| Researchers claim that they are making great strides
in extending the human life-span. Living past 120
with the aid of medicines is now considered more
than a possibility. Such attempts at prolonging
life, however, are attracting their fair share of
controversy and criticism. The law of science, the
critics say, is not the law of the good but the
law of the possible, and its loyalty is not to humanity
but to its own truth.
Dr. Donald B. Louria of the New Jersey Medical
School and director of the Healthful Life Project
has this to say (The Futurist, January-February
2002):
Common sense would suggest that excessive population
growth could have some very unpleasant consequences.
At some point, the number of people may become
so large that it exceeds the carrying capacity
of the planet, making life miserable for the
vast majority of humans (and impossible for
many other species), even sowing the seeds for
our own destruction.
The quality of life for very old people may
be severely diminished if changing the boundaries
of aging is not accompanied by reasonably good
health. Certain tissues and organs may deteriorate
even as life-span is markedly prolonged, so
people may live 140 years with ever-worsening
sight, hearing, mental function, and musculoskeletal
function....
We are now more than ever in an era of scientific
domination—a period of unfettered technology
that has and will produce many stunning discoveries
that will benefit humankind, but some that are
likely to harm our global society. As philosopher-scientist
René Dubos puts it, "We must not
ask where science and technology are taking
us, but rather how we can manage science and
technology so they can help us get where we
want to go." Today, there is no evidence
that we are following Dubos's admonition and
first figuring out where we want to go, rather
than reacting sometime in the future to the
consequences of scientific discoveries that
lengthen life-spans profoundly....
Attempts [at changing the boundaries of aging]
should be accompanied by rigorous long-term
assessment that includes evaluating the quality
of life of these very old persons....
The research into aging is spectacular, but
the implications and potential consequences
are so profound that we cannot afford to leave
it solely in the hands of the scientific community.
It is indeed the quality of life of the aged
that matters more than lengthening the life-span.
Aging has many aspects. In a sense, it begins
before birth and is more or less predetermined
for each one. The occult side of the question
is hinted at by Mr. Judge in The Ocean of Theosophy
(Chapter IV). The body, he says, is subject to
physical, physiological and psychical laws which
govern the race of man as a whole. "Hence
its period of possible continuance can be calculated
just as the limit of tensile strain among the
metals used in bridge building can be deduced
by the engineer."
It is a duty we owe to the body which is ours
under Karma to keep it in good working condition
as long as possible through natural means; e.g.,
through applications of the principle of the "middle
way"—moderation in all things pertaining
to individual existence, whether it be in eating,
or sleeping, or work, or recreation. But clinging
to bodily existence so common in our day reflects
the failure to understand the purpose of life,
the soul's immortality and the function of the
body as a tabernacle of the dweller within. To
make of the dwelling a primary entity and to prolong
its existence by all manner of means appears to
be a reversal of the natural state of things—though
of course allowing the body to decay prematurely
would imply the neglect of an obligatory duty.
If the idea of many lives for the soul is grasped
and this life is regarded as only one in a long
series of such existences, there is immediately
seen a higher purpose than physical survival,
or life-at-any-cost.
While some scientists the world over are pressing
ahead with plans to duplicate human beings, there
are others who are gravely concerned over the
prospect of cloned human embryos becoming a reality.
"It's inevitable that someone will try, and
someone will succeed," predicts Dolores Lamb,
an American infertility expert. Many biotechnologists
agree that, within a few years, news will break
of the birth of the first human clone.
An article reproduced from Time in Reader's Digest
(March 2002, Indian ed.) makes some scary predictions:
The meaning of what it is to be human—which
until now has involved the mysterious melding
of two people's DNA—will shift forever.
And the conversation that has occupied ethicists
for years, about how much man should mess with
nature when it comes to reproduction, will drop
onto every kitchen table, pulpit and politician's
desk.
That has many scientists scared to death. The
risk lies not just with potential babies born
deformed, as many animal clones are, or with
desperate couples whose hopes may be raised
and hearts broken. The immediate risk is that
a backlash against renegade science might strike
at responsible science, impeding the chances
of finding cures for ailments like Alzheimer's
and Parkinson's, cancer and heart disease....
In the messy middle are the vast majority of
people who view the prospect with a vague alarm,
an uneasy sense that science is dragging us
into dark woods with no easy way to turn back....At
the moment, the public is plainly not ready.
In a February 2001 Time/CNN poll, 90 percent
of respondents thought it was a bad idea....
The risks involved with cloning mammals are
so great that Ian Wilmut calls it "criminally
irresponsible" for scientists to be experimenting
on humans. Even after four years of practice
with animal cloning , the failure rate is overwhelming:
98 percent of embryos never implant or they
die during gestation or soon after birth....Wilmut
believes "it is almost a certainty"
that cloned human children would be born with
maladies. These kids would probably die prematurely,
he adds....
It reportedly took 104 attempts before the
first in vitro body, Louise Brown, was born.
Imagine, say opponents, how many embryos would
be lost in the effort to clone a human. This
loss is mess murder, says David Byers, director
of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' committee
on science and human values. "Each embryo
is a human being by dint of its genetic makeup."
"The short answer to the cloning question,"
concludes bioethicist Arthur Caplan, "is
that anybody who clones somebody today should
be arrested. It would be barbaric human experimentation—killing
foetuses and embryos for no purpose except curiosity.
But if you can't agree that that's wrong to
do, and if the media can't agree to condemn
rather than gawk, that's a condemnation of us
all."
Attention is invited to the item on human cloning
in "In the Light of Theosophy" for March
2002. As stated there, the issue of what it is
to be human requires primary consideration. Are
scientists who recognize no more than the physical
mechanics of human reproduction competent to make
experiments whose consequences might prove disastrous
for us and for future generations? The risks,
both immediate and long-term, are mind-boggling.
From the beginning of time there
has been light. In all its forms, visible and
invisible, it saturates the universe. Our lives
are built around it; our daily existence is continuously
shaped by it. But what exactly is light? Joel
Achenbach writes in National Geographic (October
2001):
Light reveals the world to us. Body and soul
crave it. Light sets our biological clocks.
It triggers in our brains the sensations of
colour. Light feeds us, supplying the energy
for plants to grow. It inspires us with special
effects like rainbows and sunsets. Light gives
us life-changing tools, from incandescent bulbs
to lasers and fibre optics. Scientists don't
fully understand what light is....A wave? A
particle? Yes, the scientists say. Both....Usually,
though, we don't see light, we merely see with
it.
Light passed through the laboratory of Isaac
Newton and never looked the same again. In the
1660s Newton demonstrated that white light is
composed of all the colours of the spectrum....He
believed that light was particulate—"multitudes
of unimaginable small and swift corpuscles of
various sizes springing from shining bodies
at great distances one after another."....It
was James Clerk Maxwell, a Scot, who in the
1860s made one of the most essential breakthroughs....Light,
he concluded, is an "electromagnetic"
wave. The particle versus wave debate wound
up with a kind of truce, governed by quantum
mechanics....
Enter Albert Einstein. It's common knowledge
that Einstein, in promulgating the special theory
of relativity, destroyed the mechanical, deterministic
Newtonian universe....Einstein's answer—that
light's speed is constant for all observers
regardless of their own velocity—obliterated
the classical conception of space and time....Einstein's
relativity presents all manner of head-scratching
implications....
What's certain is that light is going to remain
extremely useful—for industry, science,
art, and our daily, mundane comings and goings.
Light permeates our reality at every scale of
existence. It's an amazing tool, a carrier of
beauty, a giver of life.
Light sets in motion and controls all in nature,
from the tiniest molecule in space to man—and
not just outer light. It was discovered some time
back by Russian scientists that all living things
glow from within. This faint light is invisible
to the eye, but it is there. Scientists are still
seeking answers to many questions pertaining to
light.
Fire is the father of light, light the parent
of heat and air (vital air). If the absolute
deity can be referred to as Darkness or the
Dark Fire, the light, its first progeny, is
truly the first self-conscious god. For what
is light in its primordial root but the world-illuminating
and life-giving deity? Light is that, which
from an abstraction has become a reality. No
one has ever seen real or primordial light;
what we see is only its broken rays or reflections,
which become denser and less luminous as they
descend into form and matter. (Transactions
of the Blavatsky Lodge, p. 115)
Light is the first begotten, and the first emanation
of the Supreme, and Light is Life, says the
evangelist. Both are electricity—the life-principle,
the anima mundi, pervading the universe, the
electric vivifier of all things. Light is the
great Protean magician, and under the Divine
Will of the architect, its multifarious, omnipresent
waves gave birth to every form as well as to
every living being. From its swelling, electric
bosom, springs matter and spirit. Within its
beams lie the beginnings of all physical and
chemical action, and of all cosmic and spiritual
phenomena; it vitalizes and disorganizes; it
gives life and produces death, and from its
primordial point gradually emerged into existence
the myriads of worlds, visible and invisible
celestial bodies. It was at the ray of this
First mother, one in three, that God, according
to Plato, "lighted a fire, which we now
call the sun," and, which is not the cause
of either light or heat, but merely the focus,
or, as we might say, the lens, by which the
rays of the primordial light become materialized,
are concentrated upon our solar system, and
produce all the correlations of forces. (Isis
Unveiled, I, 258)
The fears that resulted from the attacks on the
World Trade Centre on September 11 have proved paralyzing
for some. For others, the anxiety has led to extreme
overreactions. In time, such fears can be put to
constructive use if we do not let them defeat us,
says Ohio State University's Brad Schmidt, an expert
on fear (Psychology Today, January/February 2002):
Psychologists study many kinds of fear. There
are common phobias, such as the fear of spiders,
and post-traumatic stress, the fears that spring
from memories of dramatic, sometimes life-threatening
events....In particular, psychologists will
look for symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder,
which creates an exaggerated fear response in
people who have been emotionally scarred....
There is nothing wrong with feeling fear: We
all do at some point. Fear is one of the most
basic emotions and is not, in itself, dangerous;
it is part of a natural alarm system designed
to react to or anticipate danger....Yet some
fears persist in ways that are not advantageous
to the fearful. Those sorts of fears create
more problems than they solve, paralyse rather
than motivate. Anxiety disorders are a significant
mental health problem.
Fear is a psychological inhibition and has to
be exorcised by real knowledge. It is an emotion
which affects the will, weakens thought and causes
emotional upsets. Here in India there are fears
of different kinds: the fear of Pakistanis, the
fear of the Hindus on the part of the Muslims
and vice versa, the fear of one State getting
hold of the trade and industries of another State,
and so on and so forth. Men and women individually
are fearful of their own security, their life
and possessions.
Yet there is a higher aspect of fear, hinted
at in the Old Testament saying: "The fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."
But whether we mean by the word "Lord"
the Inner Ruler or some outside force or authority
makes all the difference in our understanding
of this saying. One of the names of Maheshwara,
the Great Lord seated in the heart of each, is
"the admonisher," according to the Gita.
This admonisher is the voice of conscience, which
in its lower aspect is the accumulated experience
or knowledge garnered by the senses and the lower
mind, and, in its higher aspect, the voice of
intuitive discernment or of Buddhi.
The indissoluble unity of the
race demands that we should consider every man's
troubles as partly due to ourselves, because we
have been always units in the race and helped
to make the conditions which cause suffering.
—W. Q. Judge |
