Chapter 12 - Can the Human Life Span be Extended?
If we stay within the natural order of things without making any excursions into the domain of the supernatural, the answer to this question would be evidently negative. Under favourable conditions, a missile of any sort may not reach the limit of the course which is conditioned by its initial impulsion; but even under the most favourable conditions, it can never go farther than that. The same law pertains to the human life span.
In the realm of normal speculation, the question can be formulated in a different manner: "Can the duration of life be extended beyond the limits which today are considered as natural?" Looked at in this way, the answer may be different.
It is considered today that the medium duration of life, or the life span is something like fifty-eight years for men and sixty-three years for women. This means that of one hundred thousand male children born in a given year, there will be fifty thousand survivors fifty-eight years later, and of one hundred thousand female children, there will be fifty thousand survivors sixty-three years later. The medium betwen masculine and feminine statistics is, therefore, sixty years, and this figure represents the medium duration of life for the two sexes. If some day there should be fifty thousand survivors at age seventy, the medium duration of life would have increased by ten years; at age eighty it would have increased by twenty etc. To transpose the problem on the individual plane, this would mean that a newborn baby which today has one chance in two to reach the age of sixty, would then have a chance in two to reach the age of seventy etc.
The value of these statistics is today falsified by a proportionally high infant mortality which leads to rather paradoxical results. Thus, an individual that at birth has a chance in two to attain age sixty, would have a chance in two to attain age sixty-seven if he reaches the age of thirty, and a chance in two to attain age seventy if he reaches age forty etc.
This goes to show that the normal duration of human life is much longer than the medium duration. The normal span is that of every human life if there were no accidents, illness being considered an accident. Medium duration is calculated after statistics which take into account the innumerable accidents, the interference of which in the immense majority of cases, prevents a human being from attaining his normal life span. Therefore, even though of one hundred thousand new-borns, there are, on the average, only about twelve thousand survivors eighty years later, the limit of the human life cycle must be fixed between eighty and ninety years under contemporary conditions of existence because it is only after age eighty that one really dies of old age.
Then there are also the accidents which shorten the span of useful activity of human beings. In comparison with all the animal species the period of decline in the human species is far too long.
Among the other mammals, the period of decline is equal to a tenth of the normal duration of life; it should be, therefore, from eight to ten years in the human species and the period of full activity should extend to at least age seventy. Without, therefore, straying in the least from the path of normal experience, we can say that what today is considered exceptional should be the norm, that the majority of our contemporaries should reach or even pass age eighty, efter having led a life of useful activity until at least age seventy, provided that a rational mode of life, such as recommended by Hatha Yoga were strictly adhered to.
There still remains another question to be answered. Is the life span of eighty which we have considered as normal really the span of human life if we look at it from the point of view of the biological nature of the species? There is no doubt that looked at in this way, the human life span is too short. In the species of mammals closest to us, the normal duration of life is from ten to twelve times that of the time needed to reach adult age. We are, biologically, so similar to these mammals, so manifestly constructed on the same plane that it is difficult to explain why we should make an exception from this rule while we conform to all the others.
With this in view, the normal cycle of existence of a human being would be between two hundred and two hundred fifty years. Man would lead an active existence until at least one hundred fifty years of age and would easily know his descendants down to the ninth generation before his decease. We would, therefore, have to admit that having adopted since time immemorial a kind of life not in conformity with his real nature, man had suffered a progressive diminution of vitality which has reduced the cycle of his existence to its actual limit.
Certain facts would seem to justify this view. There are, first of all, the reports of cases of extraordinary longevity which, we know, are not always to be relied upon. The learned Li Tschang Yun, a Chinaman who died in the province of the Che-Chouan in 1936, pretended to have been born in 1690 which, of course, he could not prove. But everbody, even old men said that they had always known him. On his death, he left a widow sixty-four years of age, but she was his twenty-forth wife. To be a widower twenty-three times in succession and to leave one of sixty-four years takes just the same a little time. Even if one puts in doubt the two hundred fifty-six years to which Li Tschang Yun laid claim, it must be admitted that the had reached an age far beyond the limits of normal "old age".
There is, on the other hand, a physiological phenomenon which, while rare, is not otherwise exceptional and which seems to justify the theory according to which the human life cycle was originally much longer than nowadays. We refer to the third dentition. There are cases where a third growth of teeth occurs around the seventieth year of life. This happens generally to people who afterwards attain a ripe old age. These unexpected teeth are usually not very solid and do not last very long. The most probable explanation of this curious fact is that it represents something as normal as the second dentition of children at a time when the life span of man was much longer than it is today.
The methods of prognosis used by Hindu Astrology which originated in prehistoric times, were established for a normal lifetime of one hundred and twenty years. This leads us back to a very distant era, but in which humanity was already far enough advanced in civilization to make delicate astronomical observations and intricate calculations.
There is also a tradition which is no different from other religious traditions, that humanity was long ago endowed with a considerably longer life than today's humanity. According to this Indian tradition, the humanity of today, in regard to that of earliest times, has degenerated. As will be noted, this traditional view (which is also that of early Greek philosophy) is in contradiction to that generally held today. The evolutionary view is that our race, which was bestial and barbarous upon its appearance on earth, has gradually risen in the course of millions of years to its present lofty state. The Hindu tradition on the contrary holds that humanity which we call "primitive" was not that of our first ancestors, but rather a humanity that has reached the last degree of degeneration, from which it gradually rose again.
One of the principal aims of Hatha Yoga is the reconstruction of that for us half-divine humanity of the beginning.
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