Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Kamran the Great (talk | contribs) at 11:29, 1 May 2020 (.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Reincarnation is the philosophical or religious belief that the non-physical essence of a living being starts a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death. It is also called rebirth or transmigration.

Reincarnation is a central tenet of Indian religions, namely Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Hinduism, although there are Hindu groups that do not believe in reincarnation but believe in an afterlife. It is an esoteric belief in many streams of Orthodox Judaism and is found (in different forms) in some beliefs of North American Natives and some Native Australians (while most believe in an afterlife or spirit world). A belief in rebirth/metempsychosis was held by Greek historic figures, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. It is also a belief in various modern religions. Although the majority of denominations within 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 Cathars, Alawites, the Druze, and the Rosicrucians. The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism, and Gnosticism of the Roman era as well as the Indian religions have been the subject of recent scholarly research. In recent decades, many Europeans and North Americans have developed an interest in reincarnation, and many contemporary works mention it.

Conceptual definitions

The word "reincarnation" derives from Latin, literally meaning, "entering the flesh again". The Greek equivalent metempsychosis (μετεμψύχωσις) derives from meta (change) and empsykhoun (to put a soul into), a term attributed to Pythagoras. An alternate term is transmigration implying migration from one life (body) to another. Reincarnation refers to the belief that an aspect of every human being (or all living beings in some cultures) continues to exist after death, this aspect may be the soul or mind or consciousness or something transcendent which is reborn in an interconnected cycle of existence; the transmigration belief varies by culture, and is envisioned to be in the form of a newly born human being, or animal, or plant, or spirit, or as a being in some other non-human realm of existence. 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".

Rebirth is a key concept found in major Indian religions, and discussed with various terms. Punarjanman (Sanskrit: पुनर्जन्मन्) means "rebirth, transmigration". Reincarnation is discussed in the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, with many alternate terms such as punarāvṛtti (पुनरावृत्ति), punarājāti (पुनराजाति), punarjīvātu (पुनर्जीवातु), punarbhava (पुनर्भव), āgati-gati (आगति-गति, common in Buddhist Pali text), nibbattin (निब्बत्तिन्), upapatti (उपपत्ति), and uppajjana (उप्पज्जन). These religions believe that this reincarnation is cyclic and an endless Saṃsāra, unless one gains spiritual insights that ends this cycle leading to liberation. The reincarnation concept is considered in Indian religions as a step that starts each "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence", but one that is an opportunity to seek spiritual liberation through ethical living and a variety of meditative, yogic (marga), or other spiritual practices. They consider the release from the cycle of reincarnations as the ultimate spiritual goal, and call the liberation by terms such as moksha, nirvana, mukti and kaivalya. However, the Buddhist, Hindu and Jain traditions have differed, since ancient times, in their assumptions and in their details on what reincarnates, how reincarnation occurs and what leads to liberation.

Gilgul, Gilgul neshamot or Gilgulei Ha Neshamot (Heb. גלגול הנשמות) is the concept of reincarnation in Kabbalistic Judaism, found in much Yiddish literature among Ashkenazi Jews. Gilgul means "cycle" and neshamot is "souls". Kabbalistic reincarnation says that humans reincarnate only to humans unless YHWH/Ein Sof/God chooses.

History

Origins

The origins of the notion of reincarnation are obscure. Discussion of the subject appears in the philosophical traditions of India. The Greek Pre-Socratics discussed reincarnation, and the Celtic Druids are also reported to have taught a doctrine of reincarnation.

Early Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism

The idea of reincarnation, saṃsāra, did not exist in the early Vedic religions. The idea of reincarnation has roots in the Upanishads of the late Vedic period (c. 1100 – c. 500 BCE), predating the Buddha and the Mahavira. The concepts of the cycle of birth and death, samsara, and liberation partly derive from ascetic traditions that arose in India around the middle of the first millennium BCE. Though no direct evidence of this has been found, the tribes of the Ganges valley or the Dravidian traditions of South India have been proposed as another early source of reincarnation beliefs.

The early Vedas do not mention the doctrine of Karma and rebirth but mention the belief in an afterlife. It is in the early Upanishads, which are pre-Buddha and pre-Mahavira, where these ideas are developed and described in a general way. Detailed descriptions first appear around the mid 1st millennium BCE in diverse traditions, including Buddhism, Jainism and various schools of Hindu philosophy, each of which gave unique expression to the general principle.

The texts of ancient Jainism that have survived into the modern era are post-Mahavira, likely from the last centuries of the 1st millennium BCE, and extensively mention rebirth and karma doctrines. The Jaina philosophy assumes that the soul (Jiva in Jainism, Atman in Hinduism) exists and is eternal, passing through cycles of transmigration and rebirth. After death, reincarnation into a new body is asserted to be instantaneous in early Jaina texts. Depending upon the accumulated karma, rebirth occurs into a higher or lower bodily form, either in heaven or hell or earthly realm. No bodily form is permanent: everyone dies and reincarnates further. Liberation (kevalya) from reincarnation is possible, however, through removing and ending karmic accumulations to one's soul. From the early stages of Jainism on, a human being was considered the highest mortal being, with the potential to achieve liberation, particularly through asceticism.

The early Buddhist texts discuss rebirth as part of the doctrine of Saṃsāra. This asserts that the nature of existence is a "suffering-laden cycle of life, death, and rebirth, without beginning or end". Also referred to as the wheel of existence (Bhavacakra), it is often mentioned in Buddhist texts with the term punarbhava (rebirth, re-becoming). Liberation from this cycle of existence, Nirvana, is the foundation and the most important purpose of Buddhism. Buddhist texts also assert that an enlightened person knows his previous births, a knowledge achieved through high levels of meditative concentration. Tibetan Buddhism discusses death, bardo (an intermediate state), and rebirth in texts such as the Tibetan Book of the Dead. While Nirvana is taught as the ultimate goal in the Theravadin Buddhism, and is essential to Mahayana Buddhism, the vast majority of contemporary lay Buddhists focus on accumulating good karma and acquiring merit to achieve a better reincarnation in the next life.

In early Buddhist traditions, Saṃsāra cosmology consisted of five realms through which the wheel of existence cycled. This included hells (niraya), hungry ghosts (pretas), animals (tiryak), humans (manushya), and gods (devas, heavenly). In latter Buddhist traditions, this list grew to a list of six realms of rebirth, adding demi-gods (asuras).

Rationale

The earliest layers of Vedic text incorporate the concept of life, followed by an afterlife in heaven and hell based on cumulative virtues (merit) or vices (demerit). However, the ancient Vedic Rishis challenged this idea of afterlife as simplistic, because people do not live equally moral or immoral lives. Between generally virtuous lives, some are more virtuous; while evil too has degrees, and the texts assert that it would be unfair for people, with varying degrees of virtue or vices, to end up in heaven or hell, in "either or" and disproportionate manner irrespective of how virtuous or vicious their lives were. They introduced the idea of an afterlife in heaven or hell in proportion to one's merit.

Comparison

Early texts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism share the concepts and terminology related to reincarnation. They also emphasize similar virtuous practices and karma as necessary for liberation and what influences future rebirths. For example, all three discuss various virtues – sometimes grouped as Yamas and Niyamas – such as non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, non-possessiveness, compassion for all living beings, charity and many others.

Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism disagree in their assumptions and theories about rebirth. Hinduism relies on its foundational assumption that "soul, Self exists" (Atman, attā), in contrast to Buddhist assumption that there is "no soul, no Self" (Anatta, anatman). Hindu traditions consider soul to be the unchanging eternal essence of a living being, and what journeys across reincarnations until it attains self-knowledge. Buddhism, in contrast, asserts a rebirth theory without a Self, and considers realization of non-Self or Emptiness as Nirvana (nibbana). Thus Buddhism and Hinduism have a very different view on whether a self or soul exists, which impacts the details of their respective rebirth theories.

The reincarnation doctrine in Jainism differs from those in Buddhism, even though both are non-theistic Sramana traditions. Jainism, in contrast to Buddhism, accepts the foundational assumption that soul exists (Jiva) and asserts this soul is involved in the rebirth mechanism. Further, Jainism considers asceticism as an important means to spiritual liberation that ends all reincarnation, while Buddhism does not.

Early Greece

Early Greek discussion of the concept 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. Some authorities believe that Pythagoras was Pherecydes' pupil, others that Pythagoras took up the idea of reincarnation from the doctrine of Orphism, a Thracian religion, or brought the teaching from India.

Plato (428/427–348/347 BCE) presented accounts of reincarnation in his works, particularly the Myth of Er. In Phaedo, Plato has 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

The Orphic religion, which taught reincarnation, 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.

Celtic paganism

In the 1st century BCE Alexander Cornelius Polyhistor wrote:

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

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

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

Hippolytus of Rome believed the Gauls had been taught the doctrine of reincarnation by a slave of Pythagoras named Zalmoxis. Conversely, Clement of Alexandria believed Pythagoras himself had learned it from the Celts and not the opposite, claiming he had been taught by Galatian Gauls, Hindu priests and Zoroastrians.

Germanic paganism

Surviving texts indicate that there was a belief in rebirth in Germanic paganism. Examples include figures from eddic poetry and sagas, potentially by way of a process of naming and/or through the family line. Scholars have discussed the implications of these attestations and proposed theories regarding belief in reincarnation among the Germanic peoples prior to Christianization and potentially to some extent in folk belief thereafter.

Judaism

The belief in reincarnation had first existed among Jewish mystics in the Ancient World, among whom differing explanations were given of the afterlife, although with a universal belief in an immortal soul. Today, reincarnation is an esoteric belief within many streams of modern Judaism. Kabbalah teaches a belief in gilgul, transmigration of souls, and hence the belief in reincarnation is universal in Hasidic Judaism, which regards the Kabbalah as sacred and authoritative, and is also held as an esoteric belief within Modern Orthodox Judaism. In Judaism, the Zohar, first published in the 13th century, discusses reincarnation at length, especially in the Torah portion "Balak." The most comprehensive kabbalistic work on reincarnation, Shaar HaGilgulim, was written by Chaim Vital, based on the teachings of his mentor, the 16th century kabbalist Isaac Luria, who was said to know the past lives of each person through his semi-prophetic abilities. The 18th century Lithuanian master scholar and kabbalist, Elijah of Vilna, known as the Vilna Gaon, authored a commentary on the biblical Book of Jonah as an allegory of reincarnation.

The practice of conversion to Judaism is sometimes understood within Orthodox Judaism in terms of reincarnation. According to this school of thought in Judaism, when non-Jews are drawn to Judaism, it is because they had been Jews in a former life. Such souls may "wander among nations" through multiple lives, until they find their way back to Judaism, including through finding themselves born in a gentile family with a "lost" Jewish ancestor.

There is an extensive literature of Jewish folk and traditional stories that refer to reincarnation.

Taoism

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

European Middle Ages

Around the 11–12th century in Europe, 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.

Renaissance and Early Modern period

While reincarnation has been a matter of faith in some communities from an early date it has also frequently been argued for on principle, as Plato does when he argues that the number of souls must be finite because souls are indestructible, 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 alluded to the doctrine of reincarnation 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

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. Famous World War II American General George Patton was a strong believer in reincarnation, believing, among other things, he was a reincarnation of the Carthaginian General Hannibal.

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. Humorist Don Marquis created a fictional cat named Mehitabel who claimed to be a reincarnation of Queen Cleopatra.

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.

Religions and philosophies

Buddhism

According to various Buddhist scriptures, Gautama Buddha believed in the existence of an afterlife in another world and in reincarnation,

Since there actually is another world (any world other than the present human one, i.e. different rebirth realms), one who holds the view 'there is no other world' has wrong view...

— Buddha, Majjhima Nikaya i.402, Apannaka Sutta, Translated by Peter Harvey

The Buddha also asserted that karma influences rebirth, and that the cycles of repeated births and deaths are endless. Before the birth of Buddha, ancient Indian scholars had developed competing theories of afterlife, including the materialistic school such as Charvaka, which posited that death is the end, there is no afterlife, no soul, no rebirth, no karma, and they described death to be a state where a living being is completely annihilated, dissolved. Buddha rejected this theory, adopted the alternate existing theories on rebirth, criticizing the materialistic schools that denied rebirth and karma, states Damien Keown. Such beliefs are inappropriate and dangerous, stated Buddha, because such annihilationism views encourage moral irresponsibility and material hedonism; he tied moral responsibility to rebirth.

The Buddha introduced the concept that there is no permanent self (soul), and this central concept in Buddhism is called anattā. Major contemporary Buddhist traditions such as Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions accept the teachings of Buddha. These teachings assert there is rebirth, there is no permanent self and no irreducible ātman (soul) moving from life to another and tying these lives together, there is impermanence, that all compounded things such as living beings are aggregates dissolve at death, but every being reincarnates. The rebirth cycles continue endlessly, states Buddhism, and it is a source of Dukkha (suffering, pain), but this reincarnation and Dukkha cycle can be stopped through nirvana. The anattā doctrine of Buddhism is a contrast to Hinduism, the latter asserting that "soul exists, it is involved in rebirth, and it is through this soul that everything is connected".

Different traditions within Buddhism have offered different theories on what reincarnates and how reincarnation happens. One theory suggests that it occurs through consciousness (Pali: samvattanika-viññana) or stream of consciousness (Pali: viññana-sotam, Sanskrit: vijñāna-srotām, vijñāna-santāna, or citta-santāna) upon death, which reincarnates into a new aggregation. This process, states this theory, is similar to the flame of a dying candle lighting up another. The consciousness in the newly born being is neither identical to nor entirely different from that in the deceased but the two form a causal continuum or stream in this Buddhist theory. Transmigration is influenced by a being's past karma (kamma). The root cause of rebirth, states Buddhism, is the abiding of consciousness in ignorance (Pali: avijja, Sanskrit: avidya) about the nature of reality, and when this ignorance is uprooted, rebirth ceases.

Buddhist traditions also vary in their mechanistic details on rebirth. Theravada Buddhists assert that rebirth is immediate while the Tibetan schools hold to the notion of a bardo (intermediate state) that can last up to 49 days. The bardo rebirth concept of Tibetan Buddhism, along with yidam, developed independently in Tibet without Indian influence, and involves 42 peaceful deities, and 58 wrathful deities. These ideas led to mechanistic maps on karma and what form of rebirth one takes after death, discussed in texts such as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The major Buddhist traditions accept that the reincarnation of a being depends on the past karma and merit (demerit) accumulated, and that there are six realms of existence in which the rebirth may occur after each death.

Within Japanese Zen, reincarnation is accepted by some, but rejected by others. A distinction can be drawn between "folk Zen", as in the Zen practiced by devotional lay people, and "philosophical Zen". Folk Zen generally accepts the various supernatural elements of Buddhism such as rebirth. Philosophical Zen, however, places more emphasis on the present moment.

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. 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.

Christianity

In the major Christian denominations, the concept of reincarnation is absent and it is nowhere explicitly referred to in the Bible. However, the impossibility of a second earthly death is stated by 1Peter 3:18–20, where it affirms that Jesus Christ God died once forever (in Latin: semel, a single time) for the sins of all the human kind. In Matthew 14:1–2, king Herod Antipas identified Jesus Christ God with a risen John the Baptist, before ordering his necking execution.

In a survey by the Pew Forum in 2009, 24% of American Christians expressed a belief in reincarnation and in a 1981 survey 31% of regular churchgoing European Catholics expressed a belief in reincarnation.

Some Christian theologians interpret certain Biblical passages as referring to reincarnation. These passages include the questioning of Jesus as to whether he is Elijah, John the Baptist, Jeremiah, or another prophet (Matthew 16:13–15 and John 1:21–22) and, less clearly (while Elijah was said not to have died, but to have been taken up to heaven), John the Baptist being asked if he is not Elijah (John 1:25). Geddes MacGregor, an Episcopalian priest and professor of philosophy, has made a case for the compatibility of Christian doctrine and reincarnation.

Idea of reincarnation in the early Church

There is evidence that Origen, a Church father in early Christian times, taught reincarnation in his lifetime but that when his works were translated into Latin these references were concealed. One of the epistles written by St. Jerome, "To Avitus" (Letter 124; Ad Avitum. Epistula CXXIV), which asserts that Origen's On First Principles (Latin: De Principiis; Greek: Περὶ Ἀρχῶν) was mistranscribed:

About ten years ago that saintly man Pammachius sent me a copy of a certain person's rendering, or rather misrendering, of Origen's First Principles; with a request that in a Latin version I should give the true sense of the Greek and should set down the writer's words for good or for evil without bias in either direction. When I did as he wished and sent him the book, he was shocked to read it and locked it up in his desk lest being circulated it might wound the souls of many.

Under the impression that Origen was a heretic like Arius, St. Jerome criticizes ideas described in On First Principles. Further in "To Avitus" (Letter 124), St. Jerome writes about "convincing proof" that Origen teaches reincarnation in the original version of the book:

The following passage is a convincing proof that he holds the transmigration of the souls and annihilation of bodies. 'If it can be shown that an incorporeal and reasonable being has life in itself independently of the body and that it is worse off in the body than out of it; then beyond a doubt bodies are only of secondary importance and arise from time to time to meet the varying conditions of reasonable creatures. Those who require bodies are clothed with them, and contrariwise, when fallen souls have lifted themselves up to better things, their bodies are once more annihilated. They are thus ever vanishing and ever reappearing.'

The original text of On First Principles has almost completely disappeared. It remains extant as De Principiis in fragments faithfully translated into Latin by St. Jerome and in "the not very reliable Latin translation of Rufinus."

Belief in reincarnation was rejected by Augustine of Hippo in The City of God.

Druze

Part of a series on Druze
Beliefs Al-Muwahhidun-Ahl at-Tawhid Reincarnation Theophany Esotericism Divine Call Seven Druze pillars Taqiya Walayah
Important figures Shu'ayb Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah Hamza ibn Ali Al-Darazi Baha al-Din al-Muqtana Al-Tanukhi
Texts Epistles of Wisdom (Rasa'il al-Hikma)
Holy places Mount Druze Shrine of Shu'ayb Khalwat
Holy days Eid al-Adha Ziyara
History Tanukh (Buhtur) dynasty Ma'n dynasty 1585 Ottoman expedition against the Druze Druze Power Struggle (1658–1667) Battle of Ain Dara 1838 Druze Revolt 1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus Hauran Druze Rebellion Jabal Druze State Jaysh al-Muwahhidin Qalb Loze massacre
Druze communities Syrian Druze Lebanese Druze Israeli Druze Jordanian Druze
Related topics Persecution of Druze List of Druze Religious symbols Christianity and Druze
Religion portal
v t e

Reincarnation is a paramount tenet in the Druze faith. There is an eternal duality of the body and the soul and it is impossible for the soul to exist without the body. Therefore, reincarnations occur instantly at one's death. While in the Hindu and Buddhist belief system a soul can be transmitted to any living creature, in the Druze belief system this is not possible and a human soul will only transfer to a human body. Furthermore, souls cannot be divided into different or separate parts and the number of souls existing is finite.

Few Druzes are able to recall their past but, if they are able to they are called a Nateq. Typically souls who have died violent deaths in their previous incarnation will be able to recall memories. Since death is seen as a quick transient state, mourning is discouraged. Unlike other Abrahamic faiths, heaven and hell are spiritual. Heaven is the ultimate happiness received when soul escapes the cycle of rebirths and reunites with the Creator, while hell is conceptualized as the bitterness of being unable to reunite with the Creator and escape from the cycle of rebirth.

Hinduism

The body dies, assert the Hindu traditions, but not the soul, which they assume to be the eternal reality, indestructible and bliss. Everything and all existence is believed to be connected and cyclical in many Hinduism-sects, all living beings composed of two things, the soul and the body or matter. Atman does not change and cannot change by its innate nature in the Hindu belief. Current Karma impacts the future circumstances in this life, as well as the future forms and realms of lives. Good intent and actions lead to good future, bad intent and actions lead to bad future, impacting how one reincarnates, in the Hindu view of existence.

There is no permanent heaven or hell in most Hinduism-sects. In the afterlife, based on one's karma, the soul is reborn as another being in heaven, hell, or a living being on earth (human, animal). Gods too die once their past karmic merit runs out, as do those in hell, and they return getting another chance on earth. This reincarnation continues, endlessly in cycles, until one embarks on a spiritual pursuit, realizes self-knowledge, and thereby gains mokṣa, the final release out of the reincarnation cycles. This release is believed to be a state of utter bliss, which Hindu traditions believe is either related or identical to Brahman, the unchanging reality that existed before the creation of universe, continues to exist, and shall exist after the universe ends.

The Upanishads, part of the scriptures of the Hindu traditions, primarily focus on the liberation from reincarnation. The Bhagavad Gita discusses various paths to liberation. The Upanishads, states Harold Coward, offer a "very optimistic view regarding the perfectibility of human nature", and the goal of human effort in these texts is a continuous journey to self-perfection and self-knowledge so as to end Saṃsāra – the endless cycle of rebirth and redeath. The aim of spiritual quest in the Upanishadic traditions is find the true self within and to know one's soul, a state that they assert leads to blissful state of freedom, moksha.

The Bhagavad Gita states:

Just as in the body childhood, adulthood and old age happen to an embodied being. So also he (the embodied being) acquires another body. The wise one is not deluded about this. – (2:13)

As, after casting away worn out garments, a man later takes new ones. So after casting away worn out bodies, the embodied Self encounters other new ones. – (2:22)

When an embodied being transcends, these three qualities which are the source of the body. Released from birth, death, old age and pain, he attains immortality. – (14:20)

There are internal differences within Hindu traditions on reincarnation and the state of moksha. For example, the dualistic devotional traditions such as Madhvacharya's Dvaita Vedanta tradition of Hinduism champion a theistic premise, assert that human soul and Brahman are different, loving devotion to Brahman (god Vishnu in Madhvacharya's theology) is the means to release from Samsara, it is the grace of God which leads to moksha, and spiritual liberation is achievable only in after-life (videhamukti). The nondualistic traditions such as Adi Shankara's Advaita Vedanta tradition of Hinduism champion a monistic premise, asserting that the individual human soul and Brahman are identical, only ignorance, impulsiveness and inertia leads to suffering through Saṃsāra, in reality there are no dualities, meditation and self-knowledge is the path to liberation, the realization that one's soul is identical to Brahman is moksha, and spiritual liberation is achievable in this life (jivanmukti).

Islam

Most Islamic schools of thought reject any idea of reincarnation of human beings or God. It teaches a linear concept of life, wherein a human being has only one life and upon death he or she is judged by God, then rewarded in heaven or punished in hell. Islam teaches final resurrection and Judgement Day, but there is no prospect for the reincarnation of a human being into a different body or being. During the early history of Islam, some of the Caliphs persecuted all reincarnation-believing people, such as Manichaeism, to the point of extinction in Mesopotamia and Persia (modern day Iraq and Iran). However, some Muslim minority sects such as those found among Sufis, and some Muslims in South Asia and Indonesia have retained their pre-Islamic Hindu and Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation. For instance, historically, South Asian Isma'ilis performed chantas yearly, one of which is for seeking forgiveness of sins committed in past lives. However Inayat Khan has criticized the idea as unhelpful to the spiritual seeker.

From the teachings of Modern Sufi Shaikh M.R. Bawa Muhaiyadeen (Guru Bawa); a person's state continuously changes during his one lifetime (angry/violent at once and being gentle/nice in another). So when a person's state changes, his previous state dies. Even though it dies, the earlier state (of anger) will be reborn in another minute. According to Guru Bawa; the changing of a person's state is described as “rebirth” or reincarnation, this should not be confused with the physical death & rebirth. Although some scholars wrongly misquote that Guru Bawa accepts the common belief of reincarnation.

Ghulat sects

Part of a series on Shia Islam
Beliefs and practices Monotheism Holy Books Prophethood Succession to Muhammad Imamate Ismaili Twelver Zaydi Angels Judgment Day Mourning of Muharram Intercession Clergy The Four Companions Arbaʽeen Pilgrimage
Days of remembrance Ashura Arba'een Mawlid Eid al-Fitr Eid al-Adha Eid al-Ghadir Mourning of Muharram Omar Koshan
History Verse of purification Two weighty things Mubahala Khumm Fatimah's house First Fitna Second Fitna Battle of Karbala Origin Persecution
Branches and sects Ja'fari Akhbari Usuli Shaykhi Zaydi Houthi Isma'ili Musta'li Tayyibi Dawoodi Bohra Progressive Hebtiahs Bohra Atba-i-Malak Bohra Sulaymani Bohra Alavi Bohra Qutbi Bohra Hafizi Nizari Khoja Satpanth Ghulat Alawi Alevi Bektashi Bektashism and folk religion Qizilbash Ishiki Extinct Shi'a sects
Ahl al-Kisa Muhammad Ali Fatima Hasan Husayn
Holy women Fatima Khadija bint Khuwaylid Umm Salama Zaynab bint Ali Umm Kulthum bint Ali Umm al-Banin Fatima bint Hasan Ruqayya bint Husayn Rubab Shahrbanu Fatima bint Musa Hakimah Khātūn Narjis Fatimah bint Asad Umm Farwah bint al-Qasim Ruqayya bint Ali Sayyida Nafisa
Shia Islam portal
v t e

The idea of reincarnation is accepted by a few Shia Muslim sects, particularly of the Ghulat. Alawis, belonging to the Shia denomination of Islam, hold that they were originally stars or divine lights that were cast out of heaven through disobedience and must undergo repeated reincarnation (or metempsychosis) before returning to heaven. They can be reincarnated as Christians or others through sin and as animals if they become infidels.

Jainism

In Jainism, the reincarnation doctrine, along with its theories of Saṃsāra and Karma, are central to its theological foundations, as evidenced by the extensive literature on it in the major sects of Jainism, and their pioneering ideas on these topics from the earliest times of the Jaina tradition. Reincarnation in contemporary Jainism traditions is the belief that the worldly life is characterized by continuous rebirths and suffering in various realms of existence.

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 their future births will allow them to experience and manifest their virtues and good feelings unhindered. In this case, they 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, they will attract karma which will ensure that they are reincarnated in hell, or in lower life forms, to enable their 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 lead 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 lead 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.

Judaism

Part of a series on
Kabbalah
Concepts Ein Sof Tzimtzum Ohr Ayin and Yesh Sefirot Four Worlds Seder hishtalshelut Tree of Life The path of the flaming sword Merkavah Jewish angelic hierarchy Shekhinah Partzufim Qlippoth Tohu and Tikun Sparks of holiness Messianic rectification Gilgul Kabbalistic astrology Gematria Notarikon Temurah Names of God in Judaism Shemhamphorasch Tzadik Tzadikim Nistarim Anthropomorphism in Kabbalah Panentheism
History Pre-Kabbalistic Jewish mysticism Tannaim Heichalot Sefer Yetzirah Chassidei Ashkenaz Medieval Bahir Toledano tradition Prophetic Kabbalah Zohar Kabbalistic commentaries on the Bible Mainstream displacement of rationalism with Kabbalah Renaissance Selective influence on Western thought Hermetic Qabalah Mysticism after Spanish expulsion Mystics of 16th-century Safed Cordoveran Kabbalah Lurianic Kabbalah Maharal's thought Popular Kabbalistic Mussar Early modern Baal Shem-Nistarim Sabbatean mystical heresies Emden–Eybeschutz controversy Immigration to the Land of Israel Traditional Oriental Kabbalists Beit El Synagogue Eastern European Judaism Hasidic Judaism / philosophy Lithuanian Jews Hasidic-Mitnagdic schism Modern Hasidic dynasties Mysticism in religious Zionism Academic interest in Jewish mysticism Non-Orthodox interest in Jewish mysticism English James Lees'
Practices Torah study Mystical exegesis Mitzvot Minhag Customary immersion in mikveh Meditation Kavanot Teshuvah Deveikut Prayer Nusach Tikkun Chatzot Tikkun Leil Shavuot Pilgrimage to Tzadik Pilgrimage to holy grave Lag BaOmer at Meron Asceticism Rosicrucianism Practical Kabbalah
People 100s Four Who Entered the Pardes Simeon bar Yochai 1100s Isaac the Blind Azriel 1200s Nahmanides Abraham Abulafia Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla Moses de Leon Menahem Recanati 1300s Bahya ben Asher 1400s 1500s Meir ibn Gabbai Joseph Karo Shlomo Alkabetz Moshe Alshich Moses ben Jacob Cordovero Isaac Luria Chaim Vital Judah Loew ben Bezalel 1600s Isaiah Horowitz Abraham Azulai 1700s Chaim ibn Attar Baal Shem Tov Dov Ber of Mezeritch Moshe Chaim Luzzatto Shalom Sharabi Vilna Gaon Chaim Joseph David Azulai Nathan Adler Schneur Zalman of Liadi Chaim Volozhin 1800s Nachman of Breslov Ben Ish Chai Shlomo Eliyashiv 1900s Abraham Isaac Kook Yehuda Ashlag Baba Sali Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Role History Torah Tanakh Prophecy Ruach HaKodesh Pardes exegesis Talmudical hermeneutics Midrash Jewish commentaries on the Bible Oral Torah Eras of Rabbinic Judaism Generational descent in Halacha Generational ascent in Kabbalah Rabbinic literature Talmudic theology Halakha Aggadah Hakira Classic Mussar literature Ashkenazi Judaism Sephardi Judaism Modern Jewish philosophies Jewish studies Topics God in Judaism Divine transcendence Divine immanence Free will Divine providence Kabbalistic reasons for the 613 Mitzvot Jewish principles of faith Jewish eschatology Primary texts
v t e

Jewish mystical texts (the Kabbalah), from their classic Medieval canon onward, teach a belief in Gilgul Neshamot (Hebrew for metempsychosis of souls: literally "soul cycle", plural "gilgulim"). The Zohar and the Sefer HaBahir specifically discuss reincarnation. It is a common belief in contemporary Hasidic Judaism, which regards the Kabbalah as sacred and authoritative, though understood in light of a more innate psychological mysticism. Kabbalah also teaches that "The soul of Moses is reincarnated in every generation." Other, Non-Hasidic, Orthodox Jewish groups while not placing a heavy emphasis on reincarnation, do acknowledge it as a valid teaching. Its popularization 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 systematized 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 fulfill 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.

Among the many rabbis who accepted reincarnation are Nahmanides (the Ramban) and Rabbenu Bahya ben Asher, Levi ibn Habib (the Ralbah), Shelomoh Alkabez, Moses Cordovero, Moses Chaim Luzzatto; early Hasidic masters such as the Baal Shem Tov, Schneur Zalman of Liadi and Nachman of Breslov, as well as virtually all later Hasidic masters; contemporary Hasidic teachers such as DovBer Pinson, Moshe Weinberger and Joel Landau; and key Mitnagdic leaders, such as the Vilna Gaon and Chaim Volozhin and their school, as well as Rabbi Shalom Sharabi (known at the RaShaSH), the Ben Ish Chai of Baghdad, and the Baba Sali. Rabbis who have rejected the idea include Saadia Gaon, David Kimhi, Hasdai Crescas, Joseph Albo, Abraham ibn Daud, Leon de Modena, Solomon ben Aderet, Maimonides and Asher ben Jehiel. Among the Geonim, Hai Gaon argued in favour of gilgulim.

Native American nations

Reincarnation is an intrinsic part of some northern 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 (Ho-Chunk tribe) shaman referred to as T. C. in the narrative. Here T. C. talks about his two previous lives and how he died and came back again to this his third lifetime. He describes his time between lives, when he was “blessed” by Earth Maker and all the abiding spirits and given special powers, including the ability to heal the sick.

T. C.'s Account of His Two Reincarnations:

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

Sikhism

Founded in the 15th century, Sikhism's founder Guru Nanak had a choice between the cyclical reincarnation concept of ancient Indian religions and the linear concept of Islam and he chose the cyclical concept of time. Sikhism teaches reincarnation theory similar to those in Hinduism, but with some differences from its traditional doctrines. Sikh rebirth theories about the nature of existence are similar to ideas that developed during the devotional Bhakti movement particularly within some Vaishnava traditions, which define liberation as a state of union with God attained through the grace of God.

The doctrines of Sikhism teach that the soul exists, and is passed from one body to another in endless cycles of Saṃsāra, until liberation from the death and re-birth cycle. Each birth begins with karma (karam), and these actions leave a karni (karmic signature) on one's soul which influences future rebirths, but it is God whose grace that liberates from the death and re-birth cycle. The way out of the reincarnation cycle, asserts Sikhism, is to live an ethical life, devote oneself to God and constantly remember God's name. The precepts of Sikhism encourage the bhakti of One Lord for mukti (liberation from the death and re-birth cycle.).

New religious and spiritual movements

Spiritism

Spiritism, a Christian philosophy codified in the 19th century by the French educator Allan Kardec, teaches reincarnation or rebirth into human life after death. According to this doctrine, free will and cause and effect are the corollaries of reincarnation, and reincarnation provides a mechanism for man's spiritual evolution in successive lives.

Theosophy

The Theosophical Society draws much of its inspiration from India. 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.

Anthroposophy

Anthroposophy describes reincarnation from the point of view of Western philosophy and culture. The ego is believed to transmute transient soul experiences into universals that form the basis for an individuality that can endure after death. These universals include ideas, which are intersubjective and thus transcend the purely personal (spiritual consciousness), intentionally formed human character (spiritual life), and becoming a fully conscious human being (spiritual humanity). Rudolf Steiner described both the general principles he believed to be operative in reincarnation, such as that one's will activity in one life forms the basis for the thinking of the next, and a number of successive lives of various individualities.

Similarly, other famous people’s life stories are not primarily the result of genes, upbringing or biographical vicissitudes. Steiner relates that a large estate in north-eastern France was held during the early Middle Ages by a martial feudal lord. During a military campaign, this estate was captured by a rival. The previous owner had no means of retaliating, and was forced to see his property lost to an enemy. He was filled with a smoldering resentment towards the propertied classes, not only for the remainder of his life in the Middle Ages, but also in a much later incarnation—as Karl Marx. His rival was reborn as Friedrich Engels.

— Olav Hammer, Coda. On Belief and Evidence

Modern astrology

Inspired by Helena Blavatsky's major works, including Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, astrologers in the early twentieth-century integrated the concepts of karma and reincarnation into the practice of Western astrology. Notable astrologers who advanced this development included Alan Leo, Charles E. O. Carter, Marc Edmund Jones, and Dane Rudhyar. A new synthesis of East and West resulted as Hindu and Buddhist concepts of reincarnation were fused with Western astrology's deep roots in Hermeticism and Neoplatonism. In the case of Rudhyar, this synthesis was enhanced with the addition of Jungian depth psychology. This dynamic integration of astrology, reincarnation and depth psychology has continued into the modern era with the work of astrologers Steven Forrest and Jeffrey Wolf Green. Their respective schools of Evolutionary Astrology are based on "an acceptance of the fact that human beings incarnate in a succession of lifetimes."

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 a thetan, an immortal 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

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.

Wicca

Wicca is a neo-pagan religion focused on nature, guided by the philosophy of Wiccan Rede that advocates the tenets "Harm None, Do As Ye Will". Wiccans believe in a form of karmic return where one's deeds are returned, either in the current life or in another life, threefold or multiple times in order to teach one lessons (The Threefold Law). Reincarnation is therefore an accepted part of the Wiccan faith. Wiccans also believe that death and afterlife are important experiences for the soul to transform and prepare for future lifetimes.

Reincarnation in the Western world

Before the late nineteenth century, reincarnation was a relatively rare theme in the West. In ancient Greece, the Orphic Mysteries and Pythagoreans believed in various forms of reincarnation. Emanuel Swedenborg believed that we leave the physical world once, but then go through several lives in the spiritual world — a kind of hybrid of Christian tradition and the popular view of reincarnation.

More recently, many people in the West have developed an interest in and acceptance of reincarnation. Many new religious movements include reincarnation among their beliefs, e.g. modern Neopagans, Spiritism, Astara, Dianetics, and Scientology. Many esoteric philosophies also include reincarnation, e.g. Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Kabbalah, and Gnostic and Esoteric Christianity such as the works of Martinus Thomsen.

Demographic survey data from 1999–2002 shows a significant minority of people from Europe (22%) and America (20%) believe in the existence of life before birth and after death, leading to a physical rebirth. The belief in reincarnation is particularly high in the Baltic countries, with Lithuania having the highest figure for the whole of Europe, 44%, while the lowest figure is in East Germany, 12%. A quarter of U.S. Christians, including 10% of all born again Christians, embrace the idea.

Skeptic Carl Sagan asked the Dalai Lama what he would 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.". Sagan considers claims of memories of past lives to be worthy of research, although he considers reincarnation to be an unlikely explanation for these..

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.

Edgar Cayce an American self-professed clairvoyant answered questions on subjects as varied as healing, reincarnation, wars, Atlantis, and future events while allegedly asleep.

According to Dr. Brian Weiss, in 1980 one of his patients, "Catherine", began discussing past-life experiences under hypnosis. Weiss did not believe in reincarnation at the time but, after confirming elements of Catherine's stories through public records, came to be convinced of the survival of an element of the human personality after death. Weiss claims he has regressed more than 4,000 patients since 1980.

Neale Donald Walsch, an American author of the series Conversations with God who says his books are not channelled, but rather that they are inspired by God and that they can help a person relate to God from a modern perspective claims that he has reincarnated more than 600 times.

Other influential contemporary figures that have written on reincarnation include Alice Ann Bailey, one of the first writers to use the terms New Age and age of Aquarius, Torkom Saraydarian, an Armenian-American musician and religious author, Dolores Cannon, Atul Gawande, Michael Newton, Bruce Greyson, Raymond Moody and Unity Church founder Charles Fillmore.

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.

Research into claims of reincarnation

Experts generally regard claims of recovered memories of past lives as fantasies or delusions or a type of confabulation. Attempts to retrieve such memories using past life regression are widely considered discredited and unscientific by medical practitioners. The use of hypnosis and suggestive questions can tend to leave the subject particularly likely to hold distorted or false memories. The source of the memories is more likely cryptomnesia and confabulations that combine experiences, knowledge, imagination and suggestion or guidance from the hypnotist than recall of a previous existence. Once created, those memories are indistinguishable from memories based on events that occurred during the subject's life. Past life regression has been critiqued for being unethical on the premises that it lacks any evidence to support its claims, and that the act increases one's susceptibility to false memories. Luis Cordón states that this can be problematic as it creates delusions under the guise of therapy. The memories are experienced as vivid as those based on events experienced in one's life, impossible to differentiate from true memories of actual events, and accordingly any damage can be difficult to undo.

Investigations of memories reported during past-life regression have revealed that they contain historical inaccuracies which originate from common beliefs about history, modern popular culture, or books that discuss historical events. Experiments with subjects undergoing past-life regression indicate that a belief in reincarnation and suggestions by the hypnotist are the two most important factors regarding the contents of memories reported. As past life regression is rooted on the premise of reincarnation, many APA accredited organizations have begun to refute this as a therapeutic method on the basis of it being unethical. Additionally, the hypnotic methodology that underpins past life regression places the participant in a vulnerable position, susceptible to implantation of false memories. Because the implantation of false memories may be harmful, Gabriel Andrade points out that past life regression violates the principle of first, do no harm (non-maleficence), part of the Hippocratic Oath.

Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, from the University of Virginia, having grown up with a mother who was a theosophist, dedicated his latter career to investigating claims of reincarnation in hopes of providing evidence that reincarnation happens. Other people who have undertaken similar pursuits include Jim B. Tucker, Antonia Mills, Satwant Pasricha, Godwin Samararatne, and Erlendur Haraldsson, but Stevenson's publications remain the most well-known. Stevenson conducted more than 2,500 case studies of young children who claimed to remember past lives over a period of 40 years and published twelve books, including Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects, a two-part monograph and Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. He documented the family's and child's statements along with correlates to a deceased person he believed matched the child's memory. Stevenson also claimed that some birthmarks and birth defects matched wounds and scars on the deceased, sometimes providing medical records like autopsy photographs to make his case. Expecting controversy and skepticism, Stevenson also searched for disconfirming evidence and alternative explanations for the reports, but he argued (not without criticism) that his methods ruled out all possible "normal" explanations for the child's memories. Stevenson's work in this regard was impressive enough to Carl Sagan that he referred to what was apparently 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, although he admitted that the phenomenon of alleged past life memories should be researched. Sam Harris cited Stevenson's works in his book The End of Faith as part of a body of data that seems to attest to the reality of psychic phenomena, but that only relies on subjective personal experience.

Critical reviews of these claims include work by Paul Edwards who criticized the accounts of reincarnation as being purely anecdotal and cherry-picked. Instead, Edwards says such stories are attributable to selective thinking, suggestion, and false memories that can result from the family's or researcher's belief systems, and thus cannot be counted as empirical evidence. The philosopher Keith Augustine wrote in critique that the fact that "the vast majority of Stevenson's cases come from countries where a religious belief in reincarnation is strong, and rarely elsewhere, seems to indicate that cultural conditioning (rather than reincarnation) generates claims of spontaneous past-life memories." Further, Ian Wilson pointed out that a large number of Stevenson's cases consisted of poor children remembering wealthy lives or belonging to a higher caste. In these societies, claims of reincarnation are sometimes used as schemes to obtain money from the richer families of alleged former incarnations. Following these types of criticism, Stevenson published a book on European Cases of the Reincarnation Type in order to show the reports were cross-cultural. Even still, Robert Baker asserted that all the past-life experiences investigated by Stevenson and other parapsychologists are understandable in terms of known psychological factors including a mixture of cryptomnesia and confabulation. Edwards also objected that reincarnation invokes assumptions that are inconsistent with modern science. As the vast majority of people do not remember previous lives and there is no empirically documented mechanism known that allows personality to survive death and travel to another body, positing the existence of reincarnation is subject to the principle that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Researchers such as Stevenson acknowledged these limitations.

Stevenson also claimed there were a handful of cases that suggested evidence of xenoglossy, including two where a subject under hypnosis allegedly conversed with people speaking the foreign language, instead of merely being able to recite foreign words. Sarah Thomason, a linguist (and skeptical researcher) at the University of Michigan, reanalyzed these cases, concluding that "the linguistic evidence is too weak to provide support for the claims of xenoglossy."

See also

• Arthur Flowerdew
• Arthur Guirdham
• Cyclic model
• Incarnation
• Joan Grant
• Karmic astrology
• Life review
• Lifetimes True Accounts of Reincarnation
• Mind uploading
• Past life regression
• Planes of existence
• Pre-existence
• Reincarnation in popular culture
• Shanti Devi
• Soulmate
• Subtle body
• Xenoglossy
• Zalmoxis

References

1. Norman C. McClelland 2010, pp. 24–29, 171. sfn error: multiple targets (3×): CITEREFNorman_C._McClelland2010 (help)
2. ^ Mark Juergensmeyer & Wade Clark Roof 2011, pp. 271–272.
3. ^ Stephen J. Laumakis 2008, pp. 90–99.
4. Rita M. Gross (1993). Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism. State University of New York Press. pp. 148. ISBN 978-1-4384-0513-1.
5. Flood, Gavin D. (1996), An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge University Press
6. Gananath Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth. University of California Press, 2002, page 15.
7. Crawley
8. see Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper, Philip L. Quinn, A Companion to Philosophy of Religion. John Wiley and Sons, 2010, page 640, Google Books
9. Hitti, Philip K (2007) . Origins of the Druze People and Religion, with Extracts from their Sacred Writings (New Edition). Columbia University Oriental Studies. 28. London: Saqi. pp. 13–14. ISBN 0-86356-690-1
10. Heindel, Max (1985) The Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures (Collected Works): The Riddle of Life and Death. Oceanside, California. 4th edition. ISBN 0-911274-84-7
11. An important recent work discussing the mutual influence of ancient Greek and Indian philosophy regarding these matters is The Shape of Ancient Thought by Thomas McEvilley
12. ^ "Popular psychology, belief in life after death and reincarnation in the Nordic countries, Western and Eastern Europe" (PDF). (54.8 KB)
13. metempsychosis, Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper (2015)
14. Carl Huffman (2014), Pythagoras, 4.1 The Fate of the Soul—Metempsychosis Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University
15. Oxford Dictionaries (2016). "Transmigration". Oxford University Press.
16. "Encyclopædia Britannica". Concise.britannica.com. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
17. ^ Keown 2013, pp. 35–40.
18. Christopher Key Chapple (2006). Jainism and Ecology: Nonviolence in the Web of Life. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 39. ISBN 978-81-208-2045-6.
19. Karl Sigmund. "Gödel Exhibition: Gödel's Century". Goedelexhibition.at. Retrieved 2011-12-06.
20. "Heart of Hinduism: Reincarnation and Samsara". Hinduism.iskcon.com. Archived from the original on 2011-04-19. Retrieved 2011-12-06.
21. ^ Monier Monier-Williams (1872). A Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. p. 582.
22. Ronald Wesley Neufeldt (1986). Karma and Rebirth: Post Classical Developments. State University of New York Press. pp. 88–89. ISBN 978-0-87395-990-2.
23. Thomas William Rhys Davids; William Stede (1921). Pali-English Dictionary. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 95, 144, 151, 361, 475. ISBN 978-81-208-1144-7.
24. John Bowker 2014, pp. 84–85.
25. Gavin Flood (2010), Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism (Editor: Knut Jacobsen), Volume II, Brill, ISBN 978-90-04-17893-9, pages 881–884
26. Klaus Klostermaier, Mokṣa and Critical Theory, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pages 61–71
27. Norman E. Thomas (April 1988), Liberation for Life: A Hindu Liberation Philosophy, Missiology, Volume 16, Number 2, pp 149–160;
    Gerhard Oberhammer (1994), La Délivrance dès cette vie: Jivanmukti, Collège de France, Publications de l'Institut de Civilisation Indienne. Série in-8°, Fasc. 61, Édition-Diffusion de Boccard (Paris), ISBN 978-2868030610, pages 1–9
28. Obeyesekere 2005, p. 1-2, 108, 126–128.
29. Mark Juergensmeyer & Wade Clark Roof 2011, pp. 272–273.
30. Irving Steiger Cooper (1920). Reincarnation: The Hope of the World. Theosophical Society in America. p. 15.
31. Diodorus Siculus thought the Druids might have been influenced by the teachings of Pythagoras. Diodorus Siculus v.28.6; Hippolytus Philosophumena i.25.
32. A.M. Boyer: Etude sur l'origine de la doctrine du samsara. Journal Asiatique, (1901), Volume 9, Issue 18, S. 451–453, 459–468
33. Yuvraj Krishan: . Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1997, ISBN 978-81-208-1233-8
34. ^ Damien Keown (2013). Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. pp. 28, 32–38. ISBN 978-0-19-966383-5.
35. Laumakis, Stephen J. (2008-02-21). An Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139469661.
36. Flood, Gavin. Olivelle, Patrick. 2003. The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism. Malden: Blackwell. pg. 273-4. "The second half of the first millennium BCE was the period that created many of the ideological and institutional elements that characterize later Indian religions. The renouncer tradition played a central role during this formative period of Indian religious history....Some of the fundamental values and beliefs that we generally associate with Indian religions in general and Hinduism in particular were in part the creation of the renouncer tradition. These include the two pillars of Indian theologies: samsara – the belief that life in this world is one of suffering and subject to repeated deaths and births (rebirth); moksa/nirvana – the goal of human existence....."
37. Gavin D. Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge University Press (1996), UK ISBN 0-521-43878-0 p. 86 – "A third alternative is that the origin of transmigration theory lies outside of vedic or sramana traditions in the tribal religions of the Ganges valley, or even in Dravidian traditions of south India."
38. ^ Stephen J. Laumakis 2008, p. 90.
39. R.D.Ranade (1926). A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. pp. 147–148. Quote: There we definitely know that the whole hymn is address to a departed spirit, and the poet says that he is going to recall the departed soul in order that it may return again and live."
40. Atsushi Hayakawa (2014). Circulation of Fire in the Veda. LIT Verlag Münster. pp. 66–67, 101–103 with footnotes. ISBN 978-3-643-90472-0.
41. A.M. Boyer (1901), Etude sur l'origine de la doctrine du samsara, Journal Asiatique, Volume 9, Issue 18, pages 451–453, 459–468
42. Vallee Pussin (1917). The way to Nirvana: six lectures on ancient Buddhism as a discipline of salvation. Cambridge University Press. pp. 24–25.
43. ^ Padmanabh Jaini 1980, pp. 217–236.
44. ^ Paul Dundas (2003). The Jains. Routledge. pp. 14–16, 102–105. ISBN 978-0415266055.
45. ^ Padmanabh Jaini 1980, pp. 226–228.
46. Kristi L. Wiley (2009). The A to Z of Jainism. Scarecrow. p. 186. ISBN 978-0-8108-6337-8.
47. Padmanabh Jaini 1980, pp. 227–228.
48. Paul Dundas (2003). The Jains. Routledge. pp. 104–105. ISBN 978-0415266055.
49. Jeffery D Long (2013). Jainism: An Introduction. I.B.Tauris. pp. 36–37. ISBN 978-0-85773-656-7.
50. Paul Dundas (2003). The Jains. Routledge. pp. 55–59. ISBN 978-0415266055.
51. John E. Cort (2001). Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India. Oxford University Press. pp. 118–119. ISBN 978-0-19-803037-9.
52. ^ Jeff Wilson (2010). Saṃsāra and Rebirth, in Buddhism. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/obo/9780195393521-0141. ISBN 9780195393521.
53. ^ Kevin Trainor (2004). Buddhism: The Illustrated Guide. Oxford University Press. pp. 62–63. ISBN 978-0-19-517398-7.; Quote: "Buddhist doctrine holds that until they realize nirvana, beings are bound to undergo rebirth and redeath due to their having acted out of ignorance and desire, thereby producing the seeds of karma".
54. Edward Conze (2013). Buddhist Thought in India: Three Phases of Buddhist Philosophy. Routledge. p. 71. ISBN 978-1-134-54231-4., Quote: "Nirvana is the raison d’être of Buddhism, and its ultimate justification."
55. Gethin, Rupert (1998), Foundations of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, p. 119, ISBN 978-0192892232
56. Paul Williams, Anthony Tribe, Buddhist thought: a complete introduction to the Indian tradition. Routledge, 2000, page 84.
57. ^ Merv Fowler (1999). Buddhism: Beliefs and Practices. Sussex Academic Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-898723-66-0., Quote: "For a vast majority of Buddhists in Theravadin countries, however, the order of monks is seen by lay Buddhists as a means of gaining the most merit in the hope of accumulating good karma for a better rebirth."
58. Christopher Gowans (2004). Philosophy of the Buddha: An Introduction. Routledge. p. 169. ISBN 978-1-134-46973-4.
59. Robert DeCaroli (2004). Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religions and the Formation of Buddhism. Oxford University Press. pp. 94–103. ISBN 978-0-19-803765-1.
60. Akira Sadakata (1997). Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins. Kōsei Publishing 佼成出版社, Tokyo. pp. 68–70. ISBN 978-4-333-01682-2.
61. James Hastings; John Alexander Selbie; Louis Herbert Gray (1922). Volume 12: Suffering-Zwingli. Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics. T. & T. Clark. pp. 616–618.
62. Jessica Frazier & Gavin Flood 2011, pp. 84–86.
63. Kusum P. Merh (1996). Yama, the Glorious Lord of the Other World. Penguin. pp. 213–215. ISBN 978-81-246-0066-5.
64. Anita Raina Thapan (2006). The Penguin Swami Chinmyananda Reader. Penguin Books. pp. 84–90. ISBN 978-0-14-400062-3.
65. Jessica Frazier; Gavin Flood (2011). The Continuum Companion to Hindu Studies. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 84–86. ISBN 978-0-8264-9966-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
66. Patrul Rinpoche; Dalai Lama (1998). The Words of My Perfect Teacher: A Complete Translation of a Classic Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. Rowman Altamira. pp. 95–96. ISBN 978-0-7619-9027-7.
67. Yuvraj Krishan (1997). The Doctrine of Karma: Its Origin and Development in Brāhmaṇical, Buddhist, and Jaina Traditions. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. pp. 17–27. ISBN 978-81-208-1233-8.
68. Paul Williams, Anthony Tribe & Alexander Wynne 2012, pp. 30–42.
69. Michael D. Coogan (2003). The Illustrated Guide to World Religions. Oxford University Press. p. 192. ISBN 978-0-19-521997-5.
70. David Carpenter; Ian Whicher (2003). Yoga: The Indian Tradition. Routledge. p. 116. ISBN 978-1-135-79606-8.
71. Rita Langer (2007). Buddhist Rituals of Death and Rebirth: Contemporary Sri Lankan Practice and Its Origins. Routledge. pp. 53–54. ISBN 978-1-134-15873-7.
72. Christmas Humphreys (2012). Exploring Buddhism. Routledge. pp. 42–43. ISBN 978-1-136-22877-3.
    Brian Morris (2006). Religion and Anthropology: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge University Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-521-85241-8., Quote: "(...) anatta is the doctrine of non-self, and is an extreme empiricist doctrine that holds that the notion of an unchanging permanent self is a fiction and has no reality. According to Buddhist doctrine, the individual person consists of five skandhas or heaps – the body, feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness. The belief in a self or soul, over these five skandhas, is illusory and the cause of suffering."
    Richard Gombrich (2006). Theravada Buddhism. Routledge. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-134-90352-8., Quote: "(...) Buddha's teaching that beings have no soul, no abiding essence. This 'no-soul doctrine' (anatta-vada) he expounded in his second sermon."
73. Anatta, Encyclopedia Britannica (2013), Quote: "Anatta in Buddhism, the doctrine that there is in humans no permanent, underlying soul. The concept of anatta, or anatman, is a departure from the Hindu belief in atman (“the self”).";
    Steven Collins (1994), Religion and Practical Reason (Editors: Frank Reynolds, David Tracy), State Univ of New York Press, ISBN 978-0791422175, page 64; "Central to Buddhist soteriology is the doctrine of not-self (Pali: anattā, Sanskrit: anātman, the opposed doctrine of ātman is central to Brahmanical thought). Put very briefly, this is the doctrine that human beings have no soul, no self, no unchanging essence.";
    Edward Roer (Translator), Shankara's Introduction, p. 2, at Google Books to Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad, pages 2–4;
    Katie Javanaud (2013), Is The Buddhist ‘No-Self’ Doctrine Compatible With Pursuing Nirvana?, Philosophy Now;
    David Loy (1982), Enlightenment in Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta: Are Nirvana and Moksha the Same?, International Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 23, Issue 1, pages 65–74;
    KN Jayatilleke (2010), Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, ISBN 978-8120806191, pages 246–249, from note 385 onwards;
74. John C. Plott et al (2000), Global History of Philosophy: The Axial Age, Volume 1, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-8120801585, page 63, Quote: "The Buddhist schools reject any Ātman concept. As we have already observed, this is the basic and ineradicable distinction between Hinduism and Buddhism".
75. Bruce M. Sullivan (1997). Historical Dictionary of Hinduism. Scarecrow. pp. 235–236 (See: Upanishads). ISBN 978-0-8108-3327-2.
76. Klaus K. Klostermaier (2007). A Survey of Hinduism: Third Edition. State University of New York Press. pp. 119–122, 162–180, 194–195. ISBN 978-0-7914-7082-4.
77. Kalupahana 1992, pp. 38–39.
78. G Obeyesekere (1980). Wendy Doniger (ed.). Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions. University of California Press. pp. 137–141. ISBN 978-0-520-03923-0.
79. Libby Ahluwalia (2008). Understanding Philosophy of Religion. Folens. pp. 243–249. ISBN 978-1-85008-274-3.
80. Harold Coward; Julius Lipner; Katherine K. Young (1989). Hindu Ethics. State University of New York Press. pp. 85–94. ISBN 978-0-88706-764-8.
81. ^ Naomi Appleton (2014). Narrating Karma and Rebirth: Buddhist and Jain Multi-Life Stories. Cambridge University Press. pp. 76–89. ISBN 978-1-139-91640-0.
82. Kristi L. Wiley (2004). Historical Dictionary of Jainism. Scarecrow. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-8108-5051-4.
83. Kristi L. Wiley (2004). Historical Dictionary of Jainism. Scarecrow. pp. 10–12, 111–112, 119. ISBN 978-0-8108-5051-4.
84. Gananath Obeyesekere (2006). Karma and Rebirth: A Cross Cultural Study. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 107–108. ISBN 978-81-208-2609-0.;
    Kristi L. Wiley (2004). Historical Dictionary of Jainism. Scarecrow. pp. 118–119. ISBN 978-0-8108-5051-4.
85. John E. Cort (2001). Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India. Oxford University Press. pp. 118–123. ISBN 978-0-19-803037-9.
86. Schibli, S., Hermann, Pherekydes of Syros, p. 104, Oxford Univ. Press 2001
87. "The dates of his life cannot be fixed exactly, but assuming the approximate correctness of the statement of Aristoxenus (ap. Porph. V.P. 9) that he left Samos to escape the tyranny of Polycrates at the age of forty, we may put his birth round about 570 BCE, or a few years earlier. The length of his life was variously estimated in antiquity, but it is agreed that he lived to a fairly ripe old age, and most probably he died at about seventy-five or eighty." William Keith Chambers Guthrie, (1978), A history of Greek philosophy, Volume 1: The earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans, page 173. Cambridge University Press
88. Linforth, Ivan M. (1941) The Arts of Orpheus Arno Press, New York, OCLC 514515
89. Long, Herbert S. (1948) A Study of the doctrine of metempsychosis in Greece, from Pythagoras to Plato (Long's 1942 Ph.D. dissertation) Princeton, New Jersey, OCLC 1472399
90. Long, Herbert S. (16 February 1948) "Plato's Doctrine of Metempsychosis and Its Source" The Classical Weekly 41(10): pp. 149—155
91. Menander, The Inspired Woman
92. Lucian, Gallus, 18 et seq.
93. Poesch, Jessie (1962) "Ennius and Basinio of Parma" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 25(1/2): pp. 116—118, page 117, FN15
94. Lucretius, (i. 124)
95. Horace, Epistles, II. i. 52
96. Virgil, The Aeneid, vv. 724 et seq.
97. The book Reincarnation in Christianity, by the theosophist Geddes MacGregor (1978) asserted that Origen believed in reincarnation. MacGregor is convinced that Origen believed in and taught about reincarnation but that his texts written about the subject have been destroyed. He admits that there is no extant proof for that position. The allegation was also repeated by Shirley MacLaine in her book Out On a Limb. Origen does discuss the concept of transmigration (metensomatosis) from Greek philosophy, but it is repeatedly stated that this concept is not a part of the Christian teaching or scripture in his Comment on the Gospel of Matthew (which survives only in a 6th-century Latin translatio): "In this place it does not appear to me that by Elijah the soul is spoken of, lest I fall into the doctrine of transmigration, which is foreign to the Church of God, and not handed down by the apostles, nor anywhere set forth in the scriptures" (13:1:46–53, see Commentary on Matthew, Book XIII
98. Much of this is documented in R.E. Slater's book Paradise Reconsidered.
99. Richard Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010
100. Julius Caesar, "De Bello Gallico", VI
101. Robin Melrose (2014). The Druids and King Arthur: A New View of Early Britain. McFarland. ISBN 978-07-864600-5-2.
102. Essential Judaism: A Complete Guide to Beliefs, Customs & Rituals, By George Robinson, Simon and Schuster 2008, page 193
103. "Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity", p. 104, by B. Alan Wallace
104. "Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism", p. 190, by J. H. Chajes
105. Jewish Tales of Reincarnation', By Yonasson Gershom, Yonasson Gershom, Jason Aronson, Incorporated, 31 Jan 2000
106. Yonasson Gershom (1999), Jewish Tales of Reincarnation. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. ISBN 0765760835
107. Zhuangzi (1889). Chuang Tzŭ: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer (translated by Herbert Allen Giles). p. 304.
108. "Newadvent.org". Newadvent.org. 1911-02-01. Retrieved 2011-12-06.
109. Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy, 1982, ISBN 0-521-28926-2, Cambridge University Press, The Bogomils, Google Books
110. For example Dondaine, Antoine. O.P. Un traite neo-manicheen du XIIIe siecle: Le Liber de duobus principiis, suivi d'un fragment de rituel Cathare (Rome: Institutum Historicum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 1939)
111. "Newadvent.org". Newadvent.org. 1907-03-01. Retrieved 2011-12-06.
112. "the souls must always be the same, for if none be destroyed they will not diminish in number." Republic X, 611. The Republic of Plato By Plato, Benjamin Jowett Edition: 3 Published by Clarendon press, 1888.
113. In a letter to his friend George Whatley written May 23, 1785: Kennedy, Jennifer T. (2001). "Death Effects: Revisiting the Conceit of Franklin's "Memoir"". Early American Literature. 36 (2): 201–234. doi:10.1353/eal.2001.0016. JSTOR 25057231.
114. Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, 17.3–4
115. "Again, Rosalind in "As You Like It" (Act III., Scene 2), says: I was never so be-rhimed that I can remember since Pythagoras's time, when I was an Irish rat" — alluding to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls." William H. Grattan Flood, quoted at Libraryireland.com
116. Boulting, 1914. pp. 163–64
117. ^ Berger, Arthur S.; Berger, Joyce (1991). The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. Paragon House Publishers. ISBN 1-55778-043-9.
118. Schopenhauer, A: "Parerga und Paralipomena" (Eduard Grisebach edition), On Religion, Section 177
119. Nietzsche and the Doctrine of Metempsychosis, in J. Urpeth & J. Lippitt, Nietzsche and the Divine, Manchester: Clinamen, 2000
120. ^ "Shirleymaclaine.com". Shirleymaclaine.com. Archived from the original on 2011-11-06. Retrieved 2011-12-06.
121. David Hammerman, Lisa Lenard, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Reincarnation, Penguin, p.34. For relevant works by James, see; William James, Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine (the Ingersoll Lecture, 1897), The Will to Believe, Human Immortality (1956) Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-20291-7, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), ISBN 0-14-039034-0, Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912) Dover Publications 2003, ISBN 0-486-43094-4
122. Richmal Crompton, More William, George Newnes, London, 1924, XIII. William and the Ancient Souls; "The memory usually came in a flash. For instance, you might remember in a flash when you were looking at a box of matches that you had been Guy Fawkes."
123. Marquis, "Archy and Mehitabel" (1927)
124. Théodore Flournoy, Des Indes à la planète Mars, Étude sur un cas de somnambulisme avec glossolalie, Éditions Alcan et Eggimann, Paris et Genève, 1900
125. ^ Peter Harvey (2012). An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices. Cambridge University Press. pp. 32–33, 38–39, 46–49. ISBN 978-0-521-85942-4.
126. Ronald Wesley Neufeldt (1986). Karma and Rebirth: Post Classical Developments. State University of New York Press. pp. 123–131. ISBN 978-0-87395-990-2.
127. Ray Billington (2002). Understanding Eastern Philosophy. Routledge. p. 60. ISBN 978-1-134-79348-8.
128. Ray Billington (2002). Understanding Eastern Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 43–44, 58–60. ISBN 978-1-134-79349-5.
129. ^ Damien Keown (2004). A Dictionary of Buddhism (Articles titled ucchedavāda, śāśvata-vāda, rebirth). Oxford University Press. pp. 80, 162, 225, 255, 315. ISBN 978-0198605607.
130. Norman C. McClelland (2010). Encyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma. McFarland. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-7864-5675-8.
131. David J. Kalupahana (1975). Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism. University Press of Hawaii. pp. 115–119. ISBN 978-0-8248-0298-1.
132. Peter Harvey (2012). An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices. Cambridge University Press. pp. 57–62. ISBN 978-0-521-85942-4.
133. Oliver Leaman (2002). Eastern Philosophy: Key Readings. Routledge. pp. 23–27. ISBN 978-1-134-68919-4.
134. Malcolm B. Hamilton (12 June 2012). The Sociology of Religion: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives. Routledge. pp. 73–80. ISBN 978-1-134-97626-3.
135. Raju, P. T. (1985). Structural Depths of Indian Thought. State University of New York Press. pp. 147–151. ISBN 978-0-88706-139-4.
136. Norman C. McClelland (2010). Encyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma. McFarland. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-7864-5675-8.;
     Hugh Nicholson (2016). The Spirit of Contradiction in Christianity and Buddhism. Oxford University Press. pp. 23–25. ISBN 978-0-19-045534-7.
137. Rahula, Walpola (1990). What the Buddha Taught. London: Gordon Fraser. p. 51.
138. Trainor 2004, p. 58, Quote: "Buddhism shares with Hinduism the doctrine of Samsara, whereby all beings pass through an unceasing cycle of birth, death and rebirth until they find a means of liberation from the cycle. However, Buddhism differs from Hinduism in rejecting the assertion that every human being possesses a changeless soul which constitutes his or her ultimate identity, and which transmigrates from one incarnation to the next..
139. Robert E. Buswell Jr.; Donald S. Lopez Jr. (2013). The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton University Press. pp. 708–709. ISBN 978-1-4008-4805-8.
140. (M.1.256) "Post-Classical Developments in the Concepts of Karma and Rebirth in Theravada Buddhism." by Bruce Matthews. in Karma and Rebirth: Post-Classical Developments State Univ of New York Press: 1986 ISBN 0-87395-990-6 pg 125
141. Collins, Steven. Selfless persons: imagery and thought in Theravāda Buddhism Cambridge University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-521-39726-X pg 215, Google Books
142. (D.3.105) "Post-Classical Developments in the Concepts of Karma and Rebirth in Theravada Buddhism. by Bruce Matthews. in Karma and Rebirth: Post-Classical Developments State Univ of New York Press: 1986 ISBN 0-87395-990-6 pg 125
143. David J. Kalupahana (1975). Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism. University Press of Hawaii. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-8248-0298-1.
144. William H. Swatos; Peter Kivisto (1998). Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. Rowman Altamira. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-7619-8956-1.
145. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life (New York: Atria Books, 2002), p. 46
146. Bruce Matthews in Ronald Wesley Neufeldt, editor, Karma and Rebirth: Post Classical Developments. SUNY Press, 1986, page 125. Google.com
147. Peter Harvey, The Selfless Mind. Curzon Press 1995, page 247.
148. Robert E. Buswell Jr.; Donald S. Lopez Jr. (2013). The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton University Press. pp. 49–50, 708–709. ISBN 978-1-4008-4805-8.
149. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha. A Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Translator. Wisdom Publications. Sutta 44.9
150. Karma-gliṅ-pa; Chogyam Trungpa; Francesca Fremantle (2000). The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo. Shambhala Publications. pp. xi, xvii–xxiii. ISBN 978-1-57062-747-7.
151. Karma-gliṅ-pa; Chogyam Trungpa; Francesca Fremantle (2000). The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo. Shambhala Publications. pp. 4–23. ISBN 978-1-57062-747-7.
152. Trainor 2004, pp. 210–211.
153. Trainor 2004, pp. 62–63.
154. McClelland, Norman C. (2010), Encyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma, McFarland, p. 281, ISBN 9780786456758
155. Warner, Brad (2005), Hardcore Zen, Wisdom Publications, p. 155, ISBN 9780861719891
156. Transform Your Life: A Blissful Journey, page 52), Tharpa Publications (2001, US ed. 2007) ISBN 978-0-9789067-4-0
157. "Clementine Vulgate, First Letter of Peter, chapter 3, verse 18". biblehub.com (in Latin). Archived from the original on August 3, 2019. Retrieved August 5, 2019.
158. "Text analysis of Matthew 14:2 with parallel Greek". Biblehub. Archived from the original on August 24, 2019. Retrieved August 24, 2019.
159. ANALYSIS December 9, 2009 (2009-12-09). "Pewforum.org". Pewforum.org. Retrieved 2011-12-06.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
160. "Spiritual-wholeness.org". Spiritual-wholeness.org. Archived from the original on 2001-04-25. Retrieved 2011-12-06.
161. Rudolf Frieling, Christianity and Reincarnation, Floris Books 2015
162. Mark Albrecht, Reincarnation, a Christian Appraisal, InterVarsity Press, 1982
163. Lynn A. De Silva, Reincarnation in Buddhist and Christian Thought, Christian Literature Society of Ceylon, 1968
164. Cranston, Sylvia (1990-03-09). Reincarnation in Christianity: A New Vision of the Role of Rebirth in Christian Thought (Quest Books) (9780835605014): Geddes MacGregor: Books. ISBN 0835605019.
165. "The Big Book of Reincarnation", by Roy Stemman, p. 14
166. ^ "Church Fathers: Letter 124 (Jerome)".
167. ^ "Hieronymus_Stridonensis_cps2, Epistolae, 124, p0".
168. ^ Cross, F. L., and Elizabeth A. Livingstone. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Second Edition). New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. p. 1009.
169. Agustine of Hippo (1913). The city of God. Book 12, chapter 20. Vol. I. Translated by Marcus Dods. Edinburgh. pp. 508–509. Archived from the original on 2018-12-25. Retrieved 2018-12-25. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: translators list (link)
170. Seabrook, W. B., Adventures in Arabia, Harrap and Sons 1928, (chapters on Druze religion)
171. ^ Dwairy, Marwan (2006) "The Psychosocial Function Of Reincarnation Among Druze In Israel" Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, page 29 – 53
172. Lewis, James (2002). The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1615927387.
173. ^ Mark Juergensmeyer & Wade Clark Roof 2011, p. 272.
174. ^ Jeaneane D. Fowler 1997, p. 10.
175. Mukul Goel (2008). Devotional Hinduism: Creating Impressions for God. iUniverse. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-595-50524-1.
176. Christopher Chapple (1986), Karma and creativity, State University of New York Press, ISBN 0-88706-251-2, pages 60-64
177. Jeaneane D. Fowler 1997, p. 11.
178. ^ Julius Lipner (2012). Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Routledge. pp. 263–265. ISBN 978-1-135-24061-5.
179. Jacobsen, Knut A. "Three Functions Of Hell In The Hindu Traditions." Numen 56.2–3 (2009): 385–400. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. Web. 16 Sept. 2012.
180. Julius Lipner (2012). Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Routledge. pp. 251–252, 283, 366–369. ISBN 978-1-135-24061-5.
181. Roy W. Perrett (1998). Hindu Ethics: A Philosophical Study. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 53–54. ISBN 978-0-8248-2085-5.
182. Bruce M. Sullivan (2001). The A to Z of Hinduism. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-8108-4070-6.
183. Jeaneane D. Fowler 1997, pp. 111–112.
184. Yong Choon Kim; David H. Freeman (1981). Oriental Thought: An Introduction to the Philosophical and Religious Thought of Asia. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 15–17. ISBN 978-0-8226-0365-8.
185. Jack Sikora (2002). Religions of India: A User Friendly and Brief Introduction to Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and the Jains. iUniverse. pp. 17–19. ISBN 978-1-4697-1731-9.
186. Harold Coward 2008, p. 129.
187. Harold Coward 2008, pp. 129, also see pages 130–155.
188. Chapple 2010, p. 98.
189. Chapple 2010, p. 107.
190. Chapple 2010, p. 582.
191. Jeaneane D. Fowler (2002). Perspectives of Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Hinduism. Sussex Academic Press. pp. 340–347, 373–375. ISBN 978-1-898723-93-6.
192. Loy, David (1982). "Enlightenment in Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta: Are Nirvana and Moksha the Same?". International Philosophical Quarterly. 22 (1): 65–74. doi:10.5840/ipq19822217.
193. Jeaneane D. Fowler (2002). Perspectives of Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Hinduism. Sussex Academic Press. pp. 238–240, 243–245, 249–250, 261–263, 279–284. ISBN 978-1-898723-93-6.
194. ^ Jane Idelman Smith; Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (2002). The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection. Oxford University Press. pp. 23–24. ISBN 978-0-19-028880-8.
195. ^ Norman C. McClelland 2010, pp. 122–123. sfn error: multiple targets (3×): CITEREFNorman_C._McClelland2010 (help)
196. John L. Esposito (2004). The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. Oxford University Press. pp. 137, 249. ISBN 978-0-19-975726-8.
197. Norman L. Geisler; Abdul Saleeb (2002). Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross. Baker Academic. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-8010-6430-2.
198. Gnostic liberation front Archived 2008-12-17 at the Wayback Machine The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan
199. see his To Die Before Death: The Sufi Way of Life
200. Wilson, Peter Lamborn, Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy, Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia. (1988). ISBN 0-936756-13-6 hardcover 0-936756-12-2 paperback
201. Peters, Francis E.; Esposito, John L. (2006). The children of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-12769-9.
202. Alawis, Countrystudies.us, U.S. Library of Congress.
203. Tara Sethia (2004). Ahimsā, Anekānta, and Jainism. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 30–31. ISBN 978-81-208-2036-4.
204. Kuhn, Hermann (2001) pp. 226–230
205. ^ Krishan, Yuvraj (1997): p. 43.
206. Kuhn, Hermann (2001) pp.70–71
207. ^ Kuhn, Hermann (2001) pp.64–66
208. Kuhn, Hermann (2001) p.15
209. Rankin, Aidan (2006) p.67
210. ^ Jaini, Padmanabh (1998) p.108
211. The Jain hierarchy of life classifies living beings on the basis of the senses: five-sensed beings like humans and animals are at the top, and single sensed beings like microbes and plants are at the bottom.
212. Jaini, Padmanabh (1998) pp.108–09
213. Jaini, Padmanabh (2000) p.130
214. Krishan, Yuvraj (1997) p.44
215. ^ Kuhn, Hermann (2001) p.28
216. Kuhn, Hermann (2001) p.69
217. Kuhn, Hermann (2001) pp.65–66, 70–71
218. Tikunei Zohar, Tikkun 69, 112a and 114a. Literally, "There is an extension of Moses in every generation and to each and every righteous man."
220. Sha'ar Ha'Gilgulim, The Gate of Reincarnations, Chaim Vital
221. "Limmud Bay Area 2016: Judaism and Reincarnation". limmudbayarea2016.sched.com. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
222. Antonia Mills and Richard Slobodin, ed. (1994). Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarnation Belief Among North American Indians and Inuit. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0802077035.
223. Rink, Henry. "Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo". adapted by Weimer, Christopher, M. Retrieved 1 December 2011.
224. Jefferson, Warren (2008). Reincarnation beliefs of North American Indians : soul journeys, metamorphoses, and near-death experiences. Native Voices. ISBN 978-1-57067-212-5. OCLC 272306114.
225. W.O. Cole; Piara Singh Sambhi (2016). Sikhism and Christianity: A Comparative Study. Springer. pp. 13–14. ISBN 978-1-349-23049-5.
226. Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair (2013). Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 176. ISBN 978-1-4411-5366-1.
227. ^ Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair (2013). Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed. A&C Black. pp. 145–147. ISBN 978-1-4411-0231-7.
228. John Gordon Melton; Martin Baumann (2002). Religions of the world: a comprehensive encyclopedia of beliefs and practices. Vol. 2. ABC-CLIO. p. 632. ISBN 978-1-57607-223-3.
229. Eric J. Lott (1988). Vision, Tradition, Interpretation: Theology, Religion, and the Study of Religion. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 49–53. ISBN 978-3-11-009761-0.
230. Flood, Gavin (1996). An introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-521-43878-0.
231. H. S. Singha (2000). The Encyclopedia of Sikhism. Hemkunt Press. pp. 68, 80. ISBN 978-81-7010-301-1.
232. David J. Hess (1 November 2010). Spirits and Scientists: Ideology, Spiritism and Brazilian Culture. Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 16–. ISBN 978-0-271-04080-6.
233. See e.g. Reincarnation and Karma by Steiner
234. Steiner, Karmic Relationships, volumes 1–6
235. Hammer, Olav (1 September 2003). Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age. BRILL. p. 495. ISBN 90-04-13638-X.
236. Jutta Woods. "The Theosophical Heritage in Modern Astrology." The Mountain Astrologer. Aug/Sept 2013
237. Steven Forrest and Jeffrey Wolf Green. "About Evolutionary Astrology". Retrieved 2014-11-22.
238. "Scientology Church & Religion – What is Scientology?". Scientology. Archived from the original on 2006-06-13.
239. Baba, Meher (1967), Discourses, Volume III, Sufism Reoriented, 1967, ISBN 1-880619-09-1, p. 96.
240. Encyclopedia of Wicca and Witchcraft, Raven Grimassi
241. Charles H. Kahn (2001). Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. Hackett Publishing. p. 52. ISBN 9781603846820.
242. "Swedenborg and Life Recap: Do We Reincarnate? 3/6/2017". Swedenborg Foundation. Retrieved 2019-10-24.
243. ^ "Popular psychology, belief in life after death and reincarnation in the Nordic countries, Western and Eastern Europe" (PDF). Retrieved 2011-12-06.
244. David W. Moore, Three in Four Americans Believe in Paranormal
246. "The Boundaries of Knowledge in Buddhism, Christianity, and Science", by Paul David Numrich, p. 13, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ISBN 9783525569870
247. After the afterlife debate, referencing Sagan's book The Demon Haunted World
248. Jane Henry (2005). Parapsychology: research on exceptional experiences Routledge, p. 224.
249. Breakfast with Brian Weiss, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 5, 2002, Accessed April 25, 2009.
250. Weinstein-Moser, Edie. "Interview with Brian Weiss". Wisdom magazine. Wisdom-Magazine.com. 2008. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
251. Being at One: Neale Donald Walsch Interview with Gil Dekel (Part 3 of 3, paragraphs 18–19)
252. Walter, T.; Waterhouse, H. (1999). "A very private belief: Reincarnation in contemporary England". Sociology of Religion. 60 (2): 187–197. doi:10.2307/3711748. JSTOR 3711748. Archived from the original on 2005-06-27. Retrieved 2009-06-25.
253. Waterhouse, H. (1999). "Reincarnation belief in Britain: New age orientation or mainstream option?". Journal of Contemporary Religion. 14 (1): 97–109. doi:10.1080/13537909908580854.
254. ^ Norcross JC, Koocher GP, Garofalo A (October 2006). "Discredited psychological treatments and tests: A Delphi poll". Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. 37 (5): 515–522. doi:10.1037/0735-7028.37.5.515.
255. Linse P, Shermer M (2002). The Skeptic encyclopedia of pseudoscience. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO. pp. 206–7. ISBN 978-1-57607-653-8.
256. ^ Carroll RT (2003). The Skeptic's Dictionary: a collection of strange beliefs, amusing deceptions, and dangerous delusions. New York: Wiley. pp. 276–7. ISBN 978-0-471-27242-7.
257. ^ Cordón LA (2005). Popular psychology: an encyclopedia. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. pp. 183–5. ISBN 978-0-313-32457-4.
258. ^ Andrade G (December 2017). "Is past life regression therapy ethical?". Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine. 10: 11. PMC 5797677. PMID 29416831.
259. Spanos NP (1996). Multiple Identities & False Memories: A Sociocognitive Perspective. American Psychological Association (APA). pp. 135–40. ISBN 978-1-55798-340-4.
260. Sumner D (2003). Just Smoke and Mirrors: Religion, Fear and Superstition in Our Modern World. San Jose, : Writers Club Press. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-595-26523-7.
261. "Stevenson 2006" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on July 21, 2006. Retrieved September 1, 2016., pp. 13–14.
262. "Mills". Signs of Reincarnation.
263. Cadoret, Remi. Book Review: European Cases of the Reincarnation Type The American Journal of Psychiatry, April 2005.
264. Shroder, T (2007-02-11). "Ian Stevenson; Sought To Document Memories Of Past Lives in Children". The Washington Post.
265. Sagan, Carl (1996). Demon Haunted World. Random House. p. 300. ISBN 978-0-394-53512-8.
266. Harris, Sam (September 17, 2005). The End of Faith (Reprint ed.). W. W. Norton. p. 41. ISBN 0393327655.
267. Rockley, Richard. (2002). "Book Review: Children who Remember Previous Lives". SkepticReport. Retrieved 2014-10-11.
268. Edwards, Paul. (1996, reprinted in 2001). Reincarnation: A Critical Examination. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-921-2
269. "The Case Against Immortality". Infidels.org. Retrieved 2014-04-11.
270. Wilson, Ian. (1981). Mind Out of Time: Reincarnation Investigated. Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-02968-4
271. Baker, Robert A. (1996). Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within. Prometheus Books. ISBN 0-87975-576-8
272. Cogan, Robert. (1998). Critical Thinking: Step by Step. University Press of America. pp. 202–203. ISBN 0-7618-1067-6 "Edwards catalogs common sense objections which have been made against reincarnation. 1) How does a soul exist between bodies? 2) Tertullian's objection: If there is reincarnation, why are not babies born with the mental abilities of adults? 3) Reincarnation claims an infinite series of prior incarnations. Evolution teaches that there was a time when humans did not yet exist. So reincarnation is inconsistent with modern science. 4) If there is reincarnation, then what is happening when the population increases? 5) If there is reincarnation, then why do so few, if any people, remember past lives?... To answer these objections believers in reincarnation must accept additional assumptions... Acceptance of these silly assumptions, Edwards says, amounts to a crucifixion of one's intellect."
     • Edwards, Paul. (1996, reprinted in 2001). Reincarnation: A Critical Examination. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-921-2
273. Shroder, Tom (2007-02-11). "Ian Stevenson; Sought To Document Memories Of Past Lives in Children". Washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2011-12-06.
274. Thomason, Sarah G.. "Xenoglossy". In Gordon Stein. (1996). The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-021-5

Bibliography

• John Bowker (2014). God: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-870895-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Chapple, Christopher Key, W Sargeant (Translator) (2010). The Bhagavad Gita: Twenty-fifth–Anniversary Edition. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-2840-6. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Harold Coward (2008). The Perfectibility of Human Nature in Eastern and Western Thought: The Central Story. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-7336-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Jeaneane D. Fowler (1997). Hinduism: Beliefs and Practices. Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-898723-60-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Padmanabh Jaini (1980). Wendy Doniger (ed.). Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-03923-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kalupahana, David J. (1992), A history of Buddhist philosophy, Motilal Banarsidass
• Keown, Damien (2013). Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-966383-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Mark Juergensmeyer; Wade Clark Roof (2011). Encyclopedia of Global Religion. SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-1-4522-6656-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Stephen J. Laumakis (2008). An Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-46966-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Norman C. McClelland (2010), Encyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma, McFarland, ISBN 978-0-7864-5675-8
• Giannis Stamatellos (2013), Plotinus on Transmigration: a Reconsideration, Journal of Ancient Philosophy 7,1
• Obeyesekere, Gananath (2005). Wendy Doniger (ed.). Karma and Rebirth: A Cross Cultural Study. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 978-8120826090. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Trainor, Kevin (2004). Buddhism: The Illustrated Guide. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517398-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Paul Williams; Anthony Tribe; Alexander Wynne (2012), Buddhist Thought, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-136-52088-4

Further reading

This "Further reading" section may need cleanup. Please read the editing guide and help improve the section. (August 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• 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.
• Bache, Christopher M., Lifecycles, Reincarnation and the Web of Life, 1991, ISBN 1-55778-645-3.
• Barbara O'Brien, 'Rebirth and Reincarnation in Buddhism}
• 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.
• Emily Williams Kelly, Science, the Self, and Survival after Death, Rowman, 2012.
• Klemp, H. (2003). Past lives, dreams, and soul travel. Minneapolis, MN: Eckankar. ISBN 1-57043-182-5.
• Luchte, James, Pythagoras and the Doctrine of Transmigration: Wandering Souls, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-1441131027.
• 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

• The Columbia Encyclopedia: Transmigration of Souls or Metempsychosis
• The Catholic Encyclopedia: Metempsychosis
• Jewish View of Reincarnation

• Reincarnation
• Afterlife
• Buddhist philosophical concepts
• Druze
• Esoteric Christianity
• Esotericism
• Hindu philosophical concepts
• Ismaili theology
• Jain philosophical concepts
• Kabbalah
• Mysticism
• Philosophy of mind
• Philosophy of religion
• Spirituality