जर्नल ऑफ एजिंग एंड जेरियाट्रिक मेडिसिन

Do We Become More Spiritual with Age?

Bruce A Stevens

Objective: This study investigated the changing nature of spirituality with age.

Methods: This was based on interviews with 15 people who expressed their views about growing older, for many it was a spiritual journey, for all it was meaningful.

Results: It was found that ageing was like a catalyst, but somewhat random in outcome.

Discussion: This raises the question of how getting older might influence our sense of meaning in life. The gerotranscendence model of Lars Tornstam was compared with the interview data.

Conclusion: However, if there was a ‘fit’ with the model there was also a ‘lack of fit’. For it did not capture the core experience of many participants who found their relationship with God deepened. The model of Tornstam is more about cosmic consciousness than God, and in other ways as well it proved inadequate. A better, simpler model has been proposed by Bachelard and Miller (2016).