Reincarnation
Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration, is the philosophical or religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new lifespan in a different physical form or body after biological death.[43][44][45] 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.[59][67] 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).[109] In Roman literature it is found as early as Ennius,[110] 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.[118][119] However, author T. D. Kendrick rejected a real connection between Pythagoras and the Celtic idea reincarnation, noting their beliefs to have substantial differences, and any contact to be historically unlikely.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.[146] By the 19th century the philosophers Schopenhauer[147] and Nietzsche[148] 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.Demographic survey data from 1999 to 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.[190][191] 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.Epistula CXXIV),[207] which asserts that Origen's On the First Principles (Latin: De Principiis; Greek: Περὶ Ἀρχῶν)[208] was mistranscribed: About ten years ago that saintly man Pammachius sent me a copy of a certain person's [ Rufinus's[207] ] 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.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).[234] The non-dualistic 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).[238] 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).[52][51][247] 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.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.Among the many rabbis who accepted reincarnation are Kabbalists like 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.[277][281] The Yoruba religion teaches that Olodumare, the Supreme Being and divine Creator who rules over His Creation, created eniyan, or humanity, to achieve balance between heaven and earth and bring about Ipo Rere, or the Good Condition.[283] Once achieved, Ipo Rere provides the ultimate state of supreme existence with Olodumare, a goal which elevates reincarnation to a key position in the Yoruba religion.Modern belief in abiku has significantly waned among urban populations, with the decline attributed to improved hygiene and medical care reducing infant mortality rates.[294] Spiritism, a spiritualist philosophy codified in the 19th century by the French educator Allan Kardec, teaches reincarnation or rebirth into human life after death.[295] According to the Spiritist doctrine, a spirit evolves from simpler organisms such as bacteria, plants, then into non-human animals, then into humans, and then into further stages, including the angelical one of higher wisdom and morality.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.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,[299] and a number of successive lives of various individualities.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.[citation needed] While there has been no scientific confirmation of the physical reality of reincarnation, where the subject has been discussed, there are questions of whether and how such beliefs may be justified within the discourse of science and religion.[309] Over a period of 40 years, psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, from the University of Virginia, recorded case studies of young children who claimed to remember past lives, and published twelve books.[316] Edwards attributed the stories to selective thinking, suggestion, and false memories that result from the family's or researcher's belief systems and thus did not rise to the standard of fairly sampled empirical evidence.Further, Ian Wilson wrote that a large number of Stevenson's cases consisted of poor children remembering wealthy lives or belonging to a higher caste.[322] Other academic researchers who have undertaken similar pursuits include Jim B. Tucker, Antonia Mills,[323] Satwant Pasricha, Godwin Samararatne, and Erlendur Haraldsson, but Stevenson's publications remain the most well known.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.
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