Man's Fate and God's Choice by Bhimeswara Challa (ereader for textbooks TXT) 📖

Brahman is a jivanmukta; he is liberated while still living. Such a being continues to live in a material body, because of the momentum of the prarabdha karma that has already started taking fruit. But he accumulates no further karma, because all agamin karma and sancita karma are ‘burnt’ in the knowledge of ‘brahmajnana’. The body eventually dies, and the jivanmukta is said to have attained videhamukti. Science-based technology is trying to catapult man into that kind of being by manipulating the body through technology. The aim is to keep the anatomy intact, but alter the various phases of life; stretch out the youth and middle age, and compress the last years of aging and dying, and make the life span so long that death simply becomes theoretical and optional. While the ostensible goal is to make man an ‘immortal superman’, the same force, technology, is drastically emaciating the body by enticing man to turn to a machine to perform the many functions that Nature intended the body to perform. Soren Kierkegaard wrote that with the power of human invention, “the human race became afraid of itself, fosters the fantastic, and then trembles before it.”610 The fantasy is to prolong the present life indefinitely in the present body and to colonize the cosmos with the same consciousness. We should tremble before it because we have no idea where we will end up. There is mounting evidence to justify a re-examination of basic assumptions that may perhaps lead to a re-definition of what constitutes the essence of scientific endeavor and how it should be conducted. The historical focus of science by a process of physical trial and error is the primary reason why scientific discoveries often

 

 

 

608 RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) News Release. 11 April 2001. The ‘ETC Century’: Erosion, Technological Transformation, and Corporate Concentration in the 21st Century. Accessed at: http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/ETCcent.html

609 RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) News Release. 11 April 2001. The ‘ETC Century’: Erosion, Technological Transformation, and Corporate Concentration in the 21st Century. Accessed at: http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/ETCcent.html

610 Cited in: Brian T. Posser and Andrew Ward. Kierkgaard’s ‘Mystery of Unrighteousness’ In The Information Age. University of Aberdeen. Accessed at: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/philosophy/endsandmeans/vol5no2/prosser_ward.shtml

 

generate unpredictable and dangerous effects that could not be foreseen and cannot easily be controlled. That has to yield place to a new mode of approach that minimizes that risk. It is not abdication of science or a throwback to the days of the Paleolithic man, but a broadening of its scope of inquiry and ensuring more inclusive social and spiritual inputs into its prioritization and goal-setting.

What science-based technology is doing, with increasing virtuosity, is empowering man with awesome destructive power. With the ascendancy of the mind, man already became a malicious being, and science has immensely darkened his darker side. Unlike any previous time in the history of human horror, even a small group of men today, even a single individual for that matter, can kill or main thousands. Earlier that kind of power was the monopoly of the State; it is no longer so. In fact, the State itself is fighting a losing battle, relegating itself to a state of disrepute in the public mind. While the destructive potential of nuclear weapons is well known, what is less realized is the potentially deadly power of biotechnology. One comparison of the destructive capability of different weapons of genocide reveals the following disturbing statistics: one tonne of the nerve gas Sarin (used in a Tokyo subway attack in 1995) could kill up to 8,000 people; a one-megaton hydrogen bomb could kill up to 1.9 million people; and, finally, just 100 kg of the deadly Anthrax dropped over a city under favorable weather conditions is capable of wiping out up to three million people. Biowarfare, including agro-terrorism and ‘ethnically targeted’ attacks are so inexpensive, anonymous, and effective, that there is nothing to stop their use or deployment611. The world is already unable to cope with that kind of murderous power in the hands of the State. If that power gets into the hands of a ‘driven’ individual or a devious ‘charismatic’ cult leader, the consequences could be catastrophic. While for global consciousness change we need a ‘critical’ mass, a handful of individuals now can exploit science in order to create new instruments of mass destruction. Nick Bostrom, Director of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, sketches several apocalyptic scenarios, besides nuclear holocaust, that threaten humankind, such as the deliberate misuse of nanotechnology, badly programmed super intelligence, and out-of-control global warming. One could add to that list of calamities things like unstoppable pandemics, asteroids from outer space, human cloning, etc. ‘Rolling back the specter of a warming planet’, might well be the greatest challenge faced by modern man. That could be the gravest challenge man faces now.

Scientists are saying that the prehistoric human race came close to extinction because of drastic climate change, and we cannot be so lucky every time. Yet these are all what the human intellect can imagine and project, but there could be scenarios that we cannot even speculate. A pointer can be the past. Time and again, humankind has shown that our destructive creativity and our malevolence have run far ahead of our ‘creative constructivism’ and benevolence. We have not been able to balance passion, an attribute of the mind, and compassion of the heart; we have not been able to make passion compassionate, and compassion, passionate. Passion without compassion ultimately leads to hubris and self- exaltation. Compassion without passion might be momentary and fleeting. Compassion makes passion others-centered. Passion makes compassion operative and effective. At a more foundational level, the human species has failed, from its inception to the present times, to govern itself. Indeed the word ‘governance’ is ill-suited to the human species. We have not managed to find a way to share what the planet offers us without killing ourselves and

 

 

 

611 RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) News Release. 11 April 2001. The ‘ETC Century’: Erosion, Technological Transformation, and Corporate Concentration in the 21st Century. Accessed at: http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/ETCcent.html

 

endangering the earth. We cannot ‘govern’ our passions, drives, and desires as individuals. Successive models of political governance from city-State to the Sovereign States to the United Nations have proven unequal to their tasks and mandates. The world faces far greater problems and dangers than ever before, and what it calls for is global governance and a World Government.

That is a tall order, and calls for extraordinary effort and a serious quest for new avenues and models of change. But all such avenues and ideas will be still born given man’s present make-up, and the consciousness that drives his actions. If scripture and science cannot provide us the ‘models’ for our metamorphosis, the only resort we have is to turn to what man has always turned to when he is in ‘deep trouble’ or at an impasse: the universe of Nature. Nature is nothing if not transformation. The change of seasons from spring to fall to winter is transformation. A single seed becoming a mighty tree is transformation. An egg becoming a bird is transformation. And thoughtful humans have long looked to the natural world for guidance and illumination, seeking analogy, metaphor, and messages in all quarters of the animate and inanimate worlds. Nature invariably holds up a mirror so we can more clearly see the ongoing processes of growth, renewal, and transformation in the living world. If that were so, then where can we find similes for our present plight and future pointers? The answer ironically seems to revolve around three creatures that we instinctively detest and spurn: insects (like ants, bees and termites), the caterpillar, and the rat.

 

Of Man and Mice. Taking the last creature first, the particular type that is relevant to the present human predicament is the lemming, a small rodent that is found in vast numbers in the Arctic. Rodents have been around for about 57 million years, and form about forty percent of all mammal species on earth. Much as we detest them, we seem more and more drawn to them. Increasingly, science is turning to this lowly creature, the rodent, for therapeutic testing. We read a headline that says, “Infertile men can bank on mice for kids”,612 and the story goes on to say that mice have been used to make human sperm, and what it means is that “an infertile man could have a baby by giving up one of his teeth and agreeing to involve a mouse in the process of reproduction.”613 In other words, in a twist of exquisite irony, we have more in common with mice than what the Scottish poet Robert Burns gave us to believe: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, gang aft agley” (the best- laid plans of mice and men often go awry). So, if all else fails, man can turn to the lowly and much-despised mouse to see that he does not become extinct! We are now told that in the case of both mice and men, it is the structure of the odorant molecule, not solely experience or culture, that determines the smells they love or loathe. In simple terms, both humans and mice are attracted by the same odors. Scientists even say that the mouse genome might be even more important than the human genome to medicine and human welfare, because as much as 99 percent of mouse genes have analogues in humans and, more important, the  genes appear in the same order in the two genomes.614 The scientists are even dangling before us the possibility of eternal youth and life spans of up to 125 years based on a genetic breakthrough, of all things, on rodents. The analogy does not end there. The human race

 

 

 

 

612 The Times of India. Hyderabad, India. 8 July 2008. p.1.

613 Mice Produce Human Sperm Give Hope For Infertile Men. News Archive: Tuesday, 8 July 2008. The Visible Embryo. Accessed at: http://www.visembryo.com/baby/NewsArchive68.html

614 Alec MacAndrew. What Does The Mouse Genome Draft Tell Us About Evolution? Molecular Biology.

Accessed at: http://www.evolutionpages.com/Mouse%20genome%20home.htm

 

seems to increasingly resemble another rodent, the lemming. One of the most fascinating aspects of this small rodent is its ability to survive in a predominantly harsh environment like the Arctic, despite being a staple prey for bigger animals and birds. Lemmings remain active throughout the Arctic winter without freezing to death. Lemmings are good swimmers and can cross a body of water in search of a new habitat. Although accounts of lemmings committing mass suicide by jumping off a cliff remains a myth, large migrations across water triggered by a search for new habitat inevitably results in exhaustion, drowning, and accidental mass death. Lemmings are also often pushed into the sea as more and more lemmings arrive at the shore. For still unknown reasons, lemming numbers wildly fluctuate, reaching a peak every three or four years. Lemming suicide is a frequently used metaphor in reference to people who go along unquestioningly with popular opinion, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences.615

Although experts tell us that it is not true, the myth of the ‘Lemming Suicide Plunge’, is now a part of anecdotal folklore. It stems from an old belief that lemmings, apparently overcome by deep-rooted impulses, deliberately hurtle themselves over a cliff in millions, only to be dashed to their death on the rocks below, or to drown in the turbulent sea. It is part myth and part real: actually, the pressure for food, space or mates becomes too intense and then they sometimes kill each other. Even setting aside allegations that the Walt Disney documentary White Wilderness propagated the myth of lemming mass suicides, the parallels one can draw between humans and these rodents are uncanny and unsettling. The fact is that suicide is fast approaching pandemic proportions in humans,