Frankly, I don't get why you are so interested in achieving immortality.

Are you afraid of death?

My personal feeling is that aside from my smoking, I'm not real eager to check out the death voyage too early when there so much here that I haven't explored yet.
That goes to my second thought regarding life span. I've been thinking lately about the idea that rather than extending life (we can keep working on those fronts), we start thinking about altering our perspective of time.
So many people express how time seems slip away as we age. One revolution around the sun when you are ten is 10% of your experience. When you are twenty it's only 5% and so on. Yet to the Sun each orbit is 1/4.5billionth of its life span. A single human life must seem an inpercetable flash. The solar system is like a swam of gnats, buzzing about the head.
It seems that we begin to filter out more and more information that appears routine to our mind, regardless of its actual potential value to us.
The average male human life span in the west is 73 years. Can we accelerate our activity or mental processes to where each hour seems like ten? I know bordom seems to do this, but is bordom really that we are just exploring ideas in our head more deeply, giving that time more meaning? And when we couple our toughts with a physical activity, such as writing our thoughts down, we rejoin terrestrial time?

And what of some new work done by Jeremy Munday and Bill Robertson of Middle Tennessee State University where they've moved information faster than the speed of light cheaply? Doesn't this nescessarily mean it's traveling backward in time? So now we can move some of the product of our consciousness forward and back.

Time dilation seems like a project I'm going to want to work on...

A quick follow up-
If our perception of the passage of time is that it accererates as we age, how much actual life span do we need to gain to make a substantial impact on our perception of time?

A quick follow up-
If our perception of the passage of time is that it accelerates as we age, how much actual life span do we need to gain to make a substantial impact on our perception of time?

Well, I think there is reason behind the fact that we die from time to time.

Perhaps if we didn't, we couldn't evolve. Perhaps a total reset is necessary, so that the core experience - that part of us, that "configuration" which is constant for a whole life-time - can change.

Living and dying - for me these are analogous to the Sun and the Moon, day and night, etc. To die after living through a complete life (a whole cycle) is the natural thing to do.

The (desperate?) hunt for immortality is what feels unnatural. Sometimes the transhumanist vision can feel rather morbid and grotesque.

And it doesn't fit symbolically, either (at least for me): living forever would mean that the Light is always on, that Darkness (and everything that belongs to the dark side) completely disappears from the world. How could that be in a world which is built on dualities?

to live longer?from what i understand the end,for most,isn`t something to prolong.i would much prefer to have my youth for as long as possible.granted,the curiousity i have for the future wills me to a long life but it is tempered by the thought of being less and less able to be involved in life.i will take quality over quantity.

Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased there are advances toward immortality and life extension. However, aside from personal health care issues, there's not much I can contribute to the scientific advancement of the process. What I can impact directly is my perception of the time I have.
Can I accelerate my own behavior, mental processes, etc. to make my life more robust? To make the sense of the time I have seem longer?
I agree that anything we've done to modify our bodies, minds, and/or civilization is "synthetic" yet it goes to the very core of what we are, thus actually organic in nature.

Hi Snag,

Ok, I'm hearing ya. :)

My advice (I think you're asking me for it), is to live in the present moment as much as possible. When one is completely in the moment, time tends to disappear. Linear time is replaced with momentary time. From a momentary time perspective all that we ever really have is the present moment anyway.

I have spent many years honing this skill, now using Vivation as my preferred method for meditation and transformation. The more I 'vive' the more I remain present, and the longer and more enriched my life is. Nowadays, I am the happiest person I know. The present moment contains infinite varieties of bliss and novelty just waiting to be experienced. All one needs to do is let go of any 'make wrong' we have and the ecstatic present moment comes right on in.

cellex- the world isn't built on dualities

as an example, take hot and cold--that seems like a duality from our perspective, but in reality, if you start from 0 kelvin, there is only different degrees of heat

I think the same applies to good and evil (I think evil is simply ignorance) and the other dualities

Hmmm. I think I get what you say and really, I have nothing against this than my feelings (my brain says yes). Something inside tells me that in the long run this would not work. But to put this into legal code (to make dying a rule) - God forbid. I don't want that. It's just me and my opinion.

Perhaps I came to this conclusion because of Buddhism. From studying Buddhism, I understood that it is really important to accept the fact of death/decay. Actually, on the Buddhist path this is the starting point: to recognize the first Noble Truth, dukha (suffering), which means constant change, no stable ground for us to rest on. That's where a novice starts.

A Buddhist monk told me once that when one really understands this, that "the only constant thing is change", that equals enlightenment. When we can find joy in change, then we become free of suffering, we don't flee from it anymore, so we can overcome all the fear that exists in the world and that's how we reach a true, lasting peace of mind. And whether we do this as mortals or immortals, well, it doesn't really matter because these are incomparably miniscule details compared to the grandness of that which we realize then.

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Phil: It's great what you say. Let's just change our point of view and duality dissolves. What a trick. :-)

However, I sometimes find it quite difficult to change my mind, to change my beliefs. Some things are carried over from thousands of years. Baggage that determines and modulates the way I perceive everything. It grew on me, I'm one with it. I sometimes even caress it and I definitely cling onto it.

Sometimes I feel like a karma-burner: all this shit is here on my shoulders, all the heritage of my elders, the past, my personal piece of the puzzle, and I'm here to figure it out. To understand what went wrong, so that by my personal act, the world can understand too.

one of the funniest things i`ve ever read/heard was the statement that "my karma ran over your dogma".i forget how it was applied but it is applicable in situations where humour beats crankiness.to be real we need to be in the moment.breathing and smiling.i am fascinated by the neurological process of smiling.phenylethylamine is my addiction.in my seminars i challenge people(gracefully) to smile and with a little effort we are all laughing.when we are in the present we are living forever.
advancements in the ability for humans to live longer is very important but i was drawn to this site by the explorations in conciousness.timothy leary said that when people are agressive toward you the you must come back with as much happiness as possible.my dad always said that you must keep smiling,it makes them wonder what you`re up to.two irrepressible irishmen.
peace and smiles.

Well.... it lists 3 steps to 'immortality' but it isnt really immortality. What if you fall off a cliff, or get blown up or caught underwater or any number of things that can happen to a body? Theses processes (in the book) are increasing longevity. But true immortality.... well, we would have to live independently of a body, and/or be in constant safety with the bodies we choose relative to our environment. Immortality seems parallel with global mind and mastery of matter.

I think life extention is a better word than immortality. Immortality to me implies more of a state of mind then a physical fact. Leonardo Da Vinci is immortal, because of how he lives on in human consciousness.
On the other hand, suppose Dick Cheney is able to live forever. Would you ever consider someone like that to be "immortal"?

we live forever through our children and through the things we do in the community.want to live forever?have a statue built in the the park with your name on it and have boys and girls that contain your dna.physically hanging around for too long becomes redundant,and fashion for the 100+ crowd really sucks.

It's fascinating to see that many of us "psychedelic rebirthers" are uncomfortable with the idea of physical immortality.

Apparently living really long is yet another of our society's many taboos.

I fully agree with Paul's comment that ego death is a more than adequate substitute for death. In fact, systematic ego death through cathartic therapies is a far more rapid and effective means of advancing the evolution of our culture than the slow and frustrating process of having to wait for the jaded, cynical people to die off. They tend to hang around much too long and they have too much time to pass down their negativity to the younger generation.

Must better for people to be doing the intense inner work necessary to see that their limitations and negativity are coming entirely from within, and that there's really no limit to how wonderful and amazing life on this earth in this body can be.

Dlight - great insight. I hadn't considered the issue form that angle before but what immediately comes to mind is the Boddhisattva vow. Once the Buddha mind has been awakened, physical death or immortality are of little consequence, and there certainly seem to be plenty of work to do on this side of the veil.

when we remove ourselves from the ego`s will to react we do humanity a favour.the intense inner work is what is needed to grapple the scourge that we know as ego.
i speak from experience.
who wants a six year old running our lives,after all.
peace.