Life’s a Peach, Love is Immortality
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
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:
My beloved Guru, 
I was brought up as an atheist, so it may count as rebellion that I went to church today: a Sunday… perhaps… until you hear I went as a tourist.
I decide to start at the top, perhaps thinking the vigorous exercise of climbing 275 steps will bring me some focus. On the contrary, dizzy from turning in a spiral and testing my lungs beyond their usual scope, I take my eyes from the steps to note that carving graffiti is not only a modern sport. I try to find the earliest date. Lost somewhere in the 1600s I return my full attention to the task of placing my feet on ever-narrowing stairs, since a tumble in such a place could be quite inconvenient.
There is something in the human instinct which makes one look for familiar places when reaching a height. Perhaps the thought of seeing my house was embedded in my desire to climb in the first place. Some Italians seem to be hoping for a glimpse of their hotel, while I follow the city walls out of comfortable sight to wonder which brown dot is my own.
I try to avoid treading on the worn names of many distinguished gentlemen long-deceased, but there are so many set into the ground. I imagine them shifting uneasily beneath and tutting under their breath through hundreds of years. I am looking for a happy face in stone, but all are solemnly in prayer, unless they are one of a hundred gargoyles, whose job is not to smile.
Glass painting was clearly easier. I stare long at many windows, great beauteous works of art. Circa 1260? Such devoted intricacy, all in greys and greens, a murky yet mesmeric light gazing back at me through time. 1422? Such delicate lines, yet such strange faces have endured so long the same expression.
I creep in at the back five minutes early, but my shoes squeak on polished wood, damp from the squalls outside. A stillness has arrived before me and sits like a living presence in the room; the arching roof higher, the golden wood warmer, the white walls purer because of it. Many have followed its silent lead and sit within it, hems soaking above boots from their assorted journeys.
After eleven years alive, I had lost all thoughts of calling somewhere home. Like a dry leaf on the wind of life, I went where it went, ever poised for the transport of its next gust. It pointed to Yorkshire, so we went north. I was determined not to like it there.
The leaf, twenty-one years on, has settled in York again. Only twenty-one years? Is this the same life even? These city walls stood for a millennium, but now in the space of my life are they so changed? Through my open window, breezes bring the bells of the Minster, surging like a tide. This is it. Strangers smile at me in the road, one, two, three, before I realise I was already smiling, and they perhaps politely returning. Was that old cherry tree there in those days too, hurling confetti into a brilliant sky like the mother of some cherished bride? Is that the river inn where once I turned sixteen in a frenzy of loud friends, a cheap euphoria of sunny cider, my feet lolling in the green of the water? There are other loud frenzies now, and some look my current age. Is their joy as hollow as my own once was? As fickle as a draught? Are they still wondering “Is this it?”
An interesting article called 
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