Your Immortal Reality: How to Break the Cycle of Birth and Death ~ Gary Renard

Your Immortal Reality, the long awaited new book by author Gary Renard, author of Disappearance of the Universe is now available. Gary Renard’s captivating book includes information from the Ascended Master Teachers, Arten and Pursah, who were first introduced to the world in Disappearance of the Universe. In this new book we learn how to incorporate advanced spiritual principles into our everyday life.

Undo the ego

Go beyond theory to an experience of the Divine and the undoing of the ego. Gary says that our progress will be accelerated to such a degree that, with practice we can’t help but stop the need to reincarnate and finally break the cycle of birth and death.

Your Immortal Reality expands the teachings of the Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles. By implementing a unique modification in our understanding of forgiveness, and taking the true meaning of thought to a whole new level, the result will break the cycle of birth and death.

Your Immortal Reality is like nothing else you have ever read or heard. Discover how to practice true forgiveness and learn why we exist in such a chaotic universe – and how you can literally change the world – by changing yourself. Gary Renard will make you look at the world and yourself in a way you have never considered.

About Gary R. Renard

Gary R. Renard, the best-selling author of The Disappearance of the Universe and Your Immortal Reality, was born on the historic North Shore of Massachusetts. He became a successful professional guitar player, but during the harmonic convergence of 1987, he heard a Calling and began to take his life in a different direction. At the beginning of the 1990’s, he moved to Maine, where he underwent a powerful spiritual awakening. As instructed, he slowly and carefully wrote Disappearance over a period of nine years. In the fall of 2003, after much encouragement from other speakers and students, Gary began to present talks and workshops in public. His speaking career took off remarkably fast, and today he lectures internationally.

Combining a disarming sense of humor with radical, cutting-edge metaphysical information and experiential exercises, this acclaimed teacher of A Course in Miracles has been described as one of the most interesting and courageous spiritual speakers in the world. Over the past eight years, he has spoken in 43 states, 23 countries, and was the keynote speaker at several International A Course in Miracles Conferences. Gary is also a recipient of the Infinity Foundation Spirit Award. The award is given to a person who has made a meaningful contribution to personal and spiritual growth. Past recipients include Dan Millman, Ram Dass, Gary Zukav, James Redfield, Byron Katie, and Neale Donald Walsch.

Gary Reynard and “Your Immortal Reality.”

The Sacredness of the Soul By Ingrid Van Mater

Immortality is a word which stands for the stability or permanence of that unique and precious quality we discern in the soul, which, if lost, leaves nothing worth preservation in the world. — W. Macneil Dixon

“What a piece of work is man!” We are all souls on the way to recognizing and becoming the divine Self within: the magnitude of our whole nature is beyond our present comprehension, for we are to a large degree a mystery to ourselves and to one another. Human life is surrounded by mystery from the moment of conception to the wonder of death. Although seasoned travelers, having experienced countless births and deaths and rebirths on this planet, we have merely begun to scratch the surface of our complex being. We belong to the sun, moon, and stars, to the vast universe, and can embrace the immensity of it and universes beyond in our consciousness.

Earth is our home base, so to speak, our center of learning and opportunity for the soul’s expansion and awakenment, yet we should not forget that we are at home in many mansions. When we fall asleep we enter into a different awareness than our ordinary waking state, yet retain our identity, as we do after death, when the soul travels through many dimensions of experience.

With each incarnation we bear the fruits of past causes, while sowing new seeds which will find karmic harvest in this or some future life. Because as self-conscious beings we fashion our own destiny we must assume full responsibility for the quality of our thoughts and actions. We are a blend of physical, emotional, mental, psychological, and spiritual-intuitional energies, to name but a few, and the combination of negative and positive aspects of these varies with each individual.

This duality is a spur to inner growth, and through conflicts and suffering we learn discernment, gain equilibrium, patience, and fortitude, awaken compassion for others, and all the necessary qualities for our further evolution. As the seed holds the promise of the plant to be, so we have latent potentials within that hold the promise of the illumined human being we will one day become.

The words of Jesus provide a key to our spiritual destiny: “I (the Christ spirit or divinity) am the way, the truth, and the life.” Each one of us is the pathway to our divine source. There is a paradox here, because divinity permeates all but must be pursued individually; only through each one’s effort and readiness will the “way” become evident.

Central to us is our divine Self, our “Father within,” or Guardian Angel, that is with us in death as in life. It is a guiding light, a source of strength and wisdom, the Warrior that is continually prodding us to make the bigger, less personal choices. How do we become aware of it? For each one the answer may be different. Sometimes it is a feeling of peace and reassurance that steals in on one in the silence, and with it comes faith in the presence of a protective force beyond our ordinary understanding.

Knowledge of the enduring spirit and the continuity of existence brings a broader vision and sense of purpose into our lives. It reduces fear of death by letting us see the experience as following the universal pattern, a rest time of assimilation and inner fulfillment rather than a finality; it strengthens confidence in our true Self and in the realness of others rather than focusing on the personality; and replaces despair and futility with optimism and hope.

Sincere commitment to spiritual principles makes the difference between merely existing or automatically reacting to circumstances, and living with selfless motivation and inner awareness. Such is the justice of karma that we receive from every experience the quality of what we bring to it.

It is difficult to understand how one can believe that we come to an abrupt end after one life, when everything around us, in all of nature’s kingdoms, reveals the beauty of the divine urgency of life to express itself. Of what value are our struggles and triumphs, sufferings and joys, complex natures, when we are still such unfinished expressions of our true humanhood? It would be a mockery if all our efforts, all our deepest aspirations, close associations with those we love, and accomplishments, were for naught or were to come to no resolution at some future time.

Through the centuries intuitive writers have left a legacy of reflections reminding us of our spiritual heritage. The poet Wordsworth was convinced from childhood of preexistence and of the immortality of the soul, and felt impelled to preface his “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” with these observations:

Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being. . . .

. . . But it was not so much from feelings of animal vivacity that my difficulty came as from a sense of the indomitableness of the Spirit within me. . . . I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. . . .

All too soon, a child’s hopes and dreams, spontaneous joy and imagination, “fade into the light of common day,” buried within the confining walls of doubt and fixed mental patterns that often come with maturing years. Sometimes, however, as in the case of Wordsworth, great artists and thinkers through the ages, and others who retain glimmerings of their youthful reveries, those shadowy recollections are “master light of all our seeing, . . . which nothing can utterly abolish or destroy.”

There is no question but that the childhood state, close to the heart of life, is an important phase of human experience and, when rightly nurtured, leads to richer insights and greater freedom of thought in the adult years. It also reveals more transparently our spiritual orientation as human beings, as well as giving obvious indication of the contradictory elements in us that seek to gain the upper hand.

At the other end of the scale the elderly who have given of themselves to worthwhile endeavors, reflect their inner light as the body grows frail and the mind is enjoying the distilled essence of experience while gradually withdrawing from inconsequential things. Birth and death, coming at the beginning and ending of a life’s sojourn, are transitions between worlds which evoke feelings of the sacredness of the soul and intimations of invisible influences that shape our lives.

The path of self-discovery is at best a rough road, different for each of us. Yet as we become more aware of our multi-leveled nature and its conflicting elements, we begin to discriminate between negative desires and thoughts on a purely emotional level and the more unselfish ones, between the personality and the individuality, between the physical senses and the more penetrating perceptions of the higher mind and intuition, and the wisdom of the heart.

Victor Hugo’s lovely verse appeals to the eternal hope in each of us:

Be as the bird that in its flight
Lighteth on bough too slight,
Feels it give way beneath it,
Yet sings, knowing it hath wings.

In liberating our mind and emotions, the soul, like a bird released from its cage, is free to wing its way into the regions of the real Self, and beyond.

(From Sunrise magazine, April/May 1990. Copyright © 1990 by Theosophical University Press.)

Consciousness Explained Better [updated Feb 18, 2012]

Consciousness Explained Better is a unique contribution. This compact volume represents thousands of years of humanity’s struggle to understand consciousness from a wide variety of perspectives. It is an up-to-date digest of the search in bite-sized chapters.

Allan Combs has managed to encapsulate and synthesize vast bodies of thought and research without dilution. He has made even the most mind-twisting arguments and questions comprehensible, and he has brought forward scholarship and rigorous inquiry in language that speaks to the heart as well as the head. This book satisfies with its comprehensiveness yet intrigues with all that still remains enigmatic.

It brings forward the yearning, the brilliance, the awe, and the outrageous audacity of our search to understand conscious. It reminds us that, in a world where much of our lives on a mundane basis has been reduced to the trivial, the logistical, and the manageable, everything about that world and about ourselves is still completely beyond our grasp. We still live and move in the Great Mystery.”

—-From the Foreword by Jenny Wade, author of Changes of Mind and Transcendent Sex

Table of Contents
The Introduction
Chapter 1 – A Word Worn Smooth
Chapter 2 – Never at Rest
Chapter 3 – Four Streams of Experience
Chapter 4 – From One Great Blooming, Buzzing Confusion
Chapter 5 – The Adult Mind
Chapter 6 – States and Structures of Consciousness
Chapter 7 – The Hierarchy of Minds
Chapter 8 – Horizontal and Vertical Evolution of Consciousness
Chapter 9 – The Many Faces of Integral Consciousness
References

Allan Combs, a pioneer of Integral thought and practice whose name may be familiar if you’ve ever heard of the “Wilber-Combs lattice”, speaks with Ken about his latest book Consciousness Explained Better.
Combs-ConsciousnessExplainedBetterPt1.mp3

1. The Final Event: Dawn of the Age of Truth 2.The Elixir of Immortality 3. Creating the Soul Body by Robert Cox

Robert Cox’s The Final Event provides major new insight into the timing and significance of the momentous events beginning now to unfold on planet earth at this most crucial period of human history. Based upon his own intuitive cognitions, the author ties together prophetic indicators derived from the Vedic, Egyptian, Christian, Greek, Judaic, and Mayan traditions to develop a predictive historical model, which spans the last 13,000 years and, for the first time, connects the Precession of the Equinoxes with the cyclic unfolding of the four Ages of Man.

The model accurately pinpoints, describes, and aligns the cultural and spiritual character of historical periods and points to June 2009 as the end of the current cycle of Ages and the beginning of the next. The author predicts that this date will mark the beginning of the 42-month period indicated in The Apocalypse of St. John, when all of humanity will traverse the Valley of the Shadow of Death making our way toward a new Golden Age, or Age of Truth.

Like most birth processes, this global transformation is likely to be traumatic, and the author supplies advice on how to prepare for it physically and spiritually. Nevertheless, he argues that this risky and challenging passage will provide the greatest opportunity for transcendence ever offered to humanity, and he advises us how to take advantage of this opportunity through ego-mastery and meditation. The model predicts that the 42-month transition period, which marks the time of Tribulation, will end on December 21, 2012, when the light of the new Golden Age will first be see

Robert E. Cox holds a Master’s degree in Vedic Studies from the Institute of Creative Intelligence in Switzerland. For nine years he lived as a reclusive monk, during which time he received intuitive cognitions regarding the structure and dynamics of consciousness that inspired his research. He is the author of The Pillar of Celestial Fire, The Elixir of Immortality, and Creating the Soul Body, and he lives in Arizona.

About The Elixir of Immortality
A modern-day quest that echoes the ancient alchemists’ work to discover the elixir of life

• Provides an overview of alchemical practices in the ancient world–from Europe to China

• Reveals the alchemical secrets for creating this elixir in clear scientific language

In 1989, while attempting to extract precious minerals from his property, a wealthy Arizonan obtained a mysterious white material that initially defied scientific attempts to identify it. After several years of testing, this substance was revealed to consist of gold and platinum–but in a form unknown to modern science. Further research showed that this powder, which had also been discovered to possess marvelous healing powers, contained monatomic forms of precious metals whose electron units had been altered to no longer display the physical, chemical, or electrical properties of the original elements. This substance, Robert Cox shows, bears eerie resemblance to the ultimate quest of the alchemists: the elixir of immortality.

The mysterious material-spiritual science of alchemy was once pervasive throughout the ancient world, spanning the globe from China and India to Egypt and medieval Europe. In The Elixir of Immortality, Robert Cox reviews the alchemical lore of these traditions and the procedures each used to produce this fabulous elixir. Using his own alchemical research, Cox then reveals secrets that have been kept hidden for millennia uncovered in his own modern-day quest to rediscover this long-sought elixir of life.

About Creating the Soul Body
Outlines the principles and mechanics of the soul body, the spiritual vehicle that enables individual consciousness to survive the body’s death

• Shows that the ancient Vedic, Egyptian, Hebraic, and Pythagorean traditions shared and understood this spiritual practice

• Reveals modern science as only now awakening to this ancient sacred science

Ancient peoples the world over understood that individual consciousness is rooted in a universal field of consciousness and is therefore eternal, surviving the passing of the physical body. They engaged in spiritual practices to make that transition maximally auspicious. These practices can be described as a kind of alchemy, in which base elements are discarded and higher levels of consciousness are realized. The result is the creation of a vehicle, a soul body, that carries consciousness beyond physical death.

These spiritual preparations are symbolized in the Vedic, Egyptian, and Hebraic traditions as a divine stairway or ladder, a step-by-step path of ascent in which the practitioner raises consciousness by degrees until it comes to rest in the bosom of the infinite, thereby becoming “immortal.” This spiritual process explains the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, for example, whose reincarnation is confirmed in infancy through physical and spiritual signs, indicating that the consciousness has been carried from one lifetime to the next.

In Creating the Soul Body, Robert Cox maps the spiritual journey of consciousness behind this sacred science of immortality and reveals the practice of creating a soul body in detail. He also shows that this ancient spiritual science resembles advanced theories of modern science, such as wave and particle theory and the unified field theory, and reveals that modern science is only now awakening to this ancient science of “immortality.”

Do Our Pets Go to Heaven? Metaphysics of Animal Souls and The Afterlife ~ Pythia Peay

Tank, a bulldog with a heart as loyal as a soldier, and Bojangles, a rambunctiously sweet rescue dog, were two of the loves of my life. Inseparable, they died within a year of each other. Believing that they had souls, I gave them as good a passage from this world as possible, at home and surrounded by family.

Yet after my dogs’ deaths I found myself feeling oddly shy talking about their loss, even as I choked back tears. Why, I wondered, did I feel so self-conscious — and why did I have only the fuzziest notions about the afterlife of my animal companions?

In search of insight, I turned to Ptolemy Tompkins’ new book, “The Divine Life of Animals: One Man’s Quest to Discover Whether the Souls of Animals Live On.” In it, Tompkins undertakes an exploration into the myths and beliefs across time that have defined animals’ place in the metaphysical scheme of things. In the following interview, I share the highlights of our conversation.

Pythia: In your book you range from prehistoric cultures that viewed animals as spiritual beings, to Buddhist beliefs around the reincarnation of animals, and figures like Saint Augustine, who believed that animals would not be found in heaven. What was your purpose in laying out all these and other scenarios?

Ptolemy: In our modern culture, where people are skittish about talking about whether humans have souls, you can’t just immediately jump to the animal soul. So I saw myself as having to go back through history and see when the idea of the soul began. I wanted to address why we sense that the soul is real, but feel out of touch with what it really is.

Whether a 12th century Sufi mystic or an Australian aborigine, people used to have a much more specific idea of the soul. But we live in an age of metaphysical timidity: people don’t want to ask serious questions about the soul and the afterlife because they’re afraid that they’re being naive — and all this goes triply for asking about your dead dog. But if an animal or someone I know dies, where is that specific personality that I knew? Did it melt back into some kind of larger consciousness? Does it still exist in another dimension? These are completely valid existential questions.

Pythia: I was fascinated by your description of the “Fall” — the narrative of a golden era when animals and humans lived together in harmony until dropping out of it into conflict — that you say is one of our oldest stories. Why does this myth have such significance?

Ptolemy: Whether in the Brazilian rain forest or the story of Adam and Eve there is this recurring theme that in the past animals and humans lived in more fluid accord with each other. What a lot of thinkers believe this myth means is that life on the physical level was preceded by a spiritualized existence that we “fell” out of. But it’s also understood that at some point in the future things will return to their true essences and that the journey of life, while difficult, has something good about it.

Pythia: Another theme in your book is the ongoing question of which species is more important — animals or humans. Where did you come out on that debate?

Ptolemy: There are two arguments in myth and religion that go back and forth. In one, humans are at the center of everything. Or, humans are just arrogant beings who think they’re special when they’re not. I decided that both these ideas are extremes. Along with other thinkers, I believe that there is something about human beings that sets us apart from the rest of nature, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t a part of nature. Very often in myths of the Fall, for instance, it’s a human being who causes the problem. What this says to me is that our humanness is a special part of creation, but that we ruin our uniqueness when we cut ourselves off from nature.

Pythia: How does what you’re saying fit in with this other idea that you write about, the “Great Chain of Being?”

Ptolemy: In esoteric philosophy you find this idea that the cosmos is hierarchically structured. In this Great Chain of Being, animals are below and angels are above, with human beings dead center in the middle. Some say this is a humanist-centric idea and that it denigrates animals. But I think that at it’s best it means that something more is demanded of us. In all the traditional cultures it’s the responsibility of human beings to oversee the interactions of the different species, and to honor nature through ritual activities.

Pythia: At the end of your book, you seem to indicate that we’re coming full circle, and entering a new era.

Ptolemy: I think we’re in a time when a new overarching narrative needs to come into play. We don’t know exactly what that is yet: it has something to do with science and religion meeting, and with Eastern and Western faiths. The New Age drives me nuts, even though I’m kind of a New Age person because my dad raised me in it. (Tompkins’ father, Peter Tompkins, was the author of “The Secret Life of Plants.”) But there is a core intuition at its heart that is correct, which is that there is a new story about to come together out of this huge mix of different perspectives. Something is about to change, but it hasn’t happened yet and that’s why there’s so much confusion.

Pythia: Does this circling around to a different story that is both old and new also include integrating the values of prehistoric and indigenous cultures, especially with regard to animals?

Ptolemy: We are as cut off from nature and our true spiritual identities as it’s possible to be without going crazy. What we’ve done to the planet is a symptom of that. No traditional culture would look at a human being without the context of the natural world. But if we’re going to move out of that state of alienation and back into a state of genuine connection with the universe, we have to do it with animals. We fell out of Paradise together, and we’ll fall back into it together.

Pythia: Indeed in your book you write that, “Whenever humans forge a truly spiritual connection with animals the space separating earth from heaven becomes just a little smaller.” In this sense is the way we relate to animals an important spiritual practice?

Ptolemy: Anytime you have a feeling of compassion for an animal you’re connecting to the entire physical and spiritual universe. It’s a tiny keyhole to this whole lost world of connection. You can still be a realist and know that physical life is tough. But you can also feel that connection to an animal and its existential plight, and realize that it’s a brutal world for animals marked by suffering. In the course of this conversation, how many pigs have been slaughtered in South Carolina?

Pythia: At the end of your book, you arrive at your own synthesis of ideas about the next world as a kind of transcendent earth where the individual personality, animal or human, lives on.

Ptolemy: To me, there’s no question that there is another world. Although it’s beyond our present capacity to imagine, the physical world in the afterlife isn’t erased, as much as it is completed, an “earth above the earth.” The bigger world above this one, which this world is on its way back into, will somehow resolve the ghastliness of this world. T.S. Eliot expressed something of what I’m trying to say in a line from “The Four Quartets”: “The completion of partial ecstasies, the resolution of its partial horrors.”

Pythia Peay got her start as a writer in 1968, when her weekly column “Wildflowers” ran in the Oak Grove, Missouri High School newspaper. After a decade in the San Francisco area at the height of the spiritual renaissance, where she studied with the Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, she began her career writing about spiritual and psychological themes.

Her trademark down-to-earth articles about matters of the soul – whether the soul of the city, the messages in our nightly dreams, deep politics, or finding our calling – have appeared in media such as Washingtonian, Beliefnet, George, New Woman, Common Boundary, Ode, and Utne magazine.

Her columns for Religion News Service have appeared in newspapers around the country, from The Cleveland Plain Dealer, to The Kansas City Star and The Salt Lake Tribune. The author of Soul Sisters: The Five Sacred Qualities of a Woman’s Soul, Peay also lectures and offers workshops on women’s spirituality.

For the last six years, she has worked to complete a psychological memoir, American Icarus, a deeply researched book into the life and times of her father, and their turbulent father-daughter relationship. She makes her home in the Washington, D.C. area.

Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die by Sushila Blackman

Death is a subject obscured by fear and denial. When we do think of dying, we are more often concerned with how to avoid the pain and suffering that may accompany our death than we are with really confronting the meaning of death and how to approach it. Sushila Blackman places death–and life–in a truer perspective, by telling us of others who have left this world with dignity.

“Graceful Exits” offers valuable guidance in the form of 108 stories recounting the ways in which Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, and Zen masters, both ancient and modern, have confronted their own deaths. By directly presenting the grace, clarity, and even humor with which great spiritual teachers have met the end of their days, Blackman provides inspiration and nourishment to anyone truly concerned with the fundamental issues of life and death.

From Library Journal:

Blackman narrates the death stories of over 100 Tibetan, Hindu, and Zen masters, ancient and modern. The striking element in these accounts is a sense of being fully prepared to meet death. Blackman grappled with lung cancer and came to peace with her own fears about death as she compiled this book, completed only a few months before she died. As Blackman notes, the Judaeo-Christian perspective of death is not represented here, but this fills a demand for inspirational books about death and Eastern spirituality. – Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

“Written in lucid prose, the book is a training manual for making graceful exits from this life.”—Publishers Weekly

“Not since the ground-breaking work of Kubler-Ross on death and dying has there been such a much needed compilation of inspirational stories and examples of how to prepare oneself for the inevitable.”—Midwestern Book Review

“This beautiful little book is a gem. It contributes to our understanding that we are truly timeless.”—Deepak Chopra, M.D.

“A magical little volume. It reveals with simplicity and lucidity how wise and compassionate living leads to a wise and compassionate death.”—Glenn H. Mullin, author of Death and Dying: The Tibetan Tradition

Swami Kriyananda – “What happens when a person dies?”

Answers to common spiritual questions with Swami Kriyananda.

Swami Kriyananda is a direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda and is an internationally known author, lecturer, and composer. Widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on meditation and yoga, he has taught these principles and techniques to hundreds of thousands of students around the world. In 1968, Kriyananda founded Ananda Village in Nevada City, California, dedicated to spreading the spirit of friendship, service, and community throughout the world.

Ananda is recognized as one of the most successful intentional community in the world. Today, over 1000 people reside in seven Ananda communities throughout the U.S. (Seattle, Palo Alto, Portland, Sacramento and Los Angeles) and in Assisi, Italy and Delhi, India.

Science and the Future of Cloning: Is Immortality Possible? ~ Patrick Takahashi

An MSNBC poll shows that 81 percent of Americans don’t believe in the afterife. Yet, a Pew Forum poll shows that 82 percent do believe in an afterlife. How can two respectable organizations be so different in their surveys? On-line poll crashing perhaps. Well, 90 percent or so of Americans claim to believe in a God, so chances are the Pew version is closer to reality.

Whether you believe or not, most of us have thought about death, and for many “something” after our present life seems better than a dark eternal gloom forever. Hoping the Bible, Koran and virtually every religious publication are right, let us nevertheless speculate on the biological option, for there is a finite chance that they might all be wrong. I certainly haven’t seen anything close to compelling proof.

What is “eternal life?” In one sense, all living creatures today are essentially already immortal. We should be able to, someday, trace ourselves back through 50 billion DNA copyings over 4 billion years to determine our LUCA. Our DNA has, thus, had everlasting life. While our species almost became extinct in that Great Toba Supervolcano Eruption of 73,000 BC, where Homo sapiens dropped to perhaps a thousand breeding pairs, we have recovered well, survived the potential nuclear winter of the Cold War, and have no obvious doomsday event on the horizon, except, maybe, for The Venus Syndrome.

Of course, we will also live through our children and their children. Plus, the products of our life, such as letters, books, digital photos and statues, will be around long after we expire.

However, Woody Allen has expressed a sense that he was not satisfied with immortality through his works, for he wanted to live forever by not dying. Conscious eternal life, if not rejuvenation and reversal, then, is an ultimate goal on the level of world peace and universal happiness. Sounds a bit like Heaven.

There are at least two pathways to continue your presence. One does not involve human cloning. Without going into telomeres and ribonucleoproteins, let me just say that science is actually close to finding and checking the aging gene. Someday, you might be able to take a pill and stop growing old. The question is, can this technique be perfected before you get too old? You can still, then, of course, get killed in an auto accident or through an illness, but that so-called 130 year old lady from Georgia (of the former Soviet Union) could someday be commonplace.

The other is cloning, and there are two kinds: therapeutic and reproductive. The former is almost okay, while the latter is verboten, except in certain countries where the laws are fuzzy. You can expect some future breakthrough in countries where religion is not dominant.

Animal reproductive cloning is old news. Scotland produced Dolly in 1997, with mice in Hawaii (1998), Prometea in Italy (horse, 2003), Little Nicky in the USA (a cat, 2004) and Snuppy in South Korea (dog, 2006). Thus, the concept of reproductive cloning has been proven to be real.

So let’s get to reproductive human cloning, laden with legal and moral land mines. I sat in on a seminar by Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg almost half a century ago while a student at Stanford, where this concept came up during the discussion. The field has both come a long way, and not really that much, over this period.

The UN General Assembly in August of 2005 did adopt a declaration prohibiting all forms of human cloning. The vote was 87 in support, 34 in opposition and 70 abstaining or absent. But the edict was non-binding. The European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine prohibits human cloning, but has not been ratified by most countries. There is, further, a Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which bans reproductive human cloning, but it has no legal standing.

So where is the USA on human cloning? Human cloning is legal in the U.S., but there are some Federal prohibitions against research. The George W. Bush regime was especially difficult, and Barack Obama ended the ban on embryonic stem cell research, while remaining opposed to human cloning.

Stanford formed a stem cell institute in 2003 and Harvard initiated efforts to clone human embryos in 2006. They initially were attempting to fund this work with private donors without any government assistance. Mind you, they are not cloning humans, as Harvard would like to harvest stem cells to fight leukemia and diabetes. The University of California at San Francisco announced a similar pursuit. Advanced Cell Technology of Massachusetts is commercializing human embryonic stem cell cloning services.

Some countries have observed the American reluctance to support human cloning research and have taken definite steps. There was South Korea and their scandal. The situation is somewhat foggy in the United Kingdom, as the University of Newscastle in 2005 claimed to clone the first human embryo.

Singapore, a former British colony of 4.5 million people, has entered the competition. For all intents and purposes, while a democracy, it is about as close to a benevolent dictatorship as there exists today. The government decides what is best and gets the job done. Biotechnology is a priority area. They created Biopolis, a $300 million, 2 million square foot research center focused on biomedical development, recruiting world class scientists, some who were fed up with the national politics in their own country. Singapore is trying to establish a world sanctuary for stem cell research. While first inaugurated in 2003, Biopolis is already home to scientists from 50 nations. While reproductive human cloning is banned, I can see this island someday becoming the site of choice for therapeutic cloning, as depicted in a former CBS television drama Century City.

What about China? Is China a cloning paradise? University of Connecticut animal cloning director Jerry Yang Xiangzhong told The Standard, China’s business newspaper, that China can jump ahead of the U.S. in three years if their scientists were given the green light to proceed. His contention is that in much of the developed world scientific progress in this field is hindered by political and religious debates. There is also the moral problem with something called human dignity. Apparently, these difficulties would not be experienced in China. Tragically, Professor “Yang” passed away last year at the age of 49.

Okay, let’s say someday human reproductive cloning is attained. The concern always comes up about what good this is, as I won’t know this will be the real me. Well, it has been speculated that by the time all these bioethical hurdles are cleared, computer technology will be developed to the stage where your memory can be transferred to this new body. The field now exceeds 100 trillion calculations per second (1014 cps), and should be at least ten times faster in a decade, at which capability the brain can be simulated. Such a computer should only cost about $1000 in 2020.

That’s not all. There are algorithms and biological interfacing challenges. This field is just beginning, but the odds are, this fantasy for immortality could be possible in 25 years.

Finally, the cost factor. Only billionaires might be able to afford eternal life. So if you were worried about exacerbating our already overpopulated world, economics, as they are already affecting birth rates, will also check the growth of human reproductive cloning.

Biography of Patrick Takahashi
Professor Takahashi was born and grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, is Director Emeritus with the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute of the University of Hawaii, former professor of engineering and the author of two SIMPLE SOLUTION:

…for Planet Earth
…for Humanity

books, as listed in the May 18, 2008 issue of the Honolulu Advertiser:

He was for 15 years director of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute and co-founder of the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research, where his team initiated projects in open cycle OTEC, which will power the Blue Revolution (Chapter 4 of Book 1), and methanol from the gasification and catalysis of biomass (Chapter 2 of Book 1), which provides a more sensible biofuel option than ethanol from food.

Nearly three decades ago he helped draft original bills in the U.S. Senate on hydrogen, wind power, ocean thermal energy conversion and related sustainable resource topics. The hydrogen bill established the guidelines for the national hydrogen and fuel cell program, and is reported in Chapter 3 of Book 1. He managed the Hard Minerals Act (which featured strategic minerals and marine methane hydrates from the seabed).

Professor Takahashi worked for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on laser fusion (Chapter 1 of Book 1) and sustainable resources, and for the NASA Ames Research Center on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (Chapter 4 of Book 2).

He was awarded the Bechtel Energy Award by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Spark Matsunaga Memorial Award by the National Hydrogen Association and Ocean Pioneer Award by the Ocean Energy Council.

Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality~ Jonathan Weiner

From Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Jonathan Weiner comes a fast-paced and astonishing scientific adventure story: has the long-sought secret of eternal youth at last been found?

In recent years, the dream of eternal youth has started to look like more than just a dream. In the twentieth century alone, life expectancy increased by more than thirty years—almost as much time as humans have gained in the whole span of human existence.

Today a motley array of scientists, researchers, and entrepreneurs believe that another, bigger leap is at hand—that human immortality is not only possible, but attainable in our own time. Is there genius or folly in the dreams of these charismatic but eccentric thinkers?

In Long for This World, Jonathan Weiner, a natural storyteller and an intrepid reporter with a gift for making cutting-edge science understandable, takes the reader on a whirlwind intellectual quest to find out.

From Berkeley to the Bronx, from Cambridge University to Dante’s tomb in Ravenna, Weiner meets the leading intellectuals in the field and delves into the mind-blowing science behind the latest research. He traces the centuries-old, fascinating history of the quest for longevity in art, science, and literature, from Gilgamesh to Shakespeare, Doctor Faustus to “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”

And he tells the dramatic story of how aging could be conquered once and for all, focusing on the ideas of those who believe aging is a curable disease. Chief among them is the extraordinary Aubrey de Grey, a garrulous Englishman who bears more than a passing resemblance to Methuselah (at 969 years, the oldest man in the Bible) and who is perhaps immortality’s most radical and engaging true believer.

A rollicking scientific adventure story in the grand manner of Oliver Sacks, Long for This World is science writing of the highest order and with the highest stakes. Could we live forever? And if we could…would we want to?

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Infinity:The Ultimate Trip –Journey Beyond Death A Film by Jay Weidner

* Full Synopsis

Take a trip into the afterlife to see what happens when we pass beyond this world as renowned experts from across the globe examines the phenomena that is alternately fascinating and terrifying: Death. What if the end of this life is only the beginning of a spectacular supernatural journey? People who have physically died and returned to tell about it report experiences that defy any rational or logical explanation, and baffle doctors and scientists alike.

Once they’ve stood at the edge of the mysterious abyss, any lingering fears of death seems to simply dissipate. In this documentary, colorful imagery flows across the screen as experts like Gregg Braden, Brian Weiss, and Alberto Volloldo reveal why death is not something to be feared, but something to embrace as one of the most fantastic journeys we will ever take. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Infinity
The Ultimate Trip –Journey Beyond Death
A Film by Jay Weidner
Featuring Gregg Braden, Dannion Brinkley, Renate Dollinger, Stanislav Grof, John Holland, Dzogchen Ponlop, Robert Thurman, Alberto Villoldo, Neale Donald Walsch and Brian Weiss. View Trailer

What happens after we pass from this world? Is there a life after this one? Or do we just disappear forever? These are the questions asked in this powerful and poignant feature documentary, Infinity: The Ultimate Trip. Many may be surprised by the answers.

Featuring noted experts Gregg Braden, Dannion Brinkley, Renate Dollinger. Stanislav Grof, John Holland, Dzogchen Ponlop, Robert Thurman, Alberto Villoldo, Neale Donald Walsch and Brian Weiss, Infinity: The Ultimate Trip brings a message of hope and optimism concerning the most mysterious act in a human life; the end of this life and journey to the beyond.

Using vital and beautiful imagery, along with personal accounts of near-death experiences, reincarnation and more, Infinity brings forth the story of our own infinite nature, what to expect after death and the magic and beauty that awaits us on the other side. Here we learn of the energetic landscape of the world that we enter after we die, the angels, or beings of light, who assist us in the passing and the promise of a new life. Infinity: The Ultimate Trip is an honest and hopeful assessment of the greatest journey that any of us will ever take. It changes our view from that of dread and pessimism to one of hope, joy and light.