How should devotees see scientific research involving animal testing or organ donation?

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I think you have to answer but I will just take a couple of points say sometimes in research involving some killing of some animals but some medicine is developed some further therapies or treatments are developed by that so should we be a part of it well we have had I have discussed with several senior devotees about this I will give one as an example say organ donation now should we do it or should we not do it there are some things in scripture which are very clearly given and those are you could say imperatives those are what we have to do but apart from that if there is no specific point talked about in scripture then different devotees using scripture scriptural reasoning can arrive at different conclusions so there is one school of thought which says that the body whatever is natural course just let it go along with natural course if the body is dying then just let it die no need to artificially separate the body and take out some organs from there and donate it let nature follow its course the other school of thought is that well do we really now what does it mean to let nature follow its course in today’s world maybe 100 or 150 years ago if somebody got a heart attack then they would just die today if somebody gets a heart attack we have so many CPR forms of artificial resuscitation of the body for the person now do we consider that interfering with the nature no we consider that defibrillator is available, use it and save the person now what is intervention with nature or intervention in the course of nature and what is simply protection of the body that line may be fuzzy at some places so the other school of thought is that the other line of thought is that that after you have died why be worried about what happens to your body why be attached to the body if with your body you can do some good to someone what is the do it there is no need to be attached to the body after we have left the body and be worried about what is happening to the body so now somebody might say that if if we give our eyes to someone and that person abuses the eyes to see something obscene or something like that will I get karma for that no this is too extreme if you start saying like that if I give someone the facility and they abuse it now we can’t control what people do if we know somebody is going to abuse we have to be careful like I said somebody is angry and I know that they are going to use a I give them a gun that’s horrible so many variables you can’t control you could even take that further and we say that anybody who does anything bad that is because they are misusing their free will and it’s Krishna who is giving everyone free will so is Krishna responsible for everything bad that everyone does no Krishna gives us free will and it’s up to us to use the free will so generally generally in such cases there is there is Shastra Praman and there is Loka Praman Shastra Praman is what is taught by Shastra and Loka Praman is what is generally considered right I am using the Loka Praman for example to say that there are many stories about Krishna which you may hear in Vrindavan say there are many devotees who stay in Vrindavan they are associated with Vrajvasi and they have written many such stories of Krishna now if you ask them what is the scriptural basis for this story now there is no scriptural basis for this, it’s a tradition but now as long as those are broadly in harmony with the Siddhanta and they are in harmony with the mood of Krishna then they are fine even the famous story of Krishna having a headache and the gopis want to give him the dust of their feet this is not as far as we are found we are not found in any scripture but such a beautiful story which tells about the mood of the selfless devotion of the gopis so there is no need to reject that so Loka Praman means that if something we are not talking about something which is openly against scripture that we are to do it but something which is broadly considered the normal considered the decent respectable way to act in society and should a devotee openly not do that no, because that will alienate Prabhupada when he would go for the morning walks there are some devotees who make slogans like Hare Krishna well, ok, it’s nice but the important thing is that we have to see how we appear in front if somebody already knows that we are Hare Krishna that’s good, but somebody thinks of us as religious fanatics you can’t even have basic courtesies you have to talk about your own religious names and your God’s names and if you are alienating people, you better not do that Prabhupada when he had gone for a morning walk and some people came and asked Prabhupada had a sanyas danda and many of his sanyasi disciples also had their sanyas danda so why is everybody carrying sticks so Prabhupada said to keep their logs up now another time when Prabhupada would go for morning walks and he would meet western people he would greet good morning you don’t say Hare Krishna to entirely new people so it’s a particular way to behave in a respectable way we do that so that means that if organ donation is considered to be the respectable thing to do in today’s world and then if we say I will not donate my organs that’s a preference, if somebody chooses that that’s fine, but there is no need to make that into a campaign you should not do this or you should do this there are both schools of thought and both are in their own way there is a reasoning behind it but there is no need so in this case we have to try to understand scripture, maybe consult some senior devotees and then pray and use our inner compass to do the best thing so I know some devotees who are into animal who are doing some research which is animal research so we had a long talk with them should we do it or should we not do it so then I told them try to avoid it as much as possible but I said you know actually if I grow in this field then eventually as somebody becomes more respectable then they also have more influence so this devotee it was about 7-8 years ago when I talked to that devotee now that devotee has become like a very big researcher in their field and now they have got like full glands so that they can do animal friendly research that means not hurting animals so now if that devotee had not grown in that field say I will not do this and the field would not have been affected at all people will still keep doing that and you would have simply not grown in your career also but in this case they did what they had to do they had to do it as less as possible but eventually they grew and now they created a whole field I mean at least one research unit over there so these are all decisions which are subtle and we have to decide them according to time, place, circumstances so like the same fact of intent, content, consequence we consider that and sometimes we might do a small evil so that we can prevent a, we can create a structure to prevent a bigger evil or if we don’t feel that we might say I won’t take this concern, I will avoid this small evil entirely that’s also ok so it has to be according to to scriptural guidance as understood according to our guides and our own codeword intelligences ok, thank you