PSYCHOLOGICAL IMMORTALITY: Using Your Mind to Extend Your Life

by Jerry Gillies ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 7, 1981

A peptalk primer awash in inspirational quotes, positive think, get-up-and-go. Jerry Gillies, a biofeedback man and ""humanistic journalist"" who has given us Money Love, Transcendental Sex, and My Needs, Your Needs, Our Needs, has decided to go all the way: live forever. Don't let the deathtrap, doldrums, or despair get you down. Do biofeedback your brain to secrete all those lovely juices that turn you into the healthy, sexy, joyous immortal that you are. Part I is a scamper through the theories of aging and the dreams of gerontologists (often anonymous) who predict that we can stretch life to 120. . . 200. . . through the powers of science and psychology. (All this was said with greater authority and accuracy in Albert Rosenfeld's Prolongevity a few years back.) Part II is psychological power: lots of italicized quotes from Norman Cousins, Robert Butler, Ray Bradbury, and others--including Leonard ""Re-birthing"" Orr, who may be credited with the book's most offensive hypothesis: ""Senility is the process of rediscovering the natural divine child within."" Orr is one of a group called The Immortalists. Then there is SAGE (Senior Actualization and Growth Exploration), ""started in 1974 in the Berkeley living room of Gay Luce."" There are other Californians, needless to say, and let us not forget the long-lived Hunza or people of the Caucasus. Part III provides do-it-yourself exercises and ritual writ in ALL CAPS. Here you will learn to construct a Lifeboard, have an unbirthday party, and enjoy the power to pretend. Then come mottoes (EVERY HOUR OF EVERY DAY I AM GROWING YOUNGER AND MORE EXCITED WITH LIFE), visualizing techniques, pleasures principles, some thoughts on religion. Too much get-up-and-go, altogether, for most folks to get down.

Pub Date: July 7, 1981

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Marek--dist. by Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1981

Categories: NONFICTION