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Conscious Aging

In recent years, there has been a surge of public interest in spiritual topics especially related to development in later life. This interest in things spiritual takes different forms, ranging from an interest in exotic New Age phenomena to a revival of traditional mystical teachings from Judaism and Christianity.

Some recent research suggests that mystical experience is becoming more common, with broad implications for an aging society. For example, Jeffrey Levin (1993) looked at age differences in reports of extrasensory perception, spiritualism, and numinous experience, which he defined as being “close to a powerful, spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself.” Using data from a representative cross-sectional population survey, Levin found that between 1973 and 1988, composite mysticism scores increased with successive age cohorts. Private and subjective religiosity is positively related to overall mystical experience, but organizational religiosity is inversely related, suggesting that those pursuing spiritual growth may find it in places other than services in a house of worship. In light of Levin’s findings, it is not surprising that large proportions of older Americans are already making use of so-called alternative therapies, including meditation, as part of their health practices (McMahan & Lutz, 2004).

Compared with European societies, the United States has historically been more religiously oriented, but spiritual revival today goes beyond mainstream religion. Individual growth is the new watchword. In keeping with that trend, one of the most fascinating developments today is the rise of conscious aging, an idea based on an assumption that late life can be a period for positive spiritual growth. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a pioneer of the Jewish Renewal movement, and Ram Dass, once a Harvard psychology professor and later a spiritual teacher, emerged as national leaders of the conscious-aging movement. Holistic health care, life review, and mystical religion are all important elements in conscious aging (Schachter-Shalomi & Miller, 1995).

A central practice of conscious aging is personal meditation (Goleman, 1988), whether it takes the form of yoga, Zen, and other Eastern disciplines or the form of contemplative prayer, which has a long history in the Christian church. Meditation as a spiritual discipline is a way of looking at ourselves as beings with depths beyond the conscious mind or ego. The same outlook permeates the work of Jungian psychiatrist Allan Chinen (1989), who has opened up new vistas for the interpretation of fairy tales about the second half of life. Conscious aging represents a coming together of religion and psychology so that each can enrich the other.

Conscious aging goes beyond conventional assumptions about adaptation or personality development over the life course. An early proponent of this view was Abraham Maslow, founder of humanistic psychology. Maslow believed that most people use only a small part of human potential, a potential demonstrated in what he called “peak experiences.” At these high points in our life, we have a chance to move toward self-actualization, that is, to become more fulfilled as human beings. Maslow himself believed that most people who are self-actualized are to be found among those who are mature in years—middle-aged or older.

Mainstream psychology has, for the most part, not looked closely at the higher reaches of human potential, whether in young people or in old. One result of that limitation may be the “decline-and-fall” view of aging criticized by researchers who have looked at the emergence of wisdom in later life (Baltes, 1993). But some lifespan developmental psychologists go further. They argue that mature thought in adulthood entails a dimension of transcendence (Miller & Cook-Greuter, 1994), the province of transpersonal psychology (Walsh & Vaughan, 1993). Transpersonal psychology includes elements such as attention training, emotional transformation, refining awareness, and the achievement of wisdom through detachment and integration.

The conscious-aging perspective may have something to contribute to gerontology on matters such as health care, intergenerational relations, and adult education. For example, research over the past two decades has documented the tangible benefits of meditation for physical and mental health. What happens in meditation has long been familiar to medical and psychological researchers under the name of autogenic training, or self-induced modification of lower brain centers. More than two decades ago, Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School published his groundbreaking article on the “relaxation response,” which explained altered states of consciousness in yoga and Zen in terms of the central nervous system. Since then, extensive research on biofeedback and alpha waves in the brain has confirmed the feasibility of studying consciousness.

There has also been some interesting experimental confirmation of strategies of conscious aging as a means of overcoming what psychologist Robert Kastenbaum (1984) calls habituation. In Kastenbaum’s view, the essence of aging is a process of becoming gradually deadened or more mechanical in our response to life because of the power of habits. By contrast, meditation can be viewed as a progressive growth in powers of attention to overcome habituation in old stimulus–response patterns.

Conscious aging is a struggle to establish new cognitive structures, new ways of looking at the world. Researcher Arthur Deikman (1966/1990) has described how the process of deautomatization can come from practicing meditative disciplines such as yoga or Zen. Deikman, for instance, conducted a procedure of “experimental meditation,” after which subjects reported sensory experience that was more vivid and luminous. Deikman’s work and other experiments like it suggest that deliberate concentration and meditation can modify the selectivity of sensory input to the brain.

These findings could have implications for an aging society. For example, a controlled study in a geriatric population found that meditation-relaxation techniques can have a major impact in reducing anxiety and depression, an impact superior to conventional cognitive-behavioral techniques (DeBerry, Davis, & Reinhard, 1989). Another study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, looked at the impact of transcendental meditation to see whether it can have benefits beyond simple relaxation. That study confirmed the point that cultivation of mindfulness, a state of consciousness free of content but alert, does have measurable consequences for learning, cognitive flexibility, and overall mental health. These positive results remained with the participants years later (Alexander et al., 1989).

Conscious aging is trying to apply these lessons from research and practice to a growing older population. Interest in health promotion, productive aging, and lifelong learning is likely to make conscious aging a subject of continuing importance as the United States becomes an aging society in the 21^st century. It may prove an intriguing glimpse of things to come.