To understand this process more fully, let us take a look at the significance of a ruling found in Tractate Yevomos 22, the Talmud explains the principle involved.

When a person enters the water of the mikveh, it is as though he were returning to his mother's womb. Emerging from the mikveh is likened to the process of birth. As he climbs up out the mikveh, the person is reborn in a spiritual sense. This re-birth alters his status completely. A newborn infant comes into this world completely free of ritual impurity. There is no way in which an embryo or a fetus can become ritually impure. Similarly, when a person enters the waters of the mikveh, he sheds his impurity. He then emerges from the water a new person, free of any trace of spiritual contamination.

A further link between the waters of the mikveh and the womb is found in the narrative of the Six Days of Creation. In Genesis, we read that the universe originally consisted of water alone. The first verses of the Torah tell us: In the beginning of G-d's creating the Heavens and the Earth… the Divine Presence hovered over the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2)

As yet, there is no mention of a firmament or solid ground.

On the second day of Creation, the waters of the upper sphere were separated from those of the lower sphere. It was only on the third day that the waters were gathered to one location and divided into bodies of water, the seas, so that dry land appeared.

Water symbolizes the womb of the earth. Therefore, when a person immerses himself in a mikveh, he is, as it were, replicating the conditions that prevailed at the time when the world was not yet completely fashioned into the form in which we know it. Similarly, it was only later that the earth was given over to Mankind to cultivate and develop.

As of this third day of Creation, the universe was directly under the control of its Creator. In fact, Man had not yet been created. There was no one to receive the commandment to “fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28). All was still entirely in the Hands of the Creator.

When he submerges his body in the waters of the mikveh, man surrenders his entire being to the creative processes of Heaven. As a result, he is subsequently reborn as a new entity.

A semantic analysis of the Hebrew word for water, “mayim”, is also instructive. Several sources relate the word to the interrogative “Mah? – What?” As a person submerges himself in the water, he asks himself: “Mah ani? What am I?” One who immerses himself in the mikveh succumbs temporarily to its waters, forgoing his own identity and nature. It is a form of negating one's ego in order to be born again as a new and better person. This act of symbolically relinquishing one's independence and ego to the waters of creation constitutes a positive step toward elevating his status, from non-Jew to Jew, or from a state of contamination to one of purity.

Immersed in the mikveh, Man is temporarily in an alien environment, one in which cannot survive for more than a minute or two. Since air is the most basic human need, the waters of the mikveh, place Man temporarily in the realm of death. When he emerges from this realm, it is as though he were reborn. Thus, the mikveh symbolizes not only the womb, but also the grave. For humans, the depths of the sea constitute a place of death, not life. As a person climbs out of the mikveh, he leaves the realm of death and returns to the realm of the living, resurrected from the grave, a new person.

We see that the symbolism of the mikveh is two-fold. It represents both death and new life, the two extremes of the timeline of man's life in this world, It exemplifies the womb, on the one hand, and also the grave. Both are turning points at which man's status is completely transformed. The mikveh, as well, is an instrument of transformation.

A third symbolic comparison is made. While in the waters of the mikveh, Man is likened to a seed in moist earth. Even if seeds were contaminated before they were sown in the ground, the plants which sprout from them are pure. The seeds returned to their source, the earth, to the environment in which they are equipped to initiate another cycle of growth. Later, when young shoots appear, these new potential plants have no link to the impure state of the seeds from which they sprouted. Consequently, they are not regarded as contaminated. Thus the soil is to the seed as the womb is to Mankind: a source of new life. For Man, the mikveh is similar to the womb and to the soil in which a seed sprouts. It shelters a new life about to begin, a life renewed on a higher plane.

If we look back to the beginning of time, we find that the world was “born” of water: “...and the earth was astonishingly empty, with darkness on the surface of the deep, and the Divine Presence hovered upon the surface of the waters” (Genesis 1:2).

It was only on the third day that the dry land emerged from it. G-d said: “Let the waters beneath the heaven be gathered to one place, and let the dry land be seen.” (Genesis 1:9)

We see that water represents the womb of Creation. When Man immerses himself in the waters of the mikveh, he does so with the intention of associating himself with the state of the world before it was created, a world entirely in G-d's Hands, and at His mercy.