious in the form of dreams, visions, myths, fantasy, reverie, metaphors, and paradoxes arise from the imaginal world (Bona, 2005) or non-ordinary consciousness (Peters, 1998) and reveal to us the nature of our soul. Both Freud and Jung embarked upon this journey initiated by a “creative illness” (Ellenberger, 1970) in which they first assumed they new nothing at all while opening themselves up to whatever happened to occur to them ( Jaffé, 1963, p. 173) (Ellenberger, 1970, pp. 446-448). Buddhists call this the “beginner’s mind” in which many things are possible; as opposed to an expert mind where only a few possibilities exist. The results for both Jung and Freud, as with many great thinkers, are creative solutions brought forth by engaging problems without pre-judgment. The poet John Keats (21 Dec. 1817) once asserted that what distinguishes a “man of achievement” is a quality he called “negative capability”, “ that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” In this way, Keats describes perfectly the need to face unconscious material in a manner that allows us to capture its essence and utilize it creatively in our lives just as Freud and Jung had done.
The proper stance to achieve in relation to the unknown can be seen in ancient Russian tales of Baba Yaga who will devour us if we respond to her in any other way than that which reflects the paradox of our existence (Bly & Woodman, 1998). In other words, we dishonor the magnificence of life and ultimately harm ourselves by adopting an egocentric posture which is comfortable in responding to complex situations with a simple yes or no answer. Hillman (1975) writes that this is a subjectivizing move that directs us inward for reclamation of our shadow material and as Sardello (1996) states, forms the images from the unconscious that we see through as we face the world. Hillman (1975, p. 65) also writes that since the unconscious has become synonymous with the underworld, by “taking back our projections” in this way, we experience a metaphorical death of the ego as we transition from the world of language to the world of symbol and image. These images are concealed in emotions, Jung says (Jaffé, 1963, p. 177), and must be translated into consciousness lest we are “torn to pieces by them.” However, once made conscious, we must further choose to maintain the mystery of the image or collapse it into our all knowing ego and risk being devoured by Baba Yaga.
As if reflecting on his own personal experience, Jung wrote that the principal problem of this time of life (middle-age) is primarily religious (Ellenberger, 1970). By religious, Jung referred to the numen (divine, spiritual) and was comparing the search for ourselves with our desire for a connection to the gods (L. religio) or a search for the divine or spiritual self which emerges to consciousness as an archetypal image. Jung called this the “turning of life,” which might be experienced as the numinous quality felt in engaging with archetypal energies (Ellenberger, 1970, pp. 711-725). Freud similarly describes the associated feelings as “something limitless, unbounded,” or “oceanic” which does not require acceptance of any particular belief on the persons part (Freud, 1961, pp. 10-11), while later psychologists such as Abraham Maslow coined phrases like peak experience in order to further capture this elusive, yet widespread concept. All of these forms of experience are intended to describe an energetic and creative force that we have somehow become disconnected or, in some myths, expelled from (Bona, 2005). So, we at one time had this connection and are looking to restore or return to it once again through our religious experience (L. religare). Regardless if we interpret this experience as a desire for a return to the arms of the gods or to the mother’s womb, it is felt in us deeply as an expression of an existential predicament that gives us a sense of exile and longing as if we are being excluded from that which we somehow once belonged (Bona, 2005).
As we become engaged with actively returning to the mythical source through conscious descents, archetypal encounters, and other soul-making work, spiritual energy becomes available to us through these activities. Similar to the energy that the material forces of time and money provide to us earlier in life, we may experience this energy as wholly other than ourselves, but we are capable of taking it into our bodies through what Robert Bly (1990) calls “learning to shudder.” Bly associates shuddering with a person first descending into ashes where we receive a proper dose of consciousness and humility to counteract the grandiosity of our youth. Shuddering is described by both C.G. Jung and Rudolf Otto as being accompanied with a feeling of awe at what we perceive as the unfathomable and unapproachable (Ellenberger, 1970). Freud’s oceanic feeling and Maslow’s peak experience are connected in a similar fashion through a feeling of bliss or well-being which accompanies this sense of awe, possibly demonstrating a more self-serving view of the mystical, while the former may additionally be experienced as dread in the form of a mysterium tremendum. Jung considered these internal forces to be as powerful as the sex and aggression instincts (Ellenberger, 1970), which means that as we move into the third-age and begin to feel declines in energy associated with a youthful body, we may instead have a seemingly unlimited source of energy through what Jung called the “religious function” that can be tapped into through this learned ability to shudder and which enters us as a feeling of bliss and awe. In Mayan myth, the Gods gave people life so that we could remember them and keep them alive. A child born into the layer of the “Earth Fruit” had already passed through many subsequent layers of reality where they relived the history of the world. So, all there is to know, we already know when we are born. But, humans are prone to forgetfulness and must spend the rest of their life regaining memory of the other worlds so that they might serve the Earth, the greater good, and to help other amnesiacs to remember as well (Prechtel, 1998, pp. 104-107). In this sense the process of individuation is bound to the act of remembering, which Jung said leads to wisdom, as opposed maturity (Ellenberger, 1970 p. 712).
Sardello (1996, p. 172) follows up by writing that this internal wisdom is reflected via our imaginal process to Sophia, connecting our individual Soul to the Soul of the World. This also becomes, as Jung indicated, our link to all other people (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 712) and places an obligation on us or bonds us (religare again) to our fellow man, the Earth, and all it’s abundance by way of the divine which resides within all things. The Benedictine order adhered to the motto, “ora et labora—canta et ride” (pray and work—sing and laugh). Taken in a psychological rather than religious context, we may find relevance in this motto for our journey through the middle passage. Sardello (1996, pp. 185-186) writes that personal soul work is often directed inward for the benefit of the individual rather than outwardly for the greater good of the world. If we were to place in the center of our soul work the obligation we posses to the broader sense of the divine—or as Sardello suggests, Sophia—as the connecting medium, our inner journeys would then transform into outer work in service to the world. Life purpose is generally thought of as being a noble venture where our energy is directed outwardly toward the world and to others rather than utilized solely for our own benefit. Jung (In Hollis, 1993, p.17), in talking about neurosis, observed that it “must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.” We could just as easily say that a soul that once had meaning and has somehow lost it suffers in the same fashion. Taking care of our own needs is a healthy practice, especially if we are inclined to over compensate (in Jung’s sense of enantiodromia) as we return to a more outward facing stance after a psychical regression (Ellenberger, 1970 p.713). But, Sardello (1996, pp.200-201) warns that two values which are opposed to each other will tend toward the direction of evil, not because of any particular polarity or belief system, but because they work to create an imbalance between themselves. Taken in the context of what was earlier said about honoring the complexity of the world by facing it with a quality of negative capability, we can begin to sense our path to eldership as a psychical mobius strip on which we travel both sides of the same path, separated only by a paper thin boundary, and ultimately returning us from whence we came. Just as shamans of indigenous cultures learn to bridge the veil between the human and spirit realms and eventually come to maintain a presence in both worlds, so the elder must learn and maintain a balance between the material and the spiritual, the individual and the archetypal, the seen and the hidden, the self and the world . One can achieve this by approaching the unconscious with a beginner’s mind that receives the wisdom of the archetypal while preserving its mystery. One must also use the spiritual connection, available and desired by us all to replenish and sustain our energy through work in the world that consciously creates meaning from our individual wisdom while maintaining equilibrium of opposing energies which labor to unbalance our lives, separate us from the world, and destroy the mysterious by exposing that which desires to remain hidden (Bona, 2005).
In a sense, elders can be imagined as purveyors and custodians of archetypal wisdom. A person born in 1900 could expect to live until the age of 47 whereas a child born at this last turn of the century can expect to live to the ripe age of 77 (Arias, 2004) . What is remarkable here is that we have as a species added an additional 30 years of life to our existence without much thought as to what we should be doing with it or how we should be during that time. To make matters even more interesting, we have also learned that our cerebrum goes through a growth spurt between the ages of 40 and 50 presumably increasing our capacity for symbolic and abstract thought. If a person in the 1800’s did get around to having a mid-life crisis, chances were that it would be mercifully short lived. Today, it seems unlikely that a rupture in the fabric of our psyche will not be acutely felt sometime during that additional 30 years we have gained and also given a seeming increased sensitivity to the semiotic content of the unconscious based on those physiological changes. There are always those who may stubbornly continue living just as they had in the previous part of their adulthood with little or no reflection on that deep longing within regardless of how significantly our circumstances as a species has changed. To them we must be guides. There are those that may force their lives to fit into the previous 47 year life expectancy by abusing themselves relentlessly with substances and engaging in high risk activities. To them we must be healers. Then there are those of us who will view those 30 years as an opportunity to bring the gifts that we gain from the middle passage into full consciousness through the Soul of the World. We will be willing to sit in a paradox, suspending our judgements and projections as a way to the beginner’s mind that will allow imagination to enter into the process of creating meaning. We will accept that our striving for individuation is at its heart a desire for a connection to the gods and the Soul of the World which is present within each person and across all relationships. We will learn to tap into spiritual energy as a means of maintaining health and vitality clear through to the end of our lives so that old age is viewed as a time of ascendance not as a time of decline. And finally, we will direct our new found energy toward a purpose which seeks to keep balance among all the forces of the world regardless if we refer to them as ying and yang, good or evil, sacred or profane; to act in the world with what the Hindus call “right action” which ultimately leads to our liberation.
In the end, most myths describe very simple truths of what is required from us in this life. As an example, I close this paper with the retelling of a part of the myth of Osiris as I recently heard it from the Unitarian Minister Tom Own-Towle who recounted from his book Freethinking Mystics with Hands.
After death, Egyptians believed they would be confronted by the god Osiris with a quiz that had to be answered honestly. After forty-two routine questions concerning how the deceased had lived, Osiris asked a crucial two-part question: First, did you find joy? And second, did you bring joy? Note that the emphasis is not on what we produce or on our possessions, not even on our creative talents or our good works. The purpose of our earthly journey according to Egyptian religion is simply this: Did you find joy and did you bring joy during your earthly sojourn? The petitioners couldn’t lie to Osiris, and much was at stake. If they answered these questions affirmatively, they were returned a measure of continued existence. If not, they were taken away and forthwith eaten by a hippopotamus. (1998, pp. 78-79)
Realizing that I have now recounted two ways in which one can potentially be devoured for actions in this life and acutely aware that there are potentially countless other ways the same fate may be recounted in mythology, I will conclude as I started; with the words of the bard. His expressions often contain such familiarity that it seems Shakespeare was perpetually at one with archetypal wisdom. When Keat’s wrote about “A Man of Achievement”, he was in fact specifically writing about Shakespeare and his capacity to capture in his prose a glimpse of the great mystery and power that resides just beneath the surface of our consciousness if we are willing to let it flow into us as an actor might allow himself to be possessed by a role and through that character, transform the stage upon which he performs into a world of his own imagining.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616) As You Like It, II.vii.139-166 (Jaques)
References
Arias, E. (2004). National Vital Statistics Report, 53 (6). Retrieved November 28, 2005 , from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_06.pdf.
Bly, R. (1990). Iron john : A book about men. New York : Harper.
Bly, R. & Woodman, M. (1998). The maiden king: The reunion of masculine and feminine . New York : Henry Holt.
Bona, D. (2005, September). Introduction to Depth Psychology. Unpublished lecture presented at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria , CA .
Cushman, P. (1995). Constructing the self, constructing America : A cultural history of psychotherapy. Da Capo Press.
Ellenberger, H. F. (1970). The discovery of the unconscious; the history and evolution of dynamic psychiatry. New York : Basic Books.
Freud, S. (1961). Civilization and its discontents. London : W.W. Norton.
Freud, S. (1961). Beyond the pleasure principle. New York : Liverlight.
Hillman, J. (1979). The dream and the underworld. New York : Harper & Row.
Hollis, J. (1993). The middle passage: From misery to meaning in midlife. Toronto , Canada : Inner City Books.
Jaffé, A. (1963). Memories, dreams, reflections (rev ed.). New York : Vintage Books.
Lorenz, H.S. (2005, September). Depth Psychology and Cultural Issues. Unpublished lecture presented at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria , CA .
Prechtel, M. (1998). Secrets of the talking jaguar. New York : Putnam
Own-Towle, T. (1998). Freethinking Mystics with Hands. Skinner House Books
Sardello, R. (1995). Love and the soul: creating a future for earth. New York , NY : HarperCollins.
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One Response to “The Third Age by James Brown”
Really, really wonderful reflection on the third age, looking forward to reading more of your work.
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