What Is Reincarnation? The answer, I found, depends on who you ask!
My interest in reincarnation began while taking a course in hypnosis. In this course we learned many different techniques, past life regression being one of them. I was taught, in this course, that a person does not need to believe in reincarnation, or actual past lives for healing to occur, however, I am still intrigued by the notion of an eternal soul leaving a body after physical death and then in some mysterious spiritual interim, preparing to come back into another physical form.
I decided to begin my research with Webster's definition, which read: Rebirth (of the soul) in another body. Then I decided to explore Hinduism and Buddhism, the two most well known religions with the philosophy of reincarnation in their belief systems.
When I describe the Hindu and Buddhist ideas of reincarnation, I will of course be generalizing...because there are as many different schools of Hinduism and Buddhism as there are different denominations of Christianity.
In the Hindu tradition, the ultimate spiritual goal is to achieve liberation from the endless cycle of death and rebirth (Sanskrit term...samsara....literal meaning...recurrent wandering). Rebirth or reincarnation is controlled by Karma (action or deed). Hindus believe that the Atman (individual soul) collects the effects of karma through actions taken in lifetime after lifetime, and as long as the soul has karmic debt, it must continue to reincarnate. Nirvana is the term meaning escape from samsara (the karmic cycle of death and rebirth). Hindus believe that once all karma has been shed, a person's Atman or soul can become one with the Brahman (which is the Hindu term for the Godhead). Hindus believe that karma can be shed and Nirvana attained by practices such as meditation and yoga.
Just as Christianity was parented by Judaism in the west---sharing many the Judaism principles and much of it's scripture, Buddhism shares many of the same fundamentals of reincarnation and karma as Hinduism.
In Buddhist tradition, the basic Hindu doctrines of reincarnation and karma are accepted, as well as the notion that the ultimate spiritual goal is to escape the cycle of death and rebirth (samsara) to reach Nirvana or Liberation. Nirvana literally means extinction, and refers to the extinction of all craving, which allows one to become liberated.
The most radical difference between Hinduism and Buddhism is the Buddhist notion that individuals do not possess eternal souls. Instead, Buddhist believe, we consist of (bundles or collections) of habits, memories, sensations and desires (or streams of mental energy). It is this mental energy, the Buddhist believe, that deludes one into thinking that he or she is a stable, lasting self, and it is this false sense of self which reincarnates in body after body.
As in Hinduism, many different forms of meditation are practiced by the Buddhist to enable one to abandon this false sense of self, and allow the stream of mental energy to disintegrate. By doing so, one reaches liberation from samsara (there is nothing left to reincarnate)
These eastern philosophical and religious ideas of reincarnation and karma have become more well-known in the west....and many doctors in the field of psychiatry and psychology are using hypnosis to gather information...which some believe suggest evidence of reincarnation.
Dr. Joel Whitton, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto medical school, is considered an expert in clinical hypnosis; he also holds a degree in neurobiology. To conduct his research, Dr. Whitton gathered a group of about 30 people, from truck drivers to computer scientists...some believed in reincarnation, and some did not. He spent thousands of hours hypnotizing them, individually, while recording everything they said about their alleged previous existences. Every person in the group reported numerous past lives, some as many as 20 to 25...all reported that gender is not specific to the soul, and many had lived at least one life as the opposite sex. All reported that the purpose of life is to evolve and learn, and that multiple existences facilitate this process.
An intriguing aspect of these so called past life memories, was their ability to explain a wide range of seemingly unrelated events and experiences in the subjects' current life. For example: one subject, a male psychologist, born and raised in Canada, had an inexplicable British accent as a child. He had an irrational fear of breaking his leg, a phobia of air travel, a terrible nail-biting problem, an obsessive fascination with torture, and as a teenager, he had a brief and baffling vision of being in a room with a Nazi officer, shortly after operating the pedals of a car during a driving test. Under hypnosis the man recalled being a British pilot during WWII. While on a mission over Germany, his plane was hit by a shower of bullets, one of these bullets broke his leg and in turn caused him to lose control of the plane's foot pedals, forcing him to crash land. He was captured by the Nazis, and tortured for information by having his nails pulled out. He died shortly after this experience.
Many of Whitton's subjects experienced profound psychological and physical healings as a result of bringing up similar traumatic past-life memories. Another interesting aspect of Whitton research...came when his subjects regressed to the so called spiritual interim between physical existences. All described this interim as a dazzling, light-filled realm in which there was no time or space as we know it. According to his subjects, part of the purpose of this realm was to allow them to plan their next life. Whitton found that when the subjects were in the between-life realm, they entered an unusual state of consciousness in which they had a heightened moral and ethical sense...Whitton termed this state of mind the Metaconsciousness...I've also seen the term superconsciousness or higher self to denote this state of mind. The subjects described the process of planning their next life...they described choosing to be born with people they had wronged in a previous life so they could make amends...planning pleasant encounter with soul mates and scheduling so called accidental events to fulfill other lessons and purposes....all with an extremely moral sense of obligation.
For example: one subject, a woman who had been raped at age 37, revealed once reaching a metaconscious state, that she had planned the rape before incarnating...she explained during hypnosis that it had been necessary for her to experience this tragedy at age 37, to force her to change her entire soul complexion, and break through to a deeper and more positive understanding of the meaning of life. Another subject, a man suffering with a serious, life threatening kidney disease, disclosed in metaconscious state, that he had chosen the illness before incarnating, to punish himself for a past-life moral violation. However, dying from this illness was not part of his plan, he explained. He described arranging an encounter with someone or something, before coming into this life, which would trigger his memory and enable him to heal both his guilt and his body. Soon after starting his sessions with Dr. Whitton he experienced a miraculous complete recovery!
Another reincarnation researcher is Dr. Ian Stevenson. He is Head of the Department of Neurology and Psychiatry at University of Virginia Medical School. Instead of using hypnosis, Stevenson investigates cases of young children who have apparently had spontaneous memories of previous existences. Stevenson combines the methods of the Historian, Lawyer, and Psychiatrist to investigate these cases. He has spent over 40 years collecting and analyzing thousands of cases from all over the world. According to Stevenson, spontaneous past-life recall is relatively common among children...so common in fact, his staff is unable to investigate them all. These children are generally between the ages of two and four when they start talking about their "other life." Frequently these children remember particulars such as their name, the names of family and friends, where they lived, what their house looked like, what they did for a living, and how they died. These memories are so detailed, Dr. Stevenson is able to track down the identity of their previous personality and verify everything they have said!
In one example of a child having an apparent past-life memory, a mother told the story of her three year old son and his strange behavior the day the family dog died. When she and her son discovered the dog dead, she stepped into the next room to call the veterinarian, in order to make arrangements for the body. When she returned, she was stunned by the sight! Her son had covered the dog from head to tail with butter and bandaids! When she ask her son what he was doing, he replied "mommy, I'm making sure that she slides into heaven faster."A few days later the mother happened to mention this unusual incident to a friend. Her friend said it sounded like an Egyptian ritual she had seen in one of her books. The next day the mother's friend brought the book over and showed her a picture depicting the burial practices of the ancient Egyptians. When the mother saw the picture from the book, she exclaimed "that's exactly what our dog looked like, all wrapped in oil and bandages." The mother then asked her son if he remembered doing that with the dog, and he said he did. He told his mother he just knew that's what he had to do, because her soul (the dogs) was just above her body. Another case involves twin, two-year old boys. These boys were observed speaking a strange language to one another by their parents. The parents did not recognize any of the words the boys were using, and the language seemed far more sophisticated than ones toddlers often invent. The boy's father, being a prominent physician, was able to take the boys to the linguistics department of Columbia University, where a professor of ancient languages identified their "baby talk" as Aramaic. Aramaic is a virtually extinct language, now spoken only in a remote area of Syria. This ancient language was primarily spoken around the area of Palestine, in the time of Christ!
More intriguing research comes from the unlikely source of physicists and physical scientists. By learning about the nature of energy, mass, and electromagnetic forces, these branches of science have come to realize that energy is indestructible. They reason that energy can be transformed into other forms of power or mass, but NEVER dissipated entirely. Therefore, the human consciousness, which is an energy field, cannot be dissipated either, and must continue to exist in some form.
Does this sound like we have come back to the Buddhist idea of reincarnation? That's exactly my thought. Which makes me realize that asking, what is reincarnation, can be very similar to asking, what is God....it depends on who you ask!