The Overall Definition Of Reincarnation

The overall definition of reincarnation that most would agree on is the “rebirth of a soul in a new body”. Many different philosophers, religious leaders, and others took on this idea of life after death. Each had similar teachings of levels in which you can be reborn to, or how to live life in order to reach some sort of comparable goal. This “body” could be reborn into anything from a plant to an animal or human form; some religions/ideas such as Jainism believed that there was one more level in this process such as demi gods (the highest level that could be achieved). All of which depended on the idea of karma, where one’s actions is their deciding fate of what level to be reborn into. Another difference in the idea of reincarnation was with Buddhism, Buddhist believe that the soul eventually parishes when one reaches Nirvana (enlightenment), as opposed to the belief of the everlasting soul.

However, the belief is shared across the world. Prior to the rise of Christianity and Islam, essentially the entire world held a belief in reincarnation; Greeks, Egyptians, Celts, Nordics, Native Americans, Persians, African tribes, and Chinese believed in this idea. It was when Christianity arose, the belief in reincarnation declined due to the incompatibility of the belief in eternal salvation and eternal life with god. However, reincarnation stuck with most, and even today roughly a fifth of Christians living in America still believe in the idea of reincarnation, places such as Europe have even higher amounts of Christians believing in reincarnation even when their religion rejects this