[Introduction to, 9 Keys to Transcendent Aging: Transpersonal Psychology, ©2023]

Aging well. Who doesn’t want that?

The topic of aging well has become increasingly prevalent in the past decade, as countries across the globe are facing a ‘silver tsunami’ in the aging of their societies, and as we’re living longer and better thanks to continued advances in medical science. The UN, in fact, declared 2021-2031 as the ‘decade on healthy ageing’, though, while we all hope for good health as we age, the concept of transcendence goes well beyond.

A review of 23 recent studies (2010-2020) conducted in 13 countries across 4 continents, which asked adults age 60+ their views on ‘successful aging’, Reich et al. (2020) identified 6 themes. Most prevalent were social engagement and positive attitude; second were independence and physical health. Interestingly, least important of the six, while still noted themes, were cognitive health and spirituality – though I trust that by the end of this book you’ll agree with me that these should be given greater priority.

We typically consider aging in 3 realms: the biological, psychological, and social. Our elder stage of life is further conceived of in 3 subphases, if you will, and while these differ from one source to another, the most common conception is of ages 65-74 as ‘young-old’, 75-84 as ‘middle-old’, and 85 onward as ‘old-old’. These distinctions are primarily based on typical changes in human physiology, including risk of disease or disability and frailty, while of course we must allow for a multitude of variables.

The psychological and spiritual or metaphysical tasks of each phase can differ enormously, however. As a brief example, in the ‘young-old’ stage, we may be bringing our middle stage of life to a natural conclusion, completing unfinished tasks both personal and professional as well as embracing many new activities we hadn’t time for previously. The ‘middle-old’ stage may be focused more on imparting wisdom and mentoring others, as we also embrace those areas that we’d still like to know and experience while we have time, and we think more in terms of ‘legacy’ or our contribution to a better world. In the ‘old-old’ stage we’re still not finished; we may now turn ever more to self-transcendence, explorations of our inner world as well as the metaphysical, as we prepare to become ‘good ancestors’. (More on that soon.)

Normative expectations for older adults have included disengagement, as we retire from our employment or profession and ‘make way’ for younger workers, conclude the rearing of family, and retreat from other obligations, with newfound freedom and leisure time; there are also longstanding expectations that at the same time we will become more diligent in terms of physical exercise and other ways to stay healthy as we age, and indeed, this is a very good idea. Taken together, however, as pointed out by researchers de Paulo Couto and Rothermund (2022), these also indicate an ageist view: that we should not be a ‘burden to society’ – give over your place to those younger, while ensuring that you remain healthy so that the system isn’t overtaxed by your care. Further expectations include wisdom, that by an advanced age we will have accumulated sufficient knowledge and experience to broaden our perspective and enable us to make sound judgment and advise others, and dignity – a certain gravitas ‘befitting our age’.

Successful aging was described a few decades ago as low probability of disease and disability, high cognitive and physical capacity, and active engagement with life (Rowe & Kahn, 1987; 1997), a concept not without merit but with limitations, in that our elder years aren’t static; rather, we continue to grow and change (Stowe & Cooney, 2015). In fact, a recent in-depth analysis of prior research (Menassa et al., 2023) found 65 models and definitions of healthy aging, 3 focused solely on health-state outcomes, 31 on adaptations across the lifespan, and another 31 that included both views.

We want more. While we all want to maintain our health and a certain measure of strength, vitality, and mental capacity, it isn’t enough. We want to remain engaged, to continue learning, to be resilient, to continue to expand our sense of selfhood and even to transcend it – to thrive.

In 1950, the German American psychologist Erik Erikson introduced his model of lifespan development, relevant to this day, the first to include a late life developmental stage (Erikson, 1950). Rather than achieving our peak in mid-adulthood and steadily declining thereafter, as was commonly accepted, it was proposed that we still had capacity for growth – to our final breath. The focus of that late stage, which Erikson delineated as age 65 and beyond, was one he called ‘integrity vs. despair’; in it, we contemplate our lifespan including its meaning, purpose, and contribution, and either make our peace with our mortality or risk slipping into depression and an overwhelming sense of loss.

Just a few years prior, in 1946 Vienna, Viktor Frankl had posited the pursuit of meaning and purpose in life as a primary focus of human existence (Frankl, 1962). Recent research continues to support the views of both Frankl and Erikson, as one’s sense of life meaning serves as a buffer against despair in later years (Basher, 2022). Further, this isn’t merely a matter of retrospection; an ongoing sense of meaning and purpose in one’s elder years serves as a buffer against decline in both cognition and mood (Abellaneda-Pérez et al., 2023; Lee et al., 2022).

An encouraging theory, that of psychological development through our lifespan. However, we want still more. While reminiscing has its own health benefits, and an ongoing sense of meaning not so difficult to achieve in terms of family engagement, charity donation or volunteerism, and the sharing of accumulated wisdom, we must wonder: are there other achievements still to be reached? Perhaps even worlds to explore?

I have an idea, as I too am entering my ‘third-third’ of life, my ‘third act’, if you will, that we have in fact 4 broad stages of existence: childhood, adulthood, elderhood – and then, ancestorhood. I’m a product of western culture, within which I spent my first 40 years; for the past 2 decades, however, I’ve lived in a succession of Asian cultures with a shared belief in ancestors as integral to daily life. A primary task of one’s elder years in such cultures, then, is in preparing to become a good ancestor – for one’s own family, and for humanity. And I must also be clear: far from minimizing one’s elder years as somehow ‘no longer adult’, this concept places ‘elder’ as an even more highly developed stage – perhaps a sort of ‘advanced adulthood’ — with ancestorhood, then, as one’s most exalted stage of development.

Regardless of religious or secular beliefs about afterlife, one can still consider one’s continuation after death – in the legacy that we leave, in our influence on others while we’re here, in becoming the best person that we can in order to contribute our developed personhood to the betterment of humanity overall. Whether we continue to have a role in some spirit form after our body disintegrates or not is indeed a matter of personal belief – but even as metaphor, working on our development through our elder years in order to become a good ancestor is a worthy aim in my view.

We can also think of these stages in the terminology of both Freud and Jung. Childhood is naturally a stage of pure id, or self-interest; adulthood, then, one of ego, or a balance between our base and better selves, as we focus on career, family, and the tangible realm. Elderhood — a stage, paradoxically, of time running out yet also of time affluence, as we have minimal obligations and long hours to each day — provides us with an opportunity: we begin to focus increasingly on the intangible, the spiritual if you will, not only in terms of afterlife but also of our own development, and of legacy. How have we contributed to humanity and the planet thus far, and how can we continue to contribute? How can we best share all the knowledge and experience we’ve accumulated? And, in what ways can we perhaps have a life even more meaningful than any earlier stage? Thus: superego. We are not suddenly, magically without self-interest, but we have an ever-widening scope as we contemplate the record that we’ll leave behind – and prepare to become a good ancestor.

That fourth stage, then: ancestorhood. While Freud conceived of the id, ego, superego structure of the human psyche, which I’m applying metaphorically to these 3 life stages, it was Jung who developed the concept of a collective unconscious. This, I propose, is the metaphor for our ancestorhood. We become part of the web of humanity as have all who lived before us, and through which we continue to exist, albeit in an entirely different way. (We’ll circle back to this.)

Enter, Transpersonal Psychology. While the previous scheme, one of childhood-adulthood-elderhood-ancestorhood stages of existence, is my own, it’s transpersonal psychology that brings the spiritual realm back into our view of the human psyche. This school of thought formally emerged in the late 1960s but with antecedents much earlier. It integrates the theories of Carl Jung and later manifestations of both humanistic and depth psychology with the spiritual and/or metaphysical aspects of human interest and development, including the 19^th century work of psychologist/philosopher William James. Neither religious nor ‘New Age’, though often accused of the latter because of its inclusion of the mystical, the field nevertheless considers and explores the spiritual dimension — a realm of human experience often critically important to the individual but overlooked in our increasingly reductionist scientific study of the human mind.

Transpersonal Psychology has 3 key areas of focus: beyond-ego or personal sense of selfhood, integrative or holistic approaches to the human psyche, and self-transformation (Hartelius, Caplan, & Rardin, 2007; Walsh & Vaughn, 1980). It overlaps in some areas with that of positive psychology, a more recent school of thought introduced in the late 1990s, in concepts such as engagement and flow, wellbeing, meaning and purpose, mindfulness, creativity, and more. The realm of mystical experience is not only within but central to the transpersonal view, and thus, Eastern constructs such as Buddhism and shamanism are also of great interest.

And how does this relate to our aging well? In a word: transcendence.

A myriad of books on successful aging have been published recently: active, conscious, contemplative, positive, self-compassionate, sacred; elderhood, ‘gerotranscendence’, ‘sageing’. We want not only to go well into our elder years; we want to become elders in the true, indigenous sense of leading our tribes and contributing our wisdom. And we want to explore even more areas, of our own psyches and of the world, than we had before.

Abraham Maslow, who first conceptualized the now widely recognized hierarchy of human need, initially developed his concept culminating with the level of self-esteem, later adding ‘self-actualization’ or personal development as the pinnacle. In his final years, however, he proposed self-transcendence, in which we transcend the self altogether and focus on an expansion beyond the ego and even the physical body – into humanity and society, into the cosmos. In his own words: “Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos (Maslow, 1971, p. 269).

Twenty-five years earlier in 1946, Frankl had posited that the ultimate human development is in forgetting the self altogether – in giving oneself over to a greater purpose, motivated by love. He proposed that self-actualization only occurred as a side note to one’s transcendence of self, that we paradoxically reach our peak of personal development when we deliberately lose ourselves to the service of the greater good (Frankl, 1962).

In 1997, Swedish sociologist Lars Tornstam, informed by such thinkers as Erikson, Frankl, Maslow, and others, developed a theory of social gerontology he called, ‘gerotranscendence’ (Tornstam, 1997; 1999; 2005). His view of positive aging conceptualized the elder years as contemplative; we have transcended our exaggerated concerns for our bodies and for the daily issues of life, and instead turn toward both deeper meaning and engagement in a new way – more selective, with increasing periods of solitude and contemplative, meditative, and/or reminiscent practices. What we transcend, then, are preoccupations with career, body, and ego or selfhood.

And still – we want more. While ‘gerotranscendence’ is an appealing term, it somewhat buys into the stereotype of an increasingly solitary and contemplative existence, a withdrawal from the world. Yes, and. While this is true to a degree and in fact may be an idea we embrace, we can simultaneously remain fully engaged with humanity and the world around us – both externally and internally. (More on that soon.)

And so, our elder years, even as we wonder how our health may decline and other issues unfold, even as we face a succession of losses and understand that at some point we too will physically cease to exist, despite all its uncertainties, can be a time of richness – and perhaps, excitement. As I’m in my 60^th year, I find myself increasingly interested in this new phase of elderhood, of exploring and embracing all that it has to offer, and of preparing to become a good ancestor. The concern of loneliness becomes one of embracing solitude and inner exploration, silence and meditation; the idea of being ‘invisible’ to society becomes my superpower, my ‘cloak of invisibility’ as I can do, say, and think as I wish (with some parameters!) because no one is watching – a freedom. What’s more, the idea of feeling useless or without purpose evaporates when we explore ways to share our accumulated wisdom, remain engaged, and continue to contribute to the betterment of humanity – in part, through our own self-development.

One of the world’s true wise ones, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, passed from this earth just over a year ago in January 2022, having endured a stroke in 2014 that took his ability to speak. As millions who have been changed by his teachings mourned his death, they were also comforted by the Buddhist concept of continuation he espoused – that nothing truly dies, but continues in a different form, still engaging in and remaining part of this world. As he celebrated his beloved earth and his life, he also taught what he called ‘interbeing’, or universal interconnectedness: the individual, the ego, might die, but as we’ve interacted with and affected the lives of others, as we’re connected to and a part of all existence past, present, and future, our essence cannot cease to exist. Because of this interconnectedness, we strive to become the healthiest and most fully realized versions of ourselves, as a way of contributing to the web of all life: health and wellbeing of the species, the planet, the universe itself. This, then, is our sacred duty.

And what of transcendence? In part, it’s ego death or dissolution, in which our subjective ego or sense of self disappears, a state found in meditation and other methods for altering consciousness. This is often coupled with two other phenomena found in mystical experience: oceanic boundlessness or a sense of our identity expanding far beyond the reaches of our physical body, and universal interconnectedness or the feeling of being at one with all sentient beings and even the cosmos itself.

The concept of transcendence covers 5 domains, which also represent means to achieve this state: creativity, contemplation, introspection, relationships or interconnectedness, and spirituality or metaphysics (McCarthy & Bockweg, 2012). Aldwin et al. (2019) proposed wisdom as inclusive of self-transcendence, in addition to self-knowledge, non-attachment, and integration; they further suggested ego-transcendence as a more accurate construct. Other facets have been identified, including mindfulness, flow, awe, and both peak and mystical experience (Yaden et al., 2017). Beyond a late-life developmental stage, beyond the process itself in whatever form, transcendence has also been attributed to personality trait, psychological state, value orientation, and worldview (Wong, 2016). In addition, it correlates with both wellbeing and health promotion in those age 65 and older, a critical bonus (Haugan et al., 2022; Haugan & Dezutter, 2021).

And so, we come to our 9 transpersonal keys to transcendent aging. In this book we begin our exploration in the realm of meaning-making, or constructing sources of meaning in our own lives, as a sacred process. We move on to wisdom, in a look at how we identify, explore, and externalize our accumulated knowledge, experience, skills, perception, and more. Meditation, or inner exploration, is our next key, with specific foci for elderhood, and from there we move on to mindfulness as both trait and state, as nurtured by its practices.

Engagement follows, in many facets, connected by the concept of flow state to our 6^th key, creativity. We go from there to contemplative practices, our 7^th key and distinct from our earlier one of meditation. Then we’re on to peak experiences: how to seek out, embrace, and utilize them for our own transpersonal growth. Our final key is transcendence itself, ways that we can facilitate such experiences, and possible goals and outcomes.

There’s a bonus chapter, too, on emerging elderhood. As we reach our late 50s and into our early 60s, how can we facilitate our transition – spin our chrysalis – to embrace this new stage of life and prepare for a transcendent focus?

Isn’t it lovely, to think that we can continue to grow, expand, and contribute throughout our lifespan – and even perhaps beyond, into ancestorhood?

I’ve lived a life of the mind, my worst fear one of losing my mental capacity and sense of self in my elderhood. Recently, however, in my 60^th year and contemplating my own third act, I’ve begun to experience a profound shift in this regard. Even if my narrative does end in dementia, I’ll still be learning, experiencing, and developing – in another dimension entirely my own, perhaps the ultimate self-transcendence. And what a fascinating adventure that would be.

Let’s begin with meaning-making, shall we?

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