Reincarnation

The process of natural Evolution / of Cause and Effect

What is Reincarnation?
Random House College Dictionary:
1. The doctrine that the soul, upon death of the body, comes back to earth in another body. 2. The rebirth of the soul in a new body.

Who believes in Reincarnation?

People and Natives of:
Ancient Egypt and Greece, North and South America, India, Tibet, Japan, Australia, Africa, Russia, and many more.

Individuals: Plato ( also see Plato's Phaedo) "The Soul is older than body. Souls are continuously born over again into this life." William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar."

Kahlil Gibran
"A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me."

Pythagoras said that he remembered his transmigrations. Plotinus, in "The Descent of the Soul", claimed to have
knowledge of the Soul and its origin.

Salvador Dali said that he vividly remembered his previous

existence as St. John of the Cross.

Religious Scriptures:

Qur'an:
"Allah hath caused you to grow from the earth, and afterwards He maketh you return therto, and He will bring you forth again."

New Testament:
Matt. 17:12&13: "I tell you that Elijah has already come and people did not recognize him ....Then the disciples understood that he (Jesus) was talking to them about John the Baptist." Matt. 11:14: "..and if you are willing to believe their message, John is Elijah, whose coming was predicted. Listen, then, if you have ears!" John 3:6 Jesus: "A person is born physically of human parents, but he is born spiritually of the Spirit." John 9:1 The disciples asked Jesus: "Teacher, whose sin caused him to be born blind? Was it his own or his parents' sin?" (How could his fault be considered when he was born blind?)

Note:
History shows that early Christians generally accepted the belief in reincarnation until the teachings of Origon became unpopular and the belief in reincarnation was banned. (See Counsel of Nichaea 325 A. D. and of Constantinople 553 A. D.) Origon, theologian, teacher, and founder of the early Catholic church, made it quite clear in his books (De Prindipiis and Contra Celsum) that he believed in the prenatal existence of the Soul.

Kabbala:
Here we find the concept mentioned in form of the "Gilgul".

Old Testament:
Malachi 4:5: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord."

The Bhagavad Gita:

2:22 "Even as a person casts off worn-out clothes and puts on others that are new, so the embodied Self casts off worn-out bodies and enters into others that are new." 4:5 Krishna: "Many a birth have I passed through, and so have you. I know them all, but you know them not."

Is there any Proof for Reincarnation?

1. It makes more sense when we consider the system of cause and effect, of sin and punishment, and of justice. 2. Weight is added when we consider the general agreement between the many nations and scriptures.

3. We have a weak form of proof from hypnotic regression. 4. We have strong suggestive case collections by Dr. Ian Stevenson, M.D., a professor of psychiatry. For more than 30 years he has collected and analyzed thousands of cases, all strongly supporting the existence of reincarnation. 5. Confirmed memories of various people. Examples can be found in Ian Stevenson's books. In his "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation," Stevenson describes cases from Ceylon, India, Brazil, Alaska, and Lebanon where small children were describing their previous lives, property, people they knew, their killers, etc. At times, these children even spoke in their previous language. All these stories were checked out carefully and found to be correct, leaving us with some very impressive cases and a hard time to find any other logical conclusion other than Reincarnation is a fact. Of course, Reincarnation does not go on forever. Reincarnation finds its conclusion when Evolution has led the Soul back to its Source.