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Birth; Growth; Aging; Death
becomes its physical body through a stage-by-stage biological process.1 A new human being has been conceived. The new human is thus, endowed with (i) the genetic code contained in the 23 chromosomes from the mother (ii) the genetic code contained in the 23 chronosomes from the father and (iii) the code contained in the karmaṇa śarira appended to his soul from his previous life/lives. All these begin and continue to interact and integrate into various programs which would control the life of the new human. Its existence and development is totally dependent on karmic and hereditary programmed instructions. Those for remaining alive come from DNA and ayuṣya karman.
B. Prenatal Development
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Now the single cell with a full set of 46 chromosomes, (23 from the mother and 23 from the father) divides into two duplicates of itself. This is the first in a series of divisions and the cells divide again and again in a long process of development in which many changes occur in a precise sequence. The nucleus of the fertilized and animated cell contains full instructions needed to make all the different proteins of all the different types of cells in the body (a liver cell, a nerve cell and so on). Using these instructions, the embryo produces all the different organs in a precise sequence following a harmoniously regulated time-schedule and spelled out in DNA blue-prints contained in the nuclei of the fertilized ovum. The growing embryo is attached, first by a stalk and then by a rope-like umbilical cord, to the placenta. It receives nourishment from the placenta via its umbilical life-line.
When a human baby is born, it is already about nine months old. It has spent these nine months of life, since conception, living as a parasite within the body of its mother. During this period it increases from a microscopic single cell to 3 to 4 kg. mass of protoplasm composed of nearly 10 trillion cells, integrated into various functional systems.
C. Birth
Birth inevitably, brings a certain amount of trauma for the infant. For nine months it has rested in gently supporting fluids. The sheltering
1. See,p. 13 of this book.
