Reincarnation

Rebirth in South Asian traditions

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy dates the Vedic Upanishads to about 700 to 300 BCE. It places the 'five fires' teaching, attributed to King Pravahana Jaivali, in the Chandogya Upanishad, where conduct is linked to rebirth: those who know the teaching follow a path of the gods, while others follow a path of the ancestors and continue to be reborn. The word samsara, the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, appears in comparatively late texts such as the Katha and Shvetashvatara Upanishads.

Mark Siderits writes in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that the Buddha emerged within a wider movement of wandering ascetics, the shramanas, who rejected Vedic ritualism and shared themes of rebirth, karma and liberation. In the same encyclopedia, Marie-Helene Gorisse presents the Jain account in which karma is a subtle kind of matter that binds to the self, and rebirth follows from prior actions until liberation.

The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism entry on karma, by K. R. Srinivasa Iyenger, says the Gurus accepted karma as connected with transmigration, and that liberation comes through divine grace, called nadar, including the possibility of being jivan-mukta, liberated while living. The page opened for this draft did not show a publication year or editor.

Greek accounts of metempsychosis

Carl Huffman's Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Pythagoras says the earliest evidence makes the transmigration of the soul, including into animals, the doctrine for which Pythagoras was best known. The evidence comes from a fourth-century BCE writer, Dicaearchus, and from an anecdote preserved from Xenophanes, so details are thin. The entry cautions against assigning to Pythagoras the detailed accounts later given by Empedocles or Plato, and says it is unclear whether souls were thought able to escape the cycle.

Druze and Indigenous North American beliefs

A 2025 study in Transcultural Psychiatry describes Notq, a Druze cultural idiom for remembering and talking about a previous incarnation. It draws on interviews with 11 Israeli Druze women and men whose stories remain 'open', meaning the previous identity was never established. The page for this study was read at abstract level only.

A 1994 review in Anthropologica of the edited volume Amerindian Rebirth, by Antonia Mills and Richard Slobodin, describes 16 essays by 13 authors. The reviewer reports that the editors' introduction shows belief in reincarnation to be more widespread among North American Indigenous peoples than had been fully appreciated. The review does not itself detail individual nations' beliefs, so those are not summarized here.

Rebirth, transmigration and reincarnation

Pew Research Center defined reincarnation in a 2023 survey question as being 'reborn again and again in this world'. Scholarly sources use several related terms with different emphases. Metempsychosis and transmigration refer to a soul passing into a new body, as in the Pythagorean account. Buddhist philosophers speak of rebirth without a persisting self: Siderits explains that the persons in successive lives are described as neither the same nor different, linked by causal continuity.

The Jain account differs again. Gorisse describes the jiva as an eternal self that keeps its distinct identity, while karma is a material substance that binds to it. These traditions therefore should not be treated as one doctrine, and 'reincarnation' as an English umbrella term can obscure whether a soul, a causal stream or a clan identity is said to continue.

Terms used in research and practice

Researchers at the University of Virginia use the phrases 'cases of the reincarnation type' and 'past-life memories' for young children who report memories of a previous life. Andrade, writing on medical ethics, says past life regression therapy rests on the reincarnation hypothesis. The separate Past Life Regression page covers that practice. In Druze usage the equivalent term is Notq, and in Sikh and Indian usage the surrounding vocabulary includes karma, nadar and moksha.

The sources reviewed for this page do not document New Age or Theosophical uses of the term, and no verified source on that history was opened. Claims about how modern Western popular usage differs from the traditions above are therefore not made here.

Within religious teaching

Adherents of different traditions describe rebirth as part of a moral and soteriological framework. Siderits reports that in Buddhist teaching virtuous actions lead to fortunate circumstances and harmful actions to unpleasant rebirths, and that rebirth continues until enlightenment. Gorisse describes Jain liberation as reached through purification by non-violence, renunciation and moral conduct. The Sikh entry stresses conduct together with divine grace.

In community and identity

In the Druze setting, the 2025 study treats Notq as part of a master cultural narrative, and its authors discuss how personal accounts connect to that narrative and to wellbeing. Interviewees in the study had open stories, so the setting described is one of unresolved personal memory within a community that accepts rebirth.

In clinical and counseling settings, Andrade reports that some physicians use past life regression for anxiety disorders, mood disorders and gender dysphoria, on the assumption that these reflect problems in past lives. This is a description of a practice some clinicians use, not an endorsement, and the technique is discussed on the Past Life Regression page.

What the idea is said to explain

Within Buddhist teaching as summarized by Siderits, rebirth functions as a form of cosmic justice, so that actions have consequences beyond one life. In the Upanishadic sources, rebirth is tied to a path that those with certain knowledge may avoid. Adherents of these traditions describe the idea as explaining moral causation and the possibility of liberation.

The authors of the Druze study propose that open Notq stories, despite their ambiguity, do not essentially harm the individual psychologically and may carry therapeutic value because they fit the Druze rebirth narrative. This is a qualitative interpretation from 11 interviews and is not a measured outcome.

Claims made by researchers and clinicians

Colleagues quoted in a BMJ obituary of the psychiatrist Ian Stevenson said he believed the evidence was sufficient to permit a reasonable person to believe in reincarnation. Jim Tucker, who works in the same University of Virginia research division, writes that in the strongest cases children gave details that proved strikingly accurate for a person who lived in the past. These are claims by researchers who study the cases, and the next section covers their reception.

Surveys of belief

A Pew Research Center survey of 11,201 US adults, fielded 31 July to 6 August 2023 on the American Trends Panel, found that 27 percent said it is definitely or probably true that the dead can be reincarnated. Pew notes that earlier surveys asked about reincarnation in a yes or no format, which makes historical comparison difficult.

Pew's 2021 survey in India found belief in reincarnation among 40 percent of Hindus, 23 percent of Jains, 18 percent of Buddhists and 18 percent of Sikhs, with 29 percent of Christians and 27 percent of Muslims also saying so. Pew reports that in no religious community did a majority express this belief, whereas 77 percent of both Hindus and Muslims said they believe in karma. Doctrine and reported personal belief therefore differ.

Children's reports of past-life memories

Tucker's 2025 review in International Review of Psychiatry says young children's reports of past-life memories have been studied for 60 years, with over 2,500 cases investigated worldwide, and that in the strongest cases details proved accurate for a deceased person. The review considers explanations for the phenomenon. Its author works in the research division founded by Ian Stevenson, and only the abstract was read for this draft.

The BMJ obituary reports that colleagues said Stevenson's work was dismissed without being looked at despite being documented and published. Andrade, in a medical ethics paper, states that the reincarnation hypothesis is not supported by evidence. No independent systematic review or controlled trial of the reincarnation claim was found in the searches run for this page: PubMed title searches for reincarnation and past life regression and a search for children's past-life memory reviews. Those searches were not exhaustive.

Critiques and psychological explanations

James Matlock's article in the Psi Encyclopedia of the Society for Psychical Research groups criticisms into materialist and parapsychological camps and into logical, psychosocial and methodological objections. Psychosocial arguments include cryptomnesia, social construction, parental guidance and childhood fantasy, and methodological ones include use of interpreters, brevity of interviews and leading questions. The article is by a proponent-aligned society and reports replies to each critique.

A 2006 study in Consciousness and Cognition compared people reporting previous-life memories with controls on a false fame task and found that those with such memories more often misjudged familiar non-famous names as famous, an index of source monitoring errors. Dissociation, cognitive failures and depressive symptoms were also higher in that group but did not predict the errors. The study does not show that any particular memory is false.

False memories and distress

Andrade argues that past life regression therapy risks implanting false memories and thereby causing significant harm, and that patients cannot give informed consent if not told the reincarnation hypothesis lacks evidential support. He notes that psychiatric associations do not support the practice, though few medical associations have condemned it as unethical. This is one author's ethics argument, not a trial of harms, and the Past Life Regression page covers the practice itself.

The Maastricht study found higher dissociation and psychological distress scores among participants reporting previous-life memories, but its design cannot show that the memories or any procedure caused distress.

Belief, suicidality and wellbeing

A 2023 review in the Journal of Religion and Health examined suicide across African tribes, Inuit, Druze, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh settings and concluded that the commonly repeated notion that reincarnation beliefs encourage suicide finds little support. The authors say social and pragmatic factors shape how the belief is interpreted. The review was read at abstract level, and the sources reviewed for this page do not report evidence on blame for karma or on coercive uses of the belief.

For a person in emotional distress, a belief about past lives does not replace assessment by a qualified mental health professional. Andrade states that regression should not stand in for evidence-based care.