Sumangali.org: In The Spirit Of Serendipity

When I was little, my mum had a penchant for Chinese antiquities. Along with a glossy rosewood coffee table, my favourite was a painted statue of Shou Lao, the god of longevity. He held a long twisted staff of many twining branches in one hand, and a peach (of unlikely proportions) in the other.

Although he looked at least 200 years old, he smiled as if mid-chuckle, and his cheeks had a crimson glow like the peach. We were told that the peach came from a tree that bore fruit every 3 millennia, and anyone who took a bite from it could live as long as they wanted.

Researchers say that by 2060 people living in the country with the highest life expectancy will live to an average age of 100. The average lifespan globally is double that of 200 years ago. But, say researchers Jim Oeppen and Dr James Vaupel “This is far from eternity: modest annual increments in life expectancy will never lead to immortality.” (Source: BBC)

Physical immortality is yet further off in some countries. There is a gap of more than 30 years between the life expectancy of the world’s poorest and richest countries, and the gap is widening. (Source: The Independent)

But maybe help is at hand, as Steve Connor reports in an Independent article: Who Wants to Live Forever (sorry if you get that Queen song in your head all day, I know, it happened to me too.)

“A genetically engineered organism that lives 10 times longer than normal has been created by scientists in California. It is the greatest extension of longevity yet achieved by researchers investigating the scientific nature of ageing.

If this work could ever be translated into humans, it would mean that we might one day see people living for 800 years. But is this ever going to be a realistic possibility?”

…

“There is, of course, a huge difference between yeast cells and people, but that hasn’t stopped Longo and his colleagues suggesting that the work is directly relevant to human ageing and longevity. “We’re setting the foundation for reprogramming healthy life. If we can find out how the longevity mechanism works, it can be applied to every cell in every living organism,” Longo says.

“We’re very, very far from making a person live to 800 years of age. I don’t think it’s going to be very complicated to get to 120 and remain healthy, but at a certain point I think it will be possible to get people to live to 800. I don’t think there is an upper limit to the life of any organism.” ”

Of course I believed the story of Shou Lao, and at six years old asked myself how many more years I’d choose, if that peach on the dresser was not just ceramic. I’d say my answers have changed a lot throughout life, but now I’d definitely answer: as long as possible.

That’s not just because I believe in reincarnation, and want to delay my return to embarrassing teenage haircuts as long as I can. It’s because I’ve found what I’m looking for in life, I’m happy, and I want to hold onto that as long as I can. Believing in re-incarnation means believing in immortality at the soul’s level, but along with a new birth comes a new state of amnesia, and we are challenged with finding our long-lost happiness again.

On immortality, my spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy says:

“In the world of consciousness each individual is immortal. An individual identifies himself either with the soul or with the body. If he identifies himself with the body, which is far from perfection, then naturally he feels he cannot live forever. But if he identifies himself with the soul, then he knows that he is immortal. The body will die, but when it is a matter of consciousness—which every man has and which he inwardly is—man is eternal, man is immortal.”
—Sri Chinmoy: How Can Man Live Forever

He goes on to say that age can be a matter of mental perception rather than just a physical inevitability:

“If the mind is used, then you are finished. When you are ten years old, the mind will make you feel that you are as old as ninety years! Only think that at this particular stage of life you are supposed to do something. Then after ten or fifteen years you are supposed to do something else. Continuously a new game is starting, a new part you have to play. Each time you are given a new role, you have to play it well. When you become a huge tree, at that time more responsibility comes. A tree has to give so much, so much. Under the tree at first only one pilgrim can stay. Later many individuals can come and stay. Finally, the tree has to feel the responsibility of giving shade, protection and shelter to all. The higher you go, the more shelter, protection and illumination you have to give to others. In terms of human age, you may be only sixty or seventy, but in terms of divine light and divine wisdom you will become hundreds and hundreds of years old.”
—Sri Chinmoy: Sri Chinmoy Answers 21

Maybe Shou Lao’s happiness is part of his secret then, and not the peach alone. Sri Chinmoy’s life of happiness and meditation allowed him to continue transcending his own astonishing achievements in weightlifting well into his eighth decade, until his passing last year at the age of 76:

“I am trying to inspire people who are not praying and meditating. I am telling them that everybody has a vital, everybody has a mind everybody has a heart, everybody has a soul. But they are not utilising these members of their inner family the way I do. Otherwise, if I had to depend entirely on the physical, I could do next to nothing. My biceps are not even 14 inches, whereas the biceps of other weightlifters are 21 or 22 inches. My calves are not even 13 1/2 inches, and theirs are 20 inches. Their muscles are gigantic compared to mine. I can lift as much as I do because I am taking help from the strength within me.”
—Sri Chinmoy on SriChinmoy.tv

In 2003 Sri Chinmoy met Fauja Singh, the UK’s sporting legend who rediscovered running age 81, completing marathons and competing for world records well into his nineties. In 2004 Singh signed a major advertising deal with Adidas called “Impossible is Nothing”.

So forget about retirement, if you want to live long and prosper, look busy. Take Shigechiyo Izumi as another example:

“As well as holding the title of the oldest man to have lived, Izumi, from the Japanese island of Tokunoshima, holds the record for the longest career. A farmer, he worked from childhood until the age of 105, in a career that spanned 98 years. In spite of a weakness for sho-chu (a barley whisky) and taking up smoking at 70, he lived to 120. He died in 1986.”
(Source: The Independent)

I will end with a quote for my teacher Sri Chinmoy, whose outer loss from the world is still great for those who had the joy of knowing him, although his example of self-transcendence will live on:

“Unable are the loved to die for love is immortality”
—Emily Dickinson

FURTHER READING:

• Tribute to Sri Chinmoy
• The Oldest People in the World

“With thee conversing I forget all time,
All seasons and thir change, all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest Birds; pleasant the Sun
When first on this delightful Land he spreads
His orient Beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flour,
Glistring with dew; fragrant the fertil earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful Eevning milde, then silent Night
With this her solemn Bird and this fair Moon,
And these the Gemms of Heav’n, her starrie train:
But neither breath of Morn when she ascends
With charm of earliest Birds, nor rising Sun
On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, floure,
Glistring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,
Nor grateful Evening mild, nor silent Night
With this her solemn Bird, nor walk by Moon,
Or glittering Starr-light without thee is sweet.
But wherfore all night long shine these, for whom
This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes?”

—John Milton, Paradise Lost Book IV

This is my favourite passage from the man who is considered the second greatest English poet. If John Milton was ever irked at having to play second fiddle to Shakespeare in the poetic hall of fame, it may have comforted him to remember that his poetic works were not his greatest feat. Indeed, he invented Space.

Without him, NASA would be NA?A, there would be no “final frontier” into which Captain Kirk could boldly go, and no number 1 hit across 23 countries for Babylon Zoo (arguably a mixed blessing).

Four hundred years ago, “Space,” in the Outer Space sense of the word, was the relatively empty regions of the universe outside the atmospheres of celestial bodies. Thanks to Milton it is now in a handy 5-letter package, to which we can more readily append words such as man, ship, shuttle, hopper, and cadet.

Milton was not always so beneficent, as he also created “pandemonium” and “gloom”. But we are indebted to him for the words terrific, jubilant and sensuous. Without him we would never “trip the light fantastic,” or be moon-struck.

This week visitors to Cambridge University Library will have a chance to inspect the workings of Milton’s great mind, as some of his rare manuscripts are put on display.

Milton’s influence on the modern world cannot be underestimated, says Dr Gavin Alexander, fellow of Christ’s College: “His writing took epic realms like fantasy, romance and science fiction and combined them with ideas about politics, morality and human nature on a huge cosmic scale nobody had really seen before… Without him, it is possible we would never have heard of The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, or The Matrix.”

“He is among the world’s great poets,” says Professor Christopher Ricks in the preface to the exhibition. “Living at this Hour: John Milton 1608-2008″ opens at the Cambridge University Library on Tuesday.

—Read more from John Milton: the poet who gave us ‘Star Trek’ and ‘The Matrix’ in the Independent On Sunday

• Budding etymologists can find more surprising word origins at www.etymonline.com or www.wordorigins.org, such as the following (tangentially related as it was coined by another Milton):

Rarely do we know the exact circumstances surrounding the coining of a brand new word. But in the case of googol, a mathematical term for the number represented by a one followed by 100 zeroes or 10100, we know exactly who coined it and when, Milton Sirotta, the nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner, and the year was 1938. From Kasner and Newman’s Mathematics and the Imagination (1940):

The name “googol” was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner’s nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it…At the same time that he suggested “googol” he gave a name for a still larger number: “Googolplex.”

Later in the book:

A googol is 10¹⁰⁰; a googolplex is 10 to the googol power.

The name of the search engine and software company, Google, is a deliberate variant of the mathematical term. The company’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, came up with the name in 1998. They altered the spelling for trademark purposes.

—www.wordorigins.org