Re-experience Of Birth And Conception

RE-EXPERIENCE OF BIRTH AND

CONCEPTION

After two or three sessions the subject is, as we say, tuned into birth. He experiences his first regression in time as he re-lives his own birth, feeling again the pains, smelling, seeing, hearing and perceiving all that took place before and after delivery.

When the patient has learned to experience his birth in all its details and stages (which usually necessitates a number of repetitions), we then go back further in time to his conception. Now he re-lives the experience of being present as a conscious and perceiving entity at the conception of what was later to be his body. He can see the surroundings and his future parents. He experiences their sexual union, suddenly feels himself being sucked in as though through a funnel and finds himself once again confined in something limited, dark and material. To be present at one's own conception would seem a grotesque idea to most people of today, but it becomes entirely natural when we learn to distinguish consciousness and body as two separate things. The human being is just as much present at the conception of his material body as he is at its burial.

After the experience of conception we explore the span of time between conception and birth, those months inside the womb which are the source of so many, mostly unpleasant, experiences for the child. The fears and pains, not to mention abortion attempts, that the foetus suffers during that period, cannot be believed by anyone who has not re-lived them.

Compared with these pre-natal traumas, the subsequent childhood experiences of the early years are harmless episodes. A conscious survey of the period in the womb will shed more light for the patient than a hundred hours of analysis.

More and more often it happens that people during ordinary therapy regress of their own accord into birth and intra-uterine experiences. Thus, even in orthodox circles, it is becoming gradually accepted that the pre-natal period can be consciously re-lived. In comparison with earlier theories and therapeutic methods this discovery is sensational. The danger is, however, that some people may become convinced that in the unpleasant experiences in the womb and at birth lies the “true cause” of subsequent conflicts and disorders. In reality these factors are not causes at all, any more than the childhood experiences that Freud and his followers made so much of. Both childhood and pre-natal events are only links in a chain of problems that stretches through many incarnations.

Here some readers may raise the objection that only in the third month of pregnancy does the soul enter the body. The evidence against this is that up to now all patients and test subjects without exception have been able to describe their conception and simultaneous entry into flesh. In due course experiments may reveal how the theory about the third month arose, but it seems to me a doubtful theory, since the cells require information form the onset in order to develop according to plan.

The fact that from conception onwards a child is fully conscious of all that happens and is spoken, has far-reaching implications for parents, midwives and doctors attending labour. Fortunately the gentle-birth methods of Dr Leboyer are currently receiving increasing sympathy, and clinics are gradually accommodating themselves to the demands of conscious parents.

One could fill whole volumes with warnings and pieces of advice relating to pregnancy and birth, but the important thing for the parents to realize is that it is only in terms of the body that the growing embryo is so tiny, so helpless and so young. It is quite possible for a newborn baby to be older in soul than its parents. There is absolutely no reason to talk to a baby in meaningless babble. It understands every word and every sentence – even those things that are better not said in the presence of children.

All parents would be well advised to begin as early as possible with the education of their children – namely on the very day when they learn that a child is expected. Eugenics – in the sense of ante-natal education – consists in the parents talking to the child in the womb in a perfectly normal way, encouraging it to look forward to its arrival, teaching it about birth, exposing it only to good music, literature, films and plays. Telling the embryo clearly about birth does more good than weeks of gymnastic exercises.

All difficulties and complications during delivery are attributable to the child's attempts to prevent itself from being born. Fear of being born has to do not so much with the delivery process itself as with the mastery of life, which begins here. The embryo does not possess its own breathing rhythm and is therefore not fully caught in polarity. This means that it still has access to past and future. It can survey the most important stages of its future life – compare this with the “film” of life that a person sees at death.

The extinguishing of this knowledge occurs with the first breath, for it is through the breathing rhythm that a human being enters fully into polarity and dependence on time. This is why a horoscope is calculated in relation to the first breath or the first cry. Herein lies also the reason for the great significance attached to breathing in esoteric training. The embryo views the problems of its future life and knows that this knowledge will disappear when it is born. Hence the fear of birth and the frequent attempts to prevent it happening. Appropriate pre-natal conversations can help here more than all clinical techniques put together. By the same token, parents who spend weeks discussing whether or not they should abort a child should not be surprised later on if the child is disturbed, or rejects its parents.