Prenatal Life and Birth

Wisdom Teachings
The Basics

Our solar system is the result of a series of chain reactions. Some of these effects are the birth and development of the planets. As a part of the system, our Earth has its own series of chain reactions in the creation and development of the substance of our planet. There is a Plan to increase the awareness of this Earth. According to this Plan each one of us was created as a spark of awareness. Each soul spark has a vehicle which is made up of different layers. We call these layers body, mind, etc.

In the Eastern scriptures, the personality born from the soul is called Kshara Purusha, the mutable part of the soul. According to the Plan of the Earth, this part of the soul goes through many incarnations and takes to many forms. The substance of the forms will be given back to the mineral kingdom at the end of each incarnation. The unchanging part of the soul, Akshara Purusha, is the radiant light. There is an even higher dimension of the soul, the Universal Soul or Purushottama. It is the basis of our mutable and immutable part. We exist at all times as the two higher aspects of the soul. When we realize the connection with the Universal Soul, we are consciously linked with the background, with the unity of the Divine. This is called liberation. Then the purpose of evolution is fulfilled.

The theory that we are born as a result of our past actions is not quite complete. Reincarnations are a part of the chain reactions of this Earth. They are the real cause of our birth on this Earth, not only our past actions. These chain reactions make us reincarnate in groups and push us ahead on the path of the great Plan of the Earth. Nature gives us the repeated experiences of death and of the birth of fresh bodies so that we begin to use the potential of our experience and begin to behave better. The individual karma makes us experience the consequences of our past actions. Thus, we get involved in specific situations; we suffer from the effects of current and past debts until we have cleared them. Slowly we begin to realize our real self and to cooperate with the planetary activity of the Earth.

On our journey through the spiral paths of evolution the prenatal life is a part of life and cannot be seen as separated therefrom. The birthday is not the beginning. On the day of our birth we have stepped from inside to the outside, but inside we were already there. Even the date of fertilization, when the sperm of the father united with the egg of the mother is not the moment of the beginning. We already existed before; otherwise we would not have been able to enter the womb. We go through phases of visibility and invisibility.

The duration between leaving the physical and beginning a new reincarnation varies from soul to soul. Some highly evolved souls wait many years before they incarnate again. They have no more attachments to past lives. There is no necessity for a birth. They come back according to the divine plan to help others and they return after the purpose is fulfilled. Normal people come back after about a year, drawn by the impulse to satisfy their desires. In the meantime, they make their experience only through the causal body, in movements that correspond to the Earth's orbit.

Depending on our personality and the strength of our attachments, we feel attracted to parents who correspond to the overall quality of our nature. If we die with an intense spiritual aspiration, then we are reborn into a family where we can easily continue the yogic life or where prosperity prevails, so that we can focus on continuing our path without having to care much about the livelihood. If we have other issues, we will come into more or less harmonious or conflictual relationships. If before pregnancy parents lead a pure, harmonious life with a focus on spiritual aspiration, highly evolved souls are attracted.

As a fiery principle we descend in the form of a thought to the head of the father. This association can also happen via the breath or the food. Thus, the couple gets the idea of wanting to have a child. If they have sex then, the descent of the soul takes place into the womb of the woman through the sperm of the man. If there is no soul, no fertilization takes place; there is only the sexual arousal.

During the prenatal state the drama of the human evolution is imitated in all its details in the construction of the body within the 9 months of pregnancy. The devas of the shape and of number consciousness build the human form according to the pattern contained in the sperm and the egg. Until the 7th month the lunar or the form aspect of the child grows in the womb of the mother and the solar aspect remains around the head of the father. Thus, during this time the soul is partly with the man and partly with the woman. Around the 7th month, the soul coalesces at the pregnant woman and is in the womb for about 90 days.

The spiritual awareness of the mother gives much nourishment to the growing baby. Her ignorance gives it much pain. The actions and attitudes of man and woman have a very strong effect on the growing child. The soul suffers hell if the mother is careless and negligent in her behaviour. If she indulges in sexual acts even after conception, the child suffers and even suffers convulsions. Indifferent food habits and emotional outbursts send shock waves of vibrations to the baby in the womb. The child feels very uncomfortable and tries to move in the womb. The mother may feel happy that the child is moving but it painfully feels its imprisonment with folded arms and legs.

In the 7th month the mind and the memory of the past unfold. During the 90 days until the birth the child recalls the previous incarnations and its bad deeds as well as the purpose of its future incarnation. Each soul carries within the desire to be reborn in order to fulfil the unfulfilled part of the past and the unfulfilled responsibilities. The child feels the intense urge to get out of the womb. If it had a tendency to the divine in its previous life, it begins to pray intensely and then finds light. Even without an inclination to the divine the soul feels a resolve for a better life. Initiates from the 3rd initiation onward normally do not go through the phase between the 7th - 9th months, but join up with the child after birth.

During pregnancy and even after birth the parents can transmit very much to the child through harmonious music, chanting of mantras or songs and reading inspirational or sacred writings. It is also highly recommended that the mother has a gentle rhythm of life and spends time in a pleasant nature. Horror stories or violence videos have a massive effect on the growing child.

For the astrological determination of the date of birth the point where the head comes out should be taken. There is an important sacrament which is performed by the father just after birth, before the cutting of the umbilical cord. The father touches the child's head, so that the energies of the father give the first touch to the Sahasrara of the child through his right hand. He invokes the thread of consciousness, which connects the father and the child, by uttering mantras which mean, “You are born from body to body. You are the 'I AM' in me in the form of my child.” This calls up the subconscious nature of the child to the path of evolution. It causes an ordered development to the slowly unfolding mind.

The Vedic wisdom knows other sacraments also: the sun initiation with the severing of the umbilical cord, the sacrament of giving the milk and solid food, the sacrament of piercing the earlobes and of the initiation into the Gayatri Mantram. At each major station in life there is a sacrament that should cleanse the human body so that the soul can work through it.

The astrologers know that the impressions received by a baby during the first 6 hours after birth (90 degree rotation of the earth around its own axis) are a summary of its entire future life span of up to 90 years. Master EK describes experiments done by him where he brought young women with their babies to a silent room for 6 hours after birth and played soft music with cassettes. This has a marked effect on health and spirituality. Thus, the whole life can be raised to more noble expressions. A shock during the first 6 hours will manifest as a profound crisis at the corresponding lifetime.

During the first months after our birth, we still remember the resolve before the birth not to repeat the wrong deeds. We still sleep a lot and during this time we are still in communication with the light that we have seen before birth. Only much later we develop the senses to look outside. But the more we live in the outer world we gradually forget the inner world. A Master can help us to regain the memory of this state. And the parents can help build a subtle body through feeding with breast milk, healthy food, fresh air and sunlight.

K.P. Kumar: The Teachings of Kapila / Notes from seminars. Dr. E. Krishnamacharya: Prenatal Education (German seminar transcription). The World Teacher Trust - Dhanishta, Visakhapatnam, India