Government should try all possiblities to stop human cloning. If not, we are playing God here. We don't know. It is almost like somebody found the jar on the beach and opened it. What came out? A genie came. So, we don't know what we will be getting at. So, Practically on the safe side not to. What is the need for that? We don't see a need for it. It is simply scientific curiosity, and you know curiosity killed the cat. We should not be playing God in this way. We may even think that we are producing something good. If it turns up to be bad than we don't have any control over it. It is not acceptable to do it. The government should do all possible things to stop it. But, of course, I don't know how much they can achive, even privately they can do it or they can go to other country and do it, if they want but at least the government should be doing what it can to stop it. It is not the right thing to do.

It is impossible to say what kind of person it will be, anyway they are not going to multiply the soul. They may create a body but who knows what kind of a soul will get into that body. So, nobody will be possible to say exactly what kind of soul will be there. My thought , it could be a good person or bad person. If It is good person it's alright, but there is no guarantee. Why do we play with that?

If I can compare cloning in Hindu philosophy, in Ramayana, one of the Rakshakas, every time he was killed and a drop of blood falls on the ground, a new demon will appear from that blood. God had a terrible time in controlling it. That is the only thing I could think of cloning in the old scriptures but I don't think I've heard any experience or any knowledge of cloning the good people, the devas, the divine people, only the asuras (the demonic people).

If you allow the person to die [rather than harvest a clone for "spare parts"] he will himself have a complete new body. He is born again. We don't have to do that. What are we doing? What are we preventing? We are interfering with karma first of all. Even with the spare parts you're having a old body. If you allow the body to die the soul will have a brand new body. So, we are not allowing the soul to have a new body. We want to keep the soul in the same old body with repaired parts. Whether it is by cloning you get the parts or by animals to get the parts, that is not the correct thing. Even transplanting of organs itself is a wrong thing to do.

Let them know that we are all strongly object to cloning.

Rev. Swami Satchidananda
Satchidananda Ashram
Route 1 Box 1720, Buckingham, VA 23921 USA
Phone: 804/969-3121

Such things as human cloning are not new to our cultural history of India. We did not call it cloning, but there were other methods of procreation. One is Ganesha and Murugan, as you mentioned. The consort of Murugan, Valli, was born from a deer. It is "just a story," but then now we can see how it could have happened. Prithu, a king, in Puranas was born from the thigh. Shows there is not only one way of procreation, there were many other ways. As to dharma [righteousness, cosmic order] or adharma [wrongness, contrary to the desired order], it should not be encouraged. Presently we do not require any such methods of procreation, so man does not need to develop them.

There was a time when necessary for population, but now there are many methods to stop population growth, so it does not call for new methods of procreation. We need a principled life, now need preservation, not creation. Examples of other-than-normal procreation in Hindu tradition:

Raktabija was a mythological figure, if cut each drop of blood became a new person. The Pandavas were born to their mother as a result of mantras [sacred sounds] chanted to each of five Gods. The Pandavas father, Pandu, was conceived by his mother at the very sight of the sage Vedavyasa.

Sri Sri Sri Tiruchi Mahaswamigal
Sri Rajeswari Nagara
Kenchanahalli
560 039 Bangalore, Karnataka, INDIA
Fax: 011 91-80-860-0633

Human cloning should not be allowed. It should be stopped thoughtfully and legally. All research leading to it should be strictly regulated and monitored. It is not a matter of a few scientist's research, a few nations' decision or a few leaders' preference, the entire humanity should unite to control this crisis. If we do not act now, our future generation shall hold us responsible. Lord Swaminarayan, the founder of the Swaminarayan Faith, discouraged tampering with nature, especially humans. Just as man should not act like an animal, he should not also play the role of God. Let life progress naturally. From the Lord's words which describe the singularity of God, a parallel message of order and stability is evident:

"There is only one God, and none like Him. No one can become God. And if others became God, there would be many Gods. Then, Creation would not remain in order. One God would say "I will create", the other would say "I will destroy; one God would say "I will shower rain," the other would say "I will not" one God would say "I will introduce the qualities of man into animals, the other would say "I will introduce the qualities of animals into man" and so things would become unstable. (Vachanamrit Gadhada III39).

Though Lord Swaminarayan's words concentrate solely upon the nature and the supremacy of God, they also reveal the disorder that would rise out of interchange of qualities and chaos in nature's laws. Things would become unstable.

Already, our society is growing restless, being systematically starved of the values that make us human. Divorces, single parent families, child abuse and the overall fading of the family structure, are leading to deep flaws in our new generation. Human cloning would mean a parentless society, full of surrogate mothers, careless donors and loveless children. The thought itself is shocking. Our world would become too individualistic and ego-centric and perhaps, the word "society" would lost its meaning.

The sacredness of life would be lost. To produce clones at our whims and fancies, may also lead to their use, abuse and destruction at will. It would be unthinkable to see man become as intolerant to human life as he has become to nature. A clone may become a thing or a product for self gratification. When we should be turning our research into attaining peace and harmony with nature, this discovery may drift us far, far apart.

Any tampering with Nature is eventually avenged by nature with added fury, if not now, then drastically in future. Whenever an imbalance is caused, Nature sets her scores right with devastating results. Cloning may lead to weird combinations of humans, animals and Nature. Uncontrollable diseases and deficiencies may spring up. The idea is nightmarish. And from our daily experiences of Kaliyuga [the dark age in which humans currently live, according to Hindu cosmology), the chances are that good minded people will refrain and evil minded people will go ahead. The discoveries are more likely to be abused than properly used.

As Hindus we believe that every clone, though genetically identical, will be spiritually different, just like identical twins who live separate lives. Lord Swaminarayan says that a new jiva (soul) enters the embryo stage, with its own separate karmas. Hence, no two clones can possibly lead the same lives and have the same experiences, let alone the original human. Their nature and nurture will be different, controlled by contrasting karmas according to: desh (place), kaal (time), kriya (actions), sang (association), dhyan (thought), Shastra (scripture), Diksha (initiation) and mantra. Nevertheless, a parallel race of clones may precipitate into a powerful force. Humanity will have to compete or compromise and design a new structure, constitution and pattern of life. This may lead to more unrest than progress. Why put money, mind and energy into research that may cause unrest? Isn't the ominous shadow of a nuclear holocaust enough? There is so much positive research our scientists can do and should do. Just like religion, science is good so long as it is controlled by the good. But who can guarantee this? The time has come for us to decide what is good not merely for scientific research and experimental curiosity, or for any individual name, or for our country, our era and our race, but good for our future and the entire creation. We should not develop lifestyles that ultimately destroy us.

His Holiness Pramukh Swami Maharaj
The Swaminarayan Movement
Akshar Dan
Sector 20, R.Road
Gandhi Nagar, Gujarat
INDIA

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 (satyasya satyam), 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 civilization 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 artifact 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'être 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 realization 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 energized 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 centers offer. The ancient yet the ever-new and ultra modern Hindu mind demands that all Governments and all the concerned private organizations 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 honored 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 of 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 dynamism 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 dynamism 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.

Ananda
Omkarananda Ashram
Gschwend 77
A-6932 Langen B. Bregenz
AUSTRIA
Home: 011 43 5575 4689
FAX: 011 43 5575 4745
E-mail: bkroninger@kroninger.vol.at