Old Age and Seminal Retention

I read with interest the following item from the BBC News of 15th March (2007):


"A man thought to be the oldest living person in the world is celebrating his 116th birthday. Hryhoriy Nestor was born in what is now Ukraine....It was only at the age of 100 that he retired from working as a farm labourer. He is now looked after by a relative. Hryhoriy, who still has a full head of hair, says that being single has kept him feeling young. He recommends a diet of milk, cheese and potatoes as well as the occasional shot of vodka."

I don't wish to detract from Mr Nestor's incredible feat of longevity but, incredible as it might sound, if Hindu sources are correct he is but a mere infant compared to the likes of the Devraha Baba.

The Devraha Baba shortly before his 1989 demise at the age of 250.

Nobody knew the Devraha Baba's exact age - there was no birth certificate. However, his devotees claim that he died in 1989 at the grand old age of 250 (although it was rumoured that the Baba claimed to be over 700 years old!). The first president of India Dr.Rajendra Prashad explained at the age of 73 how as a child his father had taken him to see Baba, known as the "Ageless Yogi" who was already a very old man and that his father had known baba for many years before that. Thus the former president, a reliable witness I think, claims that from his own experience he can attest to the fact that Devraha Baba was more than 150 years of age. So I wonder what can account for the Devraha Baba's amazing longevity? Mr Nestor, of course, mentions among other things that lifelong bachelorhood is an important factor. As a Hindu ascetic, the Devraha Baba had also lived a life of sexual abstinence. This line of though brought to mind another case I came across a month ago, this time from China:

25th February 2007 - "HONG KONG (Reuters) - A 107-year-old Hong Kong villager, who still enjoys an occasional smoke, has attributed his longevity in part to decades of sexual abstinence, a newspaper said on Sunday. "I don't know why I have lived this long," Chan Chi -- one of Hong Kong's oldest people -- was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post during an annual feast for the city's elders.
"Maybe it has to do with the fact that I have lived a sex-less life for many years -- since I was 30," said Chan, a widower whose youthful bride perished during the Japanese invasion in World War Two."

There does seem to be a link then, at least anecdotally, between longevity and celibacy or, put another way, between sex and death. This could mean that an existence free of the stresses and strains of family life contributes to ripe old age. Or perhaps, as the Tantric traditions in Hinduism teach, longevity has something to do with the physiology of celibacy itself. In this system the seed is viewed as somehow embodying the 'ojas' or life energy and so the retention of this vital fluid is said to be the key to a long and healthy life, whereas its loss would seem to entail the opposite. Food for thought.

Bone Idle