In search of immortality. Ponce de Leon's search for the Fountain of Youth may be legend, but the underlying idea - the search for a cure for old age - is very real. Rebellion against the immortals

Page one - BLUE, colors of hope

It would not be better for people if everything that they desire was fulfilled.

(Heraclitus)

In the spring month of Nishan, on the second day of the new moon, the king of kings, the ruler of the universe, the ruler of all Persians, Xerxes wished to arrange a review of his great army. When the fleet-footed messengers spread the news to all the cities and fortresses where the garrisons of the invincible Persian army stood, many rejoiced, but even more were those who were sad.

Those who rejoiced thought about future great awards and honors for those who distinguished themselves, which usually accompanied such reviews. Those who were saddened recalled the terrible executions that were given to the guilty - those who were not lucky: either the girth burst, or the spear was held unevenly, or the horse suddenly lost its measured trot. But even those who were sad tried to keep cheerfulness on their faces, so as not to tempt fate and not become easy prey for the ubiquitous scammers.

And now the day has come, which so many have been impatiently waiting for and even more afraid of. A great army gathered at the foot of the hill, on which the huge tent of the king was white, and when the king of kings Xerxes came out of the tent, a copper roar shook heaven and earth. Compared to him, with this roar, the thunder that the clouds brought, the sound of the stormy sea were like a whisper, like a breath of breeze. These are thousands of warriors who struck with their swords on forged copper shields.

The head of the army, who was standing a little behind, on the right hand of the king, noticed how a shadow of pleasure ran over the face of the ruler, and this was a sign of mercy. When, at the wave of the royal hand, the great army set in motion, it seemed that the whole earth was in motion - from one end of the sky to the other, because for those who stood on the hill there was neither an archer, nor a horseman, nor a shield-bearer - there was only a agile human mass gleaming with weapons, and there was no such barrier, such a fortress, country or army, which this mass would not break and could not crush. Therefore, pride and joy that they were involved in such power filled the hearts of the people who stood on the hill at the right and left hand of the king of kings.

But they could not see the face of Xerxes. When he was pleased to turn his face towards them, they saw that the ruler was crying. And their souls were terrified.

“It truly saddens me to think of the brevity of human life. In some hundred years, not one, not a single person from all of them will be among the living ...

And having said this, the king, without looking at anyone, retired to the tent. And the courtiers did not know what to say and what to do. The army kept moving, and the earth swayed from one end of the sky to the other, and it seemed that there would be no end to this.

The king of kings, the ruler of the Persians, did not come out of the tent again that day. This time, after the show, there were no awards, no executions ...

So, or something like this, tells the Greek historian Herodotus. It happened in the spring month of Nishan, on the second day of the young moon, two and a half thousand years ago.

It always seemed to man that nature acted unfairly by giving him such a short existence and dooming him to death. Long before the great Xerxes, the inhabitants of ancient Sumer, who lived on the swampy banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, painfully thought about this. Why did the gods, who gave man reason, not endow him with immortality? From clay tablets covered with cuneiform signs, through the dark tunnels of five millennia, a voice full of bewilderment and sorrow reaches us:

How can I be silent, how can I calm down?
My beloved friend became the earth,
Enkidu, my beloved friend, has become the earth!
Just like him, and I will not lie down,
So as not to get up forever and ever?

But a person would never become what he is if he limited himself to lamentations. That is why Gilgamesh, the hero of the world's first epic, sets off on a dangerous journey across the distant sea in order to get there "a flower like a thorn", which gives youth and postpones death.

Years and millennia passed, ideas about good and evil changed, gods died and new ones were born, but this dream remained indestructible, this belief that there is a way? the only one among many, leading to immortality. And to the credit of mankind, there have always been madmen looking for this path. Who can say how many there were - unknown and nameless, who ventured to follow in the footsteps of Gilgamesh and did not reach the goal, lost their way and died on false paths?

The Epic of Gilgamesh speaks of a flower that brings immortality. "Mahabharata", the epic of Ancient India, mentions the juice of a tree, prolonging a person's life up to 10,000 years. The ancient Greek historians Megasthenes and Strabo also mention this. And Elian, a Roman author who lived in the II-III centuries, talks about trees, the fruits of which are supposedly capable of returning lost youth.

Other ancient texts stubbornly speak of some kind of "water of eternal life." This tradition existed among the African peoples, and among the peoples of America, and among the Slavs in the form of legends about "living water". Russian epics place a source of living water on the island of Buyan, which stands in the middle of the ocean. The inhabitants of the ocean expanses were looking for a source of water that gives eternal life, in the regions lying behind "many days of travel."

Gilgamesh (XXVIII century BC), the king of Uruk, according to legend, went in search of a magical flower that gives youth

Hieroglyph for "elixir of immortality", the secret of which was kept by Taoist monks

In the same way, if the inhabitants of the countries neighboring China placed such a source of living water in China, then the Chinese themselves, following the same logic, went in search of it anywhere, but only as far as possible, outside their country.

One of these expeditions is associated with the name of the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang (259-210 BC).

It was the emperor who united the country and began the construction of the Great Wall of China. The wall protected the country from nomads, and the emperor from military anxieties that weighed so heavily on his predecessors. But one concern is always replaced by another. Other rulers did not even dare to think about what the emperor was concerned about: Qin Shi Huang decided to live forever. And he spared neither time nor effort to find the path that would lead him to this goal.

…No one else could get into the Forbidden City, where the residence of the emperor was located. Curious, daring to approach the gate too close, the guards hacked to death on the spot. Even the birds that inadvertently tried to fly across the canal to the imperial residence were shot down by archers on the fly with long red arrows. This measure was not superfluous - an evil spirit or a werewolf could take the form of a bird in order to get closer to the person of the emperor and harm him. It was believed that evil spirits could only move straight or turn at right angles. That is why all the entrances to the Forbidden City, all the passages in the palace and the paths in the imperial park were laid in such a way that there were no straight lines anywhere. Even the edges of the palace roof were curved so that evil spirits could not move along them. But, despite all these measures and all the prohibitions, there was one terrible guest that nothing could stop. And the emperor remembered her every day and every hour.

In vain Qin Shi Huang talked about this with the most intelligent people of his state. They were skilled in gaining and holding power, waging war or collecting taxes, but none of them could tell their master how to overcome nature and avoid death. Then the emperor retired to the distant chambers of his palace and began to talk with those who had not been among the living for a long time, looking for an answer in ancient books and manuscripts.

“They say,” wrote one ancient author, “that in the middle of the East Sea there are three extraordinary islands. They are not so far from the places inhabited by people, but, unfortunately, as soon as someone tries to land on them, the wind rises, which carries the boat far away. If the truth is told, then in ancient times there were people who managed to reach these islands. Immortals live on these islands and there is a composition that protects from death. Everything living there, even birds and animals, is white.” On one of these islands, according to legend, there is a source of jade-colored wine. Drinking this wine will gain immortality.

When Qin Shi Huang finished reading, he realized that this was a sign of fate. On the same day, by imperial order, the construction of two dozen large ships began, on which one could risk going to sea. But no one, not a single subject, not a single confidant or minister of the emperor, knew about the purpose for which this unprecedented flotilla was built. However, the further the construction progressed, the greater the doubt seized the emperor. Can he leave the palace and the Forbidden City without risking losing the empire? As soon as the flotilla under sails of yellow silk - a sign that the emperor himself is on one of the ships - disappears over the horizon, a mutiny breaks out in the capital. And from distant provinces, countless hordes of applicants will move towards the Forbidden City, hurrying to take the throne that has been empty for a while. The emperor knew that this would be the case, and this forced him to look for more and more reasons to delay the completion of construction. Then he did not like the room for the retinue, and the carpenters had to rebuild everything anew. Then the dragons that adorned the bow of the ships turned out to be not what the emperor imagined them to be, and he ordered the execution of wood carvers. But all the same, construction continued, and sooner or later the day had to come when the emperor had to make a decision.

Therefore, this petition turned out to be so opportune, respectfully handed over to him by the chief superintendent of the office, when the construction was nearing its end. A subject, a certain unknown to the emperor, a man named Su She, fell at the high feet of his master. “We beg,” he wrote, “that we be allowed, having undergone due purification, to go with young men and girls in search of the islands of immortality.” The emperor was convinced that fate once again heard his thoughts.

On the appointed day, all twenty ships were launched. Under the bright sounds of flutes, cleansing from the evil eye and evil thoughts, the rowers took up the oars, and the flotilla, carrying three thousand young men and women, as well as a large number of various workers, servants and artisans, headed towards the East Sea.

Long days passed, weeks, finally months. There was no news from Su She. The emperor spent many hours on the shore, peering at the obscure horizon. But the ships never returned.

“Su She set sail,” a Chinese historian wrote about the end of this expedition, “he discovered lands remarkable for their peacefulness and fertility. There he settled, became king, and never came back."

When it became clear that Su She and his people would not return, the emperor began to look for other ways to immortality. Throughout the country, his messengers were looking for people involved in the knowledge of the ancients, higher wisdom and magic. He especially favored the Taoist monks - to whom, if not to them, this secret should be revealed!

The emperor had reason to think so. In ancient China, many believed that the Taoist monks jealously guarded the secret of some "immortality pills" that could supposedly prolong a person's life indefinitely. Texts mentioning this have survived to this day. But no one reports the composition of the pills. Only one source vaguely states that they, among other things, include "eight precious components."

Long and difficult was the way of making the “pills of immortality”: “The sun, moon and stars must complete their circle seven times, and the four seasons must return nine times. You must wash the compound until it turns white and churn until it turns red, then you will get an elixir that will give you life for ten thousand epochs.

By order of Qin Shi Huang, apartments were set aside in the depths of the palace, in which strange, silent people settled. They were supposed to prepare for the emperor alone the compounds and secret medicines they knew. Everyone, the very last subject, knew that the emperor ordered the wisest people to make sure that he lived forever. There was not a person in the empire who did not know that the will of their master was sacred. And so that none of the subjects - from the shepherd to the highest dignitary - did not have any doubts about the validity of this idea, Qin Shi Huang ruthlessly put to death those who thought differently throughout the long years of his reign.

That is why, when the emperor nevertheless died at the appointed hour, his subjects and courtiers faced a difficult dilemma: what should be considered more important - whether the sacred will of the emperor, who wished to live forever, or an insignificant fact that was before their eyes. However, the hesitation was short-lived. It was decided to consider the emperor alive. His body was placed on the throne, and from there, behind a screen, he gave silent audiences for many days to dignitaries, governors of provinces and diplomats. Still the same silent and motionless, sitting on the throne, the emperor traveled around the country, and only at the end of the month, overcoming fear and doubt, those close to him decided to bury what had once been their emperor. That's what the chronicles say.

Neither Qin Shi Huang nor the expedition sent by him found the water of eternal life. Later, in subsequent centuries, travelers from the Celestial Empire, busy searching for the source of eternal life, could often be seen in other countries. They searched especially hard in India.

Centuries passed, and here their paths invisibly intersected with the paths of the Jesuits and Catholic missionaries. One of these missionary travelers, in his letter from India in 1291, lamented the fact that his many years of searching had been in vain. By the way, at that time the opinions of theologians about where the source of living water was located differed: some were inclined to believe that they should continue searching in India, others, referring to the vague places of Scripture and the omissions of ancient authors, called Ceylon, and others - Ethiopia.

But when His Majesty's Admiral Christopher Columbus discovered new, unknown lands across the ocean, hopes for immortality, following the conquistadors and merchants, moved to the West.

The Italian humanist Pedro Martyr, who lived in those years and personally knew the great navigator, wrote to Pope Leo X: “North of Hispaniola, between other islands, there is one island at a distance of three hundred and twenty miles from it, as those who found it say. On the island there is an inexhaustible spring of flowing water of such miraculous properties that an old man who drinks it, while observing a certain diet, after a while will turn into a young man. I beg, Your Holiness, do not think that I am saying this out of frivolity or at random; this rumor has really established itself at court as an undoubted truth, and not only the common people, but many of those who stand above the crowd in their intelligence or wealth, also believe it.

Is it any wonder that among those who believed in the existence of the source of eternal life was the noble Castilian hidalgo Juan Ponce de Leon? He was already over fifty when he learned from the old Indians living in Puerto Rico about some country located in the north, where there is a source that gives eternal youth. It was said that a few years before this, many Indians from the island of Cuba went in search of her and not one of them returned. Do they need other evidence that they managed to find this country?!

Other Indians objected: is it worth embarking on such a long journey, when among the Bahamas there is also an island where exactly the same source of youth and eternal life beats.

Ponce de León was not the only Spaniard who heard these stories. But he turned out to be the only one who decided at his own peril and risk to equip an expedition in search of the island. Of course, if the rumors were about gold, funds and ships would immediately be found, and a crowd of volunteers would not be long in coming. But it was not about wealth, but only about immortality. True, Ponce de Leon himself was already at the age when people begin to understand the relative value of gold and the absolute value of life.

That is why, having invested all his funds in the purchase of three brigs, Ponce de Leon recruits a crew and at dawn on March 3, 1512, under cannon fire, orders to raise anchors. The sun shines brightly, foreshadowing good luck, the morning wind blows the sails, and the flotilla sets off. How many such ships were equipped in those years in search of new lands, spices or gold! But these were marked with a special sign. The one who led them was not called fame, power or wealth. Eternal life and eternal youth - that's what he was looking for. And for a long time, until the ships turned into three points on the horizon, a crowd stood on the shore and looked after them.

Weather and luck favored swimming, and soon the green islands of the Bahamas archipelago appeared in the distance. Each of them abounded in quiet bays and channels, convenient for parking ships. And each could be exactly what they were looking for. In the mornings, boats descended from the ships and, cutting through the blue expanse of the lagoon, headed for the shore. Those who remained on board envied those who had a happier fate that day. But no one expected their return with such impatience as the captain himself. In the evenings, the boats sailed up to the ship on which he was, and with a soft thud - tree on tree - froze at the tarred side. The boatswain Crooked Huang took the booty - copper flasks, flasks, bottles and flasks filled with water from all sources that could only be found on the island.

For a long time, after the crew went to bed, and the attendants took over for the night watch, the lantern continued to burn in the captain's cabin. The oil crackled in the wick, and then the reddish reflections shuddered on copper flasks, polished to a shine in rough sailor's pockets. Ponce de Leon lined them up on the table in front of him and slowly tasted the contents of each flask. They said that just a couple of sips are enough, that the transformation begins instantly.

In the morning, other sailors, those whom the lot indicated, sorted out empty flasks and went down the stump ladders overboard into the rocking boats. And while the captain looked impatiently at the sun, again waiting for the evening to come, the sailors, huddled under the awning, for the umpteenth time recounted to each other everything that they happened to hear from those who went ashore. If there is a heaven on earth, then it must be here, on these islands. The forests here are full of game, and the quiet streams are full of fish that you can catch with your hands right off the coast. But most importantly, it was a land - fertile, abundant in fruits and, most surprisingly, in fact, a draw. Because it was impossible to take seriously the timid Indians, who fled as soon as they heard the approach of the Spaniards. Could they, born among the rocky fields of Andalusia or the plains of Castile scorched by the sun, dream of such a land, of such a region?!

Crooked Huang did not interfere in these conversations. Passing by, he did not even listen to them. But not because he did not know about them or did not guess about the inevitable development of events that, he knew, would follow all this.

And again, long after midnight, the light was on in the captain's cabin. And again, after the crew had gone to sleep, muffled voices came from the cockpit for a long time. No matter how quietly Crooked Juan walked, every time he passed by, the voices subsided. But Juan only grinned in the dark. Tomorrow morning, as always, he would know everything. It is not for this that he sails the seas for seventeen years and escaped the gallows three times, so as not to learn to see what is happening under his nose. And Juan learned one more lesson from what he saw and what would have been enough for perhaps a dozen other lives - never to rush and not to adjoin either side until that very minute, the last minute, when the scales of fate will come into motion. And only then he, Crooked Juan, a moment before everyone else should understand what fate wants. And then, as has happened more than once, he will draw his pistols and be the first to shout: “Hurrah for the captain!” or "Captain to the yard!" But every time - exactly what you need to be with the winners.

True to himself, Crooked Juan was in no hurry this time either, although everything seemed to be clear and the fate of the insane hidalgo seemed to be a foregone conclusion.

So they moved from island to island, and no one complained, because each time the new island turned out to be even more beautiful than the one they had to leave. But the inevitable events that Juan foresaw were about to break out when an episode occurred that mixed all the cards.

In the evening, when the captain, as always, retired to the cabin with his flasks, Crooked Juan was missing one flask. Someone, having boarded, did not give it away, as usual, but kept it for itself. Why? The captain hardly notices. Juan was the only one on the ship who knew. This gave him an extra card in the game, and from it he decided to go.

The one who did not give up his flask actually risked little. But did he really think that if it became known, Crooked Juan wouldn't figure out who did it?

The very next morning, Juan knew who it was. For this enough was from those who were on the shore, subtract those who came to take the flasks. Rodrigo, nicknamed the Little Fox, was the one who ended up in the remnant. Again, Juan did not rush things. He only made sure that Foxkit got a job that day at the stern, on the quarterdeck, away from the others. Rewinding the ropes is not a very easy job, especially when the sun is directly overhead and there is no protection from it. Juan patiently waited until the shadow from the mast became short, like a fool's thought, and only after that he slowly moved towards the poop. The little fox did not immediately notice the boatswain, but noticing it, he began to rewind the thick pitched rope even more quickly. Juan came very close, so that there was almost no space between him and the sailor. Juan knew what he was doing.

- Is it hot, baby?

Only now the Little Fox dared to straighten up.

- Hot? – Juan painted a smile on his face, which could seem sincere only to the last idiot. - Maybe a sip of water? - And he stretched out his hand to the flask that hung from the Fox on his belt, stretched out his left hand, exactly the left.

He still continued to smile when his body barely had time to rush to the side, dodging the blow. At the same moment, his right hand, also as if by itself, against his will, shot up, and the knocked-out knife went deep into the deck boards. But not without reason the Little Fox was younger than him. The next moment he was ahead of the boatswain. There was only a splash overboard, and the Fox Cub, making wide strokes, was already quickly swimming towards the shore.

The shore, however, was not close, and Juan knew that the Little Fox would not be able to swim like this for a long time. He managed to think this in a fraction of a second, and in the same split second he was glad that he had made him work all morning - now he is no longer the swimmer. And in a fraction of a second, Juan's voice thundered already on the deck, and sailors rolled into the boat overboard one by one. Juan decided not to say anything about the flask for the time being, let him be caught first.

“That wretch tried to kill me,” he explained hastily, but the captain only pursed his thin lips and said nothing. Juan understood why: he was daring to be the first to speak before the elder spoke to him.

For the attack on the boatswain, Lisenka was provided with shackles and work on the galleys. He knew this and swam with all his might. But the distance between the boat and the swimmer was shrinking. However, the distance between the swimmer and the yellow strip of sand was shrinking even faster where the shore began. Ponce de Leon pushed the captain's cocked hat up to his forehead so that the sun would not dazzle his eyes. Now it became clear that the boat was really lagging behind, the rowers in it completely stopped working with oars. Squinting his eyes, Juan saw the captain's thin Castilian mustache twitch angrily. Of course, he is a hidalgo and a noble gentleman, but he does not understand the guys that swim with him. Doesn't understand at all. And Juan allowed himself to remark respectfully:

“Mr. Captain, he won’t leave. The kids just play with it. They want to play.

But the captain did not even look at him: he again committed insolence.

And the sailors really "played" with the fugitive. When it seemed that he was about to reach the shore, the oars suddenly flashed, the boat rushed from its place and in a minute found itself between the Little Fox and the surf. Then she froze again, slightly noticeably moving away from the shore and driving the Little Fox into the open sea. He apparently understood this and now barely waved his arms, just to stay on the water. But the boat was moving faster and faster, and he had to hurry to keep the distance short.

Then, it seemed, the boat fell behind again, and Fox managed to go around it and head to the shore. This was repeated several times, but even from the ship it was clear that the fugitive was already exhausted and could not hold out for a long time. When they tried to repeat this fun again on the boat, he began to sink. Now the rowers threw all their weight on the oars, but when the boat almost overtook him, Fox Cub surfaced for the last time, his hand suddenly rose out of the water, and he threw something that glittered in the sun away from myself. In a second, the boat was already over the place where the Fox Cub had just been, but he did not appear again.

The captain turned to Juan questioningly. Now he had to speak or shrug. Juan spoke and thus chose his fate.

“Mr. Captain, this sailor hid his flask last night. Today when I asked for it...

Crooked Juan had never seen a person turn so pale all at once.

“The boat,” the hidalgo parted his parched lips.

There were no more boats on the ship. There was only a double boat, and Juan himself sat on the oars.

When they finally reached the boat with the sailors waiting for them, everyone began to point out the place where Little Fox had thrown his flask.

“Fifty reais to whoever finds it.”

Should have been born rich and have behind back a string of rich ancestors to pronounce it the way it was said.

- Fifty reais? - Like an echo, Juan asked. It was a state. Juan regretted that he was not a simple sailor and could not dive into the water now after the others. He had never seen such money in his entire life, not only to hold it in his hands, but also to see it. And he had everything in his life.

Still found the flask. The one who succeeded, raised it high above his head and shouted so that the captain would see and others would not take away the find from him.

Juan only held the flask in his hands for a moment before handing it to the captain, but that was enough for him to realize what was in it. And having understood, he was afraid that the captain would guess that he knew. This discovery so shocked him that his hands did not obey him well and he barely rowed to the ship. But the captain didn't notice. The captain had no time for him.

That evening the muffled talk in the sailor's quarters continued longer than usual. On the other two ships, Juan knew, it was the same. And when, at dawn, the captain ordered suddenly to raise the sails and weigh anchor, a riot broke out on all three ships.

The team did not want to sail further. They will settle here, on these lands, they will grow grapes and olives, grow wheat - everyone here will become a noble lord. Let whoever wants to swim with this crazy hidalgo, but not them, not them! Crooked Huang knew that he would stay with them. But only not in order to harvest crops here or breed sheep. He would take up other business here - and the later the others knew about it, the better. The moment he took the flask out of the water, his hand could not be mistaken. Water couldn't have weighed that much - there was gold in the flask!

And Juan understood and knew one more thing, something that the others didn’t think of, didn’t have time to understand: if they stay here, they don’t need witnesses. He felt that the moment was approaching when the scales of fate would waver and begin to move. These people did not have a leader, in a minute he will become one. And then, blocking all the hubbub and screams that rushed from the decks of the three brigs that came together, he shouted as he shouted only his commands during a storm:

- Captain on the yard!

At first everyone was silent, but then several voices picked up:

- On the yard! Captain on the yard!

And already everyone screamed, roared, bleated:

- Captain on the yard!

Because everyone knew: after these words there is no turning back. And that meant the end of all doubt and hesitation. Someone hurriedly dragged the rope, adjusting the noose as they went, someone dragged the captain in the torn and crumpled camisole onto the barrel. Now everything was decided by moments. If the captain can be pulled up before anyone hesitates, even if there is at least one voice against, then the deed is done and he, Juan, can congratulate himself. If the one with the rope hadn't hesitated, maybe that's how it would have happened. But the captain suddenly raised his hand. And then everyone was silent. “So, even now, and under the noose, he still remained their captain,” Juan managed to think. And again: "You can't let him talk."

But the captain had already spoken. And by the way his voice sounded calm and authoritative, Juan realized that he had lost.

“Let those who want to dig in the ground stay here,” said the captain. “Then he deserves nothing better, nothing else.

“To the yard,” Juan tried to shout, but everyone shushed him, and he bit his tongue.

“Sailors, I, Ponce de Leon, will make sure that your former masters, all with whom you served, will bow at your waist, wallow at your feet. There will be no richer people in the world than you. Let them bring the flask that I have in my cabin ...

“Look,” he raised the flask above his head, “it's gold. I neglected them...

And from his elevation, he began to throw small nuggets at the feet of those standing on the deck.

- I'm leaving it because the day will come when you will also leave it as unnecessary. For every sip of water that restores youth, you will be paid more gold than your pockets can hold. Sailors…

Crooked Juan made a slight movement to get to the ladder, but several hands were already holding him tenaciously.

- Hurray for the captain! someone shouted. - Hooray! the others picked up.

A few minutes later, Juan was already in the stocks below, in a deaf and damp hold. The days stretched out, which were indistinguishable for him from the night. He no longer hoped for anything, he did not expect anything. He did not go already with rage when another sailor, bringing food, tried to put it so that he could not reach it. Or deliberately tried to spill those half a mug of water that relied on him for a day. Sometimes he thought about whether the royal alcalde would sentence him to the gallows or to the galley. But for some reason, this didn’t really bother him either, as if what happened didn’t happen to him, but to someone else, whose fate was actually quite indifferent to him.

Therefore, when one of the days (or nights) the hatch of the hold rose and they came for him, Juan could not know what this meant. He could not know that long weeks of fruitless searching had passed. That now, driven by impatience, the captain himself went down to the shore and went around all the springs he could find. Mesmerized by his faith, the crew devoutly combed island after island, and each failure only strengthened everyone in the hope: if not today, then tomorrow.

But the captain now knew the price of this devotion and this faith. The safest thing, he thought, was to get rid of the instigators as soon as possible, without waiting for the return to Puerto Rico. Several people he landed already on the islands along the way. Today was Juan's turn.

The sailors pulled him out of the boat and threw him on the pebbles near the surf. Then, when the boat had already sailed, they remembered that they had not left him a crate of provisions and a couple of knives, as the captain had ordered. They did not want to row back, and they simply threw their cargo into the sea.

But despite all this, Crooked Juan survived. And not only survived, but also survived the noble hidalgo, the owner of three large ships of Ponce de Leon.

The ships, meanwhile, continued on their way, and one day at dawn they discovered a flowering island, which could not be compared with any they had seen before. It was Palm Sunday ("Pascua Florida"), and the captain named the land, which he mistook for an island, Florida.

But no matter how peaceful and beautiful this land seemed, cut through by a hundred small streams and rivers, the Indians who lived here turned out to be just as warlike and implacable. They did not care much about what motives the aliens were guided by and what they were looking for. They met the white strangers, as they were accustomed to meet enemies who encroached on their hunting grounds and huts. In one of the skirmishes, the captain himself was among the wounded ...

Many other adventures and disasters befell the Spaniards as the ships continued on their long journey. Finally, fighting the hostile trade winds, they returned to the port they had left many months before. Ponce de Leon, not without profit, sold his ships and returned to Spain.

Madrid already knew about the courageous attempt of the hidalgo to find the water of eternal life. As soon as he arrived and managed to settle in the hotel, a messenger appeared, demanding him to the king's palace.

The king looked with curiosity at a man who actually could have been lucky. And then, standing here, he would hold a bottle of water of eternal life brought for his king. And he, the King of Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon, would be the first (and perhaps the only) of the Christian kings, living forever.

In any case, it's not the fault of the hidalgo that this time he was unlucky. The king listened graciously to the story of Ponce de Leon and showed him signs of his favor and attention. Respectfully withdrawing from the audience, Ponce de Leon was no longer what he was, stepping under the high vaults of the hall. With a wave of the royal hand, he became "His Excellency", the governor of the "Island of Florida" discovered by him ...

In his secret hopes for immortality, the king of Spain was not alone among other monarchs. Is it possible that the lord, being unlike other people in everything, could be equated with them even in the face of death? The Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang was probably the first who tried to rebel against the inexorable law of being. History knows other rulers who, each in their own way, tried to proclaim their immortality. The Western Roman co-emperors Arcadius and Honorius (395-408) promulgated an edict announcing that from that moment on, subjects, addressing them, should no longer say “your majesty”, but “your eternity”. The main argument in this case was the following: "Those who dare to deny the divine essence of our personalities will be deprived of their positions, and their property will be confiscated."

For the subjects, this argument was, of course, very convincing. But not for nature.

In the same way, at one time, his subjects were sincerely convinced of the immortal nature of Emperor Augustus. And even earlier, the peoples of the countries he captured were revered as immortal Alexander the Great.

And is it not a mockery of fate: the natives who lived in the vicinity of that same Puerto Rico, from where the brave hidalgo Ponce de Leon went in search of immortality, were themselves convinced that the Spaniards who conquered them were immortal! That is why the proud Indians endured all the oppression and arbitrariness that the conquistadors repaired. And indeed, is it possible to imagine an undertaking more senseless and hopeless than an uprising against the immortals?

As often happens, the "discovery" began with a doubt. There was a local leader who doubted that the cruel white gods do not know death. In order to test this, it was decided to conduct a rather bold experiment. Learning that a certain young Spaniard was going to proceed through his possessions, the leader assigned an honorary escort to him, to whom he gave appropriate instructions. Following them, the Indians, when they crossed the river, dropped the stretcher and kept the Spaniard under water until he stopped escaping. Then they pulled it ashore and, just in case, apologized to the “white god” for a long time and floridly, that they dared to accidentally drop it. But he did not move and did not accept their apologies. To make sure that this was not a trick and not a pretense, the Indians did not take their eyes off the body for several days, either watching him stealthily from the tall grass, then approaching again and repeating their apologies once again ...

After that, the Indians were convinced that their conquerors were as mortal as they were. And having made sure, in one day and hour they raised an uprising throughout the island, exterminating and expelling the Spaniards to the last. True, not for long.

As for Ponce de Leon, he - a man who sought immortality - finally died from a wound he once received in Florida. “In this way,” the author of an old Spanish chronicle edifyingly remarks, “fate destroys human plans: the discovery by which Ponce hoped to prolong his life served to shorten it.”

Crooked Juan, a few years later, was removed from the island by a brig accidentally passing by. Nobody believed the story he told. But the name of Ponce de Leon was known at the time, and the fact that Juan sailed with him aroused the interest of several very elderly (and equally wealthy) Spaniards. For several years, Crooked Juan served as a kind of guide on expeditions organized by them. But Juan's trouble was that he was not endowed with fantasy. Therefore, the information he had on where to look for the water of eternal life was quickly exhausted. And soon after that, he himself was lost somewhere in the seaside taverns and taverns of the New World.

Just as irretrievably lost in the past are the names and fates of many others who, like Juan or his reckless captain, went in search of the water of eternal youth. But were these searches so insane?

The human body is 70 percent water. No wonder one famous biologist figuratively called living beings "animate water." Obviously, for the health and longevity of a person, it is not indifferent what kind of water nourishes the tissues of his body. Indeed, in recent years it has become known that water differs significantly not only in chemical impurities, but also in isotopic composition and other features. Many properties of water change, for example, if it is passed between the poles of a magnet. Water can be more biologically active, and this affects the aging process of the body. But much about the properties of water - an important component of our body - we still do not know.

In any case, today it is no longer vague legends and not ancient legends, but scientific research that speaks of the influence of water on the health and life expectancy of the inhabitants of different regions of the Earth.

It is known that the inhabitants of some Caribbean islands, such as Guadeloupe, look much younger than their European peers. When they are asked how they manage to keep their youth for a long time, the answer usually follows: “On our island, such water flows from sources that rejuvenates a person ...” The inhabitants of the central regions of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) are also distinguished by excellent health. The inhabitants of Sri Lanka consider the climate and water of mountain springs to be the cause of their health. Apparently, it was no coincidence that the ancients tried to look for life-giving water on this island.

The longevity of the highlanders and a number of peoples of the North, some scientists also associate with the water they drink. This is the so-called "melt water effect", which has a beneficial effect on metabolism and thus, as it were, "rejuvenates" the body.

Today, the search is no longer carried out on distant islands or in unknown lands. They are carried out in dozens of laboratories of the world's largest scientific centers that study the properties of water and its effect on the human body.

People who were extremely anxious to lengthen their lives as much as possible were, for the most part, endowed with wealth and power. They were looking for the shortest path. And such a way seemed to exist. The most ancient traditions and legends mentioned him - this is the "elixir of immortality", which the gods ate. In different countries it was called differently. The gods of the ancient Greeks used ambrosia, which gives eternal life, the Indian gods - amrita, the gods of the Iranians - haoma. And only the gods of Ancient Egypt, showing majestic modesty, preferred water to other food of the gods. True, all the same water of immortality.

Of the people, no one approached the elixir of immortality as close as the alchemists, who, however, were looking for something completely different - ways to make gold. There was a certain logic to this. Immortality is a state that is not subject to change. Isn't gold the only substance that is not subject to external influences? It is not afraid of alkalis or acids, it is not afraid of corrosion. It seemed that time itself was powerless before him. Doesn't this metal contain some principle that makes it so? And is it possible to isolate this substance from it or bring it into the human body along with gold? “Whoever takes gold inside,” says one ancient oriental text, “he will live as long as gold.” This is the traditional basis of ancient beliefs: eat the eyes of an eagle - you will be like an eagle, eat the heart of a lion - you will be strong like a lion ...

Gold was an indispensable component of various versions of the elixir of immortality. A recipe compiled by the personal physician of Pope Boniface VIII has come down to us: gold, pearls, sapphires, emeralds, rubies, topazes, white and red corals, ivory, sandalwood, deer heart, aloe root, musk and ambergris should be mixed in crushed form. (We hope that prudence will deter readers from overly hasty application of the composition given here.)

Another composition was not much simpler, which can be found in one ancient oriental book: “You need to take a toad that has lived for 10,000 years, and a bat that has lived for 1,000 years, dry them in the shade, grind them into powder and take them.”

And here is the recipe from the ancient Persian text: “You need to take a person, red and freckled, and feed him with fruits up to 30 years, then lower him into a stone vessel with honey and other compounds, enclose this vessel in hoops and hermetically seal it. In 120 years, his body will turn into a mummy.” After that, the contents of the vessel, including what became the mummy, could be taken as a remedy and a means of prolonging life.

Errors, which germinate in every sphere of human activity, have yielded a particularly bountiful harvest in this field. Mention may be made in this connection of a French scholar of the 15th century. In search of the elixir of life, he boiled 2000 eggs, separated the whites from the yolks and, mixing them with water, distilled them many times, hoping in this way to extract the desired substance of life.

The sheer senselessness of such recipes does not testify to the senselessness of the search itself. Only that which was discarded as unnecessary became known. But if we judge the history of this or that science only by unsuccessful experiments and failed discoveries, the picture will probably be about the same.

Experiments in the field of immortality were distinguished by one circumstance - the complete mystery that surrounded the results. If we imagine that one of these attempts was successful, that is, someone managed to lengthen his life somewhat, then, naturally, everything was done so that this recipe would not become anyone's property. If, having taken the drug, the object of the experiment parted with his life, he, all the more, could no longer tell anyone about his sad fate. Such a fate befell, for example, the Chinese emperor Xuanzong (713-756). He went to his royal ancestors much earlier than the due date, only because he had the imprudence to take the elixir of immortality, made by his court physician.

Among the few of whom we know that, having taken the elixir, they considered themselves immortal, there was one rich gentleman-philanthropist who lived in Moscow in the last century, whom everyone called simply by his first name and patronymic - Andrei Borisovich. By old age, he began to indulge in various researches related to the elixir of eternal life, guided mainly by his own intuition. And since a person is inclined to believe in himself more than in any other authority, it is not surprising that soon Andrei Borisovich was completely sure that he had finally found the composition he was looking for. Like many other seekers of the elixir of immortality, he preferred to keep his find a secret. He himself believed in the effect of the composition so much that he really felt rejuvenated, he even began to go to dances ... Until his last minute, he did not doubt his own immortality at all.

This case is reminiscent of the story of another Russian gentleman who lived around the same time and also believed in his own immortality. Even in his youth, once in Paris, he visited the famous soothsayer Lenormand. Having told him everything pleasant and unpleasant that awaits him in the future, Lenormand completed her prediction with a phrase that left an imprint on his whole future life.

“I must warn you,” she said, “that you will die in bed.

- When? What time? the young man turned pale.

The soothsayer shrugged.

From that moment on, he made it his goal to avoid what seemed to be destined for him by fate. Upon his return to Moscow, he ordered all beds, sofas, down jackets, pillows and blankets to be taken out of his apartment. During the day, half asleep, he rode around the city in a carriage, accompanied by a Kalmyk housekeeper, two footmen, and a fat pug, which he kept on his knees. Of all the entertainment available at the time, he enjoyed attending funerals the most. Therefore, the coachman and postilion traveled around Moscow all day in search of funeral processions, to which their master immediately joined. It is not known what he thought about while listening to the funeral of others - perhaps he was secretly glad that all this had nothing to do with him, since he did not go to bed, and therefore, the prediction could not come true, and he would thus avoid of death.

For fifty years he waged his duel with fate. But once, when, as usual, he was half asleep in the church, believing that he was present at the funeral, his housekeeper almost married him to some of her elderly friend. This incident so frightened the gentleman that a nervous shock occurred to him. Sick, wrapped in shawls, he sat dejectedly in his armchair, flatly refusing to obey the doctor and go to bed. Only when he was so weak that he could no longer resist did the lackeys forcefully lay him down. As soon as he felt himself in bed, he died. How strong was faith in prediction?

No matter how great the delusions and mistakes, in spite of everything, in spite of failures and disappointments, the search for immortality, the search for ways to prolong life was not interrupted. Mistakes, ignorance, failures were immediately ridiculed. But the smallest step towards success was closed by a secret.

That is why information about the successes that have been achieved along this path is isolated, scattered and unreliable.

There is, for example, a message about Bishop Allen de Lisle, a person who really existed (he died in 1278), practiced medicine - the historical annals refer to him only as a "universal healer." He allegedly knew the composition of the elixir of immortality, or at least some method of significantly extending life. When he was already many years old and he was dying of old age, with the help of this elixir he managed to extend his life for another 60 years.

Zhang Daoling (34-156), also a historical person, the founder of the philosophical system of Tao in China, managed to extend his life for the same period. After many years of persistent experimentation, he succeeded allegedly in the manufacture of some semblance of the legendary pills of immortality. When he was 60 years old, chronicles say, he regained his youth and lived to be 122 years old.

Along with these are other messages of the ancients. Aristotle and other authors mention Epimenides, a priest and famous poet from the island of Crete. It is known that in 596 BC he was invited to Athens to offer purification sacrifices there. According to legend, Epimenides managed to extend his life to 300 years.

But this age is not the limit. The Portuguese court historian tells in his chronicle about a certain Indian with whom he personally met and talked and who was allegedly 370 years old at that time.

Similar evidence includes a book published in Turin in 1613 and containing a biography of a Goa resident who allegedly lived to be almost 400 years old. Close to this figure are the years of the life of one Muslim saint (1050-1433), who also lived in India. In Rajasthan (India) and now there is a legend about the hermit Munisadhe, who retired to the caves near Dholpur in the 16th century and hides there ... until now.

Roger Bacon, a scientist and philosopher of the Middle Ages, was also interested in the problem of prolonging human life. In his essay De secretis operebus, he tells of a German named Papalius, who, having spent many years in captivity with the Saracens, learned the secret of making some kind of drug and thanks to him lived to be 500 years old. Pliny the Elder also names the same number of years - it was up to this age, according to his testimony, that a certain Illyrian managed to extend his life.

An example closer to us in time is the information about the Chinese Li Canyun. He died in 1936, leaving behind a widow who was, according to the record, his 24th wife. Li Canyong is said to have been born in 1690, which means he lived to be 246 years old.

But the strangest and most fantastic message from the same series is associated with the name of the Indian Tapasviji, who allegedly lived for 186 years (1770-1956). At the age of 50, he, being a Raja in Patiala, decided to retire to the Himalayas in order to become "beyond human sorrows." After many years of exercises, Tapasviji learned to plunge into the so-called state of "samadhi", when life seemed to completely leave his body, and he could not take any drink or food for a long time. This practice was reported by the British, who served in the colonial administration in India. They told of yogis who, after thoroughly cleansing the stomach and intestines, covered their ears and nose with wax and plunged into a state reminiscent of the hibernation of insects. In this state, they did not stay for a day or two, but for several weeks, after which they were brought back to life with the help of hot water and massage.

The fate of Tapasvija may not come as much of a surprise. Long-livers are known, naturally living up to 140-148 years of age. There is nothing fundamentally impossible in the fact that Tapasviji or someone else, using diet and other means, was able to push this limit back for a few more decades, there is nothing fundamentally impossible. It will be about the amazing testimony of Tapasviji himself.

Once, he said, at the foothills of the Himalayas he met an old hermit. He ate only fruits and milk, and looked unusually energetic and cheerful. But, most surprisingly, the hermit did not speak any of the modern Indian languages, speaking only in Sanskrit, the language of ancient India. It turned out that 5,000 years have passed since he came here! He managed to prolong his life to such limits allegedly thanks to a certain composition, the secret of which he owned. Reaching the age of 5000 years has not yet been “blocked” by any of the “long-livers” - neither in historical chronicles, nor in legends, nor in legends.

However, no matter how fantastic such a message, no matter how long the period of fifty centuries, all this is not immortality itself, but only some approaches to it, distant approaches. That is why scientists and fanatics, philosophers and madmen so persistently continued to search for the elixir of immortality - a means capable of bestowing eternal life. They gave these searches years, decades. Sometimes a whole life.

Alexander Cagliostro (1743-1795)

Many contemporaries believed that he possessed the secret of the elixir of immortality.

“The greatest charlatan and deceiver that history has ever known,” some say.

"A man who possessed infinite knowledge and power," say others

… A German provincial town with cobbled streets, traditional red tiled roofs and the inevitable gothic. Under one of these roofs, in the attic, in a fantastic environment of flasks, retorts and crucibles, a young man is sitting. He is busy with a business no less fantastic than the environment around him - the search for the elixir of eternal life. However, the most surprising thing is that this person is none other than Goethe, the young Goethe, who devoted several years of his life to the persistent search for the elixir of immortality. Not wanting to repeat the same mistakes, fall into the same dead ends and wander in the same labyrinths as his predecessors, he carefully studies the works of alchemists, looking for their most forgotten and hidden works. “I am secretly trying,” he wrote in those years, “to draw at least some information from the great books, before which the learned crowd half bows, half laughs at them, because they do not understand them. To delve into the secrets of these books is the joy of people wise and marked by fine taste.

So the great poet, as an alchemist, a seeker of the elixir of immortality, turns out to be on a par with rather strange people. One of them was his contemporary - Alexander Cagliostro. The greatest charlatan and deceiver that history has ever known - some people thought so. A man who possessed infinite knowledge and power - so others argued.

If we thought of telling about all the adventures and adventures of this man, the pages allotted here would hardly be enough for us. In addition to the mystery of his origin and the unknown source of wealth, Cagliostro had another secret. “They say,” one of the newspapers wrote at that time, “Count Cagliostro possesses all the wonderful secrets of the great adept and discovered the secret of preparing a life elixir.” Was it not this rumor that made Cagliostro such a significant figure in the courts of royalty? So significant that the French king Louis XVI declared that any disrespect or insult to this person would be punished on a par with an insult to his majesty.

During Cagliostro's stay in St. Petersburg, secular ladies, struck by the youthful beauty of his wife Lorenza, were even more amazed when they learned from her words that she was over forty and that her eldest son had long served as a captain in the Dutch army. In response to natural questions, Lorenza somehow "said" that her husband owns the secret of the return of youth.

The strange charm inherent in Cagliostro, the mystery that surrounded him, attracted the attention of the Russian court to him. The personal doctor of the Empress, the Englishman Robertson, not without reason, sensed a potential rival in the visiting celebrity. Using the methods adopted at court, he tried to denigrate the count in the eyes of those who were close to the throne. The naive court physician expected to fight Cagliostro with the weapon that he himself wielded best - the weapon of intrigue. However, the count chose to "cross swords" on his own terms. He challenged Robertson to a duel, but an unusual duel - on poisons. Everyone had to drink the poison prepared by the enemy, after which he was free to take any antidote. With the firmness of a man who does not doubt success, Cagliostro insisted on precisely such conditions for the duel. Intimidated by his strange confidence, Robertson refused to accept the challenge. The duel did not take place. Perhaps Robertson heard rumors about the elixir of immortality, which his opponent allegedly possessed - it is possible that he, like many of his contemporaries, believed in this.

But the favorite of fate, Count Cagliostro, challenged her too often, made risky bets too often. In the end, he fell "odd", and this card was the last in his life. Cagliostro was captured by the Inquisition, imprisoned, where he is said to have died in 1795, chained to the wall of a deep stone well.

Cagliostro's personal papers, as was usually the case on such occasions, were burned. Only a copy of one of his notes, previously taken in the Vatican, has survived. It describes the process of "regeneration", or the return of youth: "... by taking this (two grains of the drug. - Auth.), a person loses consciousness and speechlessness for three whole days, during which he often experiences convulsions, convulsions and perspiration appears on his body. Waking up from this state, in which, however, he does not experience the slightest pain, on the thirty-sixth day he takes the third, and last, grain, after which he falls into a deep and calm sleep. During sleep, the skin peels off, teeth and hair fall out. They all grow back within a few hours. On the morning of the fortieth day, the patient leaves the room, becoming a new person, having experienced complete rejuvenation.

No matter how fantastic the above description may seem, it is strangely reminiscent of the Indian method of restoring youth "kayakalpa". This course, according to his own stories, was taken by Tapasviji twice in his life. He first did this when he was 90 years old. Interestingly, his treatment also lasted forty days, most of which he also spent in a state of sleep and meditation. After forty days, new teeth allegedly also grew in him, his gray hair acquired its former black color, and former vigor and strength returned to his body.

However, although in ancient texts, in medieval and later records, we find references to such "regenerations", none of them speaks of the composition of the drug used.

Should this be surprising?

Have you heard of the Comte Saint Germain,

about which so many wonderful things are said.

(A. S. Pushkin. The Queen of Spades)

So many tried to find the path to immortality that their efforts could not but give rise to their own mythology. According to the legends, some managed to find the door leading to immortality. Does this mean that they still live among people, carefully guarding their secret?

These legends, where truth is intertwined with fiction, should have appeared without fail. They are as inevitable in the history of human thought as the legend of Daedalus and Icarus - people who managed to fly into the sky on wings. The search for immortality could not have been if there had not been mysterious rumors that someone managed to achieve what he was looking for and cross the line that separated him from the rest of mortals - this is how stories about Eldorado, the legendary land of gold, encouraged more and more new daredevils to go to her search. People believed and were ready to believe that someone managed to achieve immortality, because this faith left hope, gave a chance for good luck.

The well-known Arab scholar Biruni wrote in the year 1000 about a certain Elias, who found the way to immortality in antiquity and allegedly continued to live in his time. Biruni called Elias "ever-living".

Among others who might be remembered in this connection, one of the first to come to mind is the philosopher of the Pythagorean school, Apollonius of Tyana (1st century AD).

In his earliest youth, he refused meat food, considering it "unclean and clouding the mind", began to walk barefoot, did without a woolen dress, etc. Having imposed a vow of silence, he kept it for five years.

In search of higher knowledge, Apollonius of Tyana went to India, famous for its hermits, scientists and secret sciences. On the way he was joined by a certain Damid.

“Let's go together, Apollonius,” he said. “You will see that I can be useful. Although I know little, I do know the road to Babylon and the cities along that road. Finally, I know the languages ​​of the barbarians, how many there are. One language is spoken by the Armenians, another by the Medes and Persians, and a third by the Caduans. I know all these languages.

- And I, my dear, - objected Apollonius, - I know all languages, although I have not studied any of them.

Damid expressed his surprise.

“Do not be surprised that all human dialects are known to me,” remarked the philosopher, “for I also understand human silence.

Returning from India, Apollonius did many amazing things that remained in the memory of his contemporaries. During the time of Nero, he visited Rome, visited Egypt, Sicily, Gibraltar.

He survived ten emperors, and when the eleventh reigned, Apollonius of Tyana, already an old man of seventy, returned to Rome. Here, by order of the emperor Domitian, he was captured and imprisoned. Wanting to show everyone the boundlessness of his power, the emperor ordered a trial of the philosopher in order to punish dissent itself in his face. On the appointed day and hour, the most distinguished citizens of the city gathered in a magnificently decorated hall. Under heavy guard, Apollonius was brought in. But in the midst of the trial, when false witnesses stigmatized him, accusing him of the black book and disrespect for the emperor, in front of everyone, Apollonius disappeared from the crowded hall.

On the same day, a few hours later, people who knew Apollonius personally saw him allegedly at a distance of three days' journey from Rome.

Soon after his strange disappearance from the Roman courtroom, Apollonius of Tyana appeared in Greece, where he lived at the temples. We do not know, however, either the time or place of the death of this philosopher. Nor was it known to his contemporaries. In the annals of history, he is listed as "missing." That is why, remembering many other amazing things that this man did, the rumor attributed to him one more quality - immortality.

For a number of centuries it was believed that Apollonius, having escaped death, continued to hide somewhere among the people. A thousand years have passed, and this rumor, it would seem, was confirmed. In the 12th century, there lived a philosopher and alchemist who called himself Artephius. Many contemporaries believed, however, that Apollonius of Tyana was hiding under this guise. Two works signed by Artephius have come down to us - a treatise on the philosopher's stone and an essay on ways to prolong life. It would seem, who, if not the great Apollonius, should write about these subjects? So thought not only contemporaries. Three centuries later, when printing appeared and Artephius' treatise on immortality was published, the preface to it said that the author had special reasons for writing this book, since by that time he himself had already lived 1025 years. This work is replete with dark allusions and omissions, as if the writer was trying to address, above the crowd, those few who could understand him. “Pitiful fool,” he writes in his address to the reader, “are you really so naive that you think that every word we say should be taken literally and that we will reveal to you the most amazing of mysteries?”

Apollonius of Tyana (3 BC - 97 (?) AD), philosopher of the Pythagorean school

For a number of centuries it was believed that Apollonius, having escaped death, continued to hide somewhere among people under a different name. “About how Apollonius died - if he died, they tell everything ...” - wrote Flavius ​​Philostratus

Of course, today it would not be difficult to reproach the people who once lived for both gullibility and naivety. But let's not rush to do it. Who knows what those who will live as many centuries after us will be able to reproach us with? What seems incredible to us today did not at all seem so to people who lived at that time. Apollonius of Tyana is not the only example of this. Other personalities are also known in history, who in their time aroused no less interest and no less readiness of those around them to believe everything incredible that was connected with them.

... In 1750, in Paris, there was only talk about Count Saint-Germain. It was a strange person. There were rumors that the count knew the path leading to immortality.

Saint-Germain appeared suddenly, with no past, not even any vaguely plausible history that could pass for the past. It was as if a door had suddenly opened somewhere in the wall and this man had stepped out. He left only to disappear behind the same door when the time came. Just as it was with Cagliostro, we know as little about him and about the origin of his fantastic wealth as his contemporaries.

The Count preferred not to talk about himself, but sometimes, as if by chance, he “let slip”. And then it was clear from his words that he had to personally talk with Plato, with Seneca, know the apostles, be present at the feast of Ashurbanipal, etc. Each time, however, he caught himself, like a man who said too much. Once, when the count was in Dresden, someone asked his coachman if it was true that his master was 400 years old. He answered very innocently that he did not know for sure.

“…But in the one hundred and thirty years that I have served my master, his lordship has not changed a bit.

This strange confession found, however, no less strange confirmation.

Adopted in the finest homes, the Count enchanted everyone with his manners, amazing erudition, and extraordinary awareness of the past. His appearance led to amazement and confusion of elderly aristocrats, who suddenly recalled that they had already seen this man, had seen him for a long time, in childhood, in the salons of their grandmothers. And since then, they marveled, he had not changed at all in appearance.

It turned out that long before this man suddenly appeared in Paris under the name of Comte Saint-Germain, he had been seen in England, known in Holland, remembered in Italy. He lived there under various names and titles. And if it were not for the testimonies of those who knew him well, one would really think that the Marquis of Montfert, the Count de Bellamy and the same Count Saint-Germain are different people. About a dozen pseudonyms are known under which this person appeared in different places and at different times. In Genoa and Livorno, he even pretended to be a Russian general with an almost Russian surname - Soltykov.

Some considered the count a Spaniard, others - a Frenchman or a Portuguese, others - a Russian. But everyone agreed that it was impossible to determine the age of the count. It was a time when the stories associated with the search for the elixir of immortality and the "water of eternal life" were still fresh in the memory of many. It is not surprising that there was a rumor that the count knew the secret of the elixir of immortality.

This secret of his was respectfully mentioned by the very respectable London Chronicle in its issue of June 3, 1760, in connection with the visit of the Comte St. Germain to London. The article, written in almost reverent tones, listed the high merits of the count and talked about his wisdom, which revealed to him the secret of the elixir of eternal life. For this elixir for her king and lover, the “first lady of France” the Marquise de Pompadour pleaded in vain.

Count Saint-Germain (1710(?) - 1784(?))

He was a strange person. There were rumors that the count knew the path leading to immortality. It was a time when the stories associated with the search for the elixir of immortality and the "water of eternal life" were still fresh in the memory of many.

Saint-Germain appeared suddenly, with no past, not even any vaguely plausible history that could pass for the past. Some considered the count a Spaniard, others - a Frenchman, others - a Russian

Cagliostro was a contemporary of Saint Germain. In the minutes of the court of the Inquisition, a story recorded from the words of Cagliostro about his visit to Saint-Germain has been preserved. Cagliostro claimed to have seen a vessel in which the count kept the elixir of immortality.

Saint Germain's departure from France was sudden and inexplicable. Despite the patronage of the Marquise de Pompadour and the great attention that the king surrounded him with, this strange man unexpectedly leaves Paris, in order to appear suddenly in Holstein some time later, where he spends several years all alone in his castle. There he allegedly died in 1784.

But it was a most strange death. One of his contemporaries, who knew the count, called her "imaginary death"; he wrote that none of the tombstones in the area bear the name of Saint-Germain.

A year later, a meeting of Freemasons took place in Paris. A list of those who attended it has been preserved - there, next to the names of Mesmer, Lavater and others, is the name of Saint-Germain.

Three years later, in 1788, the French envoy to Venice, Count Chalon, meets Saint-Germain in St. Mark's Square and talks with him.

During the years of the French Revolution, the count was allegedly identified in one of the prisons where aristocrats were kept. “Count Saint-Germain,” wrote one of them in 1790, “is still in this world and feels great.”

Autograph letter of Saint Germain

30 years after his “imaginary death”, the elderly aristocrat Madame Genlis, who knew the count well in her youth, meets this man on the sidelines of the Congress of Vienna. He did not change at all, but when the elderly lady rushed to him with joyful exclamations, he, preserving courtesy, tried not to drag out the unexpected meeting, and was not seen again in Vienna.

Much more circumspect was one retired dignitary. In the last years of the reign of Louis Philippe, that is, when almost none of the people who knew Saint-Germain personally were left alive, on one of the Parisian boulevards he noticed a man who painfully reminded him of his youth. It was Saint Germain, still the same as the dignitary had known him decades ago. But the old man did not rush to the count with exclamations and hugs. He called his valet, who was waiting in the carriage, and ordered him to follow this man everywhere and find out who he was. A few days later the old man knew that this man was known in his circle under the name of Major Fraser, but, despite his English name, he was not an Englishman, that he lived alone and, apart from two lackeys and a coachman, did not keep any servants in the house.

Observing the greatest precautions, through a figurehead, the old man turned to a private detective. But he could only add that the "major" has unlimited funds, the source of which, as well as about himself, nothing is known.

Taking advantage of the fact that he now knew when this man goes out on the boulevards in the evenings, the old man found an excuse to supposedly accidentally get to know him. A couple of times they even had dinner together. As is often the case with older people, no matter what the old dignitary talked about, his thoughts always involuntarily returned to the past.

“Yes, my young friend, this cafe used to know better times. I don't mean the cuisine or even the number of visitors, but those who have been here.

Everything changed after the Convention.

– Yes, everything changed after the Convention. It seems that the Jacobins decided to set up their club here, and since then the walls themselves seemed to have changed. But once I met the Marquis de Boisfy himself here. He used to come here with his cousin.

“The marquis had two cousins, do you mean Henri?”

- No, senior. His father or grandfather seems to have been in the War of the Spanish Succession.

- It was his grandfather. Vicomte de Poitiers. The rider was excellent. There was nothing better in his time. Too bad it didn't end well...

The dignitary slightly raised an eyebrow, which in his time and among the people of his circle was understood as a non-persistent question, which can be either answered or not noticed. His interlocutor preferred to answer:

- The fact is that the father of the viscount - he served his majesty Louis XIV - was distinguished not only by a dissolute disposition, but it was never possible to say what could be expected from him. He could, for example, invite you to hunt on his estate, and then, when you suffer for two days in a carriage on the way from Paris to his castle, it turns out that he himself went to Nantes or somewhere else ...

“… But this is not the most important thing,” continued the one who introduced himself to the old man as “Major Fraser,” “someone at court advised the viscount to write out a valet from Saxony. I won’t say what kind of valet he was, but there was probably no more red-haired person at that time in the entire French kingdom. For some reason, the viscount was very proud of this, and one day at a dinner with the Dutch envoy, he ...

It was hard to imagine that a person who had not been an eyewitness to what he was talking about could speak like that. These were strange meetings, where it seemed that not the old man, but the younger interlocutor, indulged in memories of the past. Even when it came to the most remote times and distant lands, it was impossible to get rid of the feeling that he was talking about what he saw and heard himself. At one time, many who spoke with Saint-Germain noted the same feature of his stories. The old man listened to the voice of this strange man, peered into his face and seemed to be transported back half a century. He himself was not spared by time, and this gave him the bitter privilege of being unrecognized by those who once might have known him.

But in every slip, in every walk along the edge, there is a great temptation. And once, it was on their second or third meeting, the old man could not stand it. He said that among the great men of his time he happened to meet and know Saint Germain himself.

His interlocutor shrugged his shoulders and spoke of something else.

That evening they parted earlier than usual, and the "major" did not come to the next meeting. When the dignitary began to make inquiries, it turned out that he, along with the servants, had gone to no one knows where.

During the years that remained to him to live, the retired dignitary was constantly interested in whether his strange interlocutor had returned. But he no longer came to Paris.

There are two more later reports associated with the name Saint-Germain. He allegedly reappeared in Paris, already in 1934. And the last time - in December 1939. Since, however, by that time there were no people left who were personally acquainted with the count, these reports can hardly be considered reliable enough. However, this reservation can be made in relation to everything connected with the name of Saint-Germain. And not just him alone.

Let us, however, try to imagine the impossible. Let's assume that out of tens, hundreds and thousands of those who were looking for the elixir of immortality, someone alone managed to find some means of prolonging life. (The fact that an increase in life expectancy is in principle possible is not denied by modern science.) Having made this assumption, we ask ourselves the question: how would a person behave if he was convinced that such a tool really was in his hands? Obviously, he would have had a difficult choice: either to hide from the people what he knew, or to make it public. As we know, the latter did not happen.

True, we forgot about one more possibility - about the rejection of immortality. No matter how strange this thought may seem at first glance, but this is exactly what the legends say, King Solomon did. When he was offered the elixir of immortality, he refused to take it because he did not want to outlive those who were close to him and whom he loved. This legend, which is based on the sad idea that immortality can be a cruel burden, even a curse, anticipates in some way the parable of Ahasuerus.

Tradition says that when Christ was led to be put to a painful execution, he carried the instrument of execution, a heavy wooden cross. His path to the place of crucifixion was hard and long. Exhausted, Christ wanted to lean against the wall of one of the houses to rest, but the owner of this house, named Ahasuerus, did not allow him.

– Go! Go! he shouted to the cheers of the Pharisees. - Nothing to rest!

“Good,” Christ pried his parched lips apart. “But you, too, will go all your life. You will wander in the world forever, and you will never have peace or death ...

Perhaps this legend would have been eventually forgotten, like many others, if after that, from century to century, here and there, a man did not appear, whom many identified with the personality of the immortal Ahasuerus.

The Italian astrologer Guido Bonatti wrote about him, the same one whom Dante, in his Divine Comedy, was pleased to place in hell. In 1223 Bonatti met him at the Spanish court. According to him, this man was once cursed by Christ and therefore could not die.

Five years later, he is mentioned in an entry in the chronicle of the abbey of St. Alban (England). It tells about the visit of the abbey by the archbishop of Armenia. When asked if he had heard anything about the immortal wanderer Ahasuerus, the archbishop replied that he had not only heard, but also personally talked with him several times. This man, according to him, was in Armenia at that time, he was wise, had seen a lot and knew a lot, but in conversation, he was restrained and talked about something only if he was asked about it. He well remembers the events of more than a thousand years ago, he remembers the appearance of the apostles and many details of the life of those years, which no one living today knows about.

The following message refers already to 1242, when this man appears in France. Then silence reigns for a long time, which is broken only after two and a half centuries.

In 1505, Ahasuerus appears in Bohemia, a few years later he is seen in the Arab East, and in 1547 he is again in Europe, in Hamburg.

Bishop of Schleswig Paul von Eitzen (1522-1598) tells about the meeting and conversation with him in his notes. According to his testimony, this man spoke all languages ​​without the slightest accent. He led a secluded and ascetic life, had no property other than the dress that was on him. If anyone gave him money, he distributed everything to the poor to the last coin. In 1575 he was seen in Spain; here the papal legates at the Spanish court, Christopher Krause and Jacob Holstein, spoke with him. In 1599, he was seen in Vienna, from where he was heading to Poland, intending to get to Moscow. Soon he really appears in Moscow, where many allegedly also saw him and talked to him.

In 1603, he appears in Lübeck, which was attested by the burgomaster Kolerus, the historian and theologian Kmover and other officials. “Die 14 Januarii Anno MDCIII,” reads the city chronicle, “adnotatum reliquit Lubekae Suisse Judacum ilium immortalem, que se Christi crucifixioni interfuisse affirmavit” (“Past 1603, on January 14, a famous immortal Jew appeared in Lubeck, whom Christ, going to be crucified, doomed for redemption").

In 1604 we find this strange person in Paris, in 1633 in Hamburg, in 1640 in Brussels. In 1642, he appears on the streets of Leipzig, in 1658 - in Stamford (Great Britain).

When the eternal wanderer reappeared in England at the end of the 17th century, skeptical Englishmen decided to check whether he was really who they thought he was. Oxford and Cambridge sent their professors, who gave him a biased examination. However, his knowledge of ancient history, the geography of the most remote corners of the Earth, which he visited or allegedly visited, was amazing. When he was suddenly asked a question in Arabic, he answered in that language without the slightest accent. He spoke almost all languages, both European and Oriental.

Soon this man appears in Denmark, and then in Sweden, where traces of him are again lost.

However, we meet the mention of this mysterious person later. In 1818, 1824, and 1830, he, or someone pretending to be him, appears in England.

We cannot know, we cannot say today what is the underlying fact behind the legend of Ahasuerus. The famous physician and scientist of the Middle Ages Paracelsus wrote in one of his treatises: “There is nothing that could save the mortal body from death, but there is something that can postpone death, restore youth and prolong the short human life.”

The idea of ​​the maximum extension of human life today is increasingly associated with science. One of the first to come up with this was Roger Bacon. “The human body,” he wrote, “can be freed from all wrongs and continue life for many centuries.” R. Bacon had in mind a meaningful, directed impact on the human body.

Another well-known scientist of the past, Benjamin Franklin, also believed that such an impact would eventually be possible. He stated that in the future man will be able to live for more than a thousand years. It was said in the years when people lived by candlelight and rode in carriages, when the best minds had no idea about the things that any schoolboy now knows.

An even greater optimist about the possibilities of science was the eighteenth-century French humanist philosopher Condorcet. He believed that the duration of human life, increasing from century to century, can eventually approach infinity, that is, immortality.

KE Tsiolkovsky thought about the problem of human immortality. “Life has no definite size and can be extended up to a thousand years,” he wrote. “Science will sooner or later reach an indefinite lengthening of life.” The famous English scientist J. Bernal also believed that over time people will comprehend the secret of the endless extension of their lives.

At the heart of this hope is not just the deification of science, which, they say, can do everything, and if it cannot today, then it can tomorrow, and not the blind desire of a person to live as long as possible, but the idea of ​​the fundamental possibility of an unlimited extension of the life of an individual.

Even at the end of the last century, the German zoologist August Weismann came to the conclusion that the death of an individual is by no means an inevitable finale determined by its very biological nature. According to him, if immortality is practically possible for unicellular organisms, then in principle it is achievable for humans as well.

According to the American physicist, Nobel Prize winner R. Feynman, if a person decided to build a perpetual motion machine, he would face a ban in the form of a physical law. In contrast to this situation, there is no law in biology that would affirm the obligatory finiteness of the life of each individual. That is why, he believes, the only question is the time when the human body can get rid of doom.

The well-known Soviet scientist, President of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR V. F. Kuprevich also believed that the immortality of a person is achievable in principle.

Some even try to name the time when this will be possible. Thus, the English scientist and writer A. Clark believes that immortality will be achieved by 2090. Of course, this is a bold prediction. Because it is one thing to say that the problem is solvable in principle, and another thing to name specific terms for its solution. True, courage is nowhere needed as much as in science. And the problem of immortality, having ceased to be an object of search for singles, is increasingly becoming a problem of science. That is why even today we can name the main directions of this search.

External factors. A number of researchers consider the main factors determining the life expectancy of a person, his immediate environment, occupation and lifestyle.

Some of these researchers are trying to find a certain pattern by studying the lifestyle of centenarians, their inclinations, etc. And indeed, curious facts are revealed. Thus, of those who lived over a hundred years, 98 percent of men and 99 percent of women were married; 61 percent of them worked in agriculture, 16 percent in industry. And only 4 percent of the centenarians were knowledge workers. It would seem that this comparison convincingly says that plowing the land is much more beneficial for the body than writing poetry or doing higher mathematics.

But is it? The numbers really reflect certain patterns, but do they not just reflect the picture of professional employment, as it was a hundred years ago, when the current centenarians chose their occupation. In other words, if out of 100 people, approximately 61 were then engaged in agriculture, 4 - in mental activity, then this ratio in general terms remained among the centenarians. Thus, these figures do not answer the main question: what is the reason for the long life of people?

When Democritus, who also lived over a hundred years, was asked by his contemporaries how he managed to lengthen his life and maintain health in such a way, he answered that he achieved this thanks to the fact that he always ate honey and rubbed his body with oil.

Of course, one could object to Democritus that many in his time acted in this way, but none of them brought such brilliant results. Therefore, as in the previous example, it is difficult to establish a direct relationship between lifestyle and its duration.

There are also known attempts to trace the relationship between diet and longevity. At one time, I. I. Mechnikov believed that the cause of aging is self-poisoning of the body by microorganisms living in the human intestine. To suppress their destructive effect, he suggested eating a glass of yogurt every night at night.

There is obviously a certain connection between nutrition and aging of the body. This is confirmed by the experiments of employees of the Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. By introducing a special diet for experimental rats, they achieved amazing results: two-year-old rats, who were considered to be at an “old” age, began to behave like young three-month-olds. But most importantly, in their body, as reported, there were no changes associated with the onset of old age.

Nobel laureate Linus Pauling argues that “with the right diet and a few vitamins, you can slow down the aging process and lengthen a person’s life by an average of twenty years.” The results obtained on experimental animals give rise to even bolder predictions.

Dr. Clive McKay of Cornell University has been doing similar experiments for more than a quarter of a century. By forcing mice to starve two days a week, he ensured that their life expectancy increased one and a half times. When he reduced their diet by a third, their lives were almost doubled.

These laboratory results correlate very clearly with what is known about the lifestyle of centenarians. Soviet gerontologists conducted a survey of 40,000 people who lived to a ripe old age and at the same time maintained good health. It turned out that they all showed moderation at the table. The same feature was revealed by American gerontologists in South American centenarians living in the Andes region.

And one more feature of centenarians is distinguished by researchers - the predominance of good feelings and positive emotions. They do not come out of anger, annoyance or hatred. They don't envy. The heart of each of them is always filled with the joy of being, gratitude for every new day of life. They rejoice in the happiness, luck, success of another, just as if it were their own happiness, luck, success.

However, some object, perhaps life expectancy does not depend on nutrition, emotions, or occupation. Everyone's body has some kind of biological clock, and no matter what we do, we can neither slow it down nor speed it up. And the bell arrow for everyone is at its mark: for some earlier, for others later. And this “earlier” or “later” is allegedly laid down from birth.

The idea that life expectancy is to some extent programmed, perhaps genetically, is also supported by some observations. The fact that there are families in which from generation to generation live to an advanced age was noticed long ago. Gerontologists sometimes recall such a legend in this connection. In 1654, Cardinal d "Armagnac, walking down the street, noticed a crying 80-year-old old man. To the question of the cardinal, the old man replied that he was crying because his father had beaten him. The surprised cardinal said that he wanted to see his father. He was introduced to an old man of 113 years old, very cheerful for his age. "I beat my son," said the old man, "for disrespect to his grandfather. He walked past him without bowing. " In the house, the cardinal saw another old man who was 143 years old.

The idea of ​​genetic programming has also found experimental confirmation. When the selection of long-lived rats began to be carried out, it was possible to obtain a certain breed with a maximum life expectancy. Moreover, this quality turned out to be hereditary.

But if the biological clock is really embedded in our body and counts the predestined days, months and years of our existence, the temptation to get to them is great. And having reached, stop or at least slow down their course. Such an attempt has been made. True, not in relation to a person.

After the female octopus lays her eggs, her days are numbered. Gradually, she begins to lose her appetite, becomes more lethargic and dies after 42 days. Everything happens with such an inevitable sequence, as if some kind of clockwork really worked. And this mechanism was discovered. Behind the eye sockets of the octopus are glands, the functions of which, until recently, remained unclear. It turned out that these are the "glands of death." When one of them was removed, the life span of the female octopus was extended by two months. When both were removed, her life was lengthened by another eleven months.

But although scientists believe that this discovery may indicate ways to prolong human life, nature, one must think, is not so simple that it can be so easily bypassed. And indeed, a human cell, both in the body and outside it - grown in a test tube, has a certain, strictly measured life span - 50 divisions. After which she dies. All efforts, all attempts to increase the number of divisions proved fruitless. These experiments convinced gerontologists that the clock of life, inexorably keeping track of time, is in the chromosomes, in the nucleus of each cell.

A new elixir of immortality? The well-known Russian scientist V. M. Bekhterev dealt with the problem of immortality. I. I. Mechnikov worked hard on this task, trying to get some kind of serum that would stimulate the activity of cells and thereby rejuvenate the entire body. In fact, it was one of the variants of the same elusive "elixir of immortality", only at the level of science. Some semblance of such a serum was made by the Soviet academician A. A. Bogomolets. This composition increased the resistance of the aging organism and really produced a certain rejuvenating effect.

The Swiss doctor P. Nigans strove for the same goal, but in other ways. He tried to rejuvenate the body by injecting serum from the tissues of newborn fallow deer into it.

Some properties of rejuvenation have, it turns out, different compositions. So, in experiments conducted at the 2nd Moscow Medical Institute, mice were injected with bee royal jelly. As a result, the life expectancy of the test subjects doubled!

Soviet scientists developed the drug NRV - an oil growth substance. After taking NRV, working capacity increased, gray-haired people darkened their hair, tissue metabolism improved, etc. However, during a long test, this version of the “youth elixir” did not justify itself. (Now NRV as a stimulant is only approved for external use.)

But most of all hopes and expectations for the return of youth and life extension are associated with hormones. When thyroid hormone was administered to the elderly, the results were astonishing: literally the whole body began to rejuvenate. However, the beneficial effect was short-lived.

One of the researchers working in this field, the American physician Robert A. Wilson, set himself the noble but difficult task of restoring youth to women. He developed a complex course of treatment, including a specific diet, taking vitamins and salts, combined with an injection of the female sex hormones estrogen and progesterone. As stated, he managed not only to suspend the age-related changes that occur in the body, but also to cause something like a reverse process. And what is especially important, these changes affected not only the general condition, but also the appearance, to which women, not without reason, attach such great importance.

For several years now, one of the Swedish clinics has been successfully working with the hormone thymosin. Experiments on mice exceeded all expectations and hopes. The hormone slowed down their aging process so much that time seemed to stop for them. Hormone injections were also given to patients. The correspondent, who visited the clinic, met a woman there who looked to be about 60 years old. It turned out that she was actually 89 years old. The doctor himself, involved in these experiments, believes that the systematic administration of the hormone could increase life expectancy up to 130 years.

In the light of these facts, it does not seem an exaggeration to report a "rejuvenating hormone" for some insects, which was isolated in one of the laboratories. The introduction of this hormone can ensure that the insect stays at a "young age" for an unlimited time. This discovery, like the others discussed, gives hope that sooner or later a similar hormonal composition can be found for humans.

But perhaps, others say, it's not about hormones at all. We cut branches, they say, without touching the roots. The roots of aging lie elsewhere - in the fact that as the years pass, a large number of fragments of molecules with a high electrical potential, the so-called "free radicals", accumulate in the body. They cause unwanted and irreversible changes in the body. If only there was a way to neutralize them...

And here are the messages about the first steps. The simplest remedy was used - preservatives used in industry to prevent spoilage of the oil. An experiment on mice showed that individuals from the experimental group lived almost one and a half times longer than those from the control group. In relation to humans, this means that life could be extended to an average of 105 years. Modest result? Maybe. But this is only the beginning. If we learn how to neutralize "free radicals", some scientists believe, human life can be extended to several centuries.

There are other directions as well. And they promise even more.

Here is a man who is not much different from others. Rather no difference at all. And only by accidentally touching his hand, you can feel that it is unusually cold. Feel - and do not attach importance to it. Or - to give, if we know what it could mean. If we know about the experiments that are now underway to artificially reduce body temperature.

If a solution of sodium and calcium is introduced into the thermostat of our body - the hypothalamus - it is possible to regulate the temperature of the whole organism in a certain way. By doing this manipulation with monkeys, it was possible to reduce their body temperature by as much as 6 °. At the same time, the monkeys themselves did not freeze, were neither sleepy nor lethargic - no side effects were noticed.

Now it is the turn of man and experiments on man.

But - why, what is the meaning of this?

The meaning is the same - the extension of life. If you lower the temperature of a person's body by only 2 °, his life expectancy will increase to an average of 200 years. At a body temperature of 33°, a person is expected to live for about 700 years! According to the researcher, “if the thermostat is adjusted to a lower temperature, there is no reason to assume that we will feel differently than at 37 °, we will react to changes in external temperature in the same way as we do now.”

It is assumed that the means for such a decrease in temperature will be produced in the form of pills, which everyone can buy. When? Usually, the period from the discovery of a drug to its mass production and sale is 5-6 years. If this discovery is tested on volunteers and justifies itself, perhaps such a drug will be produced in the coming years.

There is no contradiction in the very multitude of ways in which the search for a new "elixir of immortality" is going on. One path illuminates the search on another path, in another direction. By the year 2000, some futurists believe, there will be about 40 different ways to extend life in practice.

The results of the experiments of recent years and decades - do they not say that the messages of the ancients about the "elixirs of youth" and eternal life are not such a fairy tale? Maybe some kind of memory is reflected in the testimonies that have come down to us, some echo of reality has been preserved?

With someone else's body. In one of the foreign research institutes, a scientist demonstrated a strange frog. It wasn't her appearance that was strange; it was her behavior that was strange. Instead of jumping into the water, as anyone else would have done in her place, she began to look for a hole in the ground to dig into it. And her other habits were unusual for the frog tribe. This strange behavior was explained in a rather unexpected way.

“We transplanted the brain of a toad into the head of a frog,” the scientist said. - And here is the result: the frog moves like a toad ...

This experiment was carried out in 1963. At that time, many believed that if such experiments could succeed in lower animals, then in higher ones they were doomed to failure. But this misconception was refuted when the Soviet experimental doctor Professor V. N. Demikhov managed to transplant the head of one dog onto the body of another. The creature created in this way from two individuals did not have normal reflexes disturbed. It lived, however, not for long - two or three days.

The experiments of Professor Demikhov caused a great resonance in the scientific world. Commenting on his achievement, the famous American neurosurgeon R. White wrote that "so far, these works, apparently, are almost impossible to duplicate in humans, although in principle such a possibility should be recognized."

This possibility largely depends on how successful the transplants of other human organs - kidneys, liver, heart - will be in the end. If we can finally solve the problem of tissue incompatibility, the path to experiments in this area will be open. In any case, already today in the circles of researchers the question is being discussed, what will be more expedient - whether the transplantation of the entire head or only the human brain. According to R. White, a brain transplant may be preferable. “There is an assumption,” he said in an interview with Literaturnaya Gazeta, “that the brain, the most noble organ of the human body, may not be subject to the process of rejection that less important, less “noble” organs are subject to.” Theoretically, it is already possible to imagine in the future people whose brain, the carrier of their individuality, will pass many times from one body to another.

A space rocket separates and discards its stages one by one in flight in order to throw a small capsule into space as far as possible. So is a person. One by one, he will discard the bodies that have grown old and become unnecessary to him. But each such action will carry him farther along the straight line of time - from century to century and from millennium to millennium.

The life of one person, her memory will contain whole epochs of human history. It is quite clear that the thinking, perception of the world of such a person will be very different from the thinking and perception of a modern person with his life limited to several decades.

Everything that happened before - collisions of political struggle, wars, diplomatic intrigues, etc. - all this will be in his eyes, in the words of K. Marx, just "the prehistory of mankind." And somewhere out there, in this "prehistory", generations will irrevocably remain, on whose work and blood the foundation of the society of the future was mixed. That future, which we are powerless to predict in its entirety, but with a vague foreboding of which the prophecies of even a distant past were fulfilled. Was it not about the future that the author of the Apocalypse wrote almost two thousand years ago - about the days when “death will no longer be; there will be no more weeping, no wailing, no sickness.”

We talked about the possibility of extending the life of an individual indefinitely by transferring his brain, that is, his consciousness, from one body to another. It is possible, however, that at some stage a person will generally be able to refuse the body given to him by nature. It is suggested that in the near future an almost complete set of artificial organs of the human body will be created: artificial lungs, an artificial heart that will work more reliably than real ones, artificial arms and legs controlled by human biocurrents, etc. In Moscow, one research institute has already a model of a human hand has been created, which can be controlled and manipulated with the help of biocurrents. If you squeeze and unclench your hand, the impulses that are taken from your hand and directed to its artificial copy make it repeat your every gesture, every movement. What if, having received the opportunity to replace the fragile and short-lived parts of his body with such devices, a person someday learns to look at the body he inherited from birth, as some kind of barbaric atavism, as a painful reminder of his animal origin? Perhaps, some believe, in the future a person will part with this superfluous appendage of his "I" as easily as today he part with his appendix. The receptacle of his individuality, his consciousness - the brain - will acquire a more durable and reliable shell. It will be a body built of synthetic materials, obeying orders from the human brain placed in it. Separate components and parts of this "body", like all of it, will be replaceable and therefore practically eternal.

To designate this form of symbiosis between man and machine, American scientists M. Klipes and N. Kliney even created a special term - "cyborg". Some believe that it is in this form that intelligent life from Earth will spread to the most remote spaces of space.

Indeed, the advantages of cyborgs over body-burdened humans are obvious. First, and most importantly, it is a virtually unlimited lifespan. Secondly, cyborgs will not need an atmosphere, so they will be able to live in a vacuum - on the Moon, on asteroids, on planets with an atmosphere of methane or carbon dioxide, where a person, obeying the needs of the body, could not exist even for a moment. Thirdly, cyborgs do not need food. The only thing they need is to receive energy from some external source to maintain the biological conditions for the existence of the brain.

A brain that lives separately from the body is no longer science fiction. In laboratories, experiments were carried out on the isolated brain of a monkey and a dog. The brain was placed in conditions that ensured the maintenance of its vital activity. And it turned out that all the readings of the isolated brain differ little from the readings of the brain under normal conditions. Therefore, if it were possible to bring information into this isolated brain, and transmit impulses addressed to various parts of the body to artificial (and already existing) models, the first version of the “cyborg” could be created.

The ability to freely design your body will open up the most unlimited prospects for a person. Are two legs really the most convenient design for movement? Are two arms enough, and wouldn't it be better to replace them with a dozen tentacles located all over the body? But is it not an omission of nature that a person does not distinguish between ultraviolet or infrared rays, that he sees only what is happening in front of him, but not behind and not from above? Or a contact question. Without resorting to radio or telephone, people can make contact at a distance not exceeding the capacity of their vocal cords. Obviously, this is not the limit of what is desired. Cyborgs will probably be able to communicate over vast distances using VHF or other communication channels. An evolution that would have taken nature hundreds of centuries to complete will take place in laboratories in a matter of years or even months.

Although work in this direction is being carried out quite intensively, it is difficult to say when, after what period of time, the pictures drawn by us will begin to acquire the features of reality. According to R. White, the transplantation of a human brain into another body will become possible only in a few decades. This is a very cautious forecast. Ironically, when it comes to the timing of the alleged discovery, many scientists show similar skepticism and reticence. None other than A. Einstein, when asked whether people will be able to release the energy of the atomic nucleus in the coming centuries, exclaimed:

- Oh, it's completely out of the question!

This was said only ten years before the explosion of the first atomic bomb.

Reproducing copies of themselves. Oddly enough, but everything turns out so that in the scientific search for immortality, the ally and assistant of man is not so much the traditional guinea pig or monkey as the frog. It was she who paved the first path to a brain transplant. She also pointed out another path leading to immortality - the reproduction by the individual of a copy from himself.

Each of the cells that make up a living being stores in its nucleus all the genetic information necessary for the formation of a new organism. This information seems to be dormant, and until recently all attempts to activate it were in vain. A few years ago, scientists at Oxford University in England managed to do this. In the course of experiments, a new individual was grown from an intestinal epithelium cell of an adult frog, which was, as it were, a biological twin of the first. It was a copy that differed from the original only in age.

The experiments caused a sensation, “because,” wrote one newspaper, “they imply that, at least theoretically, it is possible to mass-produce identical twins. Including human twins. According to the director of the International Laboratory of Genetics and Biophysics in Naples, A. Buzzati-Traverso, “by applying this method to a person, that is, taking the nuclei of cells from an adult (of which he has an almost unlimited number) and growing them in cells devoid of a nucleus , we could raise any desired number of individuals genetically identical to us; we could, in a certain sense, ensure our immortality, since this operation could be repeated an unlimited number of times.

This means that a person, when he is, say, 80 or 90 years old, could repeat himself, reappearing as a newborn. However, no matter how exact a copy biologically and externally the double is, it will be endowed with its own consciousness. In this sense, it will be a different individual, and his memory, his joys and sorrows, love and dislike will be far from the prototype.

True, the well-known Soviet scientist P. K. Anokhin put forward a hypothesis according to which the hereditary transmission of information received by a person during his life is fundamentally possible. In this case, the “copy person” will carry the memory of everything that happened to the “original”, will keep it in himself as memories of his own life. Thus it will be possible to achieve complete identity of individuals. The chain of individual consciousness, passing from body to body, will not be interrupted. The memory of the life of past, already aged and non-existent bodily shells will be as uninterrupted as our memories of a day lived yesterday, a month ago or last year.

Through the cold to eternity. What the gold miners found that day at one of the mines in Kolyma looked least like a nugget. But the excitement and controversy that the find caused was greater than if they really stumbled upon a gold mine. From a transparent block of ice, raised from an eleven-meter depth, frozen into it, as if into glass, a strange creature looked at the seekers. Small, about 10 centimeters long, it was like a living thing.

But the most incredible thing happened when the ice melted. This creature - it turned out to be an amphibian, a Siberian salamander - moved, opened its beady eyes even wider and tried to duck somewhere to hide from the people surrounding it.

The amazing find was reported to the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Soon the guest from the permafrost, alive and in good health, was in Kyiv. Typically, the life span of a salamander is 10–15 years. If it turned out that this specimen is older, it would mean one thing: he really spent a certain number of years in this block of ice, deep underground. The well-established radiocarbon method made it possible to answer this question. The age of the salamander brought from the Kolyma was close to 100 years. This means that at least 85-90 years ago this creature turned out to be frozen in a block of ice and time seemed to stop for it.

But it turned out that 100 years is far from the limit for such a throw through time. It was possible to revive the hydrous crustacean, which had lain in permafrost in suspended animation for as much as 20,000 years!

Until recently, many were sure that this could happen only with cold-blooded animals, but not with mammals, and certainly not with humans. However, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain this confidence every year.

To confirm the fundamental possibility of returning to life after a "deadly freezing", American researchers conducted an experiment with dogs. Twelve dogs were frozen and, after a two-hour stay in this state, were brought back to life. 30 minutes after resuscitation, they could walk, then drink water, and a few hours later they could eat.

From time to time, such experiments, against the will of people, are put on them by chance.

... Late at night, the Leningrad driver Vasily Sh. was returning home. On one of the deserted streets, he suddenly became ill, he fell into the snow and lost consciousness. It was 30 degrees below zero. When the ambulance picked him up in the morning, his pulse was no longer felt. The chin, hands and feet were covered with frost and a crust of ice. Ice was in my mouth. Doctors stated "deadly freezing."

Nevertheless, everything was done to bring the victim back to life.

“First, Sh. was placed in a warm bath,” Professor L. F. Volkov told the correspondent, “then they injected heart and tonic drugs, after which they laid him on the bed under a frame on which electric lamps were fixed. Due to vigorous warming, the patient began to feel better. Now he is already walking, the mood is excellent.

This case is far from the only one. One must think that only a small part of such incidents ends up on the pages of the press. And an even smaller proportion of them attracts someone's attention, remains in memory.

In the winter of 1987, a boy froze to death in the Mongolian steppe. He lay for 12 hours in the snow at 34-degree frost. His body turned into an ice statue. There was not the slightest sign of life - no breathing, no pulse.

Apparently, the Mongolian doctors had experience in dealing with such situations. After some time, a pulse appeared, not even a pulse - a barely noticeable beat, two beats per minute. Many hours passed before breathing appeared and the resuscitators heard the boy's faint moan. A day later, he moved his finger, then his hand. The heart began to work smoothly and more often, returning to normal. And after 24 hours the boy opened his eyes. Consciousness returned to him completely. Medical procedures and observations continued for another week, after which the boy was discharged and sent home with the conclusion: "There are no pathological changes."

Obviously, in a state of anabiosis, somewhere deep in frozen cells, under a layer of stiff muscles, a weak spark of life glows. The challenge is to keep that spark alive. In being able to bring a person back to life not only a few hours or days later, but years or even centuries later.

Theoretically, a person, plunging into suspended animation, can program his awakening for the twenty-fourth, twenty-eighth or thirtieth century. He may wish to wake up in a thousand years or in two thousand. If today he is terminally ill, he can stipulate conditions for him to be unfrozen when a cure for his illness is found.

So did, for example, the American James Bedford, a 73-year-old professor of psychology. His body, from which the blood was pumped out and replaced with a special liquid, was placed in a freezer, where chilled liquid nitrogen circulates continuously. The professor's decision to go into the future in a frozen form caused quite an understandable resonance. Some journalists joked: “Well, Bedford will be surprised when he remains dead!” Nevertheless, after him "through the refrigerator into eternity" several hundred more people went to the USA and Japan. In special cryonic centers, enclosed in transparent capsules, which flow around liquid nitrogen, cooled to -360 °, equally alien to both life and death, they float along the waves of time into the future.

Professor Paul Segal has developed a method that allows a “client”, whose hours are numbered, to imprison himself in a freezer before clinical death occurs. “There,” says the professor, “he will remain until science can overcome his illness and provide him with a new life.”

Several dozen French also decided to follow suit. Each of them carries with him at all times a blue card with the following text printed: "I, the undersigned, desire that in the event of my death my body be immediately frozen and kept at the lowest possible temperature."

The main thing, however, is not that immersion in suspended animation will allow a person to overcome huge distances in time and live in different centuries or even millennia. Many will wish to go into the future, driven not only by purely tourist interest and curiosity. By embarking on this journey in freezers, they will hope to enter a world that will come close to solving the problem of immortality, and maybe even solve it.

It must be said that very few people can afford such a trip. Today in France the right to be frozen costs 128,000 francs. Not surprisingly, the first 40 French people who decide to take a chance at immortality are millionaires.

Just as the ancients did not imagine the afterlife except as a repetition and continuation of their daily existence, so today many in the West do not imagine that the future society would not be a copy of the current capitalist world. The ancients placed next to the deceased everything that they believed he might need in the afterlife. In the same way, those who in our time decide to go through the cold store into the future are trying to get a decent bank account. It turns out that in order to wake up a millionaire in 300 years, it is enough to put $1,000 in the bank today. Three percent per annum in a hundred years will turn this amount into 19,000, in two hundred - into 370,000, and by the time of the supposed awakening, each such inhabitant of the cold store will, according to calculations, already have 7,000,000 dollars.

It seems, however, that by that time the millions prepared for the future for future life will be practically as useless as today those stone axes and spears that the ancients carefully placed in their burials. Money that has lost its meaning can, of course, be abandoned. But what to do with that equally atavistic spiritual baggage that will inevitably accompany a person trying to enter the future through the door of the refrigerator?

The society of the future appears to us as a society of unprecedented rates of evolution - not only scientific, technical and social, but, most importantly, moral. And the more intensive this process is, the more future generations will differ from those who lived before them. Let us imagine what will happen if, in the course of this accelerated evolution, people achieve immortality. Generations will cease to replace each other, they will be layered one on top of the other, until the people of their time are buried under the layers of those born long before them.

Does it follow from this that the immortality of the individual and the evolution of mankind are mutually exclusive?

In the Soviet Union, during one of the sociological studies, a group of 1224 people was asked to answer, in particular, the following question: would they agree to personal immortality if they knew that as a result, progress on Earth would stop?

Over 90 percent of those surveyed rejected the immortality bought at such a price.

We must think that in the future this point of view will be shared by an increasing number of people. They will find in themselves the strength to renounce personal immortality in order for all of humanity to approach the heights of intellectual and moral evolution, for this is precisely the meaning of the uninterrupted progress of mankind. V. M. Bekhterev wrote in his work “The Immortality of the Human Personality from the Point of View of Science” that the goal of the evolution of society is the creation of a “morally superior human being”.

However, the number of years is perhaps not the only and not the main measure of a person's life expectancy. On one of the tropical islands, Charlie Chaplin was once present during a curious conversation. The American tried to find out from the old native aborigine how old he was.

- When was the earthquake? the old man asked.

“Twelve years ago,” the American replied.

- Well, by that time I already had three married children.

- I lived up to two thousand dollars, - and explained that this was the amount that he managed to spend in his life.

The countdown is carried out here not in abstract astronomical units, showing how many times the Earth went around the Sun, but in the events of a specific human life. This view is unfamiliar to European thinking, but common among other cultures.

In the future, as human civilizations converge, this view may be understandable to the majority. Then, when asked about age, a person will name the perfect, achieved by him, and not the measure of his biological being. Perhaps this is the true age of a person - his spiritual age.

Then, in response to such a question, a person can say:

“I have cured a thousand patients.

“I have grown fifty crops.

“I raised three children.

In the immeasurably distant future, having approached the peaks of his evolution, man will perhaps acquire the moral right to exist forever. Then immortality will not be a reward for the tricks of the human mind, but the biological crown of its entire moral evolution.

But if so, if a person can use immortality only at the highest stages of his development, why then all the past searches, discoveries and finds? Why the efforts of modern science and even science of the foreseeable future? Doesn't it follow from what has been said above that all this is meaningless?

It would seem that such a conclusion suggests itself, lies on the surface. However, like much that lies on the surface, it is false.

As you know, the uprising of Spartacus did not abolish slavery. The jump of "Smerd Nikita" on makeshift wings from the bell tower did not lead to the creation of an aircraft. The Viking voyage across the Atlantic many centuries before Columbus did not become the discovery of America.

Why, then, today, when we talk about the history of the revolutionary struggle of the masses for freedom, about the history of aeronautics or the history of geographical discoveries, do we remember these events? Events that, it would seem, had no continuation and did not lead to anything.

The fact is that each of them, even without ending with a specific result, was a step in the development of the spiritual and moral qualities of a person. Therefore, the blood of Spartacus was not shed in vain, the discoveries that were ahead of their time, rejected and forgotten were not in vain. High feats of mind and heart were not in vain, even if no one knew about them and they did not change the world. All these were steps in the development of mankind.

The search for immortality, the possible achievement of it, and even the rejection of immortality in the name of life and the improvement of all mankind are essentially the same steps.

If a person comes to physical immortality as a result of his evolution, this immortality may not arouse that interest in him and will not seem to him as valuable as it seemed yesterday and still seems to be today. Because the norms, assessments and criteria of a perfect person will be largely different from our current ideas.

It can be assumed that the ancients really knew some means of prolonging life, and even for a very significant period. It can be assumed that the search for modern science will eventually open the way to prolonging life for decades, perhaps for centuries. But no less legitimate is another, perhaps the main, idea - the idea that none of this is needed, that there is no need to seek immortality, because a person is initially endowed with it. And not in any allegorical sense or figurative meaning, but literally.

Just as a magnet is more than just a piece of metal that our eyes perceive, a person is also more than his physical appearance, accessible to our senses. In addition to the biological system of the body, researchers believe, there is a certain structure - a biological field that surrounds the physical body of a person, penetrating and filling it (“bioplasm”, in the terminology of Doctor of Biology V. M. Inyushin).

In the book of the Soviet philosopher A. K. Maneev "Philosophical analysis of antinomy in science" a large chapter is devoted to this issue. Citing the words of Heraclitus “The power of thinking is outside the body”, the author expresses an idea that may seem strange to someone who is not familiar with the whole course of his reasoning: the structure that generates a thought is a biological field - “a field formation of biosystems”. Accordingly, the entire life experience of a person, the situations that he experienced, all the words that he said and that he heard - all this is recorded by his biological field and stored in the form of peculiar holograms, “which, perhaps, is evidenced, in particular, by the phenomenon memory of highly organized beings.

In other words, the "field structure" - the repository of our memory, the generator of thinking - turns out to be, as it were, the carrier of human individuality, our "I". An important conclusion follows from this position.

Radiated fields, Maneev continues, can exist regardless of their source. Let's say the radio transmitter is silent, and the radio waves continue to rush through space, carrying the information that was embedded in them. Or: the star has long gone out, but its light continues its journey in space, carrying a wide range of data about the body, which physically no longer exists, but which continues to exist, as it were, for the observer. "It is just as possible, - believes Maneev, - the existence of a biofield," emitted "during the death of the organism, but still retaining all the information about it." In other words, the death of the physical body does not mean the disappearance of the field formation, which is the bearer of the memory and individuality of a person. Therefore, the scientist concludes, one can ask the question “about the fundamental achievability of individual immortality by emerging biosystems, since it is thought possible on the basis of the specific stability of biofields.”

The study of biological fields is currently occupied by scientists of various specialties - physicians, biologists, engineers of the widest profile. The main idea that is present at scientific conferences devoted to this problem is that we are only at the very beginning of the journey. Maneev's hypothesis is perhaps one of the steps along this path, full of the greatest surprises.

We talked about the problem of immortality, about the search for ways to it in antiquity, in our days, about the likely directions of these searches in the future. They also talked about the fact that the immortality of a person, perhaps, exists in some form - regardless of our efforts, thoughts and tricks. There is another line of thought that testifies in favor of this.

As you know, our universe is expanding. This process began 15-22 billion years ago, when the entire mass of the Universe was compressed, as if squeezed into a certain point, "the initial drop of space."

We do not know why, for what reasons this state was violated and what happened today is denoted by the term “big bang”. Scattering, expanding in all directions, matter pushed aside non-existence, creating space and starting the countdown of time. This is how modern cosmogony sees the formation of the Universe.

However, the expansion of the universe cannot be infinite. It will continue only up to a certain moment, after which the process will reverse - the galaxies will begin to approach each other, drawing back to a certain point. Following them, space will contract, shrink into a point. The result will be what astronomers today call "the collapse of the universe."

What will happen next after the Universe returns to the state of the “cosmic egg”, shrinks to a certain starting point? After that, a new cycle will begin - another “big bang” will occur, “neo-matter” will rush in all directions, pushing and creating space, galaxies, star clusters, planets, life will arise. Such, in particular, is the cosmological model of the American astronomer J. Wheeler, the model of the alternately expanding and "collapsing" Universe. The famous scientist Kurt Gödel mathematically justified this model.

How does modern cosmogony represent these processes? The well-known American physicist, Nobel Prize winner S. Weinberg describes them as follows. After the contraction begins, for thousands and millions of years, nothing will happen that could alarm our distant descendants. However, when the universe shrinks to 1/100 of its current size, the night sky will radiate as much heat to the Earth as the day does today. In another 70 million years, the Universe will shrink tenfold more, and then "our heirs and successors (if any) will see the sky unbearably bright." And in another 700,000 years, the cosmic temperature will reach 10 million degrees, stars and planets will begin to turn into a cosmic "soup" of radiation, electrons and nuclei...

Does the universe “collapse” into a point and expand again, repeating previous cycles? Not necessarily, some cosmologists answer. If, at the time of the formation of a new Universe, the physical conditions differ even in the most insignificant way, this next Universe may not have the carbon necessary for the emergence of life. Cycle after cycle, the universe can come and go without giving birth to a spark of life. This is one of the points of view. She affirms the "discontinuity of being."

The other assumes the evolution of the Universe from cycle to cycle. Every time, the already mentioned astronomer J. Wheeler believes, at the moment of compression, a certain qualitative leap of the Universe takes place. And its subsequent development each time takes place in different ways. It's like an "evolutionary" point of view.

And finally, the third point of view comes from the possibility that each cycle is a repetition of the previous one and all that came before it.

Repetition of previous...

At the moment of "collapse of the Universe", its "convergence" to a point, matter, as is known, does not disappear. “... It is logical to assume,” V. I. Lenin wrote, “that all matter has a property essentially related to sensation, the property of reflection ...” If matter does not disappear, then the information that it “reflects”, as it were, does not disappear either that is, it carries. This is information about galaxies, planets and the creatures that lived on them. When a new universe emerges, it can play the same role as the original genetic information when an organism emerges. In other words, the role of the program.

The idea of ​​eternal repetition, the eternal return of people, events and everything that exists was present in the human mind almost always. We find it in the East, in Chinese texts dating back to the 2nd century BC. Even earlier, in the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Evdem from Rhodes told his students: “If you believe the Pythagoreans, then someday I will again talk to you with the same stick in my hands, just like now, sitting in front of me, and everything else will repeat in the same way ... "Another ancient philosopher thought the same thing:" In another Athens, another Socrates will be born and marry another Xanthippe. In this eternal repetition of everything that was once, everything will again make its circle, and “new wars will begin again, and again the mighty Achilles will go to Troy” (Virgil).

Do you know the feeling when something happening is perceived as if you have already seen it all, as if it had already happened? Sometimes, when you arrive in a foreign city, some square that you have never been to seems suddenly strangely familiar. This feeling, known to many, even has the term “already seen”. As shown by special surveys conducted abroad, the feeling of “already seen” was experienced to some extent by about 15 percent of people.

There was such an episode in the life of Leo Tolstoy. Once, on a hunt, young Tolstoy, chasing a hare, fell, flying over the head of his horse. When, staggering, he got up, it seemed to him that all this had already happened: once, “a very long time ago,” as he said, he was also riding, chasing a hare, fell ...

Traveling somehow from Strasbourg to Druzenheim, Goethe for a moment felt himself in a kind of somnambulistic state - he suddenly seemed to see himself from the side, but in a different dress, which he had never worn before. Eight years later, he again passed this place and was surprised to find that he was dressed exactly as he once dreamed.

Evidence of this kind, and many of them could be cited, is not yet proof of the repeatability of everything. And can they be - such evidence? But this evidence is at least food for thought. In addition, docking with other facts and observations, they line up, as it were, in a common chain. How do the words of Christ, as if spoken by him on the eve of the crucifixion, line up in this common chain: “All this was” (“And all this was”).

What is said on these pages has, as it were, two planes of perception: logical and evidential and intuitive. Logical evidence is the concept of a “pulsating Universe”, a model of closed time that exists in the Universe, time that moves in a circle. The intuitive plan of perception is the feeling of "already seen", sometimes - the symbols and language of art. That's how the poet felt, how he understood it. He spoke of a swarm of atoms that formed, made up a particular person:

Circled this swarm without a start
And it will circle endlessly
And were a moment of berth
The features of my face.
……………………
Can't the atoms again
Fold in like you and me?
(I. Selvinsky)

Gorky once said this to Blok, half in jest, half in earnest:

- ... In a few million years, on a gloomy evening of the St. Petersburg spring, Blok and Gorky will again talk about immortality, sitting on a bench in the Summer Garden.

Back in the 20s of our century, when scientific knowledge was only taking its first steps in cosmology, Albert Einstein stated: “Science cannot bring absolutely reliable arguments against the idea of ​​eternal return.”

If each Universe reproduces, repeats the previous ones, the matter is located in space every time, forming the same clots - the same galaxies, stars, planets. Then everything that has happened, is happening, and everything that is yet to happen is indestructible, indestructible, and abides forever. How immortal and abide forever all those who live now and who once lived, because in the constant repetition of the cycles of the Universe, the doors of life will open for them again and again, letting them into the world, as it has been countless times already.

But the days of all are finite. Including those who once sought immortality. And if someone ever reached it, in the end he would have to ask himself the question: what will I do in my endless life, with what will I fill my boundless being? Probably, everyone would find his own answer to this in accordance with his inner inclination, as people have found at all times. True, as regards inner inclination, are we ourselves always aware of it? Even when we are talking about such seemingly traditional things as the distribution of female and male roles.

The idea that a man should be courageous and brave, and a woman delicate and fragile, is not so immutable. It can be recalled that in the past, women were characterized by a much more "masculine" set of qualities - courage, physical courage, and even cruelty. The bearers of these qualities were, for example, the Amazons - female warriors, about whom a lot of historical evidence and legends have been preserved. Acquaintance with them raises many questions, which are very difficult to answer.

Travel Ponce de Leon

Don Juan Ponce de Leon was a true son of his time. A representative of one of the noblest Castilian families, he distinguished himself in countless wars between the Spaniards and the Moors.

Then, without hesitation, he crossed the ocean and arrived in the "West Indies" (as the travelers themselves called the new lands) in November 1493, with the second expedition of Columbus, when the islands of Dominica, Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico were discovered, as well as the expedition again visited the island of Haiti (or as it was then called - Hispaniola).

Ponce de Leon hoped, like thousands of other conquistadors, to get rich quick. But if hope remained hope for most of them, at least at first, don Juan was lucky. In 1508, at the head of a small detachment of soldiers, he conquered the island, which the natives called Boriken (later Puerto Rico). Recall that this island was discovered by Columbus during his second trip across the ocean, and who knows, maybe it was then that don Juan Ponce de Leon, a participant in this voyage, first flashed the idea that the owner of Boriken, a flowering island with fertile climate, it should become it. And he became one.

Having heard about the rich gold deposits on the island of Boriken, de Leon captured the island, then founded the first Spanish settlement there. Settling on the northeast coast of the Boriquen, don Juan founded a city in 1511, which he named after his patron saint John the Baptist San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico, where he later became governor. In the future, the island became known as Puerto Rico - Rich Harbor.

At any rate, that was how she became for don Juan. Mercilessly robbing the local Indians, he collected a myriad of gold. He was little embarrassed by the fact that the indigenous population of the island was declining at a catastrophic rate. According to ancient Spanish chronicles, Boriken was the most populated of all the islands. The Indians here were engaged in hunting, farming, fishing, they knew how to weave fabrics and make pottery. One historian wrote: “Puerto Rico was a real paradise for the Indians, who took abundant harvests from its fertile lands; and when the Spaniards stumbled upon a prosperous and happy Indian population, they decided that they, too, had found their own paradise on earth ... ”Well, for the Spaniards, the island remained a paradise, and for the Indians it turned into a pitch hell.

And in the same 1511, Don Juan Ponce de Leon first heard the legend of the island of eternal youth - Bimini. First, he was told about him by an old Indian kacha, who was taken into his house as a servant. But was it possible to believe the old woman who had gone out of her mind? However, as it turned out, other Indians also knew that somewhere to the north of Puerto Rico lies an island on which a source of youth beats. Their stories agreed amazingly even in the smallest detail, they all named the same number of days and nights that had to be spent on the road to reach Bimini, they described the top of the mountain that crowned this happy island, and the walls of trees covering its shores in the same way. . It was said that a few years before this, many Indians from the island of Cuba went in search of her and not one of them returned. Is this not evidence that they managed to find the fountain of youth?

The Italian Pedro Martir, who personally knew Columbus, wrote in those years: “To the north of Hispaniola, between other islands, there is one island at a distance of three hundred and twenty miles from it. The first thing you see from high water is the top of the mountain. The shore is closed by a solid wall of green trees, and therefore it seems that it is impossible to step on the shore. But if you're vigilant, you'll find a few inconspicuous paths. Set foot on the island in one place or another and go to the foot of the mountain. On the island there is an inexhaustible spring of water of such wonderful properties that an old man who begins to drink it, moreover, observing a certain diet, after a while will turn into a young man. But do not forget during the journey that you must not turn around, otherwise the source will lose its miraculous power for you. The moment will come, and the forests will part, and a level place will open before you. This is where this source beats, giving eternal youth. A dried flower, moistened with its water, will bloom again and remain so forever. A dead branch lowered into its jets will immediately turn green and give new shoots. And you're human, if you haven't looked back, get down on your knees and take just a few sips. And the return of youth will happen so imperceptibly that in the previous moments you will still be old and weak, and in the next moment you will become young and full of strength ... "

And don Juan, who was over fifty years old, believed the legend.

How did the legend on the island of Boriken originate? Indeed, most often any legend is based on some real information, whimsically intertwined over the centuries with the most fantastic conjecture. Perhaps it reflected the memory of some real journeys of the indigenous islanders to other lands of the Caribbean, even more fertile and flourishing than Puerto Rico. Be that as it may, the man who conquered the island firmly decided that he would be the first European to discover a wonderful source on the island of Bimini, and began to prepare for the journey.

However, before Ponce de Leon had to face some difficulties. He had no official rights to "voyages of discovery" - such rights were given only by the Spanish king - and in addition he was accountable for his actions to the governor of the larger island, Hispaniola, Diego Colen. Don Juan first had to cross the ocean again to apply for a patent - at his own expense - to search for and colonize the island of Bimini and to exploit the miraculous spring and "island of eternal youth".

And, apparently, nothing really could surprise a person at that incredible time if the Spanish king Ferdinand of Aragon, without expressing a shadow of amazement, granted Ponce de Leon all rights and on February 23, 1512 signed an official letter in Burgos. Having sealed this fantastic treaty with his signature, the king even said at the same time, alluding to the dazzling discoveries of Columbus: “It is one thing to give authority when there has not yet been a preliminary example of someone holding such a post, but we have since learned something. You appear when the beginning has already been made…”

As chief helmsman of the expedition, de Leon invited Anton Alaminos, a native of the same Andalusian port town of Paloe, who gave the world several famous sailors, companions and rivals of Columbus. Alaminos himself had previously participated in the fourth expedition of Columbus.

The head of the expedition and his helmsman set about equipping the three ships and hiring sailors. According to stories, Ponce recruited both the elderly and the crippled, recruiting perhaps the most infirm crew in the history of the navy. The teams on the ships of this flotilla were the oldest of all that maritime history knows.

This had its own logic: what is the point of legibility, youth and health if, after a relatively short sea passage, its sailors can rejuvenate and regain their lost strength in the waters of a wonderful source?

And at dawn on March 3, 1513, the flotilla sailed from the coast of Puerto Rico to the northwest, towards the Bahamas. Each could be exactly what they were looking for. At the end of March, on the eve of Easter, they saw the big land - a wonderful flowering island, which could not be compared with any they had seen before.

But the goal of the expedition - to find a source whose waters would have the power to restore youth - was never achieved. The Spaniards explored the entire east coast of Florida. From day to day, sailors went out in search. The ships moved from island to island, and on each the Spaniards "tested" all the sources and lakes. In the mornings, boats were launched from the ships and headed for the shore, and at night, Captain Ponce de Leon checked the contents of every flask filled with water from all the sources that could only be found on the island. They said that just a couple of sips is enough, the transformation begins instantly.

And while the captain was waiting for the evening to come, the sailors recounted to each other everything they had heard from those who went ashore. If there is a heaven on earth, then it must be here, on these islands. The forests here are full of game, and the quiet streams are full of fish that you can catch with your hands right off the coast. But most importantly, it was a land - fertile, abundant in fruits and, most surprisingly, in fact, a draw.

But Ponce de Leon was not looking for an earthly paradise, and not even gold, since he was already rich enough. He only dreamed of a wonderful source. Disappointed by the failure, he landed for the last time on the coast and took possession of the new "island" in the name of the Castilian crown.

The land he took for an island, Ponce de Leon called "Pascua de Florida" - flowering land. So in Spain the holiday of blooming Easter was called. According to legend, it was on this holiday, April 2, 1513, that the team first landed on the coast of Florida. And the name suggested itself - the entire coast was covered with magnificent subtropical vegetation.

It was the first Spanish possession on the North American continent. But it was dangerous to stay here, as the Spaniards saw warlike Indian tribes in Florida - people "tall, strong, dressed in animal skins, with huge bows, sharp arrows and spears in the manner of swords." This is how Bernal Diaz described the locals in 1517.

In 1521, Ponce de Leon set off again in search of Bimini. In addition, he had a patent for the colonization of Florida. In 1521, Ponce de León returned to the place of his first landing - on the coast of the bay - already with two ships loaded with colonists and things to settle in these places. His force of 200 landed on the west coast of Florida to conquer the island. However, the Spaniards met with such fierce resistance from the local Indians that they were forced to hastily board the ships and get out.

Ponce de León, among many others, was badly wounded and died in Cuba in July 1521. He is buried in Puerto Rico, in San Juan. True, there is a legend that he survived and in subsequent years continued to explore Florida, trying to find the magical source of eternal youth. But historians rightly doubt the authenticity of this legend.