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Different modes of conception in the Mahabharata

Are test-tube babies and in vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion won­ders of mod­ern med­i­cine? Or were these a part of a deep sci­ence that was known to our civ­i­liza­tion since thou­sands of years? Let’s look at what the Mahab­hara­ta says.

(From talks at Vikasa, Rishikesh, Decem­ber 2016)

(Smrithi ji) So even when we talk about Kun­ti, the way she con­ceived Kar­na, at least when I delved in the Mahab­hara­ta and looked at it, the modes of con­cep­tion were not just lim­it­ed to the phys­i­cal aspects as we see it today. There are dif­fer­ent dimen­sions of it, which I can throw light upon.

(Adi ji) See in the Mahab­hara­ta and the oth­er texts as well, it is men­tioned con­cep­tion or birth just through the womb is one mode of con­cep­tion, which is through the phys­i­cal aspect. But there can be con­cep­tion through touch, through sight, through thought trans­fer­ence — all this is rec­og­nized as valid. For exam­ple, the birth of Drona, or Kri­pa or Kripi, all these if you look at, they were not born through a womb. Drona is called Drona because he was born in a pot. These might sound astound­ing, but if you start under­stand­ing how real­i­ty works, for exam­ple, the Rishi Nara, is explained as com­ing out of the body of Rishi Narayana. And hence Krish­na and Arju­na are so close­ly bond­ed. Krish­na says,”Hey, Arju­na, I can­not live with­out you. If you were to die, I will end my life.” That is how close­ly bond­ed they are, because they always come as twin phe­nom­e­na, to estab­lish dhar­ma. That is also men­tioned. It is not very fan­tas­tic to see this, when you under­stand the under­ly­ing dynam­ics of how it oper­ates. Even now we have so many species on earth that don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly pro­duce off­springs by the only means that we under­stand. Biol­o­gy states this. We just need to expand our vision and you will see, all these that are described are avail­able for our evi­dence. Evi­dence-based research, it is avail­able even now. In fact, this is the rea­son why we have been able to devel­op womb-like envi­ron­ments. For exam­ple, the med­i­ta­tion space here (in Kriya Baba­ji’s ashra­ma) is called Hiranya­garb­ha. In tem­ples the sanc­tum sanc­to­rum is called Garb­ha gri­ha. See those are very pow­er­ful ener­gy spaces. You con­se­crate them in such a way that a new con­scious­ness can arise. That is why it is called a Garb­ha gri­ha. Exact­ly just as we embody, a new con­scious­ness being born. Hiranya­garb­ha. Like­wise the womb space is actu­al­ly con­se­crat­ed along such lines.

All the Kau­ravas were born not with­in the womb of Gand­hari. In fact, Gand­hari was in sort of a hur­ry to give birth, because she heard of Yud­hishthi­ra being born,”Oh no! My sons will not occu­py the throne.” So in a fit of rage, she gave birth to a mass of flesh. And hence Vyasa Maharshi inter­vened, split it up into a 100 parts and she had the desire that,”One girl” Because a girl child is also very impor­tant, you know. So 101, Dusha­la was also born. So he had strict instruc­tions as to how to take care of the…it was a ves­sel of ghee and var­i­ous arrange­ments were made, it was in a cold, cel­lu­lar struc­ture with­out light and so on and final­ly it emerged. Now we have incu­ba­tors for not ful­ly formed foe­tus­es. There are incu­ba­tors. See those advance­ments also show.…you have test tube babies. See there are such things, where you under­stand the prin­ci­ple with which you are able to mas­ter that process. That is ful­ly dis­played in our iti­hasa puranas. It is just that we have an under­stand­ing that there is an idea of lin­ear progress: past — bar­bar­ians, now – civ­i­lized, future – super. Why is that? Because the time scale that we have assumed is hard­ly 2000 years. That is the dam­age that has been com­mit­ted. If you expand the time scales, it need not be lin­ear. No progress is lin­ear, if you see it. But our idea of progress is right now lin­ear.

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