Chinese immortals. Immortality through control?

The Chinese have various immortals 3 are the most famous. They believe there are 3 routes to immortality:
1. a god makes you immortal.
2. your chi power is so high that you become immortal.
3.you gain enlightenment and so gain immortality.
I was thinking of the third way when I remembered something about Gandhi
Gandhi believed that if he could control what he ate and drank that by controling his body he could control the world. Maybe immortality is like that, if you control the right thing completely you gain immortality. Maybe some aspect of the world. If the world and I are connected then if I could control it completely I could make it so I do not die.

reply to post by s12345


Of course if you control the right thing you could gain immortality. What do you think the medical field is about? Its about making life longer by controlling the factors which could shorten it. However, it is impossible in current human understanding and existence to control it to the point of immortality, because there is not one but many factors that equate to death, and they are constantly changing, developing into new strains of viruses and such. Its natures way of population control, and nature always wins even when we try to control it.

You forgot eating quicksilver, aka. Mercury.

Reportedly, he died due to ingesting mercury pills, made by his court scientists and doctors.[51] Ironically, these pills were meant to make Qin Shi Huang immortal.[51]

Qin Shi Huang

What I am thinking of, is more philosophical. If you could control maybe memory, the nature of sustenance: everything else could be controlled too.

Any pill meant to cause immortality is bound to have consequences. For instance the pill currently touted by some to stop the ageing process, increases the risk of cancer. It promises to cure but it kills.

reply to post by s12345


We already are immortal, we just leave our bodies here when we pass on.

It's simple really, if you think that you are your body you have forgotten.

reply to post by s12345


I don't think immortality is possible. We can live up to many years with all the technology we have but not immortality. Like the people from the old times like the bible. They lived up to more than 100 years. I think this might have been due to the face that they ate fruits, plants, and meats. They didn't have chemical made food like we have now that messes our body. How do you think the Chinese live a loong healthy life. I'm sure they don't eat Cheetos or other kind of man made/chemical foods.

Has dying become so demonized now we have to look towards making our body, our rotten body, live miserably long? Please people, just accept it. Billions before you have, and so will you.

Some animals can regenerate damaged parts of their bodies. Maybe our dna had this locked away. I don't know if one could use their will to gain control or not, but science may one day bring the pill.

Oh joy, forever in a smelly, pooping shell to watch all the movies, play all the video games, read all the books, see all the tourist traps, write endless snarky posts on the web, engage in endless conversations with dullards or geniuses, eat all the food, play all the sports and experience an endless chain of ultimately dissapointing lovers...

all in a more and more crowded and polluted terrarium ...

Forever on this world just doesn't entice me, though dying will not be pleasant it will at least be a change, whether oblivion or something new.

If we get a cool space faring culture with more mercy and justice and wisdom, I'd stick around ... but only for a longer interum. Eternity as a current human seems rather hellish. It sucks getting old, even if the body stays young.

If we start from the angle of how most likely to live a very long time and go from there, we may get somewhere.
I suppose exercise without wearing the body out would be a place to start. Atrophy is the problem: the body wants to break down. If we could continually change/ evolve we could prevent atrophy, maybe.

reply to post by ExploitedAliens


I don't think that we can't become immortal. We can't become one, because science made us believe and seeded the ''knowledge'' that wathever you do, your body die. With enougly belief, we could it fact overcome the process, and live as long as we want. Noah and his kind lived 600 years.

When you realize that inside our brains is what is behind most pharmaceutical counters, then you will come to terms that if we are able to gain that ability to control our brain to it's fullest, at the sametime controlling all the billions of other functions it does, I don't think anything would be too far fetched then.

We have in our brains chemicals, a catalyst, and a controlled environment, all of which are required to make things happen. what is up to your brain, of course.

Immortals, possibly, ET test subject or failed experiment, more likely.

Our best chance of living forever is if we are a a computer simulation, and we get lucky and a teenager watching us in a highly advanced version of the simms decides to make us immortal. We would have to get really lucky. But what the hell any chance is better than none. Maybe if we are a simulation we could hack the computer program we are part of.

reply to post by starheart


I meant immortality in this body. No matter what, scientifically or in the bible, we are all going to die. Our spirit or soul is the one that won't die. I think that our spirit will live forever. As for Noah, I'm guessing they lived long because they ate healthy and lived in a special way, "God's way." I mean they ate berries, nuts, meat and other natural food. I'm sure they didn't eat Cheetos or other manmade food. If you think about it these not natural food are killing us slowly and the way we live now also is killing us faster.
But I'm just saying my opinion. I've never met no one immortal.

The route to immortality would almost certainly lie in religion or occult. If this does not exist then we all will die. We could extend life, but immortality would delude us.

In my opinion we will never reach immortality through medicine, however once we achieve the singularity true immortality will be at ours.

When it comes down to it our consciousness is really just engery, call it a soul or spirit if you will, but it is still just engery that is not yet fully understood. Once science has a better understanding of how this engery works we will begin researching ways of tapping it to take full advantage of our full potential and attempt to figure out how to transport it into a non-biological container.