Superhuman Awareness

Annotated transcript of Follow-up Program in San Diego (USA), 30 May 1985.

Innervation of para-sympathetic nervous system and limbic area of the brain triggered by awakened kundalini energy rising from sacrum at base of spine.
Human evolution a continuous refinement of CNS. Nerve plexi('chakras') represent internalised evolutionary milestones.
Thinking is epiphenomenal so the state of 'thoughtless awareness' is possible; which opens the way to an expanded field of awareness or 'collective consciousness' within the individual.
"I’m really sorry for getting so late… It happens and whatever happens one has to accept. That’s how the Divine works. Everything has some reasons. Now, they must been able to explain to you what centers we have within ourselves and he has told you what is the mechanism within ourselves. It is all built within us during the different periods of our evolution. Every center is built like that.
Now, all this is built, like a pathway. By left and right you create the central path of your ascent. And when this pure energy of your desire ascends, is awakened, then it pierces through the last center what we call as Sahasrara, meaning the thousand petalled centre, which is the brain, we can say, or part of the brain which covers the limbic area. The Spirit is the reflection of God Almighty and it resides in our heart. When the Kundalini touches the Sahastrara, the seat of the Spirit, which is reflected in the heart, gets enlightened. That doesn’t mean the Spirit gets enlightened but the attention is like a sari, which is pushed in like this, [AND] when it touches, it pierces through and the Spirit in the heart, which has the seat here, starts entering into our central nervous system.
So the first feeling you get is a cool breeze on top of your head. That’s the first feeling. Second feeling you get is All Pervading Power because now you have entered into the subtle area of your awareness. Human awareness is gross first but when you touch the Spirit, you become thoughtlessly aware but there is no thought, the grossness goes away because thoughts disappear. And you become subtler. This subtleness gives you certain powers. The first power that you get is that you become, your awareness becomes collectively conscious. That you can feel another person on your fingertips – that means you become absolutely aware.
Like I went today to Mexico and I could feel the whole country, I knew about it before but my attention was not so deeply there. I could feel the whole country has a very bad left side problem and the left side problem is affecting even this area and the left side problem you can feel it very clearly that your left side becomes heavy and you feel the heat in all your centers. So you start feeling the atmosphere, the country, the people and individual and yourself. So you know the problem of a particular place. I mean you may not feel that much in the beginning, you may just feel yourself to begin with.
Then you start feeling others, so thus the awareness grows more and more. In the central nervous system you start feeling the problems of other people, your own problems. But it is not that you feel them as something, which is painful or troublesome, but you feel them as little heat or sometimes little pain, very little, as if you are recording it like a barometer. And when that happens you want to get rid of it as if they are your own problem, and if you know how to get rid of it you can do it. That’s what I was doing and that’s how I’m late, something on the collective. If you are working on something you want to finish the job and then you want to attend to another. Don’t want to leave something half done.
For human beings it is difficult in the beginning, because from human awareness you are rising to super human awareness or you can call it to super awareness, into a subtler awareness. So first the awareness is gross and then your awareness becomes subtler. But with that you do not feel in any way uncomfortable or upset, because you become extremely powerful. Such power of compassion, that you don’t feel anything, no pain, no problems, the illusions disappear completely. There’s no more illusion in the mind.
Like people say that when you face something you are filled with the greed, or greed or lust. But when your eyes become pure, there is no greed or lust. But what happens that you start feeling the oneness with another thing, whatever it is, in a way that it is joy giving. Like you see someone, an attractive person, there is no sensation of baser feelings for that person but the sensation just disappears and you start feeling the joy of the creation of that person or the thing.
Like in Mexico, people have made so many things with hand. If you watch them you might think how much it will cost, what will be the price, who has made it. But if there is no thought then you see something, which looks very joyous, because you can feel the vibrations(original sanskrit word is 'spanda' which additionally means the throb of creation, universal field.Compare with ToE, Superstring Theory. So the superhuman awareness allows a merger with the universal field which makes it possible to feel the energy essence of everthing directly on the CNS) And you know somebody has made it, who might have been a Realized soul, who might have been a very great devotee of God, might have been a person who must have thought that: “This is your creation, oh God.” Such a person might have made with that feeling which is to be gratified and you feel that we should take it. The matter has only one capacity that it gives joy in giving to others, so that you can express your happiness into it. So you become very subtly aware of the matter, that you start understanding the matter, what it means and what is the use of a particular thing.
In the same way, when you meet people, new people, absolutely never known, you know what are their needs, what problems they have, on a wider scale, on a collective scale, and also you know one simple thing that there are people in Mexico, who are seeking God, who are to be helped, who are to be given something that they want. They may not be so much aware of it but we become aware of them. And a kind of a rapport of a very subtle type is established and you get attracted towards other people not through any lust or greed or any purpose but in oneness with the joy that they have within themselves, the joy of the Spirit. You look at them and you feel: “This person is such a wonderful person”. How do you know? You start feeling the cool vibrations in your hand from that person. And you just enjoy that person for that person’s sake, not for anything, whether poor, rich, good looking, bad looking, doesn’t matter. You approach the Spirit of another person because you have become the Spirit.
People talk of big things, of organizing peace missions, this mission, that mission, to create a better relationship. All relationships, which are at a gross level create problems, because there is some sort of a lurking selfishness behind it. But once it becomes the spiritual relationship you just enjoy the other person without getting into any discussion about what is your gain, what is you are going to achieve through going nearer to that personality. Thus you become the receiver of the joy. Like a lake, which is ripleless, which is absolutely quiet and looks like a mirror. It reflects all that is created round it completely and emits complete joy of the creation.
In the same way the heart, which is filled with the light of the Spirit, reflects the complete joy of the creation of another person. Whatever it has in a subtle way you enjoyed. Then the time, you don’t see, you go beyond time, you go beyond time,(this is in sanskrit 'kala-ateet' state which is  continuously being 'in the moment' . Sense of time linked to thought, so if there is no thought then there is no sense of time.)you are not bothered about time. Everything has got a proper timing and you start understanding that this is the time it was to be. You don’t become a slave of time, you don’t become slave of any habits, you don’t become slave of any temptations, but you enjoy the complete freedom of enjoying the joy.
For example we are very tight thinking what is to be done next, what this has to be, but then you start seeing the purpose of your life. Like one day we had to have a Puja or a kind of a worship. They said: “We’ll start at about 9 o’clock” as it is today something happened. And I said: “Alright, we’ll start at 9.00.” But I knew 9.00 was not all right so I reached the place at 11.00. Of course those who had to stay, would’ve stayed on. Because you need people who understand that time has no meaning when it is the Spirit. And I said: “Now, just see the Panchanga, that book which we consult for timing.” They said: “Today is the dark night Damasya.” “And when does it end?” “Just now.” I said: “That’s it.” So everything, the timing, everything has to be worked out according to the need of the Spirit and not need of the gross. When that happens you [GO or KNOW] smoothly and understandingly the whole pattern of the Divine how it works out. And that is how you understand the dynamism of time, because you live in the present not in the future or in the past.
Actually the past doesn’t exist and future has not come, we don’t know what future is. To come in the present you have to be the Spirit. And when you are in the Spirit then you realize that this present is the reality, the rest is a myth. When the Kundalini rises She passes attention into an area or She penetrates into an area where there is silence because a thought rises and falls off, another thought rises and falls off. In between these two thoughts this area exists, of the present. Now…But if I say you stop at this point, to be at this point, you cannot. Your mind is jumping either on the past or on the future. But the Kundalini is the only thing that stops you at present moment so that you don’t consider the past and the future but you enjoy the present, the complete dynamism of the present and you are effective, you are dynamic. You can do thousand and one thing, which normally you cannot do and you are surprised how it works out.
The Divine has Its own plans, has Its own understanding and we cannot make the Divine to work as we want. We have to accept whatever the Divine does and manages and then we see the miracles of the Divine and we are surprised how efficient It is, how beautiful It is, like a machine. We feel the efficiency of the Divine but above all we feel the compassion, the love, the understanding of the Divine. But first we must rise up to that. And for that one has to grow in the awareness of the Spirit. If we cannot develop the awareness of the Spirit, we loose that magnitude which we have to achieve. So what is to be respected is the Spirit after Realization, because it gives you the truth.
To understand the truth you have to be the Spirit, otherwise whatever you understand is falsehood, is not the truth. Because of your mental projection you think that that is the truth, is not so. For example now, if I am sitting on this chair you won’t know anytime that I ever sat on this chair. But supposing there’s a Realized soul who comes round, immediately he will know that there was someone like Me. For example I say that Mozart was a Realized soul. How do I know? He’s dead now. Because you can feel it on vibrations that he was a Realized soul. I say: “Abraham Lincoln was a Realized soul.” Not because the way he lived or what he did, that what just an expression or was the symptom of his greatness but because when you think of him you get cool breeze in your hands, tremendously cool breeze, soothing, which crawls over you: “Oh, that’s Abraham Lincoln.”
We do not know where we spend our time, what people are important to us till we are the Spirit. We waste our time catering to something absolutely useless, and then suddenly we discover: “Oh, God, what a waste of time, what a waste of energy, what a waste of money. This man was a cheat. He cheated me. This work was all falsehood. Why did I waste my time there? After Realization you become the absolute. There is no relative value, you do not judge anything relatively, you just know what is absolute and once you know the absolute you are quite sure about it, there’s no wavering. Thus you become an extremely powerful person and you know the truth about everything.
Now the truth is very simple that you are the Spirit and you are not this body, you are not this mind and you are not this ego or your conditionings but you are the free Spirit, that’s the truth is. But it is not just a mental truth but is actually so and has to be actualized. The third thing that happens to you apart from your awareness becoming the truth, the complete knowledge, you become the source of joy, not that you only receive the joy but you become the source of joy, the source of bliss and the source of peace. Wherever such a person goes, it just sooths.
Yesterday you saw a lady, she had very stiff fingers, she couldn’t move them… and as soon as I said: “What’s wrong with your fingers?” she started moving them. She was amazed how she started moving. Just my attention, just one question. I said: “What’s wrong with your hands?” she just started moving. She said: “Am I cured?” First she said is some nervous trouble and then she saw: “Oh, it’s moving, it’s all right, cured.” How? Because you get that power within yourself of compassion, which doesn’t expect any thing, it just works and acts silently. Just paying attention to that person itself, it’s sufficient. Just one glance at that person can save that person from any kind of malady. It works but of course it is true also those who are not deserving at all, those who are crooked people, those who are cruel, say for example Hitler, you cannot give him Realization, can you? He has to suffer.
So, also these illusions that we have about people, [THAT OH], we should be kind to everyone, we should be nice. The kindness of the Divine to the crooks is not the way we look at it. The kindness to the crooks is punishment. It’s a wrathful God. It punishes crooks. Many people feel that, I mean it’s a [MEREST] mental attitude to say that everything is illusion, so crookery is also an illusion. It is not. For you it is just a mental attitude, that’s all. For the people who are in the boat is all right to say that the ocean is an illusion but not for the people who are in the water. That’s just a mental problem that they think it’s not an illusion or a illusion, it is not the fact with them, it’s not actually with them. But once you rise above that, to you it is an illusion but to the Divine it’s a duty to correct it. And Divine looks after you. All the blessings of the Divine starts showering upon you and you are amazed how it has worked, how it has helped you, how it has done good to you. You are amazed how all the things that you desire you get, your desires change, you ask for something and you just get it. Because these desires that are there are based on something that Divine wants.
Like one we had a doctor who was working in Riad, and he had a feeling that he should go to Abba, which is a place very much down trodden and where he thought Sahaja Yoga will work better. So he was very anxious, he wrote a very anxious letter to Me, that: “Mother, please see that I go to Abba.” That letter he had just posted, he tried his level best, he couldn’t do it. Had just posted, I never received it, even then he got the appointment. So, the whole attitude towards life changes. Like today if you ask Sahaja Yogis, they said: “Mother, we must go to Mexico.” I said: “How far is?” “Fifteen, twenty minutes.” “All right.” The reason is they wanted Me to put My attention to Mexico. They are not limited to America only. Now, Mexico is important to them. Let’s do how we work it out.
Otherwise people could have had some other desires, other things. Little desires like having a house, having a car, having a job, these are all fulfilled in no time. There’s no problem on them. Krishna has said: [Hindi talk], when you get Yoga, when you get Realization, you get your well being, your health improves, your mind improves and last of all you become the giver of gifts to others, in the sense wherever you are, you are auspiciousness. You are so pure that your purity fills the atmosphere with auspiciousness and this auspiciousness when acts, you are amazed how people are helped and how people are granted these beautiful blessings through you. And you get aware of it, you understand it.
That’s what we can learn from the lives of Christ and all other such great personalities who came on this earth, how they worked out things for others and how they granted them whatever they desired. You become absolutely dynamic as far as the creativity is concerned, you become great creators if your interest is in that, you become great healers as they call it, but not that you heal persons by charging them money or talking about money, but only being in the presence of these people you just heal them.
You become the source of all corrections, but the corrections are not mental that you give a lecture to them: “Now you don’t do this any, don’t do that any, you shouldn’t do that.” Just works out. Just people just melt into that compassion which you are. You don’t have to fight anyone, you don’t have to struggle. It just works out. It’s so powerful. The most powerful power is of love, of pure love and this purity when emits through you, you are amazed that why people have not used this power of love. They have only used the power of hatred. All these problems drop out, your family problems, your city problems, your national problems, your world problems all drop out. Because all problems come from human beings who are yet very selfish, very secluded, very abnormally attached to limitations.
The whole thing works out so beautifully and we have to create such personalities. For that God has sent on this Earth great people. I see everywhere, they are very great people, very special category of people who understand that they have to play a role in the working of the Divine, and they work it out in such a manner, that they contribute to the well-being of the whole Universe. America, I must say, has been the least concerned country about this, I must say. Is the poorest as far as evolution is concerned. I’m sorry, but has been so. They have had all kinds of gurus here, all kinds of things but in Sahaja Yoga I find them, they are not there. I’m quite surprised at it, that their interests are so funny, that they have such limited interest in life or what I don’t understand.
I’ve been to this country many a times, of course not so much as I’ve been to other countries it was every time I have come, I felt that they have to still come up to a point to see that truth has to be accepted, is to be received. Because if the truth is exposed to people who are not yet ready, maybe it will be all lost. It’s like the story of Christ where He describes the seeds, which fell on the rock, some fell on the right ground. This is what it is and I face it up. I feel sometimes that such a great country like India, which is now awakening very nicely to Sahaja Yoga, which was just a slave country for 300 years. Or we can say there are countries like Italy, which are very important but were sort of always neglected, treated as something useless, are coming up, because Spirit is higher than anything else. Politics, economics is nothing for Spirit.
Now, let us see what happens in America. Let us see what is going to awaken them. I don’t know what is going to [STIRR] them. Because they are also placed in the Vishuddhi chakra. This is the center where America is placed. This is the most important center also. And if this center is not going to be awakened then one has to see to it that something happens. The Divine might rock and shock and tell you that better accept to your spiritual life, is important. Is very important that we should hold the Divine in our arms and try to accept that. People don’t realize it, that it is not proper to live with mundane life, day to day life but should think of the wider repercussions that can have on the people who do not think of the calamities that can fall on upon them if they don’t accept the truth. Truth must be accepted.
You see the countries, which have vanished, like Romans who were such great countries. They had a fall. Why? Because they took to a life which was destructive, to such a limit that I’ve heard some people saying: “We, we have a right to destroy ourselves.” You have no right at all. You cannot create yourself and you cannot destroy yourself. So one has to realize that if we have any right that is one to be the Spirit, to be that power, which can make others the Spirit, which can make others the source of joy, what they are. This is the epitome of our evolution.
This is the last judgment as I told you and the Kundalini is going to judge you, Kundalini is going to judge you. It is not anybody is going to weigh you and say: “You are such a weight so you are all right” or “Your brain has so much weight so you are all right.” But the judgment will come to you when your Kundalini will rise. You will judge yourself. And you will judge yourself by denying or accepting the Spirithood, the oneness with the Divine, that’s a fact, I must declare it to you. Because that is what is very important to understand and as a Mother I feel very concerned, very concerned that such a big population should not go a waste, just a waste because they could not realize the importance of their being, of their own life, of their own role as spiritual beings.
May God bless you all.
The lecture can go on because on the Spirit I must have given at least, I don’t know, about at least hundred lectures so far, only on the subject of Spirit. So it’s an endless job. And every time I say something people say: “Mother you have said something very new.” So the knowledge is endless but you become the knowledge, you yourself become the knowledge and you start understanding it. Only thing is you must have as a duty, respect for yourself and the importance of responsibility that you have to be the Spirit. That’s why you have come on this earth as human beings, at this time. This time is very precious and it’s not a fashion to be a seeker but it’s something that has to happen to all of you.
Yesterday you people asked me many questions and I think I answered most of them. Some of them were very good questions but some of them were a little very simple I think, but nobody was aggressive… But on the whole I think that maybe San Diego is a place from where we may be able to save America. I didn’t have any program anywhere in Los Angeles or anything, but I came to San Diego. But you have to know that if this is the place we have to get people who are of that quality. I don’t know when are we going to get them but I hope we get those people of that quality. Even a small nail can hold a sari. In the same way a little place looking like San Diego can save America.
May God bless you all.
So we’ll have the experience now. It will take about five minutes for you because if all the chakras are discussed already the attention is on that. Is very simple to put your hands towards Me..."
 (Editor: Click here: "This moment will change your life" for guided 5 minute exercise for awakening Kundalini energy.)

You, Yoga, Meta-Health & Sahaja Yoga

​"Yoga" by Hellogreenway - Own work. Licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yoga.JPG#/media/File:Yoga.JPG

September is National Yoga Month and up and down the country, fans of yoga will be enthusiastically twisting and stretching at free coordinated events in studios, gyms and other venues . All this  to draw attention to the health and well-being benefits of the practice of yoga. As well as the fact that our health is ultimately our own responsibility.

How much responsibility is something that may be lost on many of us. If you're impatiently stuck in traffic and another driver cuts out in front of you and you react angrily then  that's you: 0; blood pressure: 2 .  If you tend to be cynical about a lot of things in life then that's you: 0 ; possible future dementia: 3 .

So our temperament, moods and lifestyle has a big bearing on our health. Something that is perhaps not fully acknowledged by the conventional medical understanding of why the body gets sick. With a mission of changing this understanding, is a non-profit  organisation called Meta-Health, who are the sponsors of the Yoga Health Foundation which is the organiser of the National Yoga Month.

According to Johannes R. Fisslinger , the founder of the Meta-Health University, knowing what "..emotion, stress-trigger, belief or thought , social and lifestyle connection" underlies illness and disease is the key to the body's self-healing.

For anyone with a passing familiarity of traditional chinese medicine or Ayurveda(traditional Indian medicine), the Meta-Health diagnostic model sounds very much like the holistic approach which is the basis of those two ancient traditions as well as much of complementary and alternative medicine(CAMs).

But the validity and acceptance of CAMs by mainstream healthcare has met with only very limited success. If you're lucky you might be able to get some acupuncture done on the NHS. It is this barrier that Meta-Health University is trying to overcome by seeking to train conventional medical practitioners and alternative therapists in a method which they claim marries CAM to science.

Some indication that the tide of medical understanding may be turning in their favour, comes in the form of recent research led by Anna-Malia Tolppanen, PhD, of the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio, and published in the journal Neurology. It shows that if you usually believe that others are motivated by selfish interest then you are more likely to develop dementia later in life than other people who are more trusting. This it seems is what being cynical about a lot of things in life will do for you.

However, merely establishing a link between cynicism and dementia is not the same as explaining exactly  how a negative temperament  will cause illness. And this where Sahaja Yoga can provide some insights.

In the field of yoga, the concept of an energetic system consisting of 'chakras'(spinning wheels of energy) and 'nadis'(energy channels) is well known. This system(see below) is similar but not identical to the energy meridian system of acupuncture. The chakras have been linked to the endocrine gland system, so, for example, the photo-sensitive pineal gland in mid-brain is linked to the agnya chakra, which is sometimes referred to as the 'third eye'. The three main nadis, left , right and centre are linked to the left and right sympathetic nervous system and the para-sympathetic nervous system respectively.

According to Sahaja Yoga, it is these chakras which catch and carry the imprint of patterns of thought, emotions and temperament and then transmit them as effects, via combination and permutation onto  the endocrine system. The endocrine system, along with a stress-induced imbalance on the left and right channel  in turn transmit this as  causes into the physiology, from which illness then directly arises.

Research conducted Dr. Katya Rubia, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at King's College, London as well other research, has shown the beneficial effect of the practice of sahaja yoga meditation in the treatment of a range of mind-body (psycho-somatic) illnesses such anxiety, depression, attention-deficit disorder and drug abuse.

In this perhaps lies the clue to the discriminating orginal purpose of yoga that may have been lost in the way it is currently practised: it was to correct a specific presenting condition in a student-patient by using a specific yoga asana(posture) to bring about a balance in a chakra and effect a cure. If a patient came with a heart condition, then the teacher-doctor would be unlikely to urge the student to run the gamut of asanas all the way from those that help eye problems to those designed to correct mis-alignment of the spine.

This could be a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

So, while enjoying your twisting and stretching this month make sure that your yoga teacher understands the purpose and effect of an asana and why you in particular should or should not be doing them. We are responsible for our own health.

References:

Yoga Health Foundation

What is META Health?

CAMs are treatments that fall outside mainstream healthcare

Cynicism linked to Dementia

Sahaja Yoga Research

Human Beings 2.0: Epigenetics , Neuroplasticity and Gifted Children.

​
Recapping what we covered at last weeks meeting, with regular meditation, your awareness of and sensitivity to vibrations develops to the point where you can make use of it in some interesting ways, by channelling it  through your hands.

Since vibrations is the essence of life energy or vital force (a subtler energy than the 'chi' of Chinese medicine and martial arts) , you can direct it to living things to heal and enhance.  For example experiments have been carried out by vibrating crop seeds and then making use of 'vibrated water' on them while they were growing. The yield and quality of the harvested crops was found to be significantly better than normal. When future  world food shortages are being predicted because of climate change and there's some controversy about GM (genetically- modified) crops, we may have to try and persuade agriculturalists to look into this.

With Mindfulness Meditation all the rage at the moment, it's good to remember that a useful test for a lot of things is to ask yourself how simple is it ? Could a child understand and practice it? Anyway, here's a 2 year old explaining sahaja yoga meditation in 3 minutes: A 2 year old explains..

On the subject of children, there's a fascinating field of science developing called Epigenetics. The gist of it (in my layman's reading of it) is that biological inheritance can be passed on by other means than through DNA. While the cycle of DNA changes occuring in evolution take place over a much larger time scale (1000+ years), Epigenetic changes are inter-generational, in other words, they represent a form of  'accelerated evolution' . Do you know what beneficial changes are taking place in your brain when you meditate regularly? Apparently the brain is not of static structure but undergoes 'morphing', the technical term for which is Neuroplasticity . Epigenetics suggests that neuroplastic changes could be inherited by your off-spring which points to  baseline awareness/consciousness of future generations being in 'vibratory awareness' from birth. They won't have to attend a meditation class; it will just be part of there 'super' human awareness state.  For further reading, take a look at this paper : Epigenetic changes in Human Brain Evolution .

So inspite of the multitude of existential threats to humanity, including catastrophic climate change, environmental disaster, an ebola-like pandemic, geo-political conflicts leading to nuclear mishap, advances in artificial intelligence and Internet of things (IoT) leading to us being taken over by Robots that we purchased to do the housework, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, which may not be the train coming the other way. The solution seems to be to evolve out of the problems.

The Future of Ageing: prevention, reversal and palliative care

Letter to Atul Gawande and others:

All human invention is mimicry. The prototypes are to be found in Nature. All scientific discovery is by dispensation. Mother Nature lifts Her veil to give a momentary glimpse. Human handiwork is then a muddled recollection.(Henri Poincaré, Jacques Hadamard et al )

I recently enjoyed watching your individual TED talks : David Sinclair's - A Cure for Ageing; Aubrey de Grey's - Undoing Ageing and Atul Gawande's - How do we Heal Medicine?  (and  Being Mortal: What Matters in the end).

Hope. Defiance. Resignation.

Here's something that may provide another perspective on the subject of Ageing.

On a bell curve, outliers could in fact  be precursors of another population set. Dr Sinclair's projection of a possible human lifespan of 150 years is attested by the life of one Shri Chand, who was born on September 8, 1494 and 'died' (disappeared) in 1629 or 1643 . In ripe old age, he is reported to have looked like a 12 year old. And not the 'second childishness' of Shakespeare's Seven Ages, "...and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything" . But rather completely compos mentis.

What was his secret?

Assuming he wasn't getting daily doses of Resveratrol , then there must have been some other means  to Shri Chand's youthful ripe old age.

Ayurveda, traditional Indian medicine, gives a possible clue. Vriddhavastha - the later stages of life - has been well-studied and the prevention, management and treatment of Ageing has been documented (see National Institute of Health - Concept of Ageing in Ayurveda) . Unsuprisingly, diet has a large part to play and indeed Shri Chand is said to have been an ascetic and so may have practised some form of  caloric restriction.

Additionally, Shri Chand was a yogi and meditated. Again, there's evidence of the anti-aging effect of this. Here's an excerpt of a neuroscience piece in a 2014 issue of Scientific American (redacted to avoid advocating a particular practice)

"Some evidence even exists that <blank>—and its ability to enhance overall well-being—may diminish inflammation and other biological stresses that occur at the molecular level. A collaborative study between our group and one led by Perla Kaliman of the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona showed that one day of intensive <blank> in <blank> turned down the activity of inflammation-related genes and altered the functioning of enzymes involved with turning genes on and off. A study by Cliff Saron of the University of California, Davis, looked at the effect of <blank> on a molecule involved with regulating the longevity of a cell. The molecule in question was an enzyme called telomerase that lengthens DNA segments at the ends of chromosomes. The segments, called telomeres, ensure stability of the genetic material during cell division. They shorten every time a cell divides, and when their length decreases below a critical threshold, the cell stops dividing and gradually enters a state of senescence. Compared with a control group, the <people> who showed the most pronounced reductions in psychological stress also had higher telomerase activity by the end of the <experiment>. This finding suggests that <blank> might slow processes of cellular aging among some <people>."

However, diet, exercise and meditation may still not account for  Shri Chand's longevity.

We could look at other examples of longevity in the natural world to see what clues that gives. We could look at trees, more specifically giant Sequoia trees that have greeted the sun daily for 3,500 years(longer than before the time of Christ). Without delving into the wonder of the trees' natural hydraulic lift that is able to draw nutrients from the roots and send it up to heights of some 83meters to nourish leaves, suffice to say that the sap rises.

Compare the trees capillary system to the human CNS (central nervous system). The CNS looks like an inverted tree with the roots in the brain. A transverse of the limbic system reinforces this view. But is there functional similarity? There are opiate receptor sites in the limbic system and if human beings weren't designed to be drug addicts (κ₂ opioid receptors & drug addiction) why are the receptors located there?

Pursuing this comparison with the tree, if the limbic system is a drawer of nutrients, similar to a trees roots, then what is the equivalent of 'sap' for humans and what is the mechanism for it's uptake (or rather downtake - with an inverted tree structure, the sap would descend) ?

The form of yoga practised by Shri Chand is not detailed, but given the tradition of secrecy surrounding esoteric knowledge at that time , we can be sure that it was not vanilla ashtanga yoga but an 'internal' or hidden yoga or 'alchemy - the practise of turning base metal into gold ' . This points to 'Kundalini yoga/meditation' . A verse from an  ancient text - Shri Lalita Sahasranama ( The 1000 names of the Goddess) describes the Kundalini in these terms:

* 106 * Sudha sarabhi varshini - She who makes nectar flow in all our nerves from sahasrara i.e. she who gives the very pleasant experience of the ultimate 

So there it is. 'Sudha' in sanskrit means nectar or ambrosia - 'food of the gods' in greek mythology. 'Sahasrara' is the 'thousand-petalled' lotus at the crown of the head ie limbic system. And the fact it gives a 'very pleasant experience' hints at a 'natural high' induced by a binding at opiate receptor sites.

In yet another verse Kundalini is described as:

* 745 * Jaradwanthara viprabha - She who is the suns rays that swallows the darkness of old age

So was Shri Chand a rare and non-repeatable example of longevity or a demonstration of the future potential of the mass of humanity?

In his lecture Aubrey de Grey suggested that Ageing was the problem most relevant today and he may be right but for a different reason  than the one  he may have had in mind.

A very wise old lady (whose photo is at the beginning of this email) once explained that Mother Nature is doing an evolutionary  upgrade of human beings. The last upgrade was from Neanderthals to Homo Sapiens. The two versions first co-existed then the older version was phased out ( Neanderthal extinction ). The mechanism Mother Nature is using is spontaneous en-masse awakening of Kundalini - experienced as a gentle cool breeze(Pneuma) at the crown of the head(Fontanelle). So Kundalini, which 'swallows the darkness of old age' is also the evolutionary trigger. And, lest it be thought that evolution is a process only occurring over thousands of years, Epigenetics would suggest otherwise (Epigenetic changes in Human Brain Evolution).

In Human Beings mark 2 , sickness and old age could be non-existent and, given that all evolution is a refinement of CNS, awareness and consciousness could be on another level . Oh, and by the way, there's a range of super-normal abilities predicated on Kundalini awakening, so literally, superhumans may be coming.