THE FOUR ASRAMAS

How to Age with Grace and Wisdom in the Fourth Stage of Your Life

It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee

Ancient Indian tradition views old age as the pinnacle of a lifelong rising of fulfillment and happiness, ending in spiritual liberation — not a long, steady decline into decrepitude and death.

In ancient India, this is called the four stages of life, or the four asramas.

It’s fun to party in the first half of life with loud music, plenty of spirits, and the excitement of sexual desire. That’s normal and necessary for a young person. But in old age, the music gets quieter; sexual desire turns into a deeper kind of love, and alcohol into a deeper kind of spirit.

Deepak Chopra (77) has a wise concept of aging — his four stages of life, based on the ancient Indian tradition of the four asramas as briefly described here.

1. Birth-25: Brahmacharya (student).
2. Age 25–50: Gṛhastha (householder). Married life and the duties of maintaining a household and raising a family.
3. Age 50–75: Vanaprastha. The retirement stage, where a person hands over household responsibilities to the next generation, takes an advisory role, and gradually withdraws from the world.
4. Age 75+ (or anytime): (Sannyasa). This is the renunciate stage, where one withdraws completely from material life without property or home to pursue spirituality.

These ancient asramas aren’t workable for our lives. Here’s how Chopra updates them for the 21st century.

His first phase is education, the second is fame and fortune, and the third is giving back. That works for me. But his fourth stage of life goes beyond wine and pickleball at the senior center.

“Now [at 77] I’ve entered the fourth ashrama, which is called self-realization — where you look back and say, ‘Who am I? What am I doing here? What does it mean?’” — Deepak Chopra

The Fourth Stage

We spend three-quarters of our lives ignoring these questions. Now, we have time to explore them by reading poetry, meditating, praying, or writing some poetry of our own. The fourth stage can be a time of reflection and discovering the stillness of your twilight years.

You can age with grace in the secular meaning of the word: elegance or beauty of form in your words and actions. In the fourth stage, you can let your inner beauty shine outward for everyone to drink in, like a beautifully aged wine.

This takes a quiet, sure state of mind.

In old age, we, of necessity, slow down and let go of our striving and accumulating ways. This is a great opportunity to look within and ask the big questions, like — what is the meaning of life? How should I spend my remaining years? What will happen when I die?

These are the heart questions of the great spiritual traditions.

You can age with wisdom in the spiritual meaning of the word: the understanding and knowledge that comes from a deep connection to one’s inner self and the divine. You can uncover the inner light that’s always shining, even if we aren’t aware of it.

“Even on an overcast day, the sun is always shining behind the clouds.”

The fourth stage of life is the time to uncover this wisdom in ourselves if we haven’t yet done it. One of the most profound lessons I have learned through meditation is that even on an overcast day, the sun is always shining behind the clouds. The clear, bright mind of wisdom is always within us, waiting to burst through the clouds.

The fourth stage of life is the opportunity of a lifetime. And it should not be wasted — it should be lived to the fullest so we can make our final exit full of gratitude.

Here are three ways to do that.

The Eastern Way

I am 78, and I’m following the Eastern way of meditation and self-realization.

I didn’t decide to do this. Like most things, it just happened as one thing led to another. I began meditating, wanting enlightenment, which is also called self-realization. I had been reading extensively about Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufiism, and Vedanta. I thought enlightenment might take a while. Three years, maybe, ha, ha!

The sutras say that the greatest meditator in human history spent six years of non-stop, night and day practice to become The Buddha, the enlightened one. He left his family and children to practice alone in the forest. That is a commitment few will make. He gave up everything and put his life on the line.

This shows how stupid I was to think I could do it in a few years, meditating an hour a day. Dabbling.

But even so, as I was dabbling, my overcast mind began to clear up. I started to notice things I had never seen before. This is what happens when you quiet your mind. Meditation is a strange kind of study. It’s not book learning. It’s more like playing the piano. The only way you can learn the piano is by playing it.

The only way you can learn to meditate is by meditating.

My mind got quieter, and I began to understand better books on Zen, which confused me 20 years ago. I became happier, kinder, and more creative, and so it goes today.

The fourth stage of life can be a gradual unfurling of the wisdom inside you.

The Western Way

If I ever become discouraged with The Eastern way, I would consider the Western way of spiritual practice. In my mid-teens, my best friend was a Southern Baptist preacher’s son in Garden Grove, California. I often attended Sunday service in the Grange Hall, where his father preached. I also attended Wednesday night prayer meetings.

I could never become a Southern Baptist, but my friend’s father had an aura about him. I could feel it when I was close to him. He believed deeply in his liturgy and had dedicated his life to it. Any religion will be beneficial and comforting if you believe in it and dedicate your life to it.

Commitment is power.

If you are already a Christian but no longer practice, consider returning and giving it another try. Instead of just praying on Sunday, consider daily prayer. That may be much easier for you than trying to make the jump to Japanese, Chinese, or Indian culture.

Meditation is a form of prayer.

And there are hybrid teachers like the Jesuit priest Anthony De Mello and the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton. They were Catholics with open minds to the wisdom of the East. Check them out.

Here’s a little taste of Anthony De Mello.

On Waking Up

Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up.

They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing we call human existence. You know, all mystics — Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion — are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare. — Anthony De Mello, Awareness

The fourth stage of life is the time to wake up and smell the coffee and realize, like the crazed sign-carrying zealot from a hundred cartoons, “The End Is Near.”

We can no longer afford to ignore the opportunities in the fourth stage of our lives.

The Creative Way

I am also following the creative way of writing in the fourth asrama of my life. This is something I never thought of doing until I began to meditate daily three years ago. After a year or so, my creative impulse grew, and I became a writer.

I’m an unknown writer, but thinking about what I want to say, devising a structure, and finding the words to say it gives me great pleasure. And that pleasure is spiritually fulfilling. All of this began developing in the fourth ashrama of my life.

Choosing a creative path like writing, painting, pottery, or poetry can give you a reason for getting out of bed in the morning — and a pillow for your head at night.

Creativity lay covered in the mud of my mind, but as I meditated daily, tiny lotus blossoms began to appear, and I began getting clues on how to express myself. I was learning how to turn my words into a structure and meaning that might be useful to people.

I hope this was useful to you. Here’s to a happy fourth stage of life. And if it’s mainly wine and pickleball at the senior center, that’s okay. Enjoy it with full awareness, and be kind to your opponents.

Gary November 2023

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