Fountain of Youth - Part One

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10th February 2006

Shrikant Vasudeo
Sri Anand Yoga

Fountain of Youth
Part One

All of us want to stay naturally young and healthy for a long life. At the same time, with the digitization of life, we are more and more going away from the ‘natural’ element of our life. Cosmetic Surgery, Cosmetics, Youth enhancing drug therapy etc are hollow attempts to stay young. We tend to overlook the difference between staying young and just looking young. The cosmetics, hormone therapy etc have the effect of masking age changes, but they do not slow, stop or reverse aging. It has been accepted, but not much publicized for obvious reasons, by the scientists that the antiaging medicine in the form of specific drugs, vitamin cocktails or esoteric hormone mixtures are not supported by scientific evidence.
The recent scientific discovery into the cellular life opens up new vistas of knowledge. More than 90 % cells of our body are less than 100 days old. This is evident from the following life chart of the cells :
Cell Approximate Life Span
Red blood cells 120 to 130 days
White blood cells > 1 year
Platelets (blood) 10 days
Bone (skeleton) 3 months
Brain 90 + years (an entire lifetime)
Colon 4 days
Liver 6 weeks
Skin 1 month
Stomach 5 days
Spermatozoa 3 days

The above fact is true for a 1 year old baby as well as for a 100 year old man. If this is so, then the question is
· How come the 100 old man, with his body cells of less than 100 days old, looks a very old man ?
· Why can’t the diseased liver get automatically and naturally cured after 6 weeks when its sick cells get replaced with new healthy ones

The scientists answer this question with some jugglery of words. They say that the cells of a 100 year old man are indeed very young. What is old is the ‘cell expression’. The young cells ‘express’ old age like an artiste on drama stage ! It is all ‘drama’. This is certainly a true representation of the actual life process. However, it does not answer as to ‘why’ should the young cells ‘express’ the old age.

Let us also consider some other interesting facts. There are around 50 to 75 trillion cells in the body. It means 10,000 times the population of this entire world today. Each second there are about 6 trillion reactions taking place within each cell. It means that the total reactions in the single cell in one second is equivalent to the sum of 1000 reactions of each person of this planet. The cell is like an institution in itself. It performs a very complex set of actions based on intelligent processing of the information in its environment. All this wonder is ‘fitted’ in an extremely tiny space unimaginable in our normal sense perceptions. Most of the cells are so tiny that nearly one million cells can fit on the tip of a pin head. Our attempts to tinker with the functioning of the cells, will all our sophisticated techniques and tools and drugs, are absolutely ‘crude’.

When a human being die and his heart stops beating and his brain stops functioning, most of the cells in his body are still alive. We can say that the whole body is still alive at the cellular level. If we keep the body at normal temperature, it takes days before all the cells in our body die and in a true biological sense we can then only declare a person as dead and not when his heart stops beating ! Scientists have now stopped their frustrating endeavour to define ‘life’.

The normal age of a human being under normal living conditions and under normal health without any disease or stress or deprivation is about 120 to 150 years. The scientists call this ‘probable maximum human life’. Any person without the aid of any ‘modern longevity drug therapy’ can achieve the old age of 120 years. In Sri Anand Yoga, we call it current normal life – not just the probable maximum. The reason why people are reluctant to accept the ‘normalcy’ of human living conditions mentioned above is that the normal conditions of good health and cheerful attitude are very rarely found. But still they are normal indeed. What I want to stress is that in order to live healthy and cheerful life, you do not need high technology inaccessible to common man, you do not need specially prepared high-nutritious and expensive food, you do not need be a rich man, you need not live in a palace nor is it necessary to do any new age alternative therapy of pranic healing, reiki etc. A village man living his life in a simple manner can aspire to live up to 120 years. Therefore, though it is a rarity, this condition of normal life is normal indeed.
Biologically, the important factor responsible for aging is the gradual buildup of toxic junk which does not get ‘flushed out’ of our cellular system. In the organ of eye, junk stuff of dead cells gets accumulated in the back of the retina. It is called ‘age-related macular degeneration’. In similar manner, this junk material causes ‘arteriosclerosis’ in the arteries. In other words, the malfunctioning of the ‘drainage system’ of the cells causes us to age. Imagine what will happen when a very big swanky and sophisticated office building gets lousy drainage system or when we do not get call of the nature for just 3 days in row !

Sri Anand Yoga addresses this issue in a novel and interesting manner. The emotional buildup in a person is the main cause for the toxic buildup at the cellular level. The various yogic practices of Sri Anand Yoga do the job of flushing out the negative emotions in a continuous manner in the same way that the flowing river does not let the dirt get accumulated in it. This is a subject of a separate and detailed study and it will be covered in a separate note.

The various emotions which are generated in us get accumulated in various places in our physical body. If we do not keep this ‘emotional matter’ freely flowing in our body, it clogs the drainage system. The solution is NOT in stopping the emotions but in letting the emotions flow and not let them get stagnated.
Another factor responsible for cell degeneration and death is the role played by free-radicals. To control the ‘nuisance’ of free radicals, the therapy of anit-oxidents is used as a master card. However, in the process we under-estimate the important role the free radicals play in our physiological processes. Free radicals help in the immune response and cell communication. It is no doubt that the antioxidants contained in fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk of having various age-associated diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, macular degeneration and cataracts. However, taking external supplements of free radicals in the form of drugs is not much of a help. This aspect is not much publicized due to the vested interests of our pharmaceutical industry. Beta-carotene, an anti-oxidant, taken as external supplement, has been shown to have some adverse effects. The reason for the failure of external supplements of drugs to have the same effectiveness as the natural food like fruits and vegetables is very simple. Our cells are NOT the machinery and we can not replace the pare parts of the machinery. Our cells are living system and very much an integral part of our body and our body is also an integral part of ourself – our Self. Free radicals are like free and radical ideas of creative expression of our Self. When these ideas do not get their expression and the energy contained in these ideas does not get ‘channeled’ properly, it rebounds from the wall of our mental block and causes ‘disturbance’ in the equilibrium of our psyche. This disturbance is the root cause of dis-ease.
In our organised society, the failure of the system to effectively tackle the problem of terrorists and militants is mainly due to the failure of our system to properly understand the ‘free radical’ theory of our Society. We are accustomed to associate terrorists and militants with robbers and dacoits. Terrorist play with their own life. Any person who is ready to give up his own life for any cause, whether right or wrong as per our perspective, indicate the failure of our social and political system to ‘handle the free radicalism’ of the person terms as a terrorist. In fact, we all have in our own self, the subtle under-currents of terrorism and militancy.
Sr Anand Yoga effectively handles the ‘free radicals’ of our mind, the cells in our body and the terrorists in our society. This is done by the process of loving and joyful integration of the whole span of our life with the Universe. Integration of the One with the Many. The process of staying and looking young is effected in playing the game of life. ____________________________________________________________
…….. to continue