"Devarsi Muni dasa"  wrote:
>So, to answer your question, one reason that anyone would desire any
>immortality other than the immortality of the spirit is due to false ego.

A good answer, although my question was rhetorical. Maybe to elaborate
on this a bit... If someone wants to prolong his physical existence,
it is almost always due to one's identification with the body. When a
person thinks "I am the body", he sees death as the end of his
existence as an individual. He will, naturally, want to prolong his
existence, but that is not the solution of the problem. The solution
is to understand that body is a vehicle of spirit, and death is always
felt as a positive experience of removing limitations, not
disappearance. So, in this case the reason for desiring immortality is
ignorance.
There are other possibilities; most of them mostly based on ignorance,
too. For instance, one can believe that there is life after physical
death, but that is only intellectual belief, not something backed up
by personal experience; or, there is uncertainty regarding the kind of
existence after death (one can believe that he'll go to hell, for
instance), so one would want to postpone the moment of judgment for as
long as possible.
Of course, there are yogis who live for centuries, and are not bound
by such illusions. Why do they prolong their physical existence, then?
It's because they see divinity in everything, regardless of
circumstances, and it is completely equal to them whether they have a
body or not. Most yogis, however, leave their physical body as soon as
their mission on earth is over; that's what the Pandavas and Krsna
did, as well as the more recent examples of Lahiri Mahasaya,
Paramahamsa Ramakrsna, Vivekananda and Yogananda.
The general rule is that the more enlightened someone is, the greater
the desire for leaving the world. A paradox is that at the same time
one's presence in the world is increasingly beautiful; it's not
bitterness that causes one to desire death, but on the contrary it's
the separation from his Beloved. The moments of enlightenment are
present, they can actually be very frequent, but the time between them
can become unbearable. One who has seen and experienced God, has an
unbearable urge to prolong that experience indefinitely. Only when the
point of equality is reached, where there is no difference between
normal consciousness and enlightenment, a yogi can desire to prolong
his physical presence in the world, for some reason. An example for
this is Mahavatar Babaji.

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