Parental State of Consciousness at Time of Conception Impacts the Child’s Development

We tend to blame, accuse and punish a child for wild tendencies, without generally recognising that the child is the product of a number of factors, including samskaras from past lives, environmental influences, diet, pollution, celestial energies, societal expectations and acculturation, genetics, and parental energies which are the first and closest influence on the prenatal state. Once the child is born, all of the other factors take on a larger role, but the entire gestational period, from time of conception, exerts its influence on the developing child. The psychological state and energy active at the time of conception itself can have an influence that is generally unrecognised.

Dr. Dalal observes: “More concealed disturbances which are related to the subconscient are the prenatal influences of the parents on the infant. The state of consciousness of the parents at the time of conception is regarded in yoga psychology as a powerful factor that underlies the physical, intellectual and characterological defects and deficiencies which a child may manifest. In response to a question whether the wickedness found in some children is due to the fact that the parents did not wish to have the children, the Mother makes certain emphatic and categorical statements regarding the subconscient influence of the parents on the new-born.

She says: “It is perhaps a subconscious wickedness in the parents. It is said that people throw out their wickedness from themselves by giving it birth in their children. One has always a shadow in oneself. There are people who project this outside — that does not always free them from it, but still perhaps it comforts them! But it is the child who ‘profits’ by it, don’t you see? It is quite evident that the state of consciousness in which the parents are at that moment [of conception] is of capital importance. If they have very low and vulgar ideas, the children will reflect them quite certainly. And all these children who are ill-formed, ill-bred, incomplete (specially from the point of view of intelligence: with holes, things missing), children who are only half-conscious and half-formed — this is always due to the fault of the state of consciousness in which the parents were when they conceived the child. Even as the state of consciousness of the last moments of life is of capital importance for the future of the one who is departing, so too the state of consciousness in which the parents are at the moment of conception gives a sort of stamp to the child, which it will reflect throughout its life. So, these are apparently such little things — the mood of the moment, the moment’s aspiration or degradation, anything whatsoever, everything that takes place at a particular moment — it seems to be so small a thing, and it has so great a consequence: it brings into the world a child who is incomplete or wicked or finally a failure. And people are not aware of that.”

“Later, when the child behaves nastily, they scold it. But they should be scolding themselves, telling themselves: ‘In what a horrible state of consciousness must I have been when I brought that child into the world.’ For it is truly that.”

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Living Within: The Yoga Approach to Psychological Health and Growth, Introduction, The Subconscient and Its Disturbances, pp. xxvii-xxxii