When a human life was supposed to have the archetypal length of 70 years, 35 was the midpoint of such a life span. This was theoretically the great moment of maturity — that is, the time when a human being was in full possession of his productive power and with enough past experiences to use this power validly in terms of the performance of his social-personal role in his community. If, on the other hand, we consider that the archetypal measure of a man's life is 84 years, the situation changes. It changes because we are dealing now with a Uranus-conditioned life, one in which change rather than stability is the keynote. We no longer live in a static type of society. Modern living is essentially and (in the deepest sense of this word) "tragically" dynamic . . . and far more exciting!
Indeed, men and women in our Western society are very often living not one but at least two lives during the life span of their body; and it is almost evident that this pattern of multiple successive lives will become more widely experienced as our society becomes more technological and more complex. In other words, the rhythm of individualized existence of the modern man and woman is moving at such a fast pace, and starting so early, that the whole pattern of human existence has to at least divide itself in two if it is to meet significantly the challenge of this new age.
At some period in our mid-life, we tend almost inevitably to feel the need of starting life afresh on a new basis — and the spread of the most recent forms of technology will force us in many cases to do so, in perhaps subtle yet none the less powerful ways. It is because society today still does not recognize this to be a fact and because it retains its old dualistic patterns of morality (which are neither significantly valid any longer nor enforceable) that so much psychological and social chaos is being experienced and hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty are practiced everywhere at all personal and social levels.
If this were well understood and if it were generally accepted that the second half of the life can be a new life started afresh and on a new psychological, social, and spiritual-mental foundation, then people would not need to retire at 65 to a more or less socially unproductive and useless existence around golf courses or bridge tables. They could have, from around 48 to 70 or later, many years of constructive, truly mature, and "contemporary" (rather than based on old precedents) productivity. They would produce — after a few years of physical, psychological, philosophical, scientific re-education and rebirth — on the foundation of a truly mature type of knowledge and experience. It should be a creative foundation of wisdom, rather than one based on ancestral traditional knowledge, mixed up with adolescent subjectivity, ebullience, rebelliousness.
Indeed, men and women in our Western society are very often living not one but at least two lives during the life span of their body; and it is almost evident that this pattern of multiple successive lives will become more widely experienced as our society becomes more technological and more complex. In other words, the rhythm of individualized existence of the modern man and woman is moving at such a fast pace, and starting so early, that the whole pattern of human existence has to at least divide itself in two if it is to meet significantly the challenge of this new age.
At some period in our mid-life, we tend almost inevitably to feel the need of starting life afresh on a new basis — and the spread of the most recent forms of technology will force us in many cases to do so, in perhaps subtle yet none the less powerful ways. It is because society today still does not recognize this to be a fact and because it retains its old dualistic patterns of morality (which are neither significantly valid any longer nor enforceable) that so much psychological and social chaos is being experienced and hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty are practiced everywhere at all personal and social levels.
If this were well understood and if it were generally accepted that the second half of the life can be a new life started afresh and on a new psychological, social, and spiritual-mental foundation, then people would not need to retire at 65 to a more or less socially unproductive and useless existence around golf courses or bridge tables. They could have, from around 48 to 70 or later, many years of constructive, truly mature, and "contemporary" (rather than based on old precedents) productivity. They would produce — after a few years of physical, psychological, philosophical, scientific re-education and rebirth — on the foundation of a truly mature type of knowledge and experience. It should be a creative foundation of wisdom, rather than one based on ancestral traditional knowledge, mixed up with adolescent subjectivity, ebullience, rebelliousness.
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