About three years ago I came across a feature that said, “If you can live for twenty more years you can live forever. That is because of the rapid progress medical science is making, and in twenty years we should see advance in genetic and microscopic agents that can repair bones and other organs, making it possible to renew your failing body.

Then recently a headline in the Guardian newspaper said, “Extreme biohacking: the tech guru who spent $250,000 trying to live forever.” The report goes on to say, “Faguet intends to live for ever, merging with robots and becoming an ultra-human. If that goal sounds creepy, laughable or unrealistic, it’s helpful to remember that it is one shared by many influential figures in Silicon Valley. Tesla’s Elon Musk has repeatedly argued that humans need to become cyborgs to survive the inevitable robot uprising and hopes to usher in an era of transhumanism with his new brain-computer interface company, Neuralink. Bill Maris, founder and former CEO of Google Ventures, the search giant’s venture capital arm, went on to say, the sole aim of which is to “solve death”. Last November, Sean Parker, the former Facebook president, described his vision of the future thus: “Because I’m a billionaire, I’m going to have access to better healthcare so… I’m going to be, like, 160 and I’m going to be part of this class of immortal overlords.” As much as Faguet likes to think of himself as a rebel pioneer, he’s an emblem of a far wider movement in the wealthy world he inhabits.”

Obviously, we as human beings carry some things we inherited from our animal past – the shortness of life. Some trees live for thousands of years, so why shouldn’t we with some manipulation? Technology is moving in that direction fast.

The sun gives of itself as it is dying. Through its dying, life can exist on earth. This is part and parcel of the processes out of which our universe has emerged. Also, what I see as the beginning of things, the origin of our universe and ourselves, was a massive change, a death was the beginning of our universe – the Big Bang. It was a death because time and space began at the start of the Big Bang. Before that there was a condition beyond time and the spcw we know in the three dimensional world. So what went before that died to give existence to the world we know now.

I saw that our corner, our small part of the universe, has certain qualities that maybe others parts do not. One of them, especially regarding us is the shortness of life. We are tiny, short lived, biological creatures that have emerged out of the amazing processes of this world in its interplay with the cosmos and evolving life. We can see ourselves in one sense as little bags of shit. We can be thought of as little digestive reproducing bags. But   we hold such amazing potential, there has always been a possibility of more in human life.

As this species we have managed to emerge beyond the level of awareness of other living forms of this earth. We have developed complex language and enormous curiosity and creativity. But the shortness of our life is a big factor in our experience of ourselves. I was shown that this shortness of life is really important for us. This because an essential part of the mystery of the universe is death; of course, what I am about to say will probably be dismissed by many but death I have seen as an immense digestive and absorbing of our whole life experience, and in doing so offers an integration and upgrade and from that a new life.

Some people who have studied our need for sleep have said that it isn’t to get rid of rubbish we collect during the day as has been stated so often, but in order to integrate the massive amount of information and synthesise it with our enormous unconscious awareness. Realising that and comparing it with many peoples near death experiences (NDE) where many people claim they face the memory of their whole life as they near death.

Phyllis Atwater, who experienced several NDE’s herself, gives an example of this huge digestive process. She says, “For me it was a total reliving of every thought I had ever thought, every word I had ever spoken, and every deed I had ever done; plus the effect of each thought, word and deed on everyone and anyone who had ever come within my environment or sphere of influence, whether I knew them or not (including unknown passers-by on the street).”

As I repeat often, “No plant or creature grows from a dead seed, the single cell, which is a seed from which all life forms evolved from, doesn’t become old or die because it is immortal, for it keeps dividing and doesn’t die. In dividing it constantly creates copies of itself, but as it does  so it gathers new experience, it changes what is copied, so becomes the ‘seed’ for multi-cellular organism.and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old as and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom or memories in you. But in this life, you developed a new brain, and the memories, education and programming you gathered this time are what you built your personality from, but beneath that is a very ancient self. To explore it see Opening to Life

Therefore, death is an enormous key to understanding the universe and life. Understanding death means that we become capable of letting go of ourselves, of delivering ourselves, of being able to give ourselves away to the mystery underlying our existence. The importance of this is because, if what has been said above is correct, then death is at the very centre of the mystery of life. It is at the foundation of our physical being. It is behind the urge that leads parents to a sort of death in giving themselves to the new being that emerges, to parents giving of themselves to their offspring.

Mellen-Thomas Benedict went through a death experience lasting 90 minutes. He learnt a great deal during it and wrote: “After dying, going through my death experience and coming back, I really respect life and death. In our DNA experiments we may have opened the door to a great secret. Soon we will be able to live as long as we want to live in this body. After living 150 years or so, there will be an intuitive soul sense that you will want to change channels. Living forever in one body is not as creative as reincarnation, as transferring energy in this fantastic vortex of energy that we are in. We are actually going to see the wisdom of Life and death, and enjoy it. As it is now, we have already been alive forever. This body, that you are in, has been alive forever. It comes from an unending Stream of Life, going back to the Big Bang and beyond. This body gives life to the next life, in dense and subtle energy. This body has been alive forever already.”