Longevity
Longevity is a concept, a catchphrase, a biological phenomenon, and above all an important issue for those who do not want to part with their life. Longevity is a serious and complicated issue because the most important matter related to Mans’ life is not how long but how well Man lives. During our life we kill so much time that it doesn’t even make sense to try and study the problem of longevity. If Man is incapable of living, does it really matter how long he lives or rather doesn’t live?
If we do not reveal the formula that can help place our life in concord with the processes of acting and creating, our attempts to define longevity will have no foundation. The idea of longevity must be based on our ability to control and manage our life. Is your life characterized by motion or by rest? Man’s life must always have a reference point. And if your reference point is the idea that you’ll die sooner or later, then it doesn’t really matter how long you’ll stay here because all of your life will be subjected to the idea that the end will certainly come.
How can Man feel well and even exist psychologically if he agrees conceptually with the idea that he’ll die? In this case the idea of death becomes our own code, our reflex to death. Therefore we must not look for ways to stop the aging process but we should rather find the knowledge that can help us prolong and improve our vitality.
The Taoist tradition works with the concept of ‘departing from life’ which happens when Man can no longer develop. The concept of old age is absent from Taoism, instead the doctrine uses the concept of wisdom, therefore respect for the elderly is based not on their age but on their wisdom. Yet is wisdom accessible to an elderly person who has placed himself in a situation where he’s just a burden to others (unless of course there are certain extraordinary circumstances)? A lot of people live burning up and destroying their own life in the very beginning and then they even destroy the lives of their family and friends simply because they’ve been ignorant!
Man must learn to respect and improve himself at any given age. The fact the ailing man wants to be healthy does not help him find an integral overall solution. Man must necessarily know what health is and why do we need to stay healthy. There’s a certain starting point here – we must begin by constantly perfecting, i.e. nourishing our mind. The unprepared unregulated mind cannot acquire knowledge, it can only react. Depriving himself of the conscious function, Man must know that along with it he loses also his purpose as a human being. From this point on it doesn’t matter how long your life is for this is in fact no life at all. This is a state where your biomass simply exists in certain crude vibration forms.
In ancient times Man’s life was not measured in temporal terms, it was instead seen as a spatial formula, the most important indicator of which was Man’s shape at life’s exit.
And only by reinforcing his human nature, i.e. the ability to increase and transform his resource, Man acquired the additional function of creation that can help him improve, change and perfect his destiny. This became a necessary prerequisite for acquiring a better form and actually made the idea of longevity important. However longevity here is seen not as the number of years one lives through but rather from the perspective of the idea of reformatting yourself and increasing your power.
Those who achieved considerably great success in this aspect were the Taoist alchemists. Here we must also recognize Leonardo da Vinci’s deep interest in the geometry of Man, which in fact is an expression of the idea of life extension in concrete forms. This notion had a more specific meaning related to the idea that man must change so that he can free himself from the false medicine and get the true medicine. These very medicines of, so to speak, Heaven, which we’ve received from the immortals, form the foundation of the knowledge of longevity. They are believed to help Man go through all the nine stages of transformation, one of which is the knowledge of nourishing ourselves with the Heavenly essence.
25 august 2012
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