same ? again

[theist 1]

OK I know I have asked this before but I still need to get an understanding on this issue.

 

When is the exact moment the soul enters a clone.

 

This is going to become an important question in the very near future, if not already.

 

I have now heard two people advocate cloned animals as a solution to the animal slaughter problem because they have no souls

 

This is just the beginning of a whole new level of nightmare. After that I can picture them cloning human forms with "no souls" and claiming proprietoy rights over them. A slave class of sub-humans to do the work. Then employing eugenics to control the birth process further and restricting it to the ruling class.

 

OK call me paranoid but at least explain the soul entering the clone process to me.

 

Thanks

[Priitaa 0]

Haribol Thiest,

 

I dont know if this is the answer you are looking for, but I dont see why the soul would enter into a clone at any different point than it enters regularly. That is, I forget the details of the cloning process, but the split second there is life, however the happens, this is the moment the soul enters.

 

That the clone would solve the animal slaughter problem because clones are devoid of a soul is untrue. Animation (life!) is a symptom of the presence of soul. And its not even a partial soul, as there is no such entity. Therefore a clones soul is of equal quality to any other soul in an animal body. After all, if they start preaching the belief system that cloned animals have no souls, next will be cloned people have no souls so its ok to clone then kill a copy of yourself if you need a "new" organ, etc.

[Govindaram 1]

 

Hare Krishna

 

 

I heard somewhere that cloning is mentioned in the Qu'ran, and that it warns future generations of its effect, i don't know if cloning is mentioned in the Vedas, if it is it could help you, in your quest.

 

 

 

[lover_soul 0]

Its not my place to say, but still it is worth saying. Advocating or not advocating something will not change the course of this world. Yes, we can oppose it, but it is also good to realize that such horrible things are going to definitely happen as every one forgets God. It is time to go back to the spiritual world, lets mail our unalloyed devotion to the supreme and just wait for him to pick us up and give a ride to his abode.

 

[gHari 0]

Then the sperm is placed in the womb to unite with the egg, causing the development of a material body to beguile the soul. The means of delivering the sperm seems irrelevant, i.e. copulation or needle, sexist or scientist, music and candles, or petri dishes and test tubes.

 

Until the scientist can create life from a vaccuum, he is simply screwing around like everybody else.

[theist 1]

gHari, Is that cloning or artifical insemination?

[Guest guest]

Haribol, good subject. The way I heard it, the living entity (in the human sense) enters via the rain, through the grain and into the human approximately two years before she works herself into brain blood, where she enters the sperm cell. The rest is more readily accepted by the science community.

 

In the case of cloning, perhaps (meaning my speculation) some natural steps are omitted, but the being is still there, through the rain. After all, birth is provision by God for a being to have a body, and when this arrangement takes place is according to the whim of Lord Sri Providence. When the spark takes place? Who knopws, there are many stories of such eerie things, the one coming to mind is how the brahmanas stirred up the carcass of King Vena and produced the bodies of King Prthu and Queen Arci. Other stories from mahabharata, like the birth of the 101 kurus from Gandhari from one lump of indistinguishable flesh, the cell carried in a clay pot, etc.

 

The stories from shastra do not omit cloning. The scientists are proven fools in the sense that they always think they create something new and unique. But they dont make it rain, they just manipulate the rain that is already there. Thus, they will never create life, they can only manipulate life that exists beyond their permission. Heck, we all do that, we always propose, but it is always God who actually disposes, and cloning is no different. If life is created, the creator is always Life (God), no one else. Only fools pretend to do such things without sanction.

 

Hare Krsna, ys, mahaksadasa

[gHari 0]

But I thought it was jamming DNA into egg cells.

[theist 1]

I don't know. All this stuff has me very confused. Jungle sounds good.

[Gauracandra 1]

Our scriptures don't discuss cloning. Still, there is no reason to say that just because something is a clone that it has no soul. The soul enters a body when life is activated. The fact that DNA is used more than once to create life doesn't mean a soul does not exist. Twins who come from the same fertilized egg, may be genetically identical (not sure if this is true, but I think so), but it doesn't mean one has a soul and another one doesn't have a soul. Aren't genetic twins exact replicas of each other? I'm not sure, but if so, then this is the same as a clone and answers the question.

[theist 1]

 

Its not my place to say, but still it is worth saying.

 

 

Yours as much as anyone elses.

 

 

 

Advocating or not advocating something will not change the course of this world. Yes, we can oppose it, but it is also good to realize that such horrible things are going to definitely happen as every one forgets God. It is time to go back to the spiritual world, lets mail our unalloyed devotion to the supreme and just wait for him to pick us up and give a ride to his abode.

 

 

This is true. But still I must act. I am forced to. I am unable to just fix my mind on Krsna or even to properly perform sadhana-bhakti. Unable or unwilling. But I can work a little according to my nature.

 

We can inject some sense of aham brahmasmi into the debates that are taking place. Plant some seeds. Abortion, animal slaughter, cloning etc. If only a few people accept it and free themselves from these cycles of viciousness and begin moving towards Godhead that's better than nothing.

 

And if nothing else it gives me something to do that keeps me moving forward(slowly).

 

You see the problem for me is I don't have the unalloyed devotion to mail in to Krsna. So waiting for me would just be lethargy disguised perhaps as renunciation. I am factually at a sub-devotee platform. But I have become free of many gross habits so I am hopeful. It is just that I lack positive attachment to Krsna-bhakti.

 

I am somewhere around Bg 12.10-11 as near as I can tell.

[ancient_paztriot 0]

Thanks Theist. I was thinking of replying to this earlier… looked for the thread and overlooked it.

 

Lover_soul said:

"Its not my place to say, but still it is worth saying. Advocating or not advocating something will not change the course of this world. Yes, we can oppose it, but it is also good to realize that such horrible things are going to definitely happen as every one forgets God. It is time to go back to the spiritual world, lets mail our unalloyed devotion to the supreme and just wait for him to pick us up and give a ride to his abode."

 

"Advocating or not advocating something will not change the course of this world."

 

… Well, what do you think the politicians are doing? What do you think business is doing? They are all advocating. Bush has been a heavyweight advocate. The power and influence come down to a few individuals who coincidentally happen to be the biggest capitalist heavyweights.

 

"Yes, we can oppose it, but it is also good to realize that such horrible things are going to definitely happen as every one forgets God."

 

… Yes, and the forerunners who oppose it are doing the best service for society.

 

"It is time to go back to the spiritual world, lets mail our unalloyed devotion to the supreme and just wait for him to pick us up and give a ride to his abode."

 

In other words, quiet complicity makes you a conspirator.

[AncientMariner 0]

 

 

 

According to the Prabhupada I was reading the only aspiration a devotee has is to be reclaimed by the Lord from the miserable conditions of this world. I could care less about politics anymore, they wouldn't listen anyway.

[ancient_paztriot 0]

And while you think that way, all your options for meaningful and consistent religious philsoohy dissapear under "freedom of religion" and secular state… in the interests of disspationate objectivity.

 

… In the interests of replacing Krsna!

 

Irrational hypocrites! You can't market the moral dimension of life out of people's lives. You can't vote it out. You can't ignore it.

[Priitaa 0]

I suppose I am mixed regarding whether to speak out, or become politically active, about things like this. On the one hand I was told (but no quotes) Prabhupada said not to worry about such things because the pious nondevotees will take care of it for us. On the other hand, he said that at a time when we were doing big book distribution and moving many souls into the temples, more and more were practicing Krishna consciousness, therefore less were going for such things and were being saved. And we were all much more spiritually situated. Yet I still do have that in me, that we should try to share Krishna with others and in that way, we have automatically taken care of everything else.

[ancient_paztriot 0]

Do you not feel you are drowning in an ocean of nescience?

 

Your life is shaped by so many opposing elements - against your moral interest… against your survival!

 

Look around. You are being swept up in material dogma and the exploitive interests of a few egocentric maniacs.

 

Everything is resisting your desires.

[AncientMariner 0]

 

 

 

Now you are beginning to see why at the end of the Kali-yuga that the Kalki avatars mission is going to be to kill every human being on Earth to deliver them from their karma.

[ancient_paztriot 0]

Is it karma or is it mercy… at the end? Strange.

[theist 1]

You are out preaching in the streets that we are not the body but rather spiritsoul. Someone asks you if a clone has a soul or not.

 

What do you say? If you can't prove logicaly that a clone has a soul why should he believe you about any other form including the one is is presently in?

 

I had the impression that Prabhupada wanted the Krsna conscious movement to be based on science.

[Priitaa 0]

Ancient,

 

Whenever I feel I am drowning in an ocean of nescience, I know its a lack of Krishna consciousness and not a lack of political involvement. Which does not mean I am against devotees who choose to become politically involved, I simply wish to keep Prabhupada's highest teachings in the forefront that Krishna consciousness, if we do it, will solve everything.

 

Thiest,

 

If I'm out on the street on skp and someone asks me if a clone has a soul, I give them the same answer I gave you. Its not much different than answering what happens to the soul during a heart transplant, if an amoeba has a soul, etc. So what if they dont accept, nothing new. ha Heck, they still don't accept the more obvious: that animals have souls. Therefore I see this as just another question, another oportunity to preach to those who want to hear truth. There will alwyas be those who rather find some angle around it.

 

Certainly there is science we can and should use, but at a certain point even science won't prove the existence of any soul. And we must wonder why we have so much faith in science ourselves, because it is often mistaken, with new 'hypothesis' often being presented as scientific facts until they can't because it becomes obvious it is not.

[lover_soul 0]

No one here can say that you are pure or impure with in the heart, but if you open mine up, you will see many many things which are ridiculously disgusting. The thing that I learned is , if we worry about this world too much it will pull us into it. We then worry about everything and forget about what is really worth worrying about, which is devotional service. Ofcourse, this is not my place to say because I am also the part of it. I am as guilty as the next guy. We are all part of this mess and the best thing we can do is get away from it through some devotion, if we are lucky and do not fool ourselves into another fantasy.

 

[AncientMariner 0]

 

 

 

That one of my downfalls as a devotee is that at times I am only interested in my own liberation and that is clearly not the example that Prahlada Maharaja set for us so if there are devotees that are strong enough to convince political leaders to enact Krishna consciousness then I am all for them. I am not at that point yet, I still have a tendency to defend my own solitude which is definetly a downfall of mine which I may never overcome. Either way hopefully when i die I will be chanting the Hare Krishna mantra.

[ancient_paztriot 0]

Nice plug Theist. I'm not participating in this discussion.

 

But since you ask…

 

I think the many spiritual masters' explanations regarding the changeless of consciousness or in themselves sufficient.

 

I might be interested in this discussion at another time.

[ancient_paztriot 0]

"Whenever I feel I am drowning in an ocean of nescience, I know its a lack of Krishna consciousness and not a lack of political involvement. Which does not mean I am against devotees who choose to become politically involved, I simply wish to keep Prabhupada's highest teachings in the forefront that Krishna consciousness, if we do it, will solve everything"

 

Priitaa, if you can do that then tell me more.

 

Theoretically perfect I think. Yet, what if the government just decides to send you to a concentration camp because of your beliefs… that happened because the masses thought it was someone elses responsibility?

 

If the kali-yuga leaders are left to dominate and exploit without any accountability…

[ancient_paztriot 0]

lover_soul, you keep expressiing this very liberal opinion.

 

I think it is all bunk. I've said so before.

 

I'll stop responding to this future dogma, but I'm on record as being against it.