The Third Act of Life
Jerome Ellison
with Stephen Spignesi
The Third Act Of Life
by Jerome Ellison
with Stephen Spignesi
Copyright © 1973 by Jerome Ellison
Second Edition Copyright© 2009
by Jerome Ellison, Stephen Spignesi, E.D. Cormier, John White
“Prologue” © 2009 John White
“Epilogue” © 2009 E.D. Cormier
“Foreword: The Great Irrelevance” © 2009 Stephen Spignesi
Cover photo © 2009 Valerie Barnes
All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN 0-8298-0252-5
Smashwords Edition
Contents
Introduction by Jerome Ellison
Prologue by John White
Foreword by Stephen Spignesi
Welcome to Act Three
1. Beginning the Third Act of Our Life
2. Understanding that Death is a Door
3. Deciding to Prepare
4. Accepting Nature’s Gift of the Third Act
5. Embracing the Divine Force
6. Meditating Our Way to Harmony with the Divine
7. Reviewing Our Past
8. Cultivating New, Higher Values
9. Acquiring and Preserving Our New Wisdom
10. Knowing Cosmic Spirituality
11. Sharing Our New Wisdom
12. Experiencing the Joy of The Third Act
3 Very Interesting Books
Harry’s Case
Epilogue by E.D. Cormier
Notes
For Further Reading
About the Authors
INTRODUCTION
by Jerome Ellison
To describe how we became Third Acters — pilgrims focusing on the Third Act of life — is not a simple matter. Nobody “organized” us. Our interest and our sensibility seemed to be just there, preexisting. None of us did much more than acknowledge its existence and give it a name.
There have, of course, been individuals who made special contributions to this identifying process. Outstanding among these was the great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. The central thoughts of Third Acters had been in circulation for many centuries before Jung. (This he frankly asserted; his candor in such matters is one of the reasons he can now be called “great.”) But the way he so ably restated the matter in terms of twentieth-century science throws a strong new light on one of the most pressing problems of present-day society. It is called geriatrics by a science unable to impart meaning to the lives it prolongs and by younger people who would seek to deal from without with problems that can only be managed from within. Jung says that most people embark upon the second half of life (which includes, of course, the subject of this book, the Third Act of our life) wholly unprepared.
Are there perhaps colleges for forty-year-olds which prepare them for their coming life and its demands as the ordinary colleges introduce our young people to a knowledge of the world and of life? No, there are none. Thoroughly unprepared we take this step ... with the false presupposition that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning — for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. I have given psychological treatment to too many people of advancing years and looked too often into the secret chambers of their souls, not to be moved by this fundamental truth.1
Though we have not attempted to found the school for later living Dr. Jung proposed, what we have undertaken in this book may in many cases serve the same function. We quote him here not because he inspired us, but because we know after the fact of our own hard-lived experience that what he says is true. For we are those who let our forties (and in most cases our fifties) slip by without preparing for the new life that presently descended upon us. Late in the game, after having seen many of our co-runners trip and fall in disaster, we paused and took stock. It was an eleventh-hour inventory, and it revealed many bare shelves. We were not prepared to do business in this new market. So we restocked.
By simply muddling through, we hit upon certain principles that seemed to work better than those which had served us so well during the first two thirds of life but miserably failed us now. By freaks of chance that sometimes seemed miraculous, we kept running into kindred spirits with whom we could share our experience. All seemed to have something to contribute to the project of living out the Third Act of life happily and creatively. At last we decided that the time had come to put the sum. of our experience into some kind of readable form. The result is this book.
Having observed that wisdom bears no relation to academic credentials and that modern science has often erred, we have made proved and recent life experience our single criterion. What matters to us is not who is right but what is true. We respect an eminent Swiss, for example, not because he was a celebrated doctor but because what he said has checked out in our own lives.
We are moving forward into an expanding domain of little-explored reality. In these dimensions, to haggle over personal reputations and pet theories would be a waste of time we can’t afford. We decided to be guided not by personal ambition but by results in human lives.
“A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old,” wrote Dr. Jung, “if this longevity had no meaning for the species to which he belongs. The afternoon of human life ... cannot be merely a pitiful appendage of life’s morning.”2
We agree with Dr. Jung — and with the poet Robert Browning — youth is not all but that “the best is yet to be.” We are convinced we can prove this “best” to tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands who may be desperately seeking that release and relief now being enjoyed by we Third Acters. Longevity research indicates that, so long as one remains useful and sociable, living happily to be a hundred is no trick at all.
PROLOGUE
by John White, M.A.T.
The book you’re reading is an updated edition of The Last Third of Life Club, written in 1974 by Jerome Ellison. Here is the backstory. I hope it will help you to appreciate the book better and gain more from it.
I first met Jerry Ellison in 1970. He had just published his book The Life Beyond Death, coauthored with the world-famous medium Arthur Ford. I found it to be a solid, insightful work about postmortem human existence and the metaphysical worlds. I lived in Connecticut, near to the University of New Haven where Jerry was a Professor of Humanities and about to retire. I called Jerry at work, had a nice chat and we soon got together.
Our relationship quickly moved to deep friendship based on our shared interest in higher human development and consciousness research. Although I was 30-plus years younger than Jerry, he met me as an equal and soon I was part of a small group of older men with whom he’d been meeting for lunch on a regular weekly basis. Their purpose was to explore the meaning of life, after having been through the mill in one way or another and ground up fine, but surviving.
In Jerry’s case, it was alcoholism. When I met him he’d been sober for many years. He’d gone to Alcoholics Anonymous faithfully, but found that it wasn’t meeting his deepening spiritual needs. He’d read Carl Jung’s statement about the second half of life being intended for spiritual growth, after the first half fulfilled the biological need to have a family and raise children. But when the children were out of the nest and the marriage partners were alone with only each other, marriages sometimes fell apart because one or both partners hadn’t cultivated their inner resources and didn’t have a willingness or interest to explore the farther ranges of human nature. The time which then became available, Jerry and the group felt, was to be used for self-directed growth in body, mind and spirit toward wisdom about matters eternal.
Thus the Phenix Society was born. It was named by Jerry after the mythical Phoenix which arose from the ashes of its own demise, just as Jerry and his circle of friends were doing. Through a program of meetings based on study, meditation and discussion, Jerry and his friends would share their own precious insights with others who were searching for something more in life than just the rewards of the first half of life, with all its superficial games and unsatisfying values based on striving for fame, fortune, honors, status, etc. Jerry and his small group of fellow travelers had seen all that up close and personal, and had found it wasn’t enough to provide satisfactory meaning to their lives. The Phenix Society was intended not only to do that for them, but also for others by sharing the goodies, so to speak.
Jerry started the Phenix Society in 1973, while I was working at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California with Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell to study the powers of the human mind. A year later I returned to Connecticut and was invited by Jerry to speak at what was to become the annual conference at Mercy Center in Madison. I did so, and rapidly became immersed in the Phenix Society, supporting Jerry’s work and counseling him, at his request, on this or that aspect of the rapidly burgeoning organization.
To help “advance the cause,” Jerry wrote the first edition of this book. Through it he was able to reach out to the public, and soon there were local Phenix Clubs in a dozen states. They functioned under the supervision of The Phenix Society, the national umbrella for the local groups. I served on the Board of Directors, as well as attending the weekly meetings of a local Phenix Club. I also produced the Phenix Society’s annual conference for many years after Jerry died (of a brain tumor) in 1980.
The Phenix Society continued for a decade and a half after Jerry’s passing, but for a variety of reasons—including the declining health of many of the elderly members—it finally had to be discontinued as an organization.
However, the wisdom of so many people, as codified by Jerry in this book, lives on in this updated edition. The idea for that was suggested by Edward J. Cormier, a Phenix Club member who attended meetings of the same club as I did. Ed said to me one day recently, “We ought to reprint Jerry’s book. I’d like to use it as the basis of an on-line course I’m developing.”
I immediately liked his idea and, as the last member of the Phenix Society’s Board of Directors, gave my approval. I connected Ed with another friend, Stephen J. Spignesi, a professional writer-editor who was likewise concerned with the development of wisdom about the large questions surrounding our lives. Together, Ed and Steve augmented the original text, gave it a new title, and the result is what you now have in your hand or on your screen.
I’m pleased to have enabled this book to continue its work in teaching and guiding people toward self-understanding and greater happiness. Looking back on it all, I feel deeply blessed to have known Jerry and to have been part of the Phenix Society. In some ways he was like a father and mentor to me. I had the marvelous opportunity as a younger person to learn much about the experiences of later life without having to make the mistakes which he and others made because they were available to me for advice and counsel. I could learn from their hard-won wisdom. The road ahead for me was made much clearer and smoother by Phenix Society, and I am extremely grateful to Jerry and the entire organization for the gifts it provided to me and to others.
Although its time is now over and we lay the Phenix Society gently to rest, Jerry and the Society served as a powerful, benevolent change-agent for people of all ages, including me.
I had one contact with Jerry after he died. A few months after his passing, he appeared to me in a dream and said a few words which were so unmistakably his in content and expression that I could not doubt the reality of it all. It wasn’t a profound statement; it was a statement of friendship and assurance that he was well and continuing with his work. The Phenix Society was, first and foremost, a friendship society where we made Large Talk rather than small talk. I’m confident that Jerry is continuing to do that.
FOREWORD
by Stephen Spignesi
The Great Irrelevance
I was nine when my father died at the ridiculous age of thirty-six years, three months, and two days. My dad had a measly 13,243 days. (On my next birthday, I’ll be at 20,445.) I remember leaning against the washing machine in the kitchen of our three-family house on Monroe Street, punching holes with a fork in the cellophane covering of a Bundt cake while my mother tearfully told me what had happened. The house on Monroe Street is still there, but it’s the only structure still standing on that side of the street.
Thus did I receive a hale and hearty “how ya’ doin’, kid?” from none other than the Grim Reaper himself before I turned double digits.
Over the years, it occurred to me that death can easily cast life in a foul spotlight if one is receptive (susceptible?) to its negative stench; death can revise the context of living from something meritorious in its own right, into the Great Irrelevance. It becomes really easy to say, “Since I’m going to die, nothing I do matters.”
Is that true? All depends on how your day’s going, I suppose.
On days when we’re happy to be alive – money is plentiful; health is robust; relationships are fulfilling – well, hell, then who wouldn’t take as much of that as they could grab on to?
But what about those days when life itself is a horror show? An abomination? Bills aren’t paid; illness abounds; a hurricane strikes; and you’re alone. That’s when it is all too easy to believe in the Great Irrelevance. Nothing matters; and the notion that there might be something better than this awaiting us; that we could trade in woes for wonder ... well, hell, who wouldn’t seriously consider trading up?
Regardless of whether we are divine thoughts made corporeal, or simply a profoundly lucky accident, our reality is that we are biological in nature, if not in spirit. Mortal. And terminal from our very first breath.
How to live knowing this? Humans are the only animals who are cognizant of their ultimate fate. Dogs know death, but they don’t know they are going to die.
Does love give life meaning? Does hatred? Does happiness? Does misery? Does faith? Does fear? All of the above? None of the above?
The answer is yes. And no.
This book, The Third Act of Life, is a volume of wisdom I am honored to have had an opportunity to work on with the late, great Jerry Ellison. It offers profound guidance on how to transform a potentially great irrelevance into an irrefutably great treasure of limitless value.
WELCOME TO ACT THREE
Let’s face it: if you’re in your mid-50s or over 60, then you know that death is closer for you than it is for the under-60 set. In this respect, you are different from the majority of people. Yet today, it isn’t unreasonable to consider life a 90-year, three-act play. The Third Act of our life begins in our fifties and ends with our passage into a new life. We, your humble authors, and many, many others, are members of an informal organization called The Third Act Club. We no longer fear death.
All of us in our Third Act — call us the Third Acters, if you like — are a mixed assortment of human beings, in no way remarkable except for the ability to assure you, dear reader, of one thing: after reading this book (and completing the associated course, if you like), you, too, will be able to say, “I no longer fear death.”
Who We Are
We Third Acters are the people who once feared death a great deal — so much, in fact, that we wouldn’t let ourselves talk about it or even think about it, sometimes covering our fear with a daredevil rashness intended to show that we had no fear! And yet it is possible to fear death less and less the closer we come to it.
This fact seems so remarkable, so unexpected, so altogether pleasing, so full of potential for shared happiness, that we are moved to set down our experiences in the hope that many others will share them and will let fall away from them, as it has fallen away from us, what had been a puzzling, ever-pressing, ever-depressing weight.
We Third Acters once saw ourselves as having only a meager future, with even this remnant shrinking fast toward a vanishing point in a terrifying vacuum. Now we can face the future with an easy, sometimes even joyous confidence and serenity. Meanwhile our present lives — our lives in the immediate year — which once seemed so sadly drained of future usefulness, have taken on a new glow of meaning and potential. And we realized that we were needed — and needed right away — by thousands, if not millions of people.
Twelve States of Mind
Our experience consists of twelve steps. This program may appear to parallel certain redemptive movements of both the near and the remote past, but any resemblance to other programs is only superficial. Our twelve principles are not to be taken as a sequence, or a course of instruction, or a creed. They are simply an attempt to set down, after the fact, some of the major states of mind that have come upon us — often seemingly spontaneously — and made us feel we have something important in common.
The sequence means little; these principles may appear in any order. But we have noticed that where there is a strong tendency for any one of these things to develop in a particular life, sooner or later all twelve are likely to appear. We seem to have been set on a road that has twelve major access points. Some of us are far advanced on this highway; some have only recently set foot on it with a few tentative steps. It doesn’t seem to matter very much. As we travel, our advance increases our confidence that we have found the path to a supremely desirable destination.
The Twelve “Scenes” In Our Third Act:
1. Beginning the Third Act of Our Life: We admit that death is closer for us who are in the Third Act of our lives than it is for the average person; that in this respect we are different from the majority of people.
2. Understanding that Death is a Door: We have come to see that, for those who are prepared, the eventual passage from this life can be a glory rather than a dread.
3. Deciding to Prepare: We have decided to use our remaining years primarily for this preparation.
4. Accepting Nature’s Gift of the Third Act: We assert that the Third Act of life is given by nature for this high purpose; that it can illuminate all earlier experience in the joyous fulfillment of a rounded life.
5. Embracing the Divine Force: We have resolved to give over our lives to Cosmic Creative Intelligence as we individually name and experience this divine force.
6. Meditating Our Way to Harmony with the Divine: Through regular morning and evening meditations, we are finding ourselves more and more in harmony with this transcendent power.
7. Reviewing Our Past: Reviewing our past in the company of other Third Acters has shown us that our earlier life goals no longer suffice.