[Advaita-l] cloning and inevitable mrutyu

[Venkatraghavan S]

"But can we give a precise
reason why an electronic entity cannot be considered a jiva with the usual
faculties of iccha, GYAna, and kriya and having sanchita karma etc."

Namaste,
An interesting thought experiment.
1) The birth of such a 'jIva' would break the laws of karma.
How can an android jIva have sanchita karma, ie what would be the
receptacle for sanchita karma for an android jIva? If you say the sUkshma /
kAraNa sharIra, then that is created at the same time as the sthUla
sharIra. A 'created-in-time jIva' would lead to a defect which
Shankaracharya alludes to in the eighth chapter of the Gita as
अकृताभ्यागमकृतविप्रणाशदोष
- the jIva would end up accruing results of actions he did not previously
commit, and actions committed would not bear fruit. That is why jIvas are
considered anAdi

2) A fundamental basis for advaitins to argue for jIvo brahmaiva nApara: is
while the existence of everything may be called into question, 'that I
exist' can never be questioned. Holding on to that svaprakAshatva one can
claim that one is Brahman.
The poor android jIva, apart from suffering mUlAjnAna as the rest of the
beings, would also end up suffering from the basic question 'am I alive'?
That is, apart from mUlAjnAna, he would suffer from svaprakAshatva samshaya
also. He would have the intelligence of humanity, but not the means to
transcend it.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan


On 24 Apr 2018 6:30 a.m., "Raghav Kumar Dwivedula via Advaita-l" <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

Namaste

A more difficult to answer question would be of the kind -
How do we decide a given entity is a jiva with sanchita karma or is it just
an Android or machine which merely mimics speech, facial features etc.
I.e., a sophisticated robot ?

Any clone is generally initially cultured in vitro (i.e., in a "test tube")
and later transplanted in vivo (into a uterus) and later the baby is
delivered in a regular way. And given its biological/organic physiology and
neuronal architecture it's quite credibly a jiva in its own right with its
own sanchita karma etc. This is my understanding.

Now if we consider a futuristic android (a real android not its namesake
smartphone OS !) which has a brain consisting of just electronic devices
with no neuronal structures, it's does not sound believable if some people
like the proponents of strong-AI claim it's a human being who has the
faculties and capacities and consequently the rights of a human being.
(Others like Roger Penrose contradict this). But can we give a precise
reason why an electronic entity cannot be considered a jiva with the usual
faculties of iccha, GYAna, and kriya and having sanchita karma etc.

Another related question - we can talk of higher mammals like deer, cows
etc., as having sanchita karma etc. Now the question is, can we extend the
privilege to still lower entities like insects (yes), viruses (doubtful),
plants(yes), stones (no). But where do we draw the line?

The concept of chidAbhAsa is to some extent helpful in figuring this out
since it (chidAbhAsa) does indeed depend on the underlying neuronal biology
and not merely on the superficial faculties of speech and motion which a
robot or android can mimic.
Om
Raghav


On Tue 24 Apr, 2018, 9:17 AM Bhaskar YR via Advaita-l, <

advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> praNAms Sri Sada prabhuji and Sri Venkateshwaran prabhuji
> Hare Krishna
>
> Thanks for the clarification.  Just wondering what would be karma / dharma
> for these cloning creatures :-) Perhaps it is their karma phala to get
> created through cloning technology :-)
>
> Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
> bhaskar
>
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