My elder sister who is almost 43, suddenly got pregnant though it was not wanted or expected.She has a daughter who is 14,and having baby at this stage was a big no.That apart,she is not mentally prepared or has the energy both physically to bring up another baby.So she had to abort it.She is not much into spirituality or believes in past lives,but after the abortion she is having a conflict within as to why when so many people want babies and don’t get, she got pregnant.Could you pls tell why.
—S, India
Dear friend,
Long ago Swami Kriyananda wrote a song called “Why?” It is about a young girl who asked just this same question about her life. Here are the last two verses from it:
She saw a mother smile
As she tended her baby,
A widow weep that love
Had to die.
The joy of new friends, and the sadness of parting –
All these made her ask God: Why?
One night into her heart
Stole the secret of Oneness,
The bond not even time
Can untie:
For Love there possessed her and made her his own;
In love she at last learned Why.
There are so many things in this world that happen which, to our rational minds at least, don’t make sense. This is why, if we are really seeking answers to such questions, we need to have a broader perspective of life. This can only come, in my experience, when we enter into the spiritual life, take up meditation, and are humbly seeking true answers to such questions.
Why your sister would have an unwanted pregnancy and others who want to have a baby aren’t able to is, in reality, a very large question. These kinds of things are, in the deepest sense, determined by our karma and our magnetism. Perhaps there was the karma for your sister and her husband to draw a particular soul to be born to them. Perhaps she and her husband’s magnetism wasn’t clear enough about not having another child to avoid this pregnancy, and the following abortion. These are questions only an individual can answer. And they are not questions that are easy to either ask, or to answer.
All of our actions in the present will determine what we face in the future, whether we believe in laws of karma and reincarnation or not. In science these are referred to as the laws of cause and effect, or action and reaction. Understanding these laws can help us begin to live in more harmonious and conscious ways that will inevitably lead to a happier life. Whether we are ready to choose what will bring this happier life is up to us.
In divine friendship,
Nayaswami Parvati
