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 The
Hindu View on Human Cloning
In the year 1997 the then
President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton, requested a report from
all Religions (religious leaders) on the ethics and morality of cloning, since
he needed to decide, whether cloning research should be allowed and whether it
will be legal in the U.S.A. to experiment with cloning human beings. In this
context Swami Omkarananda was also requested to give his opinion. In the
following is printed Paramahamsa Omkarananda Saraswati's brilliant writing on
the "Hindu View of Human Cloning".
Notwithstanding the unnaturalness
or monstrosity, the well-imaginable as also unforeseen nightmarish abuses, of
human cloning, and the urgent need for banning it as also as a safe-guard
putting it under Law by Governments, - common-sense, the Hindu Mind and
humanity's timeless Values do not desire multiplications and copies of fragile,
fleeting, helpless, suffering, diseased, restless human life-forms but they
hunger and thirst for imparting to the human beings the best education, culture,
and for furthering the human growth in fundamental goodness, wisdom, strength,
peace, happiness, knowledge and experience of the Value of Values, the Truth of
truths, that which is the highest and greatest in them - God. Let the scientific
Genius that has contributed to the phenomenal advancements in research,
discovery and development, devote a larger portion of its intelligence and
energies to contributing to the production of men of sparkling intelligence, who
derive their joys in life through pursuit of moral, mental, material, cultural,
spiritual Values.
Imagine, through millions of
abortions around the world, day in and day out, how many wonderful scientific
and spiritual geniuses, doctors, men of excellence of every kind, Sages, Saints,
benefactors of mankind, builders of a better culture and civilisation are
destroyed even before they could take a breath of fresh air here on earth! In
the face of all this, how senseless, irresponsible and damaging it is for the
overbearing intelligence in the genetic scientist and engineer to spend other
peoples' money and his own God-given time and energies in trying to produce
unfortunate artificial copies of human beings.
Nature is full of miracles at
every step and does not need the miracle of the dangerous, unnatural human
cloning. Cloning may copy the material features and characteristics but leaves
untouched the vast intangibles in the human individual. By human cloning one
cannot create a Plato or Einstein, Michelangelo or Homer, Mahatma Gandhi or St.
Francis of Assisi. Such model human beings are products of aeons of evolutionary
Nature. Man is not a mere artefact of genetic material, but an imperishable
being bearing in himself the perfections of the Creator who is indwelling and
transcending the genetic matrix. He is infinitely more than the biological
organism that functions as his temporary tenement.
The raison d''tre of man's spirit
entering into the biological organism consists in its striving for the
unfoldment of the perfections of God resident in itself and for the moral and
intellectual development that forms the foundation for the achievement of
spiritual enlightenment and perfection. Man cannot remain satisfied with
pleasures that arise from nervous titillation, but needs and hungers for
permanent happiness, unconditioned love, unlimited peace, supreme knowledge. To
obtain them is the meaning and purpose of life here on earth. Any other aim and
purpose assigned to human life would result in frustration and untold suffering
of various kinds.
The Hindu mind propagates the knowledge that the human individual is unique in
creation and bears in itself that which is other than human life and transcends
human life. That is the immutable, invisible, immortal, all-perfect, inviolable,
indivisible absolute Reality. The Hindu mind sees human life from this
standpoint and finds the purpose of human existence on earth consisting in
moving towards the achievement in daily life, of a peace that passeth
understanding of immortality by gaining in consciousness identity with the
Eternal, of the perfection that resides in obtaining oneness with God, true
freedom and happiness that belong to the Infinite.
It is patent to every scholar of
fundamental thought that in the world of spirituality, Hinduism has, over many a
millennium, produced numberless men of God-experience, men rooted in the
realisation of the ultimate Reality. Some of them have brought human life into
existence by a few drops of water or by the dirt from the surface of the human
body or a few words uttered or by the mere thought or wish, all energised by
their enlightened Consciousness. Their blessings have granted children to barren
women and the birth of male babies to those women who had no possibility of
obtaining them through natural process of self-reproduction.
The Hindu scriptures abound in
stories of the production of human life by all too many unconventional but
benign methods. They touched a stone and brought human life into existence. They
have left behind the knowledge and the techniques by which the human individual
can influence the foetus in the mother's womb and inculcate the characteristics
and qualities of supreme saintliness, can leave his biological body, enter a
corpse and use it for living a normal life and when the purpose is fulfilled
leave it at will, or enter a tree or a stone or a bird and leave it at will, or
travel in the vast immeasurable stretches of the stellar universe and come back
to his biological body, leave the biological body and enter into invisible
universes and come back to report to humanity the nature of these invisible
universes. They also travelled in time millenniums backward and forward and have
recorded the nature of human living in the immemorial past and in the
millenniums to come. They have known and handled the nature of the
space-time-continuum of our physical, psychical, occult universes and have
anchored their consciousness in the spaceless, timeless absolute Being.
They have again and again
transformed in a split second their biological human form into a structure of
light and made it disappear, much to the amazement of the stand-by witnesses.
All this is well documented in Hindu scriptures and repeatedly redemonstrated by
an unknown number of sages owning a power of reason far superior to that of Kant
and Hegel. However, the Hindu mind gave no significance to these unfolded
potentialities and required from the human individual steady growth in ethical
conduct, all-comprehending wisdom, devotion to the one God or the Truth in
numberless forms and names, selfless service to mankind, meditation on the Truth
that was, is and always will be and the experience of the absolute Consciousness
and happiness.
The Hindu mind finds that it is futile to ban this unethical and dangerous human
cloning because in spite of banning, the degenerate trend in our Time-Spirit
will find many covert ways to continue human cloning under the dictates of an
inexorable lower nature that panders to false desires in oneself and in others,
or is baited by bad governments or allured by the gains that commercial centres
offer. The ancient yet the ever-new and ultra modern Hindu mind demands that all
Governments and all the concerned private organisations should subject the
genetic research, its plans, programmes and the application of its results to
strict regulations and should requisition from the scientists in this field, the
services of their growing ethical awareness, moral conduct and the possession of
the knowledge derived from the enduring world culture and spirituality, which
alone throws floods of light on the intrinsic dignity and divinity of human life
in its organic and intimate relation to the supreme Creator.
The Hindu mind holds in itself the
knowledge that the creative Life-force is co-existent and coeval with all space
and that the building materials for creating life are available to the human
creature in whom the Creator Himself with his infinite powers and perfections
has His habitat. The living cell does not create life, Life-force is prior to
the cell and animates the cell temporarily. And Life-force itself has no
existence apart from that which indwells and transcends it - the Eternal and the
Infinite, God. Life can grow even on a metal; and the Soul can dwell in
life-structure, or in any form of metal, or wood, or air or water or fire, bird
or beast or angel and can subsist without a material form.
Life, energy, matter, light,
sound, love, consciousness, are all interchangeable and are one and the same. In
and above them is the supreme, immutable, indescribable, eternal, infinite
Reality of absolute Knowledge, Happiness, Perfection. Hinduism has evolved
hundreds of methods for experiencing that Reality and has piled up in its
numberless, indestructible and eternally valid scriptures, immense and
all-comprehensive knowledge of it. All creation is consciousness and God is the
Soul and Substance of Consciousness. Say, if you will, all is Energy, or all is
Matter, or all is Light, all is Life, all is Love, or all is Sound, or all is
God. In and above all Matter, all Energy, all Light, all Life, all Love, all
Consciousness there is the unchanging, eternal, infinite Reality. That is to be
known. That is to be researched. That is to be discovered and experienced. With
such discovery, knowledge and experience you would be the greatest benefactor of
mankind, the best scientist of all Knowledge, best Sage of all Values, Ideals,
Principles and Perfection, a man honoured and adored by all mankind, all Nature,
all the invisible divine Beings.
This is the answer of Hinduism to
the misdirected human genius and skill in genetic scientists that grope in
frightening ignorance of the fundamental knowledge pertaining to the real nature
of man and God and their inalienable oneness, the oneness that imposes on man
the first and fundamental duty in daily life, of expressing the inherited divine
Light, Wisdom, Peace, Happiness, Freedom and Perfection. Human cloning is not a
sign of spectacular achievement and advancement, but another milestone on the
Road that may lead to human degeneration and abused human skill.
Hinduism is not a religion founded
by any great Religious Leader. It is the self-revelation of the infinite Truth.
It is Sanatana Dharma, the eternal Law of the eternal Being. It countenances
nothing in nature which is not in harmony with the dynamisms of the divine Truth
and Perfection. And none in good senses can claim that human cloning can ever be
brought in harmony with the operations of moral and spiritual law in the very
soul of man.
There are no benefits from human
cloning which cannot be had through alternative methods. Human genius and skill
have to be invested in exploring and using these alternative natural methods.
There is no intrinsic value in human cloning, and the long list of advantages
presented with euphoria by the advocates of cloning is shattered by a longer
list of disadvantages, possible abuses and obvious dangers. It is a sensation
fraught with potentialities for destructive commercial exploitation in the hands
of greedy human nature that lacks scruples. A subtle, unchanging, all-potencies
containing non-genetic Element is in all genetically created organisms and
life-forms; there is the uncreated Principle in every thing created, bearing
inseverable relations with that created thing. Nothing can exist outside this
Element, this Principle, this God. Every cell, every organism, every
life-structure is in space, and Space is in them. Infinitely subtler than Space,
and containing in itself all space is God, who is every kind of miracle-working
Power of powers. Every genetic scientist and engineer who deals with cells and
genes without any Knowledge of this Principle, this Element, this imperishable
Being, is half blind and cannot produce anything with his out of context
activity that does not carry in itself a real curse, overshadowing the claimed
benefit, be that benefit medical or eugenic or of any other nature. The genetic
scientist and engineer does not, and cannot, take into his consideration the
all-important phenomenon of the psychical, occult, Soul-principle that enters,
surrounds, and transcends the living cellular organism and its genetic content.
Only such souls whose Karma it is to enter into the cloned human bodies will
enter into the cloned human bodies. There is no difference between the souls of
the naturally born and the cloned human beings, except that the cloned ones
suffer from the assaults coming from the prejudices of the normal human society
in which they live.
The aim of Creation is to help the
creature not to divert its creative energies and intelligence into false
channels, but to guide it into the world of knowing, loving and being one with
the Creator. Not the creation of mortal life, but that which is Immortal in it
and without which the mortal form has no soul and substance, the Immortal that
has always been the object of direct experience for all superscientists, sages,
saints, mystics, men of extraordinary goodness and intelligence, - is important
and should take precedence in all human attention and search for increasing
knowledge, skill, power, experience and achievement.
The Creation has made provision
for only one kind of cloning where the human individual is concerned, and that
is to clone God. The Biblical statements, "Man is made in the image of God" and
"Be as perfect as your Father in Heaven", and the statements of Hinduism, "Thou
art That" and "The Self in Man is the Supreme Reality, God", are to be
investigated, known and experienced. Make the latent God in human individual
patent. Every saint of perfect purity of heart, cosmic love, divine
enlightenment is "a cloned God". Evolutionary Nature has presented to humanity
over the millenniums numberless such "cloned Gods". It is time that scientists,
specially in the field of genetic engineering, devote some of their attention,
genius and energies to this fundamental fact and function of life on earth. It
is high time that the Governments and the private bodies around the world pool
the best services, and fund the creative activities, of the geniuses or the
leaders in every field of human knowledge and involve all mankind at all levels
into the dynamisms of moral, cultural, spiritual growth, the growth that alone
is the first and fundamental solution to all the problems that the Governments,
the societies and the families are facing on this beautiful but much abused
planet.
Swami Omkarananda
The
Divine Mother and OM
To every earnest seeker of the
Divine, to every real member of the Divine Light Centre, the Divine is the
infinite Consciousness-Power. It is Truth. Truth has two aspects: the aspect of
dynamism, the manifest Reality, and the unmanifest Reality, the transcendent
Being and the Being of the Truth that is expressive in the phenomena.
The whole cosmos is a structure of
Light and Consciousness in the infinite Truth. This Consciousness-Power and
Light is Devi, the Divine Mother. Her Nature is infinite Knowledge, She is
timeless, She is self-luminous. She is the supreme Mother of all Gods - She is
infinitely more than Savitri, Gayatri, Aditi.
She is neither masculine nor
feminine, yet She is the most wondrous 14 year-old girl. She is always 14 years
old, Kanya Kumari. This is the mystery, this is the riddle. But it is no riddle
and no mystery to inner experience - that the timeless Being, the supreme Mother
of all that is and was and will ever be, is yet the Girl of 14 years,
never-aging, ever-the-same, supremely beautiful, indescribably beautiful.
The quintessence of beauty in all
the cosmos is an ugly speck before the indescribable and ineffable beauty of the
supreme Reality, Tripurasundari.
You can think of any human face,
more beautiful than Helen, and try to infinitise that beauty, so beautiful is
the face of Kanya Kumari.
The experience of the seeker of
the Divine reveals countless worlds of wonder, in an illimitable and infinite
Consciousness. The nature of this Kanya Kumari is boundless Power, absolute
Knowledge. You can never conceive what absolute knowledge is, it is not a
totality of knowledge that we in human experience can encompass. It is more than
omniscience which is omnipresent.
Supposing if the space were omniscient, space which is present everywhere, just
imagine such an omniscience. But space is something limited; it is a small
carpet in the immeasurable Being of the supreme Reality. All space can be rolled
up by the Supreme Being as a small carpet. Millions and millions of cosmoses do
not cover even the palm of the Divine. Before this creation, before the birth of
this stellar system, this universal manifestation, there was another
manifestation. Before that, yet another. Thus regress endlessly; countless
numbers of universes are there upon the Being of the supreme Divinity.
Kali is in fact Kalatita. Kali is
the timeless Reality. She wears upon Her bosom a garland of skulls. Every skull
is one universal system that has disappeared, one cycle of creation that has
been dissolved. How many cycles of creation have been dissolved? How many times
had that Supreme Divinity brought into existence these universal systems? How
many times did it maintain them and dissolve them? No one can count. It baffles
the intelligence of the greatest Sage. It is beginningless, bottomless,
unfathomable, - not any supernormal capacity or faculty in the superconscious
being, nothing can fathom the infinite Reality. This is the Universal Mother,
the timeless Mother, the boundless Knowledge. She is AIM.
Her nature is Light. Merely by
being She destroys the demons of ignorance and ego. She destroys all
limitations, all boundaries, all forms of darkness. Every limitation, be it a
bodily limitation, or limitation in pleasure or in freedom or in peace, or in
any other form of experience or being, is an unfortunate condition, something
undesirable, something finite, perishable, something that is a source of many
problems. There is no happiness worth the name in the whole creation. That which
transcends the creation, the supreme Divinity, the all-full Reality, that alone
is Happiness.
That Being can be experienced here
and now within the limitations of a finite human life. Therein lies the sacred
aim and meaning and supreme value of life on earth. And here again, it is the
work of the same supreme Reality, that results in man's experience of infinite
Perfection. You can call it Grace of the Devi, or Grace of Krishna, or Shiva.
Krishna and Shiva are aspects of this mighty, inconceivable Reality, called
Mahatripurasundari.
We call that Reality as Devi
because that indescribable, inconceivable, boundless Existence is by its very
nature Light, Consciousness, Knowledge, Beauty, Happiness, - all these qualities
are feminine. Light is by its very nature feminine. Therefore the approach to
the supreme Reality as the infinite Divine Mother facilitates not only an easy
grasp of the nature of the ultimate Reality, but opens up a thousand roads in
daily life for the immediate grasp and experience of that Reality.
The mere thought of the Divine
Mother is a perpetual conquest of every form of darkness. The whole Durga
Saptashati consists in nothing but a splendid conquest of the powers of Light, a
conquest over everything dark which is at the same time titanic, terrific,
demonic. Passion is demonic, pride is demonic, anger is demonic. All these
negative qualities which destroy the beauty of human life are demonic by nature,
they destroy not only human happiness, human progress, human unity, but they
preclude all possibilities of any human being attaining divine knowledge and
divine experience.
The spiritual individual is an
embodiment of the grand, awe-inspiring divine drama depicted in Durga Saptashati,
or Devi-Mahatmyam.
Devi resides in the heart of the
earnest seeker. Her Presence is the Presence of Light. Where there is light
there can be no darkness, therefore the true lover of the Divine is as a
necessity full of light. In consequence there is a perpetual conquest in him of
every limitation that may raise its ugly head.
The presence of the Divine Mother
in the heart of the seeker perpetually destroys all causes of unhappiness. The
true seeker of the Divine is therefore uncompromisingly happy, cheerful. He is
established in joy. No matter his plane has crashed, the man is falling down, he
is seated like a fool calm and peaceful, even while falling to the ground he
remains peaceful. And miraculously for him either he falls in water where he can
easily swim, - something like that always happens. The omnipresent arms of the
Divine hold him. His life is a perpetual miracle, without anybody noticing it to
be a miracle. He is incorruptible in his purity. He need not have to withdraw
himself from any circumstance of temptation; nothing can tempt him, for he is
filled with the knowledge which is the very nature of the Divine Mother. He is
incorruptible. While dwelling in the body he is intensely wrapped in all his
awareness in the Consciousness of the Divine Mother, therefore he has no need
and necessity to withdraw himself from any human or environmental circumstance
which is a perpetual threat or a challenge or a temptation to an ordinary human
being.
The Divine Mother, whose Nine Days are being celebrated all over India, is
Omkareshwari. She is Om. She bears Om. She fashions the universes through Om.
She sustains the universes through Om. She dissolves the universes through Om.
From the standpoint of the science
of vibrations, everything is a structure of vibration. The tree is a structure
of vibration, the body is a structure of vibrations, your thought is a
vibration. So is your feeling, so is your action. Everything is a vibration. The
most gross and physical and material form of Om is vibration. Vibration is
everywhere. All words are vibrations. All beings are vibrations. All things are
vibrations. This is Om, that is Om, everything is Om. I am Om, you are Om,
everyone is Om, everywhere is Om.
Om is everything, and Om
transcends everything. While including everything, while constituting the inner
essence of everything, while furnishing the outer form and features for
everything, it transcends everything, it is primarily transcendental. However it
is not lost in its transcendentality, it is there in all phenomena. In fact, all
phenomena are formed in its own bosom and out of its own substances. It subsists
in itself. While covering everything, encompassing everything, constituting
everything, Om transcends everything. It is timeless, constantly weaving the
time-space universe. It is spaceless, constantly disclosing upon its vast Being,
multiplicity of forms, structures of vibrations. Everywhere is Om.
Hundreds of Sages, millions of
years ago, as also thousands of years ago, have experienced the Divine, the
supreme Reality, through the practice of the discipline of Om. Om is the mantra
that has conducted their soul into the experience of the timeless divine
Reality.
Om is everything, Om is sacred, Om is God. Om is infinite Peace, Om is the
absolute Light, Om is Omniscience, Om is Omnipresence, Om is Omnipotence.
From Om emerge Brahma, Vishnu,
Shiva. Om is the parent of everyone, of all mortals as also of all immortals. It
is the source of everything. It is that Being which contains everything,
originates everything, sustains everything, brings to a denouement the whole
drama of life. It is the concluding couplet of the evolutionary nature, as also
the first syllables that Nature in its birth utters:
Every child that comes into the being utters first Om.
Om in one form or the other is universally pervasive, universally
self-expressive, - while all the time Om in its inner being is transcendentally
poised.
Om is infinite Beauty, Om is the Divine Mother, the Supreme Mother, the Mother
of all Gods, the Parent of all knowledge.
Without Om no knowledge is
possible, no experience is conceivable. Om grants intuitions. The sadhana of Om
unfolds a new vision of the supreme Reality. It is the originating bed of all
revelations.
Om is the supreme Reality. The
experience of Om is the ultimate meaning and goal of life. Blessed are those who
repeat Om, who sing Om, who are filled with the vibrations of Om, whose being is
inwardly constituted of devotion to Om.
Om is everything, Om is everyone,
Om is everywhere. Om is the soul of all beings.
It is the supreme Intelligence operative everywhere.
The river sings Om, the sea says Om, the clouds produce Om.
The movement of the bell over the bicycle produces the sound Om. The telegraphic
wires ring with Om. The sound of Om is everywhere, even in the wood. In the
mineral world, in the animal world, in the plant world, in the kingdom of
biology, you will find Om all-pervasive.
Om is therefore the one supreme
Reality, the beginning and the end of life. Om is the Alpha and Omega. It is all
of the supreme Reality.
Durga, Tripurasundari, Mahalakshmi,
Mahasaraswati, - is Omkareshwari. She has Om in Her Heart. From out of Om She
produces everything.
Om is infinite Delight, unending
Happiness. It is Perfection. Om is Fullness:
purnamadah purnamidam purnatpurnamudachyate,
purnasya purnamadaya purnameva avashishyate.
Om is infinite Fullness. There is
no loss of energy in Om. Everything is transformed into Itself, and conserved in
Itself. It is infinite Fullness. If you take away fullness from fullness, still
fullness remains. Zero plus zero is zero - fullness plus fullness is fullness.
Zero minus zero is zero - fullness minus fullness is fullness. Fullness remains,
fullness alone was, fullness alone is. That fullness is Om.
Om is everything, Om is God.
Without Om no Vedas exist, no knowledge subsists, no sacred scriptures. The
mantras have no value without Om, Om gives value to everything, Om gives
sanctity to everything, Om gives Divinity to the Divine.
So, Om is everything, therefore
sing Om, repeat Om, be absorbed in the consciousness of Om. Uplift yourself into
a state of consciousness to which the awareness of Om becomes the characteristic
feature.
Swami Omkarananda
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