by His Holiness Satsvarūpa dāsa Gosvāmī

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 Krsna) 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."