RH: How did you get started in this field of research?
HM: I direct a gerontology center in New York City, and have
worked in this field for more than twenty years, so I've been
interested in aging for a long time. But I've also been interested in
spiritual subjects all my life. I did my philosophy dissertation at
Columbia on Meister Eckhart and medieval mysticism, and I was
studying psychedelics at Yale before that. This book puts together
my interests in lifespan development and spiritual growth.
RH: One of the first things that jumps out at the reader is the
notion that the spiritual journey is much different in the second half
of life than it is in the first.
HM: I think there's some truth to that. In many ways, we
build up our sense of self and mastery in the first half of life. In the
second half, we ask some questions about parts of ourselves, perhaps
shadow parts, that until then haven't been looked at in a clear light.
Before you turned on the tape, we were talking about Jung; he was
one of the first psychologists to understand the importance of the
search for meaning in life and beyond. Many people are experiencing
that search today.
RH: That seems especially true of the 'baby boomer' generation
which, if I can generalize, rejected traditional spirituality in its youth
and now, as it grows older, finds it necessary to take stock and ask
itself, "Where do we go from here?"
HM: You've put your finger on one vital force in the growing
interest in spirituality. Another important aspect of the general crisis
in spirituality is that Americans are very religious people, but we're
also very critical and skeptical of authority. It forces us to look for
our own spiritual paths, which is good in many ways. The problem
with it is that there are a bewildering number of paths to choose
from, and one of the reasons I wrote The Five Stages of the
Soul is because I felt it would be helpful to have a map of the
terrain. There are other books that provide excellent resources for
other aspects of aging, such as Dan Levinson's or Gail Sheehy's, but
the spiritual dimensions have really not been mapped in this way.
RH: How does the spiritual journey start?
HM: Many of us are are going to go through life pursuing other
things and then wake up one morning and ask themselves, "Wait a
minute, is this all there is? Is there something more?" That moment
is a very precious one, which I refer to as the Call, and it can take
many different forms. It's the beginning of this whole process.
RH: And it doesn't necessarily have to be a negative or traumatic
event.
HM: No, it doesn't. For some people it is, whether it's an illness,
a divorce, or a downsizing that causes them to question everything
they've been. Other people I interviewed for the book had won the
lottery of life, so to speak, and asked themselves, "Ok, what now?"
Whether our dreams come true, or we realize that they'll never come
true, it can be an opportunity for us to hear the Call.
RH: How can we distinguish between the Search and the
Struggle?
HM: At a certain point, once a person has the Call experience,
he or she needs to understand that they are not alone. That's a very
important point. They may ask themselves, "Why aren't I happy?"
Their friends and relatives may not understand them, and they may
worry that they're going crazy. The book's message is, "Look, you're
at the beginning of a process." The next part of the process is the
Search. You need to make contact with other people who are
experiencing the same thing. Maybe you go back to church, maybe
you go into therapy, maybe you buy self-help books -- but whatever
you do, you're connecting yourself with a process that goes on in
many people. It's a search for guidance, for people who can help you
find your path. It doesn't necessarily result in peace of mind, though,
and it won't necessarily answer all your questions. It may result in
struggle.
RH: The search can be complicated by the low value that our
society often places on older people, the way that it pushes them off
to the side and ignores them.
HM: For the elders, that can be an opportunity. They can say
to themselves, "If nobody wants to listen to me anymore, maybe I
can go find a path for myself." In the traditional Hindu view of life,
for example, once you had reached a certain stage, after you'd
become a householder, you abandoned that and went into the forest
to meditate. So for the elders, it isn't necessarily a bad thing, but for
the young people who cast aside the elders, that could be a mistake
because they may not have the role models and mentors that they'll
need to take this journey.
RH: On the Breakthrough stage, you make some interesting
distinctions between genuine breakthroughs that come during this
process and false breakthroughs that come out of, say, psychedelic
use.
HM: Well, I wouldn't refer to them as false
breakthroughs; it might be better to think of them as
incomplete. There are many moments in life when we have a
glimpse of something higher. It can happen through a near-death
experience, through drugs, through art...these 'peak experiences'
come in many different forms. They aren't all the same. The point
that I was trying to make about drugs is really not different from
what Ram Dass had said: drug experiences are like a call on the
phone. You take the call, get the message, and then hang up the
phone. After that, you need to find out how to make that message a
more permanent part of your daily life. The problem with drugs is
that people can become addicted to having breakthrough experiences
that way. I think it's similar to the reasons people pursue dangerous
adventures such as mountain climbing or skydiving. You have an
intense feeling of 'aliveness' during those moments, and you want to
keep repeating that feeling, to live constantly in that moment.
It's not so much a 'false' breakthrough as a wrong attitude towards
the breakthrough, an attempt to hang on to it. That's not what the
breakthrough is about. The stage beyond Breakthough, the Return
stage, is crucial.
Some people who have come back from near-death and similar
experiences say that they look at the world around them and it
seems like a cartoon. If you've really had a powerful experience, it's
hard to take the conventional rat race of life seriously again, but at a
certain point, you do need to integrate that experience into your
daily life. There's an old saying: "Before englightenment, we chopped
wood and carried water. After enlightenment, we chopped wood and
carried water." It's true that, in a sense, things are not what they
seem, but they aren't otherwise, either... I've found it very
interesting to see how the people I interviewed for this book
struggled with the issue of 'coming down from the mountaintop.'
RH: Particularly since America is, as you say, both so profoundly
religious and so profoundly skeptical. We believe that it's good for
you to be spiritual as long as we don't have to hear about it.
HM: One of the reasons I wrote this book is to get a
framework out there for integrating the sacred and profane. My book
isn't unique; Thomas Moore, for example, in The Care of The
Soul, is also concerned with ordinary life and spirituality, and I
think there are other people out there who are concerned with the
same issues, and others who are looking for guidance. Although we
need to make the connections between the mythic and the everyday,
it's not just a matter of saying, "I'm living out a myth," or "I'm
related to a myth." That can be a cause of spiritual inflation. Spiritual
growth is just the opposite. It's the ability to see yourself as "no
special person," as the Zen master D. T. Suzuki used to sign his letters.
RH: What's next for you?
HM: I do workshops and seminars based on the themes of this
book, and I'm linked up with other people who are working in what
we call "conscious aging," people like Ram Dass or Zalman Schachter. I
do a lot of work with Elder Hostel. There's a lot of interest in this
field, and I believe that interest will grow as the baby boomers
continue to grow older. But I don't think this is limited to one
particular age group. The Call doesn't come in a predictable way. It's
not chronologically based; it can come at any time to anybody.
