Nikhil Mishra, 30 June 2018
Hare Krsna
Obeisance to Guru, Gauranga and devotees.
Please refer the below link.
http://www.vedabase.com/sb/3/31
In it, is described the development of foetus. My question is- has it been seen by modern scientific instrument like ultrasound etc that fetus is totally unhappy and unable to move his/her limbs inside womb ?
Because in one youtube video, (if i remember correctly !!), they showed one grown baby fetus smiling inside belly of mother!!
Sincerely
Nikhil
Mahabhagavat Das SDA, 03 July 2018
Dear Sriman Nikhil,
Hare Krishna!
I think I remember seeing one such video, but really, we all know that videos can be easily faked.
From what I know, yes, the amount of space available to the foetus continuously decreases, and in the initial months, the foetus can swim around, but later on, everything gets progressively very tight – that part is clearly confirmed from data and experience.
In fact, one of the things that expecting mothers are taught to do is to take a few moments throughout the day to monitor that the foetus is moving around – too many just give up their life inside the womb and sometimes the mother doesn’t even know for days after! Re facial expressions, I have seen that the baby as seen in ultrasound images could be neutral, crying, or grimacing.
In any case, the ultrasound lasts for a few seconds or minutes, it cannot be done 24X7.
It is not possible to conclusively confirm, as baby is not verbal until about a year after birth, and the trauma of birth takes away all memory of life in the womb.
I have witnessed childbirth myself. It is no walk in the park, even with all sorts of pain medication. It is clearly Krishna’s mercy that women don’t remember it, otherwise, no one would have children in this world.
There is also no need to doubt the statements of the Bhagavatam which is spotlessly pure and free of fault by the personal statement of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself and thousands of other great Vaishnava Acharyas.
Sincerely,
Mahabhagavat Das
Nikhil Mishra, 04 July 2018
Thank you very much Mahabhagavat prabhu for taking out time to express your views on my question. I really appreciate that and offer my gratitude to you for the same.
Knowing views of other vaisnavas help me to intensify my search about truth and devotion while keeping my intellect sane.
Sincerely
Nikhil
Mahabhagavat Das SDA, 05 July 2018
Dear Sriman Nikhil,
Hare Krishna!
I completely understand where you are coming from.
Srila Gurudeva once told me “the sign of a Brahmana is one who can keep two opposing viewpoints in the mind without getting disturbed” and then he added “that is also a definition of intelligence”.
Basically, when we position the scripture and modern scientific understanding as competing against each other, it is always a difficult situation.
But they are not competing fields of knowledge, but complementary fields of knowledge.
Reality is very vast, and there is much of reality that is not materially perceivable – for example, material science expresses thoughts, emotions, as mere eletrochemical reactions. Yes, it is true that someone may observe that my thoughts and emotions might be expressed on one level as electrochemical reactions. BUT, that sort of reductionist viewpoint is incomplete, because we all have personal experience that thoughts and emotions are much more than just electrochemical reactions.
Science explicitly looks for matter, and thus therefore finds matter… starts with the assumption that anything that is not mathematically provable or empirically observable does not exist (though there are inconsistencies there – for example what is the square root of -1, can anyone show me an i?).
Scripture and Science are two different genres of knowledge – you cannot always take the rules of one and apply to the other.
For example, take the image below… reality consists of gross, subtle, and spiritual, but materialistic science only deals with the gross. (Image courtesy of His Grace Chaitanya Charan Das The Spiritual Scientist). Spirituality on the other hand, doesn’t concern itself so much with the gross, but focuses on the subtle and spiritual.
I hope this helps!
Sincerely,
Mahabhagavat Das
Nikhil Mishra, 05 July 2018
Hare Krsna
Thank you for writing to me again Mahabhagavat prabhu. Yes you got the essence of query and your answer further helped me.
Really vaisnavas are so merciful.
Hari bol
Sincerely
Nikhil
Please subscribe to daily inspirational emails from His Grace Sriman Sankarshan Das Adhikari (Writings and lectures archived at sda-archives.com), written fresh every day from his travels around the world sharing the highest spiritual knowledge with everyone. Sign up now at www.joincourse.com
Servant of the Servant of the Servant of God 