Theos-Talk Archives (August 2005 Message tt00040)

Marie:

Regarding the question, "Does a Clone Have a Soul," I'd say, "Yes," but
would need to explain myself.

The traditional Christian idea is that a soul is created whenever a person
is born. Men and women have souls as a gift from God, but have to lead a
good life in order to keep them. If you or I still have (or "own") our soul
at the time of death, it is our ticket into heaven, perhaps after some
preliminary punishment in purgatory. If we've lost our souls to the devil,
we suffer eternal suffering in hell, being damned and under the dominion of
the devil.

That's one version of what the traditional Christians might say. It's not
what we'd teach people wanting to learn Theosophy.

The theosophical idea is that we are eternal, timeless, perfect, but needing
to go through an evolutionary journey through matter in order to awaken
ourselves to self-conscious perfection. Some may take the Buddhist slant on
this and say there's no eternal aspect to us, that we're an ever-changing
stream of consciousness. That sounds like a contradiction, but it's really
but a seeming paradox. Both viewpoints -- the eternal Self known as the
Monad and the ever-changing stream of consciousness typified by the Void or
Emptiness -- are complimentary, co-exist, and cannot be separated.

Every being that exists is the expression of a consciousness at a certain
stage of development, the outward expression of some Monad. That being is
not created when its body is born. Rather, the birth of the body could only
happen if there was the organizing effect of a being seeking birth.
Otherwise, the body would not be born; it would have no life.

Creating a new human body the ordinary way, through sex and natural
childbirth, the parents provide an opportunity for some being to exist. That
being gives the life to the body, and when that being departs, the body
dies.

Creating a clone is a different way to produce a body. The rule still holds.
It is a living body with a human consciousness behind it if there is some
human Monad that attaches to it and gives it life. Otherwise, the clone is
not viable.

A human form is created with a clone, but for it to live, a human Monad
would have to animate it. Life is not created, merely another type of
opportunity for someone to be born into the world.

The answer to the original question, I'd say, is that a clone has a soul
(meaning it has a human Monad behind it), if the clone takes on life as a
human being. 

If the clone's body has genetic problems and is seriously defective, no
human may incarnate into it, just as defective embryos may end up stillborn,
with no one willing to live in them. If the body has good genes and would
provide an attractive host, odds are, someone would be drawn to birth in it.

Eldon

> -----Original Message-----
> From: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com [mailto:theos-talk@yahoogroups.com] On
> Behalf Of MarieMAJ41@aol.com
> Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2005 6:01 PM
> To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Theos-World Does a Clone have a Soul?
> 
> Dear Ones,
> 
> I have been lurking for some time now, reading and munching over all the
> excellent bits from this list. I have been asking myself this question
> since I
> saw it brought up on another list that I read.
> 
> The question is: Does a Clone Have A Soul? Of course, I am asking this
> question with the theosophical view in mind. I am also wondering about
> what
> theosophists think of the cloning question in general. I myself see that
> cloning
> would be a progressive thing, since it would be helpful to mankind
> generally,
> but, used by the wrong unscrupulous person/s, this could also be a great
> calamity. I believe that science in general will lead to mankind's
> progress, and
> through science, we could at last prove the age-old questions about the
> nature of reality, and the nature of God. What think you all?
> 
> Marie