How to become immortal

Immortality: the wish that we all had at least once in our mundane lives. Almost everyone wants to become immortal so that they can live for eternity and escape the fear of death. But some people also argue that immortality is a curse because you get a never ending life which is filled with deaths of your loved ones. Surely a life without any end sounds really awesome. People have searched for ages for a way to become immortal.

Mythologies are filled with the myths of people becoming immortal. Greater advancement in science has led us to the promise that immortality can be possible in the near future. From eating a mermaid to drinking the Amrita, mythologies are full of stories of immortality. The Holy Grail, one of the most widely known pieces of Christian mythology, is a cup that Jesus drank during the Last Supper. It was believed that whoever drinks from the Holy Grail will be blessed with immortality. Once, King Arthur and his knights went on a quest to search for the Holy Grail but only the purest of souls were able to grasp it.

In Hindu mythology, the Devas or gods once lost their immortality due to a curse and were determined to regain their longevity. So, they decided to become allies with their enemies, the Asuras or the anti-gods. Together they churned the “ocean milk” to create a nectar called the Amrita, which was the elixir to become immortal. The Devas tricked the Asuras to not drink the Amrita. It is also believed that yoga masters are able to drink Amrita as the Devas spilled some of the Amrita in a rush to keep it from the Asuras.

In Japanese mythology, there is a mermaid like creature called Ningyo, described as a cross between a monkey and a carp. They lived in the seas and were believed to bring bad luck or stormy weather when caught. A myth, involving a girl known as “The Eight Hundred Nun,” said that once her father accidently brought her Ningyo meat which cursed the girl with immortality. After many years of sadness due to the death of her loved ones, she devoted her life to Buddha and became a nun. Maybe due to her holiness she was allowed to die at the age of 800 years.

Mythology may have a huge number of stories but science demands evidence. There is a lot of research going on to find the key to immortality and scientists believe that this will be possible within 50 to 75 years. Do you like backing up your data, so that none of your data is lost and you can access it later? If yes, then immortality suits you. Scientists are researching for ways to upload our brain’s data so that in the future it can be restored to a cyborg body or a synthetically engineered biological body. But, the problem is that we have yet to replicate how our brain stores information. The brain uses a flexible system that lets it store about 2.5 petabytes, or one million gigabytes. So, storing that huge amount of data per brain is a problem.

Human cloning has not yet happened but it is scientifically plausible. Scientists think that cloning can be an answer to immortality. Through cloning we will be able to harvest new organs and replace our older ones, but there are some moral issues as we are just creating a clone to get the organs from its body. Recently, scientists in the Salk Institute created the first human-pig hybrid. This hybrid can be used to create different organs for the human body. There are tons of stories of immortality in mythology. Science is also promising us an immortal life.

Now, we need to think: do we really need immortality so that we live for eternity and to do all the fun stuff we wanted to do and eventually get saturated, or do we just want a mortal life so that we can live with our loved ones and at last overcome the very fear of death.