Reincarnation

Reincarnation in Hindu art

For other uses, see Reincarnation (disambiguation).

See also: Reincarnation in popular culture

Reincarnation (literally, "to be made flesh again") is believed to occur when the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, comes back to Earth in a newborn body. This phenomenon is also known as transmigration of the soul. This doctrine is a central tenet within the majority of Indian religious traditions, such as Hinduism and Jainism. The idea was also fundamental to some Greek philosophers and religions as well as other religions, such as Druidism, that had Indo-European origins.

Recently a significant number of people in the West have been shown to accept the idea of reincarnation including certain contemporary Christians,, 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. A small number of parapsychologists have claimed evidence that they believe supports reincarnation.

However the idea of rebirth is not entirely a modern one in the west: in 1911 W.Y. Evans-Wentz published anthropological research that showed it was still traceable as a coherent view among the peasants of the British Isles, as it is also found in Celtic literature of the middle ages.

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. Additionally, while reincarnation generally implies the taking of a human form on Earth, the Jain cosmology and Buddhist cosmology posits that people are reborn into many worlds, in which they take on varied forms.

Indo-European religion and thought

The concept of reincarnation (along with karma, samsara, and moksha) was likely first developed within the pre-Aryan non-Vedic culture, whose spiritual ideas greatly influenced later Indian religious thought. Buddhism and Jainism are continuations of this tradition, and the early Upanishadic movement was influenced by it. Reincarnation was adopted from this religious culture by Brahmin orthodoxy, and Brahmins first wrote down scriptures containing these ideas in the early Upanishads. 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.

Hinduism

Reincarnation is a core belief within Hinduism. The soul (atman) is immortal while the body is subject to birth and death. The Bhagavad Gita states;

Hindus believe in reincarnation, the process wherein 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 boyhood 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)

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 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 of the body and the phenomenal world that grounds 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. The cycle of death and rebirth, governed by karma, is referred to as samsara. One is reborn through desire: a person desires to be born because he or she wants to enjoy a body, 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. When the cycle of rebirth thus comes to an end, a person is said to have attained liberation (moksha). 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.

Hindu Gods are said to have incarnated in various forms under different circumstances. Lord Vishnu is known for His ten incarnations, the Dashavatars.

Jainism

Further information: Karma in Jainism and Jain philosophy

In Jainism, particular reference is given to how devas (gods) also reincarnate after they die. A Jain who accumulates enough good karma may become a deva but this is generally seen as undesirable since devas eventually die and one might then come back as a lesser being. This belief also exists in a number of schools of Hinduism.

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.

Main article: Rebirth (Buddhism)

Gautama Buddha taught a distinct concept of rebirth constrained by the concepts: anattā, that there is no irreducible ātman or "self" tying these lives together; and anicca, that all compounded things are subject to dissolution, including all the components of the human person and personality. 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. Transmigration is the effect of karma (kamma) , volitional action. Instead of a fixed entity, what is reborn is an "evolving consciousness" (M.1.256) or "stream of consciousness" (D.3.105), whose quality has been conditioned by karma.

Buddhism suggests that samsara, the process of rebirth, occurs across five or six realms of existence. It is actually said in Tibetan Buddhism that it is very rare for a person to be reborn in the immediate next life as a human. This depends on the karmic potentialities (or "seeds") they have created with their actions and upon their state of mind at the time of death. If we die with a peaceful mind, this will stimulate a virtuous seed and we shall experience a fortunate rebirth; but if we die with a disturbed mind, in a state of anger, say, this will stimulate a non-virtuous seed and we shall experience an unfortunate rebirth. This is similar to the way in which nightmares are triggered by our being in an agitated state of mind just before falling asleep.

Tibetan Buddhists believe that an accomplished or realized practitioner (by maintaining conscious awareness during the death process) can choose to return to samsara and exist within, but no longer uncontrollably bound to, the cycle of rebirth. In this way, many lamas choose to be born again and again as humans, and are called tulkus or incarnate lamas.

Skeptic Carl Sagan asked the Dalai Lama what would he do if a fundamental tenet of his religion (reincarnation) was 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."

• See also Anatta, Vajrayana, Mahayana, Theravada, Tulku

Sant mystics and Sikhism

Reincarnation remained a tenet of the Sant Bhakti movement and of related mystics on the frontiers of 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. 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. 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".

Theosophy

The Theosophical Society, the first institution in the modern west to spread the concept of reincarnation, draws much of its inspiration from India. The idea is, according to a recent Theosophical writer, "the master-key to modern problems," including heredity. In the Theosophical world-view reincarnation is the vast rhythmic process by which the soul, the part of man 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.

The classical world

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

Metempsychosis (Greek: μετεμψύχωσις) in the Greek language means "transmigration of the soul", especially its reincarnation after death, wherein an individual incarnates from one body to another, either human, animal, or plant. The term has been used by modern philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Kurt Gödel and Nietzsche.. Another term sometimes used synonymously is Palingenesia.

The Orphic religion, which held the doctrine, first appeared in Thrace in north-eastern Greece and, about the 6th century BC, organized itself into mystery schools at Eleusis and elsewhere, and produced a copious literature. 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.

The earliest known Greek thinker with whom metempsychosis is connected is Pherecydes of Syros but Pythagoras, said to have been his pupil, is its first famous exponent, who probably brought Orphic doctrine from North-Eastern Hellas to Magna Graecia and instituted societies for its diffusion. Several ancient sources affirm that Pythagoras claimed he could remember his past lives. An association between Pythagorean philosophy and reincarnation was routinely accepted throughout antiquity.

Plato presented accounts of reincarnation in his works, particularly the Myth of Er. In Plato's Phaedo Socrates, prior to his death, states; "I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead." In the Republic he tells 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. However Xenophon does not mention Socrates as believing in reincarnation. Plato may have incorporated this concept from Pythagoreanism or Orphism.

The concept underpins Plato's ideas concerning innate knowledge. Plato taught that "all learning is but recollection" because we have innate knowledge of universal ideas. 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. Therefore, according to Plato, we need only recall our buried memories to manifest innate knowledge. In Plato's view the number of souls was fixed;

In later Greek literature the doctrine is mentioned in a fragment of Menander (the Inspired Woman) and satirized by Lucian (Gallus 18 seq.). In Roman literature it is found as early as Ennius, 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 (i. 124) and by Horace (Epist. II. i. 52).

Virgil works the idea into his account of the Underworld in the sixth book of the Aeneid (vv. 724 sqq.). 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.

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 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 was probably commonplace among the Vikings 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.

The Druids

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;

"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."

Many scholars accept this account as one of many links traceable between Druid, ancient Greek and Vedic religion and culture arising from a common Indo-European heritage. Diodorus Siculus thought the druids might have been influenced by the teachings of Pythagoras and one modern scholar has speculated that Buddhist missionaries had been sent by the Indian king Ashoka.

Neopaganism

Today, most Wiccans, Witches, Occulists, and Modern Traditional Pagans seem to have the common belief that when one dies they do not always move on to a different plane of existence, but that they are reincarnated into another human, animal, or living creature. Some, Wiccans in particular, believe when they die they move onto a place called Summerland, temporarily, to rest and prepare for their next incarnation. Many Pagans believe that they will incarnate many lifetimes, until they have experienced all there is to experience, until they move on to a higher plane of existence. The ethnic neopagan Lithuanian faith, Romuva, accepts reincarnation as the most probable form of existence after death.

Judaic monotheism

Judaism

Rabbi Yirmiyahu Ullman wrote that "Reincarnation is an ancient, mainstream belief in Judaism". Rabbi Avraham Arieh Trugman states that Jewish tradition supports reincarnation though the idea has only been openly discussed in the last five centuries. There is no reference to reincarnation in the Talmud or any prior writings and most Jews do not believe in it but it is found in oral tradition (qabala) concerning the meaning of the Torah.. Reincarnation, called gilgul, became popular in folk belief and is found in the Yiddish literature of Ashkenazi Jews. Several of Martin Buber's early collection of stories of Baal Shem Tov refer to successive lives. Most Orthodox Jewish prayerbooks have a prayer asking for forgiveness of sins committed in this gilgul or a previous one. Qabalists see the Zohar, the key text of Qabala as mentioning the idea, that the idea that human souls could reincarnate into non-human bodies is found in Qabalistic works from the 1200s and among mystics in the late 1500s.

Ullman and Rabbi Shraga Simmons see the idea intimated in Deuteronomy 33:6, following the ancient commentator Onkelos, who interpreted 'Let Reuben live and not die…' as meaning that Reuben should merit the World to Come directly, and not have to die again as result of being reincarnated. Deut. 25:5-10, and Isaiah 22:14, 65:6 are also cited. Nachmanides (Ramban 1195-1270), saw the idea in Job’s saying 'God does all these things twice or three times with a man to bring back his soul from the pit to…the light of the living' (Job 33:29,30)."

Other well-known rabbis who are reincarnationists include Rabbi Yonassan Gershom, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Talmud scholar Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Rabbi DovBer Pinson, Rabbi David M. Wexelman, Rabbi Zalman Schachter, and many others, too numerous to mention. Among well known (generally non-kabbalist or anti-kabbalist) Rabbis who rejected the idea of reincarnation are Saadia Gaon, David Kimhi, Hasdai Crescas, Yedayah Bedershi (early 14th century), Joseph Albo, Abraham ibn Daud, the Rosh and Leon de Modena. Saadia Gaon's Emunoth ve-Deoth refutes the doctrine, calling it a non-Jewish beliefs.

• See also Gilgul

Christianity

Mainstream Christian denominations have rejected the notion of reincarnation but some of the earliest Christian sects such as the Sethians and followers of the Gnostic Church of Valentinus believed in it. Some Christians contend that reincarnation was taught by the early Christian church, but due to bias and mistranslations, these teachings were lost or obscured. Geddes Macgregor argued that the Early Church Father Origen taught reincarnation.

The New Testament has passages that have been taken to allude to reincarnation. In Matthew 11:10-14 and 17:10-13, John 1:21, the Jews ask John the Baptist if he is Elijah and John replies that he is not. However this is a special case as Elijah was taken bodily up to heaven in a whirlwind and a chariot of fire, and Malachi 4:5 [1] states that God would send Elijah back to Earth as a foreunner of the Messiah. Other passages seem to reject the possibility of any return or contact with this world for souls in Heaven or Hell.

During the Renaissance there was new interest in reincarnation. Marsilio Ficino (Platonic Theology 17.3-4) argued that Plato's references to reincarnation were intended allegorically but Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by the Inquisition because of his teachings about reincarnation.

A few modern churches indirectly address the subject through teachings about death (see Particular judgment) or consider the matter open to individual interpretation due to the few biblical references that survive.

Among modern Christian-oriented teachings, the Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner describes the human soul as gaining new experiences in every epoch and in a variety of races or nations. Though Steiner described the incarnating soul as searching for and even preparing a familial lineage supportive of its future life, a person's character is also determined by his or her past lives. Some events occur due to our past, others prepare us for the future. Between these there is space for human free will. Steiner investigated the karma of many historical individuals, from Karl Marx to Julian the Apostate. Anthroposophy has developed various spiritual exercises that are intended to develop the capacity to discern past lives.

The American mystic Edgar Cayce, in Edgar Cayce on Karma, promoted reincarnation and karma as instruments of a loving God as well as natural laws - the purpose being to teach us certain spiritual lessons. Animals are said to have undifferentiated, "group" souls rather than individuality and consciousness.

• See also Cathars/Catharism, Gnosticism

The Muslim world

The idea of reincarnation is accepted by several Muslim sects, particularly of the extreme Sh'ia, (Ghulat), and other sects in the Muslim world. In Nizari Ismailism the doctrine is seen in some devotional/gnostic verses (Ginans). Historically, South Asian Isma'ilis performed chantas yearly, one of which is for sins committed in past lives. (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 Nusayri faith.

Reincarnation also exists in the Druze religion, which broke from Ismailism. The Druze believe that they will be reincarnated as Druze, their future descendants. Druze believe in five cosmic principles, represented by the five-colored Druze star: intelligence/reason (green), soul (red), word (yellow), precedent (blue), and immanence (white). These take the shape of five different spirits which, until recently, have been continuously reincarnated on Earth as prophets and philosophers including Adam, Pythagoras and Akhenaten. The Druze believe that, in every time period, these five principles were personified in five different people who came down together to Earth to teach humans the true path to God, but with them came five other individuals who would lead people away from the right path into "darkness".

Ya’furiyya Shia are also reincarnationists. Some Sunni Sufi mystics and poets have celebrated similar ideas:

I died as mineral and became a plant,

I died as plant and rose to animal,

I died as animal and I was man.

Why should I fear?

When was I less by dying?

However Hazrat Inayat Khan has criticized the idea of reincarnation as unhelpful to the spiritual seeker's quest for unity with God, as it focuses the aspirant's attention on the past and the future, rather than achieving spiritual transcendence in the present moment. Modern Sufis who embrace the idea of reincarnation include Bawa Muhaiyadeen (see his To Die Before Death: The Sufi Way of Life).

A verse of the Qur-an that may support the theory of reincarnation is:

• Thou [God] makest the night to pass into the day and Thou makest the day to pass into the night, and Thou bringest forth the living from the dead and Thou bringest forth the dead from the living, and Thou givest sustenance to whom Thou pleasest without measure.

Other verses seem to discount the idea:

• From the (earth) did We Create you, and into it Shall We return you, And from it shall We Bring you out once again.

Taoism and the Native American nations

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 BCE) 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."

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

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)

Scientology

See also: Scientology beliefs and practices.

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."

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.

Parapsychological research

Main article: Reincarnation research

Ian Stevenson was best known for investigating reports of young children who had claimed to remember a past life with events that occurred during a previous life, ultimately publishing more than 2,500 case studies over the course of his lifetime. According to Stevenson, the memories normally occur between the ages of three and seven years then fade shortly afterwards; he compared the memories with reports of people known to the deceased, attempting to do so before any contact between the child and the deceased's family had occurred, and searched for disconfirming evidence that could provide alternative explanations for the reports aside from reincarnation. Stevenson believed that the best evidence for reincarnation was the existence of birth marks and deformities on children when they occurred at the location of fatal wounds in the deceased, but also claimed unusual behaviors such as phobias for the thing that killed the deceased, and in some cases the mother having a dream in which the deceased announces their intention to reincarnate in the child, were also evidence of reincarnation. He conducted research on the subject throughout the world, including North and South America, Africa and Asia. The vast majority of cases investigated by Stevenson's group involved people who had met some sort of violent or untimely death. Stevenson's work tended to polarize opinion: While his supporters saw him as a misunderstood genius, others thought him gullible and superstitious. Stevenson was noted for his scientific rigor, but his conclusions regarding his research gained little or no support within the scientific community.

Surveys in the West

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%. 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. Overall 22% of respondents in Western Europe believe in reincarnation.

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.

See also

• Afterlife (see also Birth, Life, Death)
• Bhavacakra
• Near-death experience and Life review
• Past life regression
• Planes of existence
• Soul mate
• Subtle bodies
• Pre-existence
• Reincarnation research
• Rosicrucianism
• Samsara
• Spiritism
• Xenoglossy
• Zalmoxis
• Bhagavad Gita
• Karma in Hinduism (see article for info on relationship between birth in particular body to karma.)
• Shanti Devi
• Arthur Flowerdew
• Joan Grant
• Raaz Pichhle Janam Ka

References

Scientific Publications

• Edwards, Paul, Reincarnation: A Critical Examination ISBN 1-57392-921-2
• Shroder, Tom (1999). Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives.
• Stevenson, Ian (1980). Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, second (revised and enlarged) edition, University of Virginia Press. ISBN 9780813908724
• Stevenson, Ian, Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects(in 2 volumes) ISBN 0-275-95283-5
• Stevenson, Ian, Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation, revised edition ISBN 0-7864-0913-4
• Tucker, Jim, (2005). Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives, ISBN 0-312-32137-6
• Van Lommel, Pim. (2001). "Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands." The Lancet. 358: 2039-45.
• Braude, S.E. (1992). "Claims of Reincarnation: An Empirical Study of Cases in India". The Journal of Parapsychology. 56 (4). Retrieved 27 January 2008.

Other Publications

• Abd-ru-shin, In the Light of Truth - The Grail Message. ISBN 1-57461-006-6
• About Reincarnation: There are five ways to understand that we have lived before
• Acharya, Pt. Shriram Sharma, Template:PDFlink, 1999.
• Alegretti, Wagner, Retrocognitions: An Investigation into Memories of Past Lives and the Period Between Lives. ISBN 0-9702131-6-6, 2004.
• Archiati, Pietro, Reincarnation in Modern Life: Toward a new Christian Awareness. ISBN 0-904693-88-0
• Atkinson, William Walker, Reincarnation and the Law of Karma: A Study of the Old-new World-doctrine of Rebirth and Spiritual Cause and Effect, Kessinger Publishing, 1997. ISBN 0766100790.
• Bache, Christopher M., Lifecycles, Reincarnation and the Web of Life, 1991, ISBN 1-55778-645-3
• Besant, A.W., Reincarnation, Published by Theosophical Pub. Society, 1892.
• Boulting, W. Giordano Bruno, His Life, Thought, and Martyrdom, London: Kegan Paul, 1914.
• Bowman, Carol, Children's Past Lives, 1998, ISBN 0-553-57485-X
• Bowman, Carol, Return from Heaven, 2003, ISBN 0-06-103044-9
• Cerminara, Gina, Many Mansions: The Edgar Cayce Story on Reincarnation, 1990, ISBN 0-451-03307-8
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External links

• Discussion concerning Transmigration from the Vedic perspective
• Vedanta Philosophy: Five Lectures on Reincarnation, by Swami Abhedananda (online Book)
• Do We Live More than Once?
• Dharma, Transmigration & Reincarnation in the Vedas
• Rebirth according to Buddhism
• Did Plato Believe in Reincarnation?
• Wandering Souls: The Doctrine of Transmigration in Pythagorean Philosophy, by Dr. James Luchte
• The Columbia Encyclopedia: Transmigration of souls or Metempsychosis
• The Catholic Encyclopedia: Metempsychosis
• Jewish view of reincarnation
• Did Plato Believe in Reincarnation?