Reincarnation. Does it exist?

Reincarnation has been an age-old topic and has been debated on since thousands of years. Many major religions support the reincarnation theory except for Christianity.But some believe that the reincarnation tenet had been removed from Christ’s teachings in 553 A.D. So does reincarnation really exist? Let’s first have a look at what the various religions have to say on this matter -

Hinduism
Lord Krishna in the Bhagvad Gita equates the body with a dress that the soul wears. Just as we change dresses when they become useless, similarly the soul is reborn in another body when the old body dies. He describes the soul as undying and eternal. Therefore he says that its foolishness to lament for the body. The following are some excerpts from the Bhagvad Gita

Ch2 Text 13
“As the embodied soul continually passes in this body from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered at such a change.”

Ch2 Text 22
“As a person puts on old garments giving up old ones, similarly the soul accepts new material bodies giving up the old and useless ones”

Ch2 Text 27
“For one who has taken birth, death is a certain and for one who is dead, birth is certain.”

Ch15 Text 8
“The living entity in the material world carries his different conceptions of life from one body to another as the air carries aromas”

Buddhism
I would like to give a short introduction to Buddhism before seeing the reincarnation aspect. Buddha was born as Prince Siddhartha in the Shakya clan in Nepal nearly 2500 years ago. Though he led a princely comfortable lifestyle he was saddened and disturbed by the people suffering from old age, sickness, misery and death. He then renounced his life as a Prince at the age of 29 and set on a spiritual quest. After six years of severe penance in the forest, Prince Siddhartha was enlightened and became Buddha (meaning: The enlightened one). He could see how the entire Universe worked and how people were dying and being reborn according to their past deeds or karma.

Buddha says that all living things in this Universe are in a continuous cycle of birth and death and that the only way of breaking through this cycle is through spiritual enlightment.

Note: I am not including other religions owing to my limited knowledge about them

New Age Modern Belief

According to this belief all the living things in this Universe are in a continuous state of spiritual growth. Until we attain the complete growth we keep reincarnating in circumstances of our choice to learn some spiritual lessons and growth. If we don’t learn from an experience, the same type of events keep repeating in our lives until we learn the lesson meant for us and thus break out of the pattern. I think the inexplicable sense of déjà vu that we experience many times can be related to this theory.

It is said that we choose our parents, background, education, spouse etc before we take birth. We choose the circumstances that will best assist us in our spiritual growth or would like to be born to people with similar thinking patterns.

There is some excellent material about Reincarnation and real life cases in the following links
Reincarnation FAQ
Reincarnation


Also see scientific evidence for reincarnation at
Scientific evidence

How to find out about past lives
Mediation is the safest and most reliable way. The only drawback in this method is that it is very slow and may even take years to remember anything substantial.

Other famous methods are Healing methods such as Reiki and past life regression therapy. People who have been regressed claim to remember about 8 to 10 past lives.

An interesting past life regression case
Christie’s Past life
About Past life regression therapy Past Life Regression Therapy

—Geetha