Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension

Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension

About the Cover Photo by Henry Stindt, 2008. The Tule Tree: One of the oldest living things on the planet, the El Árbol del Tule (Spanish, “the Tule Tree”) is located on the Santa María del Tule church grounds just outside Oaxaca, Mexico. Sometimes referred to as the “Tree of Life,” the Montezuma Cypress, with a diameter of 30.77 feet (9.38 meters) and a circumference of 118.77 feet (36.20 meters), is said to have the stoutest trunk of any tree in the world and, on the basis of growth rates, is estimated to be 1,433–1,600 years old. According to local legend, Pechocha, a priest of the Aztec storm god, planted it about 1,400 years ago.

Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension Edited by

Derek F. Maher and

Calvin Mercer Afterword by

Ted Peters

RELIGION AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF RADICAL LIFE EXTENSION

Copyright © Derek F. Maher and Calvin Mercer, 2009. All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–60794–1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Religion and the implications of radical life extension / edited by Derek F. Maher, Calvin Mercer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0–230–60794–2 1. Longevity—Religious aspects. I. Maher, Derek F. II. Mercer, Calvin R. QP85.R45 2009 612.698—dc22

2009006416

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: September 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

Man has to live his life in the shadow of death, and he who clings to life and enjoys its fullness must dread the menace of its end. And he who is faced by death turns to the promise of life. Death and its denial—Immortality—have always formed, as they form to-day, the most poignant theme of man’s foreboding. The extreme complexity of man’s emotional reactions to life finds necessarily its counterpart in his attitude to death. Only what in life has been spread over a long space and manifested in a succession of experiences and events is here at its end condensed into one crisis which provokes a violent and complex outburst of religious manifestations. Bronislaw Malinowski Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays, 1925

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Contents

Preface

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Introduction: Living for 1,000 Years—or Longer Derek F. Maher and Calvin Mercer

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Chapter 1 Radical Life Extension: Technological Aspects Aubrey de Grey

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Chapter 2 The Evidence-based Pursuit of Radical Life Extension Pete Estep

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Chapter 3 Be Careful What You Wish For? Radical Life Extension coram Deo: A Reformed Protestant Perspective Nigel M. de S. Cameron and Amy Michelle DeBaets

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Chapter 4 Extreme Longevity Research: A Progressive Protestant Perspective Ronald Cole-Turner

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Chapter 5 Becoming Yet More Like God: A Jewish Perspective on Radical Life Extension Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff

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Chapter 6 Karma, Austerity, and Time Cycles: Jainism and Radical Life Extension Sherry E. Fohr

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Chapter 7 Told You So: Extreme Longevity and Daoist Realization Livia Kohn

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Chapter 8

Churning the Ocean of Milk: Hindu Tantrism and Radical Life Technologies Jeffrey S. Lidke in collaboration with Jacob W. Dirnberger

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Chapter 9

Two Wings of a Bird: Radical Life Extension from a Buddhist Perspective Derek F. Maher

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Chapter 10

A Thousand Years, Less Fifty: Toward a Quranic View of Extreme Longevity Aisha Y. Musa

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Chapter 11 Radical Life Extension: Implications for Roman Catholicism Terence L. Nichols

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Chapter 12

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“May You Live Long”: Religious Implications of Extreme Longevity in Hinduism Arvind Sharma

Afterword: Theological, Spiritual, and Ethical Reflections on Radical Life Extension Ted Peters

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Selected Bibliography

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Notes on Contributors

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Index

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Preface

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e have been influenced on the topic of radical life extension (RLE) by a wide range and, fortunately, a growing number of thoughtful scholars from various disciplines. While there has been far too little of it, most of the discussion about religion and RLE has emanated from the Judaeo-Christian tradition. We are pleased to facilitate and expand the conversation by bringing scholars from several other major world religions to the table. Many of these scholars are new to the discussion, and we appreciate their efforts to address these issues. We trust this is only the beginning of an ongoing dialogue between scholars and adherents to the world’s religions. We hope that ecclesiastical leaders and informed laypeople of all religions will become increasingly interested in thoughtful discussion about the implications of RLE science. All the faith traditions will be progressively impacted in general by biotechnology and in particular by radical extensions in longevity. Calvin thanks the colleagues who helped start the “Transhumanism and Religion” consultation at the national meeting of the American Academy of Religion. That consultation will provide an ongoing scholarly forum for this discussion. In particular, Ronald Cole-Turner, who has done much through his writings to generate serious reflection on these critical questions, has been a valuable advisor regarding both the consultation and this book. Calvin also thanks the students in his spring seminar classes on transhumanism for their probing questions. At East Carolina University, our able front office assistant, Susan Adams, worked on innumerable tasks from manuscript preparation to indexing. Research assistants Robert Alvarez, Jennifer Jones, Jamie Lynn Maniscalco, Allison Priesing, Linda Ratliff, and Kimberly Wade tracked down resources, performed bibliographical research, edited references, and undertook many

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other tasks that have helped make this a better and more coherent book. All errors that remain are our responsibility. We (Derek and Calvin) wish to thank our wives Jill Jennings Maher and Susan Vickery-Mercer, respectively, for humoring us while we worked on this book and for entertaining our sometimes animated preoccupations with these themes.

Introduction: Living for 1,000 Years—or Longer Derek F. Maher and Calvin Mercer

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ife and death issues are at the core of religions’ concerns. Within the diverse faiths of the world, people seek answers to ultimate questions about the value and significance of life, and they struggle to extract purposeful patterns from the threat of their own demise. Through rituals, narratives, doctrinal structures, institutions, ethical systems, and artistic forms, adherents to religions creatively construct their worldviews in an effort to enable themselves to encounter the world and its travails in a meaningful mode. And among the foremost of these challenges is the effort to take account of the fact of death. In the founding of each religion, there is an effort to situate death. As early in the Bible as Genesis 2:17, Adam is confronted with the profundity of death. For the young prince who would become the Buddha, the importance of the spiritual path was enlivened by his first encounter with death, one of the four visions that transformed his mind. In Islam, the very creation of Adam and hence all of humankind is attended by God’s warning that those who ignore his signs shall be “Companions of the Fire” (Qur’an II.30–39). Most Christians interpret Christ’s death as the signal event that makes salvation possible. Hindus see the very creation of the universe in the sacrifice of the first man, Puru
a. Likewise, poets from the psalmists to the composers of the Tibetan Book of the Dead to Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī to Dante to Wallace Stevens have found death to be a powerful theme in exploring humanity’s ultimate concerns. Artists have continually found images of death—ranging from depictions of Christ’s passion to contemporary biker tattoos of the Grim Reaper—to be potent vehicles for expressing the most powerful issues we confront. And

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scholars who study religion have long concerned themselves with investigating how people have employed religion to understand mortality. Ancient Egyptians built pyramids as grand burial places for pharaohs and their consorts. Plato evoked the Myth of Er to dramatize his belief in the immortality of the soul in the afterlife. St. Augustine resolved in the fourth century that death was a natural good. The eighth-century Indian Buddhist master Padmasa bhava advised his Tibetan disciples on the importance of having a pure mind at the moment of death. Medieval scholastics from European capitals to Cairo and Baghdad to the Yuan Dynasty court puzzled over the mysteries of the afterlife. In the early twentieth century, James G. Frazer delivered the Gifford lectures in St. Andrews, Scotland, on the theme of “The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead.” He documented human preoccupations with death, the afterlife, and deathlessness in a threevolume set of weighty tomes by the same name. And more recently, Jacques Derrida struggled with the place of death in the grounding of ethics. Death is the central conundrum of human existence, confounding the existentialist, inspiring the artist, and challenging the believer. *

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Yet, what if you found out you could live a healthy life lasting for 1,000 years or longer? Advances in medical sciences raise the theoretical possibility that biomedical technologies could dramatically prolong or even indefinitely extend healthy human life, and the most optimistic predictions envision significant scientific breakthroughs within two or three decades. If the science of radical life extension (RLE) is realized, and the technology becomes widely available, the impact on humans would be more far reaching than any other development in history. One need only briefly reflect on the economic, political, and social implications of people living for such long periods to realize the significance of “practical immortality.” Scientists have, in the past few decades, wrought several parallel revolutions in biomedicine, cell biology, genetics, immunology, cybernetics, and nanotechnology. While ethicists and futurists have weighed in on the possibilities presented by these developments, there has been no thorough assessment of their implications for the world’s major religions. RLE research, particularly as it has moved from the realm of science fiction to the world’s labs and clinics, is only beginning to inspire some of the most thoughtprovoking discussions in the broader culture. Given the transformative impact of these potential innovations, it is urgently important that they be debated and understood at all levels of society.

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Scholars from a variety of academic disciplines, ethicists, and a wide range of scientists have joined the conversation, and increasingly public servants and policy makers will become engaged as the possible comes to be realized. Ordinary citizens, similarly, will need to become aware of the risks and benefits of various options in biotechnology to become informed voters and responsible consumers. Moreover, thoughtful people of faith would do well to help shape the discussion. This collection of articles is the first concerted effort to explore the implications of RLE from the perspective of the world’s faith traditions. We have assembled scholars of various religious traditions from major educational and research institutions. Each scholar has written an original chapter reflecting on influences the advances in extreme longevity science might have on the particular religious tradition she or he researches. Chapters 1 and 2, assessing some of the technical possibilities in extreme longevity research, are by scientists who reflect diverse expert opinion on this controversial subject. Biomedical gerontologist Dr. Aubrey de Grey is perhaps the leading theoretician in this field. Dr. de Grey, formerly of Cambridge University, is now chairman and chief science officer of the Methuselah Foundation, dedicated to advancing the emerging biological and genetic science to interrupt and repair human aging. Seeing aging as an engineering challenge, his focus is on developing interventions to address the effects of aging in the body. Pete Estep earned his Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School under the world famous geneticist George Church. A biologist and science and technology expert, Estep is chairman of the Innerspace Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting and funding neuro-engineering approaches for the enhancement of memory and learning. While Estep is pessimistic about all RLE strategies in the short term, he raises the possibility that computer technology can one day preserve and expand what humans are as informational systems. Following the core chapters by our experts on the world’s major faith traditions, Dr. Ted Peters, a widely respected authority on biotechnology and religion, has constructed a chapter of synthesizing reflections that threads the various essays together. Taking Control of Human Evolution? Not that long ago, the scientific advances summarized below, and addressed by our team of scholars, were purely the stuff of science fiction. No more. Preliminary developments are unfolding in university, government, hospital, and corporate labs around the world. A few journalists are reporting these stories, and a few scientists, ethicists, and authors are debating them.

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The media carries accounts of relevant medical breakthroughs and occasionally suggests their more radical implications. However, the significance of these developments has not yet dawned in the public’s mind. Currently, there are no medical interventions that stop or reverse human aging. However, possibilities once solely located in the domain of fantasy are being pursued on scientific grounds. Our first scientist author, Dr. de Grey, introduces us to his antiaging program, which he terms “strategies for engineered negligible senescence” (SENS). The program involves a comprehensive agenda for mitigating and overcoming all seven of the main types of dysfunction he sees as being primarily responsible for aging. Several other ongoing research programs—all controversial and debated among ethicists and public intellectuals—could radically impact human longevity. While these programs involve highly technical, cutting-edge science, the basic thrust of most of them is understandable to the layperson. The prospect of living for exaggeratedly long periods of time or even indefinitely certainly helps to focus the discussion. Yet, it is important to understand that extreme longevity is just one significant piece of a much broader agenda that entails the possibility of taking control of human evolution. “Transhumanism” refers to the new and emerging human enhancement technologies that could result in pronounced longevity and powerfully influence other aspects of human capability and experience. The convergence of these technologies may provide for the enhancement of human mental and physical abilities and the amelioration of aspects of the human condition regarded as undesirable, including disease, disability, and ultimately death. The following trends and research programs illustrate this broad front, which has been termed “radical evolution” (Garreau 2005). Some or all of the following general trends and research programs could, even if indirectly, contribute to the radical extension of healthy human life. ●

Genetic engineering: In lay terms, scientists are working to identify genes responsible for aging and to learn to switch them off. Major increases in life span have been achieved in several animal species through genetic intervention. For example, changes in just one gene of the nematode worm can significantly extend the worm’s life. In some male worms, the life span has increased six fold. Similar research has been conducted on yeast, fruit flies, and mice. The goal of these scientific inquiries is, of course, RLE of the human body. Stem cell research is expected to enhance the development of genetic manipulation technologies. Completion of the Human Genome Project in 2000 may one day be seen as the turning point between understanding human biology and engineering it.

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Germline genetic engineering: This refers to manipulating “germ” cells (i.e., the egg and sperm cells), in effect, engineering the genetic material in a human embryo. Once this threshold is crossed, it may be the first big step toward the end of humanity as we know it. This capability would allow for the suppression and enhancement of naturally occurring conditions and traits, which would then be passed on to future generations. It might become possible to design out obesity, poor eyesight, and cancer, while tallness, musical ability, a higher IQ, and longevity could be designed in. There are still many technical hurdles to overcome before “designer baby” engineering could be routinely utilized with humans, but germline genetic engineering is an important piece of emerging biotechnology. Tissue and organ replacement: When the transmission in an automobile goes bad, we replace it and still consider it our automobile. Theoretically, over time we could replace many more of human body parts than now possible. We now routinely replace knees and kidneys, and indications are that these body part replacement procedures are going to become more common. Certainly, the brain and nervous system are in a different league; however, there are research programs that may impact replacement of these significant parts or permit their regrowth. Research on therapeutic cloning, that is, producing organs and tissues for transplanting into humans, is proceeding, despite ethical debates over it. Merging of computer technology with human biology: Pacemakers are now commonplace, but someday computers that interface with the human body may become even more routine. We have implants to help deaf people hear, and a retinal implant is under development to help blind people see. FDA-approved neural implants are placed directly into the brain of some patients to counteract symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease and other neurological disorders. Increasingly, computers will be embedded in our bodies. For years, philosophers have debated whether a machine can have consciousness. Regardless of how that debate turns out, at a practical level, the merging of machines and biological entities—cyborgization—will raise acute theological and philosophical questions about the nature of human beings and possibly play a role in RLE. Scanning technologies: Noninvasive scanning techniques, such as MRI and CAT, are routinely employed. Brain scanning technologies are quickly increasing in resolution. Conceivably, scientists will eventually peer inside synapses and record neurotransmitter activity, obtaining detailed models and simulations of all regions of the brain.

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If the brain is completely mapped, the job of redesigning and rebuilding will be furthered considerably. Nanotechnology and robotics: The fields of nanotechnology and robotics may facilitate some of these modalities of extreme longevity. (A “nano” is one billionth of a meter, the width of about five carbon atoms.) Nanotechnology research is active with animals and may eventually produce blood-cell sized, computerized tools called nanobots, capable of manipulating human biology at the cellular level.

One of our scientist contributors, Dr. Estep, who has particular expertise in memory and other human mental functions, speculates about a computerized version of RLE he calls “life expansion.” The electronic preservation of memory and personality is a wholly different RLE paradigm than the indefinite continuation of the body though biological interventions. “Cybernetic immortality,” which would involve “uploading” our thoughts and feelings into some electronic medium, is advocated by transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil. Should this scenario unfold, it would raise a host of questions about the very nature of human beings. For example, where is the real “self” if we “back up” in multiple copies the information pattern that defines who we are? While our authors, for the most part, contend with a biological immortality scenario, some of their reflections are relevant for a cybernetic immortality option that may be in our future. Most Urgent Public Debate of Our Time? The demand for engineering our bodies and minds is evident from the popularity of psychotropic and sexual performance pharmaceuticals, cosmetic surgery, and sports medicine. These successful efforts to impact our mood and body pale against the wave of engineering technologies that are likely on the horizon. The paradigm shift is difficult to digest. For all of human history, the natural pattern has been birth, aging, and death. The idea that humans may not age and may not die in old, familiar ways is startling for those who have begun to contend with these developments. However, increasing numbers of news items and books on these subjects are bringing the debate—albeit in our opinion much too slowly—into public awareness and onto the political and social agenda. For example, on September 12, 2006, at an event on Capitol Hill, U.S. senators from both sides of the aisle, Nobel Laureates, representatives of national and international health organizations, and scientists delivered to representatives of Congress a petition on behalf of what is called the “Longevity Dividend.” This term, referring to public funds saved if people live longer healthily, is

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being used to advocate investment in “antiaging research,” as opposed to mere “disease research.” RLE in particular and human enhancement technologies in general could very well displace in importance terrorism, global climate change, and other momentous public issues of our day. This is not meant to minimize our appreciation of the critical importance of those issues; rather, it underscores our assessment of the profound significance that new and emerging human enhancement technologies will have for our species. Calls for serious dialogue and debate over the social implications of significant longevity, including arrested aging, are being heard from several quarters. Although cautious and conservative in its projections, The President’s Council on Bioethics, in its October 2003 report, stated (in a chapter entitled “Ageless Bodies”) that “the prospect of possible future success along these lines [i.e., stopping, slowing, or reversing human aging] raises high hopes, as well as profound and complicated questions.” The Hastings Center (July/August 2003), a respected bioethics institute, calls for “anticipatory deliberation” about the philosophical implications and social consequences of various forms of aging research, including arrested aging. According to it, “The history of biomedical science shows how unexpectedly progress can catch the scientific community and society unawares by accomplishing the ‘impossible’.” A group of bioethicists have urged that “our scientific institutions should take the lead in ensuring that public discussion of antiaging research is as deliberate and farsighted as the research itself” (Juengst et al. 2003). Dr. de Grey is certainly the most visible and perhaps the leading theoretician of an ambitious program to eliminate aging. He has said that the progress in arrested aging research would bring “social upheavals,” and the possibility “merits urgent debate” within society (de Grey et al. 2002). Some scientists are very reflective about these matters, and some of them have advised that the more radical efforts be resisted. In general, however, scientists are unrestrained in their pursuit of research that will likely lead to the engineering of human beings and the deliberate alteration of the species. More often than not they are specialists working on some tiny piece of the puzzle that fits into a larger picture they may not see clearly. In general, while scientists certainly should have a voice in deliberations about the ethics of scientific questions, it should not be the sole responsibility of the scientific community to determine the appropriate aims and limits of research. Scientists should not be the only people involved in making decisions with which the rest of humanity will have to live. Likewise, politicians alone should not be charged with making these decisions, and the leading politicians have remained almost silent on these questions at any rate. A few

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ethicists have been discussing some of these questions, but thus far have been talking mostly to each other. While there are debates among scientists over the feasibility of many of these developments, in general, biomedical technology is clearly becoming more able to manipulate our biological future in a meaningful way. It is the nature of scientists to explore, discover, and invent, and science is likely going to forge ahead exploring new territory. If some countries and scientists decide to refrain from certain research agendas, the research will shift to countries more hospitable to the work. Both government-funded programs and private initiatives directed toward the engineering of human biology and progeny are ongoing and will likely pick up speed. Funding for RLE research may be less problematic than many other domains of medical research. Once the wealthy class sniffs the possibilities of living forever or making their children smarter, the money pipelines could open widely. Mice often serve as a preclinical animal model for the development of pharmaceuticals for humans. Dr. de Grey predicts that the first unambiguous age reversal in mice will thrust the topic of practical immortality into the center of public opinion, hastening the ultimate goal of extreme human life extension. No doubt, funds—private if not public—will then flow to relevant research programs. If thoughtful people of faith and scholars of religion do not add their voices to the conversation fairly quickly, they will be left behind as society stumbles toward an incompletely examined future, perhaps guided in part by dedicated but occasionally narrowly focused scientists, self-motivated politicians, wealthy investors, or fringe religious groups. No one religion should speak for humankind in this debate, since followers of all religions are going to be affected by biotechnology developments. As coeditors, we take no position here on the advisability of RLE. Rather, we intend for this collection to jumpstart a discussion among scholars of the world’s religions. Questions We Address The contributions from our team of religion scholars spring from the following working charge: Assume that (1) biomedical science produces breakthroughs that make possible the infinite extension of healthy human life and (2) the technology becomes widely available. Within that thought experiment, please reflect on the implications such developments would have for the religion you study. While a thought experiment is valuable in itself, there is reason to believe that the religions, sooner or later, may have to contend with these questions. Relevant questions include the following: How might the traditions

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rethink such concepts as eternal life, the afterlife, or reincarnation? How does the prospect of forestalling death impact how people live their lives? How might ritual and institutional dimensions of religions change? How might traditional narratives be reconfigured or redeployed to help make sense of the new realities that would frame our new, prolonged lives? The religion scholars who have contributed chapters to this book are not experts in the biotechnology science. They were merely asked to reflect on the implications—theological and otherwise—of significant successes in this domain. These chapters are, essentially, reflective essays intended to begin the conversation of how the religions of the world might respond should RLE become feasible. This book as a whole is not intended as an ethical reflection on biomedical science. Ethical reflection finds a place in some of the chapters in terms of anticipating how a religion might respond to RLE. While a parallel volume investigating the ethical issues relating to RLE from the perspectives of the world’s religions would also be valuable, we have not made the ethics of RLE the focus of this collection. For the purposes of the sort of discussion we hoped to engender, we are assuming that extreme longevity is going to occur, and the chapters provide some considerations of how such a development might impact the world’s religions. Our authors thoughtfully address their tradition in a detailed manner. However, because the collection contains contributions from scholars of different religions and will be read by people who are not expert in all the religions, our authors refrain from highly technical language or provide appropriate explanation of technical terms. Naturally, each religious tradition will intersect with this discourse in a distinct way. Still, we did not want to have a series of disconnected essays, but rather aspired to initiate an exchange of ideas between different religious traditions. Therefore, each author has conformed to a general structure intended to cultivate a sense of overall cohesion to the greatest extent possible. The main structure of most chapters is organized around the quadripartite division of doctrines, narratives, practices, and institutions. Each author was encouraged to frame her or his presentation in terms of these broad categories. In individual cases, one or more of these topics were irrelevant and could be ignored, or they were combined in ways that made most sense for those particular scholars’ reflections. Likewise, authors were free to address significant and relevant issues outside this rubric. With regard to theology, some religions already have doctrines or narratives relating to extremely long lives in the mythical past or in the imagined future. Our authors review those doctrines. At their core, most chapters

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address the theological implications of extreme longevity. They consider how both official doctrinal positions and common lay beliefs would be impacted by innovations in biomedical science that would make it possible for people to live healthy and indefinitely long lives. They may consider how the tradition they represent might rethink such aspects as deity, humanity, soteriology, eschatology, the afterlife, and reincarnation. In some religions, RLE will also influence the liturgy or the ritual life of adherents. The social life of the faith community may be affected. Religiously advocated behaviors, such as charitable works, might take on new forms. Different religions may call for new structural or institutional forms. What might they be and how would they manifest? Beliefs relating to sexuality, child rearing, and family life may need to be re-envisioned. Moving the Conversation Forward A couple of examples will illustrate that some progress is being made in generating this conversation among academics of religion. Coeditor Dr. Mercer and some colleagues have been successful in obtaining approval for a multiyear session on “Transhumanism and Religion” at the annual national meeting of the American Academy of Religion, the largest and most significant organization devoted to the academic study of religion. The recently completed fourth year of Arizona State University’s series called “Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism: Religion, Science, and Technology,” funded by the John Templeton Foundation, was devoted to “Transhumanism as Secularized Eschatology.” So academics of religion are beginning to explore these issues in various forums. At present, the religious communities are not effectively engaged in discussing these critical questions. We hope this book will move that conversation forward among laypeople as well as scholars. We expect this collection to prompt the design of study courses, seminars, and retreats in all the religions to explore these issues. It is time for the educational institutions, bureaucratic networks, ecclesiastical leaders, and local communities of the world’s religions to be heard on these urgently important questions. We believe it will be useful for scholars and laypeople to keep abreast of how fellow pilgrims in other faith communities are wrestling with these questions. While it is too early to know how the debate will unfold, we predict that transhumanist programs, including RLE, are going to produce some strange bedfellows among the religions. Liberals and conservatives may not break out into neat camps, as they do on many other issues. Religious symbols and attendant ideas are powerful and go to the heart of how people of faith have constructed themselves within their identity.

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Symbols are like a lever in that when they move, the minds and hearts of millions of people in a culture can shift. The potential impact of religion on the issue of extreme longevity is as yet untapped, and thoughtful, respectful engagement can significantly benefit both science and religion. Let the conversation begin.

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CHAPTER 1

Radical Life Extension: Technological Aspects Aubrey de Grey

Demystifying Aging What is aging? No one definition suits all contexts, but for the purposes of this chapter, the term can be defined quite precisely: aging is a progressive, lifelong process of alterations to the structure of the body that eventually compromise its function, culminating in death. At its most essential, aging is a physical phenomenon, so its nature does not depend upon an understanding of the nonphysical aspects of the individual. The rate of aging may be influenced by stress levels and other aspects of one’s state of mind. However, the actual nuts and bolts of aging—the differences between a younger person and an older person that cause the older person to have less time to live on an average—are purely structural, definable ultimately in terms of the atoms of which the body is composed and their spatial arrangement. This point cannot be overemphasized because there is a widespread tendency to think of aging as a mystical phenomenon, intrinsically beyond our ability to comprehend (let alone combat). I have written at length elsewhere about the psychology underlying this and will not repeat myself here, beyond saying that I regard it as a consequence of our terror of the debilitation and dependence that aging so inexorably features. This fear is so deep that our most effective way of coping with it is to put the whole matter out of our minds. We “mis-file” aging as something fundamentally

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distinct from the specific diseases that we as a society strive so earnestly to defeat. It is notable that many theological discussions of aging are in no doubt about this. Some adherents of religions believe there is a nonphysical component to the individual. Whatever nonphysical component the individual may have and whatever happens to that part of a person after she or he dies, there is essential unanimity across the metaphysical spectrum that nothing happens to it until she or he dies. In the living human being, the physical body not only supports the nonphysical, it traps it. This may seem obvious to some believers, but the very obviousness of this fact causes genuine miscommunications between those who believe in the continuation of the individual after death and those who do not. The primacy of aging as an inescapable killer inclines many people to conflate the defeat of aging with the total defeat of death. Many religious believers would be chagrined to think that humankind might even aspire to delay death from all causes, let alone be in a position to achieve this result. The conflation of these concepts is harmless as long no one interprets radical life extension (RLE) as consisting of a usurpation of supernatural beings’ ability to annihilate humanity. However, there are certainly people who view it in the more literal sense just described. It should be made clear that those who overinterpret the goals of antiaging researchers are not entirely to blame for that overinterpretation. This tendency to exaggerate the objectives and claims of antiaging researchers is embedded in the entire “life extension” discourse. But more importantly, there is a consistent tendency in media coverage of such research toward emphasizing the longevity gains rather than the health gains. In this context, laypeople can surely be forgiven for at least becoming nervous that those who seek to defeat aging are in fact seeking to expand humankind’s influence over nature beyond what such nonexperts might see as its rightful limits. However, successful biomedical interventions against aging should not be thought of as delaying extra-individual events affirmed by a particular religion (e.g., the second coming of Jesus in traditional Christianity) any more than they might delay explosions of nearby stars, collisions with asteroids, or any other event that would change the “rules of the game.” Such biomedical advances will delay the decrepitude, disease, and death of enormous numbers of people until and unless such events occur, and that’s all. At the individual level, similarly, such interventions will have the same effect as any other life-saving medical therapy: they will prevent one category of causes of death, but will not prevent other causes.

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Inherent Plausibility of Defeating Aging In both secular and religious contexts, there is a strong tendency for discussions of the social, psychological, and humanitarian impact of defeating aging to take place against a backdrop of tacit disbelief that any such thing will ever in fact occur. The reason skeptics adopt this assumption is not the possession of any actual evidence that defeating aging will forever be a pipe dream. Rather, many people are simply afraid of acknowledging that it might be possible to avoid the suffering that currently pervades most people’s last years. At the same time, any hopes that optimists do entertain may be dashed by the slow pace of biomedical progress. It is psychologically far easier to accept a grim fate that one believes is truly inevitable than to aspire to a hopeful future that is not quite inevitable, but with respect to which, only limited control is imaginable. Consequently, it is critical to understand that this fatalism—that aging is immutable or even that it is mutable but undefeatable—is no more and no less than unscientific. Several questions arise in this connection. The first argument to dispose of is the argument from past failure. Undeniably, people have been saying for millennia that we either can already or soon will be able to postpone aging a lot; yet, these predictions have not been sustained. It is equally undeniable that the postponement of aging is like many other objectives in science and technology in this regard. The most obvious other example is of course powered flight (Anderson 2004, 176). The fact that civilization fails at everything until it doesn’t may seem obvious, but evidently it is not obvious to everyone—not even to very widely respected commentators on the likely future of life extension research, such as Dr. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois. In justifying his pessimism concerning the defeat of aging, Dr. Olshansky (2008) has on many occasions intoned that “everyone who ever tried to defeat aging has one thing in common: they’re all dead.” A related stratagem, weaker in its conclusions, but no stronger in its logic for that, is the argument from smooth extrapolation. The doubling of life expectancy in the industrialized world in the past century or so is held up as evidence for the prediction that progress in the coming century will be comparable. It is sometimes implied that this is the most that can be expected. This line of reasoning fails at many levels. First, life expectancy has in fact been increasing not at a linear rate in the period during which adequate records exist. Rather, the growth has been at an accelerating rate, one that has been described as two-stage linear (Wilmoth et al. 2000, 2366–2668), but which is much more parsimoniously described (de Grey et al. 2002,

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667–676) as truly accelerating, maybe even exponential, with the implication that we will eventually eliminate age as a risk factor for death. Second, despite the existence of a remarkable linearity in one particular composite statistic (Oppen et al. 2002, 1029–1031), progress within any particular nation has not been smooth, but stepwise. Specifically, each industrialized nation has seen a shift, over a period of a few decades, from a life expectancy in the 40s to one in the 70s as a result of the virtual elimination (to be precise, the reduction by a factor of 20 or more) of deaths in infancy and childbirth (Oppen et al 2002, 1029–1031). This was achieved because nearly all such deaths in the preindustrialized era were from infectious diseases, the most predominant of which were virtually banished by the widespread use of hygienic hospital procedures and, not long thereafter, vaccines and antibiotics. There has certainly been subsequent progress in increasing life expectancy in such nations, but it has been at a fraction of the pace that was seen in the period when infant mortality was being addressed. This is relevant because the cause of death that is the topic of this chapter— age-related physiological deterioration—is simply another family of phenomena. Like childhood diseases, it also predominantly affects a particular age group, and it is also likely to be defeated en masse rather than piecemeal because of the close links between the etiologies of its various members. Thus, the medically justifiable method of extrapolation from recent history is not to look at the factor by which life expectancy has increased, because there are substantive differences between the major causes of death that have been largely defeated (i.e., infectious diseases) and one that so far has not (i.e., aging) (Olshansky et al. 2001, 1491–1492). Rather, we must ask what things we would die of if aging were defeated and what the relevance of one’s age to one’s risk of those causes would be. Then, we can derive a future life expectancy from that. Proponents of smooth extrapolation are simply refusing to countenance the possibility that the predominant causes of death, once aging is comprehensively addressed, will continue to kill adults at roughly the same rate whatever age they are. The Therapies Themselves The remaining reasons why it is unscientific to regard aging as immutable can be introduced only after some introductory remarks concerning the sort of therapies that are likely to be effective against aging in due course. The term “vintage car” has a precise definition: it is a car manufactured in or prior to 1930. And that’s what the definition has been ever since vintage cars became so named. There’s every reason to believe that the same definition will persist for at least the next century. Why? Because the only reason

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to change it would be if the number of cars qualifying as “vintage” and fit to participate in rallies dwindled unacceptably, and virtually no such dwindling is occurring. (Indeed, the most famous vintage car rally in the United Kingdom, the London to Brighton Run, is still restricted to “veteran” cars, i.e., those built before 1905, and typically features 500 participants [Royal Automobile Club 2008].) This is because the owner of a typical vintage car has both the expertise and the inclination to perform truly comprehensive repair and maintenance on it, such that its risk of being unable to perform at each successive year’s rally is very low and nonincreasing. This is in stark contrast to the life expectancy of typical cars, of course. Most people are not surprised that our cars gradually decline and eventually need to be replaced, so we perform or pay for only the cheaper, sub-comprehensive maintenance that keeps it legal until a newer model catches our eye. Why exactly should the human body be any different? At present, of course, it is very different in that the expertise to do comprehensive repair and maintenance on it does not exist. But this is simply a consequence of the complexity of the human body, which, though immense, is finite and not increasing from one generation to the next. Yet, our understanding of the body and our tools to manipulate its workings are very much increasing, at a rate that can safely be predicted to accelerate so long as civilization survives. It does not take great mathematical skill to see that if no rule-changing events, like an exploding supernovae, intervene, humans will eventually bridge the complexity gap and learn how to manipulate the body on these levels. An objection sometimes raised in response to the above is that it rests on the allegedly questionable assumption that the human body is “just a machine.” It must be emphasized once again that nothing here makes any claims for or against the existence of nonphysical aspects of the individual; the only thing being discussed is the status of the physical human body. But the human capacity for automatic self-repair is so vastly more sophisticated than that of any human-made machine (the latter, in most people’s experience, being limited to things like the automatic resupply of oil and brake fluid to a car’s engine and brakes when they are depleted) that there is a reluctance to accept the analogy (Holliday 1995, 207). The fact that humans possess an inbuilt repair and maintenance capacity is—by definition!—a factor that makes the development of fully comprehensive repair and maintenance easier, not harder (let alone impossible). Evolution is our ally in this regard, not our foe. The repair and maintenance mechanisms being mentioned have specific and concrete biological expressions. Just as with simpler, human-made machines, changes occur to the structure of the human body throughout

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its existence as inherent and unavoidable side effects of its normal operation. Again, as with simpler machines, these changes are initially quite harmless—the machine can continue to function at full performance in their presence—but eventually, purely by virtue of their reaching sufficient abundance, they begin to interfere with that functioning. Thereafter, the machine’s performance declines until it fails altogether; typically this occurs at an accelerating rate as the machines ages. What, specifically, are these ongoing changes? I concluded in 2000 that they can all be classified into just seven broad but precisely defined categories, listed below along with avenues through which they might be addressed (de Grey et al. 2002, 452–462): ● ●

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Cell loss, blamed since 1955, reversible by stem cell therapy Cell death-resistance, blamed since 1965, reversible by immunotherapy and “suicide gene therapy” Chromosomal mutations and epimutations, blamed since 1959 and 1982, respectively, obviatable by gene therapy to limit cell division potential Mitochondrial mutations, blamed since 1972, obviatable by gene therapy adding versions of the mitochondrial genome to chromosomes Indigestible molecules inside cells, blamed since 1959, reversible by gene therapy introducing microbial enzymes Indigestible molecules between cells, blamed since 1907, reversible by immunotherapy Stiffening of elastic structures, blamed since 1981, reversible by “glycation link-breakers”

“Blamed since” here means that articles appeared in the primary biogerontological literature in the stated year proposing that the phenomenon in question contributed substantially to age-related dysfunction. Since 2000, no evidence has come to light that motivates a revision of this classification. And that is no great surprise, because there were good reasons all along to be confident that it was accurate. First, all seven categories have been established for more than a quarter of a century as likely contributors to—or, to be more precise in view of the definition of aging above, intermediates in—the aging process (see the list above). If an “eighth sin” were out there waiting to be discovered, and if it were something that would kill us more or less on schedule even if all the other known categories were brought under total control, it really should have been revealed by now, given the huge advances we have made since the early 1980s in our abilities to analyze and characterize biological systems. Secondly—and perhaps more persuasively to biologists, who are well

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aware of how often nature surprises them—we can derive this list by examining our biology from first principles, starting from the single basic precept that damage can only accumulate in long-lived structures. If a protein, for example, is constructed in a cell and does its job for a while, but then is damaged—oxidized by a free radical, for example—it is typically targeted in short order by one of various cellular systems responsible for breaking down damaged molecules. The result will be a clutch of reusable protein components (amino acids) that comprised parts of the protein other than the area of damage, together with a residue of damaged and nonreusable small molecules that are excreted from the cell and thence, via the circulation and the kidneys, from the body. At that point, the damage is gone forever, and it cannot contribute to aging. If we bear this in mind when examining candidate loci and mechanisms of damage accumulation, we find that it narrows the field dramatically—down to the list just given, in fact. Feasibility of Comprehensive Repair These thoughts lead to considerations of the solutions proposed for the “seven deadly things.” For, promising though it may be that a comprehensive description of the list of targets for indefinite repair and maintenance of the human body can be given, it is of only academic interest unless and until a corresponding list of solutions can be provided for those problems. Indeed, the list of solutions played a key role in defining the list of targets in the first place—they were developed in unison. This had to be so, because the very large number of known examples of molecular and cellular damage known to accumulate in the human body could in theory be classified into seven groups in a huge number of ways. The particular classification shown here was chosen because it is not only comprehensive but useful. And its utility lays precisely in that, within each category, the various examples— cases of the phenomenon in different tissues—are amenable to repair by broadly the same intervention. The case for the achievability of the defeat of aging would be significantly advanced if it were possible to specify the hypothetical interventions that would repair the damage aging implies. Additionally, it would be necessary to describe those interventions in sufficient detail to give confidence that the remaining technical hurdles to be overcome in completing their implementation are of the scale that typically yields to focused effort within only a few years or decades. Fortunately, only one thing prevents this from being attempted here: the limited space afforded by a brief essay. A very safe generalization about future technology is that the confidence one can have in the achievement of a particular goal in the near term is determined greatly

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by the size of the subproblems that remain to be solved. Truly the devil is in the detail in technology, demonstrated by the fact that even my booklength treatment of the various solutions to the seven intermediates of aging could not do full justice to them (de Grey et al. 2007). Accordingly I will say no more here by way of describing each of the individual “strategies for engineered negligible senescence” (SENS) as they were named in that book. Those who have the interest can read about the solutions in detail in that volume, which provides references to the scholarly literature, most of which is found in technical journals. Longevity Escape Velocity In one sense, it is unabashedly true that there is a good chance aging can be entirely defeated within the next few decades. In another sense of the term, however, this is not true. It is necessary, then, to tease apart these two senses of the word “defeat” and to show that the former meaning is the one that matters. First, the (superficially) bad news: there is virtually no chance that scientists will develop totally comprehensive antiaging technology within the next 50 years, and even within 100 years the chance is pretty small. The best that can be achieved within the next 25–30 years, it seems likely, is a 30–year increase in life span; I think the chance of that is around 50 percent. Why is this only superficially bad news? It all comes down to a key feature of that 30–year postponement: on account of the reparative (as opposed to preventative) nature of the therapies, the people who will benefit most will be in middle age or older at the time the therapies are initiated. In other words, the likeliest scenario, other things being equal, is that typical beneficiaries will be around 30–45 years old today, around 60–70 at the time the therapies arrive and are first applied, and will be restored by those therapies to a state that can, without too much poetic license, be termed “biologically 40–45.” Thereafter, they will age relatively normally, reattaining the biological age of 60–70 around the time that they reach the chronological age of 90–100 and eventually dying at an average age of around 110–120. The therapies may be applied periodically, but their effect will diminish as the recipients become increasingly burdened by types of molecular and cellular damage on which the therapies do not work. (Note that these will not typically be eighth and ninth categories to add to the above list: they will be subclasses within the existing seven categories.) Good, but not good enough. Certainly not good enough to be described as “the defeat of aging.” But that is not “the likeliest scenario,” because the qualification—“other things being equal”—does not apply. Thirty years

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is an extremely long time in technology, biomedical technology included. Consequently, in view of the absolute certainty that there will be phenomenal public pressure to pursue such inquiries and hence funding for them, the technologies that conferred 30 years of extra life on those individuals characterized above will have been refined a great deal during those 30 years, not only in terms of cost, convenience, and safety, but also in terms of comprehensiveness. And that means that those people, when they reach the biological age of 60–70 for the second time, will have the opportunity to be re-rejuvenated to a state that is biologically at most 40–45 (more likely, 30–35) even though the “first-generation” therapies that gave them the first 30-year rejuvenation would have been unable to do this. Accordingly, they may be as old as 140 or so before they become biologically 60 the third time. It is probably unnecessary to spell out that this scenario iterates. This means that once the initial breakthrough is achieved, improvements in rejuvenation technology are highly likely to occur fast enough to allow people to continue to get biologically younger as they get chronologically older, even though the actual damage that these therapies are repairing is getting progressively more recalcitrant. This sequence of events suggests, of course, the other sense in which aging can be described as having a good chance of being defeated within the next few decades; it is the sense that matters, since the practical upshot in terms of people’s health and longevity is the same as if a totally comprehensive elimination of aging were achieved at that initial time point. Not absolutely certainly the same, of course, because there is the rather important requirement to maintain the necessary rate of technological progress to keep recipients of state-of-the-art therapies one step ahead of their problems. That rate of progress seems worthy of a name, and I have termed it “longevity escape velocity” (LEV) (de Grey 2004, 723–726; Phoenix et al. 2007, 133–189). The likelihood that scientists will maintain indefinitely a rate of progress exceeding LEV can be seen to be very high on closer analysis, because it turns out that LEV declines over time: the more progress we make in approximating truly comprehensive rejuvenation, the less rapidly we need to continue to progress. Theological Implications Revisited: A Complication? It may be thought that the term “longevity escape velocity” is an inaccurate name and that “aging escape velocity” would be better. In hindsight, I agree; but the term has been used in print and elsewhere too many times now to make a renaming campaign worth the effort. However, there is a different

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concept that would much more rightly merit the name “longevity escape velocity” and that must now be introduced. When forced to think seriously about the prospect of a post-aging world, most people come up very quickly with reasons why it might not be such a wonderful place after all. Because of the predominantly secular nature of those arguments (and the corresponding counterarguments), these are mostly not rehearsed here, except for one. This particular argument is by no means the most commonly or most energetically adduced, but it has unique theological connotations. A number of studies have recently highlighted the fact that, contrary to many people’s assumptions, the world really is becoming a nicer place (Pinker 2007). These days, there are fewer wars, and essentially none between wealthy nations. There is less violent crime, at least in most of the industrialized world. Nearly three-quarters of the world’s sovereign states have abolished the death penalty, at the time of writing, when half a century ago virtually no country had banned it (Amnesty International 2008). A reasonable explanation for this—indeed, possibly the only available explanation—is that it reflects an increasing appreciation of the value of life. But what explains that? The most plausible explanation is that people are more in control these days of the quality and quantity of human life. When something precious can be snatched away at any moment, and indeed is snatched away from people we know on a regular basis, the only way to cope is to regard it as not so precious after all. But when the frequency of that occurrence falls—in particular, when the likelihood that one will oneself be a victim any time soon is very low indeed—the possession may become more precious, and one may behave accordingly, both protecting it for oneself and respecting its possession by others. That possession is, of course, life. Consider how precious life will be in a post-aging world. As things stand, the chance of dying in the coming year if someone is no longer an infant but is under the age of 30 is under 0.1 percent—less than one in a thousand— just so long as that person lives in a reasonably affluent neighborhood in an industrialized nation (World Health Organization 2004). That means, roughly speaking, that once the risk of death from aging is reduced to the levels that apply to people in those circumstances (in other words, to as near zero as makes no difference), the average person in such societies can expect to live at least 1,000 years—unless, of course, the risk of death from causes not related to age rises, either chronically or because of a catastrophic event. Consider what things you’ve done in the past 24 hours that ran a clear, albeit tiny, risk of your death. Did you cycle to work? Did you cross the

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street at a moment when, had an approaching driver accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake, you would have been hit? Did you have a longer conversation than absolutely necessary with someone exhibiting the symptoms that usually signify a cold but very occasionally signify something that’s fatal? Would we be so blasé about such matters if these events were the main things that people actually died of? Most people would not. Risk aversion might be felt to have downsides, though when it is considered more generally we can see that it also has very great upsides (e.g., disincentivizing violence). But the feature of risk aversion that must be highlighted here is that risk can be lessened by technology. Road accidents, for example, could already be very greatly reduced in frequency if we chose to spend the money to equip all cars with highly sophisticated, but technically feasible, sensory equipment that enabled automatic overrides in the case of driver or pedestrian error. Thus, as technology continues its everaccelerating march, there is reason to be confident that aging-independent causes of death will simultaneously become ever rarer. The implications of this point for human life spans are much more profound than may be presumed initially. Absent any improvement in safety from age-independent risks of death, the probability of death as a function of age would be like the probability of decay of a radioactive atom: just like radioactive samples, the population would have a “half-life.” There would be a period of time—call it 1,000 years, for illustration—after which (barring nearby supernovae, etc.) exactly half of those alive at the time longevity escape velocity was achieved would be dead, and after 2,000 years three-quarters of the initial population would be dead, and so on. Since the number of people on the planet is roughly two to the power 33, this means that after 33,000 years, everyone alive when aging was defeated is likely to be dead, and after 40,000 years, the chance of anyone alive then being still alive is under one in a million. Life spans of 1,000 years may initially seem bizarre, but once one has got used to that idea, life spans of 40,000 years are probably not much harder to imagine. And the critical point is that everyone dies eventually—indeed, everyone dies in a tiny fraction of the age of the universe. Doing the corresponding calculation that takes into account progressive improvements in our avoidance of death from age-independent causes, it is possible to examine the (extremely pessimistic) scenario in which we halve our risk of death every 1,000 years. In other words, suppose half of those alive when aging is defeated die within the subsequent 1,000 years, but of those who make it through that millennium only a quarter die during the following millennium, and only one-eighth of the remainder die during the millennium after that, and so on. It turns out that continued

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progress of this nature allows a substantial proportion—28 percent in the case just described (which, it must be remembered, is based on highly pessimistic assumptions)—to avoid death indefinitely (de Grey in Klein et al. 2004, 17–29). There are things we don’t currently know about the fate of the universe, of course, so there may be limits placed on our longevity by events such as the splendidly named “Big Crunch,” but individuals could still expect to live billions of years, not thousands. Forget nearby supernovae: it’s a very, very good bet that if civilization lasts even 10,000 more years we will have developed technology to “defuse” stars before they explode, to move the earth out of the way, to build adequate shields, or in some other way to survive a supernova so close that it would certainly kill us all if it happened tomorrow. I gave this section of the essay a title with a question mark. Well, is this a theological complication or isn’t it? Certainly the idea that lots of us might live literally forever as a result of simple human ingenuity, unaided by divine hand, has theological connotations. But I believe it has no theological implications whatsoever, because, just as for the defeat of aging, it’s only an extrapolation. It says nothing at all about what’s actually going to happen, only about what is likely to happen, other things being equal. It does not mean we have in any way made whatever omnipotent beings there may be out there any less omnipotent. Nor does it mean we have sought to do so. All it means is that we have sought to stay alive and keep each other alive—to save lives, just as holy scripture seems rather unanimously to advise we do. Thus, while acknowledging my status as a professional scientist but a mere recreational theologian, I leave you with the conclusion that defeating aging—and progressively defeating other causes of death too—is God’s work, and will remain so until he feels we’ve done it enough, whenever that may turn out to be.

CHAPTER 2

The Evidence-based Pursuit of Radical Life Extension Pete Estep

Introduction: The Nature and History of Aging and Death Aging and resultant death appear to be universal features of life on our planet. It was once thought that simple organisms might live indefinitely, or at least escape the demise we see so clearly in higher organisms, but recent careful tests have shown that even single-celled microbes such as bacteria age and die (Stewart et al. 2005). They display increased probability or risk of mortality with time (under essentially unchanging conditions), which is a common phenomenological definition of aging. At present, it appears that individuals of every species that has been investigated with sufficient rigor will decline and experience increased mortality risk over time.1 Three basic facts suggest an extremely ancient origin of aging and resultant death: (1) all organisms show certain molecular features that are consistent with aging in other organisms, (2) significant branching in the tree of life occurred at least 1.5 billion years ago (bya), and (3) universal convergent evolution on a very specific complex phenotype that did not exist prior to this branching is considered by experts in genetics and molecular evolution so unlikely as to be essentially impossible. Therefore, a realistic estimate for the origin of aging approximates to the origin of life itself, and a very conservative estimate is at least 1.0 bya. The intricate biochemistries that are fundamental to all of life began as much simpler biochemistries, but their early advantages allowed them to

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outcompete other strategies. The traits of these early winners in the emergence of life were carried forward in evolutionary time, eventually forming the basis for the more complex biochemistries of multicellular eukaryotic organisms. Along with these fundamental biochemistries came the general strategy of individual replacement or reproduction as the sole means for carrying forward information essential for continued existence—and an essential feature of this progressive lineage is the death of the elderly. Consider what this evolutionary progression means for all life—especially for highly sentient life throughout time, including and especially today. It is generally accepted that life began over 3 bya. It is also accepted that neurons arose about 650 million years ago (mya) and primitive brains arose a few tens of millions of years after that. The Cambrian Explosion of about 540 mya attests to the wide diversity of life forms carrying an organized nervous system that eventually gave rise to brains. Increasingly complex brains gave rise to increasingly complex and powerful thoughts, creativity, emotions, and relationships. So, the basic biochemistry that all living organisms carry today allowed the eventual development of sentience—but it carried with it an absolute and inescapable cost of aging and eventual death of every individual. What began as an inconsequential loss for one-celled microbes has become an enormously consequential burden for humanity. How and to what degree sentient species other than humans are impacted by death is difficult to say; nevertheless, many primate species, and even non-primates such as elephants, show clear emotional responses to the death of members of their own species, even nonrelatives. The apparent commonality of deathinduced grief in most or all apes (Pollock 1974; Patterson and Gordon 1993) suggests an ancient origin and sets a likely minimum of 5 mya (Patterson et al. 2006). Even though it is difficult to set a precise date of origin, the psychological burden of aging and death must have become increasingly heavy for organisms with complex communal relationships. Diversity of skills and abilities along with increased cooperation are notable in certain primates and seem to have reached their pinnacle in humans. Cooperation among people with greatly varying skill sets has driven an unprecedented emergence of humans as the dominant species on our planet. In other words, humans aren’t simply cooperative, they are highly complementary. Complementarity means that our relationships aren’t just familial and emotional but also specialized, practical, and essential. We as individuals exist at the center of a complex nexus of associations that helps ensure our survival and happiness. Even in much more primitive organisms, death of a close relative appears to trigger understandable emotions, but in certain mammals this circle of

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relationships extends much farther. People can be devastated emotionally by the death of a special member of even distant species, such as a pet dog, cat, or bird. This might also be the case for other primates. Beginning in the 1980s, a gorilla named Koko capable of employing sign language was aided by her keepers in the serial adoption of four cats. Two of the cats died; their deaths, discussion of them, and other events reportedly have elicited clear mourning responses from Koko. Furthermore, she appears to become uncomfortable when asked to discuss her own death or the death of her loved ones (Patterson and Gordon 1993, 59, 67–68). It is unclear if other primates feel exactly as we do about death. Nevertheless, such observations support an ancient origin of the recognition that death is very undesirable and looms in everyone’s future. Being accompanied by an increasing awareness of the painful specter of death, the emergence of higher levels of sentience must have been under natural—and probably at times intense—selection to assuage death-related distress. The results are easy to see. Human civilization is pervaded by an incredible array of strategies for reducing, transcending, or eliminating the looming burden of death, from the spiritual and supernatural to the purely materialistic. Many have long argued that the most obvious manifestation of this selective process is religion, which typically promotes belief in evidence-free myths of transcendence, the powers of which are propelled and amplified by strength of group and individual conviction (Holliday 2001). Materialistic approaches are often intermingled with supernatural approaches. An outstanding and well-documented example is the pyramidbuilding culture of ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Even for those who ostensibly favor purely materialistic approaches, a clear result of this intense selection is a resulting neural architecture that is prone to wishful thinking and denial. Many who study the evolution of behavior recognize that gullibility and self-deception are far more pervasive than would be expected if we assume them to be maladaptive (Knight et al. 1999; Trivers 2002). But they are almost certainly adaptive, allowing escape from the most corrosive aspects of our existence including—and probably especially—death. Even many in science and engineering, fields that are typically associated with the pursuit of evidence and rationality, are prone to wishful thinking and denial, and these tendencies are heightened with increasing importance of the goal. The vast majority of scientists and engineers focus on problems other than tackling aging or death—and are even reluctant to think or speak openly about them—despite the enormous cost and suffering. This is the strongly selected neural architecture of denial at work. But natural selection of traits for wishing away death hasn’t been so strong as to completely eradicate the underlying desire to eliminate this most

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pernicious evolutionary artifact, or at least reduce its impact, through science and engineering. The history of this quest reaches far back into human history, probably far beyond the efforts of ancient Egyptians. The presence of death-induced mourning in other primates suggests a very ancient origin. As the problem-solving abilities of our distant ancestors increased sufficiently to meet and overcome other vexing life-and-death challenges, they likely were focused increasingly on the creation of a reliable, systematic approach to escape the incessant grinding wheel that had already claimed every living thing. The Science of Aging and Death As mentioned in the previous section, aging of an organism is defined phenomenologically as an increase in mortality risk with time under the same conditions. Some of the mechanisms responsible for this decline have become reasonably well understood and generally accepted within the scientific community; nevertheless, there is no universally accepted general model and a detailed mechanistic model consistent with available data has yet to be proposed. There are two general categories for describing and understanding the causes of aging: physiological (or biophysical) and evolutionary (for review see Estep 2008). Evolutionary models provide an overall framework for understanding aging and the physiological details fit into this framework. The modern evolutionary view of aging and death began in the 1930s with the ideas of Ronald Fisher and John Haldane, leading to Haldane’s suggestion that selection against harmful genetic alleles (various “flavors” of an individual gene) would decline dramatically after the oldest age of reproduction (Haldane 1941, 192–194). In the 1950s, Peter Medawar made an important observation: even in nonaging organisms subject to death (his example was a population of glass test tubes subject to breakage over time), natural selection will tend to favor early reproductive benefits over late-life benefits (Medawar 1952). George C. Williams extended and formalized this concept and proposed the prevailing evolutionary theory of aging (Williams 1957). An extremely important—and I believe the most fundamental— component of this theory is the general synchrony of senescent processes, or more simply, synchrony of senescence. This basic idea has long been understood, and it has even been fundamental to processes outside biology—even prior to Williams’s recognition of it as a primary means for understanding the evolution of aging. Henry Ford reportedly assessed the durability of automobile parts and reduced manufacturing costs of those built far in excess of durability of the rest

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of the car. And nearly a century prior to Williams’s publication, Harvard Medical School professor Oliver Wendell Holmes famously described such a phenomenon in a poem about a “one-hoss shay” (a one-horse carriage) that “went to pieces all at once.” A similar general and synchronous decline is seen in living things, and, unfortunately, people are no exception. This is the almost imperceptible but inexorable process we all recognize as aging. In physiological terms, aging is caused largely by random drift of biologically relevant information and accumulation of various kinds of molecular damage and debris that exceed or escape the organism’s repair and maintenance systems (AGE-ing is caused largely by driftAGE, damAGE and garbAGE). Shortening of telomeres, the DNA sequence caps on the ends of chromosomes, also plays some role in aging but not the primary role some have claimed.2 According to Williams’s theory, the accumulation of these problems within an individual is approximately synchronized by natural selection. This general model appears to hold true for all organisms, even those with complex physiologies involving multiple separate organs and tissues. That’s why when the bodily systems of an old person are looked at in detail, they all show signs of decline. As developmental processes plateau near the point of maturity, all of the body’s cells and systems begin to decline in relative synchrony. On the basis of both the prevailing population genetic theory and data on the causes of death, we expect that these processes are not in exact synchrony within an individual. Because of the way natural selection works on different combinations of genetic alleles, these effects will be approximately synchronized over a breeding population. Different combinations of genetic alleles within and between individuals, newly arising mutations, stochastic processes, and environmental influences cause variations among individuals in both rate of aging and cause of death. This is why different individuals might die from different age-associated causes, such as heart disease in one person versus cancer in another. Nevertheless, an elderly person who is successfully treated for a given illness typically will not survive as long as a younger person who survives the same illness; this is because, on an average, all other life span-limiting pathologies are more advanced in the older person. Experimental data on the underlying physiological causes of aging have been accumulated over many decades; however, we cannot be certain we have identified all causes. Table 1 lists generally accepted classes of pathologies that contribute to aging. This table is adapted primarily from Robin Holliday’s list of repair and maintenance pathways and from Aubrey de Grey et al. (Holliday 2006; de Grey et al. 2002). Listed pathology types include damage at the molecular and even atomic scales. Certain higher-level

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Table 1. Major classes of candidate life span-limiting pathologies. For a detailed explanation of individual pathology types see Estep 2008. Informational pathologies • Nuclear DNA damage (unrepaired damage; primarily post-mitotic cells) • Nuclear DNA mutation (primarily mitotic cells) • Drift of epigenetic (a.k.a. epigenomic) and chromatin states • Mitochondrial genome damage and mutation • Cell loss (and replacement with scar tissue and extracellular aggregates etc.) • Cellular senescence Decline or exhaustion of reserve capacity (conditional) • Telomere shortening • Stem cell depletion Non-informational pathologies • Extracellular crosslinks • Extracellular aggregates • Intracellular aggregates

pathologies such as cellular dysdifferentiation and transdifferentiation are not listed since they are likely caused by more primary damage types listed in the table, for example, epigenetic and chromatin drift. Stem cell depletion and telomere shortening are listed even though neither is likely to be strictly true. Their roles in aging are uncertain and might display conditional dependence on many variables within the body. Promises and Prospects for Conquering Aging Much recent progress has been made in understanding certain aspects of aging and in developing therapeutic approaches for treating various agerelated diseases, disorders, and symptoms. Nevertheless, almost all credible experts in the field are skeptical that a cure will appear in the foreseeable future (for a recent review see Vijg and Campisi 2008). The synchrony of senescence framework and the still-mysterious complexity of human biology present a daunting challenge that cannot be overcome with simplistic approaches, but this has not prevented many from pursuing the lofty and compassionate goal of curing aging. Most focus their research on unraveling the molecular causes and regulators of aging in both humans and model organisms, but the nearly overwhelming magnitude of the challenge has made even the most hopeful among them circumspect in their predictions and pursuit of a cure.

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This prevailing and understandably cautious mind-set within the biomedical community has resulted in a focus on two primary approaches to developing life extending therapeutics: (1) slowing the development of life span-limiting pathologies by slowing overall aging and (2) treating these pathologies once they develop. Option 1, slowing aging, has gained in popularity over the past several years as many interventions in model organisms appear to have this effect. These include single gene mutations; restriction of caloric intake (calorie restriction, CR); and various drugs. In particular, CR has been shown to slow aging in several model organisms, and drugs that reproduce this effect in the absence of CR have been a focus of increasing research activity. Option 2, treating individual pathologies once they develop, is the preferred historical approach of traditional medicine and remains the mainstream standard. A gradual shift toward slowing or treating aging seems to be happening as more leaders in biomedical research call for increased focus on aging as the underlying cause of disease. One particularly notable effort that is gaining momentum is the Longevity Dividend (Olshansky et al. 2006). Even with a move toward treating aging rather than the symptoms and pathologies it causes, it is important to restate the stark reality of the current outlook for curing aging: our most cutting-edge research efforts have not provided a clear path forward to a cure. Many scientific and technological trends are accelerating, and a cure might be realized sooner than we now realize, but current reliable estimates are bleak. This realistic assessment comes two-thirds of the way through a hypothetical ten-year timetable set for the conquest of aging by a group including respected scientists and published in 2002 (de Grey et al. 2002). The group claimed that with sufficient funding, substantial progress could be made toward curing the essential aspects of human aging. It described this approach as strategies for engineered negligible senescence (SENS). Since the time of this publication, the lead author, Aubrey de Grey, has extended these prior claims and restated the aggressive schedule for curing aging with the SENS approach (de Grey 2005). In response, dozens of scientists have strongly disagreed with these claims and the timeline, denouncing them in unprecedented ways (Warner et al. 2005; Estep et al. 2006). Probably even more important, some of the coauthors of this initial publication and other supporters of SENS have subsequently reversed their positions and even stated in direct contradiction to prior claims that the conquest of aging is currently difficult or even impossible to envision (Warner et al. 2005; Vijg and Campisi 2008). In their recent review of the prospects for curing aging, Jan Vijg and Judith Campisi (2008) consider some very challenging issues raised by critics of SENS but previously glossed over by supporters. As one example, they highlight the extreme

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difficulty of repairing genomic and epigenomic drift (which they describe in combination as (epi)genomic): “It would be impossible to counter (epi) genomic drift pharmacologically, and transplanted organs and cells are also subject to loss of (epi)genomic integrity.” They go on to state unequivocally, “Although there is no scientific reason for not striving to cure aging— similar to what we profess to do for cancer and other diseases—our current understanding makes it impossible to assert that indefinite postponement is feasible.” Unfortunately, this statement perfectly summarizes our current state of ignorance and incapacity. Conquering Death is no More Speculative than Conquering Aging Just because a cure for aging is not immediately foreseeable doesn’t mean that it doesn’t lie just beyond the discernible technological horizon—and the same can be said quite separately about a cure for natural death, or at least a reduction in its impact. The bifurcation in the discussion of curing aging and death—that is, separately considering a cure for death—might be a bit surprising to some. However, speculations on possible cures for death that don’t require curing aging are in fact as reasonable as speculations on cures for aging. Unfortunately, a specific and detailed approach for how we might cure either exists in the realms of imagination and the future. Nevertheless, just as with speculations on cures for aging, we can extrapolate current technological trends into the future and see that they might someday achieve power sufficient to erode to a substantial degree the now clear dividing line between life and death. Many future possibilities will emerge with the maturation of key technologies, especially those capable of moving essential information into and out of the brain. I don’t believe in or advocate any specific use of these technologies for loosening death’s currently inescapable grip, but, as mentioned above, I can extrapolate current trends and see quite clearly the obvious power of these key technologies to exert fundamental and positive change. Common potential future scenarios espoused by a growing number of scientists and engineers include purely thought-based communication, distributed intelligence, and even distributed consciousness, with human minds connected in communication networks with other minds and electronics devices, such as digital storage and computers. The Internet has vastly exceeded almost everyone’s expectations and has emerged not only as a central information source and repository, but as a bidirectional media and communications channel that has rapidly revolutionized our very way of life. It is a dramatic demonstration of the power of

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networking, distribution, and sharing of information. It stands as a tantalizing precedent and analogy for what we might achieve as we more directly interface our minds with computers and further integrate them into established networks. It is little wonder that this general concept is spreading to engineers and scientists working in areas as varied as electrical engineering, neuroscience, computer science, robotics, and wireless telecommunications. The appeal of such a possibility among this varied group is particularly important since some of them are beginning to focus on producing basic technologies needed to realize this vision. What if a technology allowed some of the informational content within a person’s brain to be shared with computer networks and other people? How might this and related technologies expand human potential? Consider the powerful distributive nature of such a mind-sharing technology for creating fundamentally different family and social structures and even individual life trajectories. We know that memory information is distributed somewhat diffusely within one brain, so why not among many brains of multiple individuals, networked computers, and digital storage devices? A parent could share experiences, thoughts, and bonding emotions with a spouse and their offspring, giving rise to even more interconnected and loving family relationships. The clear physical distinction between parent and child would still exist but each individual would be an unbroken chain of identity that stretched into the distant past and into a future unbounded by the specter of death as we experience it today. This is not the type of radical life extension (RLE) we typically imagine, which is simply an extension of our lives forward in time. This distributive RLE might be more reasonably described as lateral or diffusional life extension. Since this approach expands life in many ways beyond simply making it longer, a more appropriate label is Life Expansion. Important knowledge could be taught more easily, aided by direct transfer. These shared elements would be represented redundantly among the group and on outboard information storage and computational devices, so that they would persist among surviving members when the physical body of one member died. Each member of the group might share a little in the death of each individual physical body, but identity would be largely preserved. As the power of such technology increased, the proportion of essential information preserved outside the deceased body would increase to the point at which the lost information might exert an insignificant effect. The scenario outlined above is clearly science fiction and almost certainly will not happen for decades, if ever—but the same is true of a cure for aging. Furthermore, this scenario is vastly superior to a cure for aging, which, while

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desirable relative to our currently limited lives, would still leave people vulnerable to accidents, pathogens, homicide, and other unavoidable causes of death. As long as we’re engaged in science fiction extrapolations, why not prefer and maybe even pursue an approach that allows for redundancy or backups of information critical to identity, just as we now do with computers? And why not pursue options that eliminate other clear downsides to curing aging? Overpopulation and other potentially serious problems that might accompany curing aging wouldn’t be any more an issue than they are today. Those worried about the loss of individuality brought about by such futuristic networking technologies need only look at the choices we have even today for networking our computers. The resulting minds and identities wouldn’t necessarily be one big “group mind.” Sufficient understanding of the capabilities of the brain and powerful future technologies might allow reasonably effective partitioning of separate repositories of information, allowing the individual information content of several minds to reside in a single brain. This isn’t so far fetched given the remarkable partitioning that exists today in the human brain, such as between the conscious and unconscious parts. And, again, computers and their networks offer helpful analogies. As we contemplate such science fiction scenarios, we shouldn’t confuse the questions of “should we do it?” with “can we do it?” or “would I want this if we could do it?” I discourage spending lots of time exploring the hypothetical ups and downs of clearly futuristic and science fiction technologies. I think there are clear near-term advantages to much more feeble technologies that lie on the path toward development of more powerful ones, and I suggest we focus our attention on supporting their development for immediate or near-term benefit. Feel free to ponder what lies beyond the distant horizon, but my primary purpose for outlining this futuristic mindnetworking scenario isn’t to claim that this is where we are going or where we should go. Instead, my purpose is twofold: to show that such speculations are clearly futuristic and maybe even unrealistic, but they are just as reasonable—or unreasonable—as speculations on cures for aging, and to suggest the most realistic and fruitful path forward might lead us to a far brighter future that is currently difficult to imagine. It might sound implausible to those who have been listening hopefully to excessively optimistic claims of imminent cures for aging, but available evidence suggests that we might be even closer to conquering death than we are to conquering aging. And the production and pursuit of solid and compelling evidence are essential if we are to replace hope alone with something more substantial.

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The Role of Evidence in Religion and the Conquest of Death Evidence isn’t just useful to scientists in formal investigations; it is also useful and important to each of us individually. As I proposed previously, the brain has been wired by evolution to try to make the best of death. Despite this hardwired predisposition and the intensive training we receive to convince us that death of a loved one leads her or him to a better existence, we know better. The deep sadness in even the most religious among us and the profound alterations of our very existences from these events stand as powerful testimony to our disbelief in even the most powerful approaches humanity has yet devised to cope with this most tragic and malign of all of evolution’s unwanted artifacts. These responses offer real-world proof that many won’t be completely satisfied with evidence-free claims about a spiritual afterlife and underscore the importance of the quest for more tangible solutions. As we make progress toward these solutions it is important for the traditionally religious to realize that false solutions stand as possibly the greatest impediment to the development of real ones. It is also important that they understand the deep influence of death on human history and on their own religious and cultural traditions. For Jews and Christians this tradition includes important considerations of God’s position on the role of death in human life. It also includes God’s future plan to eliminate death, not just through spiritual resurrection, but physically here on the earth. The book of Isaiah is one of the oldest and most important texts in Judeo-Christianity as it advances the notion of a monotheistic Judeo-Christian God. Many Christians believe Isaiah to be among the most important Old Testament prophets, at least in part because of his messianic prophecies that have been interpreted as presaging the coming of Jesus Christ. Isaiah also contains the prophecy that, in a future to come, God will abolish death: “He hath swallowed up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it” (Isaiah 25:8). This passage is often mistakenly supposed to refer to an afterlife or heaven, but note the clear reference to eliminating death from the earth. Also note that this passage continues the tradition of seeing death as a bad thing—as a reproach—and not a desirable and immutable part of natural life. It is even more important to recognize that this is a prophecy about a future— something yet to come—in which death will be eliminated, and, therefore, it is essential that we differentiate this idea from biblical discussions of the history of death. This includes speculative discussions about why death

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exists in the first place and whether or not death is God’s will. To believers, Isaiah’s prophecy renders these discussions largely irrelevant; it means that the long history of death someday will end—that God finally will relieve humanity of this burden. I don’t bring attention to this prophecy to persuade anyone that the evidence-based material conquest of death is God’s will—although I find it interesting that the passage seems to specifically address abolishing death, not aging. I simply offer it as a particularly powerful example of the ancient, ultratraditional belief that death is a reproach to be overcome and as a clear articulation of this supremely reasonable aspiration. I also offer it as a reminder and counterpoint to pro-death bioconservatives so they’ll take at least some care that their words aren’t clearly and directly contradicted by powerful precedent within traditions they draw upon and claim to revere. This is important since many of the outspoken opponents of human life extension are—at least nominally—Judeo-Christian religious traditionalists. Why should we be persuaded by their evidencefree mere opinions, views that not only sound completely unreasonable today but surely have always sounded unreasonable—and that stand in direct contradiction to their own tradition and God’s plan for humanity’s future? In the discussion of such ultimately significant issues of human life and death, it is critical to acknowledge that claims of the importance of and need for death don’t appear to derive from any legitimate philosophical or historical tradition. They are simply modern—and fundamentally unreasonable ad hoc contrivances. They result from a failure to understand historical precedents, possible futures, and the underlying forces that fuel the growing desire for tangible transcendence of the corrosive shackles of unconscious evolution. Compassionate and reasonable subscribers to these religious traditions must take the lead in countering these ad hoc misrepresentations. I hope both opponents and supporters of the conquest of aging and/or death will engage in a discussion on the basis of facts, evidence, and reason, and we must ultimately go where they lead us. Opponents’ direct challenges to the words and ultimate authority of their own God certainly will erode the status of themselves and whatever religious tradition they misrepresent. Supporters face great challenges and unprecedented opportunities. They must remain hopeful as we press forward into uncharted territory, but they must be vigilant in paring away false hopes and unreasonable beliefs as they pursue a better life, whose rewards might well be unimaginable from our current humble and limited perspective.

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Notes 1. The rigorous studies of bacterial aging performed by Stewart and colleagues have established a new standard that had previously not been applied to studies that had concluded certain other species might display negligible senescence. 2. Telomeres shorten with every cell division, resulting in a loss of information, but enzymes within cells can lengthen telomeres, and do so readily under appropriate conditions. This lengthening is strictly regulated by a complex interplay of factors. Therefore, short telomeres are probably more an indicator than a cause of aging.

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CHAPTER 3

Be Careful What You Wish For? Radical Life Extension coram Deo: A Reformed Protestant Perspective Nigel M. de S. Cameron and Amy Michelle DeBaets

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die.” —Genesis 3:4

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s radical life extension (RLE) a theological question? At first blush, Christian reflections on the RLE proposal appear unimportant. It is hard to find theological rationale for the claim that Christianity has any particular interest in the question of the extent of the human life span per se. What lie at the heart of the Christian religion, on the human side, are core anthropological convictions as to the nature, moral stature, and destiny of members of our species, coram Deo, and not the age at which individuals come to the end of their earthly lives. In light of the eternity of the Godhead and that of the raised and glorified future of the individual, the life of the smallest babe and Methuselah himself are as one; all lives are made in the image of the Maker, each with a beginning, a middle, and an end. All flesh, as Holy Scripture makes plain, is grass. And as the Genesis narrative of the antediluvian patriarch Methuselah is seized upon as metaphor for the RLE project, it is worth our being reminded that the refrain that punctuates the account of these long-lived characters is unambiguous: “And he died.” It is as if mortality, pandemic in Homo sapiens

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for the moral-theological reasons set out earlier in that narrative, were yet more starkly illustrated by the death of the very old than by the death of the very young. Even Methuselah died. As if the Scripture were speaking ahead to RLE proponents, it reminds them that mortality is independent of any particular life span, whether of three score years and ten, or of the holy innocents whose deaths at Herod’s hands would signal the incarnation of the Son of God in so devastating a prefiguring of his substitutionary sacrifice that it would “abolish” death (2 Timothy 1:10). Yet for some of its proponents, something else lies behind the RLE proposal: the quest to build a bridge to a life everlasting. They suggest the prospect of living not merely lengthy and healthy human lives, but of transcending the bounds of death itself. This suggestion inspires the most daring and seductive of hopes for mortals, one that would shift from the expansion of productive life and deferring of death to the prospect that we ourselves might join the immortals. And not by faith in religion, we are told, but by confidence in science, a science driven by the “transhumanist” conviction that humans hold it in their power to transcend this most fundamental constraint in the human condition itself. It is no surprise that the extraordinary powers being conferred on us by twenty-first-century science and technology have led to speculations of a new utopia unconfined even by the ravages of time, in which the good life might be made to include the life everlasting. Just as nineteenth-century Marxism emerged as a this-worldly imitation of the kingdom of God on earth, so “indefinite” RLE presents us with a twenty-first century ersatz equivalent of the eternal life of the blessed. And it is partly for this reason that a proper unease is generated in the Christian mind confronted with the conflation of RLE with this bizarre and speculative vision (Kurzweil and Grossman 2004). RLE is a central element in an ideological agenda that is generally called “transhumanism,” an organized intellectual movement that proposes the use of technologies to transform our “human nature” into something else, called a “posthuman” state. Advocates of this view are interested in a wide range of “enhancement” technologies, focused especially on adding computing functionalities to the brain in areas such as memory and communications. Ironically, their adoption of RLE as an element in their agenda (transitional from some points of view, as some transhumanist advocates see digital immortality as the final goal or radical RLE) in fact helps discredit the RLE proposal by associating it with this way-out agenda. In fact, the question of radically extending human life has only an accidental relationship with the core transhumanist ideas, which focus on extending human function and capacity or attaining endless “human” digital survival. That

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is to say, there is nothing inherently transhumanist in RLE, and it would behoove its proponents to disentangle their case from transhumanism, if, that is, they hope to persuade the public and policy makers to finance RLE. For it is not merely among theologians that the difference between RLE proper and a radical RLE, as it were, that offers the promise of immortality, is seen to be profound. RLE proper offers an ambitious program of biogerontology that depends on such modest efforts as research on mice and worms. Our subject is the latter, but the transhumanists have made it difficult to disentangle the two.1 In the pages that follow we shall first consider routine implications of RLE for the human future, in their moral and theological dimensions, before moving to some theologically focused reflections sparked by the proposal. None of what follows is intended to argue against the idea that, if science and medicine permit, human life may continue to extend beyond the range of today’s experience. It has been widely noted that life expectancy in the West has approximately doubled in the past century. Yet that is both true and misleading. The age at which the most aged have died has not substantially changed; perhaps not changed at all. Plumbing, public health initiatives, and the partial conquest of infectious diseases have pruned infant mortality in developed societies to tiny numbers and produced the actuarial outlook that leads many of us to look forward to an experience of life in our 80s and beyond—a prospect that was once exceedingly rare. But the barrier that awaits the very elderly some time after they turn 100 would seem to be as intact today as it was in earlier times. This barrier is the focus of the RLE project. To that extent, it is a parallel process to the general efforts of research and medicine to enable an ever-greater proportion of the human race to live out more of the allotment of 100+ years that has capped our various efforts in combating infectious, degenerative, and other disease. If the RLE project succeeds, life on earth will take on a very different shape. Life in an RLE World—Social Consideration What would the world look like if human beings had the capacity to live for hundreds of years? And how could or should Christians respond to these changes? Assumptions must be made, but some are plainly reasonable. For one thing, we have no reason to believe that the success of RLE technologies will bring with it a kinder, more just world, more wisdom on the part of leaders and followers, a fresh commitment on the part of all citizens—great and small—to the common good. Whether RLE proves exceedingly costly (and therefore the province solely of the private-jet set) or merely expensive (and therefore, to some degree, within the grasp of the

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economically merely successful) is uncertain. It is unlikely to be cheap or free, though that possibility should also be considered. In the more likely scenarios, the capacity of some persons to extend their lives will be set in the current matrix of political and economic forces. It will surely be seen as a uniquely valuable commodity—the elixir that the alchemists had sought in vain, the potion of the goddess Panacea—available to those with the resources to obtain it. In the less likely scenario in which it is readily obtainable and accessed by billions, an additional set of questions is raised, focused especially on natural resources. Population, Resources, and Justice If RLE were readily available and a significant portion of the human population was to live much longer as a result, the present problems of overpopulation and resource overutilization would increase exponentially.2 The natural death rate now serves as a limiting factor to population growth, with its implications for overcrowding, urban sprawl, and resource depletion. If large numbers of people stopped dying at the end of the normal human life span, and particularly if the increase in life span brought with it a substantial increase in the number of healthy reproductive years, the world’s population would rise rapidly.3 It is more likely that a limited number of individuals will have the economic resources needed to avail themselves of RLE, and the impact on global resources will depend on the number of people receiving these therapies. If they were limited to the wealthy, the already-growing global income and wealth disparities would increase dramatically, along with their political consequences. Compounded wealth over the course of a current life span will be magnified as normal periodic redistributions (family and charitable legacies, inheritance taxes) will be curtailed. By definition, current disparities in health care would be compounded, with the stakes raised for poor and rich alike. One immediate issue for RLE is whether the cost of exploring and perhaps developing such technologies might be expected to pull needed research and prevention funds away from work more likely to benefit the many. Since RLE funding has been argued as a rational effort to maximize the effectiveness of medical research in securing extra healthy years of life, an interesting question opens as to whether an extra year after, say, 120, is the equivalent of an extra year for someone who is 70, or someone who is 40. We may rightly ask how we properly weigh the extra years of life that RLE could offer. Is it a matter of diminishing returns? It is already the case that medical research is skewed toward dealing with the diseases of middleaged and elderly people in developed countries, to the massive disadvantage

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of research on tropical diseases in general and especially those associated with poverty and infant mortality. In this sense, access to RLE technologies may be seen as a type of “luxury good,” which provides a distinct type of social advantage to those who have it apart from access to the basic goods of healthy life. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that dramatic disparities in power would emerge in the skewed demographics that would follow the development of RLE technologies. The assumption may reasonably be made that RLE would not arrive as a universal benison coextensive with the human race. That is, like all new and costly technologies—not least, in and around healthcare—the trickledown from wealthy early adopters to the rest would be gradual and would not go far. With good reason, it is understood in the political and economic spheres that people in power will go to great lengths to maintain and increase it. Power to control policy in the United States and elsewhere is already largely centralized in an elite class, through lobbying, campaign funding, and such factors as media ownership. Religious Life Religious life would change in ways that are more difficult to foresee. Groups focused on evangelism would see an opportunity to reach out with the gospel to greater numbers of people over the course of an extended life span. However, the removal of the immediacy of death as average life spans grew would make it easier to ignore mortality altogether. This is already evident when twenty-first-century conditions are compared with those of the nineteenth, in which high levels of infant mortality leant a moral seriousness to the life of the typical family. Deaths during and after childbirth, together with the toll of infectious diseases, ensured that few people were untouched by a constant awareness of mortality. The shift in religious practice and broader social life from the nineteenth century on offers instructive parallels as we assess the likely implications of the next leap forward in human life span. At a practical level, we may expect fresh patterns of career and vocational development. So taking time out of one’s career to spend time in service to either the church or the public sphere would become more common, perhaps the norm. Others would take the time to live hedonistically, thinking that there would always be another opportunity “later” to live out their Christian calling. The model of religious leadership as a career might come under threat, as multi-career lives become the norm. Worship experiences might also change in ways that can hardly now be imagined; current intergenerational conflicts regarding style and orientation in worship would be

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aggravated—though perhaps in a context of the growing privatization of religious experience, itself aided by communication technologies. Marriage, families, and social structures would also be greatly impacted by the advent of RLE. “Till death do us part” takes on new meanings when “death” could be hundreds of years away. People could be less likely to enter into marriage vows, particularly until they are much older, and there might be movements within the church to change the nature of marriage to something less permanent, as serial episodes in parallel with new career patterns. Meanwhile, church leadership might offer another example of the centralization of power by elders. Theological Considerations—The Duality of Death The desire to continue life and postpone death is the most natural thing for human beings to want. In the Christian tradition, there has always been an understanding that biological death is an evil, the “last enemy” (I Corinthians 15:26). We understand that life is a good thing, a blessing from God, and that the pain and suffering of death grow out of human sinfulness, against the good purposes of God (Genesis 1:31, 2:17, 3:19). We were created for life and not for death, and the battle against death is ongoing. Yet death is also the gateway to heaven and an eternal life that will transcend the experience of being in this world. This duality sets the context for any Christian discussion of life and death, and its emphatic assertion of two seemingly contrary views—one highly valuing, the other looking beyond, the life we live—is tested in this new consideration of RLE. The affirmation of this life, and the hope of the life to come, should never be construed as mere ambivalence. The indelible commitment of Christians to the sanctity of life (seen not least in the vigorous opposition of the Christian tradition not simply to the killing of others but also to suicide) suggests that the passage from this life to that other is no minor thing. While it is inevitable, and marks the entry into a glorious new form of human existence, it is only through the deep sadness of death that it will come. Death is to be opposed, even as the life to which it leads is the great subject of Christian hope. The irony, as will be evident, of a Christian perspective on RLE is that while it is a good and proper thing to engage in the preservation of health and the prolongation of life, the net effect for the individual believer will be to put off the experience of death and, with it, the entry into eternal life.4 In this battle against suffering and death we find the theological purposes of medicine. One of the foundational aspects of Jesus’s earthly ministry was that of healing for body, mind, and soul. In addition to saying, “Your sins are forgiven,” he also said, “Get up and walk” (Matthew 2:5, 11). In his

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declaration of his own mission and purpose, Jesus quoted the prophet of old: “ ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor’ . . . Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing’ ” (Luke 4:18–19, 21). A central part of the mission of Jesus was to bring healing for the whole person, including taking away the suffering of the body. In this sense, then, many life extension technologies may be quite good in and of themselves, in that they may relieve the suffering of the body (and the mind), though their goodness will greatly depend on the purposes for which they are used. Thus, medicine is meant to continue in that tradition of healing, recognizing that finally it will fail, since mortality will triumph. This can be differentiated from technologies that seek, not to make people whole, but to make them something different, by “enhancing” human capabilities beyond the range of the human. To the extent that RLE technologies serve to heal people of their diseases and to restore them to physical and mental wholeness, they can be seen as in line with the ministry of healing. But to the extent that they seek to bypass the human and to recreate human beings into something else, they claim to usurp the resurrection, which is God’s alone. The goodness of the biological life we have been given and the war against death as an enemy, however, are not the whole story. For Christians, though we consider death as the last enemy, we also see it as the enemy that has been overcome in the resurrection of Christ to eternal glory. Life extension technologies can only ever be a relative good, and one that could potentially draw us away from God if we were to believe that our ultimate hope remained in them instead of God. Like almost anything good, they could become idols that turn us from God to ourselves in inappropriate ways. Christians know that our hope is ultimately in God and not technology. Technology has a key role to play in the relief of suffering in this life, but it cannot save us in the end. Biological life is a genuine good, and human life has intrinsic value; we welcome advances in medical technology that promote the flourishing of all human beings. But human biological life is not an absolute good, one to be maintained at all costs; it has relative value in the grand plans of God for our redemption. And in a world of greatly extended human life span, when death supervenes through accident, homicide, or military action, for example—causes unconnected to the aging process—it would take on a new and terrible aspect. The conflation of the two different conceptions of the proper place of RLE—as scientific enterprise aimed at pressing back the boundaries of “death by old age” and as ersatz immortality—is to be regretted, though

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there is no doubt that the seductive pull of the latter is very great. The one is a legitimate enterprise of science and medicine, and whether its results are incremental or dramatic they represent the further extension of the impetus to heal and preserve life in which religion and medicine have long been allied—a bond cemented in the healing ministry of our Lord. The latter is not merely speculative, in scientific terms, for all the learning with which some of its advocates have made their case; it appeals to the deepest unease and longing of a mortal race by beckoning its members into an experience that denies the moral grounding of death in sin. That is to say, the proponents of a technology-driven ersatz immortality are the legatees of the serpent’s message to Eve that, contrary to what God had said, she would not die. Power, Sin, and the Place of Technology It is important to recognize that RLE technologies will be employed, like all technologies, for both good and ill. The Christian understanding of human nature is not naïve. Sin is evident in every aspect of our lives. Thus Martin Luther warns both of the magnitude of our sin and our capacity to deceive ourselves about it: “Just as reason is overwhelmed by many kinds of ignorance, so the will has not only been confused but has turned away from God and is an enemy of God . . . Therefore this manifold corruption of our nature should not be minimized; it should rather be emphasized” (Luther 1958, 142). John Calvin likewise emphasizes sin as a form of blindness in which we think we see well the things around us; yet when we stop to look at the sun, “we are compelled to admit that our keenness in looking upon things earthly is sheer dullness” (Calvin 1957, I, 38). He states quite frankly of the human race that “all of us are inclined by nature to hypocrisy” and that “what is a little less vile pleases us as a thing most pure” (Calvin 1957, 37–38). Any assessment of the likely use and consequences of a vast new power to be granted to men and women must reckon with the fallen nature of humankind and our tendency to abuse our opportunities for power. RLE technologies would indeed constitute a vast source of power, granted to some whom by their resources or for some other reason would be enabled to live for very long periods. This is one practical reason why the institutions of government are so necessary, to maintain a balance of power between groups and institutions, and to keep the power of any group in check. While individuals and nations are capable of great generosity, the failure of the human race to share its resources more equitably with those in need is not a technological failure. For instance, there is enough food and clean water in the world for all its six billion inhabitants; yet many of the world’s people

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are malnourished, and many die young because of it. This is a failure of political will, not of technical feasibility. One can only imagine how much more likely those with the power to do so would hoard expensive and potent RLE technologies. As a corollary to this understanding of human sinfulness, a Christian understanding would suggest that technologies are not themselves moral agents, good or bad in themselves, but to be judged in light of their use by the moral agents in charge. God has granted us powers of intellect and creativity, and we are to use them to solve problems, and to serve him—in part by serving “the least of” our fellow humans. RLE technologies will grant us very great and new powers, and thus empowered, sinful human beings will choose how to use or abuse them. The Humanist Imperative It is a strange reflection that in the dawning of the third millennium .., the church should find itself called supremely to affirm the dignity of the human race, and to assert people’s need to discover in their humanity, coram Deo, a capacity for fulfillment and service that overshadows the best efforts of the mechanistic sirens of “enhancement.” When those great outpourings of the human spirit, the classical age of Greece, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and their analogues in cultures around the world, have been plumbed to their depths, perhaps the day will dawn when a credible claim can be made that we should seek something more than to be merely human. The Christian understanding of human nature is to link it to the very nature of God, and to do so by two dramatic means. In creation, he has made us in his image, models of the Godhead in space and time. In redemption, he has taken our own nature upon himself, and become flesh—an incarnate form that was not cast away as the ascended and glorified Christ took his seat at the right hand of God on high, an incarnate form that the Son of God bears and shall bear. For the Christian, therefore, embodied human nature is no mere epiphenomenon, but both image and bearer of God himself. This is not to confuse human and divine, but to ground the human in the purpose of the Maker and the person of the Redeemer. And while death, as we have noted, is not proper to human nature but a consequence of its fallenness, death is a given of that universal fallen state that is ours. The immortality we seek is not that of a resuscitated Lazarus, who would die again; it is the immortality that comes from the side of God, a panacea not of our making. Both our understanding of who we are and our hope for the future rest firmly in Christ. As Karl Barth explained of Jesus, “His death, resurrection and coming again are the basis of absolutely

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everything that is to be said about man and his future, end, and goal in God” (Barth 1960, 624). Conclusion The explosive potential of emerging technologies to transform every aspect of social and cultural life in the twenty-first century sets the context for this particular discussion (Cameron 2007). While it raises many questions with deep ethical significance—from robotic warriors to genetic manipulation5 to an end to privacy—there are two dimensions of its ambiguous promise that most clearly reveal the depth of its impact: the prospect of the “enhancement” of human capacities (especially, cognitive) and the radical extension of the human life span. It is therefore in the double aspect of the RLE discussion that some of the sharpest questions are raised for the human future: in the long term, for the human good and indeed the survival of the species, and more immediately, for policy direction and funding priorities. Like other emerging technologies, RLE holds promise for both benefit and harm to the flourishing of human beings. While researchers may have no ideological axe to grind, many of RLE’s most enthusiastic supporters also embrace transhumanism, the push to move beyond human capacities toward finally becoming “posthuman.”6 This is often coupled with a highly optimistic view of the capacity of human beings to be wise and generous in their use of power. Sometimes this takes the form of a naïve libertarianism that discounts the impact of economic forces, political will, or the entailments of technologies themselves to shape and limit the choices open to many, and ignores the prospect of a market-based eugenics and other deleterious cultural assumptions about what “the good” may be.7 Asked at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion why he believed that human beings would freely share RLE technologies, when we do not currently share available resources to meet the basic needs of millions, Aubrey de Grey gave a single-word answer: “Democracy.” It is by no means obvious that universal suffrage will have that effect—not least since it has yet to deliver clean water to large portions of the globe. Yet RLE has remarkable potential to provide an increase in healthy, productive human life. In Christian theology, death is rightly understood as an enemy to be fought, even if finally the struggle will be lost. We are still called to live out the ministry of healing of body and mind, and RLE technologies may be understood as part of this ministry—to contribute basic scientific research to better provide healthcare for those who need it most. If the public funding of life extension technologies is to become anything more than an overreaching generation’s pipe dream, then it must be used

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wisely and justly. This is what Christian humanism brings to the table: an affirmation of the dignity of those who bear the image of their Maker, the final significance of their lives whether long or short, and their responsibility to steward both the scientific enterprise and the lives they have been given for the good of one another and the glory of God. Notes 1. Thus, the cover of Kurzweil and Grossman’s book (2004) is emblazoned with the slogan, “The Science Behind Radical Life Extension.” 2. “Despite the declining fertility levels projected over 2005–2050, the world population is expected to reach 9.1 billion according to the medium variant and will still be adding 34 million persons annually by mid-century” (World Population Prospects 2004). 3. This is not the place to enter into the continuing debate about global population. One does not need to endorse Thomas Malthus’s dire and discredited predictions or the mind-set of Thomas Ehrlich’s 1968 best seller, The Population Bomb (which no longer dominates the thinking of demographers), to take the view that widespread appropriation of RLE would lead to a massive growth in global population with concomitant pressures on every natural resource. 4. The exact dilemma of St. Paul expressed in Philippians 1:23—it is “far better” to be with Christ (i.e., to die), and yet he is duty bound to stay and support the Philippian believers. 5. We have discussed the parallel question of germline interventions in Cameron and DeBaets 2008. 6. For more information, see the values declarations of the World Transhumanist Association, www.transhumanism.org. 7. A push toward “market eugenics” in which the norms to be met are set, not by individuals, but by the dominant social, cultural, and economic forces around them, is likely, even as we see now with adoptions of other technological means. Per Markus Anderson has noted that “age-retardation technology would not be one choice among others. It will be embraced as normative, just as modern sanitation, diet, immunizations, and antibiotics (and now heart valve and shoulder replacement at age 78) are goods judged to serve basic human need.” (Anderson 2008).

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CHAPTER 4

Extreme Longevity Research: A Progressive Protestant Perspective Ronald Cole-Turner

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rotestant Christians differ from each other in their opinions on nearly everything, including science and technology, and so we should expect that Protestant responses to the prospect of extreme longevity will range from condemnation to enthusiastic endorsement. Many Protestants (but not all) will share the worries of the secular critics of longevity, who suggest that aging should be left to run its course because it focuses the mind on life’s goals and keeps the generations in balance (Boorse 2005). And many Protestants, including some of those who claim to worry about missing out on benefits of mortality, will nonetheless rush to embrace life extending technologies as soon as they go from the laboratory to the clinic. Most Protestants will probably think that extreme longevity raises theological or religious questions. Just what those questions are and what answers might be offered will be less clear. This chapter is an attempt to explore some of the possibilities. Our exploration arises out of a theological perspective rooted in historic Protestantism, specifically the Reformed Protestantism associated with John Calvin. This presentation is characterized by a willingness to reform theological concepts in light of newer forms of understanding and in response to new possibilities, especially those presented by science and technology (United Church of Christ 2008). As a result, the central question raised here is not how extreme longevity threatens theology or how it should be opposed, but how theology and the church can learn from and respond to the new situation in which we find ourselves.

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While no one can predict the future of technological developments, there is growing confidence that some success will be achieved in the effort to extend not just life expectancy, but the human life span itself. While the precise shape and pace of development is unpredictable, the outcome seems inevitable. My own expectation is that the pace of technology and therefore its cultural impact will be gradual and incremental. If so, then individuals and institutions will have time for reflection, enough perhaps for serious assessment of the effects of the first, modest life extension technologies before more radical steps are even developed. Of course, technologies to extend the human life span will develop along with other technologies of human enhancement, and the desire for one form of enhancement is very likely to feed the desire for others. If so, then extensions of the human life span will occur as part of a mixed suite of developments. Life spans will be extended, cognitive abilities increased, and quite possibly, other modifications will become available, perhaps at modest levels at first, but increasingly as part of a package. Living longer with cognitive decline drawn out over several decades strikes many of us as intolerable. Longer life with no decline in mental capacities, however, is more appealing to many. But longer life with ever-improved capacities is likely to be the most appealing to the multi-enhanced human beings of the future, and they are likely to have their way. At the cultural level, the combination of enhancements is likely to fuel popular acceptance. At the technological level, we are witnessing a transformation that is at once incremental, inevitable, accelerating, and converging. Any religious assessment of life span extension must take the full scope of other enhancements into account. Technological Versions of Immortality The word “immortality” has two quite different sets of meanings. In the context of philosophy and religion, it means the quality or state of being immortal, exempt from death or annihilation, or possessing endless life. In the context of science, biologists speak of certain cells as immortal, meaning that under the right conditions, the cells will continue to divide indefinitely. According to the majority view in cosmology, nothing in the cosmos—not even the cosmos itself—is “immortal” in the religious or philosophical sense, but some things may be comparatively long lived and said to be “immortal” in a significant but only a relative sense. Something that is comparatively immortal is always vulnerable to death. It is in this comparative sense that we are now learning to speak of “technological immortality” and its various forms, ranging from “cybernetic immortality” and “cyborgization” to “biological immortality.” Technological

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immortality may include the property of unfading youth or complete immunity to the biological effects of aging, but it cannot include the property of invulnerability to death, both in the sense that catastrophic death could occur at any minute and in the more distant but ultimately more certain sense that even someone or something that is technologically immortal cannot outlive the universe that sustains it. On the basis of this distinction alone, we can say that technological efforts to engineer relative immortality do not encroach on religious hopes for eternal life. But as true as this may be, we have to recognize that the meanings of the two forms of immortality are intertwined in our culture and in our consciousness. One source of confusion is that critics of technological immortality sometimes try to strengthen their argument about its dangers by exaggerating its claims, and therefore its pretensions, for instance, by suggesting that “the logical trajectory of such visions is tantamount to immortality” (Callahan 2003, 3), of the philosophical or religious sort. But, technological immortality is not “tantamount” to true immortality, not even close. Yet the deeper reason for the confusion lies in the wide range of meanings, first of all, about what constitutes technological immortality, but much more about the various meanings of religious and philosophical immortality. Consider first the range of possibilities for technological immortality, starting with biological longevity and cyborgization. Biological strategies aim at stopping the effects of aging and at regenerating cells and tissues as needed. Cyborgization would replace parts of the body and brain with artificial parts, sometimes far exceeding the original parts in their capacities. Nanotechnology might create new possibilities that combine some of the features of biological and cyborg strategies. What these strategies have in common is that the human body remains the corporeal locus of the person. The parts of the body might be replaced, not just in the trivial sense that the atoms of our bodies are exchanged or the cells replenished, but in the more profound sense that the replacement parts are qualitatively different from the originals. But the rebuilt body, like a renovated building, remains in some sense the same building identified as the same person, even if every part is replaced several times over. A quite different scenario, sometime called “cybernetic immortality,” is envisioned by futurists like Ray Kurzweil, who see the “self” as information that is somehow separable from the body and capable of being “uploaded” into a computer substrate, replacing the original body entirely.1 According to Kurzweil, the contents of the human brain—consciousness itself—might someday be scanned or extracted from the brain and transferred to a computer of the future, where the transferred “person” will live

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forever. Kurzweil’s brilliance as an inventor may incline us to take seriously his predictions about the power of the computers of the future. Whether a person’s consciousness can be transferred to a computer is another question altogether, one that many (myself included) find hard to understand, much less accept (Horzeen 2002). Uploading a mind to a computer is different from regenerating or renewing the body, and the difference lies both in its technology and in the form of immortality it would promise. Other forms of technological life extension, which reverse aging and rebuild the body as needed, still leave the body vulnerable to catastrophic trauma or other causes of death beyond the hope of medicine. By transferring the mind or self to a new medium, mortal threats to the organism are removed, but not of course mortal threats to the computer or whatever the physical system into which the mind has been relocated. One way to minimize such threats to the computer is to create multiple copies of the self and store them in different systems. But if that succeeds, which “copy” is the real person? Of all the forms of technological immortality, uploading the person to a new physical substrate is most like some forms of religious immortality, specifically those that are dualistic in their anthropological assumptions. With that observation, we turn our attention to philosophical and theological versions of immortality, which, not unlike their technological counterparts, are arranged across a similar spectrum of more-or-less dualism. Traditional Versions of Immortality Along the spectrum, the degree of anthropological dualism (the view that the human consists of soul and body) correlates with the degree of independence enjoyed by the soul or the mind after the death of the body. At the most dualistic end of the spectrum are philosophical accounts of the immortality of the soul historically associated with Plato. For Plato, soul and body are separate substances, and the soul not only outlives the body but is better off when it is freed from the burden of the flesh. No orthodox Christian ever went this far, although some clearly move toward the dualistic end of the spectrum. These dualistic Christians might use the phrase “immortal soul.” At the opposite end is a more Semitic and early Christian view that the human person is an inseparable unity of mental and physical properties, which dies as a unity and lives again only if restored as a unity in some sort of “resurrection of the dead.” These non-dualists claim to base their argument on what they take to be a more careful reading of the Bible, which leads them to reject the immortality of the soul as an idea that crept into Christianity from Greek philosophy. In

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between these extremes is nearly every possible option, and of course there are Christians (especially Protestants) who deny a belief in eternal life at all. The disagreement between advocates of the two approaches is not confined to Christianity, but in recent decades the conflict has been most intense among Christian theologians, especially Protestants (Cullman 1960). It must be noted again, however, that Christianity has consistently ruled out an extreme form of dualistic immortality, the kind that suggests that the soul is inherently immortal and lives on forever after death without any need of the body. Even Christians who tend toward the dualistic end of the immortality spectrum have to acknowledge that resurrection of the body is a venerable part of Christian orthodoxy and therefore any immortality apart from resurrection is excluded. For this reason, most Christians will be wary of Kurzweil’s proposals since his view threatens their own dualistic views or, more likely, because they reject it with all forms of dualism. And yet at the same time, it must also be noted that in every age, including our own, Christian theologians have not completely jettisoned dualism, specifically the idea that the human self or mind is in some way detachable from the body. While not imagining the uploading of the self into a computer, it has been suggested that immortality might be thought of as a God’s storing the self in His own memory. For example, John Polkinghorne suggests that we understand the human soul as “the almost infinitely complex, dynamic, information-bearing pattern in which our bodies at any one time is organized” (Polkinghorne 2002, 51). When the body dies, “the everlastingly faithful God will hold that pattern perfectly preserved in the divine memory, and then re-embody it in the ultimate divine eschatological act of resurrection at the last day”(Polkinghorne 2002, 52). Quite clearly, Polkinghorne asserts that in the end, the “soul” is re-embodied in a new physical substrate, but between death and resurrection, the disembodied soul is stored in the divine memory, not wholly unlike Kurzweil’s computers. The approach to the problem taken by Polkinghorne is not atypical of Christian theologians, largely because of a sequential peculiarity of Christian expectations regarding the resurrection. The resurrection does not occur for each individual shortly after death. The Bible—which really says very little in detail about the meaning of resurrection—is quite clear that the resurrection has occurred once already (in the raising of Christ) and will not occur again until all are raised with or “in Christ” in what is called the “general resurrection.” In other words, there are no private resurrections; we die alone but rise together. But what happens to the individual during the “interim state” between death and resurrection? Polkinghorne’s answer— that we are somehow stored in God’s memory—is not unusual for Christian theologians, who then debate whether the mind during the interim state is

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conscious or “asleep.” Those who argue that the interim self is “asleep” are dualists, albeit of a milder sort than those who say the interim self is conscious. While strong or extreme dualism (the soul can live without the body) is rejected by Christianity, a weaker form of dualism (the soul can be stored through the death/resurrection hiatus) almost inevitably slips back in. We have seen that cybernetic immortality or mind uploading and the more dualistic versions of Christian immortality are similar in some of their anthropological assumptions, such as the detachable nature of the human self or mind from the body. It was also noted that despite this similarity, they differ in a most basic way: while cybernetic immortality (if successful) might be secure against most threats, it cannot promise literal immortality without showing how the universe itself will continue at least in a way that is sufficient to support that which supposedly supports us. Some have suggested that it may be possible for humans or their technologically advanced descendants to engineer a safe transition through whatever cosmic future might lie ahead.2 This is doubtful indeed, but the proposal serves to underscore the point that the immortality offered by technology is only as good as the immortality of the cosmos, or at least of some part of it. Another important difference between religious and cybernetic immortality should be noted. According to religious-dualistic views of immortality, the soul is either intrinsically immortal, having been created so by God (a minority view in Christianity), or it is given immortality by the immortal God, who “remembers” or otherwise assures the permanence of what is otherwise merely mortal. These two versions of religious-dualistic immortality are different from each other, but they are even more sharply set off from technological immortality, which recognizes that there is no immortal soul unless the contents of the mind can be transferred. Technology begins with the starting point that nothing is immortal unless it is rescued from decay and ultimately from entropy. Religion begins with the belief that something (either the soul and God, or at least God) is immortal at the outset and, as creator, God has the power both to recreate and eternally sustain what would otherwise be lost. Embodiment and Transformation Dualistic views of human nature and of eternal life have fallen out of favor in Christian academic theology. Whether there has been any change of opinion among the vast majority of Christians is another question. But it is important nonetheless to point out that a growing proportion of theologians are cautious about any suggestion that “soul” and “body” are two parts or even two dimensions of the embodied human person. Some are willing to go

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so far as to say that at death there is no soul, awake or asleep, that continues to exist, except in the sense that the entire past continues as part of the content of God’s memory. We will live again only if the God who remembers us also recreates us and reinstates our consciousness in the substrate of the new creation, restoring enough of our own past memories to our then-present conscious experience that we feel that “we” are alive again. What dies then lives again, not because it continues in any sense of that word, but because God brings it back transformed and yet with a subjective experience of continuity. Belief in life after death, in this view, is indistinguishable from trust in God as the only ground of hope for future life. When we think about such a non-dualistic Christian view, and when we turn our attention from Kurzweilian cybernetic immortality to biological longevity and cyborgization, we again note similarities between the theological and technological visions of future life. Unlike cybernetic immortality, biological longevity assumes that the mind cannot be transferred but might be maintained indefinitely if its body can be maintained and renewed, an assumption shared by the less dualistic Christian versions of immortality. Despite the fact that the body might take on many replacement parts, the body itself continues from day to day, perhaps from century to century, as the physical substrate of the self. A key question facing both biological and theological immortality is how to balance the requirements for continuity and change. If the body is unchanged, it cannot be given extended, much less eternal, life, but if the self and the body are one, and the body is wholly changed in a way that threatens continuity, then the self is not immortal but replaced by another, perhaps by a series of others. According to one of the classic statements of the Reformed Protestantism, the Westminster Confession, “All the dead shall be raised up with the self-same bodies, and none other, although with different qualities, which shall be united again to their souls forever.” What can be said about these “different qualities”? Almost nothing except that those who are raised are changed to be like the risen Christ, with bodies “made conformable to his own glorious body” (Westminster 1646, ch. 32). While St. Thomas Aquinas famously lists the four attributes of the glorified body—impassibility, subtlety, agility, and clarity (Aquinas 1474, 257B)—Protestants have been hesitant to speculate far beyond saying that the resurrected Christ reveals the nature of the resurrected life (Jenson 1999, 353–68). If we consider the traits of transformed human beings of the future, it does not seem at first glance to matter very much whether the means of transformation is by resurrection or by technological intervention. In both cases, the transformed human being is youthful, ageless, and cognitively more alert than ever. While these similarities are noticeable, the differences between

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resurrection and technological longevity are profound. Theological immortality and biological longevity have strikingly different aims. Biological longevity, or even small steps in that direction, offers the hope of renewed youth and restored function. While Christian theology seems to offer the same thing in the end, in reality it offers the opposite. Technology offers to give us what we want, or at least what most of us think we want—longer life, youthful bodies, greater health, and mental ability. Christianity invites us to give up what we want, indeed to give up life itself, as the one condition for real life. One of the prayers most beloved to Christians, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, concludes this way: “For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” Far from being the austere sentiment of a medieval monk, these simple lines point to something at the core of Christian scripture and theology. According to the Gospels, “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it’ ” (Matthew 16:24–25 Revised Standard Version). The pathway to life is not found in preservation and extension but, paradoxically, in “self-denial” and in willingness to lose one’s own life. In the writings of the Apostle Paul, which together with the Gospels form the central core of Christian scripture, we find these words: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5 RSV). The Christian promise of eternal life is through resurrection with or “in” Jesus Christ, and the condition for being one with Christ in resurrection is to be one with Christ in death. The twentieth-century German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who is universally revered by Protestants for both his writings and martyrdom, wrote in the 1930s about a deficient form of Christianity that ignored “the cost of discipleship.” The call to Christianity is a call to follow Christ, to detach ourselves from all that holds us, and “to surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death.” What we seek is not life, but death. “When Christ calls a man,” Bonhoeffer continues, “he bids him come and die” (Bonhoeffer 1959, 99). For Bonhoeffer, this meant in the end a literal death in a Nazi prison, but “he was a martyr many times before he died” (Bell 1959, 7). This does not mean that Christians should go out seeking their deaths, certainly not in suicide or even in martyrdom. Instead, it has at least two other meanings. First, if faced with uncompromising and destructive evil, as Bonhoeffer was, a Christian should be prepared to stand for truth and justice even at the cost of her or his own life. This is not an everyday situation.

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The second meaning, however, does apply every day. It is the requirement that Christians willingly and repeatedly surrender the right to define their own lives. To quote from the highly influential John Calvin (1960, III.7.i, 690): We are not our own: let not our reason or our will, therefore, sway our plans and deeds . . . We are not our own: insofar as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours. Conversely, we are God’s: let us therefore live for him and die for him. We are God’s: let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God’s: let all parts of our life accordingly strive toward him as our only lawful goal. “Losing one’s life” for the sake of Christ is not physical death but a living surrender or, as Paul puts it, a “living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1). By letting go of their lives, Christians believe that they are given a life that is far greater, a life (like Christ’s) that is lived for others, and therefore a life that is eternal. To be honest, none of this has ever been very popular with Christians, perhaps especially so today. The version of Christianity marketed by most televangelists and too many local pastors focuses on what faith offers, not what it costs. And so, eternal life is offered as a kind of membership benefit, while the biblical pathway to that life is rarely mentioned. But eternal life without death is precisely what Christianity does not offer, as if prolonging selfishness were a good thing. Christianity offers life, not by making us immortal but by making us new. The essential feature of that transformation is not longevity but a renewed relationship with God. Only as a byproduct of that relationship do we truly live, now and in the future. Even those Christians who know what faith requires, however, do not claim to have met its demands, not perfectly and not yet. The measure of a serious faith is commitment to its path. Does this mean that life extending technologies are incompatible with the Christian life? The answer may be yes for many Protestants, especially those who are serious about the demands of their faith. My own view, almost certainly in the minority, is that there is a risk here but no essential conflict. The risk is that life extending technology might become just another way in which we try to “save our own life,” specifically in such a way that, according to Jesus, saving it means losing it. What way is that? When we seek to save our own life by pulling back into ourselves or by hardening the borders of the self, we isolate ourselves, perhaps irredeemably. Such willful and unredeemed self-isolation, for the Christian, is seen quite literally as hell. The irony here is obvious: technology that offers a self-preserving and self-isolating eternity may in the end offer nothing but hell. The risk, in other words, is not trivial. But what is not clear is that a decision to use these

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technologies and extend one’s life is necessarily a decision rooted in selfishness or self-isolation. If it is rooted in quite a different desire, for example, a longing to serve or to grow further into the experience of spiritual transformation, then the use of these technologies might be an aid rather than a risk to a life of faith. The Narratives and Rituals of Life’s Journey In the end it is not our bodies or our metabolism or our telomeres that most need fixing. It is the whole person that needs to be changed, the whole self, in particular the tendency to turn inward, away from others and from God in self-securing isolation. Will life extending technology turn us away from the transformation we truly need, or will it merely give us more time to undertake it? In other words, if we turn to life extension and embrace it, and if it stops or reverses our aging, will it also stop or reverse our moral and spiritual maturation? Or will it give us the time that many of us need to make our way along the pathway of spiritual maturity? The pilgrimage of faith is a lifelong undertaking, an inward journey of transformation, of losing one’s way and being brought back, losing focus or commitment and renewing it, through a process that is almost wholly obscure at the beginning and through which, in the end, even the detours are part of the path. For a century now, we who benefit from sanitation and medicine have had to consider that our span of time for life’s spiritual journey might reach 90 or even 100 years. Now we are faced with the possibility of extension, perhaps even radical extension. How can we rewrite our narratives of the spiritual pilgrimage to include not merely life’s surprises but life’s extended opportunities? To live an extended, spiritual life will require individual imagination and communal support. We will find that the old narrative structure— childhood, education, work, retirement—no longer suffices. We, or at least the more fortunate among us, will experience life in multiple stages, with times for work, rest, education, and renewal, each coming around again and again as the decades pass. Over time, we will find ourselves in situations or experiences quite different from where we started out. Our sense of continuity through change over extended time will require that we consciously construct, examine, and reconstruct the narrative thread of our lives, the story that unifies our decades. We can only speculate about the shapes and rhythms of a life that is both spiritual and extended, or what rituals might be needed to help sustain identity and purpose over extended decades. Religions evolve carefully and slowly, preserving a link to the past while extending the life of a community through

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time and into the future. What is the future of Protestant Christianity and of the rituals that mark life together in community? My own guess is that we will see only slight shifts of emphasis, not major transitions away from the classic Protestant sacraments of the Eucharist and baptism. For example, the core meaning of the Eucharist as participation in the life of Christ is not likely to change, but emphasis might be placed less on the static or repetitive and more on the developmental qualities, including the theme of continued growth in the Christian life. Likewise baptism will remain the sacrament of initiation into Christian life, but attention might be drawn more to reexperiencing or reawakening that sense of initiation for a new stage of life. Indeed these changes already appear to be under way. Clearly, in addition to the two sacraments, there is room for more rites of passage, especially associated with the transitions of life through the sixth or seventh decade and, as needed, well beyond. Christians of the future who want their extended narratives to be spiritual must think of them not as soliloquies but as dialogues in which they speak but also listen. Only then can an extended life avoid the risk of extending selfishness. Their dialogue is first of all with others who share their faith and their commitment to live a life that is a pilgrimage of faith. Together they will create new rituals. The rituals that marked the old structure—birth, baptism, marriage, sickness, and death—will surely be replaced by new rites that reflect the new reality, marking it, measuring it, and investing it with meaning beyond the mere addition of time. But the dialogue of faith is also a kind of conversation with God, a prayerful self-examination and listening for a call that guides, corrects, and inspires. Short or long, a Christian life is lived in relationships over time, and the measure of life is not in years but in the depth and intensity of those relationships. Notes 1. Kurzweil and Grossman 2004. The back cover of the book announces, “Immortality is within Our Grasp.” 2. See, for example, the widely criticized book by Tipler 1994.

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CHAPTER 5

Becoming Yet More Like God: A Jewish Perspective on Radical Life Extension Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff

And the Lord God said: “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and bad, what if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he was taken. He drove man out and stationed east of Garden of Eden the cherubim and fiery ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the tree of life. —Genesis 3:22–24 Narratives Here, in one of the opening chapters of its very first book, the Bible contemplates what it would mean to live forever. Adam and Eve had already eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil—that is, they had already attained moral knowledge and, presumably, the ability to make decisions and act according to that knowledge. This asset makes them more like God than any of the other animals. If they additionally were to live forever, they would effectively become gods on earth. Thus, God must banish them from the Garden of Eden lest they attain the second aspect defining the differences between human beings and God, the ability to live forever.

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At the same time, though, the Bible records the lives of people and their sons who live much, much longer than we do. Adam lived for 930 years (Genesis 5:6), and his descendants to the time of the patriarchs live for hundreds of years, with Methuselah topping them all at 969 years (Genesis 5:27). As the Bible gets closer to historical time, life spans become shorter, but even the patriarchs live longer lives than any of us does today: Abraham lives for 175 years (Genesis 25:7), Isaac for 180 years (Genesis 35:28), and Jacob for 147 years (Genesis 47:28). Moses lives for 120 years (Deuteronomy 34:7),1 and so a common Jewish blessing for someone is “May you live to 120.”2 Of course, those of us who take a historical view of the Bible recognize these stories as narrative vehicles for describing how things came to be as they are; they are “etiological myths,” where the word “myths” does not mean falsehoods, but rather stories intended to illustrate and explain the origin of something. They are thus true to life in that they point out something accurate and important about our life experiences, even if they are not historically true, that is, even if the events described never happened or the causation that the story asserts is not true. Furthermore, we recognize the extravagantly enduring life spans recorded for the people named in these stories as a literary device to make them seem larger than life, more important than any humans are today. In fact, as Nahum Sarna notes, compared with the Mesopotamian list of heroes before the Flood, who lived for a total of 432,000 years, or the Sumerian list, whose heroes before the Flood lived for a total of 241,000 years, the biblical account, where the ten generations before the Flood live for 1,656 years, is moderate. It is not just remarkably long years of life that make ancient figures larger than life. The Bible, like other religious texts, employs accounts of the great wisdom or astounding strength of heroic figures to elevate their status. So, for example, the biblical Book of Judges describes the unusual cleverness— and, one might say, powers of deception—of Ehud (Judges 3:15–30) and Deborah (Judges 4). King Solomon was “the wisest of all men,” who “composed three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered one thousand and five” (I Kings 5:11–12). He discoursed about botany and zoology (I Kings 5:13) and was able to answer all of the Queen of Sheba’s “hard questions” (I Kings 10:1–9) but was probably known most for his paradigmatic wisdom because of the case he judged in which two prostitutes appeared before him, each claiming to be the mother of the living baby (I Kings 3:16–28). The examples of unusual strength are even more abundant. Typically, they involve a small progenitor facing and overcoming seemingly unbeatable odds. Thus, God has Gideon pare down his army from 22,000 to 300 men to mark the defeat of the 135,000 Midianites as that of God and not

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Gideon’s army on its own (Judges 7–8). Samson, with God’s help, tore a lion apart with his bare hands (Judges 14:6), caught 300 foxes (Judges 15:4), and broke his bonds to kill 1,000 men with the jawbone of an ass (Judges 15:9–15). All this, according to the story, was made possible by his long hair (Judges 16) and his intellectual ability to pose riddles that none could solve (Judges 14:12–18). David’s defeat of Goliath (I Samuel 17:48–51) is another famous example. These literary techniques help to give today’s people a sense of being descended from giants, as Genesis literally claims (Genesis 6:1–4). The ancient stories also ascribe immense importance to the achievements of the past. So, for example, the conquest of the land of Israel is made all the more miraculous by the report of 10 of the 12 spies sent by Moses to scout the land: “The people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large; moreover, we saw children of giants there” (Numbers 13:28). When we look at texts that do not have a mythic purpose or tone, however, we find life spans much closer to our own. Until very recently in human history, it was a notable accomplishment to become pregnant; hence all the patriarchs and matriarchs are described as having fertility problems. Once pregnant, it was a second major feat to make it out of the uterus alive, and anyone who did that had to avoid the diseases of childhood. Infertility remained a significant issue, and antibiotics and vaccinations are recent innovations. Even in the United States, with its advanced health care facilities, life expectancy in 1900 was only 47.3 years of age; by 2000, it had risen to 77. However, in the ancient world and the modern one, if you made it to age 20, you had a strong chance to make it to age 60 or beyond. Hence, we find this timetable in the Book of Psalms: “The span of our life is seventy years, or, given the strength, eighty years” (Psalms 90:10). Similarly, the biblical stories report more normal life spans as we get closer to historical figures. Thus, even though we do not know how old they were when they died, we are told that David (I Kings 2:11) and Solomon (I Kings 11:42) each reigned for 40 years, which is a long but humanly possible duration for a person to rule; likewise, Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, was 41 when he became king, and he ruled for 17 years (I Kings 14:21), thus living to 58. Succeeding kings in Judah and Israel rule as long as 41 years (as Asa did, according to I Kings 15:10) and as short as seven days (as Zimri did, according to I Kings 16:15). These are clearly more normal human spans of life and reign. What kinds of narratives would Judaism create if people were to live much longer lives? My guess is that they would take into account the realities of living much longer. We are already encountering and responding to such realities, as many contemporary people of all faiths live much longer

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than their parents did. Their stories, and those of their children and grandchildren who interact with them and care for them, are usually not of mythic figures; they are rather the stories of real people, some of whom (e.g., those with dementia) diminish terribly as they age, while others triumph in their extended years, doing and accomplishing things that they never dreamed of when they were younger. Likely, narratives of people whose lives have been radically extended will resemble those of the Struldbrugs in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1974), select people within a society of mortals who never die. At first, we imagine that we would delight in living much longer than we do, just as Swift describes Gulliver as doing: But happiest, beyond all comparison, are those excellent Struldbrugs, who, being born exempt from that universal calamity of human nature, have their minds free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of spirits caused by the continual apprehensions of death. (Swift, 1974, part 3, ch. 10) But when he discovers that their promise of immortality does not include the promise of eternal youth, he finds out what their lives are really like. They are removed from positions of authority and separated from financial power. Their abilities to think, read, and enjoy life diminish as they age. And they lose their capacity to participate in the public life of their community. The Struldbrugs, as Swift portrays them, were a minority within a society where most people lived normal life spans. Thus, even if they were healthy, as we are assuming in this book, they would additionally suffer the pain of seeing many of their friends die, a factor that also affects people who live long lives now. This involves not only the sadness of losing good friends; it also, as Swift describes, involves one’s inability to understand or relate to younger people. Swift’s wonderfully imaginative leap into our fantasies about living much longer than we normally do came to mind because Maimonides (1140–1204), an important Jewish physician, rabbi, and philosopher, does something similar in describing people’s desire to be resurrected after death. He describes the confusion that most Jews have about life after death:3 The first group thinks that the good [that awaits those who obeyed God’s commandments during their lives] is the Garden of Eden, which is a place where they eat and drink without physical labor or weariness; where there are homes built out of precious stones, with beds covered with linen bedspreads, and rivers bringing wine and fragrant oils, and many such [material] things as this . . . The second group thinks that the good to be hoped for is the days of the Messiah, when all people will be angels, all living

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forever, with tall stature and with prodigious procreation until the whole world will be filled with them . . . The third group thinks that the good that we hope for is the resurrection of the dead, such that a person will live after his death and return with his relatives and the people of his household and eat and drink and never die again . . . The fourth group thinks that the good that will come to us through obeying the commandments is bodily rest and the achievement of all worldly goods in this life, such as the fat of the land and many possessions, many children, long life, health, peace, security, and a Jewish king who rules over those who would harm us . . . The fifth group—and they are many—put all these things together and say that the hope is that the Messiah will come and resurrect the dead, who will enter the Garden of Eden and eat and drink there and be healthy forever. But all people wonder whether all will be clothed and whether all will be equal at the resurrection. He then points out that people need enticements at early stages of development, but ultimately they should obey the commandments or learn Torah not for the sake of attaining something else—including these ultimate rewards—but rather for their own sake, which the Rabbis call “serving God from love.” He quotes the Rabbis, who say, “Lest you say, ‘I will learn Torah so that I will be rich,’ ‘so that I will be called “Rabbi,” ’ or ‘so that I will acquire a reward in the world to come,’ the Torah says, ‘to love the Lord your God’ (Deuteronomy 19:9), teaching us that everything you do you should do only out of love” (Sifre, Ekev, on Deuteronomy 19:9; see also B. Nedarim 62a). He says, though, that this is very hard to do, and so the Rabbis say, “A person should learn Torah [and fulfill the commandments] even if not for their own sake, for in doing them not for their sake they will come to do them for their sake” (B. Peshahim 50b). For our purposes, though, the interesting thing to note is that Maimonides captures people’s fantasies about living much longer—and in a better state— than most of us do. We want fame, fortune, and long life. Furthermore, especially in light of Swift’s parable, it is important to note that Maimonides includes health as part of our desires as well. These fantasies also illustrate that we know that our human fate often lacks these things—and hence their attractiveness to us and their hold on our dreams. The Talmud also plays with this fantasy. It says, “Until Abraham there was no old age”—that is, old age did not mark a person; therefore, “whoever wished to speak to Abraham would speak to Isaac, and the reverse” [because they looked exactly alike]. Thereupon he [Abraham] prayed, and old age came into existence, as it is written, “Now Abraham was old, advanced in years” (Genesis 24:1; B. Bava Metzia 87a). Note that the marks of old age are

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seen here as a blessing, as God’s response to Abraham’s prayer that he bear the marks of being older than his son. Finally, Ulla, a talmudic sage, draws attention to the contradiction between two biblical verses: “He [God] will destroy death forever. My Lord God will wipe the tears away from all faces” (Isaiah 25:8) and “No more shall there be an infant or graybeard who does not live out his days. He who dies at a hundred years shall be reckoned a youth, and he who fails to reach a hundred shall be reckoned accursed” (Isaiah 65:20). The first verse affirms, as Ulla understands it, that death will cease to affect humans altogether, while the second asserts that, although death will ultimately occur, life will last considerably longer than it does now for most people. He ascribes the first to Jews and the second to heathens, so that extended life will, in the future, be a kind of second-best prize, with immortality the promise of future human existence (B. Pesahim 68a; B. Sanhedrin 91b). Doctrines Unlike Christianity, Judaism is not based on a series of doctrinal affirmations. One of the hardest things for many people to understand about Jews and Judaism, in fact, is how people can deny belief in God, never step foot into a synagogue, know very little, if anything, about the Jewish heritage, and not live in accordance with Jewish law, all the while still considering themselves Jewish. This happens because Jewish identity is not only religious; it is also ethnic. In fact, according to Jewish law, anyone born to a Jewish woman is Jewish (M. Yevamot 2:5; M. Kiddushin 3:12; B. Kiddushin 68b; M.T. Laws of Forbidden Intercourse 15:3–4; S.A. Even Ha-Ezer 8:5). This is parallel to American citizenship: people born in the United States are American citizens even if they do not speak English or know who George Washington was; only immigrants need to prove their knowledge of American history and government to become citizens. Similarly, only converts to Judaism must demonstrate their knowledge of Judaism and their commitment to Jewish practice to become Jews; children born to a Jewish woman are Jews no matter what they know or do. Nevertheless, Judaism certainly entails a number of convictions. Two stand out as relevant to the prospect of radical life extension (RLE): human mortality and the Messianic hope. Human mortality We have already seen that the Garden of Eden distinguishes God from humans in that we are mortal and God is not. Swift’s Struldbrugs, who live

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forever, would compromise that distinction; RLE would not. RLE would, however, weaken one of the important implications of our current span of life, namely, the sense that we have a near deadline to accomplish whatever we can. This is perhaps best expressed in Psalm 90: 10. The span of our life is seventy years, or, given the strength, eighty years; Laden with trouble and travail, they pass by speedily and fly away . . . 12. Teach us to count our days so that we may attain a heart of wisdom . . . 17. May the favor of the Lord, our God, be upon us, and may the work of our hands prosper. O prosper the work of our hands! The principle articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1958) that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion” is clearly relevant here, for if one did not have the deadline of at most 80 years of life, one would not need God to “teach us to count our days so that we may attain a heart of wisdom” in how to use them. With much more time, we would probably procrastinate and often not accomplish altogether what we would have achieved with a shorter deadline. This is a common pattern in life as we know it, and we have no reason to believe that it would not apply to people living an extended life span as well. RLE might also affect our value system. In words that parallel the message of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), the Psalmist uses death to demonstrate that a life of fame and fortune should not be our goal, because neither of those will remain after our death (Psalms 49:10–13, 16. See Kohelet [Ecclesiastes] 1:12–2:26.): 10. Shall he live eternally, and never see the grave? Clearly death engulfs even the wise, no less than the foolish and unenlightened, leaving their wealth to others. 11. Their grave is their eternal home, their dwelling for all time, of those once famous on earth. 12. Man does not abide in honor, He is like all other creatures that perish . . . 13. But God will redeem my life from the clutches of Sheol (the grave), for He will take me. Selah. Again, prolonging life does not necessarily undermine this message, but it does make it weaker, for the longer we think we have until we die, the less likely it is that the reality of death will affect our lives. Just as it is very difficult to convince people in their teens and twenties that they need to take their mortality into account, a prolonged life will likely strengthen and lengthen our pursuit of fame and fortune. We will become even more blind to the importance of other values, such as family, enjoying life, fixing the world, and connecting with God.

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On the other hand, primarily because “the good suffer and the evil prosper,” the Rabbis believed in a life after death where a just God would rectify the accounts. That then led them to imagine what else would characterize such a life after death, and in doing so they wrote their values large. Specifically, because none of us would need to work for a living, we would have time to study Torah, and God would be our teacher. This even gets into Jewish folklore: thus Tevye, in Fiddler on the Roof, imagines that if he were a rich man he would first build a magnificent house with a stairway going to nowhere, but the ultimate mark of his success is that he could “ask a question that would cross a rabbi’s eyes.” If such imagination of a life after death might dramatize Jewish values for those of us now alive, perhaps the very act of dealing with healthy lives much longer than our own might enhance our efforts to achieve ultimate Jewish goals. The Messianic era RLE also affects Jewish notions of Messianic times. That dream, which I describe in detail elsewhere (Dorff 2005, 226–49), includes the following elements: the blessings of many children, the land of Israel, the ingathering of the exiles to Israel, prosperity, health, justice, knowledge of God’s word and will, and peace. These, then, are the elements of an ideal society as Judaism perceives it. As it is now, we have the duty to try to help God, as much as we can, fix the world (tikkun olam) such that these elements of the ideal picture become reality. Presumably, more years should give us even more opportunities, and an even greater obligation, to accomplish this task. This depends, of course, on the degree to which contemporary Jews believe the traditional doctrine of the Messiah in the first place. Indeed, even in biblical, rabbinic, and medieval Jewish sources there is no unanimity in Jewish conceptions of the Messiah. The Talmud, for example, speaks usually of a Messiah, son of David, but once it talks about a Messiah who is the son of Joseph. The war of Gog, king of Magog, in Ezekiel 38 becomes in rabbinic texts instead the war of Gog against Magog, where both of those names designate enemies of Israel who will fight and destroy each other before the Messiah comes. Medieval sources explain the sufferings of Jews in those centuries at the hands of Christians in Crusades, the Inquisition, expulsions, and pogroms as “the birth pangs of the Messiah.” Just as a woman suffers most just before delivery, so too, the hope was, these terrible times would herald the coming of the Messiah soon. Some thinkers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries replaced the notion of a person called the Messiah with a Messianic era that people would bring about themselves without waiting for a supernatural intercessor.

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Whether one had to wait for such a person was at the heart of the debate between those favoring human efforts to bring about a Jewish state in Israel, an important part of the Messianic dream, and those who opposed such efforts. RLE would, of course, enhance the time people have to accomplish not only the Zionist part of Messianism, but its other goals as well, and so it would be yet another reason to supplant the notion of a supernatural Messiah with the concept of a Messianic era, including all the components mentioned above. Extended life makes the task itself harder to accomplish, however, at least in some respects. For example, as we grow older than our ancestors did, we already have to invent whole new areas of medicine to treat our geriatric illnesses and disabilities. Extreme longevity will likely bring a variety of yet unseen problems to thwart the arrival of the Messianic era. Unless rather drastic steps are taken to limit family size, overpopulation will become even more of a problem than it is now, and so the promise of prosperity will be even harder to fulfill and the potential for war over the resources that exist will become all the greater, making peace yet more difficult to attain. Practices The Mishnah (c. 200 ..), presuming as it does a normal human life span in its era, spells out the following prescription for life:4 He (Yehudah ben Tema) used to teach: At five years of age—the study of Bible; at ten—the study of Mishnah; at thirteen—responsibility for [living in accordance with] the commandments; at fifteen—the study of Talmud; at eighteen—marriage; at twenty—the pursuit of livelihood; at thirty—the peak of one’s powers; at forty—the age of understanding; at fifty—the age of [giving] counsel; at sixty—old age; at seventy—the hoary head; at eighty—the age of “strength”[as defined in Psalm 90:10]; at ninety—the bent back; at one hundred—as one dead and out of this world. Radically extended life will alter this program dramatically. Most Jews already marry in their late 20s or early 30s, after college and graduate school. Extended lives could result in problems with infertility and may complicate procreation in general. Remarriage after the death of one’s spouse would undoubtedly also become more prevalent, together with all the psychological challenges and benefits that entails and all the legal complications regarding inheritance.

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Similarly, the ages for work and study might well be extended long after the ones indicated in this Mishnah. Elderhostel and many other educational programs, including Jewish study of all sorts, are already available for senior citizens, and their number and variety would probably expand as more and more people live longer. That, though, presumes that people retain their mental as well as well as their physical health. Certainly, the legal limitations that Swift imagined for the Struldbrugs would never exist in Western societies that have already built-in protections for the aged in jobs, health care, housing, and other domains. From earliest times, no such limitations have existed in Jewish law. So, for example, the Talmud rules that even if a man was 100 years old, the writ of divorce that he sends to his wife is valid; we do not presume that he has died during the time that the agent took to deliver the writ to the wife (B. Gittin 28a–28b). Assuming mental capacity, Jewish law imposes no limitations on the work or legal acts of the aged. On the contrary, the foundational Jewish norm to have respect for the elderly requires that society treat them as full adults and provide for any special needs: “You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old” (Leviticus 19:32).5 So, for example, the Talmud already interprets the biblical command to honor one’s parents (Exodus 20:12) as applying to elderly parents, whom one must feed, clothe, and lead in and out if they cannot care for themselves (B. Kiddushin 31b.); similar care would be required for other elderly people who need such assistance. Institutions Jewish institutions have already taken steps to make their facilities accessible to the disabled, and they have introduced social and educational programs for the elderly as well. The average age of the residents of the Jewish Homes for the Aged of Los Angeles, on whose Ethics Committee I sit, is now 93, and it has a long waiting list. Clearly, society as a whole, including subsets of it like the Jewish community, will have to take into account a burgeoning population of seniors in planning the institutions, transportation, health care, and educational and social programs of the future. In this book, however, we are assuming healthy life extension rather than increasing debilitation as one becomes older. Under such circumstances, one could imagine synagogues with programs designed not only for children, teens, and people at various stages of adulthood as we currently know it, but also programs for those from, say, 100–120, 120–140, and so on. This assumes that the current desire of people to associate with people of their own generation persists under conditions of RLE.

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Family life might also change, as older and older people are able to have children and as children find themselves not only with grandparents, but with great-grandparents, great-great grandparents, et cetera. Who will have the duty to take care of whom under such circumstances? Will the government be tempted to introduce a program such as that in China in order to limit the number of children a couple may produce for fear that the planet has reached its limit of being able to sustain human beings? Education in Judaism has always been lifelong. Extended life expectancy, though, would require completely new kinds of curricular materials and schools as educators learn how to continue education for those whose minds are healthy but perhaps learn differently than younger people. All of this is admittedly imaginative, but no more so than the way that the rabbis of old took their values and wrote them large in their portrayal of life after death. May such thinking prompt us to exert yet more effort in achieving the ideal world, and may we succeed! Key to Classical Jewish Sources The Hebrew Bible: JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999). M.

Mishnah (edited by Rabbi Judah, President of the Sanhedrin, c. 200 ..), available in a number of English translations, including that of Herbert Danby (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938). B. Babylonian Talmud (edited by Ravina and Rav Assi, c. 500 ..), available in English translation under the general editorship of I. Epstein (London: The Soncino Press, 1961). M.T. Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, completed in 1177 .., available in English translation by a variety of translators as The Code of Maimonides (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949–1974). S.A. Joseph Karo’s Shulhan Arukh, completed in 1563 .., not available in English. Notes 1. Theodor Gaster points out that 120 in the Bible was a large round number that is used in multiple contexts. So, for example, the total weight of gold dishes in the Tabernacle is 120 shekels (Numbers 7:86), both Hiram of Tyre and the Queen of Sheba send Solomon 120 talents of gold (I Kings 9:14; 10:10), and there are 120 trumpeters at the dedication of the Temple (II Chronicles 5:12). See Gaster 1969, 80–81. 2. Between Adam and Abraham, life spans are as follows: Seth 912 years (Genesis 5:8), Enosh 905 years (Genesis 5:11), Kenan 910 years (Genesis 5:14), Mehalalel

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895 years, Jared 962 years (Genesis 5:20), Enoch 365 years (Genesis 5:23), Methuselah 969 years (Genesis 5:27), Lemech 777 years (Genesis 5:31), Noah 950 years (Genesis 9:29), Shem 600 years (Genesis 11:10–11), Arpachshad 438 years (Genesis 11:12–13), Shelah 433 years (Genesis 11:14–15), Eber 464 years (Genesis 11:16–17), Peleg 239 years (Genesis 11:18–19), Reu 239 years (Genesis 11:20–21), Serug 230 years (Genesis 11:22–23), Nahor 148 years (Genesis 11:24–25), and Terah 205 years (Genesis 11:32). 3. Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah, Introduction to Perek Ha-Helek (the tenth chapter of the tractate Sanhedrin of the Mishnah). 4. M. Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 5:23. 5. Although the Talmud applies this verse primarily to learned elderly people and specifically not to an aged sinner (B. Kiddushin 32b–33a), we are required to respect even the unlearned elderly who have lived normally moral lives.

CHAPTER 6

Karma, Austerity, and Time Cycles: Jainism and Radical Life Extension Sherry E. Fohr

J

ainism, as it is practiced in India today, is traced back to the twentyfourth jina (“victor”),1 Mahavira (b. 599 ), who taught a path of nonviolence and austerity to lead people to mok
a (“liberation” from rebirth). According to Jain cosmology, the world is divided into five parts: the heavens, the hells, the middle world of humans and animals, the abode of beings with only one sense, and the abode of enlightened souls (Dunda 2002, 90–93; Babb 1996, 38–41). All beings are part of a cycle of reincarnation (sa sāra) in which they may be reborn as humans, animals, and heavenly or hellish beings.2 Souls reincarnate repeatedly, according to their karma, until they reach mok
a and escape this cycle3 to float to the top of the universe to the abode of enlightened souls, never to be reborn again. It is mok
a, and not heaven, which is Jainism’s soteriological goal. Indeed, a rebirth in heaven is temporary, and not permanent like mok
a; nor do the pleasures of heaven compare to the bliss of mok
a. To achieve mok
a, laypeople must first increase their good karma in order to produce a rebirth suitable for the intensive religious practice of monks and nuns. Then, as renouncers, they eventually eliminate all good and bad karma from their souls. Once this is achieved, mok
a is attained. The smallest parts of sa sāra are the realms in which human births may take place, and therefore a birth as a human is considered exceedingly rare. It is also precious because human birth is necessary to attain mok
a or make significant religious progress of a lesser sort. Although Jains believe

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it is impossible to attain mok
a in this degenerate age, significant spiritual progress may still be made in order to achieve it later in another rebirth. However, detachment from worldly pleasures and the body is also emphasized to make this progress. Indeed, the goal of mok
a is to avoid living as a human or anything else again. According to this worldview, radical life extension (RLE) technology could be undesirable or desirable, depending on the practitioner’s perspective. While renouncers might shun this technology as a sign of worldly attachment, laypeople would most likely embrace it. In the end, a new, lesser type of renunciation might be created in which renouncers could avail themselves of this RLE technology, while an elite community of renouncers would continue to reject it. The Jain view of the progression of time, from happier and more virtuous segments of time in which humans live longer to more degenerate segments of time in which humans have shorter life spans, may also be reevaluated. Doctrine: Renouncers and Laypeople Jain communities are divided into four sections: monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen. The laity is by far the larger portion of the Jain population, with relatively few Jains renouncing the world in order to become monks and nuns. The reactions of these communities to this new technology may be very different based on their stances toward karma and worldly life. While renouncers are committed to accepting and purifying the karma they already have as well as renouncing the world and bodily existence, the laity endeavor to increase their beneficial karma. The nine tattvas or “realities” that characterize the Jain universe or worldview consist of souls (jiva), matter (ajiva), matter coming in contact with souls (ashrava), the binding of karma to the soul (bandha), beneficial karma (punya), harmful karma (papa), inhibiting the influx of karma (samvara), purifying the soul of karma (nirjara), and liberation (mok
a or nirvā a). Although Jainism shares the general concept of karma with Buddhism and Hinduism, Jainism is the only tradition in which karma is regarded as microscopic physical particles floating around in the universe. Whenever a good or bad action is performed, these karmic particles stick to the soul where they will remain until they fall away from the soul after manifesting their karmic results. The passions (emotions such as anger, lust, greed, attachment, and hatred) help bind these karmic particles to the soul and determine the severity and length of the karmic results. These karmic particles obscure the experience of the infinite qualities of the soul, infinite perception, knowledge, bliss, and energy, but once the soul has

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been purified of all karmic particles, the soul is experienced and mok
a is achieved. Also, unlike Hindus and Buddhists, Jains have extensive categorizations and detailed explanations of different types of karma. There are destructive or harmful karmas that obscure perception, insight, knowledge, and energy, as well as nondestructive or secondary karmas that control pleasure, pain, sex, birth, senses, body, color, spiritual potential, status, environment, and longevity. Ayus (“life”) karma determines one’s life span according to where one is born in sa sāra, a theme we will revisit later.4 It is this doctrine of karma that determines Jain orthopraxy. All karma, both good and bad, keeps souls in sa sāra and hinders them from achieving mok
a. Because of this, Jain monks and nuns engage in two main practices: samvara inhibits the influx of any new karma and nirjara purifies the karma the soul has already collected. Monks and nuns practice samvara by following the Five Great Vows of nonviolence, truth, no-stealing, chastity, and nonpossession/nonattachment. The last of these vows, nonattachment or nonpossession, is arguably the most relevant in discussing RLE technology. This vow means that renouncers must live in poverty, develop equanimity toward all worldly pains and pleasures, and avoid being attached to anything, including their own bodies. We can assume that one reason people would be attracted to RLE technology would be to live longer in order to enjoy the pleasures of life, but such enjoyment is forbidden to renouncers, who must practice equanimity. We can also assume that people would be very excited by the prospect of not dying, but for a renouncer this would mean attachment to the body. Detachment from the body also can be seen in how monks and nuns practice nirjara, or the purification of karma already collected. This is done through internal and external austerities. Internal austerities include practices such as service, study, and meditation, while external austerities center around bodily mortification, such as fasting. External austerities serve to purify karma and also dissociate the renouncer from external circumstances related to the body so he or she may focus exclusively on his or her soul. Although longer life spans would theoretically increase the time renouncers could purify their karma, this desire to live longer would go against the vow of nonattachment or nonpossession and therefore result in the accumulation of more harmful karma. Jain renouncers take equanimity and austerity very seriously. Indeed, it could be argued that Jainism is the most austere religion in the world. For example, one of the most difficult practices related to the vow of nonpossession and to austerities is followed by Digambara monks, who, in their detachment from the body, do not wear any clothes at any time. Though it is

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rare, a Jain renouncer or a devout layperson may even choose to fast to death since it is believed that the severe difficulty to this end to life purifies the most karma. Monks and nuns participate in varied fasts, the most difficult fasting is done for one month without food. Renouncers also pull their hair out by the roots two to five times a year. Both the vow of nonpossession or nonattachment and the external austerities show how Jain renouncers endeavor to focus on spiritual progress by detaching themselves from their bodies. Because of this, some monks and nuns even reject medical treatment for physical ailments, although most do not. If a Jain renouncer were to take part in RLE technology, the lay community would no doubt conclude that he or she was not a true renouncer, but was instead still as attached to the body as a layperson would be. Although it is relatively certain that this would be the response of Jains at the time when RLE technology first becomes widely available, it is harder to speculate about this after it has been available for a long period of time. Laypeople are allowed more latitude in practicing Jainism, even though they also attempt to follow the values expressed in the Five Great Vows and engage in fasting. Jain laypeople are allowed to enjoy the pleasures of life, and they practice nonattachment/nonpossession principally through philanthropy. The projects to which Jain laypeople donate include libraries, schools, temples, animal shelters, and hospitals. Poverty is not prescribed for them, as it is for renouncers. In fact, Jain laypeople are among the wealthier people in India. Nonetheless they practice nonattachment by giving money away. This is related to renouncers’ and the laity’s different orientations toward karma. While monks and nuns seek to eliminate all beneficial and harmful karma, laypeople aspire to increase their beneficial karma and eliminate their harmful karma. The two main ways laypeople accumulate more good karma are philanthropy (laymen) and giving monks and nuns food and other necessities (laywomen). It is believed that these practices will ensure prosperous rebirths and eventually lead to births in which it will be possible for them to renounce the worldly lay life. Laypeople may also fast to purify harmful karma already accumulated; this is something all pious laywomen do, but they do not endeavor to purify themselves of all karma. It is likely that the laity would interpret RLE as an opportunity to live longer lives to accumulate more beneficial karma. Institutions If the laity avails itself of RLE technology, but renouncers do not, this could have serious repercussions for communities of renouncers in that it may make renunciation much less attractive for Jains. Comparing a short life as

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a renouncer to a very long life as a layperson, those who would have considered renunciation before might decide not to renounce. This would result in a serious decrease in the population of renouncers who serve as the spiritual heads of the Jain community. If this were to happen, the response of Jain communities could be to allow monks and nuns to use RLE technology, or create communities of lesser renouncers who do not live as strictly as fullfledged renouncers and therefore could benefit from this technology. The latter is more probable in part because there is precedent in Jainism. An institution of lesser renouncers has already been established in the Shvetambara-Terapanthi Jain community. Male lesser renouncers are called śrama s and their female counterparts, śrama īs. This type of renunciation was created because Jain monks and nuns cannot ride in vehicles; this would violate the vow of nonviolence in that vehicles kill insects and other small forms of life. Instead, renouncers walk everywhere. This custom meant that the international Jain community was left without access to any renouncers. To remedy this situation the institution of lesser renouncers was created in which travel by vehicles was not prohibited. The establishment of lesser renouncers who use RLE technology, as opposed to letting all renouncers use it, would also be more probable because lay Jains are very proud of how strict their renouncers are. Renouncers who are lax in their austerities also concern the laity because the laity does not accumulate as much beneficial karma by providing for them. Those fullfledged renouncers, who would live a relatively short time, would probably be venerated much more highly than lesser renouncers, who use RLE technology, and would therefore constitute an elite community of monks and nuns that would be much in demand by the laity. Another possible institutional development from this situation might be that Jain sects and sub-sects could further divide because of disagreements about whether renouncers should use this technology. Again, there are precedents for this. Many of the divisions of Jainism are in part because of disagreements about how strict renouncers’ practices should be. The creation of the two main sects of Jainism, the Shvetambara (wearing white) and the Digambara (wearing the sky), happened in the fifth century .. in part because of a disagreement about whether or not renouncers could wear clothing, with the Shvetambaras arguing affirmatively, and the Digambaras arguing negatively. The Shvetambara branch further divided into the Sthanakwasi, Murtipujak, and Terapanthi sub-sects, and the Murtipujak subsect divided into subgroups called gacchas, the most important of which are the Kharatara Gaccha and the Tapa Gaccha. One of the issues fueling these divisions concerns the maintenance of austere renouncer practices against the tendency toward laxity. For example, Acharya Bikshu, who

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was born in 1726, founded the Terapanthi subsect because of lax practices among Sthanakwasi renouncers, including living permanently in dwellings constructed specifically for them, instead of being itinerant, and also handling money, instead of following the vow of nonpossession (Dundas 2002, 255). For the laity, on the other hand, an extremely long and healthy life does not necessarily mean a happy life. Like Buddhism, Jain doctrine and narratives emphasize the inevitable suffering encountered in sa sāra in order to encourage disenchantment with, and rejection of, worldly pleasures necessary for a commitment to achieve mok
a. Although a human life is considered much better than life as an animal or in one of the hells, it is still characterized by suffering and so is undesirable when compared to mok
a. It is possible that there might be a reassessment of the human rebirth as more desirable if RLE technology becomes widely available, but it is more likely that Jains would be encouraged to use this new perspective to analyze the repeated hardships they encounter in their longer lives in terms of eventually renouncing those worldly lives to become monks and nuns. Because RLE technology would not only increase life spans, but would preserve youth and health, it would then be possible for those who have lived beyond the normal human life span to renounce at extremely old ages. Only those who are healthy enough to renounce are allowed to do so. Those lay Jains who may be attracted at first by this technology to live longer worldly lives, may decide later, after meditating on Jain doctrine, to give up these lives to become renouncers. If lesser communities of renouncers who maintain their longevity are established, this might further encourage them to renounce because they would not need to relinquish their longer lives. In this case, the probability of a significant increase in the populations of these lesser renouncers would be great. The few who might choose to renounce RLE technology, on the other hand, would become members of the elite communities of renouncers. Doctrine: Cycles of Time and Reincarnation In Jainism, time consists of 12 segments that are divided into two modes, the ascending mode and the descending mode. These modes continually repeat so that there was no beginning of the universe and there will be no end. According to some sources, each mode lasts for two kalpas (an immense amount of time in the range of two billion years), and according to other sources “innumerable” lengths of time.5 Increasing happiness and decreasing suffering mark the first six segments of time in the ascending mode. However, Jain doctrine holds that we are currently in the second six segments of time in the descending mode, characterized by increasing suffering

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and decreasing happiness. They are called (1) happiness-happiness, (2) happiness, (3) happiness-suffering, (4) suffering-happiness, (5) suffering, and (6) suffering-suffering. Each happier segment lasts for a longer period of time during which humans are characterized by greater morality, longer life spans, and larger bodies. Each more painful age lasts a shorter period of time during which humans are characterized by greater immorality, shorter life spans, and smaller bodies. In the current descending cycle in the segment of suffering, the maximum human life span was 120 years at the beginning; upon descending further into the time of suffering-suffering, the maximum human life span will be 20 years at the beginning (Wiley 2003). It is only during the times of suffering-happiness and happiness-suffering that the jinas teach and that mok
a is possible. In sections of time that are mostly happy or painful, humans either do not suffer enough to question the meaning of life, or they do not have time when they are not suffering to devote to religious practice. According to this doctrine, human life spans will become shorter before entering the ascending mode when they will become longer. It is possible that Jains may adjust this view when RLE technology becomes widely available and decide that this is an ascending rather than descending mode. For this to happen there would also need to be improvements in the quality of life and the morality of society. However, the population explosion that would probably result from RLE technology, with people not dying and children continuing to be born, could not be sustained in India, where population growth is already causing problems. The social and economic downturn, along with the suffering that it would cause, would then hinder this reinterpretation of the cycle of time. However, if the government and society of India adjusts to offset these negative consequences, it is likely that the cycle of time will be reinterpreted as being in the ascending mode. In that case, it would be thought that we are approaching a time in which mok
a would be possible, and there would, therefore, be incentive to use this RLE technology to live long enough to see that time. Currently, spiritual progress is made so that one can be reborn in one of the heavens to await rebirth as a human in an age suitable for achieving mok
a, or perhaps to be reborn in Mahavidheha, a land in which it is possible to achieve mok
a presently. One never knows what harmful karma one has accumulated, however, and there is no way to know for sure where one will be reborn. Without the worry of death and then rebirth as a nonhuman and with the possibility of being in an ascending mode, people would probably conclude that RLE then would lead, with more certainty, to mok
a. For a reinterpretation of time along these lines, most people would need to take part in this technology and live longer lives. However, it is highly

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likely that when this technology first becomes used, it will only be available to the relatively wealthy, which might elicit very different responses in the West and in South Asia. In the West, this inequality is more likely to stir debate about an ensuing class of privileged immortals. However, in Jainism, the suffering and happiness one encounters in life is a direct result of karma. Karma explains everything, and it is ultimate justice worked into the fabric of the universe. It explains away apparent social, economic, psychological, and biological injustices because no one is innocent; everyone receives what they deserve based on their past actions. Those who have the means to use this technology to extend their lives may therefore seem to deserve this privilege because their virtuous actions in past lives have resulted in this opportunity. Therefore, for those unable to afford this technology, the focus might be on performing the virtuous actions believed necessary to warrant this privilege in a next life. With virtual immortality in sight for the next lifetime, this may lead to a resurgence in Jain religiosity during the last third of life. According to Jain doctrine, ayus (“life”) karma determines longevity. Ayus karma is bound to the soul of an individual during the last third of his or her life and it will determine the duration of the rebirth immediately after that life (Jaini 1980, 232–33; Wiley 2000). In any case, Jains would interpret the longer life spans of humans, resulting from RLE technology, as the result of humans’ better ayus karma that was fixed in their previous lives. After this technology is available to most people, with humans living long enough to reinterpret our age as a happier segment of time, the fundamental Jain belief in reincarnation might be reevaluated as a less pressing concern. One of the functions of many religions is to answer questions about what happens after death. As with other Asian traditions, Jainism answers this question with the concept of reincarnation. It could be argued that a large portion of the Jain tradition helps its adherents negotiate their eventual deaths by providing a path by which they may have good rebirths and eventually achieve mok
a. With the possible infinite extension of life, and therefore without the fear of being reborn in lower states, it is possible that some Jains might become less religious. Fear of harmful karma and therefore bad rebirths is a significant motivating factor for many Jains. Without death, this motivation would cease to exist, and this could lead to a decrease in the number of Jains who are religious. After comparing a virtually immortal life with their options in Jain doctrine, some might decide that immortality is a sure and present option, while mok
a is something that they may not have had much faith in from the beginning.

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Those who might become more religious, because we may be approaching a time when mok
a is possible, and those who might become less religious might be divided along gender lines. Jain women are usually more religious than Jain men and are more likely to have faith in the Jain religion (Reynell 1999, 41–68; Laidlaw 1995, 304; and Kelting 2001). For example, there are currently four to five times as many Jain nuns as monks, and Jain laywomen’s religiosity more closely resembles renouncers’ religiosity (Kelting 2001, 22). RLE technology might lead to a greater imbalance in the ratio of nuns to monks, with more women deciding to pursue the more religious life of a renouncer after they have raised their children, and more men opting for immortality rather than mok
a. Conclusion On the surface there is little in official Jain doctrine that would encourage Jains to want to live longer lives. Not only will one be born over and over, making RLE superfluous, but also prolonging life in sa sāra is simply prolonging the suffering inherent in this world. Escape is what should be sought. However, it would have been too easy to make this argument, and also inaccurate. Life as a human is both rare and precious. Since Jains would embrace RLE technology, as the peoples of other faiths would, this would have repercussions in Jain doctrine and institutions. The most significant impact would be on the institution of renunciation. The tension between being able to live an extremely long precious human life on the one hand and the renouncer doctrine and practice against attachment to this life and the body on the other hand would result in the creation of communities of lesser renouncers who would not need to renounce RLE technology. Indeed, this might eventuate in further schisms in the Jain community. Furthermore, some lay Jains, who would be encouraged to analyze their longer lives according to the ideals of renunciation, would probably decide to renounce. The possibility of being in an ascending mode of time would only encourage this. If Jains could live long enough to enter an age when mok
a is possible, it is highly likely that many would avail themselves of that opportunity, and many of these would live as renouncers to better achieve that goal. Notes 1. In the current age there have been 24 enlightened jinas, “victors,” also called tīrthankaras “ford/bridge-builders.” Each jina renewed the Jain religion and established the four-fold communities of monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen.

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Lord Mahavira, the twenty-fourth and last jina, is believed to have lived from 599 ... to either 510 ... (according to the Digambara sect) or 527 ... (according to the Shvetambara sect). For a more detailed examination of possible rebirths see Jaini 1980, 222–26. For more on rebirth and mok
a see Dundas 2002, 102–105. For more information about different categories of karma see Dundas 2002, 99–102. For the Jain concept of time in the two modes see Babb 1996, 41–44.

CHAPTER 7

Told You So: Extreme Longevity and Daoist Realization Livia Kohn

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he Chinese have traditionally believed that human life has a predetermined duration of 120 years, and Daoists have always claimed that there are not only ways to reach this life expectancy on a regular basis but to extend it to far longer periods, mentioning sages who remained on earth for 400, 800, or even thousands of years. Matching the developments of modern efforts to extend life, they have insisted for millennia that one can expand the human body to its energetic best and sublimate its physicality to a very fine and even spiritual level. Thereby, one can achieve a state called “immortality” (xian), an existence that allows people to remain alive in the body for as long as they wish and then ascend to the heavenly spheres to enjoy an everlasting spiritual existence. To reach this state, Daoists, employing some of the preventive methods from Chinese medicine, have developed an extensive set of longevity techniques or methods of “nourishing life” (yangsheng). They include a moderate and settled lifestyle, a diet in harmony with nature and the seasons, deep and controlled breathing, regular exercise to strengthen muscles and enhance circulation, sexual hygiene, and various forms of meditation and enhanced internal awareness. Pursuing these practices over many years, it is said, one will gradually transform into an entity of pure cosmic energy (qi), gaining the ability to live without food or water, enter states of suspended animation, and develop enormous strength, vitality, and endurance. Becoming more of a spirit person, one will also be intensely aware of the interconnected nature

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of reality and come to master various powers, such as telepathy, prescience, spirit travel, bilocation, and invisibility. Beyond this individual transformation, Daoists traditionally claim that if everybody reaches the fullness of life in his or her body, society as a whole will be in harmony with Dao and will reach a state of Great Peace, the complete realization of goodness in all aspects of the cosmos. This state is the ultimate perfection of the Dao on earth. It brings individual fulfillment and perfect social harmony, as well as the ultimate cooperation of nature—in other words, the end to personal strife, social dissent, and all kinds of natural disasters. Until this time of Great Peace, however, those who have attained the state of immortality have a choice of remaining on earth for as long as they wish (earth immortals) or ascending to heaven to serve in the celestial administration that keeps records of people’s good and bad deeds and decrees suitable rewards and punishments (celestial immortals). Rewards in the traditional system involved health, well-being, prosperity, good fortune, an extended family, and—most of all—long life. Under the influence of Buddhist notions of karmic retribution, punishments were accordingly sickness, dissatisfaction, poverty, misfortune, loneliness, and death, the latter involving horrible tortures in so-called underworld prisons or hells, followed by rebirth in humiliating and disgusting circumstances, such as coming to life as a barbarian, vulture, or worm. As RLE becomes a reality, Daoists will first of all feel completely vindicated and emphasize how they have always said that death was an avoidable disease and not part of original human perfection. They will then offer their services—based on millennia of experience in nourishing life—to teach people how to take care of their newly engineered, long-lived bodies to prevent abuse and ailments to the extent that is necessary or possible. They will stress that infinite life means taking infinite care of ourselves, others, and nature, and that engineering the body does not automatically mean having the proper mind-set and altruistic motivation necessary to live with it. Harking back to traditional ethics, they will endeavor to spread a new awareness of cosmic interaction and altruistic thinking to create a new harmonious society. While Daoists will only be expanding and developing what is already part of their tradition, they will face a challenge in their understanding of death and the otherworld. Ancestor worship gradually ceases, since no one is now dying; reincarnation is no longer an involuntary process but an option of voluntary return to this or another planet; and the various karmic punishments lose their effectiveness, since people are essentially healthy and live long lives regardless of how they behave. Just as Daoists on earth lose a good

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part of their livelihood, as there is no more need to pray for the smooth transition of the dead and the advent of good fortune, celestial immortals will be out of a job supervising people’s deeds and decreeing punishments. The big question faced by all people who succeed in radically extending their lives will be: What is to be done with all that free time and how should one structure a life on earth that has already achieved what used to be the ultimate goal? Practices—Longevity Techniques Daoist longevity practices are directed toward living as healthily as possible in close adaptation to the natural cycles of day and night and the changes of the seasons. The fourth-century Essential Compendium on Nourishing Life notes: The method of nourishing life consists mainly in not doing harm to oneself. Keep warm in winter and cool in summer, and never lose your harmony with the four seasons—that is how you can align yourself with the body. Do not allow sensuous beauty, provocative postures, easy leisure, and enticing entertainments to incite yearnings and desires—that is how you pervade all. (Kohn 2008, ch. 2) The most important advice is to remain moderate in everything, since any excess will harm the inner organs: eat and drink with control, stay away from various luxuries that weaken qi, and keep speech and laughter within limits. In other words, people should avoid stress. On the basis of a healthy and well-adjusted lifestyle, practitioners then conform to a Daoist diet, which essentially means eating moderately (never to complete satiation) and in natural balance by partaking of all the different food groups, matching foods to the seasons, and supplementing regular foodstuffs with herbal and mineral substances. Over time they wean themselves from solid food, replacing it with raw vegetables, fruits, and nuts—not unlike some extreme low-calorie diets today. They then increase herbal supplements, liquid nourishment, and internal guiding of qi—the Daoist equivalent to growth hormone treatments—to the point where they no longer need food but live entirely on qi. This process, called “abstention from grain” (bigu), lightens the body’s structure in favor of subtler energies and cosmic awareness. Another way of opening and lightening the body is through healing exercises (daoyin), first outlined in medical manuscripts of the second century ..., then adapted and expanded by Daoists. Not unlike yoga and qigong

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increasingly practiced in modern societies, Daoist exercises consist of slow movements and careful stretches combined with deep breathing and conscious awareness. Releasing stress, alleviating heaviness, aiding digestion, and improving circulation, they open the energy channels, balance yin and yang, and activate a subtler dimension of being. To sublimate the body’s energies further, Daoists also engaged in breathing techniques without body movements. For example, they exhale with specific lip positions and throat movements that release tensions from the inner organs, balance heat and cold, and enhance oxygen absorption. This is known as the Six Healing Sounds. They also hold the breath for several minutes to allow pulsation to slow and the heart to rest. Finally, they practice “guiding qi,” which involves breathing in deeply, mixing the breath with saliva, then swallowing it and directing it to different parts of the body. All this helps to develop another level of energetic awareness, nourish the organs, and open the energy channels. Beyond all this, there is also the refinement of sexual energy or essence (jing). Emerging from the body’s primordial qi, it is present in people from birth in limited amounts and centers in the Ocean of Qi (abdomen) in men and in the Cavern of Qi (chest) in women. Essence governs the kidneys and reproductive organs as well as the bones, marrow, teeth, brain, and body energy; it easily diminishes through sexual engagements. As a result, both medical and Daoist practitioners conserve the stock they have and replenish what is lost. People conserve essence by limiting the frequency of its loss through ejaculation and menstruation as well as by using massage techniques that keep the qi flowing. They replenish it by working on its “return” or “reversion” into primordial qi with the help of both partner and solo practices. These practices involve developing a state of excitement and then, instead of allowing the jing to flow out of the body, mentally and with the help of self-massages make it move up along the spine and into the head, guiding it along a cycle within the torso (microcosmic orbit), and thus enhancing vitality. Meditation Meditation is the inward focus of attention; ego-related concerns and critical evaluation are suspended in favor of perceiving a deeper, subtler, and possibly divine flow of consciousness. Daoists engage in all the classical forms of meditation, notably concentration, observation, and visualization. Concentration is one-pointedness of mind. It involves complete control of attention and the absorption in a single object—a sound, a visual diagram, a concrete entity, or the breath—with the goal of calming the mind

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and quieting internal chatter. Daoists focus on breathing or the inner flow of qi and strive to gain a mental centering, a withdrawal of the senses, and a reduction of mental input. The goal is to reach a deep, calm quietude and thus a profound alignment with the natural transformations. Observation—also called insight, mindfulness, or awareness meditation—encourages openness to all sorts of stimuli and leads to a sense of freeflowing awareness. It works through the detached apperception of physical sensations and sensory reactions. Daoists use this practice to see the body as a microcosmic replica of the starry heavens above, full of palaces and chambers, gods and deities. This cosmic body, moreover, is governed by the force of spirit—primordial, formless, and ever changing—which works through the human mind and governs life perfectly. Instead of trying to follow sensory impressions, make judgments, and develop critical evaluations, Daoists practice to release from all stress and tension, rest in their original cosmic nature, and let the spirit guide them. Visualization is the most common form of Daoist meditation. It involves complete mental focus on a specific scene or sequence of events, such as energy flows, deities, cosmic patterns, saints’ lives, or potential future events. The scenes are either seen with detachment or involve the participation of the practitioner. In either case, visualization opens consciousness to subtler levels, allowing the unconscious to manifest and bringing new dimensions to life. Also called creative imagination, visualization is an important method used today in a variety of contexts, from sports training to business presentations. In the Daoist world, it is called “actualization and imagination” and applies both internally and externally, serving as a form of intensified concentration to enhance the health and empower the body and also a means to ecstatically travel to the otherworld and engage with the deities. Early visualization involved seeing lights of different colors in the body, matching the energies of the five phases with their directions and related inner organs. An expanded version appeared in the Middle Ages as “Absorbing the Five Sprouts,” the subtle, germinal energies of the five directions. After some purification and preparation, practitioners seat themselves to face a certain direction, then visualize the color associated with that direction, for example, green in the east or yellow in the center. A general mist in the beginning, it gradually forms into a ball, like the rising sun, then through further concentration shrinks in size and comes closer to the adept. Eventually the size of a pill, the sprout can be swallowed and guided to the corresponding organ (i.e., green to the liver, yellow to the spleen). A suitable incantation anchors it firmly in the bodily location, and gradually, the body is infused with cosmic energy.

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The most advanced form of Daoist visualization involves ecstatic excursions, an adaptation of shamanic soul travel. In trance, practitioners envision themselves taking a tour around the far reaches of the earth, then move on to imitate the planets’ movements, especially of the sun and the moon. Eventually they reach out to visit the higher spheres of heaven, where they engage with gods and immortals to learn cosmic secrets and receive instructions. Becoming more divine, they turn into denizens of the otherworld, often finding their heavenly life more real than their existence on earth and thus preparing for life in their permanent celestial abode. Transition to the latter in the Middle Ages, moreover, was often achieved by taking an immortality elixir (dan, cinnabar), a divinely inspired but highly poisonous brew of sulphur and mercury. Called ritual suicide by some, it was a method of transcendence for Daoists, and it can be considered the precursor of modern exit strategies seen in apocalyptic religious contexts. From moderation of living through diet, exercise, breathing, and sexual control to various forms of meditation, Daoists thus have developed an extensive repertoire of longevity techniques that allow people to be comfortable in the body while reaching out to greater cosmic spheres. They see the body as a conglomeration of qi-energy in various forms and levels of subtlety, which can be abused or enhanced, obstructed or expanded. The more enhanced the energetic structure, moreover, the healthier and happier one lives and the longer one can maintain life, even to the point of living forever. In a world populated by large numbers of long-lived people, Daoists would see themselves as experts at enhancing physical well-being with traditional techniques. Doctrines—An Immortal Society A fundamental belief of Daoism is that Dao, the underlying creative power of the world, originally governs and arranges everything to perfection. It is only through human ignorance and meddling that the cosmos loses its balance and people fall into states of sickness, misfortune, and early death. While traditionally, few were gifted with immortals’ bones (xiangu) that allowed them to rise above this, there has always been a vision of an ideal, immortal society, described as Great Peace (Taiping); the realization of complete happiness and freedom, where all cosmic and social energies circulate in a continuous, smooth rhythm, the natural forces work harmoniously together, and justice prevails for all. A utopian state, this perfect society is described in the philosophy of Guo Xiang (d. 312), who was best known for his commentary on the ancient text Zhuangzi.

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According to him, the universe is essentially a spontaneous sequence of flowing energies, yet it is also structured by two powers: principle (li) and lot (fen). Principle makes things what they are and determines the particular way of being of the entire cosmos as much as it does each individual being “affair.” “Each individual has principle as much as each and every affair has what is appropriate to it,” Guo Xiang says. Similarly, lot is the share that every being has in the Dao; it determines its position in the cosmos. Within human beings, the two are defined further as inner nature (xing) and destiny (ming). Inner nature, says Guo Xiang, “is what people rely on spontaneously without ever being conscious of it.” It is the way people are naturally, their inherent psychological makeup, independent of knowledge or consciousness. It has nothing to do with people’s subjective wishes or concrete hopes, social demands, or family traditions. Obtained at birth, it is there naturally and cannot be changed. Any enforced change will result in suffering, as much as any development along its lines will be to the good. In a sense, inner nature is therefore limiting, since it only allows for so much that one can do. On the other hand, it is also liberating, since it frees the person from social ideals and obligations. It is the ultimate realization of individuality as part of a greater whole. Destiny, on the other hand, is parallel to principle; it is the life that one is ordered or destined to have by Heaven. Like inner nature, it is there to be accepted, not to be changed. It orders human existence just as principle structures the universe. It determines every individual’s birth, age, opportunities, chances—all the circumstances and conditions of life. Representing nurture and nature, destiny and inner nature together are responsible for the development of the individual. As each individual develops his or her inborn abilities in close cooperation with concrete circumstances, he or she each comes to contribute exactly what the world needs, and the perfect society unfolds. Human society in Great Peace is an organic whole, made up of countless individuals who all participate naturally and fulfill their inborn potentials. An integral part of nature, this society is hierarchical, closely knit, and well ordered; it is the forum where human beings realize themselves by doing exactly what suits them best, an arena in which people live up to their given abilities and opportunities. Immortal society is thus a playground where the individual realizes himself or herself in a continuous flow of activities in harmony with everything and everybody. Daoists thus already have a model in place of for the kind of life people of extended longevity would have. The society of Great Peace, made up of genetically engineered individuals with different goals and talents that

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yet all have immortals’ bones, would create a forum of empowerment and perfection. This version of the Great Peace society would far outshine the family-run and socially determined society of today, where people conform to social rules that override individuality and often follow ideals incompatible with their inherent nature. Ethics To realize themselves in this society, however, people need to develop an internal awareness both of who they are and what they do best and also subscribe to an ethics of cooperation, goodwill, and tolerance. As long as the extreme longevity merely means an increased life span (i.e., while sickness, poverty, and death still occur), the traditional ethical model that uses threats of ailments, misfortunes, and hellish tortures to encourage moral behavior can remain in place. Once engineering reaches the point of stabilizing health and youthfulness, and once society manages issues such as reproduction, sustainable energy use, wealth distribution, and exit strategies, however, these modes become obsolete. A society of long-lived, healthy, and well-provided people, as well as one made up of immortals, needs a different sort of ethics. Ethical rules in general can be divided into three major types: prohibitions that tell people what not to do, which include the great moral rules and specific precepts; admonitions or supererogatory rules, which tell people what they should do, encouraging kindness and actions beyond the call of duty; and resolutions or declarations of positive intent, which formulate personal guidelines for developing positive attitudes and a cosmic mind-set. Traditional Daoist ethics makes use of all these modes, providing basic prohibitions and admonitions for its lay followers and extensive lists of precepts for priests and monastics, as well as admonitions and resolutions for advanced adepts and those on the path to immortality. The more positive rules have in common that, in addition to suggesting positive behavior, they also focus on the mind of the practitioner and serve to create an altruistic morality. An example is the nine basic rules found in a supplement to the Xiang’er Commentary to the Daode jing (dat. ca. 215): Practice nonaction; practice being soft and weak; practice guarding the female and never moving first. These are the highest three practices. Practice being nameless; practice being pure and tranquil; practice doing only good. These are the medium three practices. Practice having no desires; practice knowing when to stop; practice yielding and withdrawing. These are the lowest three practices.

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Rules like these foster a non-ego-centered approach to the world and encourage actions beyond common reciprocity. They nourish one-sided goodness: make sure your attitudes are good, nurture softness, yielding, and quietude within. Formulating a personal rather than social ideal, they support compassion, love, generosity, and openness toward all. Practitioners who follow these have gone beyond the hell-enforced constraints of behavior; even without the threat of punishments they bring harmony and goodness to all. As they spread purity and tranquility, society and the universe respond by becoming better and more harmonious. An even higher level of Daoist ethics appears in the practice of resolutions, formulated as “I will” in contrast to “you should.” For example, the last five rules in the Scripture of the Ten Precepts, prominent throughout the Middle Ages, are as follows: 6. I will maintain harmony with my ancestors and family and never disregard my kin. 7. When I see someone do good, I will support him with joy and delight. 8. When I see someone unfortunate, I will support him with dignity to recover good fortune. 9. When someone comes to do me harm, I will not harbor thoughts of revenge. 10. As long as all beings have not attained the Dao, I will not expect to do so myself. (Kohn 2004, 65) Rules such as these are declarations of positive intent and personal guidelines for developing a cosmic attitude and mind-set. They go beyond even supererogatory rules in that they focus on the welfare of all beings and engage practitioners in universal ethics. Creating a culture of pure altruism, resolutions guide adepts to feel benevolence, sympathy, love, and compassion. Whatever situation they encounter, they consider the other person first and do good without expecting anything in return. Coming closer to the universal benevolence of Dao, they find a new identity as part of the larger universe. This is all the more essential the longer people live on the planet since, without the threat of misfortune and death, the only thing that will keep society harmonious is a deeply ingrained attitude of selfless giving toward nature, life, and all beings. Cosmology: Heaven and Hell The traditional Daoist system divides the universe into 36 heavens, topped by the Heaven of Grand Network, where the scriptures are stored and

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managed by gods and immortals. The 35 heavens beneath this divide into five groups. There are first the Three Clarities—Highest, Jade, and Great Clarity—representing the three major Daoist schools with their gods, scriptures, chants, and divine administrators. Below them are four “BrahmaHeavens,” named after the central Hindu deity; they are reserved for true believers who, having attained a high level of Dao in their lives, are transposed here. The lower 28 levels of the cosmos are called the Three Worlds, in adaptation from Buddhism. The lowest six form the World of Desire. The following 18 are the World of Form, and the four above them constitute the World of Formlessness. This is the world people inhabit, their level determined by their dominant way of life. Part of the system of karma and retribution, the Three Worlds encompasses five realms of rebirth: gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell dwellers. These five can be understood as psychological states or cosmological planes. In the modern, psychological reading, each realm is associated with a particular attitude or emotion: gods are addicted to pleasure, human beings are fundamentally ignorant, animals run on instinct, hungry ghosts are driven by greed and desire, and hell dwellers are full of anger and hatred. We all pass through these states variously in our lives, but some people are dominantly more in one mode than another and can be described as living in that particular realm. Daoists traditionally have read these states more cosmologically and asserted that one can actually be reborn as an animal or a god and suffer or enjoy the kind of life that plane offers. With extreme longevity and even immortality, this cosmological scheme becomes obsolete. Instead of being subject to karmic cycles of rebirth, people now mainly have the choice of living as earth or celestial immortals, choosing a region of the greater universe where they find greatest satisfaction. Hell dwellers and hungry ghosts, as much as ancestors, have been eliminated. There is no more need for immortals to administer the ledgers of life and death, supervise netherworld punishments, transmit salvational scriptures, issue talismans as otherworld passports, or provide instructions for access to the heavens. A different system will need to take its place, still enhancing the fundamentally hierarchical vision of the Chinese cosmos and emphasizing moral and personal qualities, but with different realms and ranks throughout. There is no telling what this new system would look like. Patterned on modern realities, it may well involve different levels of entertainment—from movies through video arcades to amusement parks and adventure travel— for immortals of different ranks and inclination.

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Institutions Daoist organization divides into two main schools: the lay-based Celestial Masters, who focus on communal rituals of purification, exorcism, and cosmic renewal, and the monastic school of Complete Perfection, which emphasizes individual realization of immortality through discipline, ethics, longevity techniques, and meditation. These two are supported further by a large network of non-organized Daoists, self-trained or sanctioned in master-disciple lineages. These latter Daoists tend to be either philosophically minded, applying Daoist classical thought to issues of the current age, or medically based, that is, concerned with health and longevity practices, such as the increasingly popular exercises of qigong. The underlying theme they all have in common is the realization of cosmic harmony and the attainment of immortality. With large numbers of the world’s population reaching both good health and extreme longevity, both philosophers and longevity practitioners will experience a major surge in demand. Coming to terms with social changes, people will look to philosophers for a new way of thinking that emphasizes cooperation, calmness, and going with the flow. Unless it comes with the extreme longevity technologies and therapies, they will also look to longevity practitioners to learn how to treat their bodies appropriately and make sure that they do not lose the benefits of modern science to neglect, mismanagement, and abuse. Both areas are already expanding as the population ages and the ravages of mental stress and physical neglect become apparent. A good example of the application of the Daode jing to modern life is found in Wayne Dyer’s recent book and TV series (2007). The increased spread of body cultivation methods, such as yoga and qigong, on the other hand, attests to the increased need for taking care of the body, and Western qigong masters never cease to praise the healing and life-enhancing powers of the practices and their potential impact on modern health care systems (see Jahnke 1997). Institutional Daoism, on the other hand, will see a reduction in popularity. If everyone already has long life and harmony, there is little need to seclude oneself from society and retire to a Daoist monastery. In fact, already some accomplished Complete Perfection Daosits leave the institutions, favoring the life of an inner-city recluse to that in an organization riddled with strife and internal politics. Communal Daoists of the Celestial Masters, finally, will see a massive reduction in their traditional work as some of their “business” will become obsolete: rites of purification, healing, exorcism, and rituals intended to deliver beings from hell. On the other

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hand, there is little doubt that they—as their Japanese Shinto counterparts have already done with great success—will find new niches in the market. Rituals will still be called for when people undergo major life transitions, such as from the fourth divorce to the fifth marriage or from their third advanced degree to their next career. And, of course, the need for protective devices will still be there and remain profitable: amulets for cars, feng shui for houses, talismans for wealth, and prayers for finding the right partner. Conclusion Overall, Daoists will be very happy with the brave new world we are about to enter on the coattails of genetic engineering and RLE science. They will have the immense satisfaction of being able to say, “We told you so,” being completely vindicated in their age-old contestation that death and aging are essentially avoidable, and that life in a perfect and harmonious society, where one is paid for realizing oneself and having fun, is the way to go. They will find their advanced ethics of admonitions and resolutions rise to a level of great importance, and they will realize that they still have a key role to play—as lay philosophers and health gurus more so than ritual masters and monastics being of exceptional service to the nouveau vieux. They may have to give up sections of their traditional cosmology, but, being who they are and never having taken the world too seriously in the first place, they will adjust just fine.

CHAPTER 8

Churning the Ocean of Milk: Hindu Tantrism and Radical Life Technologies Jeffrey S. Lidke in collaboration with Jacob W. Dirnberger

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round the world, the quest to extend human life has fascinated people since the dawn of recorded history. In the current era, technologies for life extension have reached their apex. Modern scientific discoveries in genetics, nanotechnology, robotics, and other areas offer many potential avenues for extending the human lifespan. Each day, scientists gain greater knowledge about the causes of biological decay and the means to eradicate fatal ailments. As new technologies emerge in light of this rapidly deepening field of knowledge, a complex and rich set of philosophical and theological questions challenges the world’s scholars, theologians, philosophers, humanitarians, politicians, scientists, doctors, and leaders.1 In this chapter, we reflect on the possibilities of extreme longevity from within a comparative interpretive framework that imagines the response of the Indic tradition known as Hindu Tantra to current technological developments aimed at radical life extension (RLE). Tantra is not a singular system of thought and practice, but rather a classificatory term (Brooks 1990) that designates a variety of texts and related communities concerned with interconnected alchemical and ritual technologies, bodily exercises, and theological assertions that appear to have originated in the Indian subcontinent no

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later than the ninth century of the common era, and arguably much earlier (Samuel 2008; Bharati 1965). As many prominent scholars of Asian religions have argued (White 1996; Eliade 1970), Tantra can no longer be seen as merely being a marginal cultic phenomenon. By the eleventh century, patterns of tantric practice and ideology had become mainstream in many parts of Asia. Extending from Kerala, India, through Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and China in the north, Tantra migrated outward into Southeast, Central, and East Asia as an ideology that linked systems of divine kingship in these regions to a richly nuanced cultural network whose basis was elaborated in alchemical and theological texts. Connoting a “vehicle that interweaves,” Tantra was so widespread by the eleventh century in much of South Asia that David White has correctly identified it as inseparable from the “popular culture” of that era (White 2003). Hindu tāntrikas (initiates into the theology, rituals and interpretive world of Hindu tantric scripture) believe that the textual traditions to which they subscribe are the apex and final revelation of the entire Hindu scriptural tradition, which dates back to the g Veda of the third millennium ... Tāntrikas are trained to see tantric scripture as streams of revelation flowing to and from the larger sea of Hindu canon, viewing tantric revelation as the Hindu tradition’s culminating wave of philosophical insight, sociopolitical application, and scientific technological production (Dasgupta 1976). Much of the theology, narratives, practices, and institutional structures of tantra overlap with and reaffirm normative Hindu values. Therefore, what we identify as Tantra in this essay is understood not to be a minority perspective within Indian traditions, but rather a set of shared theological presuppositions and related applications that are in fact central to much Indian thought and practice over the last thousand years. Our aim is to think with and through Tantra in dialogue with and in response to the profound and inspiring possibilities emerging within the growing fields of life extension. Doctrines and Narratives: Immortality and Churning the Ocean of Milk In the Mahābhārata (circa fourth century ..), the world’s largest epic narrative, we find one of the most ubiquitous Indic narratives on immortality in the tale of the churning of the ocean of milk.2 This celebrated event pits the gods against the demons in a tug-of-war to procure the nectar of immortality.3 The rope is the divine serpent Vasuki, wound around the cosmic mountain Meru and sitting atop a primordial turtle at the bottom of an ocean of milk. As the gods and demons struggle, the mountain spins,

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the ocean is churned, and from it emerges an immortalizing ambrosia called amta, meaning literally “undead.” Traditional tantric exegetes see this as an analogy for the bodily processes undergone in the context of tantric practice, called yoga or sādhana (Sensharma 1990). The ocean itself is identified as potency of consciousness, which is understood to contain within itself the elixir of life and the poison of death. Mount Meru is identified as the central column of energy, called su
umnā, residing within the spinal chord, extending from the coccyx at the base and ascending to the apex of the brain region. The rope-snake Vasuki is equated with the coiled serpentine power called ku dalinī, understood to reside at the base of the spine until awakened in the context of tantric initiation or through grace (Silburn 1988). Once awakened, it becomes a means for an alchemical process, an internal churning that can result in the attainment of a state beyond death (Dyczkowski 1995–1996). Within the tantric tradition, those individuals who attain perfection in their practice are called siddhas or perfected ones. The siddhas use the body’s own energies to reverse the universal principles and processes behind aging, thus, purportedly, achieving real physical (and spiritual) immortality. In the annals of tantric mythology and theological reflection, they are heralded for having a developed, tested, and well-recorded science dealing with alchemy of metals, cosmic forces, sexual fluids, and subtle bodily energies intended to achieve immortality. Hence, Hindu tantric siddhas would be enthusiastic at the prospects of RLE technology for increasing the well-being of the body. Nearly all tantric texts assume and champion the importance of the body in the pursuit of spiritual insight (Flood 2006). Therefore, we can assume that tāntrikas would, in general, affirm any technology of bodily well-being. To come to a deeper and more nuanced imagining of the tantric response to radical life technologies, it will be important to understand the basic commonalities and differences in the narratives, doctrines, and practices of the two systems of medical practice, contemporary biomedicine and Hindu tantra. Tantric Doctrine: A Science of Connections The tantric sciences (tantra-vidyās), founded on culturally distinct presuppositions and utilizing its own distinctive technologies, seek to eradicate the sufferings of embodied existence. Just as tantric practitioners place a primacy on the acquisition of a liberating knowledge and power, their western counterparts in the emerging field of RLE are yet to develop a tradition-affirmed telos of life extension that links life extension to a more extensive soteriological discourse. Inspired by Aubrey de Grey and other forward-thinking

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scientists in the growing field of life extension, we imagine the possibility that tantric siddhas, leading scientists of life extension, and other religious leaders could formulate a collaborative philosophy and ethics of practice that utilized the world’s global knowledge of life extension to a beneficial purpose. Tantric practitioners perceive the body as a complex multilevel system that holographically embodies and mirrors the universe. The seventeenthcentury text, the Śiva-Sa hita, states this vision paradigmatically:4 Within this body exists Mount Meru, the seven continents, lakes, oceans, mountains, plains, and the protectors of these plains. In it also dwells the seers, the sages, all the stars and planets, the sacred river crossings and pilgrimage centers, and the deities of these centers. In it whirl the sun and the moon, which are the causes of creation and annihilation . . . he who knows all this is a yogin. This brief passage highlights a foundational tantric doctrine: the same elements that comprise the macrocosm dwell within the human body and function according to the very same scientific laws that operate at all levels of existence, from the subatomic to the intergalactic. As without, in the cosmos, so within, in the body (Flood 1993, Eliade 1970, Muller-Ortega 1989). The deep interrelatedness of cosmos, body, and self has generally aligned “science” with “spirituality and religion” in tantra (White 1996). If the universe is a larger body—the body of God—that contains within itself creation and annihilation, birth and death, then so must the individual’s body be home to these processes (Lidke 1994). And, if the body of God also contains the potential for immortality—as illustrated by the churning of milk—then there must be a means for attaining immortality within and through the body. The key is to find the immortal within the mortal.5 In the ocean of milk narrative, the “tug-of-war” process produces both a fatal poison and an immortalizing consciousness. Within embodied consciousness, in other words, reside both death and its opposite. In this way, the famous narratives affirm the Hindu view that creation exists as a play of opposites, that night abides in day, that truth and falsehood are inseparable, and that while life inevitably contains death, so too does death contain the possibility of life. Life functions as a great cosmic cycle. Yet, death is never absolute. The universe perpetually regenerates itself, affirming at a macro level that there is no final end to things—but only their transformation into newly emerging forms—and that the true life of the universe—called ātman—never dies.

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For tāntrikas, as for all Hindus, there are four primary human aims: learning the foundations of social responsibility (dharma), cultivating human relations and emotions (coma), acquiring socioeconomic success (aretha), and attaining spiritual emancipation (mocha). Tantra, which claims an advanced technology for the attainment of each of these aims, had became the ideological lingua franca of Indian kings by the ninth century precisely because it offered a totalizing system of knowledge and technology that could be harnessed for a wide range of social, political, military, artistic, and spiritual ends. Tantric specialists promoted a host of technologies linked to the mapping and control of the physical universe— astronomical insights, geological and biological sciences, military arts, and medicine—as well as proto-chemical techniques for the optimization of the body. In this way, tantra offered a means for ethical, sexual, social, political, and spiritual success. The paramount aim (paramārtha) of Hindu tantra is to attain a state of unlimited freedom (svatāntrya) through knowledge of the ātman. This state is defined as beyond death (mtātīta). Its acquisition is identified as the result of the transfiguration of fluids, energies, and cognitive capacities within the body. As stated above, it is a presupposition of the Hindu tantras that the human body contains within itself the alchemical materials (rasāyana) necessary for creating within oneself a condition transcendent to death (Nityāśoaśikār ava 1.1–12). In this sense, all bodies contain within themselves the potential for deathlessness. However, few actually cultivate this potential. Some churn and consume the poisons that lead to death. A rare few, according to the tantra texts, learn the means to cultivate immortality (Paramārthasara 97). Transcending the Limitations of Our Ancestors Ronald Bailey writes about the purposes of the sciences (2005, 19): Human liberation from our biological constraints began when the first human sharpened the first stick and used it to kill an animal for food. Further liberation from biological constraints followed with fire, the wheel, domesticating animals, agriculture, metallurgy, city building, textiles, information storage by means of writing, the internal combustion engine, electric power generation, antibiotics, vaccines, transplants, and contraception. In a sense, the goal toward which humanity has been striving for millennia has been to liberate ourselves, by extending our capacities, from more of our ancestors’ biological constraints.

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This effort to liberate ourselves from our ancestors’ biological constraints has led to the development of extraordinary technologies in the field of life extension. While these technologies are multiple and diverse, they share a similar logic: the eradication of suffering and other biological limitation is a good thing. Despite well-articulated concerns regarding the limits and potential pitfalls of life extension technologies, tāntrikas would continue to concur with optimistic scientists, like de Gray, that the death process is a form of human suffering that can and ought to be reversed. Certainly, finitude can and has been made meaningful by humans; however, infinitude, or at least lengthened finitude could also be deeply meaningful. From a tantric perspective, the conquest of death brings one into a state of complete knowledge and well-being in relationship to the self, society, and cosmos. In this state one is infused by and inseparable from the life essence itself, called śakti, the creative energy that never dies. Tāntrikas see the ultimate purpose of human existence as the attainment of being completely possessed or infused (samāveśa) by śakti. In such a state one becomes, as it were, life itself. In this regard, then, tāntrikas’ own goal is in alignment with biomedical objectives; both seek a means to transcend the limits of our biology and to do so, like cell researchers, by locating the solutions within our biology itself. Within their own culturally specific arguments on the purpose and value of life extension, tāntrikas seek an alchemically engineered reversal of the “natural” processes that cause death. Tantric Practice: The Alchemical Churning of Consciousness The concluding line from the Śiva-Sa hita quoted above, “He who knows all this is a yogin,” means that knowledge of the “nature of things” comes through the practice of yoga. The word yogin denotes one who is an exponent of yoga. Derived from the Sanskrit root √yuj, yoga identifies a system of technologies employed by disciplined practitioners seeking to overcome the causes of suffering and decay. Yoga as a term does not refer to any one particular religious tradition or set of practices. Rather, yoga, like tantra, is a broad term that refers to a shared set of practices and beliefs that can be found in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, and other Indic traditions (Feurstein 2001). As a compound term, tantric yoga refers to the specific meditational, aerobic, and alchemical practices condoned in tantric texts. The prolongation of life, from a tantric perspective, is valueless without the knowledge that makes prolongation truly beneficial. In the pan-Indic worldview, life is part of an endless cycle. The cosmos is born, sustained, destroyed, and reborn over vast repeating macro-cycles that mirror

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themselves in the transmigratory experience known as sa sāra; that circular “flow” in which all souls are born and reborn according to the dictates of their own actions is called the law of karma. Tāntrikas would argue that if one extends one’s life but does so without making possible the acquisition of knowledge of the absolute (sa vit-jñāna), then the life extension would be relatively meaningless. At the end of the period of life extension, death inevitably awaits. Even if technologies were developed that made immortality possible, tāntrikas would continue to raise the question: what is the value of immortality in the absence of the cultivation of a state of consciousness that is worth prolonging? Again, this is not to state that tāntrikas stand opposed to western methods of life extension. Rather, their intention would be to encourage their western scientific peers to couple their interests in bodily life extension with efforts to promote kindness and other commendable virtues. In other words, tāntrikas would argue that those in charge of the utilization of this technology would themselves be illumined by the wisdom lying undetected by science’s eye within the depths of the ocean of consciousness. In this way, the tāntrika would argue that our goal should not be to extend human life simply out of a fear of death. Rather, our goal should be to go beyond life and death altogether, defeating fear, ignorance, and suffering in a single stroke. In other words, for a tāntrika, life extension is itself a means to a greater end: liberating wisdom ( jñāna). And in this regard, tāntrikas would point out that life extension is perhaps only one means towards this end. In short, true wisdom, the wisdom that frees us from the cycles of birth and rebirth (sa sāra) may be advanced by extending life; but it can also happen within the context of a shorter life. What is most important is not the length of one’s life, but that liberating wisdom is obtained. If life extension makes the attainment of that wisdom possible, then it would be deemed good by a tāntrika. If not, then the ultimate value of life extension would be called into question. In other words, the tāntrikas main concern would be that life extension technologies were coupled with a wisdom tradition and related technologies that emphasized the value of utilizing one’s extended life towards the end of true spiritual knowledge. In medieval India, alchemy was a primary means by which immortality in Tantra was pursued. The metals used and transfigured in alchemy corresponded to various energy centers found in the human body, which in turn corresponded to certain cosmic forces. White (1996, 264) writes: As in the case of human rites of passage, the principle aim of the alchemical sa skāras is to purify a (mercurial) body that has been tainted through the process of birth, of coming into existence. Here it is significant that

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suta, “that which was generated,” is one of the five standard alchemical terms for mercury, Śiva’s seed, which has lodged itself in the womb of the goddess earth, at the conclusion of the origin myth of mercury. The metal mercury stands for Śiva’s divine essence, and, as with the work of alchemists in the West, the goal is to purify the mercury into a form that could be utilized by the human body. Tantra teaches that in addition to our physical bodies, humans also have a “subtle,” spiritual body that contains a network of energy channels. The centers, which govern this flow, are called the cakras. The lower cakras contain the female, or Goddess principles of creation, while the upper cakras represent the male Śiva principles. In alchemy, the male principle within the body and in the cosmos is represented by the metal mercury, as the female materials, sulfur and mica, are used to purify mercury into its supreme state, which yields yogic powers (White 1996, 6). Thus, it can be said that tāntrikas use the earthly to obtain the otherworldly, and vice versa (White 1996, 9; Van Lenning 2000, 37). It is through cultivation of the energies within the cakras that the tāntrika seeks the reversal of death and the generation of a liberating wisdom. The foundational cakra, called mūlādhāra, contains the serpentine ku aliīśakti, that Vasuki rope that must be utilized in order to churn the human potential for immortality. As it rises from the base of the spine, it activates the other cakras along the medial channel, eventually culminating in its reaching the sahasrāra-cakra, at the crown of the head. This uppermost cakra is the polar opposite of the mūlādhāra-cakra: masculine, spiritual and lunar. White writes (1996, 221): These two poles of ku aliī’s mode of being—sleeping and waking, taking and giving pleasure, allowing the body to be consumed by the fire of time and consuming the fire of time—these mundane and transcendent poles are identified as her “poison” and her “nectar.” The ku alinī is poison when she remains asleep in the lower abdomen; she is nectar precisely when she rises up through the medial channel of the subtle body to reunite with Śiva, the Absolute, in the yogin’s cranial vault. In the haha-yogic sources, this union is in fact accompanied by an outpouring of nectar, which renders the yogin immortal. Like a snake, ku alinī is potentially venomous and dangerous. However, when this “venom” is utilized correctly, it is ultimately liberating and can facilitate immortality—a point illustrated in the churning of the ocean of milk by the production of both poison and nectar. Why though is this female

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energy deadly? As stated earlier, this Goddess energy represents the power of creation, that is, matter and the material world—all that in this world that is subject to time, death and decay. The mulādhāra-cakra is the force of death itself, and left unchecked, it shall consume the human body with the fire of time. Lilian Silburn describes the ku alinī as follows (1983, 27): It is in the root center that lies, prior to its awakening, the coiled one, inert and unconscious, resembling someone who has been absorbed in poison. There she is coiled three and a half times round the bindu, a point of power which symbolizes Śiva, and the essence of virility (vīrya). With her head she blocks access to the median channel. Her sleep is the bondage of the ignorant, making him blindly mistake his body for his true Self. She is then named ‘receptacle of energy’, for she contains all the energy of the universe. Although asleep, she is supporting the life of man and of the world, both have fallen into slumber. The ku alinī, paradoxically, both blocks and creates our true nature. The base cakra in the body represents, the sun astronomically, creation metaphysically, the Goddess theologically, and the female sexually. Viewing the tantric practice of liberation and immortality through the view of their feminine principle, siddhas use the lunar cycle to draw a parallel with the yogic relationship between masculine and feminine. The moon becomes the symbol for Śiva’s purified essence, which is beyond the conditioned states of life and death. As the moon moves across the sky, however, it waxes and wanes, that is, as it approaches the sun. The sun is affiliated with the female principle of creation and destruction. However, once the moon/mercury/semen passes by the sun/ sulfur/menstrual blood, the waning ceases, and the moon once again begins to regain its full radiance. The combination of the opposing forces causes a reversal in the natural processes associated with death and decay. White writes, “Rather than descending, semen, energy and mind are now forced upward into the cranial vault, effecting total Yogic integration (samādhi), a reversal of the flow of time, immortality and transcendence over the entire created universe” (1996, 45). By reversing the flow of fluids and energies within the body, moving the sexual energy up rather than down, the tāntrika seeks to halt the aging process and enter into a condition of liberation that includes among its possible powers (siddhis) the immortalization of the body. Application of Life Extension Technologies Tantric practices of life extension presume that our bodies already have what we need to fight aging. Additionally, they rely on a critical link between the

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processes and potency of sexuality and death. Sex and death appear to be two mutually sustaining phenomena, not only in the world of the tantric siddha, but also in a handful of scientific experiments. Self-described “libertarian transhumanist” Ron Bailey reflects on the links between life extension and sexuality through an analysis of an experiment by Dr. Michael Rose, professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of California at Irvine. Bailey points out that Dr. Rose bred a group of fruit flies that were able to live longer lives by breeding the individuals who reproduced later in life (Bailey 2005, 29). Bailey remarks, “In the case of human beings, evolution has selected for a set of genes to keep our bodies in pretty good shape long enough to mature sexually, produce progeny, and raise the progeny to sexual maturity. The time elapsed for humans is about 40 years. If a body invests a lot of energy in repairing itself, it will reduce the amount of energy it can devote to reproduction” (Bailey 2005, 27). On the other hand, if the energy investment is reduced, then the well-being of the human body is preserved through an intimate balance between one’s reproductive processes and the overall well-being of the individual. Likewise, tantric tradition presupposes that our reproductive processes are implicated in the quest for life extension. The proper harnessing, control, and use of our sexual power (kāma-śakti)—which in the tantric context extends from the physical body (sthūla-śarīra) to the subtle or energetic body (sūk
mā-śarīra) to a deep causal body (kāra a-śarīra)—is identified as the key to biological well-being.6 If the energy of sexuality is released through the act of procreation without also harnessing that energy, the processes of sex are limited to the physical sex act itself. That is, that our lives are geared towards reproduction, and once that goal has been accomplished (or at least, if the necessary amount of time has been given to us) then the process of evolution has no further use for the individual body. That is, it will merely lead to the winter season of death. However, what contemporary life extension technicians appear on the verge of discovering and what tantric siddhas claim to have mastered is a technology for harnessing our reproductive potential indefinitely at the level of the entire body so that every cell (a u) is indefinitely regenerated. For the tantric yogin, the practice requires control of the inner muscles and organs together with a mastery of breathing techniques that awakens and regenerates the energies of the body at all of its levels. To learn these techniques one must study with a teacher who has mastered them him or herself. Naturally, a traditional tāntrika would recommend that one study with such a teacher. However, we can imagine that the tāntrika would certainly pay carefully observant of the practical application methods that their peers in the field of contemporary life extension will perhaps soon be offering to select human

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communities. Traditionally champions of the sciences,7 a tāntrika—unless she were restricted by her sense that she was bound to her own tradition— would logically be interested in the most advanced technologies available. Conclusion: Beyond Yet within the Body— Entering into the State of the Witness If a life extension technology simply adds years to the body but does not elevate the state of one’s consciousness, then tāntrikas would regard that body extension effort as relatively pointless. Understanding that death is nothing more than change, a modification of the material world, tāntrikas seek knowledge of that which is changeless. Knowing that all that is material inevitably changes and that change itself is nothing more or less than the dance of phenomenal existence (viśva-līla), the tāntrika ultimately seeks awareness of that which transcends the dance itself. The tāntrika seeks to engage phenomenal reality from the vantage point of that-which-never-dies (tad-rūpa-nityājīvāmā). This is only possible when one has reached the pinnacle of yoga practice that is the essence of the mystical technologies of tantra. At the culmination of such a practice, one remains grounded in the epistemological position of divine consciousness itself. From this vantage point, the tāntrika’s self-experience is characterized by the unmodifying nature of what the scriptures call the Witness (dra
t ), that state of consciousness in which one enters into a state of pure subjectivity, being always the seer and never the seen (Timalsina 2006, 31–37). In such a condition of witnessing enjoyment the tāntrika attains the ability to prolong the life of his or her own physical body. Since the self is defined by the tāntrika as beyond the restrictions of the body (dehātiti-sthitvā) and nondistinct from transcendent consciousness (parāsa vit-abhiddha), it is therefore possible for the tāntrika, at any time and in any body, to shift focus from the sense that he or she is in a particular body and instead experience simultaneously all bodies at all points in time and space. This ability to enter into the experience of “universal consciousness” is in fact one of the trademarks of the accomplished siddha. So, too, is the siddha said to be capable of entering into the bodies of others. However, this ability to enter the body—or mind—of another is considered a lower level power (siddhi) and rarely any thing more than sorcery. Unless the act of entering into the mind-body of another is for the beneficial purpose of assisting the soul of that person, then most tantric gurus shun such a practice as spiritually unsophisticated.8 As was discussed above, practices directed at bodily immortality are not shunned within tantra. Across the Himalayan range—India, Tibet,

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Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan—one finds abundant claims of shamans, yogis, and holy men of all types living in caves and high mountain tops who have reached extraordinary ages of several hundred and, in a few cases, even thousands of years. Inevitably, these individuals are understood to have gained such impressive age extensions through some form of tantric yogic practice, whether Hindu, Tibetan, Chinese or indigenous. The company of these beings is desired across society because of the belief that their very presence bestows healing and blessing power. However, not all tāntrikas desire to extend the duration of their physical body. Some seem quite clear that the physical body is not necessarily the best vehicle in which to live forever. Some prefer to enter into more subtle light bodies after completing their mystical training. Some prefer to enter into more subtle light bodies after completing their mystical training. Siddhārtha Gautama, the historical Buddha, is generally considered by tāntrikas across traditions as one of the greatest practitioners of yoga of this current age. The fact that he lived only to about 80 years of age is not considered a blemish on his stature as a great teacher and exemplar of the benefits of the tradition. Similarly, the nineteenth-century Bengali incarnation (avatāra) Rāmak 
a lived not much more than 50 years. Yet, very few Hindus refute the claim that he was a pure incarnation of the Divine. In the end, a tāntrika does not refute the potential benefit of any life extending technology. The body, Tantra repeatedly declares, is a beautiful and power gift. Within it are found the mysteries of the universe. Through it one can engage and explore the phenomenal world. Integrated fully with it, the Self experiences the fullness of embodied and transcendent consciousness as two aspects of a singular Being that is both within and beyond the world. Any technology that assists in the recognition of such a condition, the tāntrika will argue, is beneficial. On the other hand, any technology incapable of making such a recognition possible will be viewed by the tāntrika as lacking ultimate purpose and therefore of relative value. As tāntrikas will always place greater weight on that which produces experiences of ultimate value, they would not personally invest time or energy in a radical life extension program that did not lead simultaneously to an increase in that wisdom which abides in and transcends the entire cycle of life and death. In this way, they would encourage the technicians of contemporary life extension programs to utilize their knowledge for the highest good of true spiritual insight. Specifically, they would hope that any life extension technology would be grounded in a higher objective that makes the pursuit of immortality inseparable from the cultivation of the expansion of consciousness within the minds and bodies of those engaged in the application of those technologies.

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While tāntrikas may not agree with all of the theoretical assumptions and practical applications of their peers in the hard sciences, there are rich possibilities for dialogue and collaboration between life extension theoreticians and leading tantric teachers. Scientists and tāntrikas alike seek liberation from the forces of impermanence. Both regard the body as key to the attainment of their respective teleologies, even to the extent that similarities may be drawn between their working theories. Tāntrikas, however, more fervently insist that the physical world only echoes the spiritual, and that while the hard sciences may be on the path to highest truth, they would perhaps benefit from taking into account the theories and technologies of tantra and the world’s other wisdom traditions. Through such a collaborative approach, technicians of life extension in the hard sciences may further deepen their understanding of what it means to be truly human and in this way make the prospect of life extension truly meaningful. Ultimately, the tāntrika would conclude, we must understand ourselves not just in terms of what we see and feel, but also in terms of what is unseen and unfelt, for the recognition of the union of these two—the seen and unseen—is itself the highest purpose of life. It is the final gift of the elixir of immortality churned from within the potent sea of our potentially immortal beings. Notes 1. For an engaging and insightful analysis of the possibility life extension through technological advances in the hard sciences see de Grey 2004. 2. While the myth of the ocean of milk is a logical place to begin exploring tantric pursuits of immortality, it does not come from the oldest textual source for such a pursuit. The oldest source on Indic technologies of immortality date back the world’s first scripture, the g Veda of the third millennium ... In this text we find much discussion of soma, a god/plant/elixirial extraction capable of conquering the ravages of time. Within the context of elaborate ritual practices conducted by Brahmin priests, the soma plant was claimed to deliver individuals into the realms of the deathlessness (am tatva). See Kalyanaraman 2004. 3. The narrative of the churning of the ocean of milk (samudra-manthan) is found in several Hindu scriptures, including the Śrīmad Bhagavatam, the Vi
u Purā a, and the Mahābhārata. Our analysis is drawn from the Astika Parva portion of the Mahābhārata, section 18. The application of a tantric hermeneutics to this text is inspired by the analysis of Sthaneshwar Timalsina, scholar of tantric and Indic traditions at San Diego State University, as well as the oral teachings of Swami Chidvilasananda and other contemporary tantric teachers. 4. Śiva-Sa hitsa 2.1–2.5. Quoted in Varenne 1973, 155. 5. The most thorough and important work to date on the tantric pursuit of immortality is White 1996.

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6. A similar logic and practice of sexuality is found in the Daoist traditions of the later Han period. See a rich discussion of these practices and analysis of practice manuals in Wiles 1996. 7. For an illustrated introductory insider’s perspective on the connections between Tantra and science see Mookerejee and Khanna 2003. 8. While the practice is ethically problematic, it is philosophically intriguing to think through the multiple possibilities for life extension that emerge through such an ability.

CHAPTER 9

Two Wings of a Bird: Radical Life Extension from a Buddhist Perspective Derek F. Maher

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ith the steady current of astounding biomedical advances and the observable extension of life expectancy in recent decades, it has become easy to imagine that in the near- and long-term future, human beings will continue to experience an increasing prolongation of healthy life spans. Canonical Buddhist texts—including sūtras, tantras, and the noted compendium of Buddhist teachings written by the fourth-century Indian scholar Vasubandhu, Abhidharmakośa—have long asserted that the span of a human lifetime can be quite variable. For example, according to one system of Buddhist cosmology, human beings living on the four continents surrounding the central Mount Meru experience lives that range from 100 years at most in the continent where we are thought to live, Jambudvīpa, up to a fixed life span of 1,000 years on the northern continent, Uttarakura (Lati Rinpochay et al. 1983, 36–37). Moreover, it is claimed that on the continent of Jambudvīpa, where human beings live, life spans are in the process of diminishing from an incalculable value in the past, at the beginning of the present cosmic age (kalpa), until life spans eventually reach only ten years at the end of this age (Pruden 1988, vol. 2, 470–73). It is not surprising that people believed or feared that life spans were declining during the perilous times when these Buddhist doctrines were enunciated; death from disease had long been on

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the rise in the regions of India that were being newly occupied in the centuries leading up to the Buddha’s own lifetime (Gombrich 1988, 58). Yet, Buddhists attributed humans’ diminishing life span to the degeneracy of the present cosmic age, called the kaliyuga, not to biomedical causes. It would be interesting to know what Buddha would say about the empirical evidence that life spans are instead increasing at this time, despite the fact that we have only traversed the first 1.5 percent of the 432,000-year kaliyuga. This sort of juxtaposition of modern scientific knowledge with Buddhist accounts of the world constitutes an enduring and significant dimension of the engagement between Buddhist communities and European and North American observers. Buddhists have alternately resisted and creatively responded to the challenges Western scientific discoveries have posed to Buddhist doctrine. While the earliest encounters in the sixteenth century consisted of Buddhist rejections of ideas that contradicted their own orthodoxy, more recently some Buddhists have attempted to reconcile Buddhist principles with scientific discoveries. Donald S. Lopez’s recent work in this area of research reveals that Buddhists have long struggled to make sense of the ways in which the legitimacy of their tradition interfaced with modern scientific results. As Lopez observes, the present Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, adopts a position that is “unusual among Buddhist teachers” when he “expresses a willingness to dismiss those Buddhist teachings that are contradicted by the discoveries of modern science.”1 And indeed, the Dalai Lama is quite fascinated by the insights modern science affords, hosting conferences and dialogues with physicians, neuroscientists, and other scientists. He tells a revealing story from his childhood about examining the moon through a telescope that had belonged to the previous Dalai Lama. On the basis of his own observations of the shadows moving across the craters, he discerned that the moon was not a “light emitter” as it was declared to be in various Buddhist texts. As he tells the story, he realized then that the ancient Buddhist doctrine would have to be amended. As he said in his address to the thirty-fifth meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C. in 2005, “I have often remarked to my Buddhist colleagues that the empirically verified insights of modern cosmology and astronomy must compel us now to modify, or in some cases reject, many aspects of traditional cosmology as found in ancient Buddhist texts” (Gyatso 2008). The dramatic supposition being entertained in the present volume, that an indefinite healthy life span could be achieved by human beings, has more far-reaching implications for Buddhism than mere questions about the luminosity of the moon. Interestingly, many dimensions of the problems surrounding that potential future have been discussed by Buddhists in

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the past. Thus, indigenous concepts, traditions, practices, and narratives are already in place that would inform Buddhist efforts to navigate the newly altered landscape that might be created by this novel biomedical future. As a way of exploring the possible Buddhist reactions to biomedical immortality, it will be instructive to investigate the tradition’s foundational beliefs about death and longevity. Doctrines and Narratives According to Buddhism, living beings continue to be born according to their previous actions (karma), take birth and create positive and negative karma, and die, only to be reborn again in a context called forth by the unmanifest karma from the past. Beings are habituated to performing afflictive actions because they are under the influence of innate ignorance that misperceives reality. This basic misunderstanding of reality means that beings perceive the world, everything in it, and both themselves and others as permanent and unconditioned, a mistaken viewpoint that permits selfish behavior. As beings overcome more and more afflictions through their own contemplative efforts, they approach the point where they will have no more unripened causes of being reborn. At that threshold, they will have achieved nirvā a, a state in which their participation in sa sāra, the cyclic character of reincarnated existence, has come to an end. When their body dies in that lifetime, they will have transcended sa sāra entirely. It could be argued that Buddhists have expended more thought, rhetoric, and ink in discussing death than any other religious group. One of the most oft-repeated lines in the Buddhist oral tradition, commonly invoked in remarks introducing almost any sort of religious talk, is a variation on the following: “The fact of death is definite, although its timing is not” (e.g., Sogyal Rinpoche 2002, 15–16). In this way, the believer is enjoined to engage in religious practice without delay; since the opportunity to make good use of a human life in order to earn merit and gain wisdom is fleeting, the time remaining to each person is regarded as a precious opportunity that should not be squandered. In the next lifetime, it is feared, a person may not be born in a fortunate circumstance where religious practice and spiritual advancement are possible. Obviously, if true immortality were realized, it would be necessary to rethink that basic orientation to the world and the method of inculcating the motive to live ethically that is embedded within it. Presumably, people would still experience the impact of their actions (karma) in their single enduring lifetime, but since they would not die, they would not have to concern themselves with being reborn into a less desirable life circumstance. Of course, it is possible that people would continue to die

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because of accidents; however, the rarity of this would drain it of the lively motivating impact it presently has. On another plane, there are a couple of reasons to think that Buddhists would have fewer apprehensions about death than advocates of other religions. The first of these is a consequence of the Buddhist embrace of the doctrine of reincarnation. Since it is asserted that people take rebirth repeatedly, the death in one particular lifetime is encumbered with less gravity; after all, another lifetime is just around the corner. Yet all lifetimes are not equal in the Buddhist worldview. Taking birth as a human being, it is claimed, provides opportunities for spiritual advancement that exceed those available to other sentient beings endlessly born in the rounds of cyclic existence or sa sāra. According to Buddhist cosmology, sentient beings cycle through six different realms of existence as they transmigrate, taking up lives as hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, demigods, and gods. The first three are regarded as unfortunate births since hell beings and hungry ghosts are both seen as enduring too much suffering to be able to engage in serious religious practice and animals are regarded as too stupid to do so. The demigod and god realms offer plenty of opportunities for spiritual advancement since such beings have lives of leisure and of great duration, some of them said to reach ages in the range of tens of thousands of years. However, the demigods are psychologically parallel to types of people who have plentiful resources but are constantly obsessed with those who have more; meanwhile, the gods are like rich, pampered playboys who luxuriate in comforts without bothering to make their lives spiritually meaningful. As a consequence, all five of these types of beings are said to spend much of their lives generating negative karma while they simultaneously fail to generate the good karma that would contribute to a positive rebirth. Thus, upon death, all five of these sorts of beings are at risk of falling into lower and more unfortunate births. In contrast, the human lifetime is regarded as most conducive to an effective and meaningful spiritual life because human beings have enough suffering that they bother to consider religious matters, without having so much that they are unable to do anything about it Moreover, humans are credited with having sufficient intelligence to reflect meaningfully on their condition. According to this explanation, the unique position of human beings makes that condition ideally suited to spiritual practice (Gyatso 2000). Another reason Buddhists might be thought to be less concerned about death than advocates of other religions arises in relation to the central doctrine of no-self (anātman). Buddha and his subsequent commentators reacted against the pre-Buddhist concept of the self (ātman) each person is

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said to possess. S. Radhakrishnan describes how the self is understood in the Upani
ads (1953, 74): Ātman is the foundational reality underlying the conscious powers of the individual, the inward ground of the human soul. There is an ultimate depth to our life below the plane of thinking and striving. The Ātman is the super-reality of . . . the individual ego. Buddhists reject the existence of the self, which they regard as an unnecessary fiction that serves as the foundation of problematic attitudes and emotions. In particular, numerous Buddhist texts single out the belief in the self as the foundation for one of the most pervasive and enduring obstacles to spiritual practice: attachment to the body. The second- or third-century Indian scholar-adept Āryadeva, for example, argues throughout the first third of his Four Hundred Stanzas against the patterns of thought that permit people to become attached to their own physical bodies. He explains that the body serves as the basis of physical pain and hunger (Chapter 2) and is an unclean thing and therefore not worthy of the adoration humans devote to it (Chapter 3). In Chapter 4, he argues that attachment to the body, in itself, solidifies predispositions to self-cherishing, egoism, pride, feelings of superiority, and other insalutary attitudes. More profoundly, this complex is also depicted as reinforcing the innate misconceptions that entrap beings in cyclic existence in the first place (Lang 1986; Rinchen and Sonam 1994). Hence, for Buddhists, as for advocates of many other religions, the mere prolongation of life could never be an end in itself. The self-centered yearning that seems to underlie it would be regarded as being wrought with too many perilous entanglements that could turn out to be obstacles to real spiritual advancement. Relatedly, a technology that is often connected to biomedical efforts to radically extend life is cryonics, where either the entire body or just the head is frozen near the time of death in the hope that at some future moment, it will become possible to reanimate the life of the person through technological advances. The great Tibetan master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche regarded this practice as “utterly meaningless” since (Sogyal Rinpoche 2002, 384): One’s consciousness cannot enter one’s body again after one is actually dead. The belief that one’s corpse is being kept for future revival can obviously trap the person’s consciousness in a tragically increased attachment to the body and so aggravate its suffering immensely and block the process of rebirth.

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While advocates of cryonics would question the lama’s understanding of death, Khyentse Rinpoche’s posture emphasizes Buddhists’ central suspicion of attachment to the body that seems to underlie many such scientific efforts to prolong life for its own sake. In fact, some Buddhist ethicists would approve of passive euthanasia, withholding life-sustaining treatments, if the person is certainly dying, is in serious pain, or is lacking a quality of life that is spiritually beneficial (Perret 1996). Instead, Buddhists believe that they can approach the paradigmatic status represented by Buddha’s ideal life by performing meritorious actions and by cultivating the wisdom consciousness that correctly assesses reality. Any lifetime that advances these twin objectives, as necessary and complementary as the two wings of a bird, would be regarded as particularly worth living. Turning to questions of cosmology, Buddhists embrace distinctive views on temporality. As for beginnings, they reject the notion of a true temporal origin on the logical grounds that such a scenario would require a causeless effect, something that is taken to be a logical muddle, a puzzling impossibility that conflicts with our normal experience of the irrevocable relationship between cause and effect. Buddhists are generally dubious of any claim that the expected and universally observed correlation of cause and effect has ever been suspended, and so they reject the “uncaused effect” or the First Mover advanced in the cosmological argument for the existence of God. Such claims are regarded by Buddhists as unnecessary assertions that should be pruned by Occam’s razor. At the other extreme of the temporal spectrum, the end of the world, again we see Buddhist conceptions of time spreading out to the nearly infinite. While the Abrahamic eschatologies concern themselves with questions of the emergence of a messianic figure, the Last Judgment, the final assignments to heaven and hell, and the like, Buddhism avoids any discourse of ultimate destinies. As the fourteenth Dalai Lama has remarked, “If Buddha has a slogan, it is that all things are dependent-arisings.” Since phenomena arise in dependence upon causes and conditions, they have no fixed enduring character. For sentient beings transmigrating through endless rounds of cyclic existence or sa sāra, this means that human beings and other creatures subject to reincarnation are not regarded as ultimately doomed to any particular fate. All is subject to change, and indeed, everything will change. If, at the end of some particular lifetime, a being is reborn in a hell realm, it is temporary, and eventually, they will be reborn in a new incarnation according to karmas from past lives that have, as yet, not come to fruition. Any sense of a final judgment or reward forever is unknown in Buddhism. Any rebirth itself is one among an endless series, a dependent

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state contingent on an array of endlessly changeable conditions. For most interpretive currents of Buddhism, no messianic savior can be expected.2 Rather, each being is responsible for their own spiritual evolution, their own moral or karmic standing, and their own intellectual penetration of reality. According to this dominant interpretation, each individual charts her or his own personal path toward realization, toward nirvā a, the cessation of suffering, by way of her or his own practice of Buddhism. As they overcome afflictive attitudes that promote the acquisition of negative karma, individuals evolve spiritually, and lifetime after lifetime, they bounce upward and downward to desirable or unwanted states of existence dependent on the mixture of unrealized karmic traces. In the end, Buddhists aspire to attain the state of an Arhat in the Theravāda tradition and the state of a Buddha in Mahāyāna; both of these states are regarded as enduring indefinitely into the future, a distinctive Buddhist conception of radical life extension (RLE). Practices These views have important implications for Buddhist practices. The science of prolongevity with which we are concerned here is very much a modern phenomenon, cutting-edge biomedicine grounded in present and especially future developments in a broad range of scientific investigation and therapeutic modalities. However, for the reasons suggested above, Buddhists have long been interested in extending the duration of human life by other means. In medieval India, Buddhist yogins joined Śaivites and other adepts in alchemical and yogic practices intended to enhance spiritual insights, attain transcendent powers, and forestall death itself. In China, Japan, India, and elsewhere, many Buddhists have appealed to Amitābha, the Buddha of Infinite Light, who is thought to have perfected himself and established a pure land to the west called Sukhāvatī, where his devotees gather to live enduring lives and practice his teachings. An alternate name for him is Amitāyus, the Buddha of Infinite Life. And it is in connection with this Buddha figure that many Buddhists have engaged in longevity practices. At different points in time, these practices have been alchemical, yogic, contemplative, and sometimes a combination of all three. (The yogic and alchemical practices overlap broadly with the practices described by Jeffrey Lidke in the Hindu Tantrism chapter, so they will not be discussed further here.) On a more exoteric level, it is very common for practitioners in many parts of the Buddhist world to recite aspirational long-life prayers intended to extend their own lives (e.g., “Prayer for the Long Life”). The earliest forms

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of Buddhism emphasized a self-reliant outlook that echoes Buddha’s own famous last words, “Be a lamp unto yourself.” However, an alternative vision emerged within the later Mahāyāna interpretation in which it was thought that the faithful believer could prevail upon Buddha figures to assist them in making spiritual progress. In that model, it is possible to obtain grace and salvation that leads to nirvā a by cultivating a devotional posture toward various Buddhas. Practitioners of such traditions, known collectively as Pure Land Buddhism, seek the blessings of Buddhas and bodhisattvas through whom they believe they can be reborn in Amitābha’s Sukhāvatī Heaven. This luminous Buddha has such an astoundingly long life that it is said “the measure of the lifespan of that blessed one is unlimited. Therefore, that tathagata is called Amitayus (‘Measureless Life’)” (Gōmez 1996, 83).3 Sentient beings fortunate enough to obtain the blessing of being reborn in Amitābha’s heaven live a life of luxurious peace, basking in a sublime and blessed atmosphere surrounded by realized Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other teachers. It is believed to be an environment so imbued with sacrality that all those who are born there are destined to become Buddhas themselves. Beings can be reborn into Sukhāvatī Heaven through having “pure faith in the knowledge of the Buddha . . . through practicing all forms of meritorious actions, and through dedicating the resultant merit with a trusting mind” (Gōmez 1996). The Pure Land tradition envisions that over the infinite life of Amitāyus Buddha, more and more beings will be reborn into Sukhāvatī Heaven and eventually sa sāra will be emptied out of suffering beings. Many other Buddhist narratives reference the prolongation of life. Prophecies foretell that the Buddhist teachings articulated by Śākyamuni Buddha in India twenty-five centuries ago will fall into decline until Buddhism is no longer known in the world. This is seen to be a consequence of the fact that we live in the degenerate era mentioned above, the kaliyuga, a period of time in which all aspects of life become increasingly corrupt. According to this interpretation, eventually, after the last remnants of the faith have disappeared, a new Buddha called Maitreya will come to the earth from Tu
ita Heaven to revitalize Buddhism with an even more dynamic and powerful expression of the faith. Moreover, in the Pure Land tradition, people aspire to be born into a lifetime that endures nearly forever. Still other Buddhist narratives, including tantric accounts, imagine the future as being characterized by a general trend toward universal liberation by all sentient beings. Eventually, all beings will attain the perfect state of a Buddha, a condition that will last unceasingly. On another track, Tibetan medical traditions employ a variety of methods intended to prolong life. A product called Tsephel Dutse (rtshe ’phel bdud rtsi) or the Elixir that Prolongs Life,

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manufactured by the Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute operated by the Tibetan government-in-exile, promises to boost body energy and prolong the life (“Sorig Healthcare”). Hence, Buddhists from various interpretive traditions already embrace an array of contemplative, tantric, and medical practices intended to extend life. So what does all of this say for the Buddhist reaction to medical modalities leading to the radical extension of life? It would seem that in general most Buddhists would welcome life-prolonging techniques just as their forebears have long sought to enhance the duration of their own lives. However, the prolongation of life would only be sought in cases that are seen as spiritually positive. In fact, there is evidence in some Buddhist canonical sources that it may be justified to end the life of a person who is destructive and who is likely to simply generate negative karma if they continue living. Preserving the person from their own bad karma by killing them can be seen as a compassionate action in some circumstances.4 If biomedicine advanced to the point that true immortality was attainable, faithful Buddhists would probably avail themselves of the breakthroughs, justifying it along the lines suggested above as a means of extending a life in which valuable spiritual work could be done. Non-faithful Buddhists would probably employ the advances as well out of selfishness, the very thing that would cause them to be counted as not being faithful practitioners. Yet, in the new environment, Buddhists would need to elaborate new rhetorical strategies to encourage people to engage in religious practice. If people could expect to live forever, they would have fewer incentives to behave well and foster good karma since they would no longer fear being reborn as head lice, dung beetles, or worse, hell beings. Presumably, it would be explained that significant karmic repercussions would eventually nonetheless begin to dawn in the lives of the newly immortal in ways that have nothing to do with rebirth in other forms. After all, karma isn’t just a good idea; it’s the law. Karma must find a way to express itself. Someone could attain immortality through biomedical science and yet choose to live a wretched, selfish, and harmful life, an outcome that would not be welcomed by Buddhists. However, most Buddhists would probably initially see the science as enabling them to pursue other religiously sanctioned objectives, such as assisting other beings, accumulating merit, acquiring wisdom, and advancing towards the ultimate state of Buddhahood. If people could somehow have the wisdom and compassion necessary to make an indefinitely long life meaningful and spiritually purposeful, it would seem that Buddhists would welcome the opportunities that would represent. Still, many Buddhists would be concerned that if radically extended lifetimes became the norm, the world would eventually become indistinguishable

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from the god realm where beings live interminable, but spiritually vacant, lives. To resist this, new narratives would be called forth that could still motivate people to remember the value of practice. These might feature a pronounced emphasis on the continuing possibility of accidental deaths and the consequent rebirths. Or they might reimagine the perils of karmic impact later on in this lifetime from acts committed in this lifetime, a theme that is now largely ignored in religious literature. Such new narratives may have less impact than current ones, however, because of the greater possibility of being empirically falsified, a threat not now confronted by Buddhist notions of rebirth or indeed by the afterlife claims of other religions. On another front, unlike in most other religious traditions, for some Buddhists, the contemplative examination of the death process itself can serve as a cause of growing spiritually. Some tantric practitioners within Mahāyāna Buddhism spend significant amounts of time in meditation on the stages of death. By understanding the process of death well and engaging in contemplative yogic practices to rehearse it, a practitioner of death yoga is thought to be able to transform death, the intermediate state, and rebirth into processes that lead to Buddhahood. It is supposed that for such a person, these practices make it possible for them to stop death and rebirth and “become fully enlightened in that same lifetime” (Lati Rinbochay and Hopkins 1979). If a meditator reached that level through their tantric practice, bodily death would no longer be seen as problematic and would be an actual hindrance to their final status as a Buddha. Thus, these people may decide to resist further therapeutic methods of prolonging the life of their body. Ethical considerations For Buddhists, a variety of ethical considerations attend the application of the biomedical innovations under discussion. The most notable concern would be that such advances ought to be made available on an equitable basis. Most Buddhists would condemn a program through which only the wealthy, powerful, or well connected were able to take advantage of prolongation therapies. Moreover, given the fact that the planet can only sustain a limited number of human beings, another significant ethical question would arise. Undoubtedly, at some point it would become necessary for the humans that were alive to refrain from bearing new children. Since this means that other nonhuman sentient beings would no longer be able to take birth in the desirable state of a human being—at least not in this world system—some people would probably regard it as arbitrary to privilege the generation that happened to be alive at the point when immortality technology happened to

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become available. Why should these particular beings, who just happen to be humans at this time, receive the benefits of these technologies? Equity between humans might be resolvable in a world that was willing to commit sufficient resources to it. However, the impossibility of resolving the arbitrary lack of equity between the residents of the six realms at the point this becomes available may doom the proposal among Buddhist ethicists. Alternatively, new narratives might emerge that would justify our use of the technologies on this planet under the suggestion that new human beings were still being created in other world systems. It is, after all, the genius of religions that they can adapt their accounts of the world to fit everevolving landscapes. Notes 1. Lopez 2008a, 108. See also, his book from which the article is excerpted (Lopez 2008b). 2. According to minority views articulated in Buddhist Tibet and Mongolia, and undoubtedly influenced by Muslim eschatological views encountered in Central Asia, there will be a final apocalyptic battle at the end of time that will result in the final victory of Buddhism. See Berzin, 2008. 3. “Tathāgatha” is an appellation of the Buddha that means the “One Gone Thus.” 4. Tatz 1994. When a ship’s captain perceives that a robber on board his ship plans to kill all 500 passengers, each of whom is a spiritually advanced person, the captain (actually Buddha during one of his previous lives) decides to kill the robber, in part to preserve him from “going to the great hells because of the deed.”

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CHAPTER 10

A Thousand Years, Less Fifty: Toward a Quranic View of Extreme Longevity Aisha Y. Musa

Qur’an What are the implications of radical life extension (RLE) for Islamic concepts of life and death, of the here and the hereafter? For Muslims, the Qur’an contains the direct and literal words of God, transmitted in Arabic to the Prophet Muhammad, by the angel Gabriel in the seventh century of the Common Era. For Muslims, it the most authoritative source of knowledge about divine commands relating to life, death, the here, and the hereafter; as such, as Muslims seek understanding about these questions in the midst of ongoing biomedical advances, they turn to the Qur’an for guidance. Not only does the Qur’an shape Muslim worldviews, it also informs Muslims about the history of earlier communities and individuals, and Muslims generally accept the claims contained in these stories as true and accurate. This chapter will examine Quranic verses that touch on the idea of extreme longevity together with Muslim understandings of those verses as they have been reflected in classical exegesis. However, the text is not understood or interpreted in a vacuum. Just as Muslim understandings of life and death are informed by the text, Muslim understandings of the text are informed by experiences and perceptions. Those experiences and perceptions evolve and change in response to a wide variety of cultural and social

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changes. Advances in science and technology are among the most potent factors that influence the experiences and perceptions that in turn influence exegesis. A basic understanding of life and death is clearly articulated in the Qur’an. God predetermines an individual’s life span prior to his or her birth: He is the One who created you from dust, then from a tiny drop, then from a hanging embryo, then He brings you out as a child, then you reach maturity, then you become old—and some of you die before—so that you reach an appointed term. (40:67) The Qur’an also suggests the age at which one reaches full maturity: We enjoined the human being to honor his parents. His mother carried him with difficulty, gave birth to him with difficulty, and his weaning takes thirty months. Until he reaches maturity and reaches forty years. (46:15) Although God predetermines one’s life span, the Qur’an suggests no minimum or maximum amount of time that span may last. Only God knows the term that he has appointed for anyone. However, the Qur’an does offer a hint of what is possible, in the story of Noah: “We sent Noah to his people, then he remained among them a thousand years, less fifty, and then the flood overwhelmed them while they were unjust.” Opinions on the duration of Noah’s life vary. The late thirteenthcentury commentator al-Qurtubī (d. 1273 CE) surveys the range of views, which extend from the 950 years indicated in the verse itself to an extreme of 1650 years: 350 years before he began preaching, 950 years preaching God’s message before the flood, and 350 years after the flood. In any case, the duration of his life was far longer than the current average human life span or even the currently recognized extreme of life expectancy. Of the major commentators on the Qur’an, both past and present, only al-Qurtubī’s early thirteenth-century predecessor Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210 CE) directly addresses the question of what may constitute “natural” life expectancy: Some physicians say that human life span does not exceed one hundred and twenty years, but the verse indicates the opposite of their statement, and reason agrees. Indeed, survival of the human body is possible; otherwise, he [Noah] would not have survived . . . Their words go against reason and tradition. We say: “There is no dispute between us and them

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because they say that the natural life span is not greater than one hundred and twenty years, and we say this life span is not natural, rather it is a divine gift.” By declaring that the extent of a human being’s life span is a gift from Allah, al-Rāzī offers a clear basis for accepting life spans that may go well beyond what human wisdom, even that of medical professions, may deem possible. That the human body can be sustained for such an extended period is clearly acceptable to al-Rāzī because it happened in the case of Noah. The possibility of an “unnaturally” long life is not limited, in the Quranic worldview, to prophets such as Noah. Chapter 18 of the Qur’an also tells the story of a group of young believers who take refuge in a cave to escape religious persecution. The text does not indicate how long they lived. Instead, it says that God “covered their ears” for “a number of years” and afterward “revived/awakened them.” During the “number of years,” the text further says that they appeared to be awake, when actually they were asleep. Here, in addition to the apparent proposal of an extended physical life, we see the possibility of experiencing an extended period of sleep followed by an awakening, after which the subjects function normally. The story is suggestive of the type of suspension of life and reanimation envisioned in cryonics. Another possibility suggested in the Qur’an is that of earthly resurrection after death. In Chapter 2 of the Qur’an, we find the story of a man who questions how God will be able to resurrect the dead. God demonstrates his power personally to the man by causing him to die and then resurrecting him to his earthly life after a century. In all of these examples, the extent of life and the timing of death are the exclusive province of God. Physical life is finite, but it is not necessarily limited to forms that human knowledge and experience may consider natural. God is able not only to extend human life for an indefinite period; he can also revive or even resurrect the human being to an earthly existence after an indefinite period. From this perspective, the Qur’an offers Muslims a means to comprehend the possibility of RLE. Moreover, Muslim views of the relationship between science and religion support acceptance of that possibility. Doctrines—Science and Religion Muslim contributions to the advancement of scientific knowledge are well documented throughout history, although this is not widely known outside the Muslim world. Over the past several decades, Muslims have given increasing weight to scientific information and theories in understanding

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and explaining the verses of the Qur’an. A key figure in this popular Muslim view of the relationship between science and scripture is Maurice Bucaille, a French physician and author of The Bible, the Qur’an, and Science: The Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of Modern Knowledge. Originally published in French in 1976, the book has been translated into many languages and has enjoyed enormous and widespread popularity throughout the Muslim world. This positive reception is due in part to the author’s enthusiastic affirmation of the compatibility of Islam and science (Bucaille 2003, 8): The Qur’an most definitely did not contain a single proposition at variance with the most firmly established modern knowledge, nor did it contain any of the ideas current at the time on the subjects it describes. Furthermore, however, a large number of facts are mentioned in the Qur’an which were not discovered until modern times. Skeptics have questioned both the reliability of Bucaille’s conclusions and his motives. However, neither the validity of his scientific and scriptural claims, nor his motives, is the issue that concerns us here. What is important in the context of the current discussion is Bucaille’s more general conclusion about “the great advantage there is in using scientific data in examining certain aspects of the Holy Scriptures,” a perspective that “leads us to establish an agreement between the conclusions drawn from scientific data and the concepts held by exegetes.” The primary importance of Bucaille’s work is two fold. Because it is seen by Muslims as a confirmation of the miraculous nature of the Qur’an, it has been not only enormously popular with Muslims, but it has also exerted a powerful influence on contemporary Muslim attitudes toward scientific and medical advancements. Secondly, his work has implications for how Muslims understand the opinions of exegetes, such as al-Rāzī, cited above. Al-Rāzī was responding to medical experts in his own time who held that the natural human life span did exceed 120 years. He did so by arguing first, that the Quranic account of Noah is factual, and thus, the human body must be able to survive well beyond 120 years. Additionally, he maintained that life span is not a natural aspect of humanity; rather, it is a divine gift. In a similar way, if RLE becomes a reality, Bucaille’s work can provide Muslims with the means to regard these biomedical advances as being in conformity to norms established in the Qur’an. Even though earlier exegetes lacked scientific data in support of a radical prolongation of human life, they recognized that something of the sort could be possible, as clearly implied in the Quranic story of Noah. In this way, the concept could be accepted as having both scriptural and exegetical legitimacy.

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In the three decades since Bucaille’s work was first published, interest in Islam as a “scientific religion” has blossomed, and more books have been written on Islam and science. These writings include works of both popular piety and academic inquiry. Topics range from human embryology to geology, astronomy, and oceanography. To date, scholars of Islam have not undertaken a sustained discussion of longevity or RLE in such literature. However, the theme that runs through all of these works is that there is a fundamentally complementary relationship between science and scripture, whether looking at science through the lens of scripture, or looking at scripture through the lens of science. Traditional Muslim understanding and interpretation appears to have room to accept the possibility of extreme longevity; however, the chance of practical immortality, even for some individuals, could challenge accepted eschatological doctrines related to death, resurrection, and afterlife. The Qur’an declares unambiguously that “wherever you are death will find you,” and “every soul will taste death.” These verses have always been understood to preclude the possibility of earthly immortality. However, in another verse that is generally understood to refer to the believers in paradise, the Qur’an states, “They do not taste death in it, except the first death.” Most commentators, past and present, generally understand “the first death” to refer to the earthly death that all individuals experience, and that the overall import of the verse is that such death will not occur in paradise. In addition to this common understanding, some exegetes offer more mystical interpretation, seeing “the first death” as a metaphor for the mystical experience of dying in the self, so that the believer is in the true paradise of knowing, obeying and loving God, even while physically still in the world. Both understandings are based on eschatological notions of death, followed by eventual resurrection and judgment, and finally an eternal afterlife in Heaven or Hell. In turn, Heaven and Hell are understood to be actual places where souls of resurrected individuals will go. These notions and the interpretations that are derived from them take for granted the universal human experience of physical death. The possibility of practical immortality, even for some individuals would necessitate a reevaluation and reinterpretation of these key doctrines, opening the way for the development and acceptance of new understandings. An example of the type of interpretation that might benefit from the challenges that practical immortality offers to inherited notions of death, resurrection, and afterlife is the work of Ghulam Ahmed Parvez, who holds that Heaven and Hell are not localities, but psychological states of being: “Heaven ( Jannah) stands for fruition coupled with glowing home for the future. Hell ( Jahannam) is the experience of frustration tinged with

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remorse and regret” (Parvez 2008). Drawing on the work of Parvez, a young Dutch Muslim thinker, Arnold Yasin Mol, goes on to posit that “the Qur’an presents Jannah as a state of evolution of the individual and society, and Jahannam as a state of non-evolution wherein both individual and society do not develop” (Mol 2008). If Heaven and Hell are understood as states of existence that are already being experienced by individuals and societies, rather than as actual places that souls enter after death, the whole view of life, death, and the hereafter changes. The Arabic word that is generally translated as hereafter is al-akhira (that which comes after or last). The common inherited understanding is that this refers to the eternal afterlife, which individuals will spend in either Heaven or Hell. Mol offers a quite different understanding, according to which the universe is “slowly working to its next phase called ‘Akhira’.” Mol explains his theory further (2008b, 47): The Universe will collapse and is [sic] formed again using the same process, but as with any evolution, it will be on a higher scale of development and so will have more possibilities and features then the first Universe. Such a radical redefinition of Heaven, Hell, and the Hereafter, if it gained acceptance, could make the sort of practical immortality that might result from RLE acceptable as well, for according to Mol, “As all species, Man will die out due to the ever changing environment of the Universe” (2008b, 47). Therefore, the Qur’an’s insistence that each person will experience death would remain true, though it might happen for some not through aging, disease, accident, or violence, but with the collapse of the universe itself. Likewise, if RLE and potential immortality become realities, that realization could make such a radical redefinition of the inherited Muslim doctrines acceptable. Rituals, Practices, Institutions Islam is a religion that lacks both a centralized authority and universally accepted institutions. Community religious activities tend to be organized on a local level. While a defined clerical hierarchy does exist in Shi’a Islam, there is no such clergy in Sunni Islam. Anyone who is seen as pious, knowledgeable, and trustworthy may serve as an imam, leading prayers, offering Friday sermons, and serving the general spiritual needs of the community. Indeed, age is something that is traditionally respected. A longer life offers Muslims more opportunities to attain knowledge, gain wisdom, and practice piety. Thus, it would not be inconsistent for Muslims to regard a significantly prolonged life to be an asset to both the family and the community.

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On this level, then, RLE seems to offer no particular challenge to the Muslim community. Although it is a matter of dispute, one of the concerns raised in the discussion of increased life expectancy is overpopulation. Here too, there is no problem for Islam from a doctrinal perspective because the Qur’an teaches that God provides the necessary sustenance for all living creatures. The problem is not the existence of sufficient provisions for all people, but the control and distribution of those provisions. Islam, like other religions, recognizes the potential injustices that might arise as a consequence of the unequal distribution of and access to resources. The religion condemns this unwanted consequence by calling upon believers to avoid greed and hoarding and to redistribute wealth by spending one’s excess in charity. There are two forms of “charity” traditionally recognized in Islam: (1) the obligatory zakat, which is often translated as “alms” or “poor-due,” and (2) the voluntary charity, sadaqa. Voluntary charity may be offered by an individual at any time and in any amount, and it is not associated with any institutionalized practice. Zakat, however, is set by tradition as 2.5 percent of an individual’s net worth, calculated and paid every year at the end of the fast of Ramadan. It may be paid privately by an individual to needy relatives or community members or paid to the local mosque for distribution to the needy. The potential challenges that extreme longevity may present on this issue are also unclear. Would an extended life span mean increased dependency on the families and communities or extended economic productivity? A longer life and presence in the work force might lead to greater competition and lower wages, making it more difficult for some individuals to support themselves and their families. This could lead not to increased charitable giving, but to a greater demand on charitable contributions. However, extended productivity and greater wealth accumulation could mean potentially greater contributions to charity and the care of the needy. Perhaps the religious practice that might face the greatest challenge from more people living much longer is the institution of pilgrimage (hajj). According to the Qur’an, making pilgrimage to the Sacred House is incumbent on everyone who has the means to do so. Tradition specifies that this obligation is once in a lifetime, but those Muslims who can afford it may go multiple times. Hajj takes place over the first ten days of the lunar month of Dhul-Hijjah. In earlier times, for most people, the pilgrimage was a long and difficult journey. However, the prosperity brought by oil wealth and advances in transportation have made the journey easier. Today, millions of

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people from all over the world travel to Mecca for these ten days. According to the Saudi Arabian embassy (Hajj 2009): Over the past four decades, [the government] has spent billions of dollars to expand the Holy Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah, as well as establishing modern airports, seaports, roads, lodging, and other amenities and services for the pilgrims. The establishment of these facilities by itself does not ensure a successful Hajj. To do so, the Kingdom has put into place a vast organization supervised by the Supreme Hajj Committee. If RLE were to lead to a dramatic increase in population, demands on the infrastructure required for a successful pilgrimage would also increase. How might such an increase change the current experience of the already crowded pilgrimage? Would the additional burden on infrastructure make the journey longer and more difficult? Might it require limiting those who have the means to make Hajj multiple times to making Hajj only once in a lifetime, or would more people be encouraged to make the lesser pilgrimage, known as ‘Umra, which can be done at other periods throughout the year? Such practical questions may seem less important than the challenges to eschatological doctrines discussed above, but if extreme longevity were to become a reality and in turn lead to dramatic increase in population, such issues would need to be addressed much more readily and directly than the doctrinal concerns because these issues have a much more immediate impact on the individual and the society. Conclusion While Muslims have yet to begin a discussion of the question of RLE and its implications, examining the issue from the perspective of scripture and doctrine reveals no conflict with Islamic norms and ideals. Indeed, we find clear examples that offer both scriptural and exegetical legitimacy to the possibility of living for centuries. Because RLE does not necessarily imply immortality, it does not necessarily conflict with the Quranic teaching that every person will experience death. Even when the means to extend life beyond that attributed to Noah become a reality, other means of death remain possible. Moreover, alternative understandings of death and the hereafter that could accommodate extreme longevity and even practical immortality are possible. Such longevity would, however, doubtless present a variety of social, ethical, and economic challenges to the families and communities in which it

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may eventually occur. Many of those issues would be of a practical nature that transcends religious identity and ideology. Moreover, just as the Qur’an and its exegetes throughout history offer a means for accepting the possibility of extreme longevity, they also offer perspectives for appreciating the benefits that will accrue and addressing the needs that will arise when such longevity becomes a reality.

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CHAPTER 11

Radical Life Extension: Implications for Roman Catholicism Terence L. Nichols

W

hat would be the implications for Roman Catholicism if persons were to live for hundreds of years rather than for decades? This is the question I will address in this chapter, along with the further question, what is the likely response of the Roman Catholic Church to the prospect of radical life extension (RLE)? There are no official or even unofficial Roman Catholic responses to these questions, because the issue is so speculative and new. So my chapter here will be a kind of thought experiment, based on my knowledge of Roman Catholic theology and a number of assumptions. What are those assumptions? I will assume that RLE will occur, that medical techniques will make it possible to arrest aging. In theory this would mean that people would not die of old age, though they might die of other causes, such as accidents, murder, suicide, natural disasters, or war. Presumably, RLE would also mean that major diseases would be cured or be curable. Thus persons born in the age of RLE could look forward to lives measured in centuries, rather than decades. But this also entails the assumption that a high level of futuristic health care would be available continuously for hundreds of years, which in turn means that advanced technical society would be stable for hundreds of years. For if there were social collapse, economic collapse, political unrest, revolution, widespread war, or environmental and resource failure, then in all likelihood the requisite health care would not be available, and people would die of disease, famine, or other disorders. Even a glance at history

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suggests that it is very unlikely that our highly technological society will continue as is for hundreds of years. We are threatened already with overpopulation, war, terrorism, environmental decline, and resource failure, not to mention declining educational levels in the United States and Europe. So I think it is unlikely that RLE will succeed and become widespread. But for the purposes of this chapter, I will assume that it does. What then would be the implications for Catholicism, and what would be the likely Catholic response? I will approach these questions by considering the implications of RLE for the narratives that are foundational to the Catholic Christian tradition, as well as Catholic doctrines, practices, and institutions. After this, I will consider what I think the likely response of Catholic theologians and bishops would be to RLE. Narratives The foundational narratives for Roman Catholicism are the same as for other branches of Christianity: the creation stories in Genesis; the story of the sin and “fall” of Adam and Eve; the Noahic flood; the covenants God makes with Noah, Abraham, and Moses; the Israelite prophetic tradition; and the New Covenant made through Jesus the Christ. What do these narratives tell us about life and life extension? First of all, they tell us that life is the gift of God. In the Genesis narratives, God creates all animal life and human life. And life is good. God blesses living things, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:22). In the initial picture of creation, the Garden of Eden story, it is not clear if there was death in the world. God gives the green plants to everything that has the breath of life, including humans. This would seem to imply that in the paradisial state of Eden, animals did not eat each other, nor did humans eat the animals. Only after humans have been cast out of Eden were they allowed to eat animals, and then only the flesh without blood, for the blood was thought to be the life, which belonged to God: “You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood” (Genesis 9:4). Life, then, is the gift of God and belongs to God; there is no hint in the Genesis creation accounts that life is due to a purely natural evolutionary process. Where, then, does death come from in the foundational narratives? It appears to come from sin. Certainly this is true of humans. The result of the sin of Adam and Eve is that they are cast out of the Garden, denied access to the tree of life, and cursed with death: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). It is not entirely clear if death among the animals was thought to be the result of human sin, though this is the implication of the Genesis story. That is one of the reasons why these stories are regarded

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by Catholic theologians as myths, not as history or science, because their accounts cannot be squared with natural history as we know it. What these stories do convey is truths about God and God’s relation with humanity, through the means of symbols. If death is the result of sin, what is sin and where does it come from? Sin is portrayed in Genesis 1–3 as disobedience to God’s commands. Interestingly, though, it is preceded by the temptation given to Eve by the serpent. According to Eve, she and Adam had been told (by God) not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or they would die. But the serpent says, “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4–5). This passage has occasioned much exegetical comment. Does it mean that Adam and Eve did not know the difference between good and evil until after they ate the forbidden fruit? Or is the meaning that, as rational creatures, they did know the difference between good and evil before, but that the temptation was to decide for themselves what was good and what was evil, rather than having to accept God’s authority? Catholic commentators have tended to follow the latter interpretation, as do I. In this interpretation, then, the primordial temptation and sin is the desire to be autonomous, to be like God, deciding for oneself what is good and evil, rather than having to accept God’s lordship. The lesson that life is the gift and province of God, and death the result of sin, is reinforced by the story of the flood. Because of human sin, God wipes out all life; Noah and his family are saved because of their righteousness, and Noah in turn saves a pair of each animal to begin the population of the earth anew. Later stories in the Hebrew scriptures continually emphasize that among the blessings of God is long life and the life of one’s descendants. Life is also the supreme gift of the New Covenant. The gift of God through Jesus Christ is eternal life. This theme is found in all the gospels (cf. Mark 10:30, Matthew 19:29, Luke 18:30), but is especially pronounced in the Gospel of John: “Whoever believes in the Son, has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath” (John 3:36). As Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, “The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14). Eternal life is also a major theme in the writings of Paul: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Here, as in the Hebrew scriptures, we find the idea that death is not natural, but is the result of sin, while life is the gift of God. But the crucial point in the New Testament is that eternal life can only be attained through and after death. It is not the result of an indefinite

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postponement of physical death; it is the gift of God after death. This is obvious in the case of Jesus himself, who died, but was resurrected after death by God. The resurrection of Jesus is the foundational narrative in Christianity. First of all, it is God’s vindication of Jesus, and the reason that Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and indeed is divine. Secondly, the resurrection is also a promise of new life for Jesus’s followers also: “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died” (I Thessalonians 4:14). The resurrected body of Jesus is, according to Paul and the Christian tradition, a transformed body. Paul calls it a soma pneumatikos, a “spiritual body” (I Corinthians 15:44). He also says it is “imperishable.” So, though its nature is mysterious, it is not what we would call a natural body, that is, a perishable, physical body. It is an imperishable, spiritualized, and glorified body. If we can trust the gospel accounts of the appearances of the risen Jesus, he could appear and disappear at will, indicating that he—and his resurrected body—was not confined to our space and time, but was/is free to appear in our space and time, or to disappear from it also. The resurrected body is thought to be physical in Christian theology, but it is a physicality and materiality that transcends nature as we know it. Eternal life, therefore, is not reached by an indefinite prolongation of life in this physical body; it is reached after bodily death in a state that transcends this physical body. The meaning of “eternal life” in Christianity also includes “being with God,” and not just freedom from physical death. For those in hell are also thought to be unable to die, but are not said to have eternal life, but eternal punishment or death (cf. Matthew 25: 31–46; Revelation 20:14). “Eternal life,” therefore, refers as much or more to the quality of life as to its duration. What has been said above about life being the gift of God applies also to the life of the separated soul, that is, the soul after the death of the body, but before the resurrection. Little is said about this in the Christian Bible, though there are some passages that clearly affirm the existence of souls after death, for example, the vision in Revelation 6, in which the author beholds the souls of the martyrs crying out for justice (Revelation 6: 9–11). But the immortality of the soul, in Christian tradition, is not thought of as natural, as it was by Platonists. Rather it too is the gift of God. I do not think these foundational narratives will be changed by the advent of RLE. Most likely, what will change is the perception that life is a gift of God. Rather, I think it will appear that life, and especially long life, is a result of science and engineering. God’s role as the giver and sustainer of life will fade into the horizon, because, though people will not be immortal, death will be indefinitely postponed. People might still die from accidents, but there will be

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little psychological or biological preparation for death. So people will have the illusion of immortality without being truly immortal. The result of this would probably be that concerns about God and the afterlife would become even more distant from the lives of most people than they are now. Doctrines I doubt that the advent of RLE would cause any immediate change in Catholic doctrines, except perhaps the doctrine on marriage (see below). Right now, the position of the Magisterium (the teaching office of the Catholic Church, made up of the bishops and the pope) is that Catholics and Catholic physicians are not obliged to take extraordinary means of extending life. Life is good, but there is a recognition that there is a natural end to biological life and that the life that endures, eternal life, will come only after biological death, when the soul survives the death of the body and, eventually, takes on a resurrected body. It is beyond human power to bring this about. It is possible that the Magisterium would, after some time, condemn RLE, as an illicit tampering with the life given us by the Creator. But I doubt this will happen, and if it does, it will be because of the adverse social consequences of RLE (see below), not because the Magisterium would object in principle to RLE. Eschatology What would be the impact of RLE on Christian and specifically Catholic eschatology? To some extent this depends on our definition of eschatology. There are at least two meanings: (1) eschatology means the end times, when the Lord comes again to judge all the living and the dead and human history on earth (but not in the afterlife) comes to a close, and (2) eschatology means the end time for each individual, which will begin when that individual dies. In Catholic thinking, each individual undergoes a personal judgment immediately upon death. Some, whose love of God and neighbor is complete, are ready for heaven; others, who have turned irrevocably against God, would presumably go to hell (which is nothing else than the absence of God). Others, who have some faith, but whose love of God and neighbor needs purification, would find themselves in Purgatory, a state in which their love of God and neighbor undergoes purification. Or, put another way, purgatory is a state in which persons continue their growth after death into a perfect love of God. Both views of eschatology are current in Catholic teaching. In practice, however, few Catholics think the second coming or parousia is imminent.

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In this, Catholics differ greatly from those Protestant groups that expect to be caught up into heaven in their lifetime of “rapture.” Though the Church still prays for the second coming in masses, in practice, it seems to me, its expected date has been postponed almost indefinitely. So I doubt that RLE would affect this aspect of eschatology. It would, however, affect the second aspect of eschatology. When priests or theologians talk about eschatology today, it is often the second meaning they talk about. Each of us will die within some decades and therefore ought to be prepared to meet the Lord in judgment. Since we do not know when we will die—it could be this very day—we should be prepared at all times to return to God. This is Jesus’s own teaching: “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Matthew 25: 13). What does preparation for death entail? In traditional Catholic spirituality, for example, Robert Bellarmine’s The Art of Dying (Ars Moriendi), it means learning to be detached from the world and the goods of the world (especially wealth), developing a deep relationship with God through prayer, learning to forgive and to love, and cultivating hope. In short, it means living according to the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount, and living in the grace of God, especially the grace of faith, hope, and love. Only the presence of God and Christ accompanies us through death, so it is important to try to live in that presence daily, so that whenever one dies, one dies in the presence of God and Christ. Ideally, of course, from a Christian view, we should live this way all the time. There are several reasons why most Christians do not do this. One reason is sin, or, to use a more modern term, self-centeredness, egotism, or, as the Buddhists say, grasping. The second and related reason is the distractions of the world. The world is full of pleasures, temptations, opportunities, and distractions. The things of the world are good, not evil, but it is easy to become so attached to the things of the world, so distracted, so busy, that we forget about God and his centrality. The onset of death, however, tends to make people realize that the goods of this world are transitory and that what will count in the afterlife is what we might call eternal goods, such as love. The prospect of death calls on people to reflect on their ultimate purpose, which is, in Christian tradition, to become united in fellowship with God, and with the communion of saints. Or, in less theological terms it is to recall people to the primacy of love. We see this happening in a wonderful way in Tuesdays with Morrie. In that book, Morrie, who was not a particularly religious man, came to realize through his process of dying what really mattered was love and forgiveness. He also recognized that it was precisely because his dying process took some time that he was able to come to this realization. It would not have happened if he had died suddenly and

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unexpectedly. And, indeed, in traditional Christian spirituality, a sudden, unexpected, or accidental death has been regarded as an unfortunate death, because one has no chance to say goodbye to loved ones, reconcile, forgive, or make one’s final peace with God. My concern, then, with RLE, is that people whose lives are so extended will not die through the aging process, but through unexpected accidents, homicides, and disasters, and will die probably unprepared for the next life with God. I think the likelihood is that for those who anticipate an indefinite life span, God and the afterlife will be easily forgotten. Indeed, this is already happening; people assume they will live to 70 or 80 years and put off any serious consideration of preparation for death or afterlife until it is too late. As long as death lies in the far future, it is easy to deny it. So, in sum, I think that the probable effect of RLE on eschatology will be that consideration of the end times, whether of one’s own personal end or the end of the human race, will be postponed, delayed, and in the end forgotten, until it is too late. I will admit, however, that another scenario is possible. Perhaps people who live many centuries will eventually become bored with new adventures, new careers, more sex, sports, fun, travel, distractions, and so on, and will turn to meditation, prayer, and the contemplation of God out of sheer ennui. For example, I have a friend who has started and sold three businesses, each for millions of dollars. His business associates are now pressing him to start a fourth business. But he has no such desire. He would rather study and teach theology; that’s where his heart is. He tells me he gets zero pleasure out of business now. Most of our desires are self-limiting; if we have more, someone else will have less. Or, if we give them away, we have less. Money, fame, possessions, and power are examples. But some nonmaterial desires, like the desire for love and knowledge, are not self-limiting. Love never ends, writes St. Paul, and the same is true with knowledge. If we share love, or knowledge, we do not end up having less; we may end up having more. These desires do not fade or become jaded, the way bodily desires do. Eventually we become surfeited with too much food, sex, fun, stimulation, and adventure. But this is not true of love or knowledge. They are not so much things we possess, as realities we enter into and participate in. Perhaps, therefore, for some or many people whose lives have been extended, there will come a time when they have had enough of self-limiting desires and will turn to love and knowledge as their true fulfillment. If this be the case, then, perhaps, RLE could serve humanity. Some people may need 100 years to exhaust their search for more pleasure, but sooner or later, they will have had enough, and they will turn toward the pursuit of love and knowledge and toward union

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with God. This idea is already enshrined within the wisdom of most major religions, certainly within both Catholicism and Hinduism. In Catholic thinking, we are made so that the only thing that brings us complete happiness is union with God. Everything else is partial, and ultimately unfulfilling. No created good, according to Aquinas, can satisfy human beings entirely: “It is impossible for any created good to constitute man’s happiness. For happiness is the perfect good, which lulls the appetite altogether; else it would not be the last end, if something else remained to be desired.” Only a universal good can satisfy man. But God is the only universal good. “Therefore God alone constitutes man’s happiness” (Summa Theologiae, I–II, Q. 1, art 8). The major world religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism—envisage the fulfillment of human life in terms of union with God, or with a metaphysical absolute, Brahman or one’s “Buddha Nature.” This is structured deep into human nature and human being. We are made so that only union with a greater transcendent reality brings us fulfillment. That union is described in different terms by different religions, enlightenment in Buddhism, love in Christianity, liberation and bliss in Hinduism, and the reward of Paradise in Islam. But no major religion thinks that human beings can attain fulfillment simply by a serial enjoyment of the goods of this world. So perhaps the fruit of RLE will be that some, or even many people, would eventually turn to God, or Brahman, or their Buddha Nature, as the ultimate realty that alone brings them fulfillment. If so, RLE would end up playing the same role that reincarnation does in Asian religions; it would give people the extended period of time they need to reach the ultimate yet invisible end that truly fulfills their life. Liberation Theology Liberation theology is a branch of Christian theology (mostly Roman Catholic theology) pioneered by thinkers such as Gustavo Gutierrez, Leonardo Boff, Juan Luis Segundo, and Jon Sobrino. What is distinctive about liberation theology is its insistence that theological reflection must begin with, and be done from, the perspective of the poor, marginalized, and oppressed people. Phillip Berryman writes, “This fact of widespread poverty is the starting point for liberation theology” (1987, 29). In his seminal book, A Theology of Liberation, Gustavo Gutierrez writes that there are three aspects or meanings of liberation, all of which inform liberation theology. First, “liberation expresses the aspirations of oppressed peoples and social classes, emphasizing the conflictual aspect of the economic, social, and political process which puts them at odds with wealthy nations and oppressive classes.” Second, liberation

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means that “man [sic] is seen as assuming conscious responsibility for his own destiny . . . the gradual conquest of true freedom leads to the creation of a new man and a qualitatively different society.” Third, liberation means liberation from sin: “Christ the Savior liberates man from sin, which is the ultimate root of all disruption of friendship and of all injustice and oppression” (1973, 36–37). Gutierrez emphasizes that these three meanings are part of a single process of liberation. Given this, what might liberation theologians say about RLE? No one has written on this subject, so far as I know, so I will have to try to anticipate what their reaction might be. A major concern of liberation theologians is the economic and political plight of the poor and oppressed classes. The question then is this: would RLE exacerbate the gulf between the poor and the rich (both within countries and between countries)? I would think the reaction of liberation theologians would be that RLE is something that will benefit the rich, but not the poor. Imagine the impact of RLE in subSaharan Africa, where millions of people die each year from diseases like malaria because of a lack of basic medical care, mosquito netting, and so on. Why would the poor want to have their lives, which are full of suffering, extended by hundreds of years? On the other hand, it seems likely that RLE for the wealthy elite classes would mean that they would hold onto their money and power almost interminably. Death would not intervene, except occasionally, to force them to distribute their wealth and power to others. A major concern of liberation theology is access of the poor to decent jobs. The poor do not need welfare and handouts; they want jobs that can bring them a decent living. But RLE would probably mean that people would not resign their jobs as often as before. Would tenured professors give up their chairs if they knew they were going to live hundreds of more years? Would those who have worked their way up in the professions—engineering, computer science, medicine, law—resign if they had centuries left to live? I think the likelihood is that people would tend to hold onto good jobs for much longer than before. This would mean that there would be little room for the young to move up into jobs in the middle or top of the income scale. Again, liberation theologians are concerned about the control of political power that is exercised by wealthy elites in poor countries, such a those in Latin America. And again, it seems that RLE would probably result in those holding political offices remaining in power over longer periods of time, leaving little chance for advancement for the young and cementing power firmly with a gerontocracy. Finally, there is the question of overpopulation. As Aubrey de Grey notes, if RLE becomes widespread, birthrates would have to fall by an order of magnitude. But the problem is that most people want to have children. The

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difficulty of enforcing a one-child family policy in China illustrates this. Now, if we imagine people living for 300–400 years or so, are they going to be faithful to a single spouse for all that time? Probably not; more likely, they will marry and remarry many times. But in that case, they will probably want to have children by several spouses, and that means any two people will leave many progeny. If each one has one child per 50 years, a low estimate, a life span of 400 years or so would mean about seven children per person. But of course, these children would go on to have children and grandchildren and so on. As in the case of compound interest, we are into the problem of exponential growth. The problems for population control would be enormous. The likely result—as in the case of income distribution—would be a class of ageless wealthy people at the top, consuming most of the resources, and a much larger underclass of poor persons who die early. I note that RLE would not necessarily lead to these disastrous consequences. Like any technology, it could be used either for good or for evil. Gutierrez emphasizes that the ultimate liberation is the liberation from sin, through Jesus Christ. It is sin that is the ultimate root of oppressive social structures. I think RLE is unlikely to change sinful social structures, more likely it will lead to their entrenchment. But I might be wrong in this judgment, for reasons given above. Practices and Institutions The most obvious practice and institution to be affected by RLE would be monogamous marriage. Let’s say people can anticipate living for centuries. How likely is it that they would be willing to commit to a lifelong monogamous marriage, “till death do us part”? But if they would not make such a commitment, what would they do? Get married, have kids, then get divorced and marry again, have another round of kids, and so on for hundreds of years? Possibly they would. But if this was the case, and they were to remain in the Catholic Church, the church would have to change its teaching on divorce. This actually seems to me to be one of the most likely effects of RLE. I have a hard time imagining that many people would commit to marriages which would last hundreds of years. It’s more likely that they would not marry at all, but simply live together (this is already becoming more and more common). Or, they would leave the Catholic Church and join a church that allowed divorce and remarriage. Either way, there would be a lot of pressure on the Catholic Church to modify its strict teaching on divorce and remarriage. There would probably be other changes too. For example, those entering religious orders and the priesthood also make vows that are supposedly

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binding for life. This might change if life comes to be measured in centuries. In practice, of course, many people enter religious orders or the priesthood, then leave. But there is no history of temporary vows to the priesthood or religious orders. So it is hard to say if these institutions would change. Again, bishops are now asked to retire at 75 and cardinals at 80, and there is no limit to the term of a pope. Would we witness popes who remained in office for hundreds of years? Or would the term limits for bishops and popes be revised upward? It’s hard to say. Most likely, term limits would stay in place for bishops and cardinals and would be put in place for popes. Other: Likely Response of the Magisterium to Radical Life Extension What would be the likely response of the Catholic Magisterium be to the advent of RLE? I think it will be negative, largely because of the effect of RLE on the Common Good.1 Right now we are facing a world in which there is relative wealth in the West and massive poverty in third world countries. Millions of people live on less than a few dollars a day. Economic disparity is growing, not shrinking, both in the United States and across the world. We are witnessing an excessive and growing population, declining natural resources, increasing pollution, and increased risk of natural disasters (due to global warming). Furthermore, in the United States and probably worldwide, it is a world in which all these burdens are being passed on to the young. In the United States, for example, we are generating enormous budget deficits and debt, which we are passing on to the young. But at the same time, we are passing on a declining resource base, more pollution, and fewer good jobs. I believe all these trends, especially population growth and economic disparity, would probably (but not necessarily, for reasons given above), be accelerated by RLE. In a world where most people cannot manage a dollar a day for medical expenses, I cannot imagine that the majority of the world population will ever have access to the medical technology to extend their lives to hundreds of years or more. Ideally, if we solve the problems of overpopulation, resource exhaustion, economic disparity, corruption, hatred, war, and poverty, this would be possible. But realistically, I do not see this changing. My best judgment is that the benefits of RLE would be confined to the wealthy minority of the population. And this would probably have adverse consequences for the common good, especially in the areas of overpopulation, economic disparity, and intergenerational equity. If this judgment is correct, I would expect a negative reaction from the Catholic Magisterium, though not necessarily a condemnation of RLE. In fact, the

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Magisterium very seldom condemns a technology as such (though its condemnation of in vitro fertilization is a counterexample). Rather, its concern will be with the effect of RLE on the common good. Finally, I note again that the goal of most religions, whether it is understood as union with God, paradise, mok
a, enlightenment, or liberation, is more about the quality of life and release from selfish desires than about the duration of life. So whether people live for 70, 100, or 500 years, in the end they will have to face the same choice as Adam and Eve: do I choose my own autonomy or the union and love of God? Note 1. The Common Good is defined as “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily” (Gaudium et Spes, # 26: 1; Catechism, 1905–1912).

CHAPTER 12

“May You Live Long”: Religious Implications of Extreme Longevity in Hinduism Arvind Sharma

Narratives Hinduism is already familiar with extreme longevity at the level of individuals and for whole classes of beings. The Hindu doctrine of the four ages (caturyuga) assumes that human beings have lived for long periods of time in the remote cosmological past. In this schema, the basic unit of computation, the kalpa, is known as the Day of Brahmā, the creator, and consists of 4,320 million earthly years. It is followed by a night of the same duration. Just as our solar year contains approximately 360 days and nights, a year of Brahmā also consists of 360 days and nights. And just as our life may be said to consist of 100 years, so does his. His life cycle therefore contains 311,040,000 million of our human years. The end of his life is followed by a temporary dissolution of the universe and then a re-creation (Basham 1967, 320). However, just as we are awake during the day and asleep at night, the creator also stays awake during his day, following which he sleeps for an equal length of time. When he sleeps, the universe is gathered up in him just as our diurnal life is gathered up in us when we sleep. The waking day of Brahmā contains fourteen manvantaras, comparable to the hours of the daytime; it is during these periods of Brahmā’s day that the world is recreated. Manu, the progenitor of the human race, appears during that time, called a manvantara or Manu’s interval. We are presently in the seventh

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manvantara of this kalpa, and the name of the Manu of our period is Vaivasvata. This worldview becomes more manageable when one comes down to even smaller cycles (Basham 1967, 321): Each manvantara contains seventy-one Mahāyugas, or aeons, of which a thousand form a kalpa. Each mahāyuga is in turn divided into four yugas or ages, called K ta, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali. Their lengths are respectively 4,800, 3,600, 2,400, and 1,200 “years of the gods”, each of which equals 360 human years. Each yuga represents a progressive decline in piety, morality, strength, stature, longevity and happiness. We are at present in the Kali-yuga, which began according to tradition, in 3102 .., believed to be the year of the Mahābhārata War. We are now living in the Kali Yuga, in which the life span of human beings is on the shorter side of the spectrum. Yet, the situation was different in the best of ages, the K ta Yuga, which took place in the distant past. According to the well-known text Manusmti (I. 83–85) (Olivelle 2004, 18): In the K ta age, people are free from sickness, succeed in all their pursuits, and have a life span of 400 years. In the Tretā and each of the subsequent ages, however, their life span is shortened by a quarter. The life span of mortals given in the Veda, the benefits of rites, and the power of embodied beings all come to fruition in the world in conformity with their Age. There is one set of laws for men in the K ta age, another in the Tretā, still another in the Dvāpara, and a different set in the Kali, in keeping with the progressive shortening taking place in each Age. Scholars, however, note that the last line is not unambiguous and that it could refer either to the progressive shortening of human life span in each age or to the shortening of the ages themselves. Nevertheless, it is clear that over time life spans become shorter. What makes this otherwise antiquated discussion quite relevant to our current concerns regarding the religious implications of extreme longevity is the fact that the text under discussion offers two versions of the prevalence of the ages, a chronological one and a conceptual one. The chronological (and cosmogonal) version has been presented above. In other parts of the Manusmti, however, one encounters the view that the nature of the age is not necessarily governed by temporal necessity, but rather that it is historically contingent, depending on the quality of the rulers that govern during any particular era. The same text says elsewhere in IX. 301–302

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(Olivelle 2004, 176): K ta-Age, Tretā-Age, Dvāpara-Age and Kali-Age—The King’s activities constitute all these: for the King is said to be the Age. When he is asleep he is Kali: when his is awake he is Dvāpara: when he is ready to undertake operations, he is Tretā: and when he is on the march, he is K ta. The significance of this discussion in the present context is that although we are living in the Kali-Age when the life span is said to be very low, radical life extension (RLE) in our own age is possible under an appropriate political order, one that is led by just and righteous leaders. Two important points have surfaced so far, namely, that Hindu myths acknowledge the possibility of people living for radically extended life spans in previous ages, and that it admits the possibility that a life span could be radically extended in our own age as well. Hindu lore also identifies individuals who possess a radically extended life span in its doctrine of the Cirajīvīs, the belief that some of the figures known to us in its epics and Puranic lore are blessed with a death-defying longevity. Doctrines—Varna or Classes of Society ˙ Hinduism is often associated with the caste system, even though the term caste is of Portuguese derivation, from “castas, meaning tribes, clans or families” (Basham 1967). The two indigenous terms that might answer to caste are vara and jāti. In terms of the evolution of the caste system, the two terms need to be looked at jointly, for the numerous jātis (which by some count may be as many as 6,000 or more during certain periods), were notionally allotted to one of the four varas. It is worth noting that jāti or the existence and persistence of communal, endogamous, and craft exclusive groups may well be a South Asian phenomenon. Thus jāti is also found among religions other than Hinduism in South Asia, such as Buddhism, Jainism, Sikism, Christianity, and Islam. The idea of the four varas, which are distinctive within Hinduism, is enumerated in the Manusmti in verses alluding to a key passage in the ancient text known as the g Veda. That scripture depicts the four var as of Brāhma a, K
atriya, Vaiśya, and Śūdra as emerging from the body parts of the primeval person who is dismembered in an original sacrifice. The verse runs as follows: But for the sake of the prosperity of the worlds, he created the Brāhman, Kshatriya, the Vaishya, and the Shūdra to proceed from his mouth, his arms, his thighs, and his feet . . . To Brāhmans he assigned teaching and studying (the Veda), sacrificing for their own benefit and for others,

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giving and accepting (of alms). The Kshatriya he commanded to protect the people, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study (the Veda), and to abstain from attaching himself to sensual pleasures; the Vaishya to tend cattle, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study (the Veda), to trade, to lend money, and to cultivate land. One occupation only the lord prescribed to the Shūdra, to serve meekly even these (other) three castes. (Embree 1972) An important issue in the tradition pertains to the basis of membership in these four var as. The three main approaches found in the tradition are that it is assigned on the basis of birth alone, on the basis of birth together with worth, or on the basis of worth alone. Although all the three views can be amply documented, the classical consensus seems to favor the criterion of birth, and this could well be rooted in the fact that in an age when life expectancy might have been low, literacy was limited, and mobility was constrained, one’s fitness for a certain var a could easily be indexed to one’s birth in it. Birth status would be unambiguous and clearly demarcated. Many features of life were determined by one’s var a, including potential marital partners and career possibilities. This is one area in which longer lives in India today, along with the spread of education and increased mobility, are altering the contours of social life in significant ways. RLE would likely reinforce this tendency, and the criterion of membership in class would likely shift from birth to worth, much as is occurring presently. Other aspects of the doctrines of Hinduism may also have to be reassessed. It is true that the division of society into functional classes would probably not disappear with RLE, but it is also true that these divisions are likely to become extremely fluid, with people basically moving freely from one to the other. From the old model of class being constituted by more or less a stable membership, one would move toward a model of a class in which the category might remain stable but the membership would be voluntary and variable. A¯s´rama or Stages of Life The doctrine of the āśrama1 or stages of life speaks of (1) childhood and adolescence, (2) youth, (3) retirement, and (4) pious lifestyle toward the end of one’s life. These four stages are referred to in Hinduism as the life of a student (brahmancārī), householder (g hastha), hermit (vānaprastha), and renunciant (sannyāsī) (Basham 1967). The scheme of the āśrama possesses an underlying dynamic, for the āśrama system represents the twin

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movements of engagement in life and withdrawal from life. Thus, while a brahmacarya, the young are educated, trained to perform a particular type of work, and impressed with the knowledge and values that will enable them to raise a family. In many ways, they are prepared for the worldly life and gāhasthya, which follows it. As a householder, they celebrate the engagement of life in the world. They bear and rear children, transmit to them the sacred traditions, and work to perpetuate both their religion and the world. Thereafter, the process of gradual withdrawal from the world commences in the stage of vānaprasthya, wherein those in the later periods of life slowly retire from work, societal, and family responsibilities. This process culminates in renunciation as an ascetic (sannyāsa). Thus, the four āśrama, considered in pairs, reflect broadly the two movements of engagement in the world and disengagement from it. This dual movement is predicated on a normal life span, in which we mature, age, and die. RLE would call this biological basis of the doctrine of the four āśramas into serious question. Thus, one effect of RLE would be to affect the proportionate division of life into the four āśramas. With RLE, the householder period could get radically extended, as well as that of student. Even if all the āśramas are proportionately extended, it is clear that the fundamental premise of a balanced dual movement may no longer hold. This does not necessarily mean that the concepts of engagement in the world (pravtti) and disengagement from the world (nivtti) will have to be discarded. The cue to what might happen in these circumstances is provided by the attempts made within the Hindu religious tradition to treat pravtti and nivtti as mental rather than biological orientations. From such a perspective, the famous Hindu text the Bhagavadgītā may be looked upon as developing the possibility that it was possible to practice niv tti in pravtti or even pravtti and nivtti—if one had the right mental attitude. The Bhagavadgītā makes a distinction between physical or mental engagement and withdrawal, through which the meaning of the words pravtti and nivtti can be reconfigured. A person may be sitting in his house but be thinking of God, while a monk may be sitting in a monastery and thinking of the female parishioners. The apparently worldly man is practicing nivtti (mental detachment) in pravtti (involvement in the world). The monk is practicing pravtti (worldly engagement) while ostensibly practicing nivtti (detachment). On the basis of this distinction, the Bhagavadgītā advocates the view that the pursuit of the spiritual life at the mental level is quite consistent with performing one’s duties while living in the world physically, so long as these duties are performed with detachment and dedicated to God.

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Purusa¯rtha or Goals of Life ˙ Most religions emphasize the search for God as the primary goal of religion. However, Hinduism, while accepting this as the primary goal called mok
a, also wholeheartedly accepts the fact that people may direct their activities toward other goals, such as the pleasures of life associated with sex and aesthetics (kāma), the quest for wealth and power (artha), or the desire to lead a morally rewarding life (dharma) (Embree 1988). It is possible that at one time only these last three were included among the goals of life (Hiriyanna 1948), but soon all four came to be considered as valid goals of human endeavor (Embree 1988). What is important to realize here is that the list involves a criticism of values. M. Hiriyanna (1948) explains this point well: The Indians generally speak of four values—artha, kāma, dharma and mok
a. Of these, the first two, which respectively mean “wealth” and “pleasure”, are secular or purely worldly values. The other two, whose general meaning has already been indicated, may, in contrast, be described as spiritual. Philosophy is concerned only with the latter, but this does not mean that it discards the other two. It does acknowledge them also, but only in so far as they help, or are instrumental to, dharma or mok
a. Owing to this judgment of preference which it implies, philosophy, as conceived in India, may be described as essentially a criticism of values. Indeed, its final aim is to determine what the ultimate value is, and to point out how it can be realized. In earlier times, the first of the two spiritual values, viz. dharma, alone seems to have been recognized. That, for instance, is the conclusion to be drawn from the original ritualistic teaching of the Brāhma as; and there are still to be found some passages in old works which indicate that belief in the ideal of mok
a was not accepted by all. But this view has for long been superseded; and mok
a has come to be acknowledged as the highest of human values by all the doctrines, so that all of them are now doctrines of salvation. The prominence which mok
a attained gradually does not mean that the ideal of dharma is abandoned. RLE could have important consequences for this scheme, especially in relation to mok
a. Scholars of Hinduism often note that the life span of a human being is ideally suited for the pursuit of liberation or salvation. The lifetimes of most animals are too short and their lives are too dominated by instinctual drives to permit them to break loose from their concerns; thus, they do not seek liberation. At the other end of the spectrum, life as a superhuman being in one of the karmic heavens is too comfortable to inspire such beings

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to consider spiritual matters. It is life as a human being that is ideally suited for the spiritual life—for it is not so animalistic that one cannot do much about it, nor is it so sybaritic for one not to be concerned about spiritual matters. In such a positive spiritual assessment of birth as a human being, the normal life span of a human being is of crucial significance, as it is not too short for one to be concerned only with the next meal, nor is it so long that death becomes too remote a possibility to stir reflection. The effect of RLE will thus be to compromise this uniqueness of the human condition. This would lead people into being less concerned with mok
a and more with dharma, artha, and kāma. The point, though valid, could be exaggerated, in the sense that most individuals, even when blessed with the normal life span, seem less concerned with mok
a than with acquiring a better birth in one’s next life. This attitude is also likely to be affected, for RLE will probably incline them to fulfill those goals in this very life, which they would earlier have transferred to the next life. Karma The term “karma” has become popular in recent years. In its traditional meaning, living beings (jīvas) take on a series of lives punctuated by repeated births, and beings’ destiny in each of these births is governed primarily by the moral quality of their actions. In other words, what happens to us is largely the consequence of our own actions, and these results of our actions are distributed over numerous lives. RLE will have the effect of weakening the significance of the rebirth component of this view and, paradoxically, of strengthening the karmic component. The concept of rebirth is helpful because it presents the arc of causation from being confined to one life. A person may have led a virtuous life but may assume that such virtue has gone unrecognized or unrewarded, because his sights are confined to one life. Meanwhile, the real result might only come to pass in the next life. The same would apply for evil deeds as well. If one’s life gets radically extended, however, then the results of one’s actions will begin manifesting in this very life. This is already true of some of our actions, but not all. With RLE, such a provision might no longer be necessary. Indeed the fact that we will be living out several ordinary life spans, as it were, in the course of one actual lifetime may have the interesting effect of making us more perceptive of the relationship between cause and effect within our own lives. If we classify our actions in terms of those that promote virtue and those that promote skills, then we might discover that the outputs can be more clearly connected to the inputs in terms of effort when it comes to skills, than when

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it comes to virtue. This might have the effect of making our approach toward karma more pragmatic. Will RLE then mean that people might lose all interest in breaking out of the cycle to attain liberation (mok
a)? Perhaps our concept of mok
a will undergo a change. In the present context, liberation or mok
a is perceived as liberation from the process of being reborn. Rebirth, however, will be rendered a distant possibility by RLE. Nevertheless, mok
a will probably continue to appeal to some people because the basic claim of mok
a is that “more of the same” can never lead to perfect happiness, whether it is more of the same in one radically extended life or over several lives. The less than fully satisfactory state of affairs of our life is what the doctrine of mok
a addresses, and whether it involves only one life or many is in some sense a matter of detail. Dharma The word dharma is being used here to mean a code for moral decision making. Dharma is concerned with doing the right thing—and has been a central concern of the Hindu religious tradition through the ages. Two aspects of the Hindu thinking on dharma assume importance in the context of RLE. One has to do with the fact that Hinduism believes in genuine moral dilemmas. This concept is best understood when contrasted with rationalism and fideism. Rationalism is the view that with enough reason we will be able to resolve all moral dilemmas. Fideism is the parallel view that with enough faith we will be able to resolve all moral dilemmas. In contrast to this, Hinduism seems to suggest that genuine moral dilemmas cannot be avoided, that life will confront us with situations in which different values will often make competing claims, and we will have to accept one at the price of the other. This aspect of dharma is not likely to be affected by RLE because it represents an existential situation that holds good for any slice of life—from a moment to virtual eternity. One may be able to draw on the larger pool of experience as a result of a radically longer life, and this may affect the quality of our decision, but the essential predicament is likely to remain unchanged. One area of dharma that might be affected by RLE would pertain to the classification of dharmas or duties into vaiśe
ika or particular dharmas and sāmānya or general dharmas. Thus, it is the specific duty of a soldier to fight, but it is the general or common duty of all to practice nonviolence. Hindus accept the fact that these duties may diverge, and the religion recommends their resolution on a case by case basis. It needs to be noted, however, that the Hindu tradition is deeply aware of the fact that what is right for one

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may not be right for another, and such differentiation in the past had a strong natal element in it. Thus, the duties of women differed from those of men, the duties of the members of the four divisions of society (var as) differed from one another, and the duties varied according to the stage of life (āśramas). It has been proposed that Hinduism may have gone so far in the recognition of particular duties as to even compromise the more general ones. One factor responsible for this, however, was the importance of birth ascription in determining what these duties are. Birth ascription can only be justified in terms of a short life span, so that RLE would probably see a loosening of the birth orientations within Hinduism, with the likely consequence that general duties may achieve a higher profile. Conclusion The ideas relating to karma, the various divisions of human society, the various stages of human life, the various goals of human life, and the sacred chronology will be affected in major ways. The concept of karma will be affected inasmuch as the effect of karma, which would otherwise have manifest in a future life, may well surface in this very life. The concept of var a will be affected because there is a tension in the tradition about whether caste should be based on birth or worth. The shorter the life, the more hemmed in one is likely to remain by natal considerations; the longer the life, the greater the possibility of modifying and even transcending them. Extreme longevity would therefore tend to resolve the debate in favor of worth over birth. The concept of āśrama, or stages of life, is usually worked out in terms of a life span of 100 years. An extension of life expectancy beyond this would lead either to a proportionate extension of the stages or to the selection of one of the four stages as one’s favored lifestyle. Extreme longevity will also tend to blur the distinction among the yugas or the cosmological ages. The puru
ārthas, or the goals of human life, namely, dharma, artha, kāma, and mok
a, could still continue to provide an axiological grid in the case of extreme longevity as well, but additional goals might also be proposed. Entertainment, or vinoda, now subsumed under kāma, may well emerge as a goal in its own right. What is being suggested is that the various components of the four goals of life will now have an opportunity to become in themselves the major foci of a person’s activities. The psychic life of a human being, however, is likely to retain the same configuration in some respects, no matter how long one lives. There may be a less acute fear of death, but fear of mortality would remain, even if only in the indefinite future. There would be more time to spend in the quest for fame and glory, but the angst of the quest would remain. And human beings

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may still seek release from finitude, even if life is extended endlessly. Thus, freedom from it, or mok
a, may still continue to inspire people as an ideal. Note 1. The word āśrama has two distinct meanings in Sanskrit. It could mean a hermitage, where the followers of a guru congregate, or it could imply the four stages of life. In this chapter the word has been used in the second sense.

Afterword: Theological, Spiritual, and Ethical Reflections on Radical Life Extension Ted Peters

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dam lived to the age of 930 (Genesis 5:5). Methuselah was 969 years old before he went to the grave (Genesis 5:27). Antediluvian birthday parties must have kept candle makers in prosperity. Since the Great Flood of Noah, however, we seem limited to roughly what Psalm 90:10 reports, “The span of our life is seventy years or, given strength, eighty years.” Despite increased life expectancy extending this to nearly 100 in recent years, we are quite certain that our life span is still limited. We all will die. The death rate is expected to be 100 percent. It is almost shocking, then, to entertain the prospect that we might live on for centuries, perhaps indefinitely. Yet, this is what transhumanists and some biogerontologists are beginning to plan for. They contend that death is a disease. And, like other diseases, death has a cure. To search for this cure is the next adventure for science, so they say.1 Now, just what does this imply for our religious sensibilities? Has God fixed our life span? Or, is it malleable? With technological ingenuity, might we be able to alter our biological clock so that it ticks unendingly? Will divine providence encourage this endeavor, or will God put a stop to it? Is the attempt at radical life extension (RLE) just another Promethean delusion, one that will end with nature striking back with an uncontrollable bio-catastrophe? In what follows, we will look at the claims and dreams of transhumanists who place before us a vision of RLE, of physical immortality. We will ask, what might be the theological implications? What might be the implications

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for spiritual practice? We will place these questions within the interpretive frameworks of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Daoism. What we will see is that any achievements by RLE scientists will have relatively little impact on these religious worldviews—that is, on theological cosmology or anthropology. Yet, as religious intellectuals speculate about the possible impact of RLE, they register concern about what might happen to our spiritual motivations and our daily life. The prospects of a prolongation of life or the elimination of death, many theologians speculate, will undercut our sense of urgency to make preparations in this life for the reality that will face us beyond death. Radical Life Extension “Why must we age and die?” wail the transhumanists. “Why must our brains and bodies be so fragile, doomed to decay—programmed for selfdestruction?” In his transhumanist manifesto, Simon Young (2006) dubs “death as a disease waiting to be cured.” That cure will result from finding the biological cause of aging. Science will make this find. In his view, science, not religion, will be the one to save us from death: “When the cure for aging is found, it will not come through faith, prayer, or meditation, but through science—the product of the technowonderland of the modern world.”2 How soon might science begin to win the war against aging? In the next decade? This is what Ramez Naam (2005) estimates, “If the pace of discovery continues, we may see therapies to increase the human life span enter human trials within the next decade” (Naam 2005, 95). Computer whiz Ray Kurzweil declares that we are already ready. By reprogramming our biochemistry, “we have the means right now to live long enough to live forever” (Kurzweil 2005, 371). Working within such a progressive vision, former Cambridge geneticist and biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey plans to return us to the pre-Noah days when the age of 70 or 80 would be only a fraction of the average life span. To make progress in the direction of RLE, science must triumph over what has hitherto been nature’s province, namely, aging and natural death. “Seven deadly things” stand as hurdles in our way, says de Grey (2007), but science can knock them down and we can race past them. Thus, (1) cell loss can be overcome with reversible stem cell therapy, (2) cell death-resistance can be overcome by immunotherapy and suicide gene therapy, (3) chromosomal mutations and epimutations can be obviated by gene therapy, (4) mitochondrial mutations can similarly be obviated by gene therapy and by splicing the mitochondrial genome into the chromosomes, (5) indigestible molecules inside cells can be obviated with microbial enzymes,

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(6) indigestible molecules between cells can become reversible by immunotherapy, and (7) elastic structures’ stiffening can become reversible by glycation link-breakers. With progress in these seven areas of scientific advance, we can blunt the aging process and perhaps even rejuvenate individuals who have already grown old.3 We are almost there. “There is a good chance aging can be entirely defeated within the next few decades,” de Grey writes. The speed of speed is speeding up, meaning that the relevant laboratory research is advancing at an increasingly rapid pace. The “longevity escape velocity” or LEV is spiraling upward. Just what is being proposed as the endpoint here? An end to all death? No. Accidental deaths will still occur. What is envisioned by de Grey is a life without aging, a longevity that is not snuffed out by what today we know as the aging process. Over time, we all will die eventually, to be sure. But if the risk of accidental death is reduced, then we can expect to live for 1,000 years or more. Methuselah will look like a youngster when we’re playing tennis during our second millennium of life. Just what are the theological implications of RLE? There are none, says de Grey. Even though “lots of us might live literally forever as a result of simple human ingenuity, unaided by divine hand . . . I believe it has no theological implications whatsoever, because, just as for the defeat of aging, it’s only an extrapolation . . . It does not mean we have in any way made whatever omnipotent beings there may be out there any less omnipotent.” Because God’s omnipotence is not rivaled by the triumph of science, de Grey presumes that no theological implications can be drawn from his vision of RLE. As we review the starting points of our inherited religious traditions, it appears at first that de Grey may be correct: RLE has no theological implications. Well, he may be correct in one respect, namely, there seems to be few, if any, cosmological or metaphysical implications. On the one hand, our religious forebears presumed a limited life span, 70–80 years in the Bible (Psalm 90:10), for example. Yet, on the other hand, ancient religious roots do not seem to forbid adding years to branches on our longevity tree. So, perhaps with respect to our fundamental worldview—our cosmology and related theological anthropology—extended life spans are likely to have little or no effect. Yet, many religious thinkers are startled about the implications RLE might have for spirituality, for the attitudes and motivations with which we approach the serious matters of our lives. At one end, some argue that finitude and the expectation of death prod us to live virtuously and to give proper attention to urgent matters. At the opposite end, others argue that increased longevity and elimination of the fear of death will provide an

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unprecedented opportunity to establish social peace and harmony. Even if increased life span does not change our fundamental cosmology or anthropology, it may have a significant impact on our psychological state and our social ethics. At least, this is what we can glean from religious speculators. We will consider these matters in more detail in what follows, but only after offering some conceptual clarifications. Clarifications: Just What Does Radical Life Extension Mean? Perhaps three clarifying distinctions are in order. The first is the distinction between life expectancy and life span. “Human life expectancy refers to the average amount of time humans live—in other words, the expected length of a person’s life. Human life span refers to the maximum amount of time any person might live. Human life expectancy, in developed countries, has risen dramatically in the last century. Human life span has not changed much throughout history” (Working Group on Faith and Genetics 2007). Attention to nutrition and medical care has been able to increase our life expectancy, but such measures have not to date increased our life span.4 What distinguishes the posthumanist proposal is the prospect of genetic and related technologies that will enhance our body’s capacity for extending our life span, establishing the possibility of physical immortality. The second clarification reiterates one offered by Ronald Cole-Turner elsewhere in this book, namely, the distinction between two understandings of immortality. Within the philosophy of religion, the term immortal means we are exempt from death or annihilation; it means we possess endless life. According to this meaning, nothing physical could possibly be immortal. The physical universe itself is mortal—that is, it will exist only for a finite period of time, even if a very long time in present human terms. Then, according to the law of entropy, the entire cosmos will dissipate. For theologians, then, to be immortal requires renewing or transcending this physical universe. No intra-cosmic immortality in this sense of the word is conceptually possible. What we find transhumanists discussing is a form of immortality that implies an extension of consciousness as we have known it for the indefinite future. It means we live on and on and on. What will be necessary for us to experience this form of immortality will be technological intervention into our biology. Cole-Turner refers to this as “technological immortality” or “biological immortality” or “cyborgization.” This second form of immortality is what we find within the school of RLE. The third clarification—one that Cole-Turner also calls to our attention—points to two schools within the more comprehensive vision of

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technological immortality. This is the distinction between RLE on the one hand and cybernetic immortality on the other. What we have been calling RLE consists primarily of altering human biology in such a way that the aging process is blunted from causing our bodies to deteriorate. What we have known as our life span will become longer, perhaps even indefinitely longer. We will remain two-legged biological creatures walking the earth, although our walks may become a lot lengthier. Cybernetic immortality, envisioned by transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil (2005) and Frank Tipler (1994), is quite different. The key assumption here is that the human self or person comes in the form of an information pattern located in the brain. This information pattern can be uploaded into a computer, then repeatedly backed up. Our body would be exchanged for a computer, but the mind would continue intact. As long as computers are around to provide the substrate, the human person can go on to enjoy consciousness for the indefinite future. Kurzweil describes cybernetic immortality this way: “Currently, when our human hardware [body] crashes, the software [mind] of our lives—our own personal mind file—dies with it. However, this will not continue to be the case when we have the means to store and restore the thousands of trillions of bytes of information represented in the pattern that we call our brains . . . [We] will live out on the Web” (Kurzweil 2005, 325). Physicist Tipler projects cybernetic immortality into the far future of the universe, regarding it as transcending the entropic dissipation of the universe. Even after our physical death, Tipler forecasts, we will be able to retrieve our previous soul pattern and upload it. This will be tantamount to a resurrection of the dead: “There will indeed be a resurrection of everyone who has ever lived, and indeed we will have ‘spiritual bodies’—our resurrected bodies will be in the form of computer programs, which are spiritual entities” (Tipler 2007, 80). With these three clarifying distinctions in mind, we will examine the implications for the future of religion precipitated by technological immortality as we find it in the RLE school of thought. What are the theological and spiritual implications (Arrison 2007)? Implications of Radical Life Extension for the Abrahamic Religious Traditions Let us begin by asking, just what might be the implications of RLE for thinkers within the three Abrahamic traditions: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity? By no means are these three traditions identical in all respects; yet, they share a common inheritance that includes belief in a single God with a created natural order combined with the divine demand to live daily in faithfulness.

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The first theological question a Muslim is likely to ask when considering the impact of RLE would be, how does it fit with what the Qur’an says? For the Muslim, any consonance with contemporary science must presume the authority of a literal reading of the Qur’an. At first, the prospect of immortality in the form of RLE looks like a conflict, because the Qur’an makes it clear that “every soul will taste death.” Even though this has traditionally been understood to preclude earthly immortality, Aisha Musa looks for an interpretation that might admit compatibility with RLE. She finds one. She recognizes that the universe has a finite future—that is, at some point, all of physical reality will disintegrate. This end to the universe will also mark the end of the physically immortal beings that live in it. Even the immortals will finally perish, and the Qur’an will have turned out to be correct: “The Qur’an’s insistence that each person will experience death would remain true, though it might happen for some not through aging, disease, accident, or violence, but with the collapse of the universe itself.” Key to the Jewish worldview is group identity and responsibility, according to Jewish ethicist Elliot Dorff (1998). Even though today’s Jews have inherited a biblical self-understanding replete with faith in the God of ancient Israel, contemporary nonreligious Jews still belong within the Jewish fold and will be affected by the speculation at hand. Within this framework, Dorff reminds us of the biblical description of the human life span: “The span of our life is seventy years or, given strength, eighty years” (Psalm 90:10). What would happen should we double this or should we be able to extend it indefinitely? The fundamental worldview would not change. Nevertheless, it would have an impact on our spiritual disposition. By putting our death off into the vague future, we might lose the sense of urgency to get our life into order, to pursue our God-given destiny. “Radical life extension would . . . weaken one of the important implications of our current span of life, namely, the sense that we have a near deadline to accomplish whatever we can.” Dorff’s concern for our spiritual disposition has been articulated in more detail by another Jewish intellectual of our era, Leon Kass, former chairperson of the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics. Awareness of our impending death is good for us, argues Kass, because (1) the sense of finitude enhances our interest and engagement in being alive; (2) the awareness of mortality instills a deeply meaningful sense of seriousness and aspiration; (3) the fact of death drives feelings of love and beauty, because we are aware that life is fleeting and precious; and (4) death leads us to virtue and moral excellence (Kass 2002b). In sum, death talks to us. Death delivers a message that says it is important for us to take our daily life as an opportunity to serve God and love the world that God has created.

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When Ronald Cole-Turner asks about theological implications from within his Reformed or Calvinist strain of Protestant Christianity, he points out that the immortality envisioned by RLE shares commonalities as well as differences with the Christian vision of the resurrected body. “In both cases, the transformed human being is youthful, ageless, and cognitively more alert than ever. While these similarities are noticeable, the differences between resurrection and technological longevity are profound. Theological immortality and biological longevity have strikingly different aims . . . Technology offers to give us what we want . . . longer life, youthful bodies, greater health, and mental ability. Christianity invites us to give up what we want, indeed to give up life itself, as the one condition for real life.” Cole-Turner is concerned less here with the metaphysical implications than with the impact the prospect of increased longevity might have on our daily spirituality. “ ‘Losing one’s life’ for the sake of Christ is not physical death but a living surrender or, as Paul puts it, a ‘living sacrifice’ (Romans 12:1). By letting go of their lives, Christians believe that they are given a life that is far greater, a life (like Christ’s) that is lived for others, and therefore a life that is eternal.” When we turn to Roman Catholic anthropology, the alteration of a person’s genes elicits cries of outrage. To alter one’s genome is to alter one’s identity, to compromise a person’s dignity. In a recent Vatican study, Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, we find a celebration of the “biogenetic characteristics” that apparently make each person unique. This is the biogenetic character we have inherited, not one that we might design for the future. To change our inherited genetic identity is “radically immoral,” says the Vatican. Indirectly, then, we might speculate that transhumanist scientists, who must alter our genome in order to prepare us for RLE, would be “radically immoral” (International Theological Commission 2004). Yet, we can approach our question much more directly. In “Radical Life Extension: Implications for Roman Catholics,” Terence L. Nichols distinguishes between what RLE plans to deliver and the Christian understanding of resurrection to eternal life. They are not the same. What RLE promises is a lengthening of life as we know it for those now living; in contrast, he says, “The crucial point in the New Testament is that eternal life can only be attained through and after death. It is not the result of an indefinite postponement of physical death; it is the gift of God after death . . . Eternal life, therefore, is not reached by an indefinite prolongation of life in this physical body; it is reached after bodily death in a state which transcends this physical body.” Like Cole-Turner, Nichols is also concerned about the implications of RLE on our daily spirituality. Nichols worries that if we become accustomed to living for centuries, we may be less inclined to

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prepare properly for our own death—that remains inevitable and necessary. We risk dying “unprepared” to meet God. This is important, because Roman Catholic theology stresses that the highest form of human fulfillment is found in our relationship with God: “Happiness is union with God.” To prepare for this union with God should be one’s orienting priority in this life, regardless of the length of this life. In sum, it appears to Muslim, Jewish, and Christian theologians that RLE will have little, if any, impact on their respective worldviews, their fundamental visions of God’s relationship to the world. Their basic vision will remain intact. However, deferral if not removal of the threat of death could influence our spiritual practices. The sense of urgency to prepare for life beyond death would diminish. Implications of Radical Life Extension for Asian Religious Traditions We can see here that Jewish and Christian theological speculation on the prospects of RLE suggests that not much impact would be felt on fundamental worldviews, but radically increased longevity might have a negative effect on spiritual disposition and practice. When we turn to Asian religious traditions, the hierarchical cosmology and karmic anthropology would place physical immortality in a different framework for interpretation and evaluation. Especially in the traditions beginning in ancient India, the invisible realm is thought to be structured so that we cycle between death and life on the wheel of rebirth. We pass from one incarnation to another due to our earned karma until we renounce entirely the physical world and jump off the wheel of rebirth to attain bodiless salvation, mok
a or its equivalent. In no way could physical longevity be considered salvific, according to this anthropology. The question here then becomes, would RLE positively inspire the individual to pursue good karma and world renunciation in order to attain salvation? Arvind Sharma’s chapter on “Religious Implications of Extreme Longevity in Hinduism” denies that RLE would have much of an impact on the Hindu view of fundamental reality, but it would likely have an effect on Hindu social and spiritual practices. Because the Hindu doctrine of the four ages (caturyuga) already affirms that human beings lived for long periods of time in previous eras—kalpas or manvantaras—RLE would not introduce something not already accounted for in Hindu cosmology. The basic Hindu vision of reality would remain intact, even if humans should begin to live longer. However, more needs to be said. Sharma speculates that RLE would not upset the classic Hindu commitment to dividing society into four castes or

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var as (Brāhma a, K
atriya, Vaiśya, and Śūdra); yet, it might precipitate a new criterion for caste membership. Rather than birth, membership for long-lived persons might be determined by worth to society. We may see a Hindu “model of a class in which the category might remain stable but the membership of which would be voluntary and variable.” This would amount to a change in social structure of significant impact. Sharma forecasts the same about the doctrine of the four stages of life, the āśrama: student or brahmancārī, householder or g hastha, hermit or vānaprastha, and renunciant or sannyāsī. Each stage might be drawn out; instead of a decade or two, each stage might last centuries. This could significantly influence the later stages, the pursuit of mok
a—that is, disembodied liberation or salvation. Over the centuries, existing stages and existing life spans have established parameters for spiritual practices, because they are neither too long nor too short. RLE would so lengthen them that previous time consciousness would no longer exert the spiritual pressure it once did. Rather than pursue the sublime goal of mok
a, Hindu practitioners may settle for lesser, more thisworldly values such as wealth or artha and pleasure or kāma. Or they may even pursue justice or virtue in the form of dharma. Mok
a may become less attractive as a spiritual goal. “The normal life span of a human being is of crucial significance, as it is not too short for one to be concerned only with the next meal, nor is it so long that death becomes too remote a possibility to stir reflection. The effect of RLE will thus be to compromise this uniqueness of the human condition. This would lead people into being less concerned with mok
a and more with dharma, artha, and kāma.” In sum, Sharma’s forecasts for Hinduism are not unlike those offered by speculators within the Abrahamic traditions: although the fundamental worldview will remain intact, we can predict a deterioration in motivation for pursuing the more sublime spiritual goals. Jeffrey Lidke and Jacob Dirnberger maintain that the pursuit of physical immortality through science would be welcomed by a tantric Hindu. But, they would add, living long would be valuable only if it is combined with enhanced consciousness and religious wisdom. “Inspired by de Grey and other forward-thinking scientists in the growing field of life extension, we imagine the possibility that tantric siddhas, leading scientists of life extension and other religious leaders could formulate a collaborative philosophy and ethics of practice that utilized the world’s global knowledge of life extension to a beneficial purpose,” they write. This might lead even to immorality because our human bodies are ontologically derived from the world, the body of God. “If the universe is a larger body—the body of God—that contains within itself creation and annihilation, birth and death, then so must the individual’s body be home to these processes . . . And, if the body

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of God also contains the potential for immortality . . . then there must be a means for attaining immortality within and through the body. The key is to find the immortal within the mortal.” Yet, turning this theological key to unlock the secret of physical immortality would benefit us only if it includes a rise in our consciousness of our ātman, our essential self in relation to the cosmic reality. “[F]or a tāntrika, life extension is itself a means to a greater end: liberating wisdom (jñāna).” Buddhists are likely to find themselves in the same boat with the Hindus, unquestioning of their basic worldview yet forecasting that RLE would have an impact on spiritual practices. In his chapter, “Two Wings of a Bird: Radical Life Extension from a Buddhist Perspective,” Derek Maher affirms a standing desire among Buddhists to live a long life. Yet, the postponement or elimination of death, he speculates, would have an influence on spiritual consciousness. Citing Sogyal Rinpoche, “The fact of death is definite, although its timing is not,” Maher avers, “In this way, the believer is enjoined to engage in religious practices without delay; since the opportunity to make good use of a human life in order to earn merit and gain wisdom is fleeting, the time remaining to each person is regarded as a precious opportunity that should not be squandered.” When death no longer presses in on our consciousness, our motivation for pursuing nirvā a could diminish. When we turn to Jainism, a religion with a Hindu cosmology but a more austere spirituality, the prospect of RLE appears dangerous. The prospect of RLE would have virtually no effect on the Jain worldview, to be sure, but it could diminish motivation for pursuit of radical renunciation of the physical world. Here is the argument raised by Sherry Fohr. Lay Jains, both women and men, pursue good karma during each reincarnation until they are ready to renounce all karma and pursue salvation (mok
a) directly. Nuns and monks at the stage of renunciation would have no interest in RLE, because they would seek to avoid the attachment to the body that RLE implies. Lay persons, on the other hand, may see life extension as an opportunity to extend the period in which they could accumulate good karma and advance themselves for the next reincarnation. One can easily imagine, then, a future Indian society with many lay Jains living for long periods while the renouncers shrivel and die with relatively short life spans. This situation would make the option of renunciation less attractive to lay Jains. Fohr concludes, “It is possible that some Jains might become less religious.” In her treatment of Chinese Daoism, Livia Kohn responds much more optimistically to the likely impact of RLE on spirituality. The prospect of immortality (xian) is not foreign to ancient Chinese thinking; rather, it has its own tradition connected in part to beliefs associated with medical practices. “As RLE becomes a reality,” she writes, “Daoists will first of all feel

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completely vindicated and emphasize how they have always said that death was an avoidable disease and not part of original human perfection.” What follows, then, is a vision of a society in which its members live for aeons. At this point, social ethics will be invoked to establish the long-awaited and expected era of peace and harmony. “Daoists thus already have a model in place for the kind of life people of extended longevity would have. The society of Great Peace, made up of genetically engineered individuals with different goals and talents that yet all have immortals’ bones, would create a forum of empowerment and perfection.” Whereas we find in the Hindu and the Jain treatments a concern for the impact of RLE on individual spirituality, we find in the Daoist speculation a hope for social peace and harmony. This prompts us to ask about the ethical implications of RLE. What are the implications for social justice? Radical Life Extension and Social Justice Like other advances in medical technology, progressive achievements in the direction of RLE will raise concerns over social justice. I will briefly address two such concerns here, namely, access and population. Who will have access to the benefits of RLE? Because the developing nanotechnology and subsequent medical services will be expensive, should we expect that only the rich will benefit from longer living? Will the poor of the less developed nations, whose life expectancy is already lower than their wealthier neighbors, fall further behind in sharing the world’s wealth? If this seems inevitable, does it provide a moral warrant for shutting down RLE research on extended life span? Derek Maher raises the justice issue within the Buddhist context. “The most notable concern would be that such [RLE] advances ought to be made available on an equitable basis. Most Buddhists would condemn a program through which only the wealthy, powerful, or well-connected were able to take advantage of prolongation therapies.” This justice question does not deal with the value of RLE specifically; rather, it places RLE within the larger complex of factors that foster economic inequality. We might ask, should existing economic equality count as a reason for retarding or blocking research? No, I do not think so. Sebastian Sethe would concur, “Even though we already live in a world where some are allotted almost twice the life expectancy as others, few would argue that the best reform could be found in a policy that would significantly reduce the life expectancy in developed nations” (Sethe 2007, 359). When seeking to redress economic inequality, we normally seek to lift up the poor rather than drive down the rich. When it comes to access to the fruits of RLE labor, our

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ethicists should seek ways to widen the benefits of increased life span rather than penalize those who already enjoy relatively longer life expectancy. Turning to the population concern, one could easily imagine how an immediate jump in life expectancy would cause an immediate jump in the world’s population. Given that futurists for four decades now have been warning us that our planet has a limit to the number of people it can support, it might appear that increased longevity would move us faster toward this limit. Newborns would enter the world while the elderly live on, and the total number of people would grow. Should we heed the futurist warning and prevent people from living longer in order to keep the world’s population under manageable control? RLE does not raise this question for the first time. Virtually no one disagrees: our planet’s population cannot be allowed to overgrow its capacity for support. Yet, by what method should we keep the population in balance? One method would be to thin the population through spreading death. In some countries where a competition for resources has become acute, genocide has become the method for population thinning. More frequently, mass starvation has reduced the number of mouths to feed. Yet, few would find increasing the death rate to be the morally preferred option. Rather, ethicists are more likely to seek ways to reduce the birth rate. It is morally preferable to prevent a new life than to destroy an existing life. Sethe formulates the problem this way: “If one decided that the vision of a crowded planet is too terrible to permit, what type of intervention should be adopted? Would we decline to invest in medical innovation? Withhold its use? Encourage suicide or sanction killing? In population ethics, one is precariously balancing the real interests of existing people against the hypothetical interests of those projected to be born and potentially also balancing a hypothetical quality of life against the imposition of an early death” (Sethe 2007, 358). When pursuing population balance, we might judge here that existing persons take moral priority over nonexisting persons. It appears to me that the rightful concern over global population does not provide sufficient ethical warrant for shutting down scientific research on RLE. The pursuit of social justice would require instead, in my judgment, a gradual integration of older people into the new demographics. Monitoring and even controlling the birth rate would be morally preferable over any measures that rely upon spreading death. Sethe suggests that the population problem might come on gradually and provide us with time to deal with it. Further, RLE will not be the only technology to advance; so also will technologies to deal with planet-wide concerns. “One can speculate that once nanotechnology is advanced enough to significantly retard or halt aging it will also enable much better resource management,

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production of organic resources from nonorganic matter, energy production entirely from renewable sources, fully effective recycling, and so on, and enable the claiming of living space” (Sethe 2007, 358). Like RLE, this is still speculation. Yet, it would be wise for us to speculate on the future of RLE in the context of the future of all factors transforming life on our planet. Conclusion It is my own surmise that the plans and promises of transhumanists to deliver indefinite longevity within the next generation or two are unrealistic. Their extravagant extrapolations based upon recent advances in genetics and nanotechnology are premature. This does not mean that the assumptions are wrong or the forecasts impossible, but it does imply that the hurdles to be crossed are more like sky-high brick walls. Having said this, I still can appreciate the exuberance and enthusiasm of the transhumanist visionaries. When it comes to God’s promise for the future as Christians have received it from Scripture, the original biblical articulation of a coming new creation was predicated on death and renewal. The Bible did not envision a radically extended life on earth; nor did it entertain an equivalence between longevity and eternal life. Long life (a long and peaceful life was incorporated into shalom) was a blessing for the ancient Hebrews, to be sure, but for Christians still greater blessings await us in the resurrection. This implies that enhancements achieved through medical research may be viewed as blessings, but they do not constitute salvation. Like health and well-being in general, RLE could be viewed as a blessing bequeathed to us by God through modern science. Yet, future people who live for thousands of years would still be people, not the redeemed hearts of the prophets (Jeremiah 31: 31–34) or the heavenly saints of the New Testament. Whether we have 70 years or a millennium to live, those years will be filled with the ambiguities of selfishness and love, fear and courage, suffering and joy, sin and grace. Properly understood, significant advances in human longevity would warrant a prayer of gratitude offered up to God. Notes 1. “Aging is caused largely by the accumulation of various kinds of molecular damage and debris that exceed the organism’s repair and maintenance systems,” writes Pete Estep in his chapter for this book, “The Evidence-based Pursuit of Radical Life Extension.” 2. Young 2006, 42. How realistic is this forecast? Not very, suggests Pete Estep in his chapter for this book. “Almost all credible experts in the field are skeptical a

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cure will appear in the foreseeable future,” he writes; “but this has not prevented many from pursuing the lofty and compassionate goal of curing aging.” For a broad analysis of the theological implications of transhumanist proposals for human enhancement, see Peters 2007, chapters 6, 7. 3. See de Grey 2007 and de Grey’s blog, retrieved June 19, 2009 from http://pimm. wordpress.com/2006/11/09/blogterview-with-aubrey-de-grey-life-extensionstories/. 4. The Life Extension Foundation with its magazine, Life Extension, focuses on life expectancy. The foundation reports on new discoveries involving nutrition, hormones, and anti-aging supplements, such as coQ10 and omega-3. Retrieved June 19, 2009 from http://www.lef.org/magazine/index.htm.

Selected Bibliography

This bibliography contains works cited in the book, along with a few more important sources. Trends in books about radical life extension (RLE) and related topics include summaries of the science, ethical and public policy reflections, and futuristic speculation. No book addresses the implications of extreme longevity for different religions. A few sources address the theological or ethical implications of a particular religion, mostly Christianity. In the coming years we expect an increasing number of books will be published by authors who attempt to wrestle with the far-reaching implications, religious and otherwise, of the more ambitious biotechnology research programs. A more comprehensive bibliography of material relating to this subject can be found at the website of one of the coeditors: www.ecu.edu/ religionprogram/mercer. A number of organizations, websites, online forums, and programs have sprung up to address the issue of and interest in RLE. Admittedly, there are organizations and websites that promote pseudoscience, questionable medical modalities, and adventurous marketing. Some of the more reputable organizations, forums, and websites can be found at www.ecu.edu/religionprogram/ mercer. Many of them have newsletters and subscriber lists. Albom, Mitch. (1997). Tuesdays with Morrie. New York: Doubleday Books. Alexander, Brian. (2003). Rapture: How Biotechnology Became the New Religion. New York: Basic Books. al-Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn. Tafsīr Mafātīh al-Ghayb. Retrieved April 16, 2009, from www.altafsir.com. al-Qurtubī. al-Jāmi’ al-Ahkām sl-Qur’ān. Retrieved April 16, 2009, from www. altafsir.com. Amnesty International. (2008). “Death Penalty: Abolitionist and Retentionist Countries.” Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http://www.amnesty.org/en/ death-penalty/abolitionist-and-retentionist-countries.

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Anderson, John D. (2004). Inventing Flight: The Wright Brothers and their Predecessors. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Anderson, Markus. (2008). “Sufficient, Sustainable Life Span for All: Responsible Biotechnology and ELCA Social Lutheran Thought.” Journal of Lutheran Ethics, 8(1). Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http://archive.elca.org/jle/article.asp?k=772. Aquinas, Thomas. (1265–1274). Summa Theologiae, I–II, Q. 1, art 8. ———. (1274). Incipit summa edita a sancto Thoma de aquino De articulis fidei et ecclesie sacreme ntis. Basel, Switzerland: Martin Flach. Arrison, Sonia. (December 14, 2007). “Radical Life Extension and Religious Evolution.” TechNews World. Retrieved June 19, 2009, from http://www. technewsworld.com/story/60758.html. ______. (July 11, 2008). “Technology and the Aspiring Methuselahs.” TechNews World. Retrieved June 19, 2009, from http://www.technewsworld.com/story/ 63748.html. Babb, Lawrence A. (1996). Absent Lord. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bailey, Ronald. (2005). Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution. New York: Prometheus. Bainbridge, William Sims. (2005). “The Transhuman Heresy.” Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14(2), 91–100. Barth, Karl. (1960). Church Dogmatics III/2. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Basham, Arthur Llewellyn. (1999 [1967]) The Wonder That Was India. New Delhi: Rupa & Co. Bell, K. A. (1959). “Foreword.” In Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship. Translated by R. H. Fuller. New York: Macmillan. Bellarmine, Robert. (1847). The Art of Dying Well. London: Richardson and Son. Benecke, Mark. (1998). The Dream of Eternal Life: Biomedicine, Aging, and Immortality. New York: Columbia University Press. Berryman, Phillip. (1987). Liberation Theology. New York: Random House. Berzin, Alexander. (2008). Holy Wars in Buddhism and Islam: The Myth of Shambhala, Berzin Archives. Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http://www.berzinarchives.com/ web/x/nav/n.html_1867868580.html. Bharati, Agehananda. (1965). The Tantric Tradition. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Bloom, Howard. (2000). Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Bokenkamp, Stephen. (1997). Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. (1959). The Cost of Discipleship. Translated by R.H. Fuller. New York: Macmillan. Boorse, Dorothy. (2005). “Anti-Aging: Radical Longevity, Environmental Impacts, and Christian Theology.” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 57(1), 55–64. Bostrom, Nick. (2002). Transhumanist Values. Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http:// www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html.

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———. (2003). “Human Genetic Enhancements: A Transhumanist Perspective.” Journal of Value Inquiry, 37(4), 493–506. ———. (2005). “In Defence of Posthuman Dignity.” Bioethics, 19(3), 202–214. ———. (2008). “Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 9. Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html. Brooks, Douglas Renfrew. (1990). The Secret of the Three Cities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brooks, Rodney. (2002). Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us. New York: Pantheon. Bucaille, Maurice. (1976). The Bible, the Qur’an, and Science: The Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of Modern Knowledge, 6th ed., revised and expanded. Paris: Seghers; Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an. Callahan, Daniel. (2003). “The Desire for Eternal Life: Scientific Versus Religious Visions: The 2002–03 Ingersoll Lecture.” In Harvard Divinity School Bulletin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Divinity School. Calvin, John. (1957). Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. (1960). Institutes of the Christian Religion, The Library of Christian Classics, Volume 20. Translated by F. L. Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. Cameron, Nigel M. de S. (2007). “Ethics, Policy, and the Nanotechnology Initiative: The Transatlantic Debate on ‘Converging Technologies.’ ” In Nigel M. de S. Cameron and M. Ellen Mitchell, eds., Nanoscale: Issues and Perspectives for the Nano Century. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Cameron, Nigel M. de S., and M. Ellen Mitchell, eds. (2007). Nanoscale: Issues and Perspectives for the Nano Century. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Cameron, Nigel M. de S., and Amy Michelle DeBeats. (2008). “Germline Gene Modification and the Human Condition before God.” In Ronald Cole-Turner, ed., Design and Destiny. Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Human Germline Modification (93–118). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Center for Bioethics and Culture. (2003). The Sanctity of Life in a Brave New World: A Manifesto on Biotechnology and Human Dignity. Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http://www.thecbc.org/redesigned/manifesto.php. Chapman, Audrey R., and Mark S. Frankel, eds. (2000). Human Inheritable Genetic Modifications across Generations: Assessing Scientific, Ethical, and Policy Issues. Washington, D.C.: American Association of the Advancement of Science. Retrieved December 28, 2008, from www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/sfrl/projets/germline/report.pdf. ———. (2003). Designing Our Descendants: The Promise and Perils of Genetic Modifications. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Cole-Turner, Ronald. (1993). The New Genesis Theology and the Genetic Revolution. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Cole-Turner, Ronald, and Brent Waters. (1996). Pastoral Genetics: Theology and Care at the Beginning of Life. Cleveland: Pilgrim.

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Cole-Turner, Ronald, ed. (1997). Human Cloning: Religious Responses. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. ———, ed. (2001). Beyond Cloning: Religion and the Remaking of Humanity. Harrisburg: Trinity. ———, ed. (2008). Design and Destiny. Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Human Germline Modification. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Colson, Charles W., and Nigel M. de S. Cameron, eds. (2004). Human Dignity in the Biotech Century: A Christian Vision for Public Policy. Downers Grove: InterVarsity. Couzin, Jennifer. (2005). “How Much Can Human Life Span Be Extended?” Science, 309, 83. Cullmann, Oscar. (1960). Immortality of the Soul; Or, Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament. London: Epworth Press. Daly, Todd. (2005). “Life-Extension in Transhumanist and Christian Perspectives: Consonance and Conflict.” Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14(2), 57–75. Dasgupta, Shashibhusan B. (1976). Obscure Religious Cults. Calcutta: Firma KLM Pvt. Ltd. Davis, Dena, and Laurie Zoloth, eds. (1999). Notes from a Narrow Ridge: Religion and Bioethics. Hagerstown, MD: University Publishing Group. Deane-Drummond, Celia, and Peter Manley Scott, eds. (2006). Future Perfect? God, Medicine, and Human Identity. London: T. & T. Clark. de Grey, Aubrey, Bruce N. Ames, J. K. Andersen, A. Bartke, Judith Campisi, Christopher B. Heward, R. J. M. McCarter, and Gregory Stock. (2002). “Time to Talk SENS: Critiquing the Immutability of Human Aging.” Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 959, 452–462. de Grey, Aubrey, J. W. Baynes, D. Berd, Christopher B. Heward, G. Pawelec, G. Stock. (2002). “Is Human Aging Still Mysterious Enough to Be Left Only to Scientists?” BioEssays, 24(7), 667–676. de Grey, Aubrey. (2004). “The War on Aging.” In Bruce J. Klein et al., eds., The Scientific Conquest of Death (17–29). Buenos Aires: Libros en Red. ———. (2004). “Escape Velocity: Why the Prospect of Extreme Human Life Extension Matters Now.” PLoS Biology, 2(6), 723–726. ———. (2005). “Resistance to Debate on How to Postpone Ageing is Delaying Progress and Costing Lives.” EMBO Reports, 6, Spec No., S49–53. ———. (2006). “The Urgency Dilemma: Is Life Extension Research a Temptation of Test?” Update, 21(1), 6–10. de Grey, Aubrey, with Michael Rae. (2007). Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime. New York: St. Martin’s. Dorff, Elliot N. (1998). Matters of Life and Death: A Jewish Approach to Modern Medical Ethics. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. ______. (2005). The Way IntoTtikun Olam (Fixing the World). Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights. Dundas, Paul. (2002). The Jains. New York: Routledge.

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Dyczkowski, Mark. (1995–1996). “Kubjikā the Erotic Goddess: Sexual Potency, Transformation and Reversal in the Heterodox Theophanies of the Kubjikā Tantras.” Indologica Taurinesia, 21–22, 123–140. Dyer, Wayne W. (2007). Change Your Thoughts—Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House. Ehrlich, Paul. (1968). The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine Books. Eliade, Mircea. (1970). Yoga, Immortality and Freedom. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Bollingen Series, no. 56. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Embree, Ainslie T., ed. (1966). The Hindu Tradition. New York: Random House. ———, ed. (1988). Sources of Indian Tradition, 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press. Engelhardt, Jr., Hugo Tristram. (1999). Genetic Enhancement and Theosis: Two Models of Therapy. Christian Bioethics, 5(2), 197–199. Estep, Pete, Matt Kaeberlein, and P. Kapahi et al. (2006). “Life-extension Pseudoscience and the SENS Plan.” MIT Technology Review, 109(3), 82–83. Retrieved on April 16, 2009, from http://www.technologyreview.com/sens/docs/ estepetal.pdf. Estep, Pete W. (2008). “The Promise of Human Life Span Extension.” In L.W. Pool and T.T. Perls, eds., Biopsychosocial Approaches to Longevity (29–61). New York: Springer. Feurstein, Georg. (2001). The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice. Prescott, AZ: Hohm Press. Flood, Gavin, ed. (1971). The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Company. ———. (1993). Body and Cosmology in Kashmir Śaivism. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. ———. (2006). The Tantric Body: The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion. London: I. B. Taurus. Foerst, Anne. (2004). God in the Machine: What Robots Teach Us about Humanity and God. New York: Dutton. Fohr, Sherry. (2005). “Jainism.” In Thomas Riggs, ed., Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale. Frazer, James G. (1913–1924). The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, 3 volumes. London: Macmillan and Co. Freitas, Robert. (2002). Naomedicine. Austin: Landes Bioscience. Fukuyama, Francis. (2002). Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Garreau, Joel. (2005). Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What It Means to Be Human. New York: Broadway. Gaster, Theodor. (1969). Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament: A Comparative Study with Chapters from Sir James G. Frazer’s “Folklore in the Old Testament.” New York: Harper and Row. Goldstein, Joshua R., and Wilhelm Schlag. (1999). “Longer Life and Population Growth.” Population and Development Review, 25(4), 741–747.

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Gombrich, Richard F. (1988). Theravāda Buddhism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Gomez, Luis O. (1996). The Land of the Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. Gordijn, Bert, and Ruth Chadwick, eds. (2007). Medical Enhancements and Posthumanity. New York: Routledge. Guarente, Lenny. (2002). Ageless Quest: One Scientist’s Search for Genes That Prolong Youth. New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Gutierrez, Gustavo. (1984 [1973]). A Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Gyatso, Tenzin, Fourteenth Dalai Lama. (2000). The Meaning of Life: Buddhist Perspectives on Cause and Effect. Translated by Jeffrey Hopkins. Boston: Wisdom Publications. ———. (2008). Science at the Crossroads. Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http:// www.mindandlife.org/dalai.lama.sfndc.html. “Hajj,” saudiembassy.net. Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http://www.saudiembassy. net/Issues/Hajj/IssuesHaj.asp. Haldane, John Burdon Sanderson. (1941). New Paths in Genetics. London: Allen & Unwin. Hall, Stephen. (2003). Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Hanson, Mark J. (1999). “Indulging Anxiety: Human Enhancement from a Protestant Perspective.” Christian Bioethics, 5(2), 121–138. Hanson, William. (2008). The Edge of Medicine: The Technology That Will Change Our Lives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Harris, John. (2007). Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People. New York: Princeton. Herzfeld, Noreen. (2002). “Cybernetic Immortality versus Christian Resurrection.” In Ted Peters, Robert John Russell, and Michael Welker, eds., Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments (192–201). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans. ———. (2005). “Transcending the Animal: How Transhumanism and Religion Are and Are Not Alike.” Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14(2), 13–28. Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http://jetpress.org/volume14/hopkins.html. _____. (2009). Technology and Religion: Remaining Human in a Co-created World. Templeton Science and Religion Series. Series editors: J. Wentzel van Huyssteen and Khalil Chamcham. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press. Hiriyanna, Mysore. (1948). The Essentials of Indian Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin. Hogendijk, Jan P., and Abdelhamid I. Sabra, eds. (2003). The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New Perspectives. Dibner Institute Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hollenberg, Norman K. (2004). “Respect for Persons as a Guide to Genetic Enhancement.” In John G. Trapani, Jr., ed. Truth Matters (194–203). Washington, D.C.: American Maritain Association.

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Holliday, Robin. (1995). Understanding Ageing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ———. (2001). “Human Ageing and the Origins of Religion.” Biogerontology, 2(1), 73–77. ———. (2006). “Aging is No Longer an Unsolved Problem in Biology.” Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 1067, 1–9. Hughes, James J. (2004). Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future. Boulder: Westview. ———. (2006). “The Illusiveness of Immortality.” In Charles Tandy, ed., Death And Anti-Death, Volume 3: Fifty Years after Einstein, One Hundred Fifty Years after Kierkegaard. Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http://ieet.org/index.php/ IEET/more/430/. ———. (2007). “The Struggle for a Smarter World.” Futures. Forthcoming. ———. (2007). “Christology and the Human Body.” Ethical Technology. Retrieved March 6, 2007, from http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/hughes20070305. ———. (2008). “The Compatibility of Religious and Transhumanist Views of Metaphysics, Suffering, Virtue and Transcendence in an Enhance Future.” Retrieved December 28, 2008, from http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/2726/. International Theological Commission, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, The Vatican. (2004). Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God. Retrieved June 19, 2009, from http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/re_con_cfaith_doc. Jahnke, Roger. (1997). The Healer within Using Traditional Chinese Techniques to Release Your Body’s Own Medicine. San Francisco: HarperCollins. Jaini, Padmanabh S. (1979). The Jaina Path of Purification. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. ———. (1980). “Karma and the Problem of Rebirth in Jainism.” In Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, ed., Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jenson, Robert W. (1999). Systematic Theology. Vol. 2: The Works of God. New York: Oxford University Press. Kalyanaraman. (2004). Sarasvati (7 volumes), Baba Saheb (Umakanta Keshava). Bangalore: Apte Smarak Samiti. Kass, Leon R., and James Q. Wilson. (1998). The Ethics of Human Cloning. Washington, D.C.: AEI Press. Kass, Leon R. (2001). “Preventing a Brave New World.” The New Republic. ———. (2002). Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. San Francisco: Encounter Books. ———. (2002). “L’Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?” First Things: A Journal of Religion and Public Life, 113, 17–24. Reprinted in Philip Zaleski, ed., Best Spiritual Writing of 2002. San Francisco: The Institute on Religion and Public Life, 2002. ———., ed. (2002). Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Report of the President’s Council on Bioethics. New York: Public Affairs.

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Katz, Bruce F. (2008). Neuroengineering the Future: Virtual Minds and the Creation of Immortality. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Kelting, M. Whitney. (2001). Singing to the Jinas. New York: Oxford. Khushf, George. (1999). “Thinking Theologically about Reproductive and Genetic Enhancements: The Challenge.” Christian Bioethics, 5(2), 154–182. Kinsley, David R. (1982). Hinduism: A Cultural Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Kitcher, Philip. (1996). The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities. New York: Simon & Schuster. Klein, Bruce J., and Sebastian Sethe, eds. (2004). The Scientific Conquest of Death. Buenos Aires: LibrosEnRed. Knight, Chris, R. Dunbar, and C. Power. (1999). The Evolution of Culture: An Interdisciplinary View. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Kohn, Livia. (1992). Early Chinese Mysticism: Philosophy and Soteriology in the Taoist Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. (2004). Cosmos and Community: The Ethical Dimension of Daoism. Cambridge, MA: Three Pines Press. ———., ed. (2006). Daoist Body Cultivation: Traditional Models and Contemporary Practices. Magdalena, NM: Three Pines Press. ———. (2008). Chinese Healing Exercises: The Tradition of Daoyin. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Kurzweil, Ray. (1990). The Age of Intelligent Machines. Cambridge, MA: MIT. ———. (1999). The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York: Viking. ———. (2002). Are We Spiritual Machines: Ray Kurzweil Vs. the Critics of Strong Al, ed. Jay W. Richards. Seattle: Discovery Institute, 2002. Kurzweil, Ray and Terry Grossman. (2004). Fantastic Voyage: Live Longer to Live Forever. New York: Rodale. Kurzweil, Ray. (2005). The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. New York: Viking. Laidlaw, James. (1995). Riches and Renunciation: Religion, Economy, and Society among the Jains. New York: Oxford University Press. Lang, Karen. (1986). Āryadeva’s Catu śataka: On the Bodhisattva’s Cultivation of Merit and Knowledge. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. LaTorra, Michael. (2005). “Trans-Spirit: Religion, Spirituality and Transhumanism.” Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14(2), 41–55. Retrieved April 16, 2009 from http://jetpress.org/volume14/latorra.html. Ledford, James McLean. (2005). Prepare for HyperEvolution with Christian Transhumanism. Retrieved December 28, 2008, from http://www.hyper-evolution.com/. Lidke, Jeffrey S. (1994). “Sahaja Samādhi—the Innate Mystical Experience, a Discussion of Sādhana in the Trika-Kaulism of Abhinavagupta.” In EPOCHÇ: Journal for the Study of Religions, 19, 1–33. Lopez, Donald S. Jr. (2008). “First There is a Mountain (Then There is No Mountain).” Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 54–57, 108–109.

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Tatz, Mark, trans. (1994). The Skill in Means (Upāyakauśalya) Sûtra. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Timalsina, Sthaneshwar. (2006). Seeing and Appearance. Aachen: Shaker Verlag. Tipler, Frank J. (1994). The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God, and the Resurrection of the Dead. New York: Doubleday. Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava. (2007). “Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism: Philosophical, Religious, and Ethical Considerations.” The Global Spiral (October 5, 2007). Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http://www.metanexus.net/ Magazine/tabid/68/id/10169/Default.aspx. Tokar, Brian, ed. (2001). Redesigning Life? The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering. London: Zed Books. Trivers, Robert. (2002). Natural Selection and Social Theory. New York, Oxford University Press. United Church of Christ. (2008). “A New Voice Arising: A Pastoral Letter on Faith Engaging Science and Technology.” Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http://ucc. org/not-mutually-exclusive/pdfs/pastoral-letter.pdf. Van Lemming, Ryan. (2000). By Way of the Body. Miami: Miami University Press. Varenne, Jean. (1973). Yoga and the Hindu Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vijg, Jan and Judith Campisi. (2008). “Puzzles, promises and a cure for ageing.” Nature, 454(7208), 1065–1071. Warner, Huber, Julie Anderson, and Steve Austad et al. (2005). “Science Fact and the SENS Agenda.” EMBO Report, 6(11), 1006–1008. Waters, Brent, and Ronald Cole-Turner, eds. (2003). God and the Embryo: Religious Voices on Stem Cells and Cloning. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University. Waters, Brent. (2006). From Human to Posthuman: Christian Theology and Technology in a Postmodern World. Ashgate Science and Religion Series, series eds. Roger Trigg and J. Wentzel van Huyssteen. Burlington: Ashgate. West, Michael D. (2003). The Immortal Cell: One Scientist’s Quest to Solve the Mystery of Human Aging. New York: Doubleday. White, David Gordon. (1996). The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditioins in Medieval India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. (2003). Kiss of the Yoginī: “Tantric Sex” in its South Asian Contexts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wiles, Douglas. (1996). Art of the Bedchamber: The Chinese Sexual Yoga Classics Including Women’s Solo Meditation Texts. Albany: SUNY Press. Wiley, Kristi L. (2000). “Aghatiya Karmas: Agents of Embodiment in Jainism.” Berkeley: Ph.D. thesis, University of California. Wiley, Kristi L. (2003). “The Story of King Srenika: Binding and Modifications of Ayu Karma.” In Olle Qvarnstrom, ed., Jainism and Early Buddhism. Fremont, CA: Asian Humanities Press. Williams, George C. (1957). “Pleitropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution of Senescence.” Evolution, 11, 398–411.

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Wilmoth, John R., Lucy H. Deegan, Kenneth H. Lundström, and Shiro Horiuchi. (2000). “Increase of Maximum Life-span in Sweden, 1861–1999.” Science, 289(5488), 2366–2368. Working Group on Faith and Genetics, Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. (2007). “Extending Human Life: Scientific, Ethical and Social Considerations.” Retrieved on June 19, 2009, from http://www.diomass.org/webfm_send/811. World Health Organization. (2004). “Annex Table 2: Deaths by cause, sex and mortality stratum in WHO regions, estimates for 2002.” In The World Health Report 2004—Changing History. Young, Simon. (2006). Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Contributors

Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Center on Nanotechnology and Society “Be Careful What You Wish For? Radical Life Extension coram Deo—A Reformed Protestant Perspective” Dr. Cameron is director of the Center on Nanotechnology and Society and research professor of bioethics and associate dean at Chicago-Kent College of Law in the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is also president of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, a new nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Cameron founded the Journal of Ethics and Medicine in 1983 and is widely recognized as a significant commentator on technology policy and ethics issues, with appearances on ABC Nightline, CNN, PBS Frontline, and the BBC. His books include Nanoscale: Issues and Perspectives for the Nano Century (2007, edited with M. Ellen Mitchell). He has been a visiting scholar at UBS Wolfsberg in Switzerland, a featured speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and a participant in the U.S./ European Commission dialogue on Perspectives on the Future of Science and Technology. He has also represented the United States as bioethics advisor on U.S. delegations to the United Nations and is currently a member of the United States National Commission for UNESCO. A native of the United Kingdom, he has studied at Cambridge and Edinburgh universities and the Edinburgh Business School. Ronald Cole-Turner, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary “Extreme Longevity Research: A Progressive Protestant Perspective” Dr. Cole-Turner holds the H. Parker Sharp Chair in Theology and Ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. His research focuses on the impact of new and emerging technologies on human understanding and the human future. His writings include The New Genesis: Theology and the Genetic Revolution (1993); Pastoral Genetics: Theology and Care at the Beginning of Life (1996, coauthored with Brent Waters); Human Cloning: Religious Responses

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(1997, edited); Beyond Cloning: Religion and the Remaking of Humanity (2001, edited); God and the Embryo: Religious Voices on Stem Cells and Cloning (2003, coedited with Brent Waters); and Design and Destiny: Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Human Germline Modification (2008, edited). He is a member of the executive committee and a vice president of the International Society for Science and Religion. He serves on the advisory panel for the “Transhumanism and Religion” consultation at the American Academy of Religion. Amy Michelle DeBaets, Emory University “Be Careful What You Wish For? Radical Life Extension coram Deo—A Reformed Protestant Perspective” DeBaets is a Ph.D. candidate in ethics and society at Emory University. She completed her M.Div. and Th.M. degrees at Princeton Theological Seminary. She previously taught medical ethics at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Her publications include an essay, with Nigel Cameron, in Design and Destiny: Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Human Germline Modification (2008). Aubrey de Grey, Methuselah Foundation “Radical Life Extension: Technological Aspects” Dr. de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist, is arguably the leading architect of an ambitious program to eliminate aging. He is chairman and chief science officer for the Methuselah Foundation, an organization dedicated to exploiting emerging biological and genetic science to cure human aging. He has authored numerous scientific articles on the subject and serves on scientific advisory boards of a number of organizations. He does basic biogerontology research, identifies and promotes specific technological approaches to the reversal (not merely the prevention) of various aspects of aging, and argues in a wide range of forums (extending well beyond biologists) for the adoption of a more proactive approach toward extending the healthy human life span in the near term. He is the editor of Rejuvenation Research, the world’s only peer-reviewed journal focused on intervention in aging. His research interests encompass the etiology of all the accumulating and eventually pathogenic molecular and cellular side effects of metabolism (“damage”) that constitute mammalian aging and the design of interventions to repair and/or obviate that damage. He has developed a possibly comprehensive plan for such repair, termed strategies for engineered negligible senescence (SENS), which breaks the aging problem down into seven major classes of damage and identifies detailed approaches to addressing each one.

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Jacob W. Dirnberger, Berry College graduate “Churning the Ocean of Milk: Imaging the Hindu Tantric Response to Radical Life Technologies” Dirnberger is a recent graduate of the Religion and Philosophy program at Berry College (Spring 2008), where he focused on Sanskrit and Asian religions with Dr. Jeffrey Lidke. In the summer of 2008, Dirnberger, a teacher of Sōtō Zen meditation practice, did postgraduate research in Bhutan, and he will pursue a Ph.D. in Buddhism in the fall of 2009. Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, University of Judaism “Becoming Yet More Like God: A Jewish Perspective on Radical Life Extension” Rabbi Dorff is rector and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Judaism and for 30 years team taught a course in Jewish law at the UCLA School of Law. Author of over 150 articles and 12 books, his papers have formulated the validated stance of the Conservative Movement on infertility treatments and on end-of-life issues. He has chaired three scholarly organizations—the Academy of Jewish Philosophy, the Jewish Law Association, and the Society of Jewish Ethics—as well as the Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles. He served on the Ethics Committee of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Health Care Task Force, testified on behalf of the Jewish tradition on the subjects of human cloning and stem cell research before the President’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission, worked with the Surgeon General’s Commission to draft a Call to Action for Responsible Sexual Behavior, and served on the National Human Resources Protections Advisory Commission. He was also a member of the California Commission to draft guidelines for stem cell research in the state. He is currently working on a project on Judaism and genetics for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He serves as cochair of the Priest-Rabbi Dialogue of the Los Angeles Archdiocese and the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, and he is a vice president of the Academy for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Studies. Pete Estep, Innerspace Foundation “The Evidence-based Pursuit of Radical Life Extension” Dr. Estep is a graduate of Cornell University, where he earned a B.S. degree and performed neuroscience research as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute undergraduate scholar. He earned a Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard Medical School, performing functional genomic research in the laboratory of genomics pioneer Dr. George Church. Following doctoral and postdoctoral work at Harvard, Dr. Estep cofounded and was CEO

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of the longevity research biotechnology company Longenity, Inc. He is a noted proponent of radical life extension as well as a critic of poorly supported life extension claims. Dr. Estep has founded and advised multiple technology start-up companies and organizations. He was an early adviser to the Personal Genome Project, an “open-source” genome project based at Harvard Medical School. He is an inventor of several DNA-chip-based technologies. Dr. Estep is also founder, chairman, and chief scientific officer of the Innerspace Foundation, whose primary mission is to accelerate the development of brain-computer interface technologies to restore, repair, and augment human mental functions. Sherry E. Fohr, Converse College “Karma, Austerity, and Time Cycles: Jainism and Radical Life Extension” Dr. Fohr teaches world and Asian religions at Converse College, where she is the chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy. She earned her Ph.D. in religious studies at the University of Virginia with concentrations in Indian Religions and Jainism. After receiving a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for research with Jain nuns in India, she conducted extensive ethnographic and narrative research about Jain nuns’ preponderance over monks in India. Her publications include “External Rules and Restrictions: Female Jain Renouncers,” in Studies in Jain History and Culture: Doctrines and Dialogues (2006), and “Jainism,” in Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices (2005). She is currently working on a book, Gender and Chastity: Female Jain Renouncers. Livia Kohn, Boston University “Told You So: Extreme Longevity and Daoist Realization” Dr. Kohn is professor of religion and East Asian Studies at Boston University. A graduate of Bonn University in Germany, she has spent many years pursuing research on medieval Daoism and Chinese long-life practices. She has written and edited numerous books, including Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques (1989), Daoism and Chinese Culture (2001), and Cosmos and Community: The Ethical Dimension of Daoism (2004). She will soon publish Chinese Healing Exercises, an integrated historical survey of Chinese physical practices. Dr. Kohn has practiced taiji quan, qigong, and meditation for over 20 years. She is also a certified instructor of Kripalu Yoga and a licensed hypnotist. She conducts regular yoga and qigong classes in her local community, as well as specialized workshops at various institutions, such as the New England School of Acupuncture and the White Cloud Institute. Jeffrey S. Lidke, Berry College “Churning the Ocean of Milk: Imaging the Hindu Tantric Response to Radical Life Technologies”

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Dr. Lidke teaches world religions at Berry College. He completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in Sanskrit and South Asian religions in the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His publications employ an interdisciplinary methodology grounded in ethnography, philology, history, art historical analysis, and hermeneutics. His first book, Visvarupa Mandir: A Study of Changu Narayan (Nirala Publications 1996), earned international acclaim as an art historical and semiotic analysis of the ancient Narayana temple complex at the Nepalese village of Changu. He has published several essays on Indian religion and culture. He serves as chair of the Berry College Interfaith Council and is an exponent of the Banaras tradition of tabla, which he learned under the guidance of the Nepalese tabla maestro Homnath Upadhyaya. Derek F. Maher, East Carolina University Coeditor, “Two Wings of a Bird: Radical Life Extension from a Buddhist Perspective,” “Introduction: Living for 1,000 Years—Or Longer” Dr. Maher received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in the history of religions, with an emphasis on Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. His research focuses on the interplay between religion, authority, and legitimacy. He studies how religious narratives influence other forms of discourse, particularly political, historical, and biographical accounts. His recent publications include “The Rhetoric of War in Tibet: Towards a Buddhist Just War Theory” in Journal of Political Theology 9:2 (2008) and “The Dalai Lamas and State Power” in Religion Compass 2 (2007). His current research includes his annotated translation of the classic two-volume One Hundred Thousand Moons: A Political History of Tibet by Tsepon Shakabpa, published by Brill in 2009 and a project on socially engaged Buddhism. He has conducted field research in India under the auspices of a Fulbright-Hays dissertation grant. His background in physics enlivens his interest in the relationship between religion and science. At East Carolina University, Maher is the codirector of the Religious Studies Program. He teaches courses on Buddhism, methodology, and religion and violence. Calvin Mercer, East Carolina University Coeditor, “Introduction: Living for 1,000 Years—Or Longer” Dr. Mercer teaches courses in Religious Studies at East Carolina University, where he recently received a “Scholar-Teacher” award, and is the director of the Multidisciplinary Studies Program. His focus is on the impact of human enhancement technologies, psychology of religion, and biblical studies, with an emphasis on the role of the Bible in modern culture. Dr. Mercer is a founding member and first chair of the American Academy of Religion’s “Transhumanism and Religion” consultation. Trained in clinical

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psychology, he practiced professionally part-time for over a decade and utilizes insights from this discipline in his research. His most recent book is Slaves to Faith: A Therapist Looks Inside the Fundamentalist Mind (2009). Dr. Mercer gives public lectures on the religious implications of radical life extension science, the psychology of fundamentalism, and the Monastic Project (http://www.ecu.edu/religionprogram/mercer/monastic.html). Aisha Y. Musa, Florida International University “A Thousand Years, Less Fifty: Toward a Quranic View of Extreme Longevity” Dr. Musa received her Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Harvard University. She is currently an assistant professor of Islamic Studies in the Religious Studies Department at Florida International University, Miami. Dr. Musa’s training at Harvard focused on early Islamic scriptural history, specifically the relative authority of the Qur’an and Prophetic Traditions (Hadith). Her book, Hadith as Scripture: Discussions on the Authority of Prophetic Traditions in Islam (2008), explores the development of the doctrine of duality of revelation and issues surrounding the relative authority of the Qur’an and the Prophetic Traditions (Hadith). Her research and teaching interests extend from the early classical period to the present and include translation of classical Arabic texts, Qur’anic interpretation, women’s issues, and modern day reformist and neo-traditionalist movements. Terence L. Nichols, University of St. Thomas “Radical Life Extension: Implications for Roman Catholicism” Dr. Nichols is professor of systematic theology and former chair of the Theology Department at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. His university studies were at Harvard University and the University of Minnesota, and he received his doctorate at Marquette University. He teaches courses on Death and the Afterlife, Science and Theology, and Christianity and World Religions, as well as introductory theology courses. His publications include The Sacred Cosmos: Christian Faith and the Challenge of Naturalism (2003), That All May Be One: Hierarchy and Participation in the Church (1997), and various articles in academic journals in the areas of science and theology, and ecclesiology. He is currently writing a book on death and afterlife for Brazos Press. Ted Peters, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union “Theological, Spiritual, and Ethical Reflections on Radical Life Extension”

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Dr. Peters serves as coeditor of the journal Theology and Science published by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) at the GTU. He worked as area editor for “Science and Religion” for the 4th edition of Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Volumes IV–VIII, and for the 2nd edition of The Encyclopedia of Religion (2005). He is author of Anticipating Omega (2006) and Science, Theology, and Ethics (2003). With Martinez Hewlett, he authored Evolution from Creation to New Creation (2003) and Can You Believe in God and Evolution? (2006). In the field of genetics, Peters served as principal investigator for a research project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on “Theological and Ethical Questions Raised by the Human Genome Initiative” hosted at the CTNS, 1990–1994. On the basis of his research, he has written Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom (2nd ed., 2002). He edited the findings of the CTNSNIH project for publication in a multiauthor book entitled Genetics: Issues of Social Justice (1998), and he authored The Stem Cell Debate (2007). Along with Karen Lebacqz and Gaymon Bennett, he authored Sacred Cells? Why Christians Should Support Stem Cell Research (2008). He currently serves on the Scientific and Medical Accountability Standards Working Group for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and the Genetics Task Force of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Arvind Sharma, McGill University “May You Live Long”: Religious Implications of Extreme Longevity in Hinduism” Dr. Sharma holds the Birks Chair in Comparative Religion in the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Born in Varanasi, India, he earned a B.A. in History, Economics, and Sanskrit from Allahabad University in 1958 and continued his interests in economics at Syracuse University, earning an M.A. in 1970. Pursuing a life-long interest in comparative religion, Dr. Sharma gained an M.T.S. in 1974 and then a Ph.D. in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard University in 1978. He was the first Infinity Foundation Visiting Professor of Indic Studies at Harvard University and succeeded Wilfred Cantwell Smith to the Birks Chair in Comparative Religion at McGill University. He has published over 50 books and 500 articles covering comparative religion, Hinduism, Indian philosophy and ethics, and the role of women in religion. His most noteworthy publications are The Hindu Gita: Ancient and Classical Interpretations of the Bhagavadgita (1986), The Experiential Dimension of Advaita Vedanta (1993), Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced by Preeminent Scholars from Each Tradition (1994), and The Study of Hinduism (2003). Two books edited by him, Women in World Religions (1987) and Our Religions

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(1993), are widely used for teaching courses on world religions. He was president of the Steering Committee for the Global Congress on World’s Religions after September 11, which met in Montreal from September 11 to September 15, 2006, and he is currently engaged in promoting the adoption of “A Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the World’s Religions.”

Index

Abhidharmakośa, 111 Abraham, 64, 67, 134 Absorbing the Five Sprouts, 89 Acharya Bikshu, 79 Adam, 1 afterlife, 2, 9–10, 35, 120, 127–8, 137–9 aging, definition of, 13, 28–9 ajiva, 76 al-akhira, 128 al-Qurtubī, 124 Amitābha, 117, 118 Amitāyus, 117, 118 amta, 99 anātman, 114 antiaging, 14, 20 a u, 106 aretha, 101 Arhat, 117 Art of Dying, 138 Āryadeva, 115 ashrava, 76 āśrama, 148, 153, 163 ātman, 100, 101, 114, 164 Ayus, 77, 82 Bailey, Ronald, 101, 106 bandha, 76 baptism, 61 Barth, Karl, 47 Bellarmine, Robert, 138

Bhagavadgītā, 149 Bible, 1, 54–5, 63–4, 71–3, 136, 157, 167 bigu, 87 bilocation, 86 bindu, 105 biochemistry, 25, 26 bioconservatives, 36 biogerontology, 18, 41 biological age, 20, 21 biological immortality, 6, 52, 158 biomedical technology, 8, 21 biomedicine, 2, 99, 117, 119 Boff, Leonardo, 140 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 58 Brahmā, 145 brahmacarya, 149 Brahma-Heavens, 94 Brāhma a, 147, 163 brahmancārī, 148, 163 Bucaille, Maurice, 126 Buddhism, 1, 2, 76, 80, 86, 94, 102, 108, 111–21, 140, 147, 156, 164, 165 cakras, 104 calorie restriction, 31 Calvin, John, 46, 51, 59 Cambrian Explosion, 26 Campisi, Judith, 31 Catholicism, 133–44, 161–2

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Index

caturyuga, 145, 162 celestial immortals, 86–7, 94–5 Celestial Masters, 95 Christianity, 1, 35–6, 37–49, 51–61, 70, 134–44, 161–2, 167 Church, George, 3 coma, 101 Complete Perfection, 95 cosmology, 52, 75, 96, 111–12, 114, 116, 156–8, 162, 164 cybernetic immortality, 6, 52–7, 159 cyborgization, 5, 52–3, 57, 158 Dalai Lama, 112, 116 Dante, 1 Daode jing, 95 Daoism, 85–6, 164–5 daoyin, 87 Day of Brahmā, 145 dehātiti-sthitvā, 107 demigods, 114 Derrida, Jacques, 2 Deuteronomy, 64, 67 dharma, 101, 150–3, 163 Dhul-Hijjah, 129 diffusional life extension, 33 Digambara, 77, 79 Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, 115 dra
t , 107 dualism, 54–7 Dyer, Wayne, 95 earth immortals, 86 Ehud, 64 Elixir that Prolongs Life, 118 entropy, 56, 158 epigenomic drift, 32 eschatology, 10, 55, 127, 130, 137–9 Essential Compendium on Nourishing Life, 87 eternal life, 9, 40, 44, 53, 55–9, 135–7, 161, 167 eugenics, 48 Eve, 46, 63, 134–5, 144

evolution, 3, 17 Exodus, 72 Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, 124 fen, 91 Fisher, Ronald, 28 Five Great Vows, 77, 78 Four Hundred Stanzas, 115 Frazer, James G., 2 Gabriel, 123 gacchas, 79 Garden of Eden, 63, 66, 68, 134 gā hasthya, 149 Genesis, 1, 39, 44, 63–5, 67, 134–5, 155 genetic engineering, 4 genetic manipulation, 4, 48 germline genetic engineering, 5 Ghulam Ahmed Parvez, 127 Gideon, 64 Great Peace, 86, 90–1, 165 g hastha, 148, 163 Guo Xiang, 90–1 Gutierrez, Gustavo, 140 hajj, 129 Haldane, John Burdon Sanderson, 28 Hastings Center, 7 heaven, 91, 93, 118, 127–8 Heaven of Grand Network, 93 hell, 93–4, 127, 128 Hinduism, 1, 76, 77, 94, 97–110, 117, 140, 145–54, 156, 162–5 Human Genome Project, 4 I Corinthians, 44, 136 I Kings, 64, 65 I Thessalonians, 136 immortality, 52–7 immortality elixir, 90 infectious diseases, 16, 41, 43 Innerspace Foundation, 3 Isaiah, 35, 68

Index Islam, 123–31, 168 Israel, 65, 70–1, 160 Jacob, 64 Jahannam, 127 Jainism, 75–84, 102, 147, 156, 164–5 Jambudvīpa, 111 Jannah, 127 jāti, 147 Jesus, 1, 14, 35, 44–5, 47, 55, 57–61, 134–8, 141–2, 161 jinas, 81 jing, 88, 92 jiva, 76 jñāna, 103, 164 John, 135 John Templeton Foundation, 10 Judah, 65, 73 Judaism, 35, 63–74, 140, 156, 159–60, 162 Judges, 64 jīvas, 151 kaliyuga, 111, 118, 146 kalpa, 80, 111, 145, 146, 162 karma, 75–82, 86, 94, 103, 113–20, 150–3, 162, 164 Kharatara Gaccha, 79 Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), 69 K  ta Yuga, 146 K
atriya, 147, 163 ku ali ī, 99, 104 Kurzweil, Ray, 6, 53, 156, 159 Leviticus, 72 li, 91 Longevity Dividend, 6, 31 longevity escape velocity, 21, 23, 157 Lopez, Donald S., 112 Luis, Juan Segundo, 140 Luke, 45, 135 Luther, Martin, 46

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Magisterium, 137, 143 Mahābhārata, 98, 146 Mahavidheha, 81 Mahavira, 75 Mahāyāna, 117, 118, 120 Maimonides, 66, 67, 73 Maitreya, 118 Manusmti, 146, 147 manvantaras, 145, 162 Mark, 135 Marxism, 40 Matthew, 44, 58, 135–6, 138 Mecca, 130 Medawar, Peter, 28 Mesopotamia, 64 Messianic, 68, 70, 71 metaphysics, 140, 157, 161 Methuselah, 39, 64, 155, 157 Methuselah Foundation, 3 ming, 91 Mishnah, 71–3 mocha, 101 mok
a, 75–7, 80–3, 144, 150, 152–4, 162–4 Mol, Arnold Yasin, 128 Moses, 64, 65, 134 Mount Meru, 99–100, 111 mtātīta, 101 Muhammad, 123 mūlādhāra, 104 Murtipujak, 79 nanotechnology, 2, 6, 53, 97, 165–7 New Covenant, 134–5 New Testament, 135, 161, 167 nirjara, 76–7 nirvā a, 76, 113, 117–18, 164 Nityāśoaśikār ava, 101 nivtti, 149 Noah, 124–6, 130, 134–5, 155–6 nonattachment, 77–8 nonpossession, 77–8, 80 Numbers, 65

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Index

Old Testament, 35 Olshansky, Jay, 15 Padmasa bhava, 2 papa, 76 paramārtha, 101 Paramārthasara, 101 parāsa vit-abhiddha, 107 Parkinson, Cyril Northcote, 69 Parkinson’s Disease, 5 Peters, Ted, 3 Plato, 2, 54 Polkinghorne, John, 55 posthuman, 40, 48 practical immortality, 2, 8, 127–8, 130 pravtti, 149 preindustrialization, 16 prescience, 86 President’s Council on Bioethics, 7 Progressive Protestantism, 51–61 Protestantism, 37–49, 51–61, 138, 161 Psalms, 65, 69, 71, 155, 157, 160 punya, 76 purgatory, 137 Puru
a, 1 puru
ārthas, 153 qi, 85–90 qigong, 88, 95 Qur’an, 1, 123–31, 160 Radhakrishnan, S., 115 radical evolution, 4 Ramadan, 129 Rāmak 
a, 108 rasāyana, 101 Reformed Protestantism, 37–49, 51 reincarnation, 9–10, 75, 82, 86, 114–16, 140, 164 renouncers, 75–83, 164 resurrection, 35, 45, 47, 54–8, 67, 125, 127, 136, 159, 161, 167 Revelation, 136

g Veda, 98, 147

robotics, 6, 33, 97 Romans, 58–9, 135, 161 Rose, Michael, 106 Rūmī, Jalāl ad-Dīn, 1 sadaqa, 129 sādhana, 99 Śaivites, 117 śakti, 102–6 Sama, Nahum, 64 samādhi, 105 sa sāra, 75–7, 80–3, 103, 113–14, 116–18 Samson, 65 samvara, 76–7 sannyāsī, 148–9, 163 scanning technologies, 5 Scripture of the Ten Precepts, 93 SENS (strategies for engineered negligible senescence), 4, 20, 31, 184 Sermon on the Mount, 138 Shi’a Islam, 128 Shvetambara-Terapanthi, 79 Siddhārtha Gautama, 108 siddhas, 99–100, 105–6, 163 siddhi, 107 Sikism, 147 Silburn, Lilian, 105 Śiva, 100, 102, 104–5 Śiva-Sa hita, 100, 102 Six Healing Sounds, 88 Sobrino, Jon, 140 Society for Neuroscience, 112 Sorig Healthcare, 119 soteriology, 10 spirit travel, 86 spiritual body, 104, 136 St. Augustine, 2 St. Francis of Assisi, 58 St. Thomas Aquinas, 57 Stevens, Wallace, 1 Sthanakwasi, 79

Index sthūla-śarīra, 106 Śū dra, 147, 163

Sukhāvatī Heaven, 117–18 Sumeria, 64 Summa Theologiae, 140 su
umnā, 99 sūtra, 111 svatāntrya, 101 Swift, Jonathan, 66 tad-rūpa-nityājīvāmā, 107 Taiping, 90 Talmud, 67, 70–3 tantra, 97–110, 111, 118, 120, 163 tantras, 101 tantra-vidyās, 99 tāntrikas, 103, 108 Tapa Gaccha, 79 tathagata, 118 tattvas, 76 teleology, 109 telepathy, 86 Tenzin Gyatso, 112 Terapanthi, 79 Theology of Liberation, 140 therapeutic cloning, 5 Theravāda, 117 Three Clarities, 94 Tibetan Book of the Dead, 1 Timothy, 40 tissue and organ replacement, 5 Torah, 67, 70, 73 transhumanism, 10, 40–1, 106, 156, 161, 167

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Transhumanism, 4, 10 Tsephel Dutse, 118 Ulla, 68 Umra, 130 Upani
ads, 115 Uttarakura, 111 Vaiśya, 147, 163 vānaprastha, 148, 163 vānaprasthya, 149 var a, 147–8, 153 Vasubandhu, 111 Vasuki, 98–9, 104 Vijg, Jan, 31 vīrya, 105 Visualization, 89 viśva-līla, 107 Westminster Confession, 57 Williams, George C., 28 xian, 85, 164 Xiang’er Commentary, 92 xiangu, 90 xing, 91 yangsheng, 85 yoga, 87, 95, 99, 102, 107–8, 120 yogins, 117 zakat, 129 Zhuangzi, 90 Zionism, 71

195