Hi Chen,
No, that is not a thing. That is just based on a myth that has circulated for quite a long time and which people seem to want to keep circulating, despite there not being any evidence to support it. It does help to sell books though! 
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Hi Chen,
Nothing wrong with seeking bodily rejuvenation and longevity. It is a core principle in Taoism and other systems of practice.
However, in Yoga (and AYP), the objective is the cultivation of conscious freedom in this life, the cessation of suffering, or at least making as much progress toward it as possible during our time here. Yoga can certainly increase longevity, but it is not the primary objective.
Our time here may be long or short, due to factors outside our control. But that is ok. As the old saying goes: âIt is not the length of life that counts. It is the depth of life.â
We are working primarily on the depth of life here. If it helps bring more length, great. Any reason we have for undertaking daily deep meditation and the rest of yoga practices is a good reason. The results will be there. 
The guru is in you.
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PS: There is an esoteric branch of yoga called âKayakalpaâ which concerns itself with rejuvenation and longevity, with some interesting stories of such yogis living hundreds of years. AYP does not concern itself much with this, but neither do we ignore what has been documented in yogic lore. Nevertheless, we are more concerned with what the causes and effects of yoga practices can do for the many who can access them nowadays through modern technology. There is plenty of evidence that a lot can be done to improve the quality of ordinary daily life without having to run off to a mountain top.
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I love this perspective. I do practice for the same reasons as youâve mentioned and have experienced wonderful results.
Your experiences of playing with subtle energy post liberation are super interesting. Iâve played with other regeneration practices in order to help patients with chronic illnesses which is what sparked this interest in the human energy system.
Understanding how it works and what capabilities lie ahead helps create tools to improve quality of life â and there arenât that many pioneers to explore with! So I appreciate both of you chipping in.
P.S. The ideas of ingesting purified mercury which somehow combined with Amrita provides fuel for the body to regenerate itself might sound outrageous, but then again this company marathonfusion.com has recently managed to turn mercury into physical gold.
So our universe might be more magical than we realize.
Hi Chen,
Purified mercury, also called âpure elemental mercuryâ is highly toxic and poisonous to the human body. It can cause damage to the brain, kidneys and the nervous system. There is no form of mercury that is safe to ingest.
If you are experimenting with longevity, and methods that promote the regeneration (healing) of the physical body, stay well away from mercury. Even so called âedible mercuryâ is not edible. It contains mercury compounds that remain toxic. There are many documented cases of people suffering from mercury poisoning through ingesting edible mercury.
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Thanks for the heads up! I havenât gone there. Only following what has proven case studies for now. But good to know. Sounds like thereâs indeed a lot of folklore then.
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I thought I would add that the Daoist view of achieving physical immortality, from what I have read, involved gradually replacing those parts of the body that can rot because made of ordinary food, with substances that do not rot, such as minerals, light, and air. Some Japanese Buddhists (and perhaps Jain practitioners, I think?) took this to an extreme by fasting to death on various toxic substances that, when built up in the body, would tend to preserve it, resulting in a kind of âself-mummification.â This is called soku shinbutsu, or âinstant bodily buddhahood."
IOTW, though I canât rule out there are siddhis that allow advanced spiritual practitioners to increase their longevity in the physical body, we should note that a lot of the mythology surrounding attempts to achieve that are probably based on misconceptions, such as that aging is a kind of a ârot,â and therefore consuming the sorts of (generally toxic) substances that prevent rot, such as mercury and lead (used in e.g., taxidermy and embalming, I think), can prevent that or replace the "food bodyâ with a more permanent body.
The Chinese also believed immortals lived in a world made of âpermanentâ substances, such as flowers, trees, etc. of jade, jasper, diamond, and so on. I would imagine that if we are able to live on in some sort of spirit form after our physical bodies die, it would probably be more in the form of prana or some other such etheric substance, though I have no personal knowledge of that. So we can say a lot of recorded practices purported to help achieve physical immortality are based on folkloric misconceptions.
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Hi Casey,
Yes, there is no such thing as âpicklingâ a living body in order to help it to live longer. Pickling causes living cells to die.
Also, attachment is one of the kleshas, or obstructions, that prevents us from experiencing liberation. It does not actually matter what the attachment is to. It is great to want to live a healthy, long life, but if it becomes an attachment, then it is a klesha (obstruction) standing in the way of liberation, just as fear of death is a klesha.
There are only five kleshas:
- Attachment/ clinging
- Aversion
- The sense of I/ me/ mine
- The fear of death
- Ignorance
Immortality (amrita) is about something much more than attachment or clinging to the physical body and in fact cannot be realised if that clinging is present.
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Your perspective on attachment to the physical body is important @Christi . I think a healthy middle ground is to be both completely surrendered with whatever happens and deeply curious about why the hell people age. If we understood that, we could help create a better quality of life for our grandparents and parents which is my core goal. Itâs a cool riddle!
In physics, several inventors have explored the concept of zero point energy. Stan Meyer, Tesla and several other inventors have created such devices which core idea is to create a closed energy system. They put 1 unit of energy in and get 2 back, thereby generating energy. For now the technology is considered forbidden but the technology community explores its physics.
Decay seems to happen when energy in < energy out.
In the human body, once kundalini activates there seems to be a natural delay in decay. Cycles of soma-amrita seem to nourish the body without the need for so much food/water (possibly for weeks at a time) which gives us an important clue. Realized yogis often reach old age and still retain their vitality (see Yogananda and others).
This suggests that a âclosed human energy systemâ could also be created, if the body is capable of generating/receiving more energy than it spends.
Iâm certain thereâs a lot of folklore as you said regarding Kaya Kalpa and similar practices and we should be critical of it as you suggest. So hereâs what we know:
- Thereâs a natural rate of decay for everyone.
- Toxins, emotional resistance, lifestyle accelerate energy expenditure and decay.
- Thereâs a bidirectional relationship between the biological body and prana. A good body can produce more prana through food and oxygen. And prana seem to at some point produce soma-amrita which sustains the physical body even for a while.
Bottom line: Seems like the more energy we âleak outâ, the faster the body becomes an unfit host for consciousness. The more energy we can generate within, the slower the decay.
So if we could help people detox to slow energy expenditure (in my work with patients with Parkinsonâs this happens through nutrition and yoga).
And at the same time figure out how to generate clean energy inside (food/water â> soma/amrita â> ???).
We can theoretically create a good quality of life for people into old age.
The biggest clue is that consciousness once evolved seem to be able to sustain the body with soma/amrita without food even for a while, which implies that the body converts oxygen â> prana â> soma/amrita â> biology).
All we have to figure out is what makes physical body need food/water again VS continuing to rely on soma/amrita directly from prana.
Just a few thoughts.
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Interesting conversation. I will throw in my experiences with amrita/soma. While amrita seems to originate primarily in the bindu, some times fragrant and sweet, but for me, many times so bitter that I have to go wash out my mouth, I have experienced its formation in the heart as well, albeit rarely. In the early years, it was a constant as a drop of âgreenish oilâ that flowed during SPB. I have experienced it as a flow that turns into a large river of liquid light, pouring through me until I dissolve completely into Pure Bliss Consciousness.
As for soma, for the past year, I have added nauli to my practices and the radiance it creates is astonishing. One round of 10 rolls and everything explodes in such brilliance and the radiance shoots up all the way to the crown and beyond. And yes, you feel sated and hunger is gone for a couple of hours after.
As for the formation of the golden body - that too is a subtle thing (obviously). I, to this day, recall standing at my kitchen sink, doing the dishes and having gold liquid squirt up from the pineal gland, flow down and turn my whole body into gold. I searched high and low to any reference to the gold body but never found anything and then, one bright day, I was reading Moses and his description of what God ordered him to place in the ark of the covenant to represent his reign in us and there, was reference to mana (amrita) being placed in a gold crucible. You need to break the crucible to feed on mana. Note that last line is my own invention. I know it sounds far-fetched - letâs just say at the point when I was reading this, it was a revelation - a clear knowing. I am adding spice to the conversation 
Sey 
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Hi Chen,
Yes, there are certainly some interesting relationships between yoga practice, amrita production, good health, and longevity, which I am sure will be explored by scientists in the future. At the moment, most scientists do not even recognise the existence of prana, chakras, nadis, soma, or amrita, so we are still very much on the starting blocks waiting for the race to begin. But once the race to discover new science does start, it will be a very interesting time.
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Hi Sey,
Thanks for sharing. 
If you do a search on this forum for âgolden bodyâ quite a lot comes up.
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My goodness! So there is. This is what happens when you leave an excellent research centre to look everywhere else 
This bit seems to reflect my experience, except it did not happen many years after starting AYP and I am no super-do-da yoga master.
When nirvikalpa samadhi has been practiced daily for many, many years â according to the classical yoga teachings, for twelve years â and the golden body has been built, the kundalini force coils itself in the sahasrara chakra of the yogi, at the top of the head. This is known as the manas chakra, located about where the hairline begins at the forehead. This chakra eventually becomes the muladhara chakra, or the memory-pattern chakra, of the golden body. The manas chakra is fully activated when the golden body is fully unfolded. This is known in Hindu and Egyptian mystic schools as the golden body of light, for it registers in the minds of those who look upon it, to their soul body, as a golden ball of light or a golden body.âŚ
Then the golden body, svarnasharira, is born through the merging of the forces of the pituitary and the pineal gland, setting the sahasrara into a constant spinning motion. This constant spinning motion generates the force which propels the yoga adept back into nirvikalpa samadhi. Each time he goes into nirvikalpa samadhi he intensifies a little the spinning movement of this chakra, unfolding it a little more, and as this occurs, the golden body begins to build.
Interesting reference to âmanasâ chakra.
There appears to be quite an exaggeration and over-complication of the enlightenment process in the yogic traditions.
Liberation is a simple recognition of what has always been.
Sey
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Hi Sey,
Yes, there is a bit of a divine paradox between the complexity involved in the process of spiritual transformation that takes place on the energetic level, and the incredible simplicity of the realisation of truth. And it is ironic that the second cannot become an abiding reality without the completion of the first.
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Hi Tristan,
It does indeed sound like a paradox. How can the truth be something absolute, if it can only be recognized by a purified subtle nervous system?
The proficient yogi will have developed in such a way that his radiance is sufficient to influence his surroundings in such a way that he concludes that everything is as it should be, perhaps in a process of merging. But outside his sphere of influence, outside of his attention, is the world not simply moving as it used to before his spiritual fulfillment?
How can he really conclude that he is discovering a truth, and not merely constructing the world around him through energetic radiance (siddhis)?
I hope the question makes sense. Perhaps all of this can only really be answered by experience.
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Hi Adrian,
The paradox deepens!
What I have found is that some things simply fall away as we progress on the path, and that as these things fall away, these questions also fall away, as they stop being relevant.
The idea that things should be a certain way, or should be another way, is gradually seen to be simply a mind created idea. So, we increasingly see everything simply âas it isâ. As well as this, the idea of separation falls away, and along with this, the idea that something could influence another thing. So, there are no âspheres of influenceâ. Two things have to be separate in order for one to influence another. In addition, the ideas of inside and outside fall away. So, there is no âworld outside⌠simply moving as it used toâ, and there never was. Also, the idea of âconcludingâ falls away, as there is no one who could conclude something. Our true Self does not draw conclusions. It is never touched by anything, never changes, and never moves.
There are some hints towards all of this in lesson 350:
During this gradual receding of self-identification with objects, the relationship of observer, process of observation, and object of observation remains intact. It does not change. What changes is our sense of self, our I-sense. It moves out slowly from the objects of perception into our emerging unbounded awareness. As it does, the initial duality between the witness and the objects of perception becomes gradually less dual and more non-dual. This means that the two gradually become One. At the same time, our sense of self expands to become increasingly universal, not tied to any particular object, but found to be underlying all objects of perception. Not self-identified with objects, but underlying them in a way that we no longer see ourselves as being in the world, but instead, the world being in us. [Yogani]
As this shift occurs over time, it can be said that we are moving beyond the witness, because we are no longer observing objects as being outside ourselves. Even as everything is still moving, we do not see it moving, and this is the condition of no objects subject only. [Yogani]
Along the way the temporal world as we have known it dissolves in the blazing light of Being. [Yogani]
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I had a moment I guess of some insight today along these lines.
I began to ruminate this afternoon, as I often do, about the fact I was feeling a bit low energy because I had had an orgasm earlier that day. This was because I was having sex with my wife and she wanted me to do so. I ruminated a bit on whether I should have focused instead on pre-orgasmic stimulation, although it had also been about two weeks anyway.
Anyway, this post is not about brahmacharya or tantric sex but rather because I caught myself ruminating like this until I had the thought âWhy does it matter how I feel?â There was no real answer (it was not as if I had some crucially important task to be completed at that time for which my energy levels might matter). Of course, the natural answer I might normally come up with is âbecause I like to feel good and not to feel bad.â But this sort of answer, at least for a moment, seemed to make no sense because it presupposed some sort of separate âmeâ not in evidence.
As you say, it seemed less like the mind finding an âanswerâ to a question so much as a question or concern suddenly seeming pointless because it had no basis in objective reality.
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One other thought I had about this recently: I have heard the idea that âlife is like a dream,â and that enlightenment is like âwaking upâ from that dream. Tristan also says something like this in his book. Indeed, we often hear the term âspiritual awakening,â etc.
I never really had a sense of what this could mean, but recently I was taking a nap and noticed I was dreaming about some sort of problem. I drifted in and out of sleep a few times during this nap, noticing in each case, that either the problem I was dreaming about wasnât really a problem because it was only a dream or, in certain cases, that the problem did not even make sense from the perspective of waking life.
Perhaps this is also the experience of considering many (all?) of our problems in waking life once we have sufficient inner silence to perceive that they are basically arbitrary mental constructs?
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Hi Casey
Well waking life is no different from dream or deep sleepâŚcause all of them are temporary
Who is the one moving in and out of these states?
The IâŚbut who is the I?
There is no answer
It is taking a step back into the silence and the no answers
Meanwhile one has to act in daily life
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Hi Casey and all,
Yes, all problems are arbitrary mental constructs and have no actual existence. Even the idea of there being someone who could have a problem is an arbitrary mental construct. This can be seen clearly when the mind is silent.
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