When the Soul enters matter, preparing for rebirth, it enters potentiality, and all its strength is needed in the Herculean effort to form the new body and adjust to it.
After birth, when the eyes are opened, and the lungs are expanded to the air, the task is easier, and there may be left enough unused energy to bridge the gulf.
But those who are soon to be mothers are often vaguely conscious of the souls they harbour.
Even when they do not grasp the full significance of the miracle that is being performed through them, they have strange dreams and visions, which are mostly glimpses into the past incarnations of the Unborn child.
They see dream countries where the entity within has dwelt in the past; they feel desires, which they cannot explain, reflected desires, which are merely the latent yearnings of the unborn one; they experience groundless fear, which are its former dreads and terrors.
The mother who nourishes a truly great soul, during this period of formation may herself grow spiritually beyond her own unaided possibility; while the mother of an unborn criminal often develops strange perversities, quite unlike her normal state of mind.
If a woman were sufficiently intelligent and informed, she could judge from her own feelings and ideas what sort of soul was to be her child some day and prepare to guide it accordingly.
