Back in the Seventies, I was visited by a mother and her teenage daughter who had become pregnant. They were debating whether to have an abortion. The boy who had gotten her pregnant was also a teenager and had neither the wisdom nor the desire to be a father The mother had been a single parent, and she didn’t want her daughter to go through that experience. The daughter herself was unsure what she wanted.
They came to me to see if I could contact the soul of the developing child and ask it what they should do. This was not something I usually did. When people came to me for advice on life-altering decisions, my standard response was to encourage them to use their own best judgment and not give the power of their agency away to someone else. In this case, however, I found myself almost immediately in touch with the child’s soul who asked that I convey a message to the young mother. I don’t remember the exact words anymore, but essentially it told her that it would abide by her decision but that if she accepted the challenge of motherhood, she would find that this soul was an old friend who would bring blessing into her life. I shared this communication with them, they thanked me, and then they left. I never heard from them again, and I had no idea what the young woman had decided to do.
Twenty years later, I had just finished a large public lecture and was talking informally with a small group who had listened to me. A lovely young woman came up to me and took my hand. She said, “You don’t know who I am, but twenty years ago, my mother came to you for advice on whether to have an abortion. You told her that the child’s soul said that it would bring blessing. I am that child, the soul that you spoke with, and I wanted to thank you. My mother and I have had a wonderful life together.”
This was a powerful moment, one I shall never forget. It was thrilling to see the woman that that soul had become. I was filled with gratitude that I had been able to make that contact at that time.
There have only been two other occasions when a pregnant woman has come to me to ask whether to have an abortion. In one instance I said that I had no inner contact one way or another and that she had to make up her own mind in consultation with her doctor. In the other case, though, as in the first, a soul immediately presented itself to me and said, “Please tell my mother that this pregnancy is out of timing. I got caught in an energetic vortex and should not be incarnating. She has my blessing if she wishes to terminate this pregnancy, though I shall abide by her choice.” I conveyed this message to the woman, who was relieved as she and her boyfriend had not intended to become pregnant and had thought they had taken protective measures…which obviously had failed.
Two pregnancies, and in one case, the soul wished to be born and in the other case, it didn’t. The point is that life is complex, especially when we take the subtle realms into account. In my experience, the beginning of an incarnation is when the soul connects in a permanent and intimate way with its physical form. But this can happen anytime along a continuum of development, making it problematic to say that this is the moment when that life begins. We know when the biological processes of body-formation and gestation begin, and we know their stages of development.
What a purely materialistic approach cannot tell us is when “soul impregnation” occurs. These biological processes can take place whether a soul is involved or not, though, past a certain point of fetal development, the magnetism of the physical organism will attract an ensouling presence. But just when this happens is not the same for every individual. We may say that life begins physically at conception, but in my experience, soul-life—or the ensouling of the fetus—does not necessarily happen then (though other soul-forces such as those of the mother or the father may be present supporting the embryo). I have encountered souls that were only very lightly connected to the form developing in the womb and who, as in the example I mentioned above, were not averse to its termination (which could happen anyway through miscarriage), and I’ve encountered souls that keenly desired incarnation and were engaged in the subtle formation of their body even before their parents actually had intercourse that would lead to conception.
But knowledge of the subtle dimension of life and incarnation is rare in our society. We have medical knowledge, religious beliefs, an evaluation of our life situation, and a sense of the value and sanctity of life, and from this, we draw the wisdom we need as best we can.
We are witnessing a collision between two spiritual principles: the sanctity of freedom, especially the freedom to choose as well as the freedom to take responsibility for our choices, and the sanctity of life. Life requires freedom and freedom requires life. They are complements to each other. But in our society, we have turned them into adversaries. How we resolve this will determine how whole and healthy our society can become.
There is no question that our society—and humanity in general—needs a strong dose of what Albert Schweitzer called a “reverence for all life.” There are so many ways we celebrate death (or the threat of death) as a way to solve problems or to remove what we don’t like or what is different from us. When a politician claims he or she is pro-life and pro-gun, or a society celebrates saving babies while also celebrating arming adults so they can kill other adults, there is a contradiction here that would be ludicrous if it weren’t so tragic. Life is sacred. One can’t agree to this on the one hand and deny it on the other.
In a similar way, we need the freedom to shape our lives and to make our own decisions. A monoculture is a vulnerable ecology, one lacking resilience or a capacity to change as the world changes. It requires more energy to sustain because life moves towards diversity, not uniformity. When we restrict peoples’ right to make their own decisions, to be diverse in their individuality, we create human monocultures, and we weaken ourselves in the process. Life is harmed, not helped by diminishing an individual’s sovereignty and ability to make his or her decisions.
What must be added to this discussion is a third element, a third spiritual principle. This is the principle of limits. Life unchecked without limits devours itself and its environment; it becomes a cancer, and the result will be collapse and death. Freedom without limits is anarchy, a state in which we become less free because we become less responsible to the larger wholeness of which we are always a part. If I claim the freedom to pollute as I see fit, my environment will suffer, and I will suffer with it. A selfish freedom creates limits that make it no freedom at all.
There is no question that we are grappling with momentous questions and challenges as we move ahead in the twenty-first century. Our best chances, I believe, arise when we can honor the sanctity of life, the sanctity of freedom, and the sanctity of limits. This may seem paradoxical and even contradictory, but only because we are choosing one or the other of these and not seeing how they come together, as we must, in a larger wholeness.