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My dictionary defines reincarnation as:

.religious doctrine that the soul enters, after death, into another (human
or animal) body

The definition, though the commonly accepted one, is actually wrong. It is
indeed the one that nearly everyone accepts, but according to the oldest and
most prominent teaching on reincarnation, it is wrong. There is no
transmigration of a 'soul'.

The oldest and most prominent is the literature of the Brahmanas of India,
which include the Vedas, Puranas and the Upanishads. In the main body of the
Upanishads, the soul is not mentioned in the same sense as the belief in the
soul that the west has. The soul is not a soul, but God itself The Self
(Sanskrit Atman). The Self is the observer, the higher mind of all living
beings. The lower self has no will of its own (read Jesus) but is only an
Ego, created by its surroundings and senses. So the Upanishads takes a
psychological Jungian (or you should say Jung took a Upanishadic view) view
of the character and content of a person.

So what about reincarnation? Lets start with an hypothesis:

My body used to be the body of many living species before me. Therefore I
am a reincarnation of them.

Is the above statement true or false? What is the body composed of? The body
you have is composed of organic matter and elements that you have acquired
form the eating of food. The cooking.net">food you ate and the cooking.net">food your parents ate
before you were born. That cooking.net">food in turn, whether meat or vegetarian, is part
of a cooking.net">food cycle, the circle of life, in which all the animals and plants are
a part of.

Taittiriya Upanishad 2:2.1 From cooking.net">food are made all bodies, which become cooking.net">food
again for others after their death. cooking.net">food is the most important of all things
for the body; therefore it is the best medicine for all the bodys ailments.
They who look upon cooking.net">food as the Lords gift shall never lack lifes physical
comforts. From cooking.net">food are made all bodies. All bodies feed on food, and it
feeds on all bodies.

The physical sheath is made up of food. Within it is contained the vital
sheath (commonly called Astral body) which has the same form, with prana as
the head, vyana as the right arm, apana as left, space as heart, and earth
as foundation.

So your body is composed of elements that once belonged to the body of
another animal or even plant. But the plant or even some animals have no
Self-consciousness. They do not ask questions about what they are. They are
stuck into being what nature tells them to be and they have no choice.
Humans, however, are aware. They can break free, act different and choose to
act human or not. This is Self-awareness. So we are reincarnations of
Self-aware creatures.

Before we can move on we need more of a sharper definition of the Self. The
Upanishads put it like this:

Shvetashvatara Upanishad 3:18 He resides in the city of nine gates, which
is the body. He moves in the world enjoying the play of countless forms. He
is master of the universe, of animate and inanimate.

Katha Upanishad 3:13 There are two selves, the separate ego and the
Indivisible Self. When one rises above I and me and mine, the Self is
revealed as ones true Self.

2:20 Hidden in the heart of every creature exists the Self, subtler than
the subtlest, greater than the greatest. They go beyond sorrow who
extinguish their self-will and behold the glory of the Self.

Kena Upanishad 2:4 The Self is realized in a higher state of consciousness
when you have broken through the wrong identification that you are the body,
subject to birth and death. To be the Self is to go beyond death.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4:23 Those who realize the Self enter into the
peace that brings complete self-control and perfect patience. They see
themselves in everyone and everyone in themselves. Evil cannot overcome them
because they overcame evil. Sin cannot overcome them because they consume
all sin. Free form evil, free from sin and doubt, they live in the kingdom
of Brahman (See Jesus kingdom is within). Your majesty, this is your
kingdom!

1:4.5 A wife loves her husband not for his own sake, but because the Self
lives in him. A husband loves his wife not for her own sake, but because the
Self lives in her.

So the Upanishads take the view, like the rest of the Brahmanas, that
everyone is truly a Quantum Observer, but to realize this is lifes most
beautiful goal and above all knowledge. It unites everything and everyone,
the same way that full knowledge of Quantum physics would unite all science
and knowledge of the Universe.

But what about the body? What about people who claim to have memories of
past lives? What about the idea that if one does wrong they will have a bad
next life and the opposite for those who do good?

Many of these ideas are recent distortions driven by those who have
benefited from writing sensationalist books with little real world value
such as the books in the 80s or even by fraud psychics such as Edgar Cayce.
The Upanishads simply state that is one does not realize the unity/Self then
one will only ever see the births and deaths and live a lifetime of worry.
But those who do realize truth will be set free from all the worries
(Jesus Know the truth and let the truth set you free. Why dont Christians
understand this simply teaching? Because the NT didnt detail it well
enough.), for they will see no more death.

Memories of past lives? If it happens at all, it could be from one of
either:

a) knowledge absorbed by the Self which transcends space and time;
b) memories within the very body tissues themselves.

The second probably relates to personal traits acquired genetically. In that
sense, we are reincarnations of our direct ancestors personalities and even
people related to them. Experiences that they had could have been stored
away as patterns that are similar to memories, but could also be transmitted
to successive generations. Thats only a theory though.

So reincarnation is quite a simple concept that hardly requires faith, its
very corporeal. Some have tried to escape it by cremation ceremonies which
was first used over burial practice in India, and others have tried to be
vegetarian so as not to acquire karma (cause and effect) of other beings.
But what about the Semitic and Egyptian belief in Resurrection. That the
body will one-day rise from the grave to be judged on Judgment Day by God.
This to the writers of the Upanishads was a most primitive belief held only
by people who did not understand the Self/God, who did not understand unity
and who made a God in a humans image. The Vedic God was said to be like
the Sun which man cannot stain or:

Paramahamsa Upanishad 4 He praises nobody, he blames nobody.

The Upanishads also have a story of how the gods/dieties tried to understand
the Self, the story ends with a criticism of the Egyptian beliefs in
resurrection and burial. The Chandogya Upanishad:

Venerable One. Asked the two disciples, what is it we see reflected in
the water or in a mirror?

It is the Self you see in all these, he said to them. Now look at
yourselves in the bowl of water, and ask me anything you want to learn about
the Self.

They looked at themselves in the bowl of water.

What do you see in the water?

We have seen the Self, even the hair and the nails.

Put on your best clothes, adorn your body, and look again in the water.

They did so and came back to Prajapati.

What do you see in the water? he asked.

We have seen the Self, well dressed and well adorned, they replied.

Indra and Virochana went away satisfied. But Prajapati said to himself,
They have seen the Self, but they have not recognized the Self. They
mistake the body to be the Self. Those who think the Self is the body
Will lose their way in life.

Virochana, quite sure the Self is the body, went back to the godless and
began to teach them that the body alone is to be saved, the body alone to be
adored. He taught them that whoever lives for indulging senses will find joy
in this world and the next. Even today people are called godless when they
lack faith, love and charity, because that is the way of the godless. They
dress even dead bodies in fine clothes and adorn them with fine ornaments so
that they may enjoy their life in the next world.

This was the Upanishads criticism of the Resurrection beliefs and burial
customs of the Egyptians. It might be interesting to speculate that
Virochana was the Virococha who went to South America and became a god to
the Maya who practiced nearly the same burial traditions as the Egyptians.

Indra though realized there was an error to this:

But Indra, as he was on his way home to the gathering of the gods, began to
question his knowledge. If the Self is the same as the body, well dressed
when the body is well dressed, well adorned when the body is well adorned,
then the Self will be blind when the body is blind, lame when the body is
lame, paralyzed when the body is paralyzed. And when the body dies, the Self
too will die. In such knowledge I see no value.

So no resurrection anyway, its a silly belief based on a misunderstanding
of what God is. Im an atheist to those who believe such a thing. Religion
is meant to be a finger pointing the way to enlightenment, not a cage around
you in which you pray five times a day using physical motions. Buddhism and
Hinduism both say that when enlightenment is attained, then religion is of
no more use:

Paramahamsa Upanishad 1:4 He has no more need to repeat the mantram, No
more need to practice meditation. The world of change and changeless Reality
are one to him, for he sees all in God and God in all.entering into the
unitive state, he attains the goal of evolution. Truly he attains the goal
of evolution.

If anyone has any ...

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