In 1997, 25% of US citizens surveyed said they believed in some form of reincarnation. A survey taken in 2003 puts that number at 27% and at 40% for people between the ages of 25 and 29. About the same percentage of Europeans share this belief although the percentage across Europe varies greatly, from one in seven in Norway, for example, to 1 in 3 in England (cite). The belief in reincarnation throughout the Northern nations is definitely on the rise and has been for quite a few years (see previous cites).

While many traditional Christians hold the concept to be wholly foreign to Christianity, evidence of its acceptance among some early Christians is rampant. The Gnostics in particular where strongly attracted to the concept. Josephus remarks on its teaching among the Jews, and Justin Martryr, St. Clement of Alexandria, and Origen all wrote of it (cite).

By the time of the Fifth Ecumenical Council in AD 553, the idea, along with other teachings of Origen was made anathema: "IF anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema."

One or another variant of reincarnation is the most common view of an afterlife among world religions generally. In addition to being a staple of Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Bonism, and other "Eastern" religions as well as the beliefs of indigenous peoples, it is a teaching within the Kaballah of Judaism and even appears among some writers in Islam.

There are a wide range of views on what reincarnation actually is, ranging from a kind of willy-nilly incarnational roulette whose karmic spin might send you into the body of a king in one life and a worm in the next to the subtleties of "rebirth" as distinguished from "reincarnation". Some people also see an inherent contradiction between belief in heaven or heavens and reincarnation.

The idea of "reincarnation" seems to depend upon the idea of a soul, what Hinduism calls "atman", the tiny drop of God or self that exists at the core of every living thing and which is eventually reunited with its source as God or Self in macrocosmic rather than microcosmic expression. The raindrop returns to the ocean by passing through innumerable temporary vehicles.

From this perspective, ones "selfish" actions, i.e. those which create or build upon attachments, create karma. Karma in Hinduism is always negative. There is no "good" karma, although actions which destroy or reduce attachment are possible. Such actions reduce karma, however, they do not create a positive form of it. The degree and kind of karma which accumulates upon a given soul is considered to determine the nature of ones subsequent incarnation. Presumably, in some cases, one could go from being a king to a worm, but one might wonder how the complexities of the one existence might translate into the other.

Buddhism, which emerges from Hinduism in much the same way Christianity emerged from Judaism but without nearly the same degree of aggression and confusion, posits a much different view of the same essential reality. The Buddha, upon attaining enlightenment, speaks one word only at first: "Anatman". The prefix "-an" in Sanskrit means "not" or "no". It is an existential negation (the same prefix along with variants "-a" and "-ab" comes into English through Latin and Greek, and retains the same meaning). So the Buddha says there is no atman, there is no soul.

What there is, from the Buddhist perspective, is emptiness. Form emerges from emptiness and returns to it. The singularity of "self" does not exist. Emptiness can neither be said to exist or not exist, thus it can neither be born nor die. All that we associate with an individual identity is rather an aggregate of events which appear and disappear both "vibrationally" and existentially. In other words, anything we might identify as self (or other) comes into existence at some moment as the result of some complex of factors (dependent origination). As the result of the internal actions of its aggregate parts and the external actions of other things, everything there is, self or other, eventually ceases to exist. During the period in which something might be said to exist, it both appears and disappears continuously. It flickers, vibrates. Nothing anywhere is solid. Everything is an event.

For this reason, Buddhists speak of "rebirth" rather than "reincarnation". The mind of each being, although essentially empty, is perpetually creating and dissolving forms, attaching and releasing with what is apparently real, and doing so as the result of a variety of causes in conjunction with its own volition. In doing this it creates a matrix of association which defines a set of conditions appropriate to itself. After death, this matrix persists and returns to an environment that reflects itself. The Dalai Lama explains this concept here.

Concepts of "heavens" and "hells" are not antithetical to those of reincarnation or rebirth. In some systems, such as the cosmology defined in Seeds of Heaven, the spiritual realms we think of as heavens or hells become the soul's abode between lifetimes in the physical universe. This view is echoed in the Pure Land Buddhism of Japan and the Far East which looks to something like a "savior" in Amitaba Buddha and to rebirth in a Pure Land very much like Heaven in which the teachings of the dharma are readily available to all and easily understood so that one lifetime in the Pure Land can advance a being far along its path to enlightenment. In other forms of Buddhism, including the Tibetan, there are six major realms of being (and innumerable sub-realms). These are the Hell Realms, Realms of the Hungry Ghosts, Animal Realms, Human Realm, Realms of the Asuras or Angry Gods, and Realms of the Peaceful Gods. Rebirth may occur from any one of these to any other although some require unusual circumstances or actions to bring them about. Life in both the Hell Realms and the two realms of superhuman beings may persist for extraordinary long periods ("forever and ever"), but enlightenment is only possible for a being born as a human.

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