R

eincarnation is the religious or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after
biological death, begins a new life in a new body. This doctrine is a central tenet of
the Indian religions. It is also a common belief of various ancient and modern religions
such as Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar and is found in many tribal societies around the
world, in places such as Siberia, West Africa, North America, and Australia.

Although the majority of sects within the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do
refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary
followers of Kabbalah, the Cathars, the Druze and theRosicrucians. 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, has been the subject of recent scholarly research.
C. History
Origins
The origins of the notion of reincarnation are obscure. They apparently date to the Iron
Age (around 1200 BCE). Discussion of the subject appears in the philosophical traditions of
India (including the Indus Valley) and Greece (including Asia Minor) from about the 6th century
BCE. Also during the Iron Age, the Greek Pre-Socratics discussed reincarnation, and the
Celtic Druids are also reported to have taught a doctrine of reincarnation.
The ideas associated with reincarnation may have arisen independently in different regions, or
they might have spread as a result of cultural contact. Proponents of cultural transmission have
looked for links between Iron Age Celtic, Greek and Vedic philosophy and religion, some even
suggesting that belief in reincarnation was present in Proto-Indo-European religion. In ancient
European, Iranian and Indian agricultural cultures, the life cycles of birth, death, and rebirth were
recognized as a replica of natural agricultural cycles.
Reincarnation research
Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, from the University of Virginia, investigated many reports of young
children who claimed to remember a past life. He conducted more than 2,500 case studies over a
period of 40 years and published twelve books, including Twenty Cases Suggestive of
Reincarnation and Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. Stevenson methodically
documented each child's statements and then identified the deceased person the child identified
with, and verified the facts of the deceased person's life that matched the child's memory. He also
matched birthmarks and birth defects to wounds and scars on the deceased, verified bymedical
records such as autopsy photographs, in Reincarnation and Biology

Stevenson searched for disconfirming evidence and alternative explanations for the reports, and
believed that his strict methods ruled out all possible "normal" explanations for the childs
memories. However, a significant majority of Stevenson's reported cases of reincarnation
originated in Eastern societies, where dominant religions often permit the concept of
reincarnation. Following this type of criticism, Stevenson published a book on European Cases
of the Reincarnation Type. Other people who have undertaken reincarnation research include Jim
B. Tucker, Antonia Mills, Satwant Pasricha, Godwin Samararatne, and Erlendur Haraldsson.
But Dr. Stevenson himself recognized one glaring flaw in his case for reincarnation: the absence
of any evidence of a physical process by which a personality could survive death and transfer to
another body.
Skeptics such as Paul Edwards have analyzed many of these accounts, and called
them anecdotalwhile also suggesting that claims of evidence for reincarnation originate
from selective thinking and from the false memories that often result from one's own belief
system and basic fears, and thus cannot be counted as empirical evidence. Carl Sagan referred to
examples apparently from Stevenson's investigations in his book The Demon-Haunted World as
an example of carefully collected empirical data, though he rejected reincarnation as a
parsimonious explanation for the stories.
Ian Wilson argued that a large number of Stevensons cases consisted of poor children
remembering wealthy lives or belonging to a higher caste. He speculated that such cases may
represent a scheme to obtain money from the family of the alleged former incarnation. The
philosopher Keith Augustine has written "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." while Stevenson argued that families in cultures where belief in
reincarnation is widespread were more likely to report alleged occurrences. According to the
research of Dr. Robert Baker many of the alleged past-life experiences investigated by Stevenson
and other parapsychologists can be explained in terms of known psychological factors. Baker has
written the recalling of past lives is a mixture ofcryptomnesia and confabulation.
Objections to claims of reincarnation include the facts that the vast majority of people do not
remember previous lives and there is no mechanism known to modern science that would enable
a personality to survive death and travel to another body, barring the idea of biocentrism.
Researchers such as Stevenson have acknowledged these limitations.