Research

I might have some interesting links related to this based on astral projection and particular advanced tantric techniques I've come across. I'll look for it again soon.

Well nano technology is almost nearing the point where they can do cell repair and regeneration, effectively making a cell immortal. If those nano machines could also in turn repair themselves it would pretty much make you immortal bar getting sucked into a black hole, thrown into a sun, or some other means of destroying every last cell in your body. Though if you want to get into the whole conciousness transfer thing it wouldn't be so much of an issue because you could retain your original brain /nervous system and inlay it into a cybernetic body (of course only possible after nano technology is sustaining your cells). I'm not sure exactly what would happen if your brain got destroyed and regenerated there's a possibility that your memories may get destroyed as well becoming a blank sheet so to speak...though it would still be your dna. There's also the possibility that if brain cells can be restored to their previous state that memories could be retained (there's a lot of research that still needs to be done in this field) I'm not entirely sure if it would be possible to transfer your consciousness into a different brain...or a computer for that matter...it's a very taboo subject and thus nobody has ever done any research on it. The closest they came was switching the heads of some monkeys way back when...though if it was possible it would pretty much mean you could store your consciousness in some sort of indistructible vault and possibly use an uplink of sort to control an avatar like body and never have to worry about your consciousness being destroyed... There are really two major hurdles that need to be overcome to achieve anywhere close to an immortal body: 1. Nano technology research needs to be improved to the point where perfect cell repair is possible down to the very dna strand as well as be able to harvest all elements out of any food you eat using what's needed for repair or energy use. 2. Fusion Reactor technology needs to get to the point where it's feasible and possible to be housed in a small enough container to not interfere with bodily functions and movements as well as be able to be powered via any elements. Though to get over both of those hurdles it will take a long long time, you would probably start off with just extending your life via nano technology or chemicals...maybe a bunch of organ transplants using 3d printed organs...There's already possibly successful research for just extending your life via a pill to slow down your cell division rates, it wouldn't be much....maybe 20-40 years tops onto your lifespan but it definitely is a start Though there are multiple possibilities once those two things happen considering the amount of cybernetics being released these days. Though most of those options being very crude. I would opt for a different option using synthetic muscle operated via electric current and nano magnetic particles in nano tubes allowing you to have a perfect human appearance yet still be able to interface with other electronics of sorts (think ghost in the shell body) With the amount of power being generated via a fusion reactor core you'd be exponentially stronger and faster than any human really only limited to what kind of materials your body is made of. Ion flight is also a serious possibility with the amount of power that could be harnessed from a fusion reaction... If we're talking about non-super human like strength and qualities it would be possible to operate a cybernetic body using solar power and enhanced digestive system via nano technology, storing excess power in a system of batteries of sorts.

http://shopofenlightenment.com/forum/go-into-another-person-s-body-t1587.html ^got me started on looking it up... http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1776458/pg1 ^Then found more discussions http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/ettt/ettt18.htm ^translation of text that includes information on the grong hjug (various spellings) that allows one to tranfer permanently into a (recently deceased) corpse. Of course certain details are secret and assuming brain damage occurs within several minutes of no oxygen...you can logically infer that to use this technique if it's real, you either witnessed the death (which hopefully didn't cause permanent damage to the body) or were the cause of it. Which brings up moral issues unless you utilize cloning or 3d printing (already working on organs, whole bodies can't be too far off).

Everything I had discussed was based off of known technology and it's projected progression over the next several years to decades. There is also the scientific possibility of 'downloading' your consciousness into a vault like I had talked about and using an avatar body. (I guess that's similar to what you're talking about but a lot less...unsound) I won't say that any of those things you linked aren't possible, but I'm more inclined to believe in science than something unsound and unproven at best.

@Karasu, Thank you for taking your time writing all that down I appreciate it. For me then the solution seems to be to extend life as far as we can until we have something that could provide immortality. But to go into what you wrote, The two major hurdles you listed to start with I do agree on, if we are to assume that at least partial cooperation is needed with cybernetics and nanotechnology fusing together. Then there needs to major overhaul on nanotechnology research although I have seen that it is quite well funded. As for the Fusion Reactor Technology you got me there on that, the thing about that research is the danger within the research itself if that wasnt enough. Theres a Russian billionair i read up about who predicts within 40 to 50 years we would be able to have this kind of technology but from what I can tell it might be much longer then that. The 3d printing method would be a very good aspect to use. I mean with that replacing organs would be easier and we could at least extend our lifes to a certain amount to give us more time to do all this. There are a few exoskeleton suits out on the market as well which dont really provide you any life extension but show promise for those who are crippled or just need extra strength and such. My question is though slowing down the aging process in the brain if there is no way to just dump ourselves into a machine without eliminating our sense of self then we will need some method to reduce the aging of the brain or improve upon it otherwise regardless of what enhancements we have being a stationary living organism slowly losing there mental capacity is not a good way to exist.

Well like I said, nano-technology is nearing the point where it can not only repair cells but revert them to their ORIGINAL state, meaning that aging is a non factor. The theory goes that it would be like a complete different sub system. Every cell in your body would over time become fused with a type of nano-factory that would constantly repair and maintain it without hindering it's prescribed job, given time certain cells would no longer be needed and simply be replaced with mechanical parts being operated off of the same thought frequency used to keep the function of those specific cells going. These factories in turn would be repaired by other nano machines in your body whose sole function is repair of any and all nano machines in your system or even repair of bones (or probably in this case a type of nano-metal built particle up) these nano machines would get their energy from an enhanced digestive system that takes it's energy and materials from the things you eat (or could just absorb stuff through your skin in a kinda weird way technically...but I'd rather just stay as human as possible) you could also have your skin be a pseudo photosynthesis factory providing you with other means of energy. There's a theory out there that the human mind can only store about 150 years worth of data...but this can easily be overcome given time...considering nano technology could repair a cell to it's original state it's highly possible that it could also make that memory cell a blank slate 'deleting' unwanted memories and retaining the necessary ones (could even 'program' the nano machine to have the necessary memories be original cell states so that upon restoration those memories and functions would never be erased...of course that's just speculation)

Back to what you were stating, Karasu, If thats the case then reverting them back to their original state would work for eliminating the aging of the brain. The thing about the memory only being able to store so much data from a given time, if you did have to remove certain bits of data to maintain new flows of data, then could this not cause a problem if you were to erase certain parts other memories might not make sense. I mean you could say that there is a technology that would allow us to automatically select which ones to remove later on. However I find that idea would very hard to pull off. But as you said if we can get the technology to maintain the original states of the necessary memory then by all means that would help with the hurdle there.

Your brain supposedly retains EVERY bit of information you've ever processed over your life span...so yeah, you'd have to eliminate some memories but as technology advances you could be more selective about what exactly you delete...say you choose to delete all color from you past memories thus increasing your storage space by leaps and bounds...deleting certain aspects from memories only retaining the very core of said memory would also be an effective method to expand your storage time...though essentially you would have to basically live in cycles, I'm sure there are lot of things you would choose to forget over time, only retaining key events in your life to retain some sort of linear progression basically compressing 10 years of memories into something like 1 year of a montage. You could even write in a program for the nano machines to basically compress and cache your memory of each year in this sense...or however long of a time period you would want, the longer the better considering you could filter out more of the unimportant memories.