According to the ancient Hindu Laws of Manu, there are four stages or “ashramas” of life, each lasting 21 (or 25) years. The first stage – 0-21 (0-25) years – Brahmacharya/Student – the person lives as a unmarried celibate, studies with a guru; the focus is on education, character development, development of skills The second...Read More
“According to a beautiful legend from the Jewish tradition, the fetus in the womb has a light that shines above his head that sees from one end of the universe to the other. This light encompasses the unborn’s own deep past and his ultimate destiny. Just before birth, however, the angel Lailah comes to the...Read More
Fielding Graduate University sponsors a free monthly e-newsletter called Human Values in Aging, that provides a rich source of information about humanistic gerontology, including brief articles, books and films of interest, web links, calendar of events, and quotations on humanism and spirituality in aging. It is edited by Dr. Harry R. Moody, author of The...Read More
David Marshak, emeritus professor in the College of Education at Seattle University, has written a book, The Common Vision: Parenting and Educating for Wholeness (Peter Lang Publishing), that integrates the developmental ideas of three esoteric thinkers from the early 20th century: Rudolf Steiner, Hazrat Inayat Khan, and Sri Aurobindo. As the title indicates, Marshak...Read More
I’m impressed with the work of Susan Linn, author of The Case for Make-Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World, whose organization, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), has been attempting to stop corporations from using characters like Sponge Bob Square Pants,Sesame Street’s Elmo, and cartoon movie figures to advertise everything from sugar-rich cereals and unhealthy McDonald’s “happy meals” to...Read More
An 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) suggests that abnormalities in the lower brainstem affecting serotonin production may be a major predisposing factor in the occurrence of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in infants. The neurotransmitter serotonin is best known for its mood-regulating characteristics (many current antidepressant drugs affect the regulation...Read More
I’d like to recommend an amazing film entitled Bodysong. It chronicled the entire human condition through hundreds of video clips taken from many cultures, many historical settings (back to the very beginnings of the history of film), and most importantly, from each stage of the human life cycle. It begins with images of conception, and then, in...Read More
The stages of life in Native American traditions are sometimes represented through the Medicine Wheel, a cross within a circle that indicates the Four Directions: East, South, West, and North. The symbolism that is usually described goes as follows: East – birth, childhood; South – youth, growing up; West – aging, mature adulthood; North –...Read More
In W.B. Yeat’s poem Supernatural Songs, part IX of the poem presents his “theory” of the human life cycle in poetic form. According to Yeats, there are four stages of life or “ages of man” that relate respectively to body, heart, mind, and soul. The first age recalls infancy, as the baby struggles to walk...Read More
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