page_title: Reincarnation
section_title: Western world
hierarchical_section_title: Reincarnation / Western world
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Tibetský dalajláma v roce 2012
context_page_description: Reincarnation is the philosophical or religious belief that the non-physical essence of a living being starts a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death. It is also called rebirth or transmigration. Resurrection is a similar process hypothesized by some religions, that involves coming back to life in the same body.
  Reincarnation is a central tenet of Indian religions, namely Buddhism, most Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and most Paganism, although there are Hindu and Pagan groups that do not believe in reincarnation but believe in an afterlife. In various forms, it occurs as an esoteric belief in many streams of Judaism in different aspects, in some beliefs of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and some Indigenous Australians. A belief in rebirth/metempsychosis was held by Greek historic figures, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. It is also a belief in various modern religions.
context_section_description: Before the late nineteenth century, reincarnation was a relatively rare theme in the West. In ancient Greece, the Orphic Mysteries and Pythagoreans believed in various forms of reincarnation. Emanuel Swedenborg believed that we leave the physical world once, but then go through several lives in the spiritual world — a kind of hybrid of Christian tradition and the popular view of reincarnation.
  More recently, many people in the West have developed an interest in and acceptance of reincarnation. Many new religious movements include reincarnation among their beliefs, e.g. modern Neopagans, Spiritism, Astara, Dianetics, and Scientology. Many esoteric philosophies also include reincarnation, e.g. Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Kabbalah, and Gnostic and Esoteric Christianity such as the works of Martinus Thomsen. 
  Demographic survey data from 1999–2002 shows a significant minority of people from Europe (22%) and America (20%) believe in the existence of life before birth and after death, leading to a physical rebirth.  The belief in reincarnation is particularly high in the Baltic countries, with Lithuania having the highest figure for the whole of Europe, 44%, while the lowest figure is in East Germany, 12%. A quarter of U.S. Christians, including 10% of all born again Christians, embrace the idea.
  Skeptic Carl Sagan asked the Dalai Lama what he would do if a fundamental tenet of his religion (reincarnation) were definitively disproved by science. The Dalai Lama answered, "If science can disprove reincarnation, Tibetan Buddhism would abandon reincarnation… but it's going to be mighty hard to disprove reincarnation.". Sagan considers claims of memories of past lives to be worthy of research, although he considers reincarnation to be an unlikely explanation for these.
  Ian Stevenson reported that belief in reincarnation is held (with variations in details) by adherents of almost all major religions except Christianity and Islam. In addition, between 20 and 30 percent of persons in western countries who may be nominal Christians also believe in reincarnation.
  Edgar Cayce an American self-professed clairvoyant answered questions on subjects as varied as healing, reincarnation, wars, Atlantis, and future events while allegedly asleep.
  According to Dr. Brian Weiss, in 1980 one of his patients, "Catherine", began discussing past-life experiences under hypnosis. Weiss did not believe in reincarnation at the time but, after confirming elements of Catherine's stories through public records, came to be convinced of the survival of an element of the human personality after death. Weiss claims he has regressed more than 4,000 patients since 1980.
  Neale Donald Walsch, an American author of the series Conversations with God who says his books are not channelled, but rather that they are inspired by God and that they can help a person relate to God from a modern perspective claims that he has reincarnated more than 600 times.
  Other influential contemporary figures that have written on reincarnation include Alice Ann Bailey, one of the first writers to use the terms New Age and age of Aquarius, Torkom Saraydarian, an Armenian-American musician and religious author, Dolores Cannon, Atul Gawande, Michael Newton, Bruce Greyson, Raymond Moody and Unity Church founder Charles Fillmore.
  One 1999 study by Walter and Waterhouse reviewed the previous data on the level of reincarnation belief and performed a set of thirty in-depth interviews in Britain among people who did not belong to a religion advocating reincarnation. The authors reported that surveys have found about one fifth to one quarter of Europeans have some level of belief in reincarnation, with similar results found in the USA. In the interviewed group, the belief in the existence of this phenomenon appeared independent of their age, or the type of religion that these people belonged to, with most being Christians. The beliefs of this group also did not appear to contain any more than usual of "new age" ideas (broadly defined) and the authors interpreted their ideas on reincarnation as "one way
caption: The 14th Dalai Lama has stated his belief that it would be difficult for science to disprove reincarnation.
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