May 15 Bhaktamal Overview
-Conciousness In The Womb-
For the last 2 nights Shri Ramesh Bābājī Mahārāja has been responding to question “Do all living entities has consciousness of the Supreme Lord in the womb as mentioned in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam?”
He repeats from śastra on how the living entity experiences sufferings in the womb, being bitten by so many living entities, with the head down and on a bed of stool and urine. If the mother eats spicy things then the child must also endure the stinging chili, etc.
In the first 10 days the embryo in the size of a plumb, 1 month a head forms, 3 months hands and legs, gender organs appear, 6 months consciousness develops.
The living entity can pray to God in such a suffering condition to not forget Him but after birth, we become intoxicated and easily forget Him.
Overview Class:
Actually it is the subtle body that does all the work. The subtle body goes into the womb and then the gross body manifests around it. From the mind the subtle body manifests, so here we can see that the living entity actually exists under the shelter of the mind. People mistakenly think that we have taken shelter of God, but actually we have taken shelter of our mind. Our future is based on ‘vasana’, this root desire lies in the subtle body.
SB 10.14.41;
svapne yathā paśyati deham īdṛśaṁ
manorathenābhiniviṣṭa-cetanaḥ
dṛṣṭa-śrutābhyāṁ manasānucintayan
prapadyate tat kim api hy apasmṛtiḥ
Having experienced a situation by seeing or hearing about it, one contemplates and speculates about that situation, and thus one surrenders to it, not considering his present body. Similarly, by mental adjustments one dreams at night of living under different circumstances, in different bodies, and forgets his actual position. Under this same process, one gives up his present body and accepts another [tathā dehāntara-prāptiḥ [Bg. 2.13].
We think that we are chanting or doing bhajan, but we are meditating on the 50 rupees, or as we do mala, our concentration it is on noon prasadam, we are just meditating on our stomach. We go to Shri Ji Mandir and take darshan of Radharani and we are meditating on who is stealing my shoes, while saying “Jaya Jaya Jaya.” So we are all living in the shelter of our mind.
From vasana, then the living entity quits the body then goes to the next. Gita 8.6;
yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ tyajaty ante kalevaram
taṁ tam evaiti kaunteya sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitaḥ
Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, O son of Kuntī, that state he will attain without fail.
I am telling from all the scriptures. All this cheating that is going on in the name of ‘taking shelter of God’. Kabir dasa describes how we are under the shelter of our own mind. Real japa is when real emotion comes to our heart.
Basically, the eyes and ears are the main senses that influence the mind. When one dreams it is through the subtle body that one is flying or lust comes with bad dreams etc., we suffer due to attachment.
There is the story of the poor man who had acquired this perfumed oil and he became so absorbed in the ‘ladhu’ of money. He was single and lonely, and was thinking if I sell this oil today, I will make a big profit and if I obtain this money then I will celebrate by getting married.
I will have nice children with my wife, and when I have to go to work to sell the oil, my little ‘babu’ will come up to me as I am going out the door “Oh papa, Oh papa”…And as he meditated in this way, the expensive pot of oil fell off his head onto the ground[Bābāji makes big round face of sadness…laughter]. Just see the state of material affairs.
It was 58 years ago that there was this big guru, who had millions of disciples who was about to die. At the final moments his main disciple closed the doors so no one could come in, the crowd was so frustrated and the ācārya then left this world. The disciple was interrogated why he did close the doors and he replied “That at the final moments he was speaking about so many mundane sensual things.” He looked good from the outside but inwardly he meditated on these bodily affairs. He took so much money from his disciples and was not able to deliver them.
Anyways, this guru became a big python here in Gahbarvan, I saw it with my own eyes, that was slowly dying with a million ants, his disciples, feeding off the body. We cannot under go the pain of one ant biting, what to speak of a million. The python could not do anything and these ants were just eating his body, just see the reactions that came. So looking at these verses SB 10.14.41 and Gita 8.6, we see the śāstric confirmation.
This is the evidence of the śāstra, also Sridhar Swami declares that it is the mind that affects the subtle body which enters the womb. Then we have the example of King Puranjana, where the mind was the wife, the intelligence that controlled him.
We are simply under the shelter of the mind not the shelter of God. If we take shelter of God then we are safe: Gita 12.8;
mayy eva mana ādhatsva mayi buddhiṁ niveśaya
nivasiṣyasi mayy eva ata ūrdhvaṁ na saṁśayaḥ
Just fix your mind upon Me, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and engage all your intelligence in Me. Thus you will live in Me always, without a doubt.
So the glorification is not done by all living entities in the womb. There are 3 types to individual who can remember the past. One individual can remember his past life, the second, the yogi can remember his sādhana , and three, the devotees are the ones who can remember God and can thus pray to Him at that crucial period.
[Bābājī Mahārāja then gave several examples in the sastra of how some enities are ‘conscious’ in the womb, one of which is below.]
There was once a great scholar, Sage Kahod, who while chanting mantras heard a small voice telling him that his pronunciation was wrong. He looked everywhere and could not find, then the voice told him that he was his son in the womb of his mother who was nearby.
Kahod angrily replied “Oh you are my son and now you are correcting me, what will happen when you come out of the womb? I curse you for your impudence to have a body that is bent in eight places.”
When his son was born, he indeed had a body bent in eight places, with the hands, head, and legs bent like this[Bābājī Mahārāja moved his face and arms imitating the crippled son]. The son then was named, Ashtavakra, one whose body was bent in eight places, however this boy was the greatest of scholars.
Now in this connection, later on there was this Pandit Bandi, who was an undefeatable pandit, and was asked to do a service for the devas. The demigods needed all the major pandits from earth to go to heaven for a ‘Varuna yajña’, so if Pandit Bandi would defeat them in the śāstras, then they would be drowned in the water by the King Janaka and thus transferred to the arena of the demigods for this sacrifice. Many scholars were invited for debate, that was the culture at that time, but all were defeated and sent to their death.
One day Sage Kahod, the father, went to debate and he was quickly defeated and drowned. Saddened by the plight of his father, Ashtavakra also went to the court to defend his father. His mother was crying that she would now lose her son.
When he a came to the court and it was announced that another challenger had come and everyone seeing his deformities, bent in eight places, the many pandits residing there laughed at him “Ha ha ha, this creature is going to challenge our pandit?” Ashtavakra rebuked them, “Oh you are supposed to be learned pandits and you are laughing at my body!?” They then realized that they were not dealing with an ordinary personality.
Within moments he defeated Pandit Bandi in a discussion, and then panditji told him the whole story behind these debates and then brought his father, including the other pandits back to life from the water, the sacrifice had completed.
Then his father, Sage Kahod, understood what had happened and felt very remorseful that he had cursed his son. He prayed that his son would forgive him for his offenses.
Here Bābājī Mahārāja offers śāstric evidence of how some living entities are fully conscious in the womb.