Reincarnation

Reincarnation, or punar janma, means birth again. Its conceptual origins remain obscure, though early passages from the Brhadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanisads (ca. 800 BC) describe the sacrificial process through which the funeral fire allows a person’s remains to ascend into the clouds, return to earth with the rains, become food, and then the semen that begets new life.

Reincarnation forms one of the foundations of religious mysticism. It is a basic tenet of both Hinduism and Buddhism, which teach that the soul of every person and plant is eternal and returns, after death, in another form.

In Hinduism, reincarnation is the religious or philosophical belief that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body that may be human, animal or spiritual depending on the moral quality of the previous life's actions.

The entire universal process, that gives rise to the cycle of death and rebirth, governed by karma, is referred to as "Samsara."

Reincarnation must be distinguished from other forms of rebirth. Resurrection is defined as the process of being brought to life again after death.

It is very different from reincarnation; resurrection is the coming to life again of the same being – it does not change form. Reincarnation is a rebirth into a new form of existence that may be completely dissimilar from the first form of life.
Reincarnation