Reincarnation is the religious or philosophical belief that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body that may be human, animal or spiritual depending on the moral quality of the previous life's actions. This doctrine is a central tenet of the Indian religions and is a belief that was held by such historic figures as Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates. It is also a common belief of pagan religions such as Druidism, Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar and is found in many tribal 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, and the Shia sects such as the Alawi Shias and the Druze and the Rosicrucians. 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. 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.

Conceptual definitions[link]

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, 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 and has entered the English language. Another Greek term sometimes used synonymously is ''palingenesis'', "being born again".

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.

History[link]

Neolithic Era[link]

Africa[link]

Serer religion[link]

In Serer religion, the concept of reincarnation (''ciiɗ'' in Serer language) is linked to the ''Pangool'', the ancient Serer saints and ancestral spirits. Only the ''Pangool'' (singular : ''Fangool'') have the capacity to reincarnate depending on how they have lived their previous lives on earth. About 10,000 BCE, the ancient Serers depicted rupestral engravings of the ''Pangool'' on the Tassili n'Ajjer, represented by "man" and coiled "snakes" (the symbol of the ''Pangool''). This era marks the development of Serer religion and the concept of ''ciiɗ'' (reincarnation). In Serer religion, everything has a soul. The soul is immortal and must make its way to ''Jaaniiw'' (the sacred dwelling place of the soul or the afterlife). It is only those who have lived good lives on earth according to Serer religious teachings, whose souls will be able to make the necessary journey to ''Jaaniiw''. It is from this group that are canonized as ''Pangool'', called upon and venerated. These ''Pangool'' have the capacity to reincarnate and intercede with the Divine (''Rog'', the Supreme Deity in Serer religion).

Antiquity[link]

Origins (outside Africa)[link]

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.

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, some even suggesting that belief in reincarnation was present in Proto-Indo-European religion. 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.

Early Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism[link]

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. Another possibility are the prehistoric Dravidian traditions of South India. Some scholars suggest that the idea is original to the Buddha.

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.

In Hinduism, the holy book Rigveda, the oldest extant Indo-Aryan text, numerous references are made to rebirths, although it portrays reincarnation as "redeaths" (punarmrtyu). One verse reads "''Each death repeats the death of the primordial man (purusa), which was also the first sacrifice''" (RV 10:90). 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.''"

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) as well as Mahavira, the 24th Tirthankara of Jainism.

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. The later Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which incorporated elements of Buddhist thought, 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''.

Early Greece[link]

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). His younger contemporary Pythagoras (c. 570-c. 495 BCE), 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.

Classical Antiquity[link]

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.

The Celts[link]

In the 1st century BC Alexander Cornelius Polyhistor wrote;

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

Judaism[link]

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

Taoism[link]

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."

Middle Ages[link]

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, and the Bogomils in Bulgaria.

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.

Norse mythology[link]

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:

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Renaissance and Early Modern period[link]

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, Benjamin Franklin held a similar view. 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 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.

19th to 20th centuries[link]

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.

Reincarnation research[link]

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''.

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.

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.

Reincarnation in the West[link]

During recent decades, many people in the West have developed an interest in reincarnation. 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 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.

Contemporary religious philosophies[link]

Hinduism[link]

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;

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[link]

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

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. ''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." 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."

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. 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. 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.

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. As a result of this doctrine, Jainism attributes supreme importance to pure thinking and moral behavior.

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). 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.

Single-sensed souls, however, called ''nigoda'', 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. 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''.

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.

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. It enables the soul to experience the various themes of the lives that it desires to experience. 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.

Buddhism[link]

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, which serves as a contrast to Hinduism, where everything is connected, and in a sense, "everything is everything." 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'').

Sant mystics and Sikhism[link]

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. 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".

African Vodun[link]

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 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[link]

The idea of reincarnation is accepted by a few Muslim sects, particularly of the (Ghulat), and by other sects in the Muslim world such as Druzes. 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 Alawi, who are thought to have been influenced by Isma'ilism.

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.

Judaism[link]

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''.

Native American nations[link]

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

}}

Christianity[link]

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. In a 1981 Survey in Europe 31% of regular churchgoing Catholics expressed a belief in reincarnation.

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.

New religious movements[link]

Theosophy[link]

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. 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[link]

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."

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[link]

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.

See also[link]

Afterlife

Bhavacakra

Arthur Flowerdew

Joan Grant

Karmic astrology

Life review

Lifetimes True Accounts of Reincarnation

Metempsychosis

Past life regression

Planes of existence

Pre-existence

Shanti Devi

Soulmate

Spiritism

Subtle body

Xenoglossy

Zalmoxis

References[link]

Further reading[link]

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 0-7661-0079-0.

Baba, Meher, ''Discourses'', Sufism Reoriented, 1967, ISBN 1-880619-09-1.

Faye, Louis Diène, "Mort et Naissance Le Monde Sereer", Les Nouvelles Edition Africaines (1983), ISBN 2-7236-0868-9

Gravrand, Henry, "La Civilisation Sereer - ''Pangool''", vol.2, Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines du Senegal, (1990) ISBN 2-7236-1055-1

Gravrand, Henry, "La civilisation sereer, ''Cosaan'' : les origines", vol. 1, Nouvelles Editions africaines (1983), ISBN 2-7236-0877-8

Thiaw, Issa Laye, "La religiosité des Seereer, avant et pendant leur islamisation", in Éthiopiques, no. 54, volume 7, 2e semestre 1991

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

Childs, Gilbert and Sylvia, ''Your Reincarnating Child: Welcoming a soul to the world''. ISBN 1-85584-126-6

Doniger O'Flaherty, Wendy (1980). ''Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions.'' University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03923-8.

Doore, Gary, ''What Survives?'', 1990, ISBN 0-87477-583-3

Edwards, Paul, ''Reincarnation: A Critical Examination'' ISBN 1-57392-921-2

Foltz, Richard, ''Religions of the Silk Road'', New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, ISBN 978-0-230-62125-1

Gyatso, Geshe Kelsang, ''Joyful Path of Good Fortune'', pp 336–47, Tharpa Publications (2nd. ed., 1995) ISBN 978-0-948006-46-3

Gyatso, Geshe Kelsang, ''Living Meaningfully, Dying Joyfully'': The Profound Practice of Transference of Consciousness, Tharpa Publications (1999) ISBN 978-0-948006-63-0

Head, Joseph and Cranston, S.L., editors, ''Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery'', 1994, ISBN 0-517-56101-8

Jefferson, Warren. 2009. “Reincarnation Beliefs of North American Indians: Soul Journeys, Metamorphoses, and Near-Death Experiences.” Summertown, TN: Native Voices. ISBN 978-1-57067-212-5

Heindel, Max, ''The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception'' (Part I, Chapter IV: Rebirth and the Law of Consequence), 1909, ISBN 0-911274-34-0

Leland, Kurt. ''The Unanswered Question: Death, Near-Death, and the Afterlife''. Hampton Roads Publishing (2002). ISBN 978-1-57174-299-5

Klemp, H. (2003). Past lives, dreams, and soul travel. Minneapolis, MN: Eckankar. ISBN 1-57043-182-5

Newton, Michael, ''Life Between Lives: Hypnotherapy for Spiritual Regression'', 2004, ISBN 0-7387-0465-2

Newton, Michael, ''Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives'', 2000, ISBN 1-56718-499-5

Nikhilananda, Swami. ''Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna'', (8th Ed. 1992) ISBN 0-911206-01-9

Prophet, Elizabeth Clare, Erin L. Prophet, ''Reincarnation: The Missing Link in Christianity'', 1997, ISBN 0-922729-27-1

Palamidessi Tommaso, The Memory of Past Lives and Its Technique, ed. Archeosofica, 1977

Ramster, Peter, ''In Search of Lives Past'', ISBN 0-646-00021-7

Rinehart, Robin, ed., ''Contemporary Hinduism'', (2004).

Roberts, Jane. ''Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul'', (1972). ISBN 1-878424-07-6

Semkiw, Walter, ''Return of the Revolutionaries: The Case for Reincarnation and Soul Groups Reunited'', 2003, ISBN 1-57174-342-1

Steiner, Rudolf, ''Karmic Relationships: Esoteric studies'', 8 volumes, various dates, Rudolf Steiner Press. ISBN 0-85440-260-8 and others.

Steiner, Rudolf, ''A Western Approach to Reincarnation and Karma: selected lectures and writings''; ed. and intr. by René Querido. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, c1997, ISBN 0-88010-399-X

Steinpach, Richard, ''Hidden Connections Determine Our Earth-Life'', 1988, ISBN 1-57461-013-9

Stevenson, Ian (1980). ''Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation,'' second (revised and enlarged) edition, University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-0872-4

Taylor, Michael, "Master of the Rose", Comstar Media LLC, 1997–2007, ISBN 1-933866-07-1

Tucker, Jim (2005). ''Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives'', ISBN 0-312-32137-6

Weiss, Brian L., ''Only Love is real: the story of soulmates reunited'', 1996, ISBN 0-446-51945-6

External links[link]

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?

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).

Biography[link]

Early life and education[link]

Stevenson was raised in Ottawa, where his Scottish father was the Canadian correspondent for ''The Times'' of London. His mother had an interest in theosophy, and Stevenson would later credit her vast library on the subject as triggering his own interest in the paranormal. As a child Stevenson was often bedridden due to bouts of bronchitis, a condition that would continue throughout his adult life, and lead to the lifelong voracious reading habit which saw him read over 3500 books according to the list he kept since 1935.

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.

Early career[link]

Following graduation, Stevenson took a series of jobs in hospitals as an intern or resident, before embarking on research at Tulane University focusing on biochemical tissue oxidation. He became interested in finding explanations for psychosomatic illnesses and in the late 1940s he worked at New York Hospital as part of a team exploring psychosomatic medicine, a theme that persisted throughout his later research. This work persuaded him that the reductionism of biochemistry rendered it inadequate as an explanatory tool, and he chose to pursue psychiatry over internal medicine.

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.

Research interests[link]

Criticism of psychoanalysis[link]

Early in his career Stevenson became a controversial figure amongst psychoanalysts. He opposed what he saw as the determinism of Sigmund Freud, arguing that there was little room for free will if a person's character was formed almost entirely by their experiences as an infant. His 1957 paper questioning whether personality was more plastic in childhood than adulthood provoked strong reactions from psychoanalysts. He said later that the rejection of his views in these cases helped prepare him for the rejection he experienced with his work on paranormal phenomena.

Interest in parapsychology[link]

Stevenson came to see both behaviorism and psychoanalysis as unable to explain the formation of individual characteristics and personality. In the late 1950s, he reviewed "cases suggestive of reincarnation", and was impressed by certain similarities among published reports, particularly that a significant proportion of subjects were under the age of 10 when they apparently recalled past lives. He started collecting and investigating cases of children who seemed to recall past lives, without using hypnosis. After publishing a paper on reincarnation in 1960, Stevenson was invited to travel to India and Sri Lanka by self-professed psychic and founder of the Parapsychology Foundation Eileen J. Garrett. The trip convinced him that the child cases were plentiful and impressive. Around the time of his first visits to India, inventor Chester Carlson began to offer financial support for his work, and when Carlson died in 1968 he left $1 million to endow a Chair at the University of Virginia, and a further $1 million for Stevenson himself to continue his research into reincarnation.

Division of Personality Studies[link]

Carlson's bequest enabled Stevenson to set up the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia, with the founding principle of conducting "scientific empirical investigation of phenomena that suggest that currently accepted scientific assumptions and theories about the nature of mind or consciousness, and its relationship to matter, may be incomplete." It remains one of several academic departments in the world dedicated to the study of paranormal phenomena. It was later renamed The Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) with Stevenson appointed as Director. Stevenson resisted efforts to have the word "parapsychology" used to describe his department and research, arguing that his work was distinct from parapsychology, and was an extension of his more mainstream psychiatric work.

Reincarnation research[link]

Stevenson traveled extensively to conduct field research into reincarnation and investigated cases in Africa, Alaska, Europe, India and both North and South America, logging around 55,000 miles a year between 1966 and 1971. He reported that the children he studied usually started to speak of their supposed past lives between the ages of two and four, then ceased to do so by seven or eight, with frequent mentions of having died a violent death, and what seemed to be clear memories of the manner of death. After interviewing the children, their families, and others, Stevenson would attempt to identify if there had been a living person who satisfied the various claims and descriptions collected, and who had died prior to the child's birth.

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.

Reception[link]

Stevenson’s conclusions gained little support from within the scientific community, although Eugene Brody has suggested many of them simply dismiss ideas like reincarnation. While Stevenson published his research in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and three scientific commentators have stated that Stevenson rigorously followed the scientific method in conducting his research, mainstream scientists "tended to ignore or dismiss his decades in the field and his many publications".

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. Skeptic Sam Harris said of Stevenson "either he is a victim of truly elaborate fraud, or something interesting is going on".

Retirement[link]

After the 1984 death of his wife Octavia, Stevenson married Margaret Pertzoff in 1985. He retired in 2002, although the Department of Perceptual Studies continues his work. Bruce Greyson has taken over as the Director while Jim B. Tucker, a child psychiatrist, is continuing Stevenson's reincarnation research with children, focusing on North American cases and exploring possible mechanisms for personality transfer.

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 Westminster-Canterbury of the Blue Ridge Retirement community in Charlottesville, Virginia, on February 8, 2007.

The locked cabinet[link]

Nearly 40 years ago, Stevenson bought and set a combination lock on a filing cabinet in the Division of Perceptual Studies. He based the combination on a mnemonic device known only to him, possibly a word or a sentence.

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.

Bibliography[link]

Books[link]

Ian Stevenson authored or co-authored more than a dozen books. Stevenson died in 2007, and many of these books are mentioned in his obituaries in the ''British Medical Journal'', ''New York Times'', and the ''Washington Post''.

Early medical books[link]

''Medical History-Taking'', New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1960.

''The Psychiatric Examination'', Boston: Little, Brown, 1969.

''The Diagnostic Interview'' (2nd revised edition of ''Medical History-Taking''), New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation[link]

''Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation'', University of Virginia Press, ISBN 0-8139-0872-8, 1966.

''Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation,'' (second revised and enlarged edition), University of Virginia Press, ISBN 978-0-8139-0872-4, 1974.

This book includes detailed reports of 20 cases of children (from five different countries) who claimed to remember previous lives.

Cases of the Reincarnation Type[link]

''Cases of the Reincarnation Type Vol. I: Ten Cases in India'', University of Virginia Press, 1975.

''Cases of the Reincarnation Type Vol. II: Ten Cases in Sri Lanka'', University of Virginia Press, 1978.

''Cases of the Reincarnation Type Vol. III: Twelve Cases in Lebanon and Turkey'', University of Virginia Press, 1980.

''Cases of the Reincarnation Type Vol. IV: Twelve Cases in Thailand and Burma'', University of Virginia Press, 1983.

Birthmarks and birth defects[link]

''Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects Volume 1: Birthmarks'' and ''Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects Volume 2: Birth Defects and Other Anomalies''. (2 volumes), Praeger Publishers, ISBN 0-275-95282-7, 1997.

''Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect''. Praeger Publishers, ISBN 0-275-95282-7, 1997. (A short and non-technical version of ''Reincarnation and Biology'', for the general reader)

Other books[link]

''Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation'', (revised edition) ISBN 0-7864-0913-4, 2000, (A general non-technical introduction into Reincarnation research).

''European Cases of the Reincarnation Type''. McFarland & Company, ISBN 0-7864-1458-8, 2003.

''Telepathic Impressions: A Review and Report of 35 New Cases'', University Press of Virginia, 1970.

''Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy''. University of Virginia Press, ISBN 0-8139-0994-5, 1984.

''Xenoglossy: A Review and Report of A Case'', University of Virginia Press, 1974.

''A World in a Grain of Sand: The Clairvoyance of Stefan Ossowiecki'', ISBN 978-0-7864-2112-1, (with Mary Rose Barrington and Zofia Weaver), McFarland Press, 2005.

Selected articles[link]

See also[link]

Afterlife

C. T. K. Chari

Satwant Pasricha

Richard Wiseman

Xenoglossy

References[link]

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 Category:People from Ottawa Category:Canadian people of Scottish descent

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