Reincarnation describes the concept whereby 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. The idea was also fundamental to some Greek philosophers and religions as well as other religions, such as Druidism, and later on, Spiritism, and Eckankar. It is also found in many small-scale societies around the world, in places such as Siberia, West Africa, North America, and Australia.
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 and the Rosicrucians. The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of the Neoplatonism, 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. 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 Carl Sagan said that more reincarnation research is needed.
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'' 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. 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. 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, 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
''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'': the belief is found among Shi'a ghulat Muslim sects.
The origin of the Indian tradition is usually assumed to lie in the non-Vedic sramana traditions, which would explain why it only enters the historical record with the adoption of sramana elements into mainstream Brahmin orthodoxy at the end of the Vedic period. along with the associated concepts of ''karma, samsara'' and ''moksha''.
Some scholars suggest that the idea is original to the Buddha. Another possibility is an origin in the native tribal religions of the pre-Indo-Aryan Ganges valley, or in prehistoric Dravidian traditions of South India.
Whatever its ultimate origin, Indian discussion of reincarnation enters the historical record from about the 6th century BC, with the development of the Vedantic tradition, in the early Upanishads (around the middle of the first millennium BC), Gautam Buddha (5th century BC) as well as Mahavir the Tirthankar of Jainism.
Early Greek discussion of the concept likewise dates to the 6th century BC. An early Greek thinker known to have considered rebirth is Pherecydes of Syros (fl. 540 BC). His younger contemporary Pythagoras (c. 570-c. 495 BC), its first famous exponent, instituted societies for its diffusion. Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC) presented accounts of reincarnation in his works, particularly the ''Myth of Er''.
Proponents of cultural transmission have looked for links between Iron Age Celtic, Greek and Vedic philosophy and religion, some even suggesting that belief in reincarnation was present in Proto-Indo-European religion. 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.
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.
The Rig Veda makes numerous references to rebirths, although it portrays reincarnation as "redeaths" (punarmrtyu.) It declares, "''Each death repeats the death of the primordial man (purusa), which was also the first sacrifice''" (RV 10:90).
The following is another excerpt from the Rig Veda (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. ::When thou hast made him ready, Jatavedas, then do thou give him over to the Fathers. When he attains unto the life that waits him, he shall become the Deities' controller. ::The Sun receive thine eye, the Wind thy spirit; go, as thy merit is, to earth or heaven. Go, if it be thy lot, unto the waters; go, make thine home in plants with all thy members. ::Thy portion is the goat: with heat consume him: 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.
The early Buddhist texts discuss techniques for recalling previous births, predicated on the development of high levels of meditative concentration. The later Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which exhibit heavy Buddhist influence, give similar instructions on how to attain the ability. The Buddha reportedly warned that this experience can be misleading and should be interpreted with care.
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''. The Hasidic tzadik was believed to know the past lives of each person through his semi-prophetic abilities.
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. 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 and satirized by Lucian. 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 and Horace.
Virgil works the idea into his account of the Underworld in the sixth book of the Aeneid. 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.
Some early Christian Gnostic sects professed reincarnation. The Sethians and followers of Valentinus believed in it. 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 attributes Mani's teaching of reincarnation to Buddhist influence. However the inter-relation of Manicheanism, Orphism, Gnosticism and neo-Platonism is far from clear.
Julius Caesar recorded that the druids of Gaul, Britain and Ireland had metempsychosis as one of their core doctrines;
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". 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.
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:
During the Renaissance translations of Plato, the Hermetica and other works fostered new European interest in reincarnation. Marsilio Ficino argued that Plato's references to reincarnation were intended allegorically, Shakespeare made fun but Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by authorities after being found guilty of heresy by the Roman Inquisition for his teachings. But the Greek philosophical works remained available and, particularly in north Europe, were discussed by groups such as the Cambridge Platonists.
By the 19th century the philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche 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''.
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. 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, 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.
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. 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...". Hypnosis, used in psychoanalysis for retrieving forgotten memories, was eventually tried as a means of studying the phenomenon of past life recall.
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. 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. 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.
The most cited objection to reincarnation is that there is no mechanism known to modern science that would enable a personality to survive death and travel to another body, and researchers such as Professor Stevenson acknowledge this limitation. Another objection is that the vast majority of people do not remember previous lives. A possible counter-argument to this is that not all people reincarnate, although Professor Stevenson once proposed "maybe we're supposed to forget, but sometimes that system malfunctions, and we don't forget completely". Stevenson found that in the majority of cases he investigated people who remembered past lives had met some sort of violent or untimely death. Some people see a problem with population increase as there seems to be no way of "new souls" coming into existence, though this is addressed by many philosophies: Saiva Siddhanta believes that new souls constantly emanate from God like sparks from a fire; Other explanations include souls moving between people and animals, multiple planets and the time between incarnations decreasing as population increases.
Recent studies have indicated that some Westerners 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. 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.
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."
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.
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. 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. 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.
In Hinduism the soul (atman) is immortal while the body is subject to birth and death. The Bhagavad Gita states;
and,
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, 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.
Jainism, like Buddhism, is historically connected with the ''sramana'' tradition with which the earliest mentions of reincarnation are associated.
The early Buddhist texts make it clear that there is no permanent consciousness that moves from life to life. 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, 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'') or stream of consciousness (Pali: ''viññana-sotam'', Sanskrit: ''vijñāna-srotām, vijñāna-santāna'', or ''citta-santāna'') upon death (or "the dissolution of the aggregates" (P. ''khandha''s, S. ''skandha''s)), 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. 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'') or volitional action. The basic cause is the abiding of consciousness in ignorance (Pali: ''avijja'', Sanskrit: ''avidya''): when ignorance is uprooted rebirth ceases.
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". 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. 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, 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. 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'').
Modern Sufis who embrace the idea of reincarnation include Bawa Muhaiyadeen. However Hazrat Inayat Khan has criticized the idea as unhelpful to the spiritual seeker.
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. 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. ''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''.
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
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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'', that Christian doctrine and reincarnation are not mutually exclusive belief systems.
====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."
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.
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.
Category:Esoteric Christianity Category:Esotericism Category:Hindu philosophical concepts Category:Jain philosophical concepts Category:Buddhist philosophical concepts Category:Philosophy of mind Category:Afterlife Category:Shabd paths Category:Death in Greek philosophy Category:Ismaili theology Category:Kabbalah Category:Druze
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Name | Ian Stevenson |
---|---|
Birth date | October 31, 1918 |
Birth place | Montreal, Canada |
Death date | February 08, 2007 |
Death place | Charlottesville, Virginia |
Field | Biochemistry, psychiatry, parapsychology |
Work institutions | University of Virginia |
Alma mater | St. Andrews University, McGill University |
Known for | Reincarnation research |
Influences | Psychosomatic medicine |
Influenced | Bruce Greyson, Jim B. Tucker, Satwant Pasricha, Carol Bowman |
Footnotes | }} |
Ian Pretyman Stevenson, MD, (October 31, 1918–February 8, 2007) was a Canadian biochemist and professor of psychiatry. Until his retirement in 2002, he was head of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, which investigates the paranormal.
Stevenson considered that the concept of reincarnation might supplement those of heredity and environment in helping modern medicine to understand aspects of human behavior and development. He traveled extensively over a period of 40 years to investigate 3,000 childhood cases that suggested to him the possibility of past lives. Stevenson saw reincarnation as the survival of the personality after death, although he never suggested a physical process by which a personality might survive death. Stevenson was the author of several books, including ''Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation'' (1974), ''Children Who Remember Previous Lives'' (1987), ''Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect'' (1997), ''Reincarnation and Biology'' (1997), and ''European Cases of the Reincarnation Type'' (2003).
There has been a mixed reaction to Stevenson's work. Critics have questioned his research methods and conclusions, and his work has been described by some as pseudoscience. Others have, however, stated that his work was conducted with appropriate scientific rigor. Stevenson's research was the subject of Tom Shroder's ''Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives'' (1999) and Jim B. Tucker's ''Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives'' (2005).
He studied medicine at St. Andrews University in Scotland, and at McGill University in Montreal, receiving a BSc in 1942 and a degree in medicine in 1943, graduating top of his class.
After training as a psychiatrist, Stevenson taught at Louisiana State University. In the 1950s, inspired by a meeting with Aldous Huxley, he was involved in the early medical study of the effects of LSD and mescaline. He tried LSD himself, describing three days of "perfect serenity" and commenting, "I could never be angry again. As it happens that didn't work out, but the memory of it persisted as something to hope for."
In 1957, he was appointed head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. His early scientific research included psychosomatic illnesses, as well as writing textbooks on interviewing patients and psychiatric examinations.
Stevenson's research is associated with a 'minimalist' model of reincarnation that makes no religious claims. According to Robert Almeder, the central feature of this model is that "There is something essential to some human personalities, however we ultimately characterize it, which we cannot plausibly construe solely in terms of either brain states, or properties of brain states, or biological properties caused by the brain and, further, after biological death this non-reducible essential trait sometimes persists for some time, in some way, in some place, and for some reason or other, existing independently of the person's former brain and body. Moreover, after some time, some of these irreducible essential traits of human personality, for some reason or other, and by some mechanism or other, come to reside in other human bodies either some time during the gestation period, at birth, or shortly after birth."
Stevenson believed the strongest cases he had collected in support of this model involved both testimony and physical evidence. In over 40 of these cases Stevenson gathered physical evidence relating to the often rare and unusual birthmarks and birth defects of children which he claimed matched wounds recorded in the medical or post-mortem records for the individual Stevenson identified as the past-life personality.
The children in Stevenson's studies often behaved in ways he felt suggestive of a link to the previous life. These children would display emotions toward members of the previous family consistent with their claimed past life, e.g., deferring to a husband or bossing around a former younger brother or sister who by that time was actually much older than the child in question. Many of these children also displayed phillias and phobias associated to the manner of their death, with over half who described a violent death being fearful of associated devices. Many of the children also incorporated elements of their claimed previous occupation into their play, while others would act out their claimed death repeatedly.
Tom Shroder said Stevenson's fieldwork technique was that of a detective or investigative reporter, searching for alternative explanations of the material he was offered. One boy in Beirut described being a 25-year-old mechanic who died after being hit by a speeding car on a beach road. Witnesses said the boy gave the name of the driver, as well as the names of his sisters, parents, and cousins, and the location of the crash. The details matched the life of a man who had died years before the child was born, and who was apparently unconnected to the child's family. In such cases, Stevenson sought alternative explanations—that the child had discovered the information in a normal way, that the witnesses were lying to him or to themselves, or that the case boiled down to coincidence. Shroder writes that, in scores of cases, no alternative explanation seemed to suffice.
Stevenson argued that the 3,000 or so cases he studied supported the possibility of reincarnation, though he was always careful to refer to them as "cases suggestive of reincarnation," or "cases of the reincarnation type." He also recognized a limitation, or what Paul Edwards calls the "modus operandi problem", namely the absence of evidence of a physical process by which a personality could survive death and travel to another body. Against this, Robert Almeder argues that "you may not know how something occurs but have plenty of evidence that it occurs." Recent work by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff on quantum consciousness has been suggested as hinting at a possible mechanism for the persistence of consciousness after death. However the hypothesis of Quantum mind which this work builds on, is itself under ongoing debate.
In 1977 the ''Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease'' devoted most of one issue to Stevenson's work. In an editorial for that issue, psychiatrist Eugene Brody explained the decision to publish research that might normally be regarded as unscientific due to the "scientific and personal credibility of the authors, the legitimacy of their research methods, and the conformity of their reasoning to the usual canons of rational thought." In the same issue psychiatrist Harold Lief wrote in a commentary: "Either [Stevenson] is making a colossal mistake, or he will be known ... as 'the Galileo of the 20th century'." More recently a review of Stevenson's ''European Cases of the Reincarnation Type'' described it as "an inspiring example of application of a painstaking protocol to sift facts from fancy."
Stevenson's work has drawn criticism from skeptical groups and individuals such as The Skeptics Society and Robert Todd Carroll, while philosopher Paul Edwards included a lengthy criticism of Stevenson's work in his book ''Reincarnation: A Critical Examination''. In each of these critiques, the authors question both the methods used and the evidence gathered by Stevenson, and offer alternative, more mainstream, explanations for the types of cases Stevenson argued were suggestive of reincarnation. Philosopher Paul Kurtz, founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, has gone further and suggested Stevenson's reincarnation research is pseudoscience. By contrast, in his books ''Death and Personal Survival'' and ''Beyond Death: The Evidence for Life After Death'', philosopher Robert Almeder endorsed Stevenson's research, rebutted most of Kurtz's objections, and concluded that the evidence he assembled argues strongly in favor of reincarnation, to the point of it being irrational to disbelieve that some people reincarnate.
Work on past-life experiences also attracted the attention of Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke who, while intrigued, felt it fell well short of providing proof of reincarnation, which they both viewed as unlikely. In his 1996 book ''The Demon-Haunted World'', Sagan stated of past-life experiences that it was one of three ESP claims warranting further study (along with the ability of people to affect random number generators, and receive thoughts or images 'projected' at them whilst under mild sensory deprivation), stating:
Clarke observed that Stevenson had produced a number of studies that were "hard to explain" conventionally, but noted: }}
Skeptic Sam Harris said of Stevenson "either he is a victim of truly elaborate fraud, or something interesting is going on".
Tucker said that toward the end of his life, Stevenson felt his long-stated goal of getting science to consider reincarnation as a possibility was not going to be realized in this lifetime. According to his University of Virginia obituary, his greatest frustration was not that people dismissed his theories, but that in his opinion most did so without even reading the evidence he had assembled. Stevenson died of pneumonia at the Blue Ridge Retirement community in Charlottesville, Virginia, on February 8, 2007.
A colleague, Emily Williams Kelly, told ''The New York Times'': "He did say, that if he found himself able, he would try to communicate that. Presumably, if someone had a vivid dream about him, in which there seemed to be a word or a phrase that kept being repeated—I don't quite know how it would work—if it seemed promising enough, we would try to open it using the combination suggested." As of February 2007, the ''Times'' reports, the filing cabinet remains locked.
Category:1918 births Category:2007 deaths Category:Canadian psychiatrists Category:Reincarnation Category:Reincarnation research Category:Canadian expatriate academics in the United States Category:Alumni of the University of St Andrews Category:McGill University alumni Category:University of Virginia faculty Category:Canadian scientists Category:Parapsychologists Category:Deaths from pneumonia
de:Ian Stevenson eo:Ian Stevenson fr:Ian Stevenson pl:Ian Stevenson pt:Ian Stevenson ru:Стивенсон, Ян simple:Ian Stevenson fi:Ian Stevenson ta:இயான் ஸ்டீவன்சன்This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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