Immortality is your right…Our mission, human mission, is to come to the platform of amaåatuvam, immortality. – Srila Prabhupada
Two genetic engineers, in a preview to their book, “The Death of Death” have claimed that humanity will have an option – to die or not – by the year 2045. And one of them went on to claim that he has chosen not to die and 30 years hence, would be younger than what he is today. In 1979, a noted American medical scholar, Alvin Silverstein in his book, Conquest of Death wrote, “The 1980s will be the Decade of the Scientific payoffs….
During the next decade, further advances will bring a striking improvement of the odds. If you survive the next 10 years, you may live on indefinitely in youth and vigour—you may become emortal (indefinite life expectancy).” But within a year, his prediction remained just a prediction, due to the appearance of the deadly AIDS disease. History, right from the time of Vedic civilisation, abounds in examples of well-calculated predictions and plans by best intellects fizzling out.
We are constitutionally immortal
It is a fact that we can stop our repeated births and deaths and achieve the state of immortality. We are not these temporary bodies, but spirit souls which are amåta, deathless, immortal. In the Bhagavad-gétä. It is said, na jäyate mriyate vä kadäcit: We living entities-we never die and never take birth. Ajo nityaù çäçvato ‘yaà puräëo na hanyate hanyamäne çarére. Every one of us-we are primeval and eternal, without beginning and without end. And after the annihilation of this body, we do not die.
But the body is mortal
But when the body is finished, we will have to accept another body. No one who takes birth in the material world can live eternally. The material world is called Martyaloka, meaning that every living entity here is subject to birth, death, old age, and disease. It is stated in the Bhagavad-gétä: janma-måtyu-jarä-vyädhi. Birth, death, old age and disease.This is real problem. Anything which is born must die. So janma-måtyu. Everyone should become diseased. Everyone should become old. Everyone must die. Even Lord Brahmä, whose one day is millions of years long, is not allowed to remain perpetually in his position.
Material advancement cannot award immortality
Modern scientists are aspiring to become immortal by scientific advancement. However, there is no evidence in the history of human society that a man has not died. The Bhagavad-Gita describes such people who make valiant attempts to be eternally happy, by means of their hard work or intelligence but without an understanding of their spiritual identity and relationship with God, as mudha (foolish) or mayaya -apahrtajnana (whose knowledge is stolen by illusion). The modern scientists who are trying to attain immortality by material means are therefore to be considered foolish as they are trying to make the body deathless without realising that we are the eternal undying soul within these temporary, dying bodies.
Story of Hiranyakashipu
Such material endeavour to be immortal without surrendering to God, has been going on since time immemorial. In Srimad Bhagavatam., it is described
hiraëyakaçipü räjann ajeyam ajarämaram
ätmänam apratidvandvam eka-räjaà vyadhitsata
The demoniac king Hiraëyakaçipu wanted to be unconquerable and free from old age and dwindling of the body. He wanted to gain all the yogic perfections like aëimä and laghimä, to be deathless, and to be the only king of the entire universe, including Brahmaloka. By virtue of severe austerities, he got benedictions from Brahma, by which he ensured that he would be killed neither during the day nor night, neither by a man nor an animal, neither inside the house or outside the house, neither on the ground or in the sky. Equipped with these boons, he conquered the entire world and thought himself to be deathless. However, without contravening any of these boons received by Brahma, Lord Narasimhadeva killed Hiranyakashipu and all his austerities and benedictions were of no avail to save him from death.
Real path to immortality
But it is possible to become immortal, to have eternal blissful life of knowledge. This is possible if one becomes fully Kåñëa conscious.This is the path followed by the mahatmas or great souls.Mahätmä refers to the first-class Kåñëa conscious man who is eligible to enter into the abode of Kåñëa and attains immortality by adopting this process.
