The Comte de Saint Germain:
During his life St. Germain was surrounded with mystery. No one knew what he did for a living, or where he got all those precious stones he was always carrying with him and giving generously as gifts to all the pretty ladies. He dressed simply, but tastefully, and everything, from his shoe-buckles to his snuff box was decorated with diamonds. The king of France gave him a flawed diamond once, and the Count brought it back to the king perfect, without a blemish. He was thought to be a great alchemist who knew how to manufacture precious stones and how to make the Elixir of Youth. He gave a certain Mme. v. Georgy some of his Elixir of Youth, and as a result she didn't age for 25 years. He was also an excellent musician and a painter. During the whole 18th century he always appeared about 40-50 years old. He reminds me of the Time Lord from the British sci-fi show Doctor Who. He appears and disappears, rich, powerful and mysterious. Some people think the Count is a real vampire. There were many witnesses who wrote that he barely ever ate anything and never drank wine, and never joined anyone for dinner. He lived alone, and apart from occasional flings he never married and had no family or children. He appeared and disappeared, traveled all over the world without any apparent purpose, and knew every language. He had the most perfect teeth, penetrating eyes and dark hair without any gray. For a hundred years he never aged. Most likely he faked his own death in 1784 and changed his name, because people began to get too suspicious, calling him the Devil and such.
The mysterious count inspires quite a lot of writers.
An Embarrassment of Riches story takes place in 13th century Bohemia. The Burning Shadows adventure happens in the ancient Roman Empire. Each book vividly and realistically depicts a different historic period, which makes them exciting and educational.
I read a number of these books and enjoyed them greatly. My only gripe was - I didn't like her sticking to that silly claim that vampires don't have a reflection. If they can be touched and seen, they can be reflected. And how can the clothes not have a reflection just because a vampire wears them! Also, her St. Germain is too nice and generous, and, for someone alive for thousands of years, a rather poor judge of character. He keeps getting in trouble due to his excessive trust and generosity, which, in my opinion, isn't necessary, since he'd get in trouble either way.
Here are some links where you can read more about this fascinating character:
Crystalinks.com/germain.html
The Shangra-la
Sacred-texts.com/sro/csg/
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The Jitterbug Perfume is my favorite novel of Tom Robbins, a famous contemporary American writer. The novel happens to be about people achieving physical immortality through enjoying life, love, and exercizing a freedom of choice in all situations. It is absolutely delightful and I enjoyed it most of all his novels I read.
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REBIRTHING BREATHWORK INTERNATIONAL
The official website of Leonard Orr:http://www.rebirthingbreathwork.com/
His two best known immortality methods that he's famous for are Rebirthing and Breathing. Rebirthing involves floating for hours in the bathtub simulating being in the womb. The Breathing isn't really different from what yoga teaches.
Wikipedia on Rebirthing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirthing-breathwork
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IMMORTALITY ORGANIZATIONS:
SENS Foundation
http://www.sens.org/
Aubrey de Grey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey
Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist and the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Foundation. The editor of Rejuvenation Research, the world’s only peer-reviewed journal focused on intervention in aging, he is an advocate of research seeking answers to how molecular and cellular metabolic damage brings about aging and ways humans can intervene to repair and/or obviate that damage.
The central goal of Aubrey de Grey’s work is the expedition of developing a true cure for human aging. In his view, the main obstacle to developing such technology is the position of biogerontology at the boundary between basic science and medicine.
In Ending Aging, Dr. de Grey and his research assistant Michael Rae describe the details of this biotechnology. They explain that the aging of the human body, just like the aging of man-made machines, results from an accumulation of various types of damage. As with man-made machines, this damage can periodically be repaired, leading to indefinite extension of the machine’s fully functional lifetime, just as is routinely done with classic cars. We already know what types of damage accumulate in the human body, and we are moving rapidly toward the comprehensive development of technologies to remove that -damage. By demystifying aging and its postponement for the nonspecialist reader, de Grey and Rae systematically dismantle the fatalist presumption that aging will forever defeat the efforts of medical science.
Watch Aubrey's exciting videos:
Ted.com
Guardian, UK
Youtube
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Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology (IEET)
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/bio/degrey/
IEET's purpose:
"Technology and democracy complement one another, ensuring that safe technology is generally accessible and democratically accountable. The convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science in the coming decades will give us unimaginable technological mastery of nature and ourselves. That mastery requires progressive democratization.
Our purpose, therefore, is to stimulate and support constructive study of ethical issues connected with these powerful emerging technologies."
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Immortality Institute
http://www.imminst.org/
The Immortality Institute (ImmInst.org) is an international, non-profit, membership-based organization.
Its mission is "to conquer the blight of involuntary death".
To advance this mission, ImmInst.org aims to provide, among other things:
* a repository of high-quality information,
* an open public forum for the free exchange of information and views,
* an infrastructure to support community projects and initiatives, and
* the facilities for supporting an international community of those with an interest in life extension.
ImmInst.org hosts an online forum, publishes books, creates films, sponsors conferences and supports a varied portfolio of community projects in life-extension research and activism.
ImmInst.org is supported by donations and by sponsored advertising. To make a one-time donation or to become a member of ImmInst.org, please see the "Donate" page.
ImmInst.org was founded in 2002 by Bruce J. Klein.
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MORE ABOUT PRESENTLY LIVING IMMORTALS:
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As far as reliably documented longest living people go, according to Wikipedia, the longest living person was Jeanne Calment of France (1875-1997), who died at age 122 years, 164 days.
Here is a link to the list of the longest living people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people
