Development In The Womb
With Limor Soffer-Fetman, educational psychologist and psychotherapist, and
Eli Vinokur, education content manager for the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute
Limor Soffer-Fetman: If possible, I will begin with statements I heard you say, regarding the early development in the womb, the fetus level. There is very little information, and so, very cautiously, particularly in recent years, more studies have been published which actually claim that the fetus already perceives. So at the beginning, they spoke about perceiving sounds, and actually…
Eli Vinokur: Starting from a specific month, right? If I'm not mistaken.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Yes, don't ask me which.
Eli Vinokur: Okay.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: In recent years, studies have found that even while in the womb, there is some connection and some type of preparation that you can do with fetuses, that the fetus can hear the voices of the family members and there is some type of bond between the fetus and the family. There are even studies of twins which speak of some sense of bonding between the fetuses, both when they are identical and when they are not identical, which is amazing. It means that the fetus perceives a great deal more than we thought.
Michael Laitman: Yes, but why are yousurprised? We want to divide nature into parts, to disconnect connections between those parts and say, I can relate to this however I please, and to that, however I please. It is convenient for our ego to do so. I am superior to nature and I do whatever I please with each and every part. If I say that all of nature is one and that it is actually one flowing mechanism, with a process, it obligates me to first study nature and then keep its rules.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Certainly, before I change it and destroy it.
Michael Laitman: Yes, whereas now I can say, “Oh, nature is like that, I do whatever I feel like,” and then we end up where we are today. But the holistic approach to nature—that nature is everything, integrated, and one—is true, and this is how the wisdom of Kabbalah relates to it—as one complex. And that is why the fetal stage, birth, the years of nursing, or even the years of adulthood are all one mechanism, and we mustn't take into consideration what we perceive in our senses.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Yes but it does feel different.
Michael Laitman: It is an eternal system, connected in all its parts, just as in our body, each cell is connected to all the cells. So when we talk about the fetus, does it only belong to the mother? Did it lose contact with his father? It doesn't even matter where his father is.
Eli Vinokur: In the process of the development in the womb, can you detail the stages that the fetus goes through?
Michael Laitman: The first stage is reception of the sperm. This is called “3 days of reception of the sperm,” which is until there is a connection between the sperm and the egg, the uterus, the uterus wall, and creating the new bond. After that begins the forty days of creating the embryo. This is when something that takes a new form begins to develop. The forty days include the three days of reception of the sperm, and then continuing to complete the forty days.
After forty days, as we learn in the wisdom of Kabbalah, it already exists. It is a human being already, having an initial form of the future human and already having independence. After forty days, the fetus mustn't be treated as just a lump of flesh.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: It exists in the full sense of the word?
Michael Laitman: Yes, because it has everything. It is only lacking from our perspective, that is, to develop so as to connect with us, but it already exists. We need to relate to it like a fully developed human being.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: In fact, we don't know that it exists at this stage, forty days.
Michael Laitman: We don't know because our senses don't perceive it, but the final form is already there.
Eli Vinokur: Is there a way to influence the fetus at this stage of zero to forty?
Michael Laitman: Absolutely, with music, reading, and in the way of life.
Eli Vinokur: Even at this age?
Michael Laitman: Even before that!
Limor Soffer-Fetman: But it’s a stage when the woman still doesn't know she is pregnant.
Michael Laitman: It doesn't matter.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Oh, is it because she's preparing?
Michael Laitman: I don't know. What matters is how we arrange the environment around the woman.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Ok, now let’s talk about the first trimester.
Michael Laitman: First, the months are counted according to the lunar months, not according to our calendar months. In pregnancy, everything runs according to the moon because this system is not connected to the sun or to the Earth, but specifically to the moon.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: The woman's cycle.
Michael Laitman: Yes, since the maternal cycle is linked entirely to the moon. Three times three months are nine months, and as we know from our lives, the eighth month is dangerous; it is better to give birth on the seventh month.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Really?
Michael Laitman: Yes, because there is a certain completion between the seventh and the ninth months. There are hundreds of pages written about it in The Study of the Ten Sefirot, it’s a whole science.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Which men study.
Michael Laitman: Yes.
Eli Vinokur: They study their own development.
Michael Laitman: What does it mean “Men study”? We are talking about the development of the soul, and the fetal development is a precise parallel. It’s not just parallel, but a result of the development of the soul. A soul projects its development onto the development of the body and the body develops.
If there is a failure in the soul, the body stops developing. The fact that we artificially create a failure and don't want the fetus to develop—thus causing abortion—is also because there is a prior cause that induces us to act that way. Again, it is a system, an integral system.
Eli Vinokur: Now, what develops at each stage? You mentioned three months, three trimesters; what develops in each of them in the fetus according to the wisdom of Kabbalah?
Michael Laitman: Actually, all of the highest qualities develop in the first stage, in the first three months. Afterwards develop things like the skeleton and other less significant organs, and in the last three months, the strength develops. So the most important development is the initial development.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Actually, medical knowledge speaks of the development of the brain in the first three months, which is why they are the most dangerous and require the most care.
Michael Laitman: The question is this: Either we handle things ourselves without being rewarded with medicine that will develop and correct all the ailments in our world, or we at least examine the wisdom of Kabbalah and conduct a study based on what it says. In the latter case, we will very quickly reach results and develop tools to at least help the woman and the fetus.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: How long ago was all this written?
Michael Laitman: 3,500 years ago.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Amazing.
Michael Laitman: Six hundred years ago, the Ari wrote very accurately, in a way that today we still don't know everything. In The Zohar, too, we suddenly find it written that the earth is round, and that the people on the other side are seemingly positioned head-down. Two thousand years ago!
So in short, there are three trimesters of three months.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: With regard to the woman, is there anything she should do? Are there any guidelines in regard to her environment?
Michael Laitman: A woman should function in wholeness.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: What does that mean?
Michael Laitman: If we want to bring about the right development, she must think of the fetus as alive. She should speak with it, she should relate to it, she should sing as if she is singing with it, play with it. It already has all the foundations, and she should solicit responses from it. And then she will begin to sense it, although it is still in the womb. She should speak with it as if there is no partition between them, no partition.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: But it’s as if she has to imagine his response.
Michael Laitman: She can sense it inside her, sense his personality.
I’ve never felt that, but based on what I know from the wisdom of Kabbalah, there is such a possibility to be completely connected with it, in terms of knowledge, mind, feelings, stories, conversing, everything, even more than she senses herself, because she lives by the fetus’ will.
Eli Vinokur: You said that she needs to sing and play, etc. What type of songs, games or other things should it be?
Michael Laitman: I don’t know if we can get into details right now. I’m just saying that in general the mother senses the fetus. If you only direct her in the right direction, she herself will sense it specifically with regard to her fetus, and in different situations and on different days. She will sense everything; nature will accompany and support her.
Eli Vinokur: What do you mean by directing, say this and don’t say that?
Michael Laitman: “A person’s soul will teach him,” just so. I wouldn’t get into that at all, only evoke the mother’s awareness to the fact that she is connected to the fetus like two people, but in a natural, inseparable connection. That even her innermost thought is already in him.
Eli Vinokur: So she should be aware that everything she sees, everything she hears affects the child. If I watch a horror movie, it affects the child.
Michael Laitman: Yes, obviously.
Moreover, according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the spiritual mother, the upper mother is a unique mechanism that develops our soul. She has only one thing: a mechanism that perceives us as the ones who determine, and she is entirely to our service, at the service of our soul, to develop it in the best, must suited way for the soul. That is the entire concept of the mother.
A mother means she is entirely for the benefit of the fetus, having nothing for herself, only this. So if we teach, give some importance to mothers, even begin to build it at school, I think we will be able to develop sensitivity in people, primarily to strangers or to others. From that they will go through all the stages of the pregnancy correctly, and they will begin to better understand and sense others. As a result, we will have people who understand that it is not only the fetus they are connected to, but that they are connected to the whole of humanity, that in fact, we are all inside each other’s womb, and that‘s already a very different degree.
Eli Vinokur: We’ve been discussing the mother a great deal, I would like to ask about the father.
Michael Laitman: We already answered that on the previous show—the father here is not taken into any consideration. In the wisdom of Kabbalah, the father is at a much higher degree than the mother. He determines the fetus’ traits in a very distinct manner, and the mother develops them. It is called, “The father gives the ’whiteness’ and the mother gives the ’redness.’” The mother gives forces, what is called “flesh,” but the father gives the essential traits of the fetus.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: What does it mean that “the father gives”?
Michael Laitman: The drop of semen.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: But genetically, it is fifty-fifty.
Michael Laitman: Yes, but we are not talking about the corporeal traits. We are talking more about the inherent approach to life. Those are more intrinsic things, transferred through the father. The entire beginning of the fetus cascades from the degree of the father through the mother, and then she bears it. That is, the father is nonetheless the first, and determines a great deal here. I don’t want to say that the mother is only a home for development, like an incubator, but there is still a relationship here in which the father gives that drop of semen, there is nothing you can do about it, and this is what develops.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: That’s true.
Michael Laitman: This is one thing. The other thing is that I can’t say in what situations in our world, but in spirituality the father determines everything the mother will have. Let’s put it this way, the mechanism of the mother is meant to adapt what the father determines for the fetus. It’s as if the mother is a kind of means, coordinating between the father and the fetus. Excuse me for seemingly belittling the mother’s degree, but I want to emphasize that the father should not be ignored altogether.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: You made him the most important.
Michael Laitman: There is a very subtle role division here, very fundamental, and one does not interfere with the other.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: But you are saying that there is one who is more important and one who is less so.
Michael Laitman: No. I don’t think you can have one without the other. I guess there aren’t studies about that yet, but there is a great difference if it is single-parent family.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Actually, there are studies on that, regarding the father safeguarding the mother and child’s environment, and reminding the mother that she belongs to his system as well. That is, the father has many functions, although less direct.
Michael Laitman: I think that particularly by that, we hand it down to the children to maintain it in the future, too.
Eli Vinokur: So perhaps to sum it up, what is the role division between the father and the mother?
Michael Laitman: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, these are very deep and very high matters. There is a division; the father does not actually impact the child directly.
In any case, whatever the woman requests, the man must do. It is certainly with regard to the child. But he himself he has no approach to the child at all, but only through the mother, until the time when the father begins to educate.
Eli Vinokur: Is there a difference between boys and girls in that matter?
Michael Laitman: In the wisdom of Kabbalah, we talk about the boys because that is the force of overcoming, the force of the screen and reflected light, as we call it. Regarding the girls, I think it is surely different. Taking care of the girls is done entirely by the mother, and the father should be behind the mother.
With boys, both the father and the mother take care of them in a way that the son feels he has a father from the first day, differently from a daughter. Later, he should switch to the father’s care. The fact that these days our boys are cared for by women from first grade or even before that is destroying us.
Eli Vinokur: Let’s summarize the show. We said that dividing nature and the stages in general, as we do, is incorrect, that we should rather relate to it holistically, as one system. We slice it into slices, because we see a separated reality, but the reality is whole.
We also said that at forty days the fetus already has the complete form. There are three days of reception, then forty days, which is the stage in which the human being is formed.
And we talked about this process being divided into three trimesters, and the development actually starts from the more internal and outwards. That means, the more internal things develop during the first three months.
We also said that the mother’s role is extremely important. Like the mother in spirituality, she should be totally concerned for her fetus and aware that everything she does affects it throughout the pregnancy, that the fetus is part of her and that if she really tries, she will actually sense her fetus; they will actually be a single whole.
Finally, we said that the father has a role, as well, and even a very important one. The father provides the internal qualities and the mother provides the environment, as well as develops the fetus.
Michael Laitman: Yes, but the father must show the outer limits of the cell, and the children should sense that.
Eli Vinokur: Okay, and we also said that if your wife requests something, the father must do it, especially in regard to the child. This is a very important tip we should implement.
July 05, 2010
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