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From: pgd@bbt.se
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Re: Body and Soul?
Keywords: soul, conception, reincarnation
Message-ID: <1990Oct18.061233.19437@nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 18 Oct 90 06:12:33 GMT
Sender: news@nas.nasa.gov
Organization: NAS Program, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Lines: 78
Approved: prabhu@amelia.nas.nasa.gov

In article <1990Sep13.000952.27231@nas.nasa.gov> hugh@cs.adelaide.edu.au (Hugh Garsden) writes:

>
>A question.
>
>Suppose we accept that there is a soul, and that we are reincarnated. At
>some time, therefore, the soul must enter the body (since it comes
>intact from a previous life). When does it do this? Before we are born?
> etc...

Here is what the Srimad Bhagavatam (canto 4, chapter 31) says about
the subject matter:

  "The Personality of Godhead said: Under the supervision of the
Supreme Lord and according to the result of his work, the living
entity, the soul, is made to enter into the womb of a woman through
the particle of male semen to assume a particular type of body."

That is, during sexual intercourse, the soul is transferred through
the semen of the father into the mother's womb in order to produce a
particular type of body. This process is applicable to all embodied
living entities. The above quoted sanskrit verse indicates that it is
not the semen of the man that creates life within the womb of a woman;
rather, the living entity, the soul, takes shelter in a particle of
semen and is then pushed into the womb of a woman. Then the body
develops. 

  "On the first night, the sperm and ovum mix, and on the fifth night
the mixture ferments into a bubble. On the tenth night it develops
into a form like a plum, and after that, it gradually turns into a
lumb of flesh or an egg, as the case may be."

The body of the soul develops in four different ways according to its
different sources. One kind of body, that of the trees and plants,
sprouts from the earth; the second kind of body grows from
perspiration, as with flies, germs and bugs; the third kind of body
develops from eggs; and the fourth develops from an embryo.

....

  "Owing to the mother's eating bitter, pungent foodstuffs, or food
which is too salty or too sour, the body of the child incassantly
suffers pains which are almost intolerable".

....

   "Thus endowed with the development of consciousness from the
seventh month after the conception, the child is tossed downward by
the airs that press the embryo during the weeks preceeding delivery.
Like the worms born of the same filthy abdominal cavity, he cannot
remain in one place."

So far, the child has been unconscious, but from the seventh month,
the soul wakes up to consciousness again.

....

  "Pushed downward all of a sudden by the wind, the child comes out with
great trouble, head downward, breathless and deprived of memory due to
severe agony."

The wind referred to is one of the bodily airs. This verse describes
the birth of a human as a very painful experience. So painful, that
the child is loosing its memories from the previous lifetime.

------------------

Srimad Bhagavatam is part of the vedic scriptures, one of the puranas
(Bhagavat Purana).  Together with the Bhagavad Gita, it is the most
important scripture for the theist Vaisnava-faith (of India). The
purpose of Srimad Bhagavatam is to teach the "complete science of
Godhead", but it also covers a lot of knowledge about the material
world, and it's construction. It is maybe not so well known, outside
India, because it is so strongly theistic, and thus not favoured by
the atheistic schools.
It is very volumous. It consist of 12 cantos, each with has many
chapters of verses. All in all around 18000 sanskrit verses (slokas).
There are translations in many languages.