Immortality

If you should die today, where would you spend eternity?

“Why do you want to know what you will be when you die, before you know what you are now?” – Ramana Maharshi

Immortality has long been one of the deep seated desires of mankind. It is the subject of countless stories and mythology,

Some think that science will eventually discover a way to prolong life indefinitely. It will never happen. That which is born dies.

But that which was never born does not die. Immortality is attained by discovering that which is Real.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the first literary works, dating back at least to the 22nd century BC, is primarily a quest of a hero seeking to become immortal.

Wittgenstein writes in the Tractatus that, “If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”

The Search For The Philosophers Stone, The Elixer of Life

“You” Will Die

The “I” will die. The individual, the body, the mind will die. The content of your mind – your desires, hopes, fears, knowledge will all be wiped out.

Are you only your body and mind?

“You have squeezed yourself into the span of a lifetime and the volume of a body, and thus created the innumerable conflicts of life and death. Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved. They exist because you believe yourself born to die. Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person.”-Nisargadatta Maharaj

Jesus, The Kingdom of Heaven, and Eternal Life

Eternal Life is not indefinite existence through time, but rather the discovering of the eternal present.

Our immortality is dependent not on our ability to extend our personal illusion indefinitely but to transcend it

-Richard Rose

“Each one is bound to his own ideals; he whose ideal is mortal must die when his ideal dies, he whose ideal is immortal must become immortal himself to attain it.” –

“God does not redeem the personal man by death. He redeems himself by freeing himself from the personality of man.”

-Franz Hartmann

The urge, thirst, implant in humans and all life for immortality, life has an urge to survive and to survive indefinitely
The only immortality is to realize that you were not born and therefore can’t die
The ego will die, the body, mind, thought, form, all will die. If you identify with those then you too will die.
Death as necessary for life. Dieing daily is the only way to live, die to your memories, concepts, beliefs, etc.
What does it mean to live? And what does it mean to Die? The two questions and their answers are inseparable.
The understanding of death(and therefore life) as the most practical endeavor to dedicate ones life to. (Paradoxically many will say it is the most impractical pursuit. Because they give up without trying and say it can not be known.)
Prevalence of “Books of the Dead” in human history. Tibeten, Egyptian, other?
Current society attempts to ignore death. Botox, double-speak and euphemisms, advertising and fashion emphasis on youth, cryogenics, funeral practices, growing feelings that in the near future science will be able to make humans immortal, technology thought and hoped to be able to render humans immortal.