(a re-post from ArcanumArcanorum group, which has its place here!)


"Life after death; life after life; life before life; reincarnation, transmigration, rebirth, palingenisis -
All appears to be the same, yet each and every one of the above has some subtle differences in what it tries to convey, and how it is understood. Most people are not aware on how really big the issue is, how very deep it can, and will go. Its implications, and relationships with other issues, directly and indirectly, observable, and hidden. Ask any person on the street: "Do you believe in reincarnation?" - with some exceptions you will get an immediate answer anywhere between an emphatic "No!" or a resounding "Yes!". If you try to dig deeper on why a Yes or No answer was provided, one will soon discover that often the answer was simply given based on what someone else said, a friend, a parent, a religion or science, all imprinted with the cultural bias from their upbringing. Very little personal thought has gone into it, and so they may easily flounder, or continue to deny any possibility of the opposite answer.

How deep could this possibly go? you may wonder. Yes, on the surface it is a simple yes or no question. But the question also implies many other questions. Questions I indirectly alluded to above: "Who am I?"; "How did I get here?"; "Where will I go?" - all are embedded in the question of "Was there a life before this life?", or put a different way: "Is this it?" (the only life). Those are very simple, profound questions. And they go deeper yet. For it also indirectly implies the questions of "What am I?"; "How could reincarnation work?"; "What, if anything, affects the 'choice' of this life, or a life to come?". All of these questions are the very basis of practically every religion and philosophy that has ever existed, exists, and will exist. A negative answer, that is a "No" to reincarnation, makes a lot of these questions a mute point. And should someone answer "No!", provision must be made, questions must be answered, on why it is that these questions seeking the "Yes!" even arise. As any researcher observing animal behaviours knows, for every behaviour there is a cause, a reason why it is so. So deep is this subject that it could fill a book, has already filled many books. It will not be easy to restrain the discussion on this topic to reincarnation. And sometimes it may require delving somewhat into other related issues to aid in the understanding of the possibility of reincarnation."

(Please note: this quote was an introductory article to this issue from a dear friend from AS: I have his permission to post it, but this is copyrighted material!).


Considering the idea of “this is it” – this is what we have, the one and only life, there is no other life, before or after this one. This invalidates of course the concept of a soul – a soul here stands for this something more then just the physical body, and not especially a soul as commonly understood in the Judeo-Christian sense.

If this life is the only life, this thing called soul would somehow have to be created. And then, when death occurs, it too would die. Many people will react, even emotionally, against this idea. For the very simple reason that life becomes something without purpose. This is basically what science indirectly postulates: we are an organic machine that comes into existence, goes around for a very short time, and then disappears. And most probably science can explain to some extent the hows but not the whys.

If asked, everybody would say that death is the opposite of life. But is it? To those that see life as a cycle, death is also part of the cycle, not its opposite. In this way, death is but an attribute, an aspect of life. It is the other "end" of the cycle, which is birth. A cycle implies a circle. Circles do not have opposites; their ends merge into beginnings. Every point on a circle is at once a beginning and an end. We actually are continuously being born, and continuously dying. Each point on a circle, represents the now and here of this very moment. As life moves from moment to moment, we die and we are born.


When seeing life as a cycle, a permanently moving and changing cycle, a question will certainly arise: but then, "How do I come to this life?" or, if you prefer, "How does life come to me?" The answer may be given in many forms and shades. Reincarnation is one possibility.

This possibility can give raise to a set of questions:

Are there any signs of evidence for reincarnation, physical, or logical?

How does this reincarnation stuff works?

Is there a beginning or end to reincarnation - to life?

What is the connection between this life and the next.. or the last one?

And a lot more questions can be asked...