Reincarnation and the Law of Karma

By Reincarnation we mean the repeated incarnation or embodiment in flesh of the soul or immaterial part of mans nature. The term Metempsychosis is frequently employed in the same sense the definition of the latter term being: The passage of the soul as an immortal essence at the death of the body into another living body. The term Transmigration of Souls is sometimes employed the term being used in the sense of passing from one body into another. But the term Transmigration is often used in connection with the belief of certain undeveloped races who held that the soul of men sometimes passed into the bodies of the lower animals as a punishment for their sins committed during the human life. But this belief is held in disrepute by the adherents of Reincarnation or Metempsychosis and has no connection with their philosophy or beliefs the ideas having sprung from an entirely different source and having nothing in common. There are many forms of belief--many degrees of doctrine--regarding Reincarnation as we shall see as we proceed but there is a fundamental and basic principle underlying all of the various shades of opinion and divisions of the schools. This fundamental belief may be expressed as the doctrine that there is in man an immaterial Something (called the soul spirit inner self or many other names) which does not perish at the death or disintegration of the body but which persists as an entity and after a shorter or longer interval of rest reincarnates or is re-born into a new body--that of an unborn infant--from whence it proceeds to live a new life in the body more or less unconscious of its past existences but containing within itself the essence or results of its past lives which experiences go to make up its new character or personality. It is usually held that the rebirth is governed by the law of attraction under one name or another and which law operates in accordance with strict justice in the direction of attracting the reincarnating soul to a body and conditions in accordance with the tendencies of the past life the parents also attracting to them a soul bound to them by some ties in the past the law being universal uniform and equitable to all concerned in the matter. This is a general statement of the doctrine as it is generally held by the most intelligent of its adherents.