Elixir of Immortality (humor)

>>>But if I an allowed to go back to Swami Satyananda
>>>(=somebody who loves truth) Sarawati’s list
>>>(Socrates, Christ, Al-Hallaj, Joan of Arc etc.),
>>>my question is that if you would need to choose
>>>some genuinely bad guy who also might have been
>>>in very special way spiritually (or actually demonically)
>>>inspired, who would you choose? I mean somebody to
>>>add to that list.

Bad guy? Demonically inspired? Spiritual nature?

I don’t know. The only people that come to mind would
be Anton Szandor LaVey and Aleister Crowley.

Why do you ask?
Are you interested in falling into the dark side?

S

>>>Sorry but this idea of immortality is so outlandish
>>>that again became almost irritated with that.

Lots of things are outlandish, but it doesn’t necessarily
mean that they are impossible either. Take physical
immortality for instance. Most of us would agree this
is impossible. But actually, just because all of the
billions of humans that have been born and died prior
to now all met their end, does not therefore imply that
some unique individual might not be born that is free
from the genetic flaw that leads to age-related failure
of the body. In that sense, unless you take action to
do yourself in, anyone alive now can not with 100%
mathematical certainty say that they will die.

>>>But I was actually trying to consider what is the
>>>difference between those “imaginary friends” which
>>seemingly possess this poor girl mentioned above
>>>and for example Michael Winn’s and Wendy’s immortals.
>>>She (that girl) tells that beside these common
>>>(for schizophrenics) hallucinations these “friends”
>>>as well scratch and bite her etc. It’s also not so
>>>rare as they say in that program I have impression,
>>>but these kind of cases seem to be hidden in special
>>>kind of places (for example Camphill communities,
>>>which also Finland has several).

This is a legitimate question.
If someone says that they experienced some supernatural
phenomenon or relates some kind of channeled information,
how do you know that this is indeed the case and
that the person is not simply delusional?

This is not so easily answered.
I think the best approach is a moderate stance.
One should maintain a healthy dose of skepticism,
while at the same time keeping an open mind and not
dismissing it outright. As time goes on, relative
belief will either increase or decrease. If the
person exhibits delusional behavior, or in other ways,
exhibits a disconnection from our shared reality, then
credibility drops. If, on the other hand, the
person seems well-grounded and/or the revealed
“supernatural info” either seems to be consistent
with what is known or demonstrates an insight that
likely could not have been gained otherwise, then
the credibility goes up. These factors, one’s
personal experience, and one’s intuition all
combine to form an ever-evolving amount of belief
in one such claim or another. And ultimately,
that is about the best one can do.

>>>Anyway I was mainly thinking that if there
>>>is some kind of elixir of immortality, it might be
>>>in the end very dangerous to pursue, but still one
>>>can make fun out of it.

If you don’t even know if one exists, how can
you comment on how dangerous it may or may not be?
And, I contend, as in the first paragraph, you
don’t even really know if you are actually mortal to
begin with.

Qi,
Steven

>>>Isnt this just way of the human body.
>>>All things have birth, grow, decline and ending.

You assume a lot.

This isn’t anything other than a belief either, an opinion.
Unless it constitutes a mathematical proof, you can not
legitimately say “all things”.

If you examine 10 rooms, all of which are filled with oranges,
this does not mean that you can therefore conclude that
room #11 that you have not looked into is also filled with oranges.
It maybe be filled with apples; it may be empty.
You don’t know until you’ve experienced it.

S

False. You are making a HUGE logic error.
Observation of many cases does NOT imply truth of all cases.
Please reread my post to see exactly where you are incorrect.

Moreover:

Neither you nor I has experienced death.
It has not transpired.

You can not be certain about something that has not yet occurred.

What you have is a BELIEF, not a personal experience,
nor a deduced fact.

S

The point is that you are making assumptions.
Plausible assumptions or not, they are STILL assumptions.
You can not know what has not yet happened in relation to yourself,
when you yourself have not experienced such “stories”.
Ultimately, they are nothing more than fantasies . . .
plausible fantasies, yes, but fantasies still.

This was the point to my original post to howdy, which
got sidetracked by this tangential discussion about
physical immortality.

The point being that a lot is open to possibility,
there isn’t much you can take as a “given fact”,
that we generally live our lives based around some
assumptions, built on how plausible they are, not
on some absolute fact. It pays to have an open mind,
not be so decidedly certain about things that are
unknowable, given the present moment and one’s
personal experience.

S

1. Plants and animals are hardly human–don’t have our level of consciousness–not an adequate comparison.
2. If you mention plants, it appears to me that the Californian redwoods are doing pretty well. Many of them are estimated over 1000 years old and don’t appear to
be dying anytime soon–except for the occasional storm or person with an axe taking one out.
3. Inability to see certain things, does not discount their existence.

As mentioned in my recent response to bagua, there are plenty of things
that we take as assumptions in our everyday life, things that we expect to
be true, but there is no way of knowing with a 100% certainty that are
true.

As things that–ultimately we CAN NOT know–is supplied with supporting
evidence (but not an absolute proof), our overall confidence level in
the belief goes up, until ultimately we believe in its truth (but it
is still *just* a belief).

Much of what we take as “fact” is really just plausible belief that
we feel supported by external evidence.

This goes back to original post by howdy about otherworldly immortals,
dragons, channelings, etc.

If you want to dismiss such things automatically, out-of-hand,
simply because you have not experienced them, then dismissing your
own mortality is the natural consequence of this as you have
not experienced this either. That was the point to my “extremist example”.

Since not much can truly be said WITH 100% certainty, I feel it
makes sense to keep an open mind, albeit skeptical, with regard
to new claims. As new evidence comes in, relative belief will
either increase or decrease, but one can never truly say that it is
either 100% or 0%.

The universe is far too mysterious to ever say you know something for certain.

S