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reincarnation

 
American Heritage Dictionary:

re·in·car·na·tion

('ĭn-kär-nā'shən) pronunciation
n.
  1. Rebirth of the soul in another body.
  2. A reappearance or revitalization in another form; a new embodiment: "The brownstone had already endured one reincarnation: In the 1940's, it was converted into eight studio apartments" (Ben Lloyd).

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Doctrine of the rebirth of the soul in one or more successive existences, which may be human, animal, or vegetable. Belief in reincarnation is characteristic of Asian religions, especially Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. All hold to the doctrine of karma, the belief that actions in this life will have their effect in the next. In Hinduism, a person may be freed from the cycle of birth and rebirth only by reaching a state of enlightenment. Likewise in Buddhism, discipline and meditation may enable a seeker to reach nirvana and escape the wheel of birth and rebirth. Manichaeism and Gnosticism accepted the concept of reincarnation, as do such modern spiritual movements as Theosophy.

For more information on reincarnation, visit Britannica.com.

Oxford Dictionary of Buddhism:

reincarnation

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Term generally avoided by writers on Buddhism since it implies the existence of an immortal soul (ātman) that is periodically incarnated in a fleshly host, a notion more proper to Hinduism. By contrast, Buddhism denies the existence of an immortal soul and does not accept the dualistic opposition between spirit and matter it presupposes. Accordingly, the English term preferred by Buddhist writers to designate the dynamic and constantly changing continuity of the individual from one life to the next is ‘rebirth’. Neither this term nor ‘reincarnation’ has a direct Sanskrit equivalent, and Indian sources speak instead of ‘rebecoming’ (Sanskrit, punarbhava) or ‘repeated death’ (Sanskrit, punarmṛtyu).

Columbia Encyclopedia:

reincarnation

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reincarnation (rē'ĭnkärnā'shən) [Lat.,=taking on flesh again], occupation by the soul of a new body after the death of the former body. Beliefs vary as to whether the soul assumes the new body immediately or only after an interval of disembodiment. Although some religions teach that it may inhabit a higher or lower form of life, most believe that the soul is consistently reincarnated in the same species. See transmigration of souls.

Bibliography

See J. Head and S. L. Cranston, ed., Reincarnation: An East-West Anthology (1961) and Reincarnation in World Thought (1967).


The return to a new corporeal life of a soul (the incorporeal true self) that had previously been embodied and passed through bodily death. The idea of reincarnation—that the soul passes through a series of embodiments—stands in contrast to the dominant Western Christian idea of a single corporeal embodiment followed by resurrection (reunion of the soul with a spiritual body) and life with God in heaven. Reincarnation is often associated with, but is not necessarily connected with, transmigration, the idea that at death the soul might pass into the body of an animal, a plant, or even an inanimate object such as a stone. The belief in reincarnation was tied to moral categories in ancient religions, especially the Eastern concept of karma, which viewed the present life as the working out of consequences from previous lives. Future embodiments will also be determined by the consequences of this present life. One must remove oneself from the realm of consequences through spiritual activity or be stuck in the endless cycle of reincarnation forever. The belief in a form of reincarnation is fundamental to both Hinduism and Buddhism and had some popularity in the ancient Mediterranean basin. Pythagoras, for example, claimed that he was Euphorbus in a previous existence. In modern times, reincarnation has spread in the West through the efforts of French Spiritism and Theosophy.

Reincarnation in the East

The idea of reincarnation is usually associated with India. It is found in most of the forms of Hinduism; there are hundreds, with some variation in the different theologies and schools of thought. Basically, the soul is an immortal entity that has continuity through eternity, but falls into material existence and is trapped in the illusion that this physical world is ultimately real. Through multiple lives the soul becomes subject to karma, or consequences. Good karma leads to noble birth; bad karma to a lower birth, even to rebirth as an animal. The idea of karma and reincarnation was integral to social organization in the caste system and thus had practical application in everyday life. The caste system in turn dictated proper action that was sanctioned by the rewards and punishments of karma.

In the mainstream of Hindu thought—which found truth in the timeless eternal world beyond this world of illusion—while a favorable reincarnation was desirable, the ultimate goal was to escape the wheel of reincarnation totally. The means of such escape was spiritual discipline encased within a renunciation of the world. By withdrawing and concentrating on the spiritual realm, one ceased to create karma and dissolved old karma. Eventually, one could rid oneself of karma entirely and escape.

The essential soul is said to be pure and impersonal, part of a universal soul, but overlaid by illusions of individual egoism relating to desires and fears of the body and senses. The classic statements relating to reincarnation are to be found in the Hindu scripture Bhagavad-Gita, which stresses: "The soul is never born nor dies, nor does it exist on coming into being. For it is unborn, eternal, and primeval. Even although the body is slain, the soul is not" (2:20).

Buddhism emerged as a reform movement in Hinduism. It challenged the traditional Hindu system at a number of points, including its understanding of human life. In particular, Buddhism challenged the idea of a substantial soul that existed in and of itself apart from the body. The rather sophisticated understanding of the self in Buddhism is often likened to a candle flame. Obviously, as the candle burns down the flame will eventually die out. It has no existence apart from its burning. Buddhists suggest that reincarnation is as if, just as the flame is about to go out, it finds a new candle wick—a new body within which to burn.

In the nineteenth century, during the height of British rule in India, Christianity challenged Hinduism, especially as it existed in village temple worship. Christian leaders denounced animal sacrifice and the sexual promiscuity of some tantric groups, while slowly discovering the sophistication of Hindu philosophy. One of the responses to Christianity's invasion of the country, with the backing of colonial authorities, however, was a revival of philosophical Hinduism in light of new nineteenth century Western notions of progress, evolution, and moral striving.

In this new Hinduism of the nineteenth century, the succession of lives of the soul in different bodies is regarded as one indivisible life. The soul uses the experience of each incarnation as an opportunity for expiating sins in former lives, of balancing bad karma with good, and perfecting the soul through a process of evolution so that further incarnations will not be necessary and the individual soul can be absorbed in the divine plan. Until then, the body of the next life (whether human or animal) is shaped by actions in the present life. Moral striving is the means of gaining good karma. Ultimately, all lives may be seen as illusions of consciousness. This form of reincarnationist thought—which called for the good life, rather than the more traditional form calling for withdrawal from life— influenced Western visitors to India and was ultimately imported to the West through Theosophy and the various Indian teachers who successfully established themselves in the United States (notably Swamis Vivekananda and Yogananda).

Some religions, like Hinduism, teach that reincarnation is not always immediate, but that some souls may enjoy a period in a transitional state, either heavenly or purgatorial, before re-birth.

An idea of reincarnation, though not karma, is also found in some early Greek philosophy, including that of both Pythagoras and Plato. It actually emerges in the Mediterranean basin simultaneously with its emergence in India, around 600 B.C.E.

In the fourth century, Plato's Phaedrus presents a reincarnation myth that seems to have been derived from the ophite religion. A preexistent soul falls from the realm of the gods into earthly existence, where it migrates from one body to the next for some ten thousand years before it returns upward to a place of judgment. Plato also introduced into Greek thought the possibility of a transmigration of the soul into an animal.

In Roman literature, the idea of reincarnation is found in the writings of Ennius, probably deriving from Greek thought. There is no trace of it in Jewish literature, although it later entered into some Kabalistic teaching. From Greek philosophy, it came into the Gnostic tradition, and from second-and third-century Gnosticism it passed to the Manichaeans and Cathari.

The theory underlying the concept of reincarnation differs from the eschatology of rewards and punishments in Christianity. Each individual soul will eventually attain perfection, although some will take more reincarnations than others, learning by painful experience, in one life after another, the inexorable laws of karma—of cause and effect. All actions involve consequences, some immediate, others delayed, others in future lives. We punish ourselves by our actions, and the very defects and difficulties under which we suffer offer scope for expiation and perfection.

The Jewish and Christian traditions were (and largely remain) inimical to reincarnation. All of the Christian theologians who spoke of reincarnation denounced it in no uncertain terms. The only break in the antireincarnationist view appears in the early writings of Origen, the third-century theologian who as a young man had converted to Christianity. Before his conversion he was an accomplished Platonist, and he attempted to integrate Platonic philosophy and Christian thinking in his earliest writings, which, if not affirming reincarnation, do speak of the preexistence of the soul and its possible transmigration. Origen later dropped his beliefs and in his biblical commentaries emerged as hostile to reincarnationist thought.

A major controversy involving Origen's early thought emerged in the sixth century surrounding a group of people who adopted Origen's early writings as part of their larger challenge to the Roman Empire. Thus it was that several councils reaffirmed the church's opinion on reincarnationist ideas and, in the style of the times, pronounced them anathema. In the early twentieth century, several proponents of reincarnation, primarily Theosophists working against the opposition of Christian leaders, countered with the story of a sixth-century plot. According to the idea, Christianity had taught reincarnation until the Roman empress Theodosia forced the church to edit the Bible and remove any reference to it. This theory shows a great ignorance of the history of the period and has no foundation in fact. In recent decades the primary presentation of this idea appeared in a book by Noel Langley, Edgar Cayce and Reincarnation, and has passed into New Age literature.

Theosophical Teachings on Reincarnation

The major conduit of reincarnationist teachings in the West during the twentieth century has been the Theosophical Society. According to Theosophy, the various manifestations in the flesh are merely small portions of one whole. The monad, the divine spark, or individuality, remains the same throughout the whole course of reincarnation and is truly a denizen of the three higher worlds—the spiritual, the intuitional, and the higher mental. In order to further its growth and the widening of its experience and knowledge, however, it is necessary for the monad to descend into the worlds of denser matter—the lower mental, the astral, and the physical—and take back with it to the higher worlds what it learns there. Since it is impossible to progress far during one manifestation, the monad must return again and again to the lower worlds.

The laws of progress, the laws that govern reincarnation, are those of evolution and of karma. The scheme of the evolution of life decrees that all shall sooner or later attain perfection by developing to the utmost their latent powers and qualities, and each manifestation in the lower worlds is but one short journey nearer to the goal. Those who realize this law shorten the journey by their own efforts while those who do not realize it, of course, lengthen the journey.

Karma decrees that both good and bad effects follow whoever caused them. Hence, what an individual has done in one manifestation he will benefit by or suffer for in another. It may be impossible that actions should be immediately effective, but each is stored up and sooner or later will bear fruit.

It may be asked why one long life in the lower worlds should not suffice in place of a multitude of manifestations, but this is explained by the fact that the dense matter that is the vehicle of these bodies becomes, after a time of progress, incapable of further alteration to suit the developing monad's needs and must accordingly be laid aside for a new body.

After physical death, the individual passes first to the astral world, then to the heavenly portion of the mental world. Most time is spent in the latter, except when descending into the denser worlds to garner fresh experience and knowledge for further development in preparation for passage into a higher sphere.

In the heaven world these experiences and this knowledge are woven together into the texture of the individual's nature. In those who have not progressed far on the journey of evolution, the manifestations in the lower worlds are comparatively frequent, but with passage of time and development, these manifestations become rarer and more time is spent in the heaven world, until at last, the great process of reincarnation draws to an end, and the pilgrims enter the path that leads to perfection.

Reincarnation and Spiritism

In France reincarnation was advocated before the time of Allan Kardec by several philosophers and mystics, such as Henri de St. Simon, Prosper Enfantin, Charles Fourier, Pierre Leroux, and Jean Reynaud. From an article by Alexander Aksakof in the London Spiritualist during 1875, it appears that Kardec adopted the doctrine of reincarnation from spirit communications that were received by the medium Celina Japhet. Japhet's mediumship was developed by one M. Roustan, a mesmerist who believed in reincarnation.

If the medium disclosed the doctrine under the effect of the mesmerist's belief, it is easy to understand how Kardec and his school could receive ample confirmation through automatists of his tenet that spiritual progress is achieved through a series of incarnations, always in the human race, that successive corporeal existences are the necessary steps to perfection and that the soul retains its individuality and memory after separation from the body.

The influence of the Kardec school was powerful and, by the appeal of its reconciliation with the apparent injustices of life, it bacame more popular than the teachings of the Spiritualist Z. J. Piérart and his followers, who denied reincarnation and relied on the same kind of evidence as that which the Kardecists produced. Indeed, Alphonse Cahagnet, who kept the earliest careful trance records in France, was the first to whom the communicators emphatically denied reincarnation, but admitted the existence of the soul anterior to its appearance on Earth.

Outside France, the doctrine of Allan Kardec was denounced by many Spiritualists. In the United States, Andrew Jackson Davis declared it to be "a magnificent mansion built on sand." But he also believed in preexistence and taught that "all souls existed from the beginning in the divine soul; all individuality which is, has been, or will be, had its pre-existence, has its present existence in creative being."

In England, William Howitt was the chief antagonist. He said that the doctrine was pitiable and repellent, and argued that if it were true there must have been millions of spirits who, on entering the other world, have sought in vain their kindred, children, and friends.

A very pertinent remark may be quoted from a published letter of the great medium D. D. Home: "I have had the pleasure of meeting at least twelve Marie Antoinettes, six or seven Marys of Scotland, a whole host of Louis and other kings, about twenty Great Alexanders, but never a plain John Smith. I, indeed, would like to cage the latter curiosity."

For its psychological import, it is also interesting to note that at the exact time of Kardec's death, Home claimed to have received the following communication: "I regret having taught the Spiritist doctrine. Allan Kardec." (See Home's book Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism, 1877.)

Among Spiritualists, those who favored reincarnation countered Home. His argument was no argument; reincarnation, if true, may not necessarily be a universal fact. It may not take place at once. In The Road to Immortality, by Geraldine Cummins (1932), the spirit of F. W. H. Myers, communicating from "the other side," admits reincarnation as an optional choice and as a necessity for "animal men," but not through a series of existences, and counters Theosophical notions of karma by a fascinating theory of group souls.

Regarding Howitt's objection it may be claimed that the double, in sleep, may establish meetings without recollecting them on awakening. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle pointed out that since reincarnation for the spirits is a question of their own future, they may not be more enlightened on it than we are on our own fate.

Reincarnation could be optional; it could be punitive. It could be imposed for the purposes of retribution or it could be undertaken for the fulfillment of a mission. The teachings of the spirit control "Imperator" through medium W. Stainton Moses admitted the possibility of reincarnation as another chance for souls that had sunk so low as practically to lose identity, and in the case of high spirits who descend with a mission.

The opposition to Kardec's philosophy in England was not universal; he had some followers. Theosophist Anna Kingsford translated many of his books. She believed herself to be the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, while her follower Edward Maitland believed that he had been St. John the Divine.

Reincarnation and Spiritualism

Outside France, Spiritualist experience offered little to support the theory of reincarnation. "John King," the famous control of the medium Eusapia Palladino, claimed to have been Palladino's father in a previous existence. "John King" claimed manifestation through many different mediums at different times, however.

The experiences of Carl A. Wickland and his wife in obsession cases did not bear out the theory. They were told by earth-bound spirits, brought into their rescue circles, that on passing over they had entered the auras of young children and obsessed them. The children, however, never ceased to struggle against these invaders. In those cases in which the Wickland rescue circle enlightened the obsessors of their error, the sanity of the patient quickly returned as the obsessing influence was relieved.

In the nineteenth century, however, hints of support for reincarnation began to emerge. Charles Richet gives one illustrative case from Les Miracles de la Volonté, by E. Duchatel and R. Warcollier: "A distinguished physician of Palermo, M. Carmelo Sa-mona, well acquainted with metapsychic science, lost his little daughter, Alexandrina, aged five, in 1910. Mme. Samona was wild with grief. Three days after she saw the child in a dream who said to her: 'I have not left you; I have become tiny like that,' designating some very small object. A fresh pregnancy was the more unlikely in that Mme. Samona had undergone a serious ovarian operation a year previously. On April 10, however, she became aware that she was pregnant. On May 4th it was predicted by Alexandrina, communicating by means of the table, that Mme. Samona would be delivered of twin girls, one of whom would entirely resemble Alexandrina. This came to pass. One of the twins had a mark on the left eye and another mark on the right ear with a symmetry of the face, precisely like the deceased child."

Among various automatic writing scripts, Frederick Bligh Bond, whose famous discovery of Edgar Chapel, Glastonbury Abbey, is described in his book The Gate of Remembrance (1918), noticed reincarnation claims in the communications he received through "Miss X." The old monks who communicated asserted that Miss X was one of the early Glastonbury monks and addressed her as "Brother Simon." Neither Miss X nor Bond believed in reincarnation when the script came through. The incident is referred to in Bond's book The Company of Avalon (1924).

Spiritualist J. Arthur Hill presented his reflections on scripts received by a Mrs. Cary (pseudonym), a British working woman of about 50. The scripts detailed episodes involving reincarnation. The impact of "Some Reincarnationist Automatic Scripts," in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (vol. 38), was weak, however, since no attempt had been made to verify the historic accuracy of the names. It was also noted that Cary was a Theosophist.

The Strange Experiments of Eugene Rochas

The feeling of déjà vu has often been cited as an argument for reincarnation. However, this phenomenon yields to a variety of explanations. More interesting than the rather vague feelings of déjà vu are claimed memories of past incarnations. Eugene Rochas was among the first to explore such memories. Rochas claimed that certain subjects, if put into hypnotic sleep by means of longitudinal passes, could be made to retrace the previous phases of their existence down to their birth and beyond "into the grey" and then into an even earlier state of incarnation. By means of transversal passes the subject was brought back to his normal state by going through the same phases in order of their time. If the transversal passes were continued, the subject was led into the future.

Marie Mayo, the daughter of a French engineer, was one of Rochas's subjects. She passed through various stages of hypnotic sleep into the first stage of lethargy, in which she was suggestible for brief moment, into the first state of somnambulism, in which she was not at all suggestible and retained the memory of what happened in her preceding state and in her waking life. She then passed into the state of rapport, in which she heard no one but the hypnotizer.

In this state she began to exteriorize herself, a half phantom formed at the left and a half at the right, the colors red and blue. In a successive state, the phantom halves united; the exteriorization of the astral body became complete but was attached to the body by a fluidic cord. In this state of exteriorization, the astral body assumed shapes in accord with the age in which the subject saw herself going through the stages of her life.

At age eight, she wrote her name in Arabic. At that age she had attended a school in Beirut. Beyond that birth she called herself Lina, the daughter of a fisherman in Brittany. She married at age 20. Her husband was also a fisherman; his name was Yvon, but she did not remember his family name. She had one child who died at the age of two; her husband perished in a shipwreck. In a fit of despair she had thrown herself into the sea from the top of a precipice. Her body was eaten by fish.

All this information was successively elicited. She first passed through the convulsions of drowning and then went back to her life as Lina, through the childbirth to girlhood, infancy, the state of "grey" and then spoke in a previous incarnation as a man, named Charles Mauville, who lived in the time of Louis XVIII. He was a clerk in a ministerial office in Paris, a bad man,

a murderer who died at age 50

Still further back, she was a lady whose husband was a gentleman attached to the court. Her name was Madeleine de Saint-Marc. Being brought back to the present by transversal passes Mayo successively reached her real age of 18 and then was pushed, by a continuation of the passes, two years into the future. Beyond this she could not go. She saw herself in a strange country with Africans, in a house far away from a railway station, the name of which she could not read. She could not give any precise information that could be used for identification.

Rochas was also possibly the first to explore the fact that similar visions occur if a hypnotized subject is moved into the future instead of into the past. He pushed Juliette Durand, a girl of 16, ahead nine years up to age 25, when she reported dying at Nice. After a time, she reportedly was reincarnated in the future as Emile Chaumette in a family of easy circumstances, studied for the ministry, and was appointed vicaire at Havre in 1940.

Rochas's research soon reached the same dead end as did most of those to follow. It could never be proved that the past personalities enacted by the subjects had really lived, even though they were often very plausible. In some cases, the places and the families spoken of existed, but the individuals could never be traced in parish registers or family documents and the incarnations swarmed with improbabilities.

Rochas rejected the idea that the accounts were the result of suggestion: "They certainly do not come from me, for I have not only avoided everything that could lead the subject into any determined path, but I have often tried in vain to lead her astray by different suggestions; and the same has been the case with the experimenters who have devoted themselves to this study…. Are we to assimilate these phenomena to mere dreams? Certainly not. There is in them a constancy, a regularity, which we do not find in ordinary dreams…. And besides, how are we to explain why physical causes, such as longitudinal and transversal passes should have absolutely certain effects on the memory of the subjects between the moments of their birth and that of their present life, and they produce phenomena which do not rest on any basis of fact. I believe that we must compare these manifestations with those which have been studied in the case of Mlle. Hélène Smith, and generally with all those which are provisionally attributed to spirits, and in which we see the true and the false intermingled in a way calculated to drive to despair those who do not reflect upon the darkness in which all observers have to struggle at the beginning of every new science."

Psychical Researchers and Reincarnation

When Allan Kardec died, Leon Denis and Gabriel Delanne became the main pillars of the reincarnationist school in France. The general evidence they relied on was fourfold: (1) infant prodigies, (2) spontaneous recollection of past lives, (3) exploration of memory under hypnosis, and (4) the claims announced of coming reincarnation.

They found a powerful supporter in psychical researcher Gustav Geley. His book From the Unconscious to the Conscious (1920) was described as a veritable Bible for reincarnation by Innocinzo Calderone, founder and director of the Italian review Filosofia della Scienza, which made a widespread international inquiry on reincarnation in 1913. Geley asserted, "I am a reincarnationist for three reasons: (1) because the doctrine seems to me from the moral point of view fully satisfactory, (2) from the philosophic point of view absolutely rational, and (3) from the scientific point of view likely, or—better still— probably true."

Reminding all that French thought was by no means unanimous on the subject, another distinguished representative of French psychical thinking, René Sudre, ranked himself definitely in the opposite camp, declaring in an article in Psychic Research (May 1930), "Even as I can admit the faith in survival from the religious point of view, I should in like measure reject as absurd the doctrine of reincarnation and I well understand how it is that the common-sense of the Anglo-Saxon refuses to bow to this teaching."

Modern Experiments in Hypnotic Regression

Through the twentieth century, reincarnation garnered its supporters with little fanfare. Then in 1954 the subject of reincarnation became the subject of a public controversy following the serialization of the story of Bridey Murphy in the Denver Post and the subsequent publication of Morey Bernstein 's bestselling book The Search for Bridey Murphy in 1956.

Bernstein was a businessman in Pueblo, Colorado, who had hypnotized a housewife, Ruth Simmons (the pseudonym of Virginia Tighe). In those sessions Bernstein probed Tighe's memories back to childhood and then, as it seemed, to an earlier life as Bridey Murphy, an Irish girl. The book stimulated "come as you were" social parties, pop songs, and a spate of amateur hypnotic sessions. More important, it launched attempts to find remaining traces of Bridey Murphy. As the controversy seemed to be reaching a dead end, the Chicago American published a series of articles that effectively disproved the claim that Tighe was really Bridey Murphy in a former existence. Not only had the evidence for a Bridey Murphy been lacking, but an Irish woman turned up from Tighe's early life who proved the likely model from which the past life could have been constructed. Today most people consider Bridey Murphy to have been a case of cryptonesia.

A few other experimenters in hypnotic regression techniques produced more convincing results. Among these is the British hypnotherapist Arnall Bloxham, who spent more than 20 years tape recording hypnotic subjects. These sessions convinced many that they presented actual memories of former incarnations.

Reincarnation and Parapsychology

Renewed popular interest in reincarnation also led to serious research by parapsychologists, most notably that of Ian Stevenson, of the Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Virginia. Stevenson collected cases from around the world of people, primarily children, who remembered an immediately previous life, and was able to provide some convincing evidence when confronted with the actual locations and people in those former lives. His book Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation was initially published by the American Society for Psychical Research as the society's Proceedings for September 1966. It presented similar cases, each investigated personally by Stevenson on field trips to Alaska, Brazil, Ceylon, India, and Lebanon. Additional cases were documented in subsequent volumes.

Stevenson's research received mixed reactions. Many of his parapsychologist colleagues, having given up on the possibility of doing survival research, had moved away from that whole area of research. A few actively attacked his cases as representative of biased sources and the imposition of Stevenson's own well-known prior commitment to a belief in reincarnation. However, they remain the best contemporary attempt of psychical research to compile evidence on so complex a subject.

Sources:

Banerjee, H. N., and W. C. Oursler. Lives Unlimited: Reincarnation East and West. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974.

Bernstein, Morey. The Search for Bridey Murphy. Garden City,N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956.

Duncasse, C. J. A Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life after Death. Springfield, Ill.: Charles Thomas, 1961.

Ellwood, Gracia Fay. Psychic Visits to the Past: An Exploration of Retrocognition. New York: New American Library, 1971.

Fisher, Joe. The Case for Reincarnation. New York: Bantam,1985.

Guirdham, Arthur. The Cathars and Reincarnation. London: Neville Spearman, 1960.

Head, Joseph, ed. Reincarnation in World Thought: A Living Study of Reincarnation in All Ages. New York: Julian Press, 1967.

Head, Joseph, and S. L. Cranston, eds. Reincarnation: An East-West Anthology. New York: Julian Press, 1961. Reprint, Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1968. Rev. ed. Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery, an East-West Dialogue on Death and Rebirth. New York: Julian Press/Crown Publishers,1977.

Holzer, Hans. Born Again: The Truth about Reincarnation. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. Reprint, London: Bailey Bros. & Swinfen, 1975.

Leek, Sybil. Reincarnation: The Second Chance. New York: Stein & Day, 1974. Reprint, New York: Bantam, 1975.

Osborn, Arthur. Superphysical: A Review of the Evidence for Continued Existence, Reincarnation, and Mystical States of Consciousness. Rev. ed. New York: Barnes & Noble; London: Frederick Muller, 1974.

Pierce, Henry W. Science Looks at ESP. New York: New American Library, 1970.

Rochas, Eugene. Les Vies Successives. N.p., 1911.

Stevenson, Ian. Cases of the Reincarnation Type. 3 vols. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975-80.

——. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. Rev. ed. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974.

Story, Francis, and Nyanaponika Thera. Rebirth as Doctrine and Experience. Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society,1975.

Underwood, Peter, and Leonard Wilder. Lives to Remember: A Case Book on Reincarnation. London: Robert Hale, 1975.

Wilson, Ian. Mind out of Time? Reincarnation Claims Investigated. London: Gollancz, 1981. Revised as Reincarnation? Balti-more: Penguin Books, 1982.

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"Reincarnation: People coming back to life at quitting time." - Source Unknown

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Reincarnation

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Reincarnation in Hindu art

Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant. This doctrine is a central tenet within the majority of Indian religious traditions, such as Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism; the Buddhist concept of rebirth is also often referred to as reincarnation.[1] The idea was also fundamental to some Greek philosophers as well as other religions, such as Druidism, and later on, Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar. It is also found in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Siberia, West Africa, North America, and Australia.[2]

Although the majority of sects within Judaism, Christianity and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Kabbalah, the Cathars, the Alawi, the Druze[3] and the Rosicrucians.[4] The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of the Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism and Gnosticism of the Roman era, as well as the Indian religions, is unclear.

In recent decades, many Europeans and North Americans have developed an interest in reincarnation.[5] Feature films, such as Kundun, What Dreams May Come and Birth, contemporary books by authors such as Carol Bowman and Vicki Mackenzie, as well as popular songs, regularly mention reincarnation. Some university researchers, such as Ian Stevenson and Jim B. Tucker, have explored the issue of reincarnation and published reports of children's memories of earlier lives in peer-reviewed journals and in books such as Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation and Life Before Life. Skeptics are critical of this work and many have stated like Carl Sagan that more reincarnation research is needed.[6]

Contents

Conceptual definitions

The word "reincarnation" derives from Latin, literally meaning, "entering the flesh again". The Greek equivalent metempsychosis (μετεμψύχωσις) roughly corresponds to the common English phrase "transmigration of the soul" and also usually connotes reincarnation after death,[7] as either human, animal, though emphasising the continuity of the soul, not the flesh. The term has been used by modern philosophers such as Kurt Gödel[8] and has entered the English language. Another Greek term sometimes used synonymously is palingenesis, "being born again".[9]

There is no word corresponding exactly to the English terms "rebirth", "metempsychosis", "transmigration" or "reincarnation" in the traditional languages of Pāli and Sanskrit. The entire universal process that gives rise to the cycle of death and rebirth, governed by karma, is referred to as Samsara[disambiguation needed ][10] while the state one is born into, the individual process of being born or coming into the world in any way, is referred to simply as "birth" (jāti). Devas (gods) may also die and live again.[11] Here the term "reincarnation" is not strictly applicable, yet Hindu gods are said to have reincarnated (see Avatar): Lord Vishnu is known for his ten incarnations, the Dashavatars. Celtic religion seems to have had reincarnating gods also. Many Christians regard Jesus as a divine incarnation. Some Christians and Muslims believe he and some prophets may incarnate again. Most Christians, however, believe that Jesus will come again in the Second Coming at the end of the world, although this is not a reincarnation. Some ghulat Shi'a Muslim sects also regard their founders as in some special sense divine incarnations (hulul).

Philosophical and religious beliefs regarding the existence or non-existence of an unchanging 'self' have a direct bearing on how reincarnation is viewed within a given tradition. The Buddha lived at a time of great philosophical creativity in India when many conceptions of the nature of life and death were proposed. Some were materialist, holding that there was no existence and that the self is annihilated upon death. Others believed in a form of cyclic existence, where a being is born, lives, dies and then is re-born, but in the context of a type of determinism or fatalism in which karma played no role. Others were "eternalists", postulating an eternally existent self or soul comparable to that in Judaic monotheism: the ātman survives death and reincarnates as another living being, based on its karmic inheritance. This is the idea that has become dominant (with certain modifications) in modern Hinduism.

The Buddhist concept of reincarnation differs from others in that there is no eternal "soul", "spirit' or self" but only a "stream of consciousness" that links life with life. The actual process of change from one life to the next is called punarbhava (Sanskrit) or punabbhava (Pāli), literally "becoming again", or more briefly bhava, "becoming", and some English-speaking Buddhists prefer the term "rebirth" or "re-becoming" to render this term as they take "reincarnation" to imply a fixed entity that is reborn.[12] Popular Jain cosmology and Buddhist cosmology as well as a number of schools of Hinduism posit rebirth in many worlds and in varied forms. In Buddhist tradition the process occurs across five or six realms of existence,[13] including the human, any kind of animal and several types of supernatural being. It is said in Tibetan Buddhism that it is very rare for a person to be reborn in the immediate next life as a human[14]

Gilgul, Gilgul neshamot or Gilgulei Ha Neshamot (Heb. גלגול הנשמות) refers to the concept of reincarnation in Kabbalistic Judaism, found in much Yiddish literature among Ashkenazi Jews. Gilgul means "cycle" and neshamot is "souls." The equivalent Arabic term is tanasukh:[15] the belief is found among Shi'a ghulat Muslim sects.

History

Antiquity

Origins

The origins of the notion of reincarnation are obscure. They apparently date to the Iron Age (around 1200 BCE). Discussion of the subject appears in the philosophical traditions of India and Greece from about the 6th century BCE. Also during the Iron Age, the Greek Pre-Socratics discussed reincarnation, and the Celtic Druids are also reported to have taught a doctrine of reincarnation.[16]

The ideas associated with reincarnation may have arisen independently in different regions, or they might have spread as a result of cultural contact. Proponents of cultural transmission have looked for links between Iron Age Celtic, Greek and Vedic philosophy and religion,[17] some[who?] even suggesting that belief in reincarnation was present in Proto-Indo-European religion.[dubious ][18] In ancient European, Iranian and Indian agricultural cultures, the life cycles of birth, death, and rebirth were recoginized as a replica of natural agricultural cycles.[19]

Early Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism

Patrick Olivelle asserts that the origin of the concept of the cycle of birth and death, the concept of samsara, and the concept of liberation in the Indian tradition, were in part the creation of the non-Vedic Shramana tradition.[20] Another possibility are the prehistoric Dravidian traditions of South India.[21] Some scholars suggest that the idea is original to the Buddha.[22]

In Jainism, the soul and matter are considered eternal, uncreated and perpetual. There is a constant interplay between the two, resulting in bewildering cosmic manifestations in material, psychic and emotional spheres around us. This led to the theories of transmigration and rebirth. Changes but not total annihilation of spirit and matter is the basic postulate of Jain philosophy. The life as we know now, after death therefore moves on to another form of life based on the merits and demerits it accumulated in its current life. The path to becoming a supreme soul is to practice non-violence and be truthful.[23]

In Hinduism, the holy book Rigveda, the oldest extant Indo-Aryan text, numerous references are made to rebirths,[citation needed] although it portrays reincarnation as "redeaths" (punarmrtyu).[citation needed] One verse reads "Each death repeats the death of the primordial man (purusa), which was also the first sacrifice" (RV 10:90).[24] Another excerpt from the Rig Veda states (Book 10 Part 02, Hymn XVI):

"Burn him not up, nor quite consume him, Agni: let not his body or his skin be scattered. O Jatavedas, when thou hast matured him, then send him on his way unto the Fathers... let thy fierce flame, thy glowing splendour, burn him With thine auspicious forms, o Jatavedas, bear this man to the region of the pious... Again, O Agni, to the Fathers send him who, offered in thee, goes with our oblations. Wearing new life let him increase his offspring: let him rejoin a body, Jatavedas."[citation needed][25]

Indian discussion of reincarnation enters the historical record from about the 6th century BCE, with the development of the Advaita Vedanta tradition in the early Upanishads (around the middle of the first millennium BCE), Gautama Buddha (623-543 BCE)[26] as well as Mahavira, the 24th Tirthankara of Jainism.[27]

The systematic attempt to attain first-hand knowledge of past lives has been developed in various ways in different places. The early Buddhist texts discuss techniques for recalling previous births, predicated on the development of high levels of meditative concentration.[28] The later Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which incorporated elements of Buddhist thought,[29] give similar instructions on how to attain the ability.[30] The Buddha reportedly warned that this experience can be misleading and should be interpreted with care.[31] Tibetan Buddhism has developed a unique 'science' of death and rebirth, a good deal of which is set down in what is popularly known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Early Greece

Early Greek discussion of the concept likewise dates to the 6th century BCE. An early Greek thinker known to have considered rebirth is Pherecydes of Syros (fl. 540 BCE).[32] His younger contemporary Pythagoras (c. 570-c. 495 BCE[33]), its first famous exponent, instituted societies for its diffusion. Plato (428/427 – 348/347 BCE) presented accounts of reincarnation in his works, particularly the Myth of Er.

Authorities have not agreed on how the notion arose in Greece: sometimes Pythagoras is said to have been Pherecydes' pupil, sometimes to have introduced it with the doctrine of Orphism, a Thracian religion that was to be important in the diffusion of reincarnation, or else to have brought the teaching from India. In Phaedo, Plato makes his teacher Socrates, prior to his death, state; "I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead." However Xenophon does not mention Socrates as believing in reincarnation and Plato may have systematised Socrates' thought with concepts he took directly from Pythagoreanism or Orphism.

A 2nd century Roman sarcophagus shows the mythology and symbolism of the Orphic and Dionysiac Mystery schools. Orpheus plays his lyre to the left

Classical Antiquity

The Orphic religion, which taught reincarnation, first appeared in Thrace in north-eastern Greece and Bulgaria, about the 6th century BC, organized itself into mystery schools at Eleusis and elsewhere, and produced a copious literature.[34][35][36] Orpheus, its legendary founder, is said to have taught that the immortal soul aspires to freedom while the body holds it prisoner. The wheel of birth revolves, the soul alternates between freedom and captivity round the wide circle of necessity. Orpheus proclaimed the need of the grace of the gods, Dionysus in particular, and of self-purification until the soul has completed the spiral ascent of destiny to live for ever.

An association between Pythagorean philosophy and reincarnation was routinely accepted throughout antiquity. In the Republic Plato makes Socrates tell how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the secrets of the other world. There are myths and theories to the same effect in other dialogues, in the Chariot allegory of the Phaedrus, in the Meno, Timaeus and Laws. The soul, once separated from the body, spends an indeterminate amount of time in "formland" (see The Allegory of the Cave in The Republic) and then assumes another body.

In later Greek literature the doctrine is mentioned in a fragment of Menander[37] and satirized by Lucian.[38] In Roman literature it is found as early as Ennius,[39] who, in a lost passage of his Annals, told how he had seen Homer in a dream, who had assured him that the same soul which had animated both the poets had once belonged to a peacock. Persius in his satires (vi. 9) laughs at this: it is referred to also by Lucretius[40] and Horace.[41]

Virgil works the idea into his account of the Underworld in the sixth book of the Aeneid.[42] It persists down to the late classic thinkers, Plotinus and the other Neoplatonists. In the Hermetica, a Graeco-Egyptian series of writings on cosmology and spirituality attributed to Hermes Trismegistus/Thoth, the doctrine of reincarnation is central.

In Greco-Roman thought, the concept of metempsychosis disappeared with the rise of Early Christianity, reincarnation being incompatible with the Christian core doctrine of salvation of the faithful after death. It has been suggested that some of the early Church Fathers, especially Origen still entertained a belief in the possibility of reincarnation, but evidence is tenuous, and the writings of Origen as they have come down to us speak explicitly against it.[43]

Some early Christian Gnostic sects professed reincarnation. The Sethians and followers of Valentinus believed in it.[44] The followers of Bardaisan of Mesopotamia, a sect of the 2nd century deemed heretical by the Catholic Church, drew upon Chaldean astrology, to which Bardaisan's son Harmonius, educated in Athens, added Greek ideas including a sort of metempsychosis. Another such teacher was Basilides (132–? CE/AD), known to us through the criticisms of Irenaeus and the work of Clement of Alexandria. (see also Neoplatonism and Gnosticism and Buddhism and Gnosticism)

In the third Christian century Manichaeism spread both east and west from Babylonia, then within the Sassanid Empire, where its founder Mani lived about 216–276. Manichaean monasteries existed in Rome in 312 AD. Noting Mani's early travels to the Kushan Empire and other Buddhist influences in Manichaeism, Richard Foltz[45] attributes Mani's teaching of reincarnation to Buddhist influence. However the inter-relation of Manicheanism, Orphism, Gnosticism and neo-Platonism is far from clear.

The Celts

In the 1st century BC Alexander Cornelius Polyhistor wrote;

The Pythagorean doctrine prevails among the Gauls' teaching that the souls of men are immortal, and that after a fixed number of years they will enter into another body.

Julius Caesar recorded that the druids of Gaul, Britain and Ireland had metempsychosis as one of their core doctrines;[46]

The principal point of their doctrine is that the soul does not die and that after death it passes from one body into another..... the main object of all education is, in their opinion, to imbue their scholars with a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul, which, according to their belief, merely passes at death from one tenement to another; for by such doctrine alone, they say, which robs death of all its terrors, can the highest form of human courage be developed.

Judaism

In Judaism, the Hasidic tzadik was believed to know the past lives of each person through his semi-prophetic abilities.

Taoism

Taoist documents from as early as the Han Dynasty claimed that Lao Tzu appeared on earth as different persons in different times beginning in the legendary era of Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. The (ca. 3rd century BC) Chuang Tzu states: "Birth is not a beginning; death is not an end. There is existence without limitation; there is continuity without a starting-point. Existence without limitation is Space. Continuity without a starting point is Time. There is birth, there is death, there is issuing forth, there is entering in."[47]

Middle Ages

Around the 11-12th century several reincarnationist movements were persecuted as heresies, through the establishment of the Inquisition in the Latin west. These included the Cathar, Paterene or Albigensian church of western Europe, the Paulician movement, which arose in Armenia,[48] and the Bogomils in Bulgaria.[49]

Christian sects such as the Bogomils and the Cathars, who professed reincarnation and other gnostic beliefs, were referred to as "Manichean", and are today sometimes described by scholars as "Neo-Manichean".[50] As there is no known Manichaean mythology or terminology in the writings of these groups there has been some dispute among historians as to whether these groups truly were descendants of Manichaeism.[51]

Norse mythology

Sváfa holding the dying Helgi in their first incarnation of three.

Reincarnation also appears in Norse mythology, in the Poetic Edda. The editor of the Poetic Edda says that Helgi Hjörvarðsson and his mistress, the valkyrie Sváfa, whose love story is told in the poem Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar, were reborn as Helgi Hundingsbane and the valkyrie Sigrún. Helgi and Sigrún's love story is the matter of a part of the Völsunga saga and the lays Helgakviða Hundingsbana I and II. They were reborn a second time as Helgi Haddingjaskati and the valkyrie Kára, but unfortunately their story, Káruljóð, only survives in a probably modified form in the Hrómundar saga Gripssonar.

The belief in reincarnation may have been commonplace among the Norse since the annotator of the Poetic Edda wrote that people formerly used to believe in it:

Sigrun was early dead of sorrow and grief. It was believed in olden times that people were born again, but that is now called old wives' folly. Of Helgi and Sigrun it is said that they were born again; he became Helgi Haddingjaskati, and she Kara the daughter of Halfdan, as is told in the Lay of Kara, and she was a Valkyrie.[52]

Renaissance and Early Modern period

While reincarnation has been a matter of faith in some communities from an early date it has also frequently been argued for on principle, as Plato does when he argues that the number of souls must be finite because souls are indestructible,[53] Benjamin Franklin held a similar view.[54] Sometimes such convictions, as in Socrates' case, arise from a more general personal faith, at other times from anecdotal evidence such as Plato makes Socrates offer in the Myth of Er.

During the Renaissance translations of Plato, the Hermetica and other works fostered new European interest in reincarnation. Marsilio Ficino[55] argued that Plato's references to reincarnation were intended allegorically, Shakespeare made fun[56] but Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by authorities after being found guilty of heresy by the Roman Inquisition for his teachings.[57] But the Greek philosophical works remained available and, particularly in north Europe, were discussed by groups such as the Cambridge Platonists.

19th to 20th centuries

American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842 - 1910) was an early psychical researcher.[58]

By the 19th century the philosophers Schopenhauer[59] and Nietzsche[60] could access the Indian scriptures for discussion of the doctrine of reincarnation, which recommended itself to the American Transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson and was adapted by Francis Bowen into Christian Metempsychosis.[61]

By the early 20th century, interest in reincarnation had been introduced into the nascent discipline of psychology, largely due to the influence of William James, who raised aspects of the philosophy of mind, comparative religion, the psychology of religious experience and the nature of empiricism.[62] James was influential in the founding of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in New York City in 1885, three years after the British Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was inaugurated in London,[58] leading to systematic, critical investigation of paranormal phenomena.

At this time popular awareness of the idea of reincarnation was boosted by the Theosophical Society's dissemination of systematised and universalised Indian concepts and also by the influence of magical societies like The Golden Dawn. Notable personalities like Annie Besant, W. B. Yeats and Dion Fortune made the subject almost as familiar an element of the popular culture of the west as of the east. By 1924 the subject could be satirised in popular children's books.[63]

Théodore Flournoy was among the first to study a claim of past-life recall in the course of his investigation of the medium Hélène Smith, published in 1900, in which he defined the possibility of cryptomnesia in such accounts.[64] Carl Gustav Jung, like Flournoy based in Switzerland, also emulated him in his thesis based on a study of cryptomnesia in psychism. Later Jung would emphasise the importance of the persistence of memory and ego in psychological study of reincarnation; "This concept of rebirth necessarily implies the continuity of personality... (that) one is able, at least potentially, to remember that one has lived through previous existences, and that these existences were one's own...".[61] Hypnosis, used in psychoanalysis for retrieving forgotten memories, was eventually tried as a means of studying the phenomenon of past life recall.

Reincarnation research

Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, from the University of Virginia, investigated many reports of young children who claimed to remember a past life. He conducted more than 2,500 case studies over a period of 40 years and published twelve books, including Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation and Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. Stevenson methodically documented each child's statements and then identified the deceased person the child identified with, and verified the facts of the deceased person's life that matched the child's memory. He also matched birthmarks and birth defects to wounds and scars on the deceased, verified by medical records such as autopsy photographs, in Reincarnation and Biology.[65]

Stevenson searched for disconfirming evidence and alternative explanations for the reports, and believed that his strict methods ruled out all possible "normal" explanations for the child’s memories.[66] However, a significant majority of Stevenson's reported cases of reincarnation originated in Eastern societies, where dominant religions often permit the concept of reincarnation. Following this type of criticism, Stevenson published a book on European Cases of the Reincarnation Type. Other people who have undertaken reincarnation research include Jim B. Tucker, Brian Weiss, and Raymond Moody.

Some skeptics, such as Paul Edwards, have analyzed many of these accounts, and called them anecdotal.[67] Skeptics suggest that claims of evidence for reincarnation originate from selective thinking and from the false memories that often result from one's own belief system and basic fears, and thus cannot be counted as empirical evidence. Carl Sagan referred to examples apparently from Stevenson's investigations in his book The Demon-Haunted World as an example of carefully collected empirical data, though he rejected reincarnation as a parsimonious explanation for the stories.[68]

Objection to claims of reincarnation include the facts that the vast majority of people do not remember previous lives and there is no mechanism known to modern science that would enable a personality to survive death and travel to another body. Researchers such as Stevenson have acknowledged these limitations.[69]

Reincarnation in the West

During recent decades, many people in the West have developed an interest in reincarnation.[5] Feature films, such as The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Dead Again, Kundun, Fluke, What Dreams May Come and Birth, contemporary books by authors such as Carol Bowman and Vicki Mackenzie, as well as popular songs, regularly mention reincarnation.

Recent studies have indicated that some Westerners accept the idea of reincarnation[5] including certain contemporary Christians,[70] modern Neopagans, followers of Spiritism, Theosophists and students of esoteric philosophies such as Kabbalah, and Gnostic and Esoteric Christianity as well as of Indian religions. Demographic survey data from 1999-2002 shows a significant minority of people from Europe and America, where there is reasonable freedom of thought and access to ideas but no outstanding recent reincarnationist tradition, believe we had a life before we were born, will survive death and be born again physically. The mean for the Nordic countries is 22%.[71] The belief in reincarnation is particularly high in the Baltic countries, with Lithuania having the highest figure for the whole of Europe, 44%. The lowest figure is in East Germany, 12%. In Russia, about one-third believes in reincarnation. The effect of communist anti-religious ideas on the beliefs of the populations of Eastern Europe seems to have been rather slight, if any, except apparently in East Germany.[71] Overall, 22% of respondents in Western Europe believe in reincarnation.[71] According to a 2005 Gallup poll 20 percent of U.S. adults believe in reincarnation. Recent surveys by the Barna Group, a Christian research nonprofit organization, have found that a quarter of U.S. Christians, including 10 percent of all born-again Christians, embrace the idea.[72]

Skeptic Carl Sagan asked the Dalai Lama what would he do if a fundamental tenet of his religion (reincarnation) were definitively disproved by science. The Dalai Lama answered; "if science can disprove reincarnation, Tibetan Buddhism would abandon reincarnation... but it's going to be mighty hard to disprove reincarnation."[73]

Ian Stevenson reported that belief in reincarnation is held (with variations in details) by adherents of almost all major religions except Christianity and Islam. In addition, between 20 and 30 percent of persons in western countries who may be nominal Christians also believe in reincarnation.[74]

One 1999 study by Walter and Waterhouse reviewed the previous data on the level of reincarnation belief and performed a set of thirty in-depth interviews in Britain among people who did not belong to a religion advocating reincarnation.[75] The authors reported that surveys have found about one fifth to one quarter of Europeans have some level of belief in reincarnation, with similar results found in the USA. In the interviewed group, the belief in the existence of this phenomenon appeared independent of their age, or the type of religion that these people belonged to, with most being Christians. The beliefs of this group also did not appear to contain any more than usual of "new age" ideas (broadly defined) and the authors interpreted their ideas on reincarnation as "one way of tackling issues of suffering", but noted that this seemed to have little effect on their private lives.

Waterhouse also published a detailed discussion of beliefs expressed in the interviews.[76] She noted that although most people "hold their belief in reincarnation quite lightly" and were unclear on the details of their ideas, personal experiences such as past-life memories and near-death experiences had influenced most believers, although only a few had direct experience of these phenomena. Waterhouse analyzed the influences of second-hand accounts of reincarnation, writing that most of the people in the survey had heard other people's accounts of past-lives from regression hypnosis and dreams and found these fascinating, feeling that there "must be something in it" if other people were having such experiences.

Contemporary religious philosophies

Hinduism

In some teachings of Hinduism, the soul (atman) is immortal and reincarnated through the cycle of lives known as Samsara, each time in a body which is born and dies. People gain karma by acting, which prompts the need for reincarnation.

The Bhagavad Gita states;

Hindus believe the self or soul (atman) repeatedly takes on a physical body.
Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be. As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from childhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change. (2: 12-13)

and,

Worn-out garments are shed by the body; Worn-out bodies are shed by the dweller within the body. New bodies are donned by the dweller, like garments. (2:22)[77]

According to the Hindu sage Adi Shankaracharya, the world - as we ordinarily understand it - is like a dream: fleeting and illusory. To be trapped in samsara (the cycle of birth and death) is a result of ignorance of the true nature of our existence. It is ignorance (avidya) of one's true self that leads to ego-consciousness, grounding one in desire and a perpetual chain of reincarnation. The idea is intricately linked to action (karma), a concept first recorded in the Upanishads. Every action has a reaction and the force determines one's next incarnation. One is reborn through desire: a person desires to be born because he or she wants to enjoy a body,[78] which can never bring deep, lasting happiness or peace (ānanda). After many births every person becomes dissatisfied and begins to seek higher forms of happiness through spiritual experience. When, after spiritual practice (sādhanā), a person realizes that the true "self" is the immortal soul rather than the body or the ego all desires for the pleasures of the world will vanish since they will seem insipid compared to spiritual ānanda. When all desire has vanished the person will not be born again.[79] When the cycle of rebirth thus comes to an end, a person is said to have attained liberation (moksha).[80] All schools agree this implies the cessation of worldly desires and freedom from the cycle of birth and death, though the exact definition differs. Followers of the Advaita Vedanta school believe they will spend eternity absorbed in the perfect peace and happiness of the realization that all existence is One Brahman of which the soul is part. Dvaita schools perform worship with the goal of spending eternity in a spiritual world or heaven (loka) in the blessed company of the Supreme Being.[81]

Jainism

Jainism is historically connected with the sramana tradition with which the earliest mentions of reincarnation are associated.[82]

The hand with a wheel on the palm symbolizes the Jain Vow of Ahiṃsā. The word in the middle is "ahimsa". The wheel represents the dharmacakra which stands for the resolve to halt the cycle of reincarnation through relentless pursuit of truth and non-violence.

Karma forms a central and fundamental part of Jain faith, being intricately connected to other of its philosophical concepts like transmigration, reincarnation, liberation, non-violence (ahiṃsā) and non-attachment, among others. Actions are seen to have consequences: some immediate, some delayed, even into future incarnations. So the doctrine of karma is not considered simply in relation to one life-time, but also in relation to both future incarnations and past lives.[83] Uttarādhyayana-sūtra 3.3–4 states: "The jīva or the soul is sometimes born in the world of gods, sometimes in hell. Sometimes it acquires the body of a demon; all this happens on account of its karma. This jīva sometimes takes birth as a worm, as an insect or as an ant."[84] The text further states (32.7): "Karma is the root of birth and death. The souls bound by karma go round and round in the cycle of existence."[84]

Actions and emotions in the current lifetime affect future incarnations depending on the nature of the particular karma. For example, a good and virtuous life indicates a latent desire to experience good and virtuous themes of life. Therefore, such a person attracts karma that ensures that his future births will allow him to experience and manifest his virtues and good feelings unhindered.[85] In this case, he may take birth in heaven or in a prosperous and virtuous human family. On the other hand, a person who has indulged in immoral deeds, or with a cruel disposition, indicates a latent desire to experience cruel themes of life.[86] As a natural consequence, he will attract karma which will ensure that he is reincarnated in hell, or in lower life forms, to enable his soul to experience the cruel themes of life.[86]

There is no retribution, judgment or reward involved but a natural consequences of the choices in life made either knowingly or unknowingly. Hence, whatever suffering or pleasure that a soul may be experiencing in its present life is on account of choices that it has made in the past.[87] As a result of this doctrine, Jainism attributes supreme importance to pure thinking and moral behavior.[88]

The soul travels to any one of the four states of existence after the death depending on its karmas

The Jain texts postulate four gatis, that is states-of-existence or birth-categories, within which the soul transmigrates. The four gatis are: deva (demi-gods), manuṣya (humans), nāraki (hell beings) and tiryañca (animals, plants and micro-organisms).[89] The four gatis have four corresponding realms or habitation levels in the vertically tiered Jain universe: demi-gods occupy the higher levels where the heavens are situated; humans, plants and animals occupy the middle levels; and hellish beings occupy the lower levels where seven hells are situated.[89]

Single-sensed souls, however, called nigoda,[note 1] and element-bodied souls pervade all tiers of this universe. Nigodas are souls at the bottom end of the existential hierarchy. They are so tiny and undifferentiated, that they lack even individual bodies, living in colonies. According to Jain texts, this infinity of nigodas can also be found in plant tissues, root vegetables and animal bodies.[90] Depending on its karma, a soul transmigrates and reincarnates within the scope of this cosmology of destinies. The four main destinies are further divided into sub-categories and still smaller sub–sub categories. In all, Jain texts speak of a cycle of 8.4 million birth destinies in which souls find themselves again and again as they cycle within samsara.[91]

In Jainism, God has no role to play in an individual's destiny; one's personal destiny is not seen as a consequence of any system of reward or punishment, but rather as a result of its own personal karma. A text from a volume of the ancient Jain canon, Bhagvati sūtra 8.9.9, links specific states of existence to specific karmas. Violent deeds, killing of creatures having five sense organs, eating fish, and so on, lead to rebirth in hell. Deception, fraud and falsehood leads to rebirth in the animal and vegetable world. Kindness, compassion and humble character result in human birth; while austerities and the making and keeping of vows leads to rebirth in heaven.[92]

Each soul is thus responsible for its own predicament, as well as its own salvation. Accumulated karma represent a sum total of all unfulfilled desires, attachments and aspirations of a soul.[93][94] It enables the soul to experience the various themes of the lives that it desires to experience.[93] Hence a soul may transmigrate from one life form to another for countless of years, taking with it the karma that it has earned, until it finds conditions that bring about the required fruits. In certain philosophies, heavens and hells are often viewed as places for eternal salvation or eternal damnation for good and bad deeds. But according to Jainism, such places, including the earth are simply the places which allow the soul to experience its unfulfilled karma.[95]

Buddhism

In this 8-meter (25-foot) tall Buddhist relief, made sometime between the years 1177 and 1249, Mara, Lord of Death and Desire, clutches a Wheel of Reincarnation which outlines the Buddhist cycle of reincarnation.

The early Buddhist texts make it clear that there is no permanent consciousness that moves from life to life.[96] Gautama Buddha taught a distinct concept of rebirth constrained by the concepts of anattā, that there is no irreducible ātman or "self" tying these lives together, which serves as a contrast to Hinduism, where everything is connected, and in a sense, "everything is everything."[97] and anicca, that all compounded things are subject to dissolution, including all the components of the human person and personality.

In Buddhist doctrine the evolving consciousness (Pali: samvattanika-viññana)[98][99] or stream of consciousness (Pali: viññana-sotam,[100] Sanskrit: vijñāna-srotām, vijñāna-santāna, or citta-santāna) upon death (or "the dissolution of the aggregates" (P. khandhas, S. skandhas)), becomes one of the contributing causes for the arising of a new aggregation. At the death of one personality, a new one comes into being, much as the flame of a dying candle can serve to light the flame of another.[101][102] The consciousness in the new person is neither identical to nor entirely different from that in the deceased but the two form a causal continuum or stream. Transmigration is the effect of karma (kamma)[103][104] or volitional action.[105] The basic cause is the abiding of consciousness in ignorance (Pali: avijja, Sanskrit: avidya): when ignorance is uprooted rebirth ceases.[106]

The Buddha's detailed conception of the connections between action (karma), rebirth and causality is set out in the twelve links of dependent origination. The empirical, changing self does not only affect the world about it, it also generates, consciously and unconsciously, a subjective image of the world in which it lives as 'reality'. It "tunes in" to a particular level of consciousness which has a particular range of objects, selectively notices such objects and forms a partial model of reality in which the ego is the crucial reference point. Vipassana meditation uses "bare attention" to mind-states without interfering, owning or judging. Observation reveals each moment as an experience of an individual mind-state such as a thought, a memory, a feeling or a perception that arises, exists and ceases. This limits the power of desire, which, according to the second noble truth of Buddhism, is the cause of suffering (dukkha), and leads to Nirvana (nibbana, vanishing (of the self-idea)) in which self-oriented models are transcended and "the world stops".[107] Thus consciousness is a continuous birth and death of mind-states: rebirth is the persistence of this process.

While all Buddhist traditions accept rebirth there is no unified view about precisely how events unfold after death. The Tibetan schools hold to the notion of a bardo (intermediate state) that can last up to forty-nine days. An accomplished or realized practitioner (by maintaining conscious awareness during the death process) can choose to return to samsara, that many lamas choose to be born again and again as humans and are called tulkus or incarnate lamas.[citation needed] The Sarvastivada school believed that between death and rebirth there is a sort of limbo in which beings do not yet reap the consequences of their previous actions but may still influence their rebirth. The death process and this intermediate state were believed to offer a uniquely favourable opportunity for spiritual awakening. Theravada Buddhism generally denies there is an intermediate state, though some early Buddhist texts seem to support it,[108][109] but asserts that rebirth is immediate.

Some schools conclude that karma continues to exist and adhere to the person until it works out its consequences. For the Sautrantika school each act "perfumes" the individual or "plants a seed" that later germinates. In another view remaining impure aggregates, skandhas, reform consciousness. Tibetan Buddhism stresses the state of mind at the time of death. To die with a peaceful mind will stimulate a virtuous seed and a fortunate rebirth, a disturbed mind will stimulate a non-virtuous seed and an unfortunate rebirth.[110] The medieval Pali scholar Buddhaghosa labeled the consciousness that constitutes the condition for a new birth as described in the early texts "rebirth-linking consciousness" (patisandhi).

Sant mystics and Sikhism

Reincarnation remained a tenet of the Sant Bhakti movement and of related mystics on the frontiers of Islam and Hinduism such as the Baul minstrels, the Kabir panth and the Sikh Brotherhood. Sikhs believe the soul is passed from one body to another until Liberation. If we perform good deeds and actions and remember the Creator, we attain a better life while, if we carry out evil actions and sinful deeds, we will be incarnated in “lower” life forms. God may pardon wrongs and release us.[111] Otherwise reincarnation is due to the law of cause and effect but does not create any caste or differences among people. Eckankar is a Western presentation of Sant mysticism.[112] It teaches that the soul is eternal and either chooses an incarnation for growth or else an incarnation is imposed because of Karma. The soul is perfected through a series of incarnations until it arrives at "Personal Mastery".

African Vodun

A Egungun masquerade dance garment in the permanent collection of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis

The Yoruba believe in reincarnation within the family. The names Babatunde (father returns), Yetunde (Mother returns), Babatunji (Father wakes once again) and Sotunde (The wise man returns) all offer vivid evidence of the Ifa concept of familial or lineal rebirth. There is no simple guarantee that your grandfather or great uncle will "come back" in the birth of your child, however.

Whenever the time arrives for a spirit to return to Earth (otherwise known as The Marketplace) through the conception of a new life in the direct bloodline of the family, one of the component entities of a person's being returns, while the other remains in Heaven (Ikole Orun). The spirit that returns does so in the form of a Guardian Ori. One's Guardian Ori, which is represented and contained in the crown of the head, represents not only the spirit and energy of one's previous blood relative, but the accumulated wisdom he or she has acquired through a myriad of lifetimes. This is not to be confused with one’s spiritual Ori, which contains personal destiny, but instead refers to the coming back to The Marketplace of one's personal blood Ori through one's new life and experiences. The explanation in The Way of the Orisa[113] was really quite clear. The Primary Ancestor (which should be identified in your Itefa (Life Path Reading)) becomes - if you are aware and work with that specific energy - a “guide” for the individual throughout their lifetime. At the end of that life they return to their identical spirit self and merge into one, taking the additional knowledge gained from their experience with the individual as a form of payment.

Islam

The idea of reincarnation is accepted by a few Muslim sects, particularly of the (Ghulat),[114] and by other sects in the Muslim world such as Druzes.[115] Historically, South Asian Isma'ilis performed chantas yearly, one of which is for sins committed in past lives.[116] (Aga Khan IV) Sinan ibn Salman ibn Muhammad, also known as Rashid al-Din Sinan, (r. 1162-92) subscribed to the transmigration of souls as a tenet of the Alawi,[117] who are thought to have been influenced by Isma'ilism.

Modern Sufis who embrace the idea of reincarnation include Bawa Muhaiyadeen.[118] However Hazrat Inayat Khan has criticized the idea as unhelpful to the spiritual seeker.[119]

Judaism

Reincarnation is not an essential tenet of traditional Judaism. It is not mentioned in the Tanakh ("Hebrew Bible"), the classical rabbinical works (Mishnah and Talmud), or Maimonides' 13 Principles of Faith, though the tale of the Ten Martyrs in the Yom Kippur liturgy, who were killed by Romans to atone for the souls of the ten brothers of Joseph, is read in Ashkenazi Orthodox Jewish communities. Medieval Jewish Rationalist philosophers discussed the issue, often in rejection. However, Jewish mystical texts (the Kabbalah), from their classic Medieval canon onwards, teach a belief in Gilgul Neshamot (Hebrew for metempsychosis of souls: literally "soul cycle", plural "gilgulim"). It is a common belief in contemporary Hasidic Judaism, which regards the Kabbalah as sacred and authoritative, though unstressed in favour of a more innate psychological mysticism. Other, Non-Hasidic, Orthodox Jewish groups while not placing a heavy emphasis on reincarnation, do acknowledge it as a valid teaching.[120] Its popularisation entered modern secular Yiddish literature and folk motif.

The 16th-century mystical renaissance in communal Safed replaced scholastic Rationalism as mainstream traditional Jewish theology, both in scholarly circles and in the popular imagination. References to gilgul in former Kabbalah became systemised as part of the metaphysical purpose of creation. Isaac Luria (the Ari) brought the issue to the centre of his new mystical articulation, for the first time, and advocated identification of the reincarnations of historic Jewish figures that were compiled by Haim Vital in his Shaar HaGilgulim.[121] Gilgul is contrasted with the other processes in Kabbalah of Ibbur ("pregnancy"), the attachment of a second soul to an individual for (or by) good means, and Dybuk ("possession"), the attachment of a spirit, demon, etc. to an individual for (or by) "bad" means.

In Lurianic Kabbalah, reincarnation is not retributive or fatalistic, but an expression of Divine compassion, the microcosm of the doctrine of cosmic rectification of creation. Gilgul is a heavenly agreement with the individual soul, conditional upon circumstances. Luria's radical system focused on rectification of the Divine soul, played out through Creation. The true essence of anything is the divine spark within that gives it existence. Even a stone or leaf possesses such a soul that "came into this world to receive a rectification". A human soul may occasionally be exiled into lower inanimate, vegetative or animal creations. The most basic component of the soul, the nefesh, must leave at the cessation of blood production. There are four other soul components and different nations of the world possess different forms of souls with different purposes. Each Jewish soul is reincarnated in order to fulfil each of the 613 Mosaic commandments that elevate a particular spark of holiness associated with each commandment. Once all the Sparks are redeemed to their spiritual source, the Messianic Era begins. Non-Jewish observance of the 7 Laws of Noah assists the Jewish people, though Biblical adversaries of Israel reincarnate to oppose.

Rabbis who accepted reincarnation include the mystical leaders Nahmanides (the Ramban) and Rabbenu Bahya ben Asher, Levi ibn Habib (the Ralbah), Shelomoh Alkabez, the Baal Shem Tov and later Hasidic masters, and the Mitnagdic Vilna Gaon. Rabbis who have rejected the idea include Saadia Gaon, David Kimhi, Hasdai Crescas, Joseph Albo, Abraham ibn Daud and Leon de Modena. Among the Geonim, Hai Gaon argued in favour of gilgulim.

Native American nations

Reincarnation is an intrinsic part of many Native American and Inuit[122] traditions.[citation needed] In the now heavily Christian Polar North (now mainly parts of Greenland and Nunavut), the concept of reincarnation is enshrined in the Inuit language.[citation needed][123]

The following is a story of human-to-human reincarnation as told by Thunder Cloud, a Winnebago shaman referred to as T. C. in the narrative. Here T. C. talks about his two previous lives and how he died and came back again to this his third lifetime. He describes his time between lives, when he was “blessed” by Earth Maker and all the abiding spirits and given special powers, including the ability to heal the sick.

T. C.’s Account of His Two Reincarnations

I (my ghost) was taken to the place where the sun sets (the west). ... While at that place, I thought I would come back to earth again, and the old man with whom I was staying said to me, “My son, did you not speak about wanting to go to the earth again?” I had, as a matter of fact, only thought of it, yet he knew what I wanted. Then he said to me, “You can go, but you must ask the chief first.” Then I went and told the chief of the village of my desire, and he said to me, “You may go and obtain your revenge upon the people who killed your relatives and you.” Then I was brought down to earth. ... There I lived until I died of old age. ... As I was lying [in my grave], someone said to me, “Come, let us go away.” So then we went toward the setting of the sun. There we came to a village where we met all the dead. ... From that place I came to this earth again for the third time, and here I am. (Radin, 1923)[124]

Christianity

Though the major Christian denominations reject the concept of reincarnation, a large number of Christians profess the belief. In a survey by the Pew Forum in 2009, 24% of American Christians expressed a belief in reincarnation.[125] In a 1981 Survey in Europe 31% of regular churchgoing Catholics expressed a belief in reincarnation.[126]

Geddes MacGregor, an Episcopalian priest who is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a recipient of the California Literature Award (Gold Medal, non-fiction category), and the first holder of the Rufus Jones Chair in Philosophy and Religion at Bryn Mawr, demonstrates in his book Reincarnation in Christianity: A New Vision of the Role of Rebirth in Christian Thought,[127] that Christian doctrine and reincarnation are not mutually exclusive belief systems.

New religious movements

Theosophy

The Theosophical Society draws much of its inspiration from India. The idea is, according to a recent Theosophical writer, "the master-key to modern problems," including heredity.[128] In the Theosophical world-view reincarnation is the vast rhythmic process by which the soul, the part of a person which belongs to the formless non-material and timeless worlds, unfolds its spiritual powers in the world and comes to know itself. It descends from sublime, free, spiritual realms and gathers experience through its effort to express itself in the world. Afterwards there is a withdrawal from the physical plane to successively higher levels of Reality, in death, a purification and assimilation of the past life. Having cast off all instruments of personal experience it stands again in its spiritual and formless nature, ready to begin its next rhythmic manifestation, every lifetime bringing it closer to complete self-knowledge and self-expression. However it may attract old mental, emotional, and energetic karma patterns to form the new personality.

Eckankar

Awareness of past lives, dreams, and soul travel are spiritual disciplines practiced by students of Eckankar. Eckankar teaches that each person is Soul, which transcends time and space. Soul travel is a term specific to Eckankar that refers to a shift in consciousness. Eckists believe the purpose of being aware of past lives is to help with understanding personal conditions in the present. Practicing students of Eckankar can become aware of past lives, through dreams, soul travel, and spiritual exercises called contemplations. This form of contemplation is the active, unconditional practice of going within to connect with the "Light and Sound of God" known as the divine life current or Holy Spirit.

Scientology

Past reincarnation, usually termed "past lives", is a key part of the principles and practices of the Church of Scientology. Scientologists believe that the human individual is actually an immortal thetan, or spiritual entity, that has fallen into a degraded state as a result of past-life experiences. Scientology auditing is intended to free the person of these past-life traumas and recover past-life memory, leading to a higher state of spiritual awareness. This idea is echoed in their highest fraternal religious order, the Sea Organization, whose motto is "Revenimus" or "We Come Back", and whose members sign a "billion-year contract" as a sign of commitment to that ideal. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, does not use the word "reincarnation" to describe its beliefs, noting that: "The common definition of reincarnation has been altered from its original meaning. The word has come to mean 'to be born again in different life forms' whereas its actual definition is 'to be born again into the flesh of another body.' Scientology ascribes to this latter, original definition of reincarnation."[129]

The first writings in Scientology regarding past lives date from around 1951 and slightly earlier. In 1960, Hubbard published a book on past lives entitled Have You Lived Before This Life. In 1968 he wrote Mission into Time, a report on a five-week sailing expedition to Sardinia, Sicily and Carthage to see if specific evidence could be found to substantiate L. Ron Hubbard's recall of incidents in his own past, centuries ago.

Meher Baba

The Indian spiritual teacher Meher Baba stated that reincarnation occurs due to desires and once those desires are extinguished the ego-mind ceases to reincarnate:

The power that keeps the individual soul bound to the wheel of life and death is its thirst for separate existence, which is a condition for a host of cravings connected with objects and experiences of the world of duality. It is for the fulfillment of cravings that the ego-mind keeps on incarnating itself. When all forms of craving disappear, the impressions which create and enliven the ego-mind disappear. With the disappearance of these impressions, the ego-mind itself is shed with the result that there is only the realisation of the one eternal, unchanging Oversoul or God, Who is the only reality. God-realisation is the end of the incarnations of the ego-mind because it is the end of its very existence. As long as the ego-mind exists in some form, there is an inevitable and irresistible urge for incarnations. When there is cessation of the ego-mind, there is cessation of incarnations in the final fulfillment of Self-realisation.[130]

Popular culture

In the 2006 movie Pan's Labyrinth the main character is reborn, and returns to a fantasy, or heaven like environment.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The Jain hierarchy of life classifies living beings on the basis of the senses: five-sensed beings like humans and animals are at the top, and single sensed beings like microbes and plants are at the bottom.

References

  1. ^ Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper, Philip L. Quinn, A Companion to Philosophy of Religion. John Wiley and Sons, 2010, page 640, Google Books.
  2. ^ Gananath Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth. University of California Press, 2002, page 15.
  3. ^ Hitti, Philip K (2007) [1924]. Origins of the Druze People and Religion, with Extracts from their Sacred Writings (New Edition). Columbia University Oriental Studies. 28. London: Saqi. pp. 13–14. ISBN 0-86356-690-1
  4. ^ Heindel, Max (1985) [1939, 1908] The Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures (Collected Works): The Riddle of Life and Death. Oceanside, California. 4th edition. ISBN 0-911274-84-7
  5. ^ a b c Popular psychology, belief in life after death and reincarnation in the Nordic countries, Western and Eastern EuropePDF (54.8 KB)
  6. ^ Tucker, Jim B. (2005). Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives, p.186.
  7. ^ "Encyclopædia Britannica". Concise.britannica.com. http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9063098/metempsychosis. Retrieved 2011-12-06. 
  8. ^ Karl Sigmund. "Gödel Exhibition: Gödel's Century". Goedelexhibition.at. http://www.goedelexhibition.at/goedel/goedel.html. Retrieved 2011-12-06. 
  9. ^ "Heart of Hinduism: Reincarnation and Samsara". Hinduism.iskcon.com. http://hinduism.iskcon.com/concepts/102.htm. Retrieved 2011-12-06. 
  10. ^ Brodd, Jefferey (2003). World Religions. Winona, MN: Saint Mary's Press. ISBN 9780884897255. 
  11. ^ Teachings of Queen Kunti by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Chapter 18 "To become Brahma is not a very easy thing.... But he is also a living entity like us."
  12. ^ "Reincarnation in Buddhism: What the Buddha Didn't Teach" By Barbara O'Brien, About.com
  13. ^ Transform Your Life: A Blissful Journey, pages 52-55), Tharpa Publications (2001, US ed. 2007) ISBN 978-0-9789067-4-0
  14. ^ "The Five Precepts". Urbandharma.org. http://www.urbandharma.org/kusala/revkus/5precepts.html. Retrieved 2011-12-06. 
  15. ^ Mullasadra.org[dead link]
  16. ^ Diodorus Siculus thought the Druids might have been influenced by the teachings of PythagorasDiodorius Siculus v.28.6; Hippolytus Philosophumena i.25.
  17. ^ one modern scholar has speculated that Buddhist missionaries had been sent to Britain by the Indian king Ashoka. Donald A.Mackenzie, Buddhism in pre-Christian Britain (1928:21).
  18. ^ M. Dillon and N. Chadwick, The Celtic Realms, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London,[page needed]
  19. ^ Ara, Mitra (2008). Eschatology in the Indo-Iranian traditions: The Genesis and Transformation of a Doctrine. Peter Lang Publishing Inc., New York, USA. ISBN 1433102501. pp. 99-100.
  20. ^ Flood, Gavin. Olivelle, Patrick. 2003. The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism. Malden: Blackwell. pg. 273-4. "The second half of the first millennium BCE was the period that created many of the ideological and institutional elements that characterize later Indian religions. The renouncer tradtion played a central role during this formative period of Indian religious history....Some of the fundamental values and beliefs that we generally associate with Indian religions in general and Hinduism in particular were in part the creation of the renouncer tradition. These include the two pillars of Indian theologies: samsara - the belief that life in this world is one of suffering and subject to repeated deaths and births (rebirth); moksa/nirvana - the goal of human existence....."
  21. ^ Gavin D. Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge University Press (1996), UK ISBN 0-521-43878-0 p. 86 - "A third alternative is that the origin of transmigration theory lies outside of vedic or sramana traditions in the tribal religions of the Ganges valley, or even in Dravidian traditions of south India."
  22. ^ Arvind Sharma's review of Hajime Nakamura's A History of Early Vedanta Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Jul., 1987), page 330.
  23. ^ T.U.Mehta,Path of Arhat - A Religious Democracy Pujya Sohanalala Smaraka Parsvantha Sodhapitha, 1993, Pages 7-8
  24. ^ P. 99 Religion and aging in the Indian tradition By Shrinivas Tilak
  25. ^ Provide reference(s) if this refers to rebirth?
  26. ^ "As is now almost universally accepted by informed Indological scholarship, a re-examination of early Buddhist historical material, ..., necessitates a redating of the Buddha's death to between 411 and 400 BCE." Paul Dundas, The Jains, 2nd edition, (Routledge, 2001), p. 24.
  27. ^ Karel Werner, The Longhaired Sage in The Yogi and the Mystic, Curzon Press, 1989, page 34. Wayman... traces them particularly in the older Upanishads, in early Buddhism, and in some later literature."
  28. ^ Paul Williams, Anthony Tribe, Buddhist thought: a complete introduction to the Indian tradition. Routledge, 2000, page 84.
  29. ^ Karel Werner, The Yogi and the Mystic. Routledge 1994, page 27.
  30. ^ Gavin D. Flood, The ascetic self: subjectivity, memory and tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2004, page 136.
  31. ^ Joanna Macy, Mutual causality in Buddhism and general systems theory: the dharma of natural systems. SUNY Press, 1991, page 163.
  32. ^ Schibli, S., Hermann, Pherekydes of Syros, p. 104, Oxford Univ. Press 2001
  33. ^ "The dates of his life cannot be fixed exactly, but assuming the approximate correctness of the statement of Aristoxenus (ap. Porph. V.P. 9) that he left Samos to escape the tyranny of Polycrates at the age of forty, we may put his birth round about 570 BCE, or a few years earlier. The length of his life was variously estimated in antiquity, but it is agreed that he lived to a fairly ripe old age, and most probably he died at about seventy-five or eighty." William Keith Chambers Guthrie, (1978), A history of Greek philosophy, Volume 1: The earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans, page 173. Cambridge University Press
  34. ^ Linforth, Ivan M. (1941) The Arts of Orpheus Arno Press, New York, OCLC 514515
  35. ^ Long, Herbert S. (1948) A Study of the doctrine of metempsychosis in Greece, from Pythagoras to Plato (Long's 1942 Ph.D. dissertation) Princeton, New Jersey, OCLC 1472399
  36. ^ Long, Herbert S. (16 February 1948) "Plato's Doctrine of Metempsychosis and Its Source" The Classical Weekly 41(10): pp. 149—155
  37. ^ Menander, The Inspired Woman
  38. ^ Lucian, Gallus, 18 et seq.
  39. ^ Poesch, Jessie (1962) "Ennius and Basinio of Parma" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 25(1/2): pp. 116—118, page 117, FN15
  40. ^ Lucretius, (i. 124)
  41. ^ Horace, Epistles, II. i. 52
  42. ^ Virgil, The Aeneid, vv. 724 et seq.
  43. ^ The book Reincarnation in Christianity, by the theosophist Geddes MacGregor (1978) asserted that Origen believed in reincarnation. MacGregor is convinced that Origen believed in and taught about reincarnation but that his texts written about the subject have been destroyed. He admits that there is no extant proof for that position. The allegation was also repeated by Shirley MacLaine in her book Out On a Limb. Origen does discuss the concept of transmigration (metensomatosis) from Greek philosophy, but it is repeatedly stated that this concept is not a part of the Christian teaching or scripture in his Comment on the Gospel of Matthew (which survives only in a 6th-century Latin translatio): "In this place [when Jesus said Elijah was come and referred to John the Baptist] it does not appear to me that by Elijah the soul is spoken of, lest I fall into the doctrine of transmigration, which is foreign to the Church of God, and not handed down by the apostles, nor anywhere set forth in the scriptures" (13:1:46–53, see Commentary on Matthew, Book XIII
  44. ^ Much of this is documented in R.E. Slater's book Paradise Reconsidered.
  45. ^ Richard Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010
  46. ^ Julius Caesar, "De Bello Gallico", VI
  47. ^ tr. Giles 1889, p. 304
  48. ^ "Newadvent.org". Newadvent.org. 1911-02-01. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11583b.htm. Retrieved 2011-12-06. 
  49. ^ Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy, 1982, isbn=0521289262, Cambridge University Press, The Bogomils, Google Books
  50. ^ For example Dondaine, Antoine. O.P. Un traite neo-manicheen du XIIIe siecle: Le Liber de duobus principiis, suivi d'un fragment de rituel Cathare (Rome: Institutum Historicum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 1939)
  51. ^ "Newadvent.org". Newadvent.org. 1907-03-01. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01267e.htm. Retrieved 2011-12-06. 
  52. ^ "Bellow's translation of Helgakviða Hundingsbana II". Sacred-texts.com. http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe20.htm. Retrieved 2011-12-06. 
  53. ^ "the souls must always be the same, for if none be destroyed they will not diminish in number." Republic X, 611. The Republic of Plato By Plato, Benjamin Jowett Edition: 3 Published by Clarendon press, 1888.
  54. ^ In a letter to his friend George Whatley written May 23, 1785: Jennifer T. Kennedy, Death Effects: Revisiting the conceit of Franklin's Memoir, Early American Literature, 2001. JSTOR
  55. ^ Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, 17.3-4
  56. ^ "Again, Rosalind in "As You Like It" (Act III., Scene 2), says: I was never so be-rhimed that I can remember since Pythagoras's time, when I was an Irish rat" — alluding to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls." William H. Grattan Flood, quoted at Libraryireland.com
  57. ^ Boulting, 1914. pp. 163-64
  58. ^ a b Berger, Arthur S.; Berger, Joyce (1991). The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. Paragon House Publishers. ISBN 1557780439. 
  59. ^ Schopenhauer, A: "Parerga und Paralipomena" (Eduard Grisebach edition), On Religion, Section 177
  60. ^ Nietzsche and the Doctrine of Metempsychosis, in J. Urpeth & J. Lippitt, Nietzsche and the Divine, Manchester: Clinamen, 2000
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  62. ^ David Hammerman, Lisa Lenard, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Reincarnation, Penguin, p.34. For relevant works by James, see; William James, Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine (the Ingersoll Lecture, 1897), The Will to Believe, Human Immortality (1956) Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-20291-7, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), ISBN 0-14-039034-0, Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912) Dover Publications 2003, ISBN 0-486-43094-4
  63. ^ Richmal Crompton, More William, George Newnes, London, 1924, XIII. William and the Ancient Souls; "The memory usually came in a flash. For instance, you might remember in a flash when you were looking at a box of matches that you had been Guy Fawkes."
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  67. ^ Rockley, Richard. Book Review: Children who remember previous lives
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  69. ^ "Ian Stevenson; Sought To Document Memories Of Past Lives in Children". Washingtonpost.com. 2007-02-11. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/10/AR2007021001393.html?nav=hcmodule. Retrieved 2011-12-06. 
  70. ^ Tony Walter and Helen Waterhouse, "A Very Private Belief: Reincarnation in Contemporary England". Sociology of Religion, Vol. 60, 1999
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  74. ^ Jane Henry (2005). Parapsychology: research on exceptional experiences Routledge, p. 224.
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  77. ^ Bhagavad Gita II.22, ISBN 1-56619-670-1
  78. ^ See Bhagavad Gita XVI.8-20
  79. ^ Rinehart, Robin, ed., Contemporary Hinduism19-21 (2004) ISBN 1-57607-905-8
  80. ^ Karel Werner, A Popular Dictionary of Hinduism 110 (Curzon Press 1994) ISBN 0-7007-0279-2
  81. ^ Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Translation by Swami Nikhilananda (8th Ed. 1992) ISBN 0-911206-01-9
  82. ^ "The sudden appearance of this theory [of karma] in a full-fledged form is likely to be due, as already pointed out, to an impact of the wandering muni-and-shramana-cult, coming down from the pre-Vedic non-Aryan time." Kashi Nsadcwath Upadhyaya, Early Buddhism and the Bhagavadgita. Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1998, page 76.
  83. ^ Kuhn, Hermann (2001) pp. 226–230
  84. ^ a b Krishan, Yuvraj (1997): p. 43.
  85. ^ Kuhn, Hermann (2001) pp.70–71
  86. ^ a b Kuhn, Hermann (2001) pp.64–66
  87. ^ Kuhn, Hermann (2001) p.15
  88. ^ Rankin, Aidan (2006) p.67
  89. ^ a b Jaini, Padmanabh (1998) p.108
  90. ^ Jaini, Padmanabh (1998) pp.108–09
  91. ^ Jaini, Padmanabh (2000) p.130
  92. ^ Krishan, Yuvraj (1997) p.44
  93. ^ a b Kuhn, Hermann (2001) p.28
  94. ^ Kuhn, Hermann (2001) p.69
  95. ^ Kuhn, Hermann (2001) pp.65–66, 70–71
  96. ^ The many references in early Buddhist scriptures include; Mahakammavibhanga Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 136); Upali Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 56); Kukkuravatika Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 57); Moliyasivaka Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 36.21); Sankha Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 42.8). For an explicit rejection of this view in the early texts see David J. Kalupahana, Causality--the central philosophy of Buddhism. University Press of Hawaii, 1975, page 119.
  97. ^ Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught (London: Gordon Fraser Limited, 1990), p. 51
  98. ^ (M.1.256) "Post-Classical Developments in the Concepts of Karma and Rebirth in Theravada Buddhism." by Bruce Matthews. in Karma and Rebirth: Post-Classical Developments State Univ of New York Press: 1986 ISBN 0-87395-990-6 pg 125
  99. ^ Collins, Steven. Selfless persons: imagery and thought in Theravāda Buddhism Cambridge University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-521-39726-X pg 215, Google Books
  100. ^ (D.3.105) "Post-Classical Developments in the Concepts of Karma and Rebirth in Theravada Buddhism. by Bruce Matthews. in Karma and Rebirth: Post-Classical Developments State Univ of New York Press: 1986 ISBN 0-87395-990-6 pg 125
  101. ^ Tucker, 2005, p.216
  102. ^ "PTS: Miln 71-72; 82-83; 84 (Pali Canon)". Accesstoinsight.org. 2010-06-30. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/miln/miln.3x.kell.html#miln-3-5-05. Retrieved 2011-12-06. 
  103. ^ His Holiness the Dalai Lama, How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life (New York: Atria Books, 2002), p. 46
  104. ^ Bruce Matthews in Ronald Wesley Neufeldt, editor, Karma and Rebirth: Post Classical Developments. SUNY Press, 1986, page 125. Google.com
  105. ^ Rahula, p. 144
  106. ^ Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Accesstoinsight.org.
  107. ^ Peter Harvey, The Selfless Mind. Curzon Press 1995, page 247.
  108. ^ Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Vol. 1, p. 377
  109. ^ The Connected Discourses of the Buddha. A Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Translator. Wisdom Publications
  110. ^ Transform Your Life: A Blissful Journey, page 52), Tharpa Publications (2001, US ed. 2007) ISBN 978-0-9789067-4-0
  111. ^ Reincarnation as understood by Sikh Religion[dead link]
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  113. ^ The Way of the Orisha by Philip John Neimark: Publisher HarperOne; 1st edition (May 28, 1993) ISBN 9780062505576
  114. ^ Wilson, Peter Lamborn, Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy, Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia. (1988). ISBN 0-936756-13-6 hardcover 0-936756-12-2 paperback
  115. ^ Seabrook, W. B., Adventures in Arabia, Harrap and Sons 1928, (chapters on Druze religion)
  116. ^ Char Joog No Chanto - Seeking forgiveness for sins from past lives
  117. ^ Wasserman, James (2001). The Templars and the Assassins - The Militia of Heaven. Inner Traditions International. pp. 133–137. ISBN 0-89281-859-X. 
  118. ^ see his To Die Before Death: The Sufi Way of Life
  119. ^ Gnostic liberation front The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan
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  121. ^ Sha'ar Ha'Gilgulim, The Gate of Reincarnations, Chaim Vital
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  124. ^ Jefferson, Warren (2008). Reincarnation beliefs of North American Indians : soul journeys, metamorphoses, and near-death experiences. Native Voices. ISBN 1570672121. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/272306114. 
  125. ^ ANALYSIS December 9, 2009 (2009-12-09). "Pewforum.org". Pewforum.org. http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/Many-Americans-Mix-Multiple-Faiths.aspx. Retrieved 2011-12-06. 
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  127. ^ Cranston, Sylvia. "Reincarnation in Christianity: A New Vision of the Role of Rebirth in Christian Thought (Quest Books) (9780835605014): Geddes MacGregor: Books". Amazon.com. ASIN 0835605019. 
  128. ^ "Theosophy and reincarnation". Blavatskytrust.org.uk. http://www.blavatskytrust.org.uk/html/wr_reincarnation.htm. Retrieved 2011-12-06. 
  129. ^ Does Scientology believe in reincarnation or past lives?
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Further reading

External links


Translations:

Reincarnation

Top

Dansk (Danish)
n. - reinkarnation

Nederlands (Dutch)
zielsverhuizing, wedergeboorte, nieuwe belichaming

Français (French)
n. - réincarnation

Deutsch (German)
n. - Reinkarnation, Wiedergeburt

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - μετενσάρκωση, μετεμψύχωση

Italiano (Italian)
reincarnazione

Português (Portuguese)
n. - reencarnação (f)

Русский (Russian)
перевоплощение

Español (Spanish)
n. - reencarnación

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - reinkarnation

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
化身, 轮回说, 转世

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 化身, 輪迴說, 轉世

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 다시 육체를 부여함, 영혼 재래[설], 재생

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 霊魂再来, 再生, 化身, 再来

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) تجسيد, تقمص‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮גלגול נשמות, גלגול‬


 
 

 

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