What do we experience as a new born child inside

Namaste dear all,
This is my first mail to this list. My thoughts ponder on what I
would have felt inside, i.e. in my mind when I was born, or in other
words, during the early days of my life on earth. However hard I try
to remember, memory fails to reveal what I experienced. Probably the
first two years? or maybe even less. We are not able to remember, or
atleast i am not able to. The point is not trying to remember, but to
know if we really did have pure thoughts only and did we possess
realization of the self.

Babies are compared to sages(rishis), in a sense that, they don't
focus their thoughts after something dissappears from their field of
view.

A related thought that comes to my mind, (someone told me this),
newborn babies that die, are sure to attain moksha, coz they have
only that much karma left in them.

Ur thoughts on the issue ?

Karthik

Namaste Kathikji:

First, welcome to the list with the thoughtful question. Your
question can't be answered without a brief understanding of the
Vedantic View of Moksha.

According to Vedanta, our True Nature is Divine. At paramarthika
(absolute) level of experience it is Sat (Absolute Existence), Chit
(Consciousness) and Ananda (Bliss). But at the vyavahara level of
experience (plane of relative human consciousness) this true nature
degenerates into dualities of life and death (Existence), knowledge
and ignorance (Consciousness), and happiness and misery (Bliss). The
cause of this distortion is known as Cosmic Ignorance or Maya.

Because of the influence of Maya, we become attached to
body-mind-intellect complex and take this as our true reality. We
associate sense perception to source of knowledge and sense pleasure
to happiness. This worldly life is known as Samsara (life propelled by
desires and attachment) and we can't avoid the experience of sorrow,
death, and miseries. These experiences of bodily pleasures and worldly
knowledge including Sastras, science and literature are transitory and
not permanent. The state of Moksha is the liberation from Samsara and
it can be reached if we can recognize our True Divine Nature. This can
be achieved by spiritual disciplines that help us reach to
transcendent from the body-mind-intellect complex of Samsara. Then we
can become a Perfect Yogi as spelled out Bhagawan Krishna in Bhagavad
Gita, Chapter 2, Verses 55 to 72.

It is not incorrect to say that Sage behaves as though he/she is a
baby. But this definitely does not mean that a baby is a sage. In the
case of babies, they seem to accept everthing that is offered to them
and they lack the discriminating intelligence. As the babies grow they
tend to cultivate likings and attachments to objects that they like
such as toys, sweet food, etc. The entire transformation of baby
(sagehood) to adulthood is also part of the Cosmic ignorance or Maya.

Let me allow other knowledgeable members of the list to shred more
insights to your question. Your last question regarding the
assessment: "babies that die, are sure to attain moksha." comes from
belief. It is possible to counter such a belief with the question:
"Why did that baby born when there was no karma left to perform?"

regards,

Ram Chandran

--- In advaitin@y..., rastapoppolous@y... wrote:

>
> A related thought that comes to my mind, (someone told me this),
> newborn babies that die, are sure to attain moksha, coz they have
> only that much karma left in them.
>
> Ur thoughts on the issue ?
>
> Karthik

On Tue, 19 Jun 2001 rastapoppolous@... wrote:

> Namaste dear all,
> This is my first mail to this list. My thoughts ponder on what I
> would have felt inside, i.e. in my mind when I was born, or in other
> words, during the early days of my life on earth. However hard I try
> to remember, memory fails to reveal what I experienced. Probably the
> first two years? or maybe even less. We are not able to remember, or
> atleast i am not able to. The point is not trying to remember, but to
> know if we really did have pure thoughts only and did we possess
> realization of the self.
>

namaste karthik-ji and welcome to the List. In answer to your
question, I like to say the following as per my understanding.

I do not know about Self-realization (realization may be an
inappropriate word here, please see further below) of a baby,
but I think the thoughts of a baby are certainly purer than for
an adult average person.

Realization of the SELF implies, as per my understanding, that we
had developed some wrong thoughts about ourselves and, getting rid
of those wrong ideas is realization. That is, realization is only
for a person who is engulfed in avidyA. Our true SELF is always
with us in its untainted brilliance; only when it is masked by
avidyA, then only realization is needed. Realization is the
recognition that what we see as ourselves in avidyA is not our
true SELF.

Now, coming to the babies, babies have pure and innocent thoughts
until they fall into the mold of avidyA of their parents and friends.
So, I would say that babies are in the natural state of the jIvA.
As they grow older, their natural state is gradually masked by
avidyA, they develop wrong ideas of what they are; at some stage
in their life, due to divine grace, they question their already-held
views and strive for realization, i.e. know their true SELF.

> Babies are compared to sages(rishis), in a sense that, they don't
> focus their thoughts after something dissappears from their field of
> view.
>
> A related thought that comes to my mind, (someone told me this),
> newborn babies that die, are sure to attain moksha, coz they have
> only that much karma left in them.
>

It is true that a jIvA sheds its body the minute the prArabdha karma
of that entity is satisfied; that does not mean, as per my understanding,
that the jIvA has attained moksha.

Further, I tend to think that moksha is through jIvanmukta only
and not at the dropping down of the physical body.

You may not agree with my thoughts on this, but I want to thank
you for giving me the opportunity to express my present
understanding.

> Ur thoughts on the issue ?
>
> Karthik
>

Regards
Gummuluru Murthy
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