Introduction

As conscious beings endowed with reason and reflection, we are perhaps uniquely aware among the creatures of this world of our own mortality, which has been, since time immemorial, the ultimate mystery for humankind. Experience shows that at death we perish and our body turns to dust, but the existential question remains: Is death really the end?

The belief in reincarnation seems to be an early development in
human consciousness. Evidence discovered in a number of Neanderthal burial sites and cave sanctuaries suggests these early humans held a belief in reincarnation. (Homo neanderthalenis, an ancient and primitive form of humans, appeared in Europe as early as 150,000 CE. They walked the earth with our ancestors for more than five thousand years until they disappeared in 24,000 CE.) Carl Jung, the noted Swiss psychiatrist who researched the “collective unconsciousness,” considered the idea of reincarnation an archetype, or primitive mental image, common to all humanity.

It may be helpful at the outset to offer definitions for some of the terms used in this book. These are taken from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

Eschatology The branch of theology that is concerned with the ultimate or last things, such as death, judgment, heaven, and hell.

Exist To have being or actuality; to be; to have life.

Incarnate Invested with bodily nature and form.

Reincarnation The discarnate soul of a deceased person that comes back into bodily nature and form; to have died and come back into being and actuality; to be; to have life again.

Soul The animating and vital principle in man credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion, and conceived as forming an immaterial entity distinguished from but temporally coexistent with his body. . . . . more

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