[In this section we seek to answer frequently asked questions, at U.L.T. meetings or during private conversations and discussions with people who seek the answers in the light of Theosophy. Answers given in this section are by no means final. Only a line of thought is being offered by applying general principles of Theosophy.]

Question: Why does Theosophy not recommend organ transplantation from a human donor, even in cases of "End-Stage Renal (kidney) Disease" where a therapy of dialysis is not effective?

Answer: The reasonable objections to this surgical procedure are at least on three grounds—economic, moral, and psychical (occult). As a result, some countries have enacted the Transplantation Act, banning or restricting the transplantation of organs with a proviso for exception under certain precautions and procedures.

Organ transplant requires "live" donors as well as organs retrieved from fresh cadavers. Unchecked, illegal and clandestine financial arrangements often take place in many cases since there is the ever-present possibility of vested interests of the "middle-men," the private clinics and the so-called "authorization committees." In India, for instance, safeguards are available through the Transplantation Act of 1994 banning the sale of live organs. It is not effective enough, in spite of the fact that all such centres are required to have an "Authorization Committee" to review the donors and to ensure that the donation is done out of altruistic reasons and not for commerce.

A startling exposure of "Kidney Trade" in Chennai, a city of India, was published, as a reprint from the Journal of the American Medical Association, in JAMA-India (February, 2005). It gives a detailed report on "Economic and Health Consequences of Selling a kidney in India." It was based on a scientific survey done by qualified Indian physicians, in January 2001, covering 305 individuals (discovered after a search) who admitted to having sold their kidneys in that city's private clinics about six years earlier. The objective of the survey was the long-term (6 years) follow-up of the donors, in order to assess their health and financial condition. Of these, 305 eligible "sellers"—euphemistically called the "voluntary donors"—the majority (71%) were women, most of whom worked as poor labourers or street vendors and sold their kidneys through the middle-man! The report further states: "Almost all respondents (94%) had sold their kidneys to pay off personal debts, 75% were still in debt, and an average annual income (which was almost touching the 'poverty-line') had increased. Most respondents reported a deterioration in their health status after the donation."

Similar reports and conclusions on kidney transplant donors are available in other international medical journals, like the Lancet, especially regarding the global traffic in human organs.

The ethical element in this transaction is evident. There is but greed and exploitation involved on all sides. The wealthy recipient is naturally thirsty to extend his life span and quality at the expense of the quality of life of the hapless donor who is supposed to be "rewarded" for his sacrifice. "When asked a separate question about wanting to help a sick person with kidney disease, 95% of the participanst honestly admitted that this was not a major factor in their decision to sell." As per the "right of information" in decision-making process before surgery, none was properly warned about the physical and economic consequences of selling a kidney. Hence 71% would not recommend to another to sell his kidney.

The moral question of survival in a desperately sick person often comes up for consideration. But survival at what expense? Is it right to keep on prolonging one's physical existence, at any cost, even if it results in lowering of the quality and life-span of another being—be it man or animal? We, as moral beings, have to answer this question individually, for ourselves, and have to accept the personal responsibility of and the consequences to the donor as well as the recipient of another's organ.

As to how even the recipient of the cadaver or a live transplanted organ can be affected, much has been written in the past issues of this magazine, The Theosophical Movement, and elsewhere. It is a very large and important field to be considered since it embraces the inescapable "occult," i.e., psychical, vital and psychological elements in the practice of organ transplantation.

Modern surgeons and physicians, who are apt to view bodily organs purely anatomically, would do well to consider their interrelationships. The modern system of medicine loses much by not recognizing the astral counterpart of man's body. In larger perspective, how a person lives is of far greater consequence than how long he lives.

Another important aspect is that if science persists in organ transplantation, the transplanted "organs" should be those of a "good" man, and willingly given. We are continuously imparting good and bad psychic impulses to our bodily organs through our thoughts and feelings. So also, "every organ in our body has its own memory....every cell must of necessity have also a memory of its own kind" (Raja-Yoga or Occultism). The engrafted organs can affect their new owner with thoughts and feelings he had never before experienced. There have been cases where the recipient's body rejects the transplanted organ. As mentioned in The Theosophical Movement, November 1969:

According to a Stanford University psychiatric team, some heart transplant patients become psychotic. They suggest that an anti-rejection drug called "prednisone" may cause psychotic behaviour such as delusions, insomnia accompanied by fear of a murder plot and a belief that the patients had recieved not only a new heart but also a new personality. Psychiatrists report, too, that there is in general a higher incidence of emotional problems in heart patients than in any other group of surgical patients. (Science Digest, July 1969)

Question: How is it that the female of the human species experiences labour pain, while the process is comparatively painless in the animal kingdom?

Answer: Sex and Speech are the two avenues through which we lay waste our divinity. Sexual power is creative power. In the course of evolution, men of the Fourth Root Race (Atlantean Race) abused this creative power—wasting the life-essence for bestial and personal gratification. The result of such excessive sensuality and sexual indulgence, under Karma, was that the healthy and gigantic bodies with great powers and intellect of the Atlantean Race were slowly replaced by dwarfed and weakened human beings. It is as a result of such Karma of the Atlanteans that the females of our Race bring forth progeny in pain. For, we are those same Atlanteans reborn. H.P.B. puts it thus:

Nature had never intended that woman should bring forth her young ones "in sorrow." Since that period, however, during the evolution of the Fourth Race, there came enmity between its seed, and the "Serpent's seed, the seed or product of Karma and divine wisdom. For the seed of the woman or lust, bruised the head of the seed of the fruit of wisdom and knowledge, by turning the holy mystery of procreation into animal gratification; hence the law of Karma "bruised the heel" of the Atlantean Race, by gradually changing physiologically, morally, physically, and mentally, the whole nature of the Fourth Race of mankind, until, from the healthy King of the animal creation of the Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our Race, a helpless scrofulous being, and has now become a wealthier heir on the globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals!

The supreme reason why I am unattached is that nothing really exists except the Self.

—Sri Sankaracharya