The idea that the very subtle consciousness that once experienced reality as a human, may now experience it as a kitten is not such a weird idea when we understand this pared down notion of mind. Many of us have had glimpses of how such a thing may be possible from our dreams, when we may experience reality in many different guises besides the one we are so familiar with when we are awake. It is quite possible you may have had a very strong sense of self even though you were an animal, alien or some other being — in a dream.
Animals generally have none of those, unless they have the immensely good fortune to end up in the homes of doting pet lovers. What we take for granted, looked at dispassionately, is actually incredibly rare. It arises from a specific cause — virtue. Any being acting in according with virtue, creates a cause to be reborn as human. The counterpoint is that non-virtue is the cause for a much less auspicious rebirth, including that of an animal.
Failing to make the most of our precious human rebirth to cultivate virtue is sometimes likened to visiting an island littered with precious jewels, and not picking up any before returning home. A lost opportunity unlikely to be repeated for a very, very long time. Sikhs believe that the soul is passed from one body to another until liberation. God may pardon wrongs and release us. Otherwise reincarnation is due to the law of cause and effect but does not create any caste or differences among people.
Reincarnation is refuted by all the main monotheistic religions of the world. The first life? The last life? Considering this, Quran rejects the concept of reincarnation, though it preaches the existence of soul. The principle belief in Islam is that there is only one birth on this earth. The Doomsday comes after death and will be judged as to one has to once for all go to hell or be unified with God. Modern Sufis who embrace the idea of reincarnation include Bawa Muhaiyadeen. Reincarnation is not an essential tenet of traditional Judaism.
Medieval Jewish Rationalist philosophers discussed the issue, often in rejection. Other, Non-Hasidic, Orthodox Jewish groups while not placing a heavy emphasis on reincarnation do acknowledge it as a valid teaching. The 16 th -century Isaac Luria the Ari brought the issue to the center 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.
The major Christian denominations reject the concept of reincarnation. Christians believe that when a person dies their soul would sleep in the grave along with their corpse. However, there was a schism about understanding Jesus himself in early Christian history. Was he a man who became God? Was he God born as a man? The Roman faction rejected pre-existence and reincarnation and believed Jesus was God become man.
The Jerusalem faction knew Jesus was a man who achieved the human-divine at-one-ment, which is the goal of everyone to escape reincarnation cycle of birth and death and have eternal life.
NRMs may be novel in origin or they may be part of a wider religion, such as Christianity, Hinduism, or Buddhism, in which case they will be distinct from pre-existing denominations. All spiritual schools accept the concept of reincarnation. They admit, with some differences, that the purpose of reincarnation is for the soul to get purified and gain wisdom, so that it comes out of the cycle of birth and death.
Osho, also known as Bhagvan Rajaneesh, says that the life is born when the existence looks upon itself. An individual is a consciousness localized in a body. The mind of an individual exists as a set of memories, both good and bad.
Of course more of bad memories than good, as we always tend to remember the insults and criticisms more than praises. Memory is nothing but energy in a very subtle form. Being energy, it cannot be destroyed even at death. It is liberated into the cosmos and dissolved. Just like riches attract more riches, such memories are pooled up, only to enter another womb. Thus when a person is born, he gets the bits of memories from many people.
So he cannot remember his past birth. Nevertheless, in exceptional cases, when a new born gets the entire memory system of another individual, he can easily recall his past birth, though it is not actually his birth.
So in true sense, the person is not born again, only his memories are expressed in another individual. An enlightened person is not born again.
This is because; his mind contains no memories, neither good nor bad. He lives in a moment to moment existence. It is like the path of a fish in water or a bird in the sky.
They do not leave any track behind. Thus when an enlightened person dies, he leaves no memories, to be picked up by other beings. Thus he is not born again. Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, from the University of Virginia, is an authority in scientific research on reincarnation. He investigated many reports of young children who claimed to remember a past life.
He conducted more than case studies over a period of 40 years and published 12 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 by medical records such as autopsy photographs, in Reincarnation and Biology. 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, Brian Weiss, and Raymond Moody. Some skeptics, such as Paul Edwards, have analyzed many of these accounts, and called them anecdotal. 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.
Researchers such as Stevenson have acknowledged these limitations. Ian Stevenson reported that belief in reincarnation is held with variations in details by adherents of almost all major religions except Christianity and Islam. 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 India, Satwant Pasricha, Professor of Psychology, is the authority on the scientific study of reincarnation. Having worked as an assistant to Ian Stevenson, her research methods are similar to Stevenson. She documents the child's statements. Then she identifies the deceased person the child remembers being, and verifies the facts of the deceased person's life that match the child's memory. By the time aspiration begins, the soul is far too highly developed ever to return to the animal kingdom.
The soul does not go back to animal condition; but a part of the vital personality may disjoin itself and join an animal birth to work out its animal propensities there. But the soul, the psychic being, once having reached the human consciousness cannot go back to the inferior animal consciousness any more than it can go back into a tree or an ephemeral insect.
What is true is that some part of the vital energy or the formed instrumental consciousness or nature can and very frequently does so, if it is strongly attached to anything in the earth life.
You must be logged in to post a comment. Is it the same as rebirth? Is karma the same as fate? These and a hundred similar questions are often put to me. A gross misunderstanding of about Buddhism exists today, especially in the notion of reincarnation. The common misunderstanding is that a person has led countless previous lives, usually as an animal, but somehow in this life he is born as a human being and in the next life he will be reborn as an animal, depending on the kind of life he has lived.
This misunderstanding arises because people usually do not know-how to read the sutras or sacred writings. It is said that the Buddha left 84, teachings; the symbolic figure represents the diverse backgrounds characteristics, tastes, etc.
The Buddha taught according to the mental and spiritual capacity of each individual. For the simple village folks living during the time of the Buddha, the doctrine of reincarnation was a powerful moral lesson. Fear of birth into the animal world must have frightened many people from acting like animals in this life.
If we take this teaching literally today we are confused because we cannot understand it rationally. Herein lies our problem. A parable, when taken literally, does not make sense to the modern mind. Therefore we must learn to differentiate the parables and myths from actuality. However, if we learn to go beyond or transcend the parables and myths, we will be able to understand the truth.
People will say "If such is the case why not speak directly so that we will be able to come to an immediate grasp of the truth? The doctrine of reincarnation is often understood in this light.
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