The Destiny of the Body

Chapter VII

Attempts at 'Kayasiddhi' and Rejuvenation

Then man was born among the monstrous stars

Dowered with a mind and heart to conquer thee.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savttri, Book IX, Canto n, p, 594)

The Ars magna, that royal and sacerdotal science of the alchemists,

is verily a science of regeneration.. .. Many a seeker on

the ways of the Divine has undergone spiritual regeneration.

But very few are they who have known the mystery of corporal

renewal.

(D'Eckhartshausen, La Nuée sur le Sanctuaire)

Senescence and natural death, 'la mort naturelle', are thus seen to be not at all necessary and intrinsic attributes or accompaniments of incarnate life. Hence have arisen on the part of man various deliberately planned attempts at the physical conquest of death and at prolonging life indefinitely. Even from the point of view of science, - science as it is understood and practised in the modern West, - this battle for the victory over senile decay and the body's death is no longer considered to be farcical and futile, but rather as a veritable scientific problem and proposition. Already in the year 1924, S. Metalnikov of the Institut Pasteur (Paris) wrote: "All these efforts of the biologists and medical men to wage a successful battle against the onset of senescence and restore youth to the aged and decadent ought to be considered

as practically possible and scientifically motivated (pratiquement possibles et scientifiquement motivées)".1

Here we may briefly state the main attempts, both scientific and occult-spiritual, that have been so far made for the physical conquest of death .

(A) Rejuvenation Procedures: Indeed, in recent years, science has proceeded in right earnest to tackle the problem of aging and death, starting from the lower end- of the range of our being.

¹ S. Metalnikov, Immortalité et Rajeunissement dans fa Biologie Moderne.

² "In the pursuit of perfection [of the body] we can start at either end of our

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It has sought to formulate theories, and act effectively, on the underlying physico-chemical factors and processes that govern the phenomenon of progressive senescence of the body-locked soma-cells and have for their ultimate and inexorable consequence the somatic death of the individual organism. In our time much valuable work has been done in this specialized field of biology and the interested reader may consult appropriate publications for relevant information.

In brief, we may state that many are the theories that have been put forward to explain the onset of the phenomenon of senescence (e.g., those of Maupas, Hertwig, Mainot, Koltzoff, Metchnikof, Weissmann and others), and numerous have been the attempts to achieve rejuvenation of the aging body and lengthen the span of life¹ by various surgical alterations of certain endocrinal organs, particularly the essential organs of sex.

Indeed, it has often been thought that aging is brought about by the failure of one or other of the endocrine glands and attempts have been made to rejuvenate an aging body by grafting to it appropriate glands or injecting into it glandular extracts.

But, from the fundamental point of view, these have by no means solved the problem at its base. For, on the one hand, no theory of senile decline so far put forward can be regarded as entirely satisfactory or as generally established by the evidence. Also, "most of them suffer from the logical defect of setting up some particular observed attribute or element of the phenomenon of senescence itself, such as protoplasmic hysteresis, slowing rate of

range of being and we have then to use, initially at least, the means and processes proper to our choice. In Yoga the process is spiritual and psychic,... on the other hand, if we start in any field at the lower end we have to employ the means and processes which Life and Matter offer to us and respect the conditions and what we may call the technique imposed by the vital and the material energy." (Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, P. 13).

¹ "This experimental era of revitalization stemmed from the accounts of the physiologist, Charles Edward Brown-Sequard, who in 1889, at the age of 70, injected himself with testicular material from dogs and guinea pigs and claimed a renewal of vigour, mental alertness and the 'enjoyment of life'. Twenty-five years later Jurgen W. Harms claimed the same thing for himself." (Vernon T. Schuhardt, Rejuvenation).

The foremost names in the field of induced rejuvenation are those of Stein-ach, Pezard, Zavadovsky, Lichtenstern, Schmidt, Holz, Voronoff and others.

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metabolism (meaning essentially only reduced activity), etc. as the cause of the whole".¹

On the other hand, whatever may have been the immediate physical and psychological effects of the procedures of rejuvenation, these have proved to be no more than temporary heightening of some gland activities, altogether "transient results" as one distinguished biologist has termed them. There is as yet no evidence whatsoever that these medico-scientific procedures help to increase in any way the basic potential specific longevity of the individual. In the words of Prof. Vernon T. Schuhardt, an authority in the field:

"Although loudly proclaimed, these procedures were not well founded in theory and have not withstood the exacting and critical tests of time and confirmation. No evidence has been discovered that the aging of the body as a whole is dependent on either the activity or the failure of the sexual glands, per se.... The effects were temporary and did not offset the slow decline of old age. Indeed, some danger is involved in such a one-sided stimulation of the senile since the organism as a whole may not be physically constituted to withstand the sudden and abnormal stress.... The hormones may alter the background of physiological reactions and modify the structural integrity of the cells and tissues, but they have little lasting effect on the primary causes of aging and senility ....Thus while the germinal elements become the source of posterity, the body seems predestined to weaken, grow old and die, and by the latter 1950's no means have been found to seriously alter this decline."²

So we see that the scientific attempts at preventing devitalisation and prolonging the individual life-span of man have so far proved futile and illusive, and we on our part venture to assert that these will prove equally so even in the future; for, the root of the malady lies somewhere else and is too deep and inscrutable for science to probe or to find the remedy thereof. To anticipate the line of suggested solution, we may state forthwith that "even if Science — physical Science or occult Science — were to discover the necessary conditions or means for an indefinite survival of the body, still, if the body could not adapt itself so as to become a fit instru-

¹ Raymond Pearl, "The Biology of Death", Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 7.

² Vernon T. Schuhardt, Rejuvenation. (Italics ours)

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ment of expression for the inner growth, the soul would find some way to abandon it and pass on to a new incarnation. The material or physical causes of death are not its sole or its true cause; its true inmost reason is the spiritual necessity for the evolution of a new being."¹

(B) Kāyāsiddhi Procedures: Leaving behind the field of scientific achievements as well as failures, we pass on now to a summary consideration of some of the attempts made by man, starting from the other, the higher, end of the range of our being.

These occult-spiritual attempts at dehasiddhi, the attainment of perfection of the material body of man, have in the majority of cases come down to us in the form of traditions and a lore whose sources sometimes have been lost in the obscure and remote past of the race.

Thus, in the words of the Mother, "in a very ancient tradition, preceding even the Vedic and Chaldean traditions, there was already the question of a glorious body which would be plastic enough to be constantly remodelled by the deeper consciousness, a body expressing this consciousness. There was the question of luminosity: the matter constituting the body being able to become luminous at will. There was the question of a kind of lightness being possible which would enable the body to move about in the air by mere will-force and some procedure of handling the inner energy and so on."²

Some Buddhist traditions speak of the Buddha's temporary victory over death, Mṛtyumāra. These are based on a Buddhist belief that just as an arhat can abandon the 'coefficients of life', so he can also stop them (stṅāpayati). "According to the Vaibhasi-kas, the saint says: 'May [the action] that is to ripen for me in enjoyment ripen in life!' By its nature, life is 'ripening' (vipāka), and it can replace any enjoyment which normally ought to ripen from a former merit, and which the saint no longer desires and has escaped by his sainthood. By this process, 'vanquishing death', the Buddha prolonged his life three months for the salvation of men, and the disciples employ this to assure the duration of the dhamma. This term of three months seems to be given as a maximum, and as the mark of the victory of the Buddha over Mṛtyumāra

¹ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 822 fn. (Italics ours)

² Bulletin of Physical Education, Vol. IX, No. 3, p. 123.

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'Mara, who is death'. "¹

This question of a possible maximum limit to the postponement of death is very significant and highly germane to the problem we have been discussing. For, although there have been in the past "seemingly allied ideals and anticipations — the perfectibility of the race, certain Tantric sadhanas, the effort after a complete physical siddhi by certain schools of Yoga,"² these have been attempted for the most part as individual personal achievements, imperfect and precariously maintained by the help of Yogasiddhis, and not as a dharma, natural law, of the transformed physical nature. But "mental or vital occult power", warns Sri Aurobindo, "can only bring Siddhis of the higher plane into the individual life — like the Sannyasi who could take any poison without harm, but he died of a poison after all when he forgot to observe the conditions of the siddhi."³

Among the various attempts in the past falling into this category, mention may be made of:

(i)attempts at dehasiddhi through kālabañcana, conquest of Time, by certain schools of Hathayoga;

(ii)attempts at the attainment of a rasamayī tanu, body with divine essence, by the Raseswara sect;

(iii)attempts at skandasiddhi made by certain Mahayani Tantric schools among the Buddhists;

(iv)attempts at kāyāsiddhi by Nathayogis like Matsyendra, Goraksha, Jalandharanath, and others;

(v)attempts at the elaboration of a bhāvadeha by Sahajiya Vaishnavas.⁴

But none of these attempted Siddhis became intrinsic to the material body and hence could not be made to endure. As a matter of fact, as we shall see in the course of our study, "there can be no immortality of the body without supramentalisation; the potentiality is there in the yogic force and yogis can live for 200 or 300 years or more, but there can be no real principle of it without the supramental."⁵

¹The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 4, p. 448.

²Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 165.

³Ibid., p. 172. (Italics ours)

⁴ See Gopinath Kaviraj, Akhaṇḍa-Mahāyoga, Chap. 2.

⁵ Letters on Yoga, p. 1229.

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