Rational Moms

I’m almost 34 weeks pregnant right now. At the beginning of my pregnancy, I was talking with a friend who believes she’s had out-of-body experiences (OBEs), that an afterlife exists, and that this is her final incarnation on this planet, in this form. As skeptical as I am, I always ended up listening to her stories with great interest, simply out of curiosity and a dose of romanticism.

So when I informed her of my pregnancy, she was delighted to explain to me how souls and other pregnancy-related phenomena work in or are affected by the “spiritual realm.” She told me she witnessed first-hand the process of choosing a soul for an ever-growing embryo/fetus, or, I should say, for the soul choosing the embryo/fetus.

Apparently, it goes something like this:

Around the time a pregnancy is present, various souls gather around the mother and begin watching her and her partner closely. This is why, according to my friend, women have very vivid, sometimes lucid dreams. All the “spiritual energy” surrounding the mother adds to her own, making her more cognitively aware of her surroundings and even clairvoyant. In fact, during pregnancy, my friend told me it’s much easier to have OBEs since the fetus’s energy and the mother’s energy combine for the remainder of the pregnancy.

Around the fourth month of pregnancy, the soul that will inhabit the fetus enters the fetal body (I guess they all duked it out and the winner gets to incarnate), which is right around the time most women can feel some fetal movement. This is where St. Thomas Aquinas got it right, so said my friend: “quickening” is when the soul enters the body.

Now, the people we’re close to in this life are all souls we’ve come to know through various reincarnations. Your significant other in this life may have been a former lover or your child or your parent in a past life, for example. All these souls are connected, and the fetus is no exception. So the souls that were vying for a particular pregnancy all seem to know one another. This is how you chose your parents, for example, and how your children, if you have any, chose you.

I don’t know why, but I find this very romantic. It’s intriguing to think about how my daughter was “floating around” in my kitchen during early pregnancy when I’d sneak in an extra doughnut or when I stubbed my toe in the garage or when I whispered mean expletives when the hormones were raging because my husband didn’t pick up the right kind of fried chicken.

It’s intriguing, it’s romantic, it’s even exciting and puts a smile on my face—but it’s not true.

Now, is my friend nuts or delusional? I don’t necessarily think so, or at least I don’t want to think so. Evidence tells me she’s a wonderful person who has great insight into life and enjoys herself. She’s smart, she’s mentally sound, she’s beautiful, and she has everything going for her.

I have no doubt that she believes she has OBEs, that she thinks she knows all about the afterlife (which, by the way, places dead atheists in a deep sleep or some dimension between the living and dead, so she says), or that she really believes this is her last incarnation on this planet, in this form.

The thing is: she’s not alone. In fact, I’ve read that many people who don’t know each other have had very similar experiences and have supposedly seen similar things while on “the other side.”

I don’t think I can just shrug people like this off as liars, although I’m sure there are a few who just intentionally lie for the sake of attention or acceptance or whatever, or as deluded, but I really wonder where belief like this comes from, how it originates, and why it sticks around—that sort of thing.

Or am I simply casting this off as not being real from the beginning without giving it proper skeptical attention and scrutiny? After all, there’s nothing empirical to indicate an afterlife exists, and science has done a fairly decent job of explaining the causes of so-called OBEs (although some still can’t be explained), but what if there is really something to it? After all, how can an otherwise rational person really think there’s an afterlife one can visit via an OBE?

I can’t answer these questions. I’d have to study the psychology of belief for years to even begin formulating some answer. Maybe you readers have had experience with this and can shed some light on the matter.

But I can tell you this: I don’t mind falling for romanticism every now and again. It feels good, even if it’s not real.

This entry was posted Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 7:13 am and is filed under Pregnancy, paranormal. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.