ASARAM

I have had, what I believe to be, the good fortune of having spent a good deal of time in India.

Lifestyle there is varied, just like in most countries, according to how much money a person has. There is extreme wealth and there is extreme poverty. In my time there, I was mostly privy to the latter. 

The purpose of my first trip to India, at fifty years of age, was to pursue my yoga teacher certification.  Traveling on my own,  I arrived in a country that, honestly,  I knew very little about and was naive to what I would encounter. Once there, I was challenged, not only by the demands of the training but by the extreme culture shock that consumed me at first. By the time the month of training was ending, I felt like India and her people would always be a natural part of my life. I returned nine times.

I no longer travel to India. I find the experience of making my way to such a faraway place, and the challenges once on the ground, too demanding now. My heart makes its way there often. I have friends there who are as dear to me as family and I will be forever grateful for having been blessed with having them in my life.

Something I learned about while in India, which has stayed with me over the decades and is especially potent now, was the ancient  Hindu philosophical system of life known as Asrama, which sees our human experience, our purpose, as being divided into four stages. Each stage has its unique goals, which ultimately bring us happiness and liberation throughout our lives.  

A very simplistic overview of the four stages of Asrama is presented here.  Keeping in mind that the Asrama philosophy was written thousands of years ago, in an Eastern culture very different from ours, it must be considered with a good deal of openness.   The ages suggested in each stage are not to be taken literally. 

In the first stage, commonly referred to as student life, we are focused on education and we live, and are cared for, within a household by others. Our guardians and educators mentor us. Roughly this stage is the first twenty-five years of life.

The second stage, the household life, covers the ages from twenty-five to fifty. It is during this stage that we are focused on maintaining a household, raising our family, and leading a family-centered social life. This stage is considered the most important of all stages in a sociological context, as human beings work to achieve and accumulate all that is necessary to sustain themselves and others. It is considered the most intense stage physically, sexually, emotionally, and socially. During this stage, we develop material attachments and accumulate wealth that sustains us and others.

The third stage,  retirement life, covering the years from fifty to seventy-five, is the stage where we hand over responsibilities to the next generation and start to withdraw from the busy world.  In this stage, we move away from what was emphasized in the preceding stage, like the accumulation of wealth and pursuit of material desires, and we start to direct more of our attention in the direction of our spiritual liberation. We begin to withdraw from the trappings of the external world. We place less importance on material possessions as we become more interested in the peace that comes from a simpler life. We are letting go of that which has no place in the final stage of life.

The fourth stage, renunciation, after age seventy-five, is marked by a state of disinterest and detachment from material desires, in pursuit of peace and a simple spiritual life. While it is defined as happening in the seventies, this renunciation stage of life could happen anytime after stage two. Individuals may develop a disinterest in the pursuit of material desires, have no interest in accumulating wealth, and focus intently on their spiritual life much earlier than what is suggested to be the age marker of the renunciation stage of life.

In an earlier blog article, I wrote about the “first and second adulthood” as presented by the Jungian therapist and author, James Hollis. Hollis differentiates these two stages of our adult lives, not by age, but by experience. His analysis is very closely related to what is offered by the Asaram as the difference between stages two and three.   We are moving from the pursuit of the goals of our householder (this term cannot be interpreted literally) years into our retirement years. Hollis focuses on the importance of us moving away from the identities and roles of the first half of our lives as we transition into the second half of our lives.

The word retiring isn’t limited to defining the ending of paid work, it defines our transitioning away from many of our earlier commitments and expectations. Women often come to counselling asking questions about life’s purpose as they move beyond their earlier years, defined by being responsible for careers, raising children, and accumulating material wealth.  My intention, as a counsellor and with this blog website, is to normalize this transition and help women appreciate the natural flow of their lives.  It isn’t easy to do, as we work against the cultural push for us to continue pursuing the desires of earlier decades, denying the inherent gifts embedded in the second half of our lives.

In our culture, we have placed extreme importance on the incentives of the first half of our lives. There is little recognition given to the value of transitioning willingly into the second half. 

The first adulthood, as presented by Hollis, is easily compared to the Asrama householder stage of our lives, defined by all that makes us productive and described as being the most socially responsible stage of life. We are very much outward-focused as we pursue work and accumulation of material pursuits to care for ourselves and our families. This stage of life is where our culture has placed the bulk of its attention. It should come as no surprise that we might struggle to find our footing as we move beyond this stage and into something less about the external world and more about our individual growth, moving us along the continuum of self-knowledge and liberation.

Considering the life expectancy we now have, compared to when the Asaram was written, we can exercise a degree of openness about the ages suggested for each of the four stages.  Regardless of how we assign age to stage,  I think it’s quite likely most of us of at a certain age, recognize how we are moving through the stages.  Much has changed since this philosophy was written.   Much remains the same.  Society places more importance on the first adulthood stage of life, based on its necessary contribution to the social framework of life.  For those who have moved beyond the first adulthood, and into the second adulthood (retirement and beyond) there is an appreciation of the value of becoming less outwardly focused and more in tune with our inner world of self-knowledge.

We experience unique differences in the decades of life as we move further away from the responsibilities of earlier years and the pursuit of material desires into a simpler, more self-knowing stage of life.   We aren’t meant to get attached to any one stage of our lives, but to fulfill the purpose of each and move naturally into the next.  

Life has a rhythm.  Learning to embrace the offerings of aging, into the later stages of life, can bring us peace as we move with ease in the natural flow of life.