Quick Answer
Reincarnation means the soul or essential consciousness survives physical death and is reborn into a new body for further development. It is central to Hinduism, Buddhism, Pythagoreanism, Kabbalah, and Steiner's anthroposophy. University of Virginia psychiatrist Ian Stevenson spent four decades documenting over 2,500 children's verified past-life memories, producing the most rigorous empirical research in this field.
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- Cross-cultural convergence: Reincarnation appears independently in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Pythagorean Greece, Kabbalistic Judaism, and numerous Indigenous traditions, suggesting the concept addresses a genuine feature of human experience rather than a single cultural invention.
- Hindu vs. Buddhist distinction: Hinduism posits a permanent Atman (soul) that transmigrates; Buddhism posits a stream of consciousness conditioned by karma without a fixed self. Both reach the same practical prescription: develop clarity and release craving.
- Stevenson's research stands: Ian Stevenson's 40-year study of children's past-life memories is the most methodologically rigorous empirical investigation of reincarnation and has not been definitively refuted.
- Between lives is structured: Tibetan Buddhism and Steiner's anthroposophy give the most detailed accounts of between-life states, both describing an active period of review, purification, and preparation before the next incarnation.
- Karma as development: Across traditions, karma is not punishment but developmental momentum: past actions creating the conditions for future growth.
Definition and Etymology
Reincarnation comes from the Latin re (again) plus incarnare (to make flesh), literally meaning "to be made flesh again." The concept holds that the essential consciousness of a person, variously described as the soul, Atman, spirit, or stream of mind, continues to exist after physical death and enters a new physical body for another lifetime of experience and development.
The concept is one of the most widely distributed in human religious and philosophical history. It appears in the Vedic traditions of India (documented from c. 1500-500 BCE in the Upanishads), in Buddhist philosophy (6th century BCE), in Jainism (6th century BCE), in the Pre-Socratic philosophy of Pythagoras (c. 570-495 BCE), in Plato's dialogues (c. 428-348 BCE), in Jewish Kabbalistic texts (particularly the Zohar, 13th century CE), in many West African traditional religions, in Druidic tradition, and in numerous Indigenous American traditions.
The modern English word "reincarnation" entered general use through the Theosophical Society's publications of the late 19th century, particularly Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine (1888) and The Key to Theosophy (1889). Before this, Western writers used the classical Greek term "metempsychosis" (transmigration of souls).
What Is Said to Reincarnate?
Different traditions have different answers to the question of what exactly continues across lives. In Hindu Advaita Vedanta: the Atman (individual soul), understood as ultimately identical with Brahman (universal consciousness), temporarily veiled by ignorance. In Buddhism: a stream of consciousness (vijnanasantana), conditioned by karma and craving, without a fixed self. In Pythagoreanism and Platonic philosophy: the psyche (soul), which pre-exists birth and continues after death through multiple lives. In Steiner's anthroposophy: the I-being (Ich-Wesen), the individuality that carries the results of each lifetime across the threshold of death into the spiritual world and returns with them into a new incarnation. The differences matter philosophically; the practical guidance they generate often converges.
Hindu Understanding of Reincarnation
The Hindu understanding of reincarnation is the world's most systematically developed framework for the concept, with a continuous philosophical tradition spanning approximately 3,000 years.
The foundational texts are the Upanishads (c. 800-200 BCE), particularly the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads, which describe the soul's journey after death and its return to embodied life. The Bhagavad Gita (c. 200 BCE to 200 CE), delivered in the context of the Mahabharata war, presents the most direct statement of the Atman's relationship to reincarnation: "Just as a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, similarly, the soul accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones" (Chapter 2, verse 22).
The mechanism of reincarnation in Hindu philosophy operates through samsara (the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth) driven by karma and maya (illusion). The Atman is immortal, but under the influence of avidya (ignorance), it identifies with the body and mind rather than with its own infinite nature. This identification generates karma (action driven by desire and aversion), which creates the conditions for further incarnation.
Liberation from samsara is called moksha (release, liberation). The three primary paths to moksha described in the Bhagavad Gita are jnana yoga (the path of knowledge: realising the Atman's identity with Brahman), bhakti yoga (the path of devotion: dissolving the sense of separate self in love of the divine), and karma yoga (the path of selfless action: performing duty without attachment to results).
The Advaita Vedanta school, associated particularly with Adi Shankaracharya (c. 788-820 CE), argues that the Atman and Brahman are not merely similar but identical: samsara and moksha are ultimately both appearances within the single reality of Brahman. Reincarnation occurs within the dream of maya; awakening dissolves both the dreamer and the dream.
Buddhist Understanding of Rebirth
Buddhist philosophy presents a distinctive challenge to other reincarnation frameworks by denying the existence of a permanent self (anatta, non-self) while simultaneously teaching the continuity of consciousness across lives. This apparent paradox is resolved through the concept of dependent origination (pratityasamutpada): consciousness arises not from a fixed self but from the interaction of conditions, and those conditions carry forward across the gap of death.
What continues in the Buddhist framework is not a soul but a stream of consciousness (vijnanasantana) conditioned by karma (volitional actions and their mental residues, called sankhara). The Dalai Lama, in numerous contemporary expositions, describes this as "a continuum of mind": not a fixed thing but a flow, like a river that is never the same water yet recognisably the same river.
The Tibetan Buddhist tradition has developed the most elaborate cartography of the rebirth process, encoded in the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead, attributed to Padmasambhava, c. 8th century CE, first printed in the 15th century). The text describes the consciousness of the dying person experiencing three bardos (intermediate states): the bardo of dying (dissolution of the elements and the arising of clear light), the bardo of dharmata (vivid luminous appearances that are the projections of one's own mind), and the bardo of becoming (the gradual narrowing of options as karmic momentum draws the consciousness toward a new birth).
The Tulku System: Institutional Rebirth Recognition
Tibetan Buddhism has developed a unique institutional practice based on the reincarnation concept: the Tulku system, in which high lamas recognised as having developed sufficient mastery to control their rebirth are identified in subsequent incarnations through a combination of signs at birth, recognition of objects from previous lives, and physical marks. The current Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso, b. 1935) is recognised as the 14th incarnation in a lineage beginning in 1391 CE. This system provides the most institutionally verifiable test of the reincarnation concept, though the verification process itself is internal to the tradition.
Western Roots: Pythagoras, Plato, and Kabbalah
The concept of metempsychosis (transmigration of souls) entered Western philosophical tradition through Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570-495 BCE). Herodotus (Histories, Book II, c. 430 BCE) noted that the Egyptians taught that the soul transmigrates after death into various creatures before returning to human form after 3,000 years, and that "certain Hellenes" (widely understood to refer to Pythagoras) had adopted this teaching.
Pythagoras reportedly taught his followers on the basis of personal memory of previous incarnations, claiming to have been the Trojan hero Euphorbus in a prior life, among other identities. The Pythagorean ethical prescription of vegetarianism was explicitly connected to metempsychosis: if animals might be former or future human souls, consuming them carried moral weight.
Plato's dialogues present the most philosophically developed Western account of reincarnation before the modern period. In Phaedo (c. 385 BCE), Plato's account of Socrates' final day includes extensive arguments for the soul's immortality and its passage through multiple lives. In Republic (Book X, c. 380 BCE), the Myth of Er describes a soldier who dies in battle and witnesses souls choosing their next incarnations, demonstrating the relationship between character developed in one life and the choices available in the next. In Meno (c. 380 BCE), Plato introduces the doctrine of anamnesis: all learning is remembering knowledge the soul possessed before birth.
In Kabbalistic tradition, the concept of gilgul neshamot (transmigration of souls) is developed extensively in the Zohar (compiled c. 13th century CE, attributed to Shimon bar Yochai, 2nd century CE) and most systematically in Isaac Luria's Sha'ar HaGilgulim (Gate of Reincarnations, 16th century CE, compiled by Luria's student Haim Vital). Lurianic Kabbalah describes souls as fragments of the primordial cosmic soul (Adam Kadmon) scattered through the process of shevirat hakelim (the shattering of the vessels) at the beginning of creation, and reincarnation as the process through which these fragments are gathered back to their source through tikkun (repair).
Ian Stevenson's Research
The most rigorous empirical investigation of reincarnation is the work of Ian Stevenson (1918-2007), Carlson Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, who spent four decades collecting and investigating cases of children who appeared to remember previous lives.
Stevenson's methodology was more rigorous than most academic work in this area. He required that children's statements be recorded before verification against any specific deceased person, that the statements correspond to verifiable facts about the claimed previous personality, that alternative explanations (fraud, normal information access, coincidence) be systematically considered and as far as possible eliminated, and that cases be evaluated by independent investigators unfamiliar with the case details.
His two landmark publications are Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (1966, revised 1974) and the two-volume Reincarnation and Biology (1997). The latter presented 225 cases in which birthmarks or birth defects corresponded to wounds or marks on the body of the claimed previous personality, with many cases documented through post-mortem medical records. His collected case database at the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies now includes over 2,500 cases from cultures across the world.
Stevenson's work has been evaluated by several academic reviewers. Carl Sagan, in The Demon-Haunted World (1995), listed the reincarnation research of Stevenson as one of three claims in the paranormal field that deserved serious scientific investigation despite not yet having adequate evidence. The work has not been definitively refuted; the debate continues in journals of consciousness research and parapsychology.
Stevenson's Most Evidential Case Type
Among Stevenson's most compelling cases are those involving children in cultures where reincarnation is not a culturally expected belief (reducing social reinforcement as an explanation), where specific verifiable facts about the previous personality are provided before verification, and where birthmarks correspond to documented wounds. The case of Chanai Choomalaiwong in Thailand (documented in Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. IV, 1983) is among the most extensively verified: a child with birthmarks corresponding to the entry and exit wounds of a gunshot death in a previous personality, whose family was identified and independently confirmed the correspondence before cross-referencing.
Between-Life States
Most reincarnation frameworks describe a structured interval between incarnations, not simply death followed immediately by a new birth. The nature of this interval varies by tradition but shares common themes: review, purification, and preparation.
In Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo of becoming is described as lasting approximately 49 days in the most common account, though the text acknowledges this is variable. During this period, the consciousness experiences the karmically conditioned appearances generated by its own mind and is gradually drawn toward rebirth in a realm and situation matching its karma.
In Steiner's anthroposophy, the period between death and rebirth is understood as lasting approximately one-third of the length of the immediately preceding life (so approximately 25-30 years for a person who lived 75-90 years). This period includes kamaloca (a purification stage in which the soul experiences the effects of its actions from the perspective of those it affected, described in Theosophy, 1904), followed by devachan (the spiritual world, where the soul reviews the life and works with its karma-bearing higher self to plan the circumstances of the next incarnation).
Near-death experience research (Moody, Life After Life, 1975; Ring, Life at Death, 1980; van Lommel et al., 2001, Lancet) documents consistent phenomenological features: a sense of leaving the body, movement through a dark space, an encounter with light, a review of the life just lived, and a boundary experience before return. While NDEs are not evidence of reincarnation specifically, their cross-cultural consistency suggests that the transition of death has a structured phenomenology that multiple traditions have independently mapped.
Karma and Destiny
Karma is inseparable from reincarnation as a developmental framework. The word comes from the Sanskrit root kr (to do, to act). It refers to action and its consequences, specifically to the principle that volitional actions generate effects that shape future experience, including future incarnations.
Karma is often misunderstood in Western popularisation as a punishment mechanism: bad actions lead to bad future lives. This misrepresents its function in all the major traditions. In Hindu philosophy, karma is a natural law, no more moral in intent than gravity. Actions driven by ignorance and craving generate conditions for further experience of ignorance and craving. Actions driven by wisdom and compassion generate conditions for further wisdom and compassion. The goal is not to accumulate good karma but to dissolve the karma-generating mechanism altogether through liberation from craving.
In Steiner's framework, karma is described as destiny: the soul's own deeds from previous incarnations creating the specific circumstances of the current life. This includes the body one inhabits, the family one is born into, the abilities and limitations one encounters. Steiner described karma not as punishment but as the soul's own deepest wisdom, creating exactly the conditions needed for the next stage of its development. This perspective produces a distinctive response to suffering: not fatalism, but the recognition that one's own soul, in its highest understanding, chose these conditions for a developmental reason.
Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy and Reincarnation
Rudolf Steiner's treatment of reincarnation in his anthroposophical spiritual science is the most systematically developed modern Western engagement with the concept, incorporating elements from Hindu and Buddhist traditions while grounding them in what Steiner described as spiritual scientific investigation.
Steiner's foundational text on reincarnation is Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man (1904). In it, he describes the human being as consisting of three aspects: body (physical and etheric), soul (sentient, rational, and consciousness soul), and spirit (spirit self, life spirit, spirit man). After death, the physical body dissolves; the etheric body dissolves within days; the soul passes through kamaloca and devachan; and the spirit carries the essence of the life's development into the spiritual world before descending again into a new incarnation.
Steiner's unique contribution to reincarnation theory is his description of how karma works across different incarnations at different levels: physical karma manifesting as bodily conditions in a later incarnation, soul karma as the emotional and relational patterns encountered, and spiritual karma as the capacities and limitations of the higher self. His 1924 lectures on karma, collected as Karmic Relationships (eight volumes), present detailed karmic analyses of historical individuals and their connections across multiple incarnations.
Steiner also placed reincarnation in a specifically Christian context, arguing that the Mystery of Golgotha (the death and resurrection of Christ) was a unique cosmic event that fundamentally changed the conditions of human reincarnation: before the Christ event, the soul descended fully into matter and lost connection with its spiritual origin; after it, a new impulse entered earthly evolution enabling the development of the individual I-being in a way that was not previously possible. This integration of reincarnation with Christological understanding distinguishes Steiner's approach from both Theosophical and Eastern frameworks.
Exploring Past Lives
Approaches to past-life investigation range from formal clinical hypnotherapy to contemplative meditation practices to spontaneous phenomena (unexplained affinities, aversions, or déjà vu experiences).
Brian Weiss, a Yale-trained psychiatrist, published Many Lives, Many Masters (1988) describing his accidental discovery of past-life regression through hypnotherapy with a patient (identified as "Catherine"). The book, which became a significant popular influence, describes therapeutic results from working with past-life material including resolution of phobias and unexplained chronic conditions. Weiss's clinical approach positions past-life regression as psychotherapy rather than metaphysical investigation.
Steiner was more cautious about hypnosis-based approaches. He recommended the development of supersensible perception through specific meditative exercises described in How to Know Higher Worlds (1904-1905) as the most reliable method for genuine past-life knowledge. His concern with hypnosis was that it bypasses the conscious I-being rather than developing it, potentially accessing unconscious material without the clarity and integrity that genuine spiritual knowledge requires.
For most people, the most accessible form of past-life investigation is attentive self-observation: noticing recurring relational patterns across different contexts, unexplained strong reactions (positive or negative) to historical periods, cultures, or types of people, recurring dreams with specific historical settings, and physical sensations or symptoms without identified physical cause. These are not evidence of past lives in themselves, but they are the starting material for the kind of contemplative inquiry that Steiner and other practitioners describe as the first stage of genuine karmic exploration.
Frequently Asked Questions
Reincarnation and Karma: Two Fundamental Truths of Human Existence (CW 135) by Steiner, Rudolf
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What does reincarnation mean?
Reincarnation (from Latin re-incarnare, 'to be made flesh again') is the concept that the soul or essential consciousness of a person continues to exist after physical death and is reborn into a new body for further experience and development. Different traditions have distinct understandings of what reincarnates (soul, consciousness, karma), how many lives occur, what determines the circumstances of rebirth, and what the purpose of the cycle is. The concept is central to Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Pythagoreanism, and many Indigenous traditions.
What is the difference between reincarnation and metempsychosis?
Metempsychosis (from Greek metempsychosis, 'transmigration of souls') is the broader term used in classical philosophy for the movement of a soul from one body to another, including movement into animal or plant forms. Reincarnation typically refers specifically to rebirth in human form. Pythagoras and Plato used metempsychosis; Hindu and Buddhist traditions use samsara (the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth). The modern term 'reincarnation' emerged in Theosophical literature of the late 19th century as a more specific, human-focused term.
What does Ian Stevenson's research show about reincarnation?
Ian Stevenson (1918-2007), professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, spent four decades collecting and investigating cases of children who claimed to remember previous lives. His published work, including Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (1966) and the two-volume Reincarnation and Biology (1997), documents over 2,500 cases where children's detailed memories corresponded to verifiable facts about deceased individuals they could not have known through normal means. His methodology included independent verification and the elimination of alternative explanations, earning cautious academic respect even from skeptics.
How does karma relate to reincarnation?
Karma (Sanskrit: action, deed) in the context of reincarnation refers to the principle that actions generate consequences that follow the soul across incarnations, shaping the circumstances and developmental challenges of future lives. In Hindu philosophy, karma is understood as a cosmic moral law operating through samsara. In Buddhist philosophy, karma is the momentum of habitual mental patterns (sankhara) that condition the stream of consciousness across lives without requiring a permanent self to carry them. Rudolf Steiner described karma as destiny: the soul's own previous deeds creating the conditions for further development.
What happens between lives in reincarnation?
Between-life states are described differently across traditions. In Tibetan Buddhism, the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead, 8th century CE, attributed to Padmasambhava) describes three intermediate bardos: the bardo of dying, the bardo of dharmata (luminosity), and the bardo of becoming, during which the consciousness navigates experiences and eventually takes rebirth. In Steiner's anthroposophy, the soul passes through kamaloca (an etheric purification stage) and devachan (a spiritual review and preparation stage) before choosing its next incarnation with its karma-bearing higher self.
Is reincarnation compatible with Christianity?
Mainstream Christianity teaches resurrection rather than reincarnation: a single earthly life followed by judgment and eternal existence. However, early Christian Gnostic sects, including the Cathars of southern France (12th-13th centuries CE), taught metempsychosis. The concept of pre-existent souls appeared in the writings of Origen of Alexandria (c. 184-253 CE) before being declared heretical at the Second Council of Constantinople (553 CE). Rudolf Steiner argued that reincarnation was part of original Christian teaching, removed in the 6th century, and that understanding karma and reincarnation was necessary to grasp Christ's redemptive work in its full cosmic scope.
What is the Hindu understanding of reincarnation?
In Hinduism, reincarnation operates through the mechanism of samsara (the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth) driven by karma. The Atman (individual soul) is understood in Advaita Vedanta as identical with Brahman (universal consciousness), temporarily veiled by ignorance (avidya). Reincarnation continues until this ignorance is dissolved through dharmic living, devotion, and spiritual practice, achieving moksha (liberation) from the cycle. The Bhagavad Gita (c. 2nd century BCE) presents the classic statement: 'For the soul there is never birth nor death; it has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being' (Chapter 2, verse 20).
What is the Buddhist understanding of reincarnation?
Buddhism's concept of rebirth differs from Hindu reincarnation in that it does not posit a permanent self (atman) that transmigrates. Instead, Buddhism teaches anatta (no-self): what continues across lives is not a soul but a stream of consciousness conditioned by karma and craving. The Dalai Lama describes this as 'a continuum of mind, a flow of mental events' rather than a fixed entity. Liberation from the cycle (nirvana in Theravada, buddhahood in Mahayana) comes through the realisation of emptiness (sunyata) and the dissolution of craving.
What did Rudolf Steiner teach about reincarnation?
Rudolf Steiner incorporated reincarnation as a central pillar of his anthroposophical spiritual science. In Theosophy (1904) and Karma and Reincarnation (compiled lectures), Steiner described the soul as passing through repeated earthly lives to develop capacities that can only be acquired through physical incarnation. Between lives, the soul passes through kamaloca (experiencing the effects of past actions) and the higher spiritual world (devachan), where it prepares for its next incarnation with full awareness of its karmic debts and developmental needs. Steiner distinguished his description from Hindu and Buddhist accounts by grounding it in what he called spiritual scientific investigation.
How do I investigate my own past lives?
Common approaches to past-life investigation include past-life regression hypnotherapy (pioneered by Dr. Brian Weiss, Many Lives, Many Masters, 1988), guided meditation focusing on recurring patterns, themes, or inexplicable affinities or aversions, dream journaling with attention to historically-specific settings, and working with a skilled therapist who can contextualise experiences. From a Steiner perspective, developing organs of spiritual perception through meditation practice is the most reliable path to genuine past-life recall. He advised against hypnosis and emphasised that genuine memory requires conscious development, not induced states.
The Soul Remembers Its Purpose
Whether or not reincarnation is literally true in the sense that memory persists across physical deaths, the framework it offers is genuinely useful: your current circumstances, challenges, and capacities are not random. They are the product of a development that has been going on longer than this lifetime. The patterns you keep encountering, the abilities that come unnaturally easily, the wounds that seem deeper than this life alone could explain: these may be the fingerprints of a much longer journey. Working with them as if they are meaningful, regardless of one's certainty about their ultimate metaphysical nature, tends to produce more depth of understanding than treating them as arbitrary accidents.
Sources and References
- Stevenson, I. (1974). Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (2nd ed.). Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
- Stevenson, I. (1997). Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects (2 vols.). Westport, CT: Praeger.
- Van Lommel, P., van Wees, R., Meyers, V., & Elfferich, I. (2001). Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: A prospective study in the Netherlands. Lancet, 358(9298), 2039-2045.
- Steiner, R. (1904). Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man. Berlin: Philosophisch-Theosophischer Verlag.
- Blavatsky, H.P. (1888). The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy (2 vols.). London: Theosophical Publishing Company.
- Bodhi, B. (Trans.). (2000). The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.