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De Grey has some impressive folks backing him up, including Peter Thiel, co-founder and ex-CEO of PayPal. Thiel donated $3.5 million to de Grey’s Methuselah Foundation.

The article went on to talk about all the potential advantages of living for ten centuries. And it asked some intriguing questions. Will we want to be married to the same person for 1,000 years? Won’t the planet get too crowded? Will humans need religion any longer? And so on.

As I read through the long article, I was riveted by de Grey’s impressive arguments not about whether we really can live that long, but about why we should want to live 1,000 years in these physical bodies. He made a good case for the "why."

I personally wouldn’t want to live that long, even if it becomes possible in our lifetime. But there are obviously many others who don’t agree with me. So I decided to get Chief Joseph’s perspective.

Here’s Chief Joseph.

Eternal life is the eternal human dream. An impossible dream? Hardly. For you already have eternal life.

The question is how do you want to live eternally? You already are eternal beings, with no ending, no beginning.

If you look at it from that perspective the question then becomes: How do I want to spend my eternal life?

From your soul’s perspective this endless quest for eternal -- or, at least, long -- life in a physical body is a bit frivolous. You live as long as you decide to. (We know that’s a controversial topic, but we don’t need to discuss it today.)

Let’s say Aubrey de Grey is right, and in your lifetimes it becomes entirely possible for you to keep your current physical bodies for another 900 or 1,000 years.

Some of you would probably choose that. Others, like John, would not.

What difference would it really make? None, from our perspective. None, from your souls’ perspective.

As we see it, there is little difference between living a "normal" human life span and living 1,000 years.

You often lament when one of you dies at an "early" age -- say 20 or 30. But when one of you dies at 100, you say he/she lived a good long life.

That, friends, is the key as we see it. Was it a good long life? Maybe not. Could it have been a good short life? Maybe.

You are mostly caught up in your identity -- or what you perceive as your identity. Almost all of you identify yourselves with your physical bodies. You see little of the greater you beyond those bodies.

Yet you are so much more than your physical bodies. Whether those bodies live 10 or 100 or 1,000 years is irrelevant. Your higher selves do not care.

But your higher selves do care about the quality of those lives, no matter how long or short.

When it comes time for you to leave your current physical bodies, whether they are 100 or 1,000 years old, there is only one thing that matters. It’s not the length of your physical life. It’s the amount of joy you’ve experienced in that physical lifetime.

Joy is the only criterion of your success.

Do you have a comment or want to talk about this article with other readers? Go to our Chief Joseph forum.