I am not mocking this. I am all for longevity, even physical immortality, so long as it is with perfect health in a more sane world than we currently live in. A few weeks ago I listened to a person telling me in great detail how it is possible to live well into your hundreds so long as you made sure that all the negative damage of the free radicals in your body was curtailed. And he knew how to do this.
Then, just today, I read of how cancer cells could be the key to a longer life. It seems that cancer cells are basically immortal, for across the world cancer cells have been kept alive in laboratories for decades. Apparently a molecule in cancer cells called tolomerase prevents the degradation of tolomerase, the protective caps at the end of chromosomes, and it is believed that this keeps the cells alive. The theory is that if the cells of a body could be cajoled into maintaining a controlled and regulated amount of tolomerase, we should be able to enjoy massively extended lives.
It certainly sounds feasible, and research is taking it seriously. Many people take a handful or more of pills and tablets a day as both aids and supplements toward better nutrition and a longer life. I believe the late, prolific romance author, Barbara Cartland, took ninety such supplements a day and she was still writing and well into her nineties when she died. On the other hand there are authenticated reports of Russian peasants who have reached the second and third decade after their first century without ever seeing a pill, tablet, or any nutritional supplements.
I have read a few books on serious longevity, some based entirely in the scientific facts of what we need to add to our diets, some based simply in a healthy lifestyle, and some based in spirituality. All have good, useful information, and are written by sincere and dedicated authors. Now, far-be-it for me to add to the longevity debate, because I’m not old enough to be the ‘proof of the pudding’ - come to that, none of the authors are - but I do have some pertinent insights into life. And life is life, whether lived for a long or short time!
It seems to me that humanity, on an overall basis, thinks small. We think in terms of days, weeks, even years, but very seldom in terms of decades and centuries. In other words, we have short-term time span references instead of long-term time span references. No matter how much you supplement yourself with tablets and health foods, short- term thinking creates a short-term life. Overall, we ‘expect’ a short-term life! We talk about people in their nineties being old. But they are not old, they are around middle age if you are going to have even a reasonably long life span. You never hear people saying things like, “I plan to be able to levitate by the time I'm a hundred and thirty, and I’m going to teleport all over the globe by the time I’m a hundred and fifty.” If we seriously want longevity, or immortality, we have to think and plan in terms of the next hundred years, not next year! In fact, we commonly hear the very opposite, especially at the doctors. “Well of course you have a few pains and are feeling stiff in your joints. You’re sixty-four now, you’re getting old.” Sound familiar? We even say to people, “How ‘old’ are you?” What we need to say is “How young are you?” This implies that at eighty you are many times younger than a person of twenty. Psychologically, it would make an enormous difference. But such a thing will only happen with long-term, radically altered thinking.
It is unfortunate that our whole reference to the human life span is that one hundred years is old. We talk about the short life spans of people centuries ago, and then consider our added decades as living longer.
Let’s briefly look at this. [You see? Brief; short term reference!] Many of the wealthy, the nobility, and the well-educated - mostly the same people - of centuries past lived lives of pure gluttony and gastronomic indulgence. Chronic constipation was the order of day. It was these people who could read and write who wrote what we today call our history. Basically, a few people in the overindulged population wrote the history for the ninety-five percent of people who could neither read or write, and were thus unable to deny the authenticity of what was written. So the very short life spans of the sick and constipated few became the facts and history of the much more lean many! However, it takes very little research in British birth and death records, churchyards, and cemeteries to find that a great many people who had enough food to sustain life lived as long as we, who enjoy good heath, do today.
Longevity may be a new buzz word, but it is not a new reality. It’s just an inspiring concept that you and I - given the right approach - may achieve a longer life. I gave a talk to a group of people recently who for four days had been revved up with the ideas of biological farming, of implementing new and exciting techniques for the better health of both the land and themselves. All good powerful stuff, and not to be denied. Yet, it all fell into the short-term life span bracket.
As the after dinner speaker, I challenged this group. I told them that if they view their farms in a thousand year time span, how they treat the land will make little difference to Nature. Let’s face it; Nature expresses through a time span that is immense. We look at Nature through little time spans, but this is us, not Nature. The way they treated their land in regard to techniques and cultural practices, in just the span of a thousand years, is of no consequence at all, but . . . their aware consciousness of ‘being with’ the land, instead of simply ‘doing to’ the land, will have a huge overall long-term effect.
Consciousness is the key to life. Consciousness is the key to ‘living’ life. To live consciously. Rare, very rare. To be consciously aware of consciously living your life - this is the place of miracles. No matter whether we use controlled tolomerase in the cells of our bodies, or some ‘miracle drug’ yet to be discovered, no matter what the supplements or how we control the free radicals, all this has as much hope as snow in the tropics if we think short term, act from a negative subconscious, and have no real Love for self and life.
Personally, I think if we become consciously aware, think with a hugely expanded timeframe reality, and consciously express the love for self, for other people, and for life in our daily living, then our life span can be greatly extended without recourse to any outside aids. Of course, as metaphysical Beings we are already immortal . . . but that’s another story!
In Love and Light, Michael
