The reencarnation
It is a belief that people in some religions think that the individual essence of people, whether it be their soul or spirit, can start a new life in a new body or in a different physical form after they have their biological death. It can be known by the following terms:
- Mentepsychosis which comes from the Greek word meta which means after or successive and Psyche which means soul or spirit.
- Transmigration: what does it mean to migrate through
- Reincarnation: reincarnate
- Rebirth: reborn
Each of these terms presupposes the presence of a soul that can travel and go through different bodies, in order to have new life lessons and that makes parallel universes exist where you want to reincarnate, until you reach the higher level of ascension to a state of consciousness, it is through those experiences that he lived that will allow him to evolve as part of a macro spirit.
The existence of this belief in reincarnation has been present in humanity for many centuries, especially in Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, and in some regions of Africa, tribes of America and Oceania.
The idea that a person who dies can come back to life in another body but with a more evolved mind, has lasted longer than in the Jewish, Christian and also in Islam religions, which they think are a form of heresy. that the church has not accepted it.
Eastern Religions and Traditions
In all the dharmic religions that originate from Hinduism they have a firm belief in reincarnation as the end of a life cycle that gives rise to a new cycle or wheel of Karma, when good deeds are done or one acts under religious methods, one reaches to a state of liberation or cessation of that cycle, but if you don't do the good deeds you don't get to have a liberation. In Asian countries, reincarnation is a topic that has been included in a good way in popular devotion, culture and even in the folklore of these countries.
In Hinduism, or the Brahmanic religion, when a body dies, the soul, or essential part, leaves this body, which no longer serves its purpose, and is carried by the Yamaduta, the messengers or servants of the god Yama, who is in charge of judging the karmic actions of all souls in the universe. This is also reflected in the beliefs of Ancient Egypt, where people's actions are weighed against the weight of a feather.
Whether the actions are good or bad, the soul must either reincarnate in a higher, intermediate or lower existence. That is, they can be heavenly or hellish beings, and life is the intermediate state. This process is called Samsara which means flowing together or wandering, when the person spends it in constant entertainment, greed, wanting to have more goods or spend time, it is said that he does not have a life with purpose or meaning.
The soul of the person travels through that wheel that goes from the gods or devas to the insects. It is the acts that the person has had or the meaning that he has obtained in his life that determines what the trajectory of the soul in the universe will be. Popularly in Hinduism, the state in which a soul can be reborn is determined by good or bad actions, which are karma, since they are acts that are performed in previous incarnations.
Reincarnation and its quality are determined by the merits one has earned and accumulated, or the lack thereof, since these depend on the actions performed. This is what is called the soul's karma in the current life and past lives. If a person has committed evil, their soul is reborn in lower beings (animals, insects, and trees) or perhaps in hellish states, or they may have a life as a person but one filled with misfortune.
But karma can be modified by practicing yoga, bringing consciousness to a highly heightened or contemplative state, performing good deeds such as being generous, being joyful, giving good for evil, making ritual offerings of gratitude and generosity; or by being an ascetic and depriving oneself of everything that crams the senses and prevents the soul from growing or communicating with higher beings in the universe.
This concept of transmigration appears in the sacred texts of the Upanishad corresponding to a period from 500 BC to 1600 AD, which were the ones that replaced the ancient Vedas dating from 1500 to 600 BC. Liberation from reincarnation or samsara is only achieved when the full expiation of the weight of karma and all the consequences that came from good or bad deeds is made.
This is a permanent transformation that is done continuously until the soul of an individual or Atman manages to evolve and identifies and reaches the Brahma, who is the creator of the world, that is when he manages to save himself from all the misfortunes that are generated by the need to have reincarnated many times. This identification can only be achieved by practicing yoga or asceticism, after a last death it is possible to leave the material universe and be part of a divine light, which is the effulgence that comes out of Brahma, always believing that the soul of the individual and the universal soul are the same.
In Jainism, which is a religion following Hinduism, this process is explained by the way in which the soul can travel to any of the four states of existence that emerge after death, always depending on the Karma it has had in life. . The main postulate of this is that the souls are reaping the fruits of the good or bad deeds that they have had in successive lives, if they have had good karma they can reincarnate as a deva or demigod, but this would not be a permanent situation, for what Jains always look for the way to have complete liberation from their samsara.
Now, Sikhism, part of the belief that reincarnation is an important issue within this religion that, unlike the others, is monotheistic, for the Sikhs the soul must transmigrate from one body to another in order to evolve. This evolution must end in a union with God but purifying his spirit. As long as the person does not have good deeds, his soul will continue to reincarnate for eternity. If the person has good deeds he gets saved by God, and the way to purify his soul is to recite the naam or name of God, have knowledge of the waheguru who is a spiritual master and follow the path of the gurmat.
If we talk about Buddhism, it arises from Hinduism, but it made a series of changes to be able to be a new religion. His concept of reincarnation is different, since he denies it and affirms it from two points of view. He denies it when he says that there is no entity in a person that can be reincarnated into what he calls anatman, but then he affirms that the new individual manages to appear according to the actions that the previous person has carried out, so instead of speaking of a transmigration we speak of a palingenesis.
For them, if a nirvana is achieved, which is a total state of liberation, a rebirth can be achieved. In Tibetan Buddhism, the term reincarnation is often used to refer to the fact that one must go through the bardo, which is a middle or transitional state that arises after death and where one would spend 49 days. For Buddhism there is no immortal soul, nirvana is the completion of the wheel of continuous births and deaths, and this cycle only ends when enlightenment is achieved.
Buddhism states that reincarnation is just a way of changing in the same life with the evolution of the self, that is, changing identities, truths and emotions, another personality, but all within a single life. In other words, one can die and be born again in the course of a lifetime, living in the present, leaving the past behind and not taking time as an external dependency.
Shinto or Japanese Buddhism had in mind a notion of reincarnation through souls or spirits that must have a relationship with living people and in the taoism which is a philosophical way of seeing life and nature based on methods of life, health and meditation, the tao is the fundamental principle of the universe and therefore it is immortal and eternal, for them reincarnation exists since everything that has life it cannot die but flows through the tao.
Reincarnation exists since nothing dies as everything alive flows with the Tao. The Taoist does not seek to put an end to reincarnation directly, but follows the path of the Tao whose culmination is to become one with the Tao, and thus achieve immortality.
Reincarnation in Western Religions
For the Western world reincarnation is a different concept, for example the ancient Greeks had an anecdote where the famous Pythagoras manages to see a dead friend in the body of a beaten dog. The Greek philosophers believed in the transmigration of souls and therefore meat should not be eaten since it was an abomination, because all living beings passed to another living being when they died, in fact Pythagoras stated that he had a memory of having been in Troy when Menelaus killed the Son of Panthus. For Plato, reincarnation was the passage of a human soul to know or reach the truth and depending on this, it would be born in one body or another.
In the group of the Celts or Gauls, the doctrine of Pythagoras is taken and it was taught that the souls of men enjoyed immortality and that after living a number of years they returned in a new body. As for Judaism, which is very similar to Christianity, they do not admit reincarnation, although it appears in the Kabbalah. In the zohar it says that all souls are subject to transmigration and that men who know what the ways of the lord are are blessed.
However, Christianity makes a total rejection of reincarnation, since it is a dogma that is against what is written in the Bible, which does not square with the belief in the resurrection. Although today some Christian currents have accepted the term of the resurrection. Many agnostic people believe that this doctrine was accepted in his time, that is, in ancient times, so many church fathers discussed this topic but ended up rejecting the concept.
The hermeticism that deals with the doctrine of the soul, says that this is a container where all the faults of human beings are poured and when the body dissolves, it can be elevated or it can earn punishment for having been impious and clinging to the passions of the body. Souls can go through various elements to achieve purification, reincarnating until they reach the choir of god, but it is only for those who live a life of piety with God and manage to serve the world with diligence. Those who do not lead this life but follow an impious path will not be able to see a return to heaven and a degrading migration of a holy soul begins to incarnate in other people's bodies.
Reincarnation Research
Ian Stevenson, is a writer who has carried out research on children who had memories of a past life, more than 2500 studies carried out in a 40-year journey made him publish 12 books, the best known of them Twenty Cases that suggest reincarnationHis investigations were methodical; he took statements from each child and then tried to find the ID of the deceased person with whom that child had memories. He then ran checks on the deceased person's life to see how they matched everything the child remembered.
In many of the cases he found birthmarks or scars that were consistent with the wounds or scars of the deceased person, each of the stories were certified in medical records and autopsy forums and he reflected them in his book Reincarnation and Biology. But Stevenson did not keep this information alone, he also tried to make refutations and seek explanations for the reports, so that with his exact methods they would rule out the normal explanations that could be given in the memories of these children.
The only objection he had was that most of the cases reported by Stevenson were from Eastern societies, where the predominant religions kept the concept of reincarnation present. With this criticism on top, he publishes the book European Cases of the Reincarnation Type, so that they could validate the research he was doing. This type of study has also been carried out by writers such as Brian Weiss, Jim Tucker and Raymond Moody.
There are skeptics like Paul Edwards, who think that these cases are rather anecdotal, and most skeptics think that these cases come from selective thinking based on false memories, thanks to the beliefs they have about themselves and their fears and therefore they are only empirical evidence that cannot be verified.
Writer Carl Sagan makes references to many cases from Stevenson's investigations in his book The world and its demons, as part of this selected empirical information, although he believes that reincarnation should be rejected in these accounts. In these cases, most people do not speak of having had previous lives, and there is no way or mechanism recognized in science that can help to know how a personality survives death and passes into another body.
Investigated Cases that Evidence Reincarnation
We are going to mention some of the cases that were registered by several investigators, among which are those that we already mentioned, all these cases suggest that a soul can pass from one body to another.
Cravings: in some regions of Asia, when a person dies, the family places a mark on the body with soot or charcoal, since they hope that when the person reincarnates he or she will be born with that same mark, in this case it is called a birthmark. The scientific journal The Journal of Scientific Exploration did a study where it reported several cases of babies born with spots in places where relatives had marked another dead relative, the most notorious was that of a baby born in Burma, born with an unusual mark , and at two years of age she called her grandmother by a peculiar nickname that only her dead husband used to call her.
Baby born with gunshots: Dr. Ian Stevenson that we talked about in the previous title did a study on birth defects that had no known causes. In a baby born in Turkey, I managed to find marks on his head and ear that correspond to bullet wounds made with a shotgun, the baby had a deformed right ear and a part of his right face with a facial deformity, which only one baby in six thousand manages to develop.
Patient recalls killing her son: Brian Weiss, Miami psychiatrist, author of the book Many Lives, Many Masters, narrated the case of a woman named Diana, who was subjected to hypnosis, had memories of a past life where she was a XNUMXth century settler woman who was in a fight with the American Indians, she told in her hypnosis that being with her son hid so they wouldn't be killed and accidentally suffocated her baby when she covered his mouth so he wouldn't cry, in her memory she saw that her baby had a crescent-shaped mark on his body.
Months after hypnosis, Diana was at her job as a nurse and met a patient who was asthmatic, who had a crescent-shaped spot on the same part of the baby's body that she had seen in her hypnosis, when she told him what happened to Dr. Weiss, and he remembered that in several of his investigations and cases there were people who had that same feeling of suffocation due to asthma and that they were memories that in a past life died that way.
Reincarnated and with the same story: A young man of Indian origin named Taranjit Singh, said at the age of two that his real name was Satnam and that he had been born in a village 60 kilometers from where he lived. He said that he was in ninth grade when he died in a traffic accident and that in his pocket he had 30 rupees and his notebooks that were filled with blood. Taranjit's father went to the village that his son mentioned and looked for the relatives of the young Satnam and confirmed that he had indeed died after being run over by a motorcycle.
Taking his son to the house of this family, he showed him in photos who Taranjit was, without anyone having told him anything, in addition, comparisons were made of Taranjit's handwriting with that of Satnam and the writing is identical.
Souvenirs of monasteries: Adrian Finkelstein, author of the book “Your Past Lives and the Healing Process,” told the story of a boy named Robin Hull, who sometimes spoke a language different from that of his family. They sought out a dialect expert, who confirmed that the boy was speaking a dialect used in a mountainous region of Tibet. The boy claimed to have been born in a different time in a monastery where he was taught to speak the dialect, and was told exactly where it was located and what it looked like. The teacher went to Tibet on a trip and managed to find the monastery the boy mentioned in the Kunlun Mountains.
scars of his brother: the young Kevin Christenson dies in 1979 from cancer, he had a broken leg, which became infected and caused a metastasis, they made an incision on the right side of his neck to place the cannula for chemotherapy, he also developed a tumor in his left eye that made it pop out of its socket and he also had a nodule in his right ear.
Twelve years after his death, his mother remarried and had a son. At birth, a mark similar to that left by a cannula was seen on the right side of his neck. He also had a nodule in his right ear, a problem in his left eye that turned out to be a leucoma of the cornea, and when he began to walk, he had a limp, which had no explanation since his leg bones were normal.
Modern Perspectives on Reincarnation
For Anthroposophy, Theosophy and the New Thought and New Age, the term reincarnation is accepted. Now, in the XNUMXth century, the West has become more open to accepting the religious and philosophical concepts that come from the former British and French colonies in Asia, more to give the subject a popular taste since they consider it something new, and also so that the same is magazine of greater publicity.
But many of these new experiences are based on facts that have to do with their own experiences in a world of economic chaos and a lot of political and social tension, and also how they have to face suffering and their own lives, so they try to avoid tensions with the spiritual themes that are in vogue and that are followed by young people.
Reincarnation is then taken to divert what is considered social injustice and they present it with the explanation of karma, affirming that there must be a resignation before these facts so that a truth can be obtained from the same person, so that these can have a transcendence. to a better future life.
Criticism of Reincarnation
Many thinkers today such as René Guenón criticize the subject of reincarnation, stating that this doctrine belongs to the West and that it has nothing to do with Eastern religions such as metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls. He believes that this topic belongs more to spiritualism. Instead, the Hindu orientalist Ananda Coomaraswamy established in his book Vedanta and the Western Tradition, who did not believe that the theme of reincarnation was what had kept India, for him, the human being must be undone in the universe since nothing can exist if there is no consciousness of being someone.
It suggests that the elements of a person or psychophysical entity disintegrate and pass on to other entities as an inheritance, that this process has gone through the entire life of a person and that it can be understood as a rebirth of a father in a son. This is the doctrine of reincarnation in India, in the Greeks, Christians and modernity. In other words, reincarnation as the return of individual souls to new bodies is not only used in India but is a belief in all people and cultures.
Signs Proving Reincarnation
In the Indian book of The Bhagavad Gita there is talk of a person named Krishna who gives advice to a human telling him that in the same way a person takes off his dirty clothes and puts on new ones, in the same way the embodied soul leaves a used body and enters a new form. of manifestation. That is why many experts think that there are signs that indicate when a person is a reincarnation of another in time.
Recurring Dreams
It is said that dreams are the reflection of the unconscious mind, it is thought that when you dream of the same image it is the sign of a trauma, or of a past life, that is why many people may have experimentation in certain things, have the sensation of meeting a person who has just been introduced to you or being aware of having been in certain places that you have never seen in real life.
have spontaneous memories
In young children there are cases of having memory of objects or people that come to them spontaneously and that over time turn out to be true and verifiable, in some cases it is believed that these memories are the product of fantasies, things that were misinterpreted or incongruous thoughts, but they associate it with moments or connections from other past lives.
Have Intuition
Intuition is the ability to maintain a balance of the conscious mind with the unconscious, which allows us to have greater wisdom that helps us at specific times, sometimes the intensity of this sensation is so supernatural that it passes to the plane of the seer . For Buddhism, there is Nirvana, where all energies can flow and where knowledge is shared and perhaps that is where this knowledge comes from.
Already seen
This is a sensation that a situation has been experienced at some point in life, this is evidenced in certain smells, sounds, images or tastes, for some this is a discrepancy that arises at the neurological level and for others it is a reflection that there is another dimension.
You feel empathy with other beings
This is a vision of the Buddhist line that is based on a principle of seven lives where a human being can reincarnate seven times to live in the correct way, not always in these lives you can be a human, the soul can be taken to a animal so that it can learn basic principles of life, when there is empathy it is because it has passed through several bodies and that is why they are respected and valued.
Precognition
If you have a preference for certain cultures or certain stages of time, your life may have a pending part of a past life in which you lived in a good way or in which you have suffered a lot and you feel the need to know more about it. .
You think you're not part of the world
When you think that you feel discomfort for the world you live in and for everything around you, and also want to find a true place and call it home, it may be the result of a mystical place where souls must have met, because they have already fulfilled the mission of their life and have a basic need to return to what they call home.
Unexplained Fears or Phobias
Many fears or phobias that people have are residues of experiences from other lives that could not be overcome and that in the current life are mentioned as an illness, it is believed that in past lives people could have a violent death or a moment so difficult that they can't get over it in a new life, this is the feeling, for example, that people have when they go to the beach and they are afraid of drowning or they go to a specific place and they are afraid of being in it.
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