An exploration of one of the most universal human obsessions charts the rise of longevity science from its alchemical beginnings to modern-day genetic interventions and enters the world of those whose lives are shaped by a belief in immortality.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As seen on The Joe Rogan Experience! A groundbreaking dive into the role psychedelics have played in the origins of Western civilization, and the real-life quest for the Holy Grail that could shake the Church to its foundations. The most influential religious historian of the 20th century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. Did the Ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? And did the earliest Christians inherit the same, secret tradition? A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? There is zero archaeological evidence for the original Eucharist – the sacred wine said to guarantee life after death for those who drink the blood of Jesus. The Holy Grail and its miraculous contents have never been found. In the absence of any hard data, whatever happened at the Last Supper remains an article of faith for today’s 2.5 billion Christians. In an unprecedented search for answers, The Immortality Key examines the archaic roots of the ritual that is performed every Sunday for nearly one third of the planet. Religion and science converge to paint a radical picture of Christianity’s founding event. And after centuries of debate, to solve history’s greatest puzzle. Before the birth of Jesus, the Ancient Greeks found salvation in their own sacraments. Sacred beverages were routinely consumed as part of the so-called Ancient Mysteries – elaborate rites that led initiates to the brink of death. The best and brightest from Athens and Rome flocked to the spiritual capital of Eleusis, where a holy beer unleashed heavenly visions for two thousand years. Others drank the holy wine of Dionysus to become one with the god. In the 1970s, renegade scholars claimed this beer and wine – the original sacraments of Western civilization – were spiked with mind-altering drugs. In recent years, vindication for the disgraced theory has been quietly mounting in the laboratory. The constantly advancing fields of archaeobotany and archaeochemistry have hinted at the enduring use of hallucinogenic drinks in antiquity. And with a single dose of psilocybin, the psychopharmacologists at Johns Hopkins and NYU are now turning self-proclaimed atheists into instant believers. But the smoking gun remains elusive. If these sacraments survived for thousands of years in our remote prehistory, from the Stone Age to the Ancient Greeks, did they also survive into the age of Jesus? Was the Eucharist of the earliest Christians, in fact, a psychedelic Eucharist? With an unquenchable thirst for evidence, Muraresku takes the reader on his twelve-year global hunt for proof. He tours the ruins of Greece with its government archaeologists. He gains access to the hidden collections of the Louvre to show the continuity from pagan to Christian wine. He unravels the Ancient Greek of the New Testament with the world’s most controversial priest. He spelunks into the catacombs under the streets of Rome to decipher the lost symbols of Christianity’s oldest monuments. He breaches the secret archives of the Vatican to unearth manuscripts never before translated into English. And with leads from the archaeological chemists at UPenn and MIT, he unveils the first scientific data for the ritual use of psychedelic drugs in classical antiquity. The Immortality Key reconstructs the suppressed history of women consecrating a forbidden, drugged Eucharist that was later banned by the Church Fathers. Women who were then targeted as witches during the Inquisition, when Europe’s sacred pharmacology largely disappeared. If the scientists of today have resurrected this technology, then Christianity is in crisis. Unless it returns to its roots. Featuring a Foreword by Graham Hancock, the NYT bestselling author of America Before.

THIS WAS AN ANGEL SENT FROM GOD AS SEEN IN MY VISION. THE VISION AND REVELATION OF THE BIRTH FO IMMORTALITY IT WERE A BIG EXPLOSION IN OUTER SPACE OUTSIDE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. AT THE FAR END OF THE UNIVERSE THIS BIG HEAVENLY BODY EXPLODED AND FRAGMENTS FROM THE GIANT PLANET WENT SPEEDING INTO ALL DIRECTIONS OF SPACE. AS I SAW THIS GREAT VISION IT WAS A SPIRITUAL LIGHT. AFTER TIMES AND TIMES THESE FRAGMENTS APPEARED TO BE MADE INTO PLANETS, SOME INTO MOONS, COMETS, SOME INTO, STARS, AND OTHER WELL KNOWN HEAVENLY BODIES. ONE OF THE FRAGMENTS WERE EARTH, AND ONE OF THE FRAGMENTS FROM THIS LARGE HEAVENLY BODY APPEARED TO BE SUPER BRIGHT. THE APPEARANCE OF THIS FRAGMENT AS I SEEN IT OUT IN THE SECOND HEAVEN WERE AS METERITE OR A SMALL COMET IN THE DARKNESS OF SPACE THE APPEARANCE OF IT AS A SHOOTING STAR IN THE DARKNESS OF THE HEAVENS AND AFTER SOME SPIRITUAL TIME THIS SMALL HEAVENLY BODY DESCENDED DOWN UNTO ME. THESE WORDS APPEARED AND WERE REVEALED INTO A SPIRITUAL REVELATION FROM GOD THE BIRTH OF IMMORTALITY THIS IS WHERE THE REVELATION OF THIS BOOK BEGAN TITLE: THE BIRTH OF IMMORTALITY BOOK WRITTEN BY: RAY WILSON

In the 1960s Robert Ettinger founded the cryonics (cryonic hibernation) movement and authored THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY. (And in the 1970s Ettinger would help initiate the transhumanist revolution with his MAN INTO SUPERMAN.) Ettinger sees "discontinuity in history, with mortality and humanity on one side -- on the other immortality and transhumanity." [[P: ]] This 2005 edition (ISBN 0-9743472-3-X) contains an exact replica copy of the complete first edition of Ettinger's 1964 cultural classic, THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY. (The Cultural Classics Series By Ria University Press is edited by Charles Tandy, Ph.D.) Additional (2005) materials include comments by others -- "Developments In Cryonics 1964-2005" -- written especially for this 21st century edition: (1) "The State of Cryonics -- 2005" (By Jim Yount); and, (2) "A Brief History of Cryonics" (By R. Michael Perry). A new (2005) Introduction by Charles Tandy is entitled "Ettinger's 1964 Thesis: Indefinitely Extended And Enhanced Life (Immortality) Is Probably Already Here Via Experimental Long-Term Suspended Animation" [[P: ]] James Bedford began his journey as "the first cryonaut" on January 12, 1967; as of 2005, he and many others remain in cryonic hibernation. According to Ettinger, cryonic hibernation (experimental long-term suspended animation) of humans may provide a "door into summer" unlike any season previously known. Such patients (individuals and families in cryonic hibernation) may yet experience the transhuman condition. Ettinger argues for his belief in "the possibility of limitless life for our generation." We should become aware of the incorrect, distorted, and oversimplified ideas presented in the popular media about cryonics. He believes that the cool logic and scientific evidence he presents should lead us to forget the horror movies and urban legends and embrace great expectations.

A mesmerizing debut novel that spans a thousand years of European and Jewish history seen through the beguiling members of the Spinoza family Since the eleventh century, the Spinoza family has passed down, from father to son, a secret manuscript containing the recipe for immortality. Now, after thirty-six generations, the last descendant of this long and illustrious chain, Ari Spinoza, doesn’t have a son to whom to entrust the manuscript. From his deathbed, he begins his narrative, hoping to save his lineage from oblivion. Ari’s two main sources of his family’s history are a trunk of yellowing documents inherited from his grandfather, and his great-uncle Fernando’s tales that captivated him when he was a child. He chronicles the Spinozas’ involvement in some of Europe’s most formative cultural events with intertwining narratives that move through ages of tyranny, creativity, and social upheaval: into medieval Portugal, Grand inquisitor Torquemada’s Spain, Rembrandt’s Amsterdam, the French Revolution, Freud’s Vienna, and the horrors of both world wars. The Elixir of Immortality blends truth and fiction as it rewrites European history through comic, imaginative, scandalous, and tragic tales that prove “the only thing that can possibly give human beings immortality on this earth: our ability to remember.”

Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose; to explore thoroughly the great, themes of existence.

In the tradition of Jon Ronson and Tim Wu, an absorbing and revelatory journey into the American Way of Defying Death . . . As longevity medicine revolutionizes the lives of many older people, the quest to take the next step—to live as long as we choose—has spurred a scientific arms race in search of the elixir of life, funded by Big Tech and Silicon Valley. Once the stuff of Mesopotamian mythology and episodes of Star Trek, the effort to make humans immortal is becoming increasingly credible as the pace of technological progress quickens. It has also empowered a wild-eyed fringe of pseudo-scientists, tech visionaries, scam-artists, and religious fanatics who have given their lives over to the pursuit of immortality. Starting off at the Church of Perpetual Life in Florida and exploring the feuding subcultures around the cryonics industry, Peter Ward immerses himself into an eccentric world of startups, scam artists, scientific institutions, and tech billionaires to deliver this deeply reported, nuanced, and sometimes very funny exploration of the race for immortality — and the potentially devastating consequences should humanity realize its ultimate dream.

A historical account of the role of fruit in the modern world explores the machinations of multi-national corporations in distributing exotic fruits, the life of mass-produced fruits, and the author's experience with unusual varieties that are unavailable in America.

"Prospects for Immortality: A Sensible Search for Life After Death" theorizes how matters concerning the birth of the universe, its ultimate fate, and the creation, evolution, and final destiny of life on earth co-exist with regenerated consciousness. Readers of this volume will be prompted to think about the basic concepts of life, death, and consciousness in a unique way. Written in a style that entertains and informs, author J. Robert Adams speculates on how the transfer of memory and consciousness into the hereafter occurs in conjunction with the physical, chemical, and historical facts already established by science.

What drives people to crave fame and celebrity? How does fame affect people psychologically? These issues are frequently discussed by the media but up till now psychologists have shied away from an academic away from an academic investigation of the phenomenon of fame. In this lively, eclectic book David Giles examines fame and celebrity from a variety of perspectives. He argues that fame should be seen as a process rather than a state of being, and that 'celebrity' has largely emerged through the technological developments of the last 150 years. Part of our problem in dealing with celebrities, and the problem celebrities have dealing with the public, is that the social conditions produced by the explosion in mass communications have irrevocably altered the way we live. However we know little about many of the phenomena these conditions have produced - such as the 'parasocial interaction' between television viewers and media characters, and the quasi-religious activity of 'fans'. Perhaps the biggest single dilemma for celebrities is the fact that the vehicle that creates fame for them - the media - is also their tormentor. To address these questions, David Giles draws on research from psychology, sociology, media and communications studies, history and anthropology - as well as his own experiences as a music journalist in the 1980s. He argues that the history of fame is inextricably linked to the emergence of the individual self as a central theme of Western culture, and considers how the desire for authenticity, as well as individual privacy, have created anxieties for celebrities which are best understood in their historical and cultural context.