Table of Contents
The search for a life without end shows up on this site in a surprising number of places. Genesis guards a tree so that man cannot eat from it. A flood hero in Babylon is taken away and never dies. Gods and demons churn an ocean to win a drink. And a Chinese emperor sends ships across the sea to find an elixir.
Across those sources two ideas keep running side by side. One is a body that does not die, or that lives for thousands of years. The other is a soul that survives the body. I follow both.
The tree in the garden
The Bible names the danger directly:
And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
Genesis 3:22 (KJV)
On The forbidden fruit I compare the fruit of Eden with the Peach of Longevity, the golden apples and ambrosia. On Genesis contains a history of Atlantis Ignatius Donnelly sets the same verse next to the Quiche legend of gods who feared they had made men too perfect. And on Sumer: The First Known Civilization Jim Marrs reads it in paleo-contact terms:
The extreme life spans of the more pure-blooded Anunnaki rulers made them appear as immortal.
Jim Marrs
The flood hero who did not die
The Babylonian flood hero escaped death altogether. George Smith wrote in 1873:
Now, the Babylonians believed in the existence of a patriarch named Sisit, the Xisuthrus of the Greeks, who was supposed to have been translated and to have attained to immortality without death.
George Smith
See The Chaldean Account of the Deluge and Utnapishtim, Ziusudra, and Noah. Gilgamesh goes looking for the same secret and does not get it. On Did Genesis copy the Gilgamesh flood the lesson of the epic is put simply:
the only immortality one can hope to achieve is to make a name for yourself
InspiringPhilosophy, Genesis and the Gilgamesh flood, at 2:06
The drink of the gods
India tells of a drink won from the sea. W. S. Blacket quotes the story:
the Gods and the demons (the vast serpent Vasuky serving as a rope), churn the Ocean, to recover the Amrita or beverage of Immortality.
W. S. Blacket, Researches into the Lost Histories of America
See Researches into the Lost Histories of America and The creation story in Tibetan Buddhism, which has its own version of the churning. Matías de Stefano links the same drink to the philosopher’s stone:
But when it becomes a stone when it's the philosopher's stone, that amrita, that golden liquid becomes an apple.
Matías de Stefano, Golden Apple and the Broken Bloodline, at 4:01
See Golden Apple and the Broken Bloodline. In a longer talk with Aubrey Marcus, on Matias de Stefano on cycles and the philosopher’s stone, he treats the stone not as a substance at all but as an inner state, the coherence of thought, feeling and action inside a person. Not every immortality is a gift, though. On Sadhguru on the curse of Ashwatthama:
Krishna did not curse him with death he said I curse you with immortality
Sadhguru, Sadhguru on Ashwatthama, at 1:56
China and the elixir
In China the immortals are a whole class of beings. See The Eight Immortals, where Li Tieguai carries a gourd with an elixir. On Moon Chang’e becomes the moon goddess after she drinks the Elixir of Immortality. On The myth of a sinking city Emperor Qin Shi Huang, obsessed with the elixir of life, searches for the island of Yingzhou. And on Ningyo the flesh of a fish with a human face grants immortality or a very long life.
The fountain of youth
The search reached the Americas as well. Lewis Spence writes:
When the first Spanish expedition reached Florida in a quest for the Fountain of Perpetual Youth, the Elixir of Life, they encountered a band of Indians searching in these regions for the self-same thing !
Lewis Spence, The Problem of Atlantis
See The Problem of Atlantis. On The Occult Sciences in Atlantis Spence also notes that Vincent de Beauvais made Noah acquainted with the Elixir of Life. And on The Immortal Count of St Germain I follow the man who was said to have found it.
A modern channeled source is more modest. On Longevity and Living in the Now, Bashar answers a question about very long lives by saying such longevity is unlikely in this lifetime, though living longer than average is possible, depending on technology and personal circumstances.
The immortal soul
The second idea is older than any elixir. On Mummification the practice rests on a belief in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. Manly P. Hall reads the Book of the Dead the same way:
this Union bestows immortality upon the personality which then becomes an incarnation of the God
Manly P. Hall, Manly P. Hall on the Book of the Dead, at 46:19
See Manly P. Hall on the Book of the Dead and Phoenix, the bird of death and rebirth.
Related pages
- The forbidden fruit
- The Eight Immortals
- The Immortal Count of St Germain
- Utnapishtim, Ziusudra, and Noah
- Ningyo
- Phoenix
- Mummification
- After death
For every page I tagged with immortality, see the Immortality tag archive.
