Rather than blaming oneself, one's family or one's immediate history, one can now blame happenings in a distant past that can then be manipulated as stepping stones for an improvement in one's life. It seems to me that this potential for healing contained in the idea of reincarnation is actively exploited in some new religious movements, such as in Scientology, and in many therapeutic practices found in the West. Reincarnation sells because it promises healing. Escape from death. It is a wellknown fact that coping with death is a social and personal problem in western societies.
Death is avoided as a taboo.
The whole of consumerist society aims at presenting life as a happy story in which there really is no place for death. Health, success, romantic relationships and social achievement, are held out as the great ambitions. Faced with an actual occurrence of death, many people are at a loss how to give a proper intellectual and emotional response. Since people often lack deep Christian convictions and since at the same time the secular world holds out only the prospect of bleak annihilation at death, people are desperately looking for an answer. It is interesting that Elizabeth K bler-Ross, who has contributed so much to the counselling and guidance of the dying, came herself to an acceptance of reincarnation because of her exposure to the phenonomen of death.