Why Humans Seeks Immortality?

Why Humans Seeks Immortality?

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It is our usual proclivity to fear death and to wish for never ending life. It is a fact in every individual to think that death is inevitable . However, the ideaof voidis hard for the human being to recognize. Psychological studies have made known that it is not easy for us to consider the thought of our short existence on earth. Humans have tried to chase away the thought which may hang aboutin their minds by different ways. They look for console in supernatural belief, in their descendants, in attaining reputation or leaving a heritage to make their name unforgettable for years.


Psychologists have attempted to prove this tendency of our intellect to believe we are immortal. In a interesting group of experiments, Jesse Bering and his colleagues produced confirmation that the faith in a psychological afterlife is innate, it's the natural, usual view of children. They found that young children tended to comprehend that biological functions finished at death (for example that the ears don't hear), but the most of children thought that psychological workings (e.g., thinking and wishing) would continue after death. Bering found an analogous pattern in the grown ups, and more fascinatingly, they found that when adults did say that a psychological function stopped at death, it took them longer to state it than when they said that a biological function stopped at death.

The belief that we can't envisage our own death is well-known. In the 20th century, Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, wrote about the theme of keenness to die to ensure immortality. In a treatise inspired by World War I, Freud took it to be a concerning and important fact that men are so ready to go to war because they are confident of their own eternal life.

There are mental states which manifest as a belief in existence or non-existence of the person to a delusional degree. Some people with such psychiatric disorders may imagine that they do not exist at all. In severe psychotic depression, some patients may seem to be convinced that they are dead or their body is decaying or that vody organs are not present. Such strong belief in non-existence is called a nihilistic delusion or delusion of negation. Another related known neuropsychiatric disorder named Cotard's syndrome in which patients who have had an injury to their parietal lobe of the brain hold a fixed belief that they are dead and do not exist. In rare instances, it can consist of delusions of immortality.


The belief in immortality is essential to many religious beliefs. Indeed, one of the fundamental questions that religions attempt to answer is that related to what happens to us when we die. Egypt was the source of the first true monotheistic religion. The belief that Osiris will come to life again as the Nile flood comes back every year, and plant life rise again from the dead earth, so might man also rise after death and lives for eternity. The distinguished upkeeping of the dead body in the arid soil of Egypt lent some credence to this belief, which was to govern Egyptian belief for thousands of years, and to pass from it into other religions. Ancient Egyptians believed that the body was occupiedby a small copy of itself called the ka, and also by a soul that settle in the body. The soul survived the appearance of death and escaped mortality. Preservation of the body by mummification was an essential step to keep the body intact waiting for the soul returns to it. The word "mummification" is derived from the Latin word mumia, which means black bitumen. Bitumen was used in the preservation of the body by ancient Egyptians who believed that the body of a person was to live in the hereafter, therefore, mummification was developed to preserve the body. The tombs were filled with all the supplies of life, such as food, tools, and treasures to ensure that the soul would return to the body, enabling the mummy to live happily in the afterlife.

Modern culture has the same obsession as ancient societies with respect to the longing to reach immortality. The only difference is the modern technology that is used to achieve immortality. Cryonics, a current mummification technique, is a term that is derived from cryogenic, the more general term given to the branch of physics that deals with extremely low temperatures. Cryonics is the practice of freezing the body of a recently deceased person to preserve it for possible revival in the future. The body, which is in a state of freezing suspension, is cooled to the point where cellular physical decay completely stops. When a remedy for the illness that triggered the death has been found, the person may be resurrected and restored to life later on.

Memorials, monuments and ornaments have been symbols of the human's search for permanence, immortality and beauty. Those artefacts played an central part in the religious and social life in primitive societies. mythology about the marble figures coming to life and living people turned into salt statues is plentiful in ancient and religious myths. Names were believed to have a mystical character and thought to last longer than the name bearer.

Our genes get infinity through duplication although the amoeba, bacteria and viruses are more immortal than humans. Passing genes to offspring is not the best way to assure immortality. Identical twins are 100% genetically interrelated. Parents, siblings, children, fraternal twins all share 50% of the genes. Grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, half-siblings share 25% of genes. Great grandchildren share 12.5% of your genes. By the seventh generation the genes pooled are only 0.78%. For example. an individual's 13 times great grandfather has less than a half chance of offering a single gene to that individual. There isn't much relevance in taking the family tree back to few centuries for at that distance, our genetic legacy will long ago have fused into the population's gene pool, the DNA that all human's share.

Fame , reputation and distinction itself can not "achieve immortality". The name and works of a eminent individual would "live on" after his or her death. It depends on how one will be remembered by generations in the future. With the present day profusion of human thoughts, theories, works of art and literature, scientific discoveries, music and visual and creative production, there is slim chance that a person will be remembered for many years by so many people.

Sometime a sense of eternity is achieved when we recognise that we are part of the whole cosmos and that all the components of our body will go back to earth and live again in the body of other creatures and living matter on earth. We may become a flower, a tree or a river, a bird, a fish, or a lion, a mammal or another human being. We are never-ending because we are made of eternal matter. Ludwig Wittgenstein once said "If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present." Eternity is at hand here at this time in the present and not something lying ahead in the future.

About the Author:
Dr Sabry Fattah is a doctor and consultant psychiatrist practicing in UK.

For more articles visit

The Psychiatric Zone
New Horizon



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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