Life in the Womb

CERTAIN PSYCHOLOGISTS and folklorists imagine that the womb was a very nice place—a comfortable, warm home where food .and shelter were provided without our effort. Some even say that throughout our adult lives, we unconsciously desire to return to that protection and security, “floating undisturbed in the warm, dark, quiet world of unparalleled intimacy with the beloved mother.” By the scientific method of hearing from Vedic literature, however, we get the actual account of a human being’s conception, his pre-natal condition, and his birth. Contrary to what our psychologists and folklorists have imagined, life in the womb is among the most painful and miserable of human experiences.

The Srimad-Bhagavatam, a 5,000-year-old spiritual classic containing the essence of Vedic knowledge, gives the following vivid description of the living entity’s experience from the point of conception to the time of birth: “Under the supervision of the Supreme Lord (Sri Krishna) and according to the results of his work, the living entity, the soul, is made to enter the womb of a woman through the particle of a man’s semina to assume a particular kind of body. On the first night, the semina and ovum mix, and on the fifth night the mixture ferments into a bubble. On the tenth night it develops into a form like a plum, and after that it gradually turns into a lump of flesh. In the course of a month, a head is formed, and at the end of two months, hands, feet and other limbs take shape. By the end of three months, the nails, fingers, toes, body hair, bones and skin appear, as do the organ of generation and the other apertures in the body, namely, the eyes, nostrils, ears, mouth and anus. Within four months from the date of conception, the seven essential ingredients of the body (lymph, blood, flesh, fat, bone, marrow and semina) come into existence. At the end of five months, hunger and thirst make themselves felt, and at the end of six months the fetus begins to move in the abdomen—on the right side if the child is a male and on the left side if female.”

Painful Confinement

The actual experience of the fetus, however, cannot be known by mere medical observation. For this information we must go to the Vedic scriptures, which give us direct knowledge of events beyond our normal experience. The Bhagavatam continues, “Deriving its nutrition from the food and drink taken by the mother, the fetus grows and remains in that abominable residence of stool and urine, which is a breeding place for all kinds of worms. Bitten again and again all over his body by these hungry worms in the abdomen itself, the child suffers terrible agony because of his tenderness. He thus becomes unconscious moment after moment. When the mother eats bitter, pungent foods or food that is too salty or too sour, the body of the child incessantly suffers pains that are almost intolerable. Placed within the amnion and covered outside by the intestines, the child remains lying on the side of the abdomen, his head turned toward his belly and his back and neck arched like a bow.” An adult would be unable to endure such a difficult confinement. The child’s pain is beyond our conception, but because his consciousness is yet undeveloped, he is able to tolerate it.

As adults, we have forgotten all this suffering and absorbed ourselves in trying to become happy in material life. Life in the womb may seem remote; no one has ever .told us before about its actual nature, and it has not concerned us. Writing on this topic, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada comments, “It is an unfortunate civilization in which these matters are not plainly discussed to make people understand the precarious condition of material existence.”

Astounding Remembrance. At the end of seven months in the womb, the child remains just like a bird in a cage unable to move freely and suffering without relief. At that time, if the soul is fortunate, he gains one astounding facility: he can remember all the troubles of his past one hundred lives. The vision of his wasted attempts to be happy makes him grieve wretchedly. While in the womb, the living being realizes that he has unnecessarily entered the material world. In this frightful condition, he prays with folded hands, appealing to the Lord, who has put him there.

Sometimes a woman in labor promises herself that she will never again become pregnant and suffer such severe pain. Or a man on the operating table may promise himself that he will act in such a way as to never again become diseased and undergo surgery. Similarly, the child, deeply repentant, prays to the Lord that he will never again commit sinful activities and be forced into another womb. He prays as follows: “I take shelter of the lotus feet of Lord Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who appears in His various eternal forms. I, the pure soul, appearing now to be bound by my activities, am lying in the womb of my mother by the arrangement of the Lord’s illusory energy. I offer my respectful obeisances unto Him, who is also here with me, but who is unaffected and changeless. He is unlimited, but He is perceived in the repentant heart.”

Repentant Prayer

The child in the womb, praying out of bewilderment and repentance, realizes he is not independent or supreme. He seeks shelter from the Supreme Lord, perceiving that the Lord in his heart is the supreme master and that he is subordinate. By the grace of God, the child in the womb can understand his actual relationship with the Supreme Lord, and he realizes that he has been reduced to his abominable condition because of his forgetfulness of God. He wants to get out, but he understands that he can do so only by the mercy of the Supreme Lord, and thus he asks for the Lord’s blessings.

After nine months, however, the child in the womb makes an extraordinary request to the Lord: “Although I am living in a terrible condition, still I do not wish to depart from my mother’s abdomen to fall again into the blind well of materialistic life.” The child foresees that the trauma of birth will destroy his clear knowledge of the miseries of material life and his remembrance of Lord Krishna. If he forgets the ordeal in the womb and again assumes the false position of an enjoyer, it would be better for him never to be born. Although bitten and burned and surrounded by blood and urine, at least in the womb he is able to remember Krishna. The thought of his future miseries makes him reluctant to take birth, but of course he cannot possibly live in the womb much longer. While he thus extols the Lord, the wind that helps parturition propels him forth with his face turned downward. Pushed down suddenly by the wind, the child comes out with great trouble, breathless and deprived of his memory due to severe agony. He cries piteously, having lost his superior knowledge in the ordeal of birth. We should not take lightly this account of life in the womb. One may say, “I cannot remember such pain in the womb. I am not suffering now, so why worry? Besides, I don’t care.” According to this way of thinking, ignorance is bliss. But it is only a temporary illusion of bliss. Although we now have no idea of the suffering in the womb, by reading such scriptures as the Srimad-Bhagavatam and the Bhagavad-gita, we can understand the terrible condition there and learn how to act in such a way that we will not suffer again. We learn from the Bhagavad-gita that, as individual souls, we are never created, but are eternal, fragmental parts of the Supreme Lord. By misusing our small independence, we desire to be supreme and are thus cast into the material world. Then we wander, according to our material desires, from body to body in each of the different species, until we finally evolve to the human form of life. All this happens under the supervision of the Supreme Lord. As Sri Krishna states in the Bhagavad-gita (18.61), “I am seated in everyone’s heart, and I direct the wanderings of all living beings.” If, upon reaching the human form of life, we do not utilize the opportunity for self-realization, we will again be forced to enter a womb and undergo repeated tortures there. We should therefore thoughtfully reflect, “What can we do to avoid such miseries?”

śrī-bhagavān uvāca

karmaṇā daiva-netreṇa

jantur dehopapattaye

striyāḥ praviṣṭa udaraḿ

puḿso retaḥ-kaṇāśrayaḥ

The Personality of Godhead said: Under the supervision of the Supreme Lord and according to the result of his work, the living entity, the soul, is made to enter into the womb of a woman through the particle of male semen to assume a particular type of body.

As stated in the last chapter, after suffering different kinds of hellish conditions, a man comes again to the human form of body. The same topic is continued in this chapter. In order to give a particular type of human form to a person who has already suffered hellish life, the soul is transferred to the semen of a man who is just suitable to become his father. During sexual intercourse, the soul is transferred through the semen of the father into the mother's womb in order to produce a particular type of body. This process is applicable to all embodied living entities, but it is especially mentioned for the man who was transferred to the Andha-tāmisra hell. After suffering there, when he who has had many types of hellish bodies, like those of dogs and hogs, is to come again to the human form, he is given the chance to take his birth in the same type of body from which he degraded himself to hell.

Everything is done by the supervision of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Material nature supplies the body, but it does so under the direction of the Supersoul. It is said in Bhagavad-gītā that a living entity is wandering in this material world on a chariot made by material nature. The Supreme Lord, as Supersoul, is always present with the individual soul. He directs material nature to supply a particular type of body to the individual soul according to the result of his work, and the material nature supplies it. Here one word, retaḥ-kaṇāśrayaḥ, is very significant because it indicates that it is not the semen of the man that creates life within the womb of a woman; rather, the living entity, the soul, takes shelter in a particle of semen and is then pushed into the womb of a woman. Then the body develops. There is no possibility of creating a living entity without the presence of the soul simply by sexual intercourse. The materialistic theory that there is no soul and that a child is born simply by material combination of the sperm and ovum is not very feasible. It is unacceptable.