On Abortion

All Life Has the Potential to Become Divine

Over the years it has become clear to me how different my point of view is from that of others who have spoken out in defense of life. Most people defend life from the perspective that it is human life that has the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In contrast, I have taken my inspiration from Mother Mary.

One day as I was meditating on Mother Mary, I saw her address the Darjeeling Council. I saw her stand before individuals from the national and international pro-life and pro-choice groups who had come to the retreat and, looking like a woman of our time, an attorney in defense of life, deliver a statement that was resoundingly clear and to the point: “We do not defend life on the basis that it is human life, but that it is human life with a potential to be divine life.”

This is the teaching that has the strength and the power to convince the women of today to turn from espousing death to espousing life.

Does a Belief in Reincarnation Condone Abortion?

I will take up now some questions that have arisen in relation to abortion and reincarnation. People have asked me why, if I believe in reincarnation, am I against abortion? They ask this question because some who believe in reincarnation say that abortion must not be wrong because the aborted soul can always come back in another body.

Those who belong to the great faiths that teach reincarnation, such as Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, believe that abortion is murder. Also every sect of Hinduism holds that the soul enters the fetus at the moment of conception. However, in practical life, many adherents of these faiths today also believe that abortion is permissible.

In an article in the Washington Post, Mark Weston explains: “Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists believe in rebirth, so most also believe that an abortion, however regrettable, will not deprive a soul of its one and only chance at life.” <1> Therefore it becomes a question of whether a woman’s freedom of choice should take precedence over the baby’s right to life, because the baby will always have another chance.

I’ve also heard people say that a soul may choose to experience life in the womb for a few months and then return to higher octaves after being ejected from that womb through an abortion. This point of view says that abortion doesn’t harm the soul but gives her an opportunity to return in another body under more ideal circumstances, such as being wanted instead of unwanted.

(As a footnote, I would like to tell you that the soul of man or woman is referred to as the feminine potential of being, whereas the spirit, which is the essence and animating principle of a person, is considered to be masculine. Therefore when mentioning the soul we use the pronouns she and her. When speaking of the spirit we use the pronouns he and him.)

What About the Law of Karma?

Here are the Ascended Masters’ answers to these state-menace. The idea that a baby will always have another chance and that a soul chooses her experiences denies the law of karma. We certainly have been given free will by Almighty God but, you see, we have been exercising that free will for many lifetimes.

We have created the karmic circumstances that dictate our return in a specific body at a specific time and place and through specific parents. Thus we can’t just choose to enter life when and where we feel like it. Furthermore, the argument is ludicrous on the face of it. If souls could choose their bodies, wouldn’t most people choose to be brilliant, beautiful and wealthy? Therefore why isn’t everybody brilliant, beautiful and wealthy?

Some New Agers say that abortion does not kill the fetus since the true nature of every individual is a light essence that has no form and cannot be destroyed. If that were so, we would be obliged to condone murder because a person is energy and energy can’t be destroyed.

We can’t just take Newton’s Law that says that energy is neither created nor destroyed and apply it to a fetus in the womb. The energy of the fetus has been locked into form by the Lords of Form, the Lords of Mind and the Lords of Creation. And that form is more than energy coalesced; it is child-man made in the image and likeness of God.

The New Age argument goes on to say that the light essence has the opportunity to experience life on this plane by acquiring a body. It is true that souls have the opportunity to experience physical incarnation but it is not for experience alone. It is for the purposes of balancing karma, serving to set life free and fulfilling one’s divine plan.

Is God Without Judgment?

The next New Age argument runs as follows: Abortion is neither right nor wrong, for God does not judge; therefore doing away with the developing body within the womb simply removes one potential body. We are wholly responsible for our choices but a woman need not feel guilty for choosing not to give birth if she decides that it is in her best interest not to accept the responsibility of being a parent.

First of all, right and wrong lives in the heart of the living Christ in us all, in The Lord Our Righteousness and in the Cosmic Christ. In life, some things are right and some things are wrong, and abortion is one of those things that is absolutely wrong.

God as the supreme Lawgiver divides light and darkness, heaven and earth, right and wrong. He has set forth laws and has given these laws to us through the great avatars, prophets, Christed ones and Buddhas whom he has sent into our midst. These laws are the very foundation of our Judeo-Christian tradition and they are also the foundation of the traditions in the East that have existed for thousands of years.

It is not true that abortion does not destroy the incoming life, for life exists in the body as well as in the soul. The point of view that suggests that a woman need never feel guilty for choosing not to give birth has, I am certain, neutralized the conscience of many a woman. Many under this advice may have considered themselves free to have an abortion, for this argument does not place accountability on the process of bringing forth life or being a co-creator with God.

It is true that the real nature of every individual is a light essence, but it is not true that that light essence has no form and needs no form. The light essence is the soul and the soul can be destroyed. As it is written in scripture, “the soul that sinneth it shall die.” <2>

The soul has the potential to realize in form and formlessness the fullness of the Spirit of the living God. And that potential is dependent upon decision-making every step of the way. Choices must be made between right and wrong, and the soul can choose wrongly one too many times and become lost and become a castaway.

Therefore, those who abort life place their own souls in jeopardy as well as the incoming souls whom they abort.

Every Fetus Has the Potential to Be God

Now we come to another argument that people put forward to defend abortion. Many Americans today believe that the soul is not in the body during gestation. One New Age authority on the subject teaches that the newborn child has a period of up to a year after birth to decide whether or not to commingle itself with matter.

Consequently, those who hear this conclude erroneously that there is nothing wrong with abortion, for the fetus is not a human yet. It’s just a potential human. Take, for example, Dr. Jane Hodgson, an obstetrician who has supervised and/or participated in 30,000 abortions in the last twenty years. Here is her perspective on her role as an abortionist:

“I think I have done a humane service for lots of women in this world,” says Dr. Hodgson. “I don’t look upon it as killing, because I do not consider in the first place that the embryo or the fetus is a person. It is a potential person.” <3> Therefore she is content to kill potential persons because they have not yet earned the status of personhood.

This is the fundamental lie of the pro-choice movement today. We are not just removing a “potential” body when an abortion takes place, we are aborting a life and a destiny that is set by Almighty God. A soul cannot simply hop into another body anytime she pleases.

The question is, do you or I have the right to snuff out life, burgeoning life, that has not only the potential to be God but is already God from the moment of conception? Does the child in the womb have any less potential to be God than you or I do? Each of us has the unlimited possibility to realize the seed of God, the seed of Life itself.

Yes, we have had the seed of our immortality even prior to conception; we have always had that seed, for immortality is our goal and the reason God sent us into incarnation. We don’t say to one another, “Well, I can kill you, or you, or you because you’re not a God yet; you’re just a potential God.”

At what stage of physical-spiritual evolution do we draw the line? Can we ever say that anyone is subject to termination because he has not realized his full human or divine potential? Do we have to be a full-blown Buddha or a full-blown Christ to be guaranteed our constitutional right to life?

What Did Edgar Cayce Believe?

Some people believe that Edgar Cayce condoned abortion because he said that the soul did not necessarily enter the body at conception.

During a reading, when asked if the soul entered the child at conception or birth or in between, he replied: “It may at the first moment of breath; it may some hours before birth; it may many hours after birth. That depends upon that condition, that environ surrounding the circumstance.”

This does not mean Cayce thought it unnecessary to care for the body before the soul entered it permanently. For in the very same reading, Cayce answered a question on whether one’s thoughts and impressions during pregnancy had an effect on the child. “To be sure,” he said. “Thus, if surrounded with beauty, the more beauty there may be.” <4> Taken in the context of all Cayce’s teachings on karma, these statements on the soul cannot be seen as condoning abortion.

Abortion Is Not a Method of Birth Control

Many people support a woman’s “right” to have an abortion based on the principle that a woman has free will and the right to control her own body. They may uphold this right even though they wouldn’t choose abortion themselves. They say a woman should be able to choose whether or not to have a child.

We all agree. But we also must state that she should make her choice before conception, not after. We have access to many methods of birth control. Abortion is not one of them.

The Soul Exists before Conception

Let’s return to the question of when the soul enters the body. Most orthodox Christians believe that a brand-new soul is created for each new embryo. The 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God.” <5> Catholic theologian John A. Hardon adds that it is “assumed that creation of the soul and its infusion [into the body] take place at the moment of conception.” <6>

Both the New Age and the Christian view of the soul are wanting. The soul exists before conception. It exists in the beginning with God. Twin souls come forth out of the great white-fire ovoid as we are created by Elohim. And, having cycled through the bands of the Causal Body, the souls descend into material form to fulfill their reason for being, and they must complete many life cycles in embodiment before they may return to their point of origin.

Long ago God spoke to the prophet Jeremiah and he said: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee.” <7> God had predestined the soul of Jeremiah just as he has predestined your soul and the soul of your twin flame to go forth to fulfill a mission of light, splendor, usefulness and creativity in this earth and throughout the spheres of the heavens.

We understand the soul to be a continuum existing in the beginning with God. By exercising right choices and increasing in the manifestation of Light and Christhood, these twin souls will one day return home from their journey to bow before the presence of Alpha and Omega and receive the divine approbation “This is my beloved Son [and my beloved Daughter] in whom I am well pleased.” <8>

Your Body Is the Temple of the Living God

As I have said, the modern reincarnationists’ view that it is okay to abort the body because it is only a body denies that the body is the temple of the living God. The apostle Paul said it clearly: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?”

He also said: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. “ <9>

The point Paul makes that we must underscore here is “ye are not your own.” It is true that we are not our own, for we are God’s, and our souls are “bought with a price” by the living Saviour Jesus Christ. This means that our bodies are not our own and nor are our souls.

God has ordained us to bring forth souls made in his image and likeness; therefore the freedom to choose not to bring forth the soul that is conceived and already attached to the womb from the moment of conception does not belong to us. It cannot because we are not gods, we are sons and daughters of God and we are obedient to his law.

He has ordained us to be co-creators with him, not above him. We cannot play God with the soul aborning in our womb.

The Soul and the Body Are Becoming One

Modern reincarnationists seem to think that the soul is like a candle on a birthday cake—you just stick it on at the last minute—but this is not the case. The soul and the body are meshed during gestation. God doesn’t simply stuff a soul into a body like you stuff a pillow into a pillowcase.

The prevailing idea is that the soul and the body are separate. This does not happen to be so, and it is spoken so easily and lightly by those who truly do not understand the great mysteries of God. The soul and the body are in the process of becoming one.

As the child grows in grace and waxes “strong in spirit,” the Christ descends into that temple increment by increment, year by year. This integration of the soul with the body and of the soul with her Lord, the Holy Christ Self, takes place from the moment of conception up to and throughout adulthood.

Each one of us has a soul consciousness, a solar awareness. Our soul is like the sun that we see in the heavens; her awareness is spherical, and it is a continuing awareness from the hour of our going out from the Great Central Sun unto our return. Our solar awareness is integral to our arms, our fingers, our eyes, our nose, our every organ and our four lower bodies.

We also have a memory body, a mental body and a desire body as well as a physical body. We suffer not only the anguish of physical pain but also the anguish of emotional pain. Our physical organs can become ill because of the pain of the soul. What’s more, during gestation the spirit along with the etheric, mental and emotional bodies is being brought back from all previous lifetimes to mesh with the body.

We have an etheric body that we have carried with us since the beginning. We have a mental body that consists of our mind and the accumulations of our reasonings in the Mind of God as well as in the lower octaves, and we have a desire body that contains the records of all the desires we have ever had, including those that have been fulfilled.

We are a fully integrated entity, a being of God. All we need when the time comes to return to earth is a new physical body, and while that physical body is being formed, the three other bodies are meshing with it.

The Embryo Contains the Seed of the Living God

The Spirit of the living God is also a part of every son and daughter of God and is directly tied to that child from the moment of conception when it is yet an embryo, for embryonic life contains the seed of the living God. When we speak of the Spirit of the living God, it is the I AM THAT I AM, the Father-Mother God—the God-essence or the God-life of us all.

The spirit of our lifestream is our animating principle, our energy, what kind of person we are. Our spirit is the overriding vibration reflected in our character. Thus we say of someone that their spirit is laconic or feisty or that the individual has an evil spirit or an honest spirit, and so forth. The spirit, then, of the individual is distinguished from the soul, the former being masculine, the latter, feminine.

The spirit is also infused into the physical body as the very blood cells are forming. The spirit, or essence, is always in the blood of the individual as well as in the entire body itself.

Our Etheric, Mental and Desire Bodies

The etheric body contains the record of our divine plan and of our original image in God. It contains the memories and records of all that we have ever done in previous lifetimes. We know that our memory in this life defines our identity. Remove all memories of everything we have ever done and none of us would know who we are or were.

Our memory contains all the experiences we have ever had since we first came forth from the heart of God, and that memory is with the soul as she integrates with the physical body in this nine-month period. Likewise the mental body is the accumulation of the cognitive and reasoning mind—the rational thinking self. All that we have ever thought and reasoned we bring with us in our mental body. It is there from the moment of conception.

Through the entire process of gestation, this mind is meshing with the new physical body. It is part of the identity that already is and the identity that is being formed, for the child’s psychology is molded while he is in the womb by his parents’ psychology in combination with the psychology that he brings with him from past lifetimes.

The Mind of Christ Chooses Our Genetic Code

What we need to understand is the selective process by Almighty God, by the Mind of Christ, of the genetic code that will be ours for this lifetime. Through that genetic code and those genes, we are expressing a portion of our Causal Body—the vast memory, mental and desire bank that we bring with us.

A slice of our life will become prominent in this incarnation; for our life is infinite, but this finite time-and-space world and this finite body cannot contain the totality of our being. Thus, for the purposes of our divine plan and our karma in this life, we can access a certain portion of our Causal Body to accomplish the things we are assigned to do.

Just as we bring our memory and our mind with us, we bring our desires and our desire body. We have desires that were fulfilled and desires left unfulfilled from previous lifetimes. We will have to deal with these; we will have to sort them out. Because of the limits of our mortality—three score years and ten—we will have to decide which desires we will fulfill in this lifetime.

This we will learn to do under the guidance of teachers, parents and our own communion with our inner God. So we have to look at our unfulfilled goals, and we have to see, for instance, if something that we wanted to accomplish was suddenly cut off in the very prime of life, perhaps by our untimely death or a violent crime. We may desire to pick up the pieces as soon as possible to be reunited with loved ones, to fulfill what we began.

As the unborn child is developing and continues to develop after birth, as the desire body is integrating with the new physical body and with a new opportunity, the focus of our life’s goal begins to sharpen and to take form. When we’re little, we want to become a doctor or a nurse or a fireman or an Indian chief or a policeman, and as we grow a little older, we refine those goals in terms of priorities, economic necessities, family responsibilities and so forth.

Even before conception, when we are preparing to take embodiment and are being instructed in the retreats of the Ascended Masters, we are in training for that mission so that we can gain many victories and perhaps conclude our incarnations on earth.

As a side note, I would like to say that this teaching does not conflict with the teaching about the soul leaving the body at night to study in the etheric retreats. When the soul goes forth from the body at night, it actually leaves a portion of itself behind with the body.

That is why when you are suddenly awakened, often you are not fully in your body but you can still respond to an emergency or take care of child that is crying. At the same time, you may be continuing your experience in the inner retreats as only a portion of yourself is fully integrated with the body.

Life Begins at Conception in the Heart of the Great Central Sun

Let’s take a look at the question of abortion from a purely humanistic standpoint. If you take the view that man doesn’t have a divine spark—he’s of the race of Homo sapiens, one among other species—surely we would have to consider that if we were to eliminate any segment of humanity or a single human being, we would be eliminating a link in the genetic chain.

This chain could ultimately bring forth a Beethoven, a Dostoevsky, an Einstein, an Abraham Lincoln, a Jesus Christ—the geniuses that have enabled the human race to leap forward scientifically, culturally and spiritually. And what about the common everyday people? They are the carriers of the genes of genius that shall one day appear.

But we believe that we are more than human. We believe that we have a divine spark given to us by our Father-Mother God. We believe that we are sons and daughters of Elohim. Mother Mary settled the question with her statement of October 26, 1990. She said:

No matter what the argument, no matter what the evidence, life begins at conception. And I speak of the conception of the soul in the heart of the Great Central Sun, of you and your twin flame in the beginning. Life on earth likewise begins at conception, and even at that moment does the Spirit begin to weave itself as part of the fabric, even the warp and woof of that body. Therefore, beloved, woman has a right to bring forth that which is conceived by love and in love by God. May you know, beloved, that this issue that has become such a controversy in this nation may be dispensed with by the very simple teaching: abortion in the physical sense is also abortion in the spiritual sense. And to abort the divine plan of a life, whether physically or spiritually, is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

In conclusion, I would say that the contemporary view of the soul as not being formed at conception is put forward by those who are ignorant and who have not received the mysteries of God. Ignorance, therefore, in this dark age of the Kali Yuga is having its day. Thus we must bring enlightenment to fathers and mothers, and bring to all people the great joy of being co-creators with God.