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I would say yes as the most logical way for the soul to control the body is with the proteins that are able to form prions and RNA that behaves similarly, because they are in all life, spread out, are essential to life and intelligence while having no identifiable mechanical use, etc.

Anyway does scripture or any guru have something to say about this?

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  • Not living entities like Rivers, Mountains, Stars also have souls. Aatman is in everything.
    – sbharti
    Jul 30, 2021 at 14:31
  • If it is alive, it should have a soul. Microscopic organisms of little to no consciousness should be no exception. Anyway, rivers and the like have souls as well because they are personified as living beings e.g. Ganga (river) or Bhumi (Earth). The final thing to note is that just because Brahman pervades everything, it does not make everything alive.
    – MassEnquirer
    Jul 30, 2021 at 20:03

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There is a famous shloka in Chandogya Upanishad that states that all is Brahman.

Sarvam khalvidam Brahman ...

Verily, all this universe is Brahman....

Chandogya Upanishad 3.14.1

So it follows naturally that viruses, prions etc are also Brahman. There is, however, a difference between them and sentient beings. Brahman is Satchidananada. Sat is the principle of existence, chit is principle of consciousness and Ananda is the principle of bliss. Brahman is existence itself, consciousness itself and bliss itself. In the case of viruses, prions etc the consciousness and bliss aspects are veiled and only the principle of existence operates.

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  • That is assuming viruses and prions are completely non-sentient. They could have limited decision making capability.
    – Aupakarana Abhibhaa
    Jul 30, 2021 at 12:30
  • You can say that viruses are Brahman. However, satcitananda describes the experience of Brahman, and not Brahman itself.
    – WillyWonka
    Jul 30, 2021 at 20:30
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The key ingredient in soul is it's chetna. It is "able" to cause action (karma) be it physical, physiological, psychological, social, etc.

So to test whether the virus/ virod / prons have souls we have to observe how are they behaving are they being able to "act".

The most visible type of karma for these kinds should be movement, if they move even in their prey host cell "independently" from the environment then they have souls else don't.

To be able to detect independent movement at that lengths would be difficult. We just had discovered the Brownian motion and it is at much greater lengths, to the length of viroids.--- Research required

Now second thing that may indicate some action would be chemical (physiological) changes in them, i.e. mutation in these cases, which according to my knowledge is not done by itself.

According to Viroids video of Sci-show viroids can (a) preserve info and (b) catalyse reactions.

I think viroids are like dead bodies they preserve info and catalyse reactions. In the RNA world they may have been alive either they are parts of dead cells or have their own origin through natural selection.

In case of origin through selection they have souls, in case they are parts of dead cells then they don't. And we can also see their conscious movement for final determination.

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