When Does The Soul Enter The Body?

By Mary Kretzmann

Excerpted from “Finding God in Your Family”

Children often ask questions about the beginning of life, prompted sometimes by things they have seen or overheard in conversations or the media. Their questions come up in many ways, but it is helpful to provide both children and teens with the clinical facts and spiritual insights as well.

I remember when Swami Kriyananda mentioned the topic of “how a soul enters the body” during a spiritual seminar my husband and I attended the first week we moved to Ananda Village. I was happy to learn that parents can and do influence outcomes for the children born to them.

If you are hoping to start your family or add to your current family, may your prayers for a spiritual child be guided and blessed. All such souls serve to uplift the general vibrations of the planet and bless us all. A couple’s love, goodness, and spiritual devotion also serve as a divine magnet, helping to draw a more spiritually receptive child.

In Conversations with Yogananda (Entry #177), the question of how a soul enters the body is addressed:

It is a common belief these days that until a child is actually born, it is not yet a consciously developing human being. This belief is fallacious. “When does the soul enter the body?” someone asked the Master. “At the moment of conception. When the sperm and ovum unite, there is a flash of light in the astral world. Souls ready to reincarnate, whose vibration matches this light, may enter at that moment. Sometimes multiple souls enter, resulting in twins, triplets, or even—well!”

Yogananda further states that the consciousness of the parents will influence the spiritual quality of the soul coming in through them.

It is important, therefore, to come together physically with an uplifted consciousness. That flash generated in the astral world reflects the couple’s state of consciousness, especially as they felt during the moment of physical union.

When a family welcomes a spiritual soul into their lives, there is an increased and ongoing process of responsibility to follow through with spiritual support and guidance for that soul. Many appreciate this image of a flash of light that calls the child’s soul to the parents. Parents know their children and will also sense if and when it is time to share any of these things with them.

It is comforting for the child to know that we are always the soul, but sometimes we have a physical body, and sometimes (such as after death and before life) we have an astral body, made of energy and light. I have seen these ideas help many, young and old.

Paramhansa Yogananda also taught that when the flash occurs from the sperm and ovum uniting, the new body starts to create the medulla oblongata, the seat of the “ego” in the body. He sometimes referred to the ego as the “soul identified with the body.”

Interestingly, in his teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, Paramhansa Yogananda said that the moment the sperm and ovum unite is when the soul is “born” to this plane, and, therefore, that is the ideal moment from which to draw an astrological chart. However, since that is highly impractical, using the moment of the baby’s first breath is the second-best option, and is considered only to be approximate. (For this reason, and others, he said only a true God-realized master can do an astrological chart with complete accuracy.)

When discussing abortion, Swami Kriyananda acknowledged his hesitation to address the topic too directly, recognizing that he is personally unaffected and not wishing to appear indifferent. He did advise that any feelings of guilt be released. “We make many mistakes in life. Our duty is to love all the more deeply.” All missteps and errors in judgment, he emphasized—accumulated over countless lifetimes—will ultimately be washed away in God’s grace when we find Him.

Swami Kriyananda writes:

What the world needs now is a general uplift of consciousness. Such, our Masters have declared, is the function of the new rays of energy and consciousness that are entering the planet at this time… Its role is to show mankind how to live together on earth in higher awareness.

As spiritual parents, we have a unique opportunity to uplift the hearts and minds of our children. The impact of these efforts extends beyond our own families, gradually contributing to the awakening of our greater human family.

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See also Swami Kriyananda, In Divine Friendship

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Testimonials from devotee parents

I love hearing soul-affirming wisdom straight from the lips of women who knew from the first moment that new life was within them. I received this note from a friend after she read my original article.  Her daughter is now grown and has children of her own.

Dear Mary, This is so beautiful. Thank you so much. When my dear daughter came to me, I felt her fully formed, not by any biology, but by her own nature. I saw her personality fully present. She was smart and observant. She thought way before she could speak. It was such a joy to have her with me. Joy to you, Mary, Sheila

And it is really great to hear from dads, too! This one is from a devotee in Canada. He and his wife live surrounded by forest, and I feel that this natural peace, plus meditation, of course, have deepened their intuition to a high degree.

One of his stories, below, gives testimony to the truth of Paramhansa Yogananda’s words: “At the moment of conception…when the sperm and ovum unite, there is a flash of light in the astral world….”

I would like to briefly share my own private experience with you:

At the point of my son’s conception, my wife and I had a mystical experience that will stay with us for our lives. Both of us heard a pronounced, almost electrical PING” sound, and simultaneously saw a subtle inner flash, as we rested in the midst of our loving embrace. We both exclaimed – “Did you hear that?!”—and yes, we both did hear it, and also both saw an almost electrical energy like charge take place in a subtler realm, distant yet somehow very close to us. We knew at that moment that our pure expression of love had opened the way for a wonderful soul to come to us. My son, 26 years old now, remains a source of great joy in our family.

We have also been blessed with other experiences such as an unwavering inner knowledge, not provable to others, but without a doubt for us, that our daughter is my dear grandmother, who previously loved my wife and I so much. To see a soul you knew very well in one life, and who sang lullabies to me as a child, come into this world a clean slate in their own new conscious mind, and travel a new journey with you in a new form as your daughter, is an amazing gift that deepens ones spiritual ardor. To this day, my daughter (she’s 22 now) carries many of her strong willed and goodness tendencies from her past life, but remembers nothing of her past [lives] in this incarnation. We usually avoid speaking of these things as they have been greeted with rolling eyes and unspoken skepticism, but my experiences have proved to me, truly, souls do congregate and are attracted to each other, coming into this Matrix of a physical world.

These stories describe experiences these parents had before reading Yogananda’s teachings on the topic. Soul teachings are eternal, and we discover them for ourselves when we live more and more in the Divine Light.

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