How to Live Forever (or at least to 100)

Is the secret to be found among the centenarians in an isolated region of Sardinia?

The Mediterranean island of Sardinia is dotted with prehistoric stone ruins called nuraghi. Little is known about the nuraghi, or the ancient people who built them, except that they predate the earliest invaders to Sardinia, the Phoenicians, who arrived here about 9,000 years ago.

I passed a number of nuraghi as I drove up into the island’s interior through mountains of limestone and granite, on a terrifying road, into a region called the Ogliastra. It’s never been an easy ramble into Sardinia’s mountains. Neither the Phoenicians nor any of other invaders who came to Sardinia later — Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Carthaginians, Arabs, Genoese, Catalans — were ever able to the penetrate them.

The villages of Ogliastra have had very little contact with the outside world since about the 11th century. Even now, the region is considered by many to be a wild, dangerous place and travelers like me are regularly warned about bandits and kidnappers.

Ignoring those overheated warnings, I traveled into the Ogliastra anyway. I’d been sent into the wild interior of Sardinia on assignment by AARP Magazine. Researchers had recently documented an abnormal cluster of modern-day Methuselahs residing here. At least one man in this region lived to 112 and, until his death, was the oldest man in the world. And there were many other centenarians living in isolated Ogliastra villages.

Basically, my AARP assignment called for me to barge in on very old Sardinians and ask: How can our readers, too, live such a long life? The editors wanted tips, nuts and bolts, practical “how to” nuggets.

Of course, I wanted to know these things, too. Like most other human beings, my desire to live forever — or at least as long as I possibly can — knows no bounds. And I, like many, have been fooled before in this quest for longevity. I remember, for instance, a widely reported tale of men in the Caucasus Mountains who lived to the ripe of old age of 120 by subsisting solely on a diet of yogurt. After gorging myself on yogurt, it was soon reported that whole story was a hoax. The men’s birth records were wrong. Faulty data. Sorry.

But in Sardinia, the story is different. This time, after rigorous study, all the Sardinian centenarians’ birth records checked out. The demographers on the case confirm that the age data are perfect. No hoaxes, no inaccuracies.

In fact, researchers have detailed an astonishing longevity hot spot in which they have documented 90 centenarians among a population of 18,000. That means that one out of every 200 people in Ogliastra has lived to celebrate a 100th birthday. It’s an extraordinary figure, about 50 times the rate of the United States, where only one person out of every 10,000 people lives to see 100.

“These are people who not only have a very long life, but they are healthy up to a very old age,” says Luigi Ferrucci, chief researcher of longitudinal studies at the U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA) and a co-author of the Ogliastra study. “These are not people who’ve gotten diseased or dementia at 70 years old and somehow lived another 30 years.”

This research project is called Akea, an abbreviation of a traditional Sardinian language greeting, “akentannos,” or “to 100 years” (meaning, may you live that long), and it’s made up of researchers from Sardinia, mainland Italy, Belgium, France, and NIA. Since the Akea findings were published in 1999 and 2004, more teams of scientists have arrived on Sardinia, and they now monitor several isolated mountain villages of the Ogliastra as if they were petri dishes. The scientists ask the same questions that any of us would: Why do so many of these people live so long? What’s their secret?

“It’s still an amazing mystery,” says Michel Poulain, the Belgian demographer whose work on the Akea project verified the Sardinians’ age claims. “To be sure, everyone wants to live as long as possible. And everyone is looking into our study to find the recipe.”

In the Ogliastra village of Arzana, I enjoyed a glass of wine with a tiny 107-year-old woman named Raffaela Monni, who was dressed in the traditional black shawl and headscarf of Sardinian women. Sitting in the living room of her niece and niece’s husband, the family doctor at her side translating from Sardinian into Italian, we all toasted “akentannos!”

Raffaela told me about a walnut tree that stands in her front yard and how, up until she was 103, she would climb it. She teared up briefly when she spoke of her husband, whom she was married to for 76 years and who lived until almost 101.

I asked her the obvious question: What’s the secret to a long life?

Raffaela told me that she’s eaten the wild grasses of the mountains her whole life, and that she worked hard from the age of 10, tending to her fields and flock of sheep. Her doctor, Raffaele Sestu, said she takes no medicine at all, but that she does drink a little aquavit each night before bed.

But Raffaela wasn’t the only resident of Arzana in her second century — the sleepy village of 3,000 actually boasted three living centenarians. In addition to them, there were 41 nonagenarians, and a total of 89 people over the age of 85.

The following day, Dr. Sestu’s assistant took me to visit Federica Muceli, 102. She greeted me wearing the same traditional garb and holding a string of rosary beads in her hands. “Do you think you can find her a husband in the United States?” joked the assistant.

“Oh, I’m too old for marriage!” Federica said in Sardinian, with a laugh.

Federica told me about her older sister, who died three years ago at 103. She said she also had two brothers who lived into their 90s. She also spoke of working many years in the fields and pastures.

I had to ask her the obligatory question: What’s your secret?

“Everybody wants to know the secret,” she said, “but there is none.”

“Has it been a good life?” I asked.

“Not so much. Many sacrifices. Too much hard work.”

“But,” she said with a smile, “the other girls had a nice, quiet life. And they died young.”

Common Characteristics of Centenarians

I knew getting to the bottom of the longevity riddle would be difficult. But I didn’t realize how strange it would be, too.

On my first day in Sardinia, in its second biggest city of Sassari, I’d met with Luca Deiana, a professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Sassari and the lead researcher on the Akea project. Deiana, I was told, is the gatekeeper for anyone seeking contact with Sardinia’s centenarians. Several of Deiana’s colleagues on the Akea project described him as “a politician” and told me to be wary.

The fact that Deiana insisted on meeting me in a local café rather than in his office or lab seemed a little odd. But we ordered espressos and began our conversation, helped along by his interpreter, Antonio.

“Here in Sardinia, we have always understood that one can live for a long time, and live well,” Deiana said grandly. “We have wild olive trees here that have lived for 3,000 years.” He then disparaged some of the other centenarian research going on around the world. “There are a lot of lies in other places, but our records are certified.”

Near the end of our brief meeting, Deiana looked me in the eye and said, “After studying centenarians for a long time, I now understand there are certain common characteristics. When I see a person, I don’t usually say anything, but I can tell if someone has the characteristics of a centenarian.”

“What about me?” I ask.

“Yes,” Deiana said. “You seem like you have the characteristics of someone who might become a centenarian.” Like a fortune-teller, he did not elaborate on what those characteristics might be. I told him this surprised me — I hate to admit it, but I’m not exactly the one you’d want to bet your money on in the Great Centenarian Derby.

“How old was your father?” he asked.

“He’s still alive. He’s only 58.”

“How old are your grandfathers?”

“Well,” I said, “one died at age 68 and the other in his mid-50s.”

Professor Deiana concluded our interview soon afterwards.

Later, two of Deiana’s fellow researchers asked me if he’d demanded money in exchange for arranging meetings with centenarians. For the record, I can say that Deiana did not ask me for money. But I can also say that he didn’t introduce me to any centenarians, either, which he had promised he would do.

Nutrition, Mental Health, and the Longevity Gene

Common sense tells us that the keys to longevity stem from both the genes with which we’re born, and the lifestyle we lead — what and how much we eat, whether we drink and smoke, where we live, how much stress we experience. Yet the science of longevity has only begun to unravel the mysterious relationship between genes and lifestyle.

“We have little chance of discovering a longevity gene,” says Gianni Pes, a researcher at the University of Sassari, and formerly a member of the Akea team. “Longevity is a complex thing. Centenarians are not a homogenous group. I wonder if what we’re seeing today is more an act of natural selection or what we’re seeing is because of habit or lifestyle.”

Before the Akea Project, one of the most comprehensive and high profile studies on longevity and lifestyle was the Okinawa Centenarian Study, a 25-year study of 600 centenarians in Okinawa, Japan carried out by the Pacific Health Research Institute in Honolulu. In Okinawa, another longevity hot spot, the islanders’ regimen of regular exercise combined with low-fat high-fiber diet rich in fruits and vegetables, resulted in very low rates of heart disease. Okinawans also have shown the importance of strong bones as they age — they suffer less than half as many debilitating hip fractures as do people in the United States. Researchers attribute this bone strength to high antioxidant consumption, mainly flavonoids and carotenoids, particularly from high vegetable and soy intake.

In fact, Okinawans are the world’s largest consumers per capita of soy. Researchers believe this is linked to a low incidence of hormone-dependent cancers. Breast and prostate cancer are almost unheard of on Okinawa — only about six deaths per 100,000 for breast cancer compared to 33 per 100,000 for Americans. And only four deaths per 100,000 for prostate cancer, as compared to 28 per 100,000 for Americans.

But even more important than what Okinawans ate was how much they ate. An Okinawan man’s daily intake of no more than 1,800 calories was significantly less than the American average of 2,500 calories. Eating fewer calories seems to have a direct correlation with lowering blood levels of damaging free radicals.

Just as important as nutrition was the Okinawans’ state of mental health. Researchers attribute this to what they call the Okinawans’ excellent “psycho-spiritual health.” In personality tests, the researchers found that the centenarians scored low when it came to feelings of “time urgency” and “tension” and high in “self-confidence” and “unyieldingness.” They also found that the Okinawan centenarians had worked well into old age. One result of this is an extremely low prevalence of dementia — only ten percent of Okinawans 85 or older suffer from dementia, versus over 35 percent in the U.S.

All of these findings were published in two recent books, The Okinawa Program and The Okinawa Diet Plan.

When I spoke with Michel Poulain, the Akea demographer, he snidely referred to the Okinawa books as “How to Become A Centenarian in Four Weeks.” He dismissed them as “such a typically American idea.”

Poulain went on to say that he’d visited Okinawa to verify the centenarians’ ages there. “I’ve had some problems,” he said. Apparently many important documents on Okinawa were destroyed during World War II and subsequently rewritten. Poulain said he was preparing his Okinawa findings for publication — which may call the validity of this centenarian cluster into question.

But even Poulain’s age data from Sardinia was initially called untrue by rival demographers — though, so far, the Sardinian ages have held up under further scrutiny. This type of sniping between rival researchers is fairly common when it comes to centenarian research, which is controversial within gerontology. “There is so much guardedness, fear, and paranoia in this field,” says Poulain’s colleague, Pes.

None of which has stopped The Okinawa Diet Plan and The Okinawa Program — and other books like them — from becoming bestsellers. In fact, they are prime examples of a burgeoning genre of healthy-eating books and articles: How To Eat If You Want To Live Forever.

An example: Several studies in the past few years have shown that laboratory monkeys and rats fed very-low-calorie diets live significantly longer than junk-food-eating monkeys and rats. Health reporters jumped on these findings. This led some brave people, on an endless search for the fountain of youth, to experiment with draconian calorie-restricted diets — just like the Okinawans’ — even though the effectiveness of these diets remains largely unproven.

Meanwhile, Nature reported last fall that a substance in red wine, resveratrol, protected mice from the ill effects of obesity and extended their life spans. The mice were fed a McDonald’s-esque diet, and led long, active lives despite becoming obese. “The mice were still fat, but they looked just as healthy as the lean animals,” said David A. Sinclair, the Harvard biologist who led the study, as quoted in the Washington Post. Of course, the researchers were quick to warn against beginning a high-fat, all-you-can-eat diet. You’d have to drink gallons of red wine in order to reach the levels given to the mice. We may be many years away from harnessing the potential benefits of resveratrol — for now everything’s hypothetical.

So if I’m the kind of person who’s keen to increase my longevity — and who isn’t? — it seems I have two options:

a) Struggle to eat 30 percent fewer calories than “normal.”

b) Eat whatever I want, but find the time (and the capacity) to ingest the equivalent of 100 glasses of red wine every day.

Apparently, the science of longevity has become a little like that drinking game where you answer such uncomfortable questions as: Death by fire, or drowning? Would you rather pee in your pants every time someone calls your name, or develop the worst case of acne ever recorded?

Still, the “Would You Rather?” question of ascetic-versus-hedonist is fun to play. While we’re playing, let me ask another question: Would you rather live a decidedly shorter life in a world of 24/7 stress, but still be able eat foie gras, candy bars, and Big Macs whenever you wanted to? Or would you rather, say, live forever as a poor, illiterate sheepherder in an isolated mountain village where resources are scarce?

The "Normal" Life of a Cententarian

In Sardinia, the homogenous populations of several of the Ogliastra mountaintop villages have drawn the interest of several major genetic research teams. In an effort to find the mysterious genetic links with old age, a private life sciences company called Shardna has created what it calls a “genetic park” in two particular Ogliastra villages, Urzulei and Talana (each with a population of a little over 1,000). Shardna is run by a leading Italian molecular geneticist named Mario Pirastu who was able to obtain blood samples — after receiving legal consent — from over 80 percent of the villages. Additionally, because of good church record keeping — birth, death, and marriage records and family census — Shardna has been able to construct genealogy charts for every person who’s lived in the villages over the past 450 years.

“We don’t only study centenarians,” says Pirastu, who worries about putting too much emphasis on the extreme end of the longevity pool. Shardna instead focuses on the entire adult populations of the villages, a much larger task. “We chose Urzulei and Talana because they simplify our job,” he says.

What’s fascinating about the two villages is just how genetically homogenous and pure they are — the creation of something called a “founder effect” in genetics. Urzulei and Talana were each founded by about 20 ancestors, and most of the residents descend from one or more of these. In Talana, for example, there has been less than one percent immigration into the village in the past 400 years. Over those four centuries, 95 percent of Talana residents have married someone else from Talana.

Shardna is now studying common disorders such as incidences of obesity, hypertension, and kidney stones. Pirastu cites one example in which Talana’s residents have more than double the rate of obesity of Urzulei’s. “If you visit the villages, you will see that they have a very similar style of life,” says Pirastu, explaining that people in both villages eat and drink the same things and work almost identical jobs. “We feel this must be genetic,” he says.

But how, exactly, the genetic mechanism works is a much more complicated issue. “It’s hard to say someone has ‘good’ genes. Maybe there was a gene that allowed them to eat less and still survive in poorer times. But maybe in richer times, they eat more and become obese.”

I visited Urzulei with Paola Melis, an anthropologist who works at Shardna with Pirastu. Melis is in the process of compiling personal histories of the villagers — a good example of the intersection of genetics and lifestyle in studying longevity.

“We believe history is very important,” Pirastu says of Melis’ work. “Knowledge of history is integral to this type of genetic research. We believe that some day we may use some of this anecdotal knowledge. Perhaps to compare the type of work someone did, or the types of houses they lived in, or the type of daily stress they might have had. To some, this information may sound naïve, but I think this history of health will become important in years to come. More and more, people are realizing the importance of the context of where you live.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of the lifestyle elements documented in Okinawa — low caloric intake, a diet high in vegetables, a lengthy, vigorous work life, lack of stress — are all prevalent among old people in the Ogliastra villages.

In Urzulei, Melis and I visited a potential future centenarian, 95-year-old Fortunato Mulas. Fortunato, who lives alone, was hanging his laundry when we arrived and was planning to meet four other 95-year-old friends later that afternoon. Over and over again, “normale” — normal — was the word Fortunato kept repeating as I asked him about what he ate, what work he did, how he lived.

He explained what he consumed during a normal day. In the morning, he drank a little fresh, unpasteurized milk. At lunch, he ate fresh vegetables, rice or pasta, and pecorino cheese, sometimes maybe a hard-boiled egg. And he drank a glass of wine. At dinner, he’d have about the same thing, but less. With perhaps a spot of grappa before bed. “I’ve never been a big eater,” he said. “I’ve never been fatter than I am now.”

Like most people in the village, Fortunato seldom eats meat — only a little pork or free-range lamb on special occasions. Even though the Mediterranean is nearby, eating fish is not a part of the mountain culture. Melis noted that the food in Sardinia is the very definition of organic — grown locally and consumed fresh, without preservatives.

Fortunato was a normal member of the village in every way. He worked as a shepherd until the age of 80, he never went to school, never learned to read or write, only attended church sporadically. He never left the island of Sardinia, except once — to serve in Africa in Mussolini’s army. “I started working in the fields when I was four years old,” he said. “It was a normal way of working. We spent long days walking the countryside. I did not know how to stand still.”

This would seem the idyllic picture of a stress-free life. As Melis said to me later, “The life of a shepherd was hard, but not very stressful.” Fortunato, for instance, would not be bothered by an irritating email or a disturbing story in the newspaper — because he cannot read or write. “What’s in his head?” Melis said. “What does he think about all day?”

But just because Fortunato lived as a poor shepherd on a Sardinian mountaintop, don’t think that he’s escaped life without his share of woes. At 13, Fortunato contracted malaria — which was endemic in Sardinia until the 1950s — just like many other children of his era. And when he was serving in the army, in Africa, he was captured by the British and held as a prisoner of war for eight years. Then, a year after he returned home to the village, his wife died, leaving him with a nine-year-old child he barely knew.

As Fortunato told me about his life, I started to think hard about the whole notion of living forever. Given a life such as this, I wonder how many of us would opt to live to 100. Perhaps many of us might agree with Chekhov, who once wrote, “Death is terrifying, but it would be even more terrifying to find out that are you going to live forever and never die.”

At the same time, I realized such thoughts might eventually doom my piece for AARP Magazine. I was right. Weeks later, my editor would write me an email saying I hadn’t really “delivered” on the “how to” they were looking for. “Are people supposed to eat more soy or not?” she asked. I felt like I couldn’t even begin to answer a question like that.

On my last day in Ogliastra, I visited a woman named Barbara Mossudu, who would turn 100 in two months’ time. She told me he had worked in the fields until the age of 85.

Once again, I asked her for the secrets to living a long life. Her family gathered around in the living room and beamed proudly as they translated from Italian in Sardinian. But Barbara wouldn’t have any of it.

“So what if I’m almost 100 years old?” she says. “I can’t go anyplace I want to go. I can’t work. I can’t hear a conversation between people. The only thing I can do is sew lace. It makes the time pass.”

One of her family members asked, “But it’s been a beautiful life, right?”

“Ah, so-so,” she says. “I have seen beautiful things and I’ve seen ugly things. But I didn’t get very upset about anything.”

As her family members bustled around, serving us afternoon drinks and snacks, Barbara looked me right in the eye and said, “I have lived a long time and I am tired of this life.”

Jason Wilson is editor of The Smart Set. He also edits The Best American Travel Writing series (Houghton Mifflin).

Happiness Comes Cheap - Even for Millionaires

A bar of chocolate, a long soak in the bath, a snooze in the middle of the afternoon, a leisurely stroll in the park. These are the things that make us the most happy, according to new research from The University of Nottingham.

In a study commissioned by the National Lottery, Dr Richard Tunney of the University's School of Psychology found that it's the simple things in life that impact most positively on our sense of well being.

The study compared the 'happiness levels' of lottery jackpot winners with a control group, using a 'Satisfaction with Life Scale' developed by the University of Illinois. Respondents were asked how satisfied they were in relation to different elements of their life, their different mood states explored, how often they treated themselves and what form this took.

Surprisingly, it wasn't the flashy cars and diamond jewellery that upped the jackpot winners' happiness quotient. It was the listening to music, reading a book, or enjoying a bottle of wine with a takeaway that really made the difference.

Dr Tunney said: “Modern-day pressures take their toll on everyday happiness. As a result we try to make ourselves feel better and happier through personal rewards and treats. We've all heard the saying 'a little bit of what you fancy does you good', and treating yourself is the ideal way to keep spirits lifted when you're down in the dumps.

“As lottery jackpot winners are on the whole happier than non-winners — 95 per cent claim they are positive about their life compared to 71 per cent of people in the control group — we researched the treats they rewarded themselves with to see what could influence their mood state.”

The survey contrasted cost-free activities, such as walking and snoozing, with expensive ones like overseas holidays. It asked how frequently they might purchase 'staying in treats' — like a bottle of wine — and how often they bought themselves items like shoes, mobile phones and DVDs.

The research found that happy people — whether lottery jackpot winners or not — liked long baths, going swimming, playing games and enjoying their hobby. Those who described themselves as less happy didn't choose the cost-free indulgences. They rewarded themselves with CDs, cheap DVDs and inexpensive meals out instead.

“While buying sports cars, giving up work and going on exotic holidays is out of reach for most of us, there are small lessons we can learn from society's happiest people to help improve our quality of life,” Dr Tunney added.

“It appears that spending time relaxing is the secret to a happy life. Cost-free pleasures are the ones that make the difference — even when you can afford anything that you want.”

Near-Death Experiences of the Rich and Famous

The near-death experiences of rich and famous people are particularly interesting. They are known all over the world. They are often beautiful, articulate and very talented in what they do. With this in mind, why would such a person reveal to everyone that they were dead and came back to life? Money? They already got that. Fame? They are already famous.

In fact, by telling everyone they came back from the dead, they may be risking their own reputation. People who reveal such things to others often become the butt of jokes or thought to be crazy. Why would anyone rich and famous subject themselves to this when it might result in lost fame and fortune? The only rational reason that such people who have nothing to gain is that it really happened to them and they want to share it.

The following are rich and famous people who risked it all to tell the world about their near-death experience. Some of these accounts are documented in Jean Ritchie's excellent book, Death's Door.

Jane Seymour
Jane Seymour is an actress most noted for the cult classic movie, "Somewhere in Time," with actor Christopher Reeves, and the television series "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." When Jane Seymour was 36 years of age, she had a severe case of the flu and was given an injection of penicillin. She suffered an allergic reaction which led to a near-death experience.

"I literally left my body. I had this feeling that I could see myself on the bed, with people grouped around me. I remember them all trying to resuscitate me. I was above them, in the corner of the room looking down. I saw people putting needles in me, trying to hold me down, doing things. I remember my whole life flashing before my eyes, but I wasn't thinking about winning Emmys or anything like that. The only thing I cared about was that I wanted to live because I did not want anyone else looking after my children. I was floating up there thinking, "No, I don't want to die. I'm not ready to leave my kids." And that was when I said to God, "If you're there, God, if you really exist and I survive, I will never take your name in vain again." Although I believe that I "died" for about thirty seconds, I can remember pleading with the doctor to bring me back. I was determined I wasn't going to die." She then suddenly found herself back in her body.

Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers was the comic genius of a generation of actors. He brought brilliant characterizations to numerous films, including "The Mouse That Roared" (1959), "Dr. Strangelove" (1964), "The Pink Panther" (1964), and "Being There" (1979). He was known for his enthusiastic way of totally absorbing himself in his characters, even carrying roles offstage. He also suffered from sad moods between films. While he knew his characters thoroughly, he said that he really did not know who he was. Then Peter Sellers, the brilliant, confused actor, had a near-death experience.

Seated in a Hollywood mock up of a limousine's back seat while shooting his last great film, "Being There", he told Shirley MacLaine about his near-death experience, astonished that she did not consider him "bonkers." Shirley documents their conversation in her book, Out on a Limb. In 1964, during the first of a rapid series of eight heart attacks, when his heart stopped and he was clinically dead, he had an out-of-body experience and saw the bright, loving light:

"Well, I felt myself leave my body. I just floated out of my physical form and I saw them cart my body away to the hospital. I went with it ... I wasn't frightened or anything like that because I was fine; and it was my body that was in trouble."

The doctor saw that he was dead and massaged his heart vigorously, Meanwhile: "I looked around myself and I saw an incredibly beautiful bright loving white light above me. I wanted to go to that white light more than anything. I've never wanted anything more. I know there was love, real love, on the other side of the light which was attracting me so much. It was kind and loving and I remember thinking "That's God.""

Peter's out-of-body soul tried to elevate itself toward the light, but he fell short: "Then I saw a hand reach through the light. I tried to touch it, to grab onto it, to clasp it so it could sweep me up and pull me through it." But just then his heart began beating again, and at that instant the hand's voice said: "It's not time. Go back and finish. It's not time." As the hand receded he felt himself floating back down to his body, waking up bitterly disappointed.

What effect did his near-death experience have on Sellers? His biographer says that "The repeated act of "dying" became for Peter Sellers the most important experience of his life." Sellers said of death: "I'll never fear it again." Family and friends found him more spiritual and reflective than before.

Elizabeth Taylor
British actress Elizabeth Taylor spoke about her experience of having "died" on the operating table while undergoing surgery, and of passing through a tunnel towards a brilliant white light. Interviewed by Larry King on CNN's "Larry King Live," the legendary Hollywood star related how she had "died" for five minutes on the operating table.

"I was pronounced dead once and actually saw the light. I find it very hard to talk about, actually, because it sounds so corny. It happened in the late '50s, and I saw Mike (Todd, Taylor's third husband, who was killed in a plane crash in 1958). When I came to, there were about 11 people in the room. I'd been gone for about five minutes - they had given me up for dead and put my death notice on the wall. I shared this with the people that were in the room next to me. Then after that I told another group of friends, and I thought, "Wow, this sounds really screwy. I think I'd better keep quiet about this."

Robert Pastorelli
Robert Pastorelli is most noted for his starring role in the television series, "Murphy Brown." At the age of 19, he had a car accident which caused a near-death experience that literally changed how he was living, in a very dramatic way.

"It smashed right into the driver's door. It hit me so hard it actually knocked the shoes off my feet. My car rolled over about four times on this big highway and the next thing I knew I was in intensive care with a collapsed lung. Every one of my ribs was shattered. I had lacerations to my head and face, and my kidneys, spleen and gall bladder were all ruptured. I was a mess.

"I was in excruciating pain. Then, in the next second, there was no pain. Suddenly I realized I was out of my body. I was floating above myself, looking down at my unconscious body lying in the hospital emergency room with my eyes closed. I could see tubes down my nose and throat. I knew I was dying and I thought, "Well, this must be death." I even saw a priest giving me the last rites. But it was the most peaceful feeling in the world. Then I saw my father starting to faint out of grief. Two nurses grabbed him and sat him down in a chair across the room.

"When I looked down and saw my father's pain it had an effect on me. I firmly believe that at that moment I made a decision to live, not die. The next thing I knew I was waking up back in my body. Later, in the recovery room, when I was fully conscious, I told my father what had happened, his fainting and all. He was astounded."

Sharon Stone
"Basic Instinct" star, Sharon Stone, has told how she had a "white light experience" during her brain scare. Stone says she almost died after internal bleeding caused by a tear in an artery at the base of her skull. Sharon was interviewed by Katie Couric about her journey into the afterlife.

When it hit me I felt like I'd been shot in the head. That's the only way I can really describe it. It hit me so hard it knocked me over on the sofa. And Phil was out of town and I called him and said, "I think I had a stroke." But in all fairness, I'm a person who's always saying, " I think I've had a stroke, I think I've had a heart attack, I think I've had a brain hemorrhage ...

I had a real journey with this that took me to places both here and beyond that affected me so profoundly that my life will never be the same ...

I get to be not afraid of dying and I get to tell other people that it's a fabulous thing and that death is a gift. And not that you should kill yourself, but that when death comes to you, as it will, that it's a glorious and beautiful thing. This kind of giant vortex of white light was upon me and I kind of – poof – sort of took off into this glorious, bright, bright, bright white light and I started to see and be met by some of my friends. But it was very fast - whoosh! Suddenly, I was back. I was in my body and I was in the room.î

Gary Busey
Gary Busey, once Hollywood's "bad boy," was nominated for an Oscar for the movie, "The Buddy Holly Story." Busey, who fought addiction with drugs and alcohol for several years, was nicknamed "Gary Abusey" by his wife. Busey has had supernatural encounters in which he nearly died three or more times in his life ...a drug overdose, cancer, and an accident west of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

But the most tragic experience, and one that changed his life, was a motorcycle accident in 1988. Gary was going about 40-50 miles per hour riding on 750 pounds of cold steel. He was not wearing a helmet when he crashed. He was flung over the top of his cycle, head first into the curb and he cracked his skull. Busey had an NDE while he was dying on the operating table after having brain surgery. During his NDE, he was surrounded by angels. Busey stated that they didn't appear in the form that people see on Christmas cards. The angels he saw were big balls of light that floated and carried nothing but love and warmth - and this love is unconditional.

Larry Hagman
Larry Hagman, of "Dallas" and "I Dream of Jeanie" fame, underwent a liver transplant in 1995. Years of heavy drinking resulted in cirrhosis and cancer of the liver. He was only weeks away from certain death at the time of his liver transplant and near-death experience.

Larry describes what he experienced: "I was able to look over the edge. I got a little glimpse of what was the next step. I didn't see a light some people see, but I had a wonderful feeling of bliss and warmth. The bottom line is "love," that sounds corny, but it was just lovely, uplifting."

Rebecca DeMornay
Rebecca DeMornay starred in the movie thriller, "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle." When she was 7 years old, she was in Mexico City, Mexico, when she got ill from a peptic ulcer and had what she believes was a near-death experience.

"One night the doctors told my mother that there was only a fifty-fifty chance that I'd make it. I remember that I was tied to three IVs but I recall getting out of bed and looking out of the window: it was snowing. There was an old-fashioned lamppost and barefoot children were dancing around it, singing. I went back to bed and the next morning the crisis was over. In 1983 I started thinking about it: "Does it ever snow in Mexico City? Do they have these strange kind of lampposts there?" I went back to Mexico and I didn't see those lampposts anywhere. Nor does it ever snow there."

Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland, who played the character, Hawkeye Piece, in the movie version of "Mash", had a near-death experience when ill with meningitis in 1979.

"Suddenly the pain, fever and acute distress seemed to evaporate. I was floating above my body, surrounded by soft blue light. I began to glide down a long tunnel, away from the bed ... but suddenly I found myself back in my body. The doctors told me later that I had actually died for a time."

Eric Estrada
Eric Estrada became famous for his starring role in the television series, "Chips." While filming an episode of "Chips," he had a terrible motorcycle accident that led to a near-death experience.

"Suddenly I was in a long corridor with bright lights, beautiful music, and a feeling of great peace. But something seemed to be blocking my progress. A voice told me, "You've got to go back. You've a lot still to do. You've achieved success and stardom but you haven't achieved personal happiness and peace of mind." After hearing the voice, he returned to his body.

Eric Roberts
Internationally renowned actor Eric Roberts has starred in more than 70 films, including the Dannion Brinkley movie, "Saved by the Light." Eric has traveled all over the world encountering many colorful experiences. One of Eric's most dramatic moments took place in Westport, Connecticut. He was driving along, became distracted by his dog, and crashed. He was hospitalized in a coma and almost died. It was this state that Eric claimed to have had a surreal out-of-body experience.

Elvis Presley
People having near-death experiences are greeted by someone - usually someone they deeply love or the so-called "Being of Light". When Elvis Presley died, it seemed like the whole world mourned. He was truly loved by many people the world over. Since then, many people have reported having "Elvis sightings" where the spirit of Elvis appears as an apparition to people much in the same way that Jesus appeared to people after his death.

Not only this, many near-death experiencers find themselves greeted, not by a Being of Light, but by Elvis Presley. According to Dr. Melvin Morse in his book on near-death experiences entitled "Transformed by the Light," a 45-year old Mid-western teacher saw Elvis Presley in an intense light during her near-death experience. The woman had met Elvis when she was a child. The following is her near-death account:

"I entered into a dark tunnel and suddenly I was in a place filled up with love and a beautiful, bright light. The place seemed holy. My father, who had died two years earlier, was there, as were my grandparents. Everyone was happy to see me, but my father told me it was not my time and I would be going back. Just as I turned to go, I caught sight of Elvis! He was standing in this place of intense bright light. He just came over to me, took my hand and said, "Hi, Bev, do you remember me?"

Dr. Raymond Moody wrote an entire book on Elvis sightings, including near-death experiences, entitled Elvis After Life. Because of the large number of devoted Elvis fans, it should not be a surprise that people having NDEs should be greeted by the King.

How to Slow Down Time With Your Mind

Your spirit operates outside time and space. When there is an emergency where danger is about to approach you faster than you can normally sense, your spirit will compel you to act quickly without pondering. It directs you through your instinct and reflexes. Think of a time when you moved out of harm's way in an instant and the move was so spontaneous it seems that everything just flowed in the moment. Your awareness of what was happening and your response happened without hesitation, but so quickly that it was almost together at the same time.

That is because your spirit can observe things and sense reality beyond your ordinary rate and range of awareness. Imagine that a dagger is flying towards you from the side. In ordinary rate of awareness, there is simply not enough time to notice the dagger coming and to move out of the way. But in the realm of your spirit’s awareness, time is slowed down to a crawl and it can fully perceive everything that is happening no matter how quickly. It sends the message to you and in that moment you experience the spontaneous and seemingly simultaneous knowing and action. The awareness comes just before the action but it seems that time slows almost to a standstill during that moment of thought. Perception and action become as one.

If you want to consciously perceive faster so that things don’t seem to happen so quickly, you have to slow time down in your consciousness.

It is not time that slows down but you that slows down. See in your mind’s eye and memory things slowing down. Like a picture frame frozen from a movie in motion. It is the way you experience time slowing down or stopping when you see a beautiful person of your dreams.

It would be an advantage for anyone to stop the world or at least make everything appear to move in slow motion. It would give you time to analyze the situation and the actions of everyone and everything around you. It gives you extra time to determine your actions in a pressure situation. This would would be incredibly useful in business, driving your car in traffic, playing games, military combat, sports and life threatening situations.

Be Fully Alive to This Moment

Perceptive awareness is being fully alert and living fully in the moment. It is seeing the trees bend in the wind and the way the birds circle overhead. It is sensing how the trees feel and what problems and joy the birds are experiencing. It is experiencing the full moment around us and not just our little thoughts. It is clearing the mind of future events and past replayed scenes, so you can experience the entirety of the current moment in time. It is putting yourself in the full frame picture now in front of you in relationship to everything happening around you. It is being fully alive. With that kind of perceptive awareness, a moment can seem to you to last forever.

A master baseball batter is apparently able to slow things down when he’s at the plate. To everyone else, the ball would be rocketing toward the plate at approximately 100 mph, almost faster than the eye can see. But to the focused athlete, the ball seems to slow down just for him, and present itself to him.

This is what many of the best batters have this in common. Somehow, when they need to slow things down to make their big play, they are able to perceive everything happening in slow motion. The ball rolls slowly up to the plate and is easy to see, often appearing larger than life. It’s almost as if the ball is waiting for them to hit it. To everyone else, the ball is racing to the plate at a blistering speed, curving, skunking, and breaking in ways that make it almost impossible to track, let alone hit.

This is truly time manipulation, since the perception of the person who seems to manage this trick is that time has been stretched longer or made shorter. Since this is the perception of the magician, and becomes the way he acts upon the world, it becomes that person’s own functional reality. It’s really a consciousness shift and an expanded awareness. And yes, it is real magic as we will see.

When playing baseball as a batter, allow yourself to focus consciously on the location and speed of the ball. Clear your mind of all noise and clutter. Get unnecessary thoughts out of your head. Tune out all sound and distraction around you. Simply focus on the baseball being pitched to you. Focus your intent. Imagine hitting it squarely and watching it sail far through the air. Concentrate on your abdomen and visualize projecting energy from this “will center”. You must want to hit the ball and will it to happen. See the ball big and bold. Fixate on the ball. See only the ball and focus your total intent and will on the ball. Did the ball appear to be moving slower than normal? If so, you are well on your way to becoming a master of time manipulation.

For most rapid perception, attention must be at its maximum focus on the area of the thing to be perceived. You must intend to see everything you can in that moment of looking. When you focus only on the thing you are looking at, things surrounding will become dimmer and out of focus while moving in slow motion together with it.

How to Experience Timelessness

To experience timelessness, you need to focus intently on the moment at hand. You cannot allow your mind to wander over events of the past or wallow in deep concern over the future. You must be in the present moment, fully alert and clear headed. In short, you must be totally involved in the “now”.

You must not fear but be calm and have a heightened state of awareness. Fear collapses time. You do not want to collapse time, you want to expand it. Awe is one of the feelings that expands time and slows it down. The opposite is true, things that move in slow motion likeness create a feeling of awe. Fear and awe are very similar and yet very different feelings. Fear causes you to be totally unseeing and blind to the action of the thing you are afraid of in the moment. Awe causes you to be totally seeing and taking in the fullness of what you are looking at.

Scientists have shown that mild anxiety can improve performance in some instances like a 100 meter dash, a musical performance, or even an exam. But for the most part, a full-blown autonomic response is not adaptive in most of these circumstances. These are classic instances of what the Taoists would call getting in your own way.

The ancient Eastern masters from various traditions such as Taoist, Buddhist, Hindu, Zen, Sufi and many others recognized this feature of the human nervous system, and so found antidotes to it. These were awareness and equanimity. They cultivated a calm temperament through meditation and breathing exercises, which you can think of as strengthening the parasympathetic response.

As a result, the Eastern masters were able to develop a very strong and nearly imperturbable presence. Because they were not getting in their own way, in the face of danger they were pure action, maximally effective. This cultivation fed into a hyper-aware state of mind, which, interestingly enough, seems to block out emotion-based responses.

Empathic healers who transfer energy to others in therapeutic touch reach a level of heightened alertness, which is classified as hyper beta brain activity. This is a state of “super alertness” similar to the keen alertness that Zen masters have been observed to reach in closed-eye meditations. In this state, the healer is acutely focused on one thought or activity, tuning out all peripheral distractions.

You can also heal or comfort yourself in this manner. In this heightened state of consciousness, you can focus on any area of pain or injury and send healing energy to that area in thought forms. Similarly, you can use your hands to help or to heal, using your hands to project and conduct that healing energy.

A concentrated mind is not an attentive mind, but a mind that is in the state of awareness can concentrate. Consciousness or awareness is never exclusive, it includes everything. It is not a constricted concentration but a relaxed and free one. When you get into the calm and unperturbed state of mind of conscious awareness, you can perceive easily and nothing can happen too quickly for you. When you are able to slow time down in consciousness, you can use time as the ultimate weapon. Nothing can stop you but you can stop anything. Time is the ultimate illusion. All time is mental.

By using the principle of “it is not time that slows down but you that slows down”, you slow down your actions to slow down the rate of things moving around you in consciousness. Then once you have that increased rate of perception, you can start moving faster again with much greater control and effectiveness. This is the secret of slowing down in order to go faster. Do not hurry because hurry manifests fear and collapses time. Only when you are calm are you able to perceive things in slow motion.

Act as if you have all the time to do everything you want.

Every time you slip up on an action or have a hesitation, it’s because you overlapped a proper sequence of things and it just cancels out in your mind. Maybe it’s because you were in a hurry. Your mind can only do one thing at a time, yet each may be done at the rate of microseconds, giving the illusion of many things at once. If you actually try to do many things at once, nothing happens. We’re referring to the conscious awareness here, although your subconscious can do many things simultaneously. It is your conscious awareness that uses rapid perception in order to slow time down.

Time is an illusion, only consciousness is reality. Who is to say that only a certain amount of things can happen within one second and not more? There are times when people encounter life threatening situation and in the moment, their whole life passed in front of them. As their precious life hung in the balance, for one split second, they took stock of their life, including their loved ones, unfulfilled dreams and unrealized goals and made a momentous decision that saved them in virtually no time at all.

Maybe you experienced moments like this before. It is a state of superconsciousness. Everything seemed to slow down. Things seemed to appear in slow motion. You saw your loved ones and they seemed to be frozen in time. You considered logical arguments and argued them through the steps to completion. All of this takes a long time normally, but for this one instance when you are so sharply focused and alert, you play it all our in one magical moment, a moment that you seemed to control.

You can perceive things in slow motion and still let your thoughts and actions flow at the “same speed”. It is all relativity. To you, time around you slows down but to an outside observer, you become phenomenally precise and in control. When you are able to perceive faster, you also possess the ability to respond faster. Each second of your time becomes stretched and you can have increased rate of movement within it. Your time is increased compared to other people’s. Those watching with normal rate of consciousness will see you moving like flashes of lightning with sudden bolts of speed.

You can also use your mind to increase your own rate of movement to phenomenal levels. Think of yourself moving at extremely high speed that is beyond the ordinary. And act with that mental state. Think speed and you manifest speed. Time manipulation and phenomenally fast movement like all mind powers, require you to be in the right state of consciousness to be of effect.

The best ballplayers, it seems, have learned how to manipulate time whenever it suits them. Perhaps they do this without a great deal of thought or analysis, but they certainly employ all of the key factors of time magicians. They focus their intent, engage their will power, and energize their thought forms. This is personal magic. This is personal power. Everyone can do it. The superstars just do it more easily and more often than the rest of us. We say that they are gifted or superhuman. They are simply focused, intent and willful.

All champions have one thing in common, they have learned to seize the moment. No matter what situation we are in, there is always a cubic centimeter of chance that appears in the moment for us to accomplish what we want. The trick is to be alert enough to seize the moment and then have enough personal power to execute the appropriate move at the appropriate instance. Impeccable warriors are fully alert and fully aware of the physical world.

Everybody knows that under normal conditions when heroics are not on the line, a person cannot pass a ball through a crowd to a selected teammate who scores, all in less than one second. Under normal circumstances, most people cannot even locate a person in a crowd in less than one second, let alone pass the ball to him. This demonstrates over and over again the elasticity of time.

There’s a young swimmer who came out of nowhere at the end of a race to eclipse the field. She always found a way to win, and would “pick her spot” to “make her move.” Still, it seemed uncanny how she could close the big gap between herself and the race leader at the end, when you consider she had to swim nearly twice as fast as she had been swimming throughout the rest of the race.

It’s like the track sprinter who digs down at the end of the race to bolt like a cannon to victory at the end. To the observer, it looks as thought they are running against opponents who are moving in slow motion. How can somebody who’s been running at top speed suddenly double that speed at the end of a race, when they should be the most tired? It’s an obvious display of will power, focused intent, and energized thought power, whereby they conceive of miraculous victory and believe it is possible. And whatever our consciousness can conceive, the body can achieve. Since everything is consciousness, the physical world is only an illusion.

Move Into the "Zone" of Higher Performance

You can cope with daily emergency situations and daily challenges where you need extra time and powers that heightened awareness affords you. You can run faster in less time and slow down events when needed by altering your perception of time and space. Some of the greatest athletes do it. Heroic rescue teams do it. You can do it too.

You can meditate anywhere and reach a state of heightened consciousness and timelessness. Surely, star athletes in action do not stop everything that they are doing to sit down in perfect posture and slowly number their bodies to enter this state. They have learned to do it within the flow of events. They pop in and out of this state, as needed. They do it quickly and almost effortlessly with practice. It becomes a learned behavior. Soon your total self will sense the opportunity or need and shift you to that new, higher level of consciousness. Then everything slows down in front of you, so that you can respond.

If you watch top athletes who gets into this “zone”, as sports people often call it, you will notice that their eyes seem to glaze over or close halfway for a brief time. They might even appear to be going into a trance. That trance, of course, is the altered state of consciousness known to meditators. They go into a state of higher consciousness very briefly. A split second can seem to last much longer to a person in this state because there is no time or normal laws of physics in higher consciousness.

Most people think that spectacular athletes simply try harder when they “turn it on”. Certainly, they do find extra energy and move with greater speed in less time at these moments, almost as though time for them was standing still. These golden moments in an athelete’s life are truly magical. They can see everything happening in slow motion around them. They have all the time in the world to make amazing moves. They can run faster, think faster, and jump higher than anyone else. And all of this comes by slipping momentarily into higher consciousness, a nonphysical reality where time does not exist and the normal laws of physics do not apply. What’s even better, they operate in these golden moments with a higher consciousness that thinks faster and better than the normal, physical consciousness that people use.

Remember that you control time as you experience it. As an agent of change, you control the only real measure of time. This is because time only occurs with change. The theatre of events around us is interpreted by our personal perception of change. Your perception will be somewhat different from mine, although we might agree on many things we observe together. Because of your unique perception, you create your own reality. You also create your own sense of time as an agent of change. Time simply measures change. Beyond that simple function, time is nonexistent. There is really only the “now”.

Since time only operates according to perception of it, you can manipulate time by controlling your perception of it. Your higher consciousness exist in the realm of timelessness. Stay in a state of heightened awareness in order to make your perception of time stand still. It is a matter of personal time perception and a focused intent to stay in the now. There are people who use such time powers to transverse great distances in very little amount of time and cause limited resources to last far longer than normal as though inexhaustible. Such are the miracles that happen when time and space are altered.

Slow Time Down and Stop the World

Sword masters and ninjas all use this “slowing time down” and “stopping the world” with the mind technique to accomplish amazing feats of lightning fast combat which normal perceiving people can hardly even comprehend how it is humanly possible for themselves to attempt.

We miss ourselves. We are so busy out there in our minds, in the mirror, on the phone, on the pc, listening to deafening music, overtaking, seeking power, status, labels. The boy racer feels alive, excited, when he is near a near death opportunity! Adrenalin pumping, over excited, showing off, seeking attention, seeking power, seeking approval, fearful. Fight or flight that we cannot see the signs. We make mistakes, we miss turnings, we lose or forget things. Because we lose the plot, we lose reign of our senses.

Only when there’s an accident, a car crash, a thump on the head, a slap in the face, a comment, a synchronistic moment, a glance from a beautiful person, song of a sweet bird, the rising or setting of the sun, a shooting star, ever renewing the rhythm of the waves do we stop for a second…time slows down…in awe, devotion, speechlessness, thoughtlessness, our ears perk up. We become aware of something here now. Something beautiful, fresh, sweet, pristine, shining, glowing, effervescent, ever fresh. Only at these times, are we awake, truly alive - during the skid / bang / crash - time slows down.

Mindfulness can be defined as knowing what is happening while it is happening, no matter what it is. The essence of meditation is training in mindfulness. It’s direct perception. We see through meditation, what the mind is doing, moment by moment. Why? Because we are training ourselves to become present. If we are present, we naturally bring our intelligence to bear on the moment. Therefore we have no option but to find out what is happening.

Meditation, then, involves being present with what is here. The observer consciousness allows you to fully observe what is happening internally as well. You notice thoughts and feelings as they arise and realize the causes. It is a self-reflective awareness where you know you are thinking when thinking happens. When you become mindful, you become more aware of things both within and without. The way to wisdom and intelligence is to understand ourselves as human beings. Not through a theory, not through a concept, but through direct experience.

When you are calm, you are clear seeing. You filter out a lot of noise that affects consciousness. To have a calm mind is to silence and still a lot of vibrations leaving perception to be free and unhindered. You get into the state of observer consciousness, where you are just watching what is going on and seeing it in every moment of its happening. Mindfulness is the systematic training in knowing what is happening, while it is happening.

As the mind becomes tranquil, many things begin to become clear. Things that were not formerly clear to us about ourselves, the world around us, the way we are living, relationships. We become clear about everything. So we need to generate within our minds the conditions for a prelimary mindfulness which is the essence of meditation. As tranquility arises we began gaining insight into the state of our own minds. Insight may arise naturally with tranquility. That is the traditional teaching. We train in tranquility and insight naturally arises.

Insight is the most profound level of learning. It is learning through direct perception which naturally gives rise to understanding. It is not learning through externally acquired information, something imported from outside. It leads to wisdom because it is learning inwardly how we are and what we are as human beings. When your meditation becomes really powerful, it also becomes constant. Life offers many challenges and the serious meditator is very seldom bored.

When you’re looking for something or a solution, take time to pause and enter the stilled state of consciousness. Don’t think of it as wasting time during the work day. With practice, this little exercise takes very little time, as others perceive it. Think of it as a creative way to think through your problems by engaging your higher mind to meditate on work issues. In that state of consciousness, the answer can come to you suddenly.

Remember, even a brief second in an altered state of consciousness can seem like hours, since you are controlling time. You are creating perfect timing of perfecting time manipulation. Time is but an illusion. There is all of the time in the world, if you can focus your intent and control your perception. Make your own reality.

Any activity where you perform can be expanded and enriched by a heightned state of awareness that allows you to expand your perception of time and operate somewhat outside of normal physical limitations.

Slow down only that which you want to, otherwise allow it to proceed at normal speed. Use rapid perception on whatever you want to, whenever you want to.