fisky wrote:
Interesting question. I believe in reincarnation, but it's not the Hindu version.
I've read dozens of books on the afterlife. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the book I read that made everything make sense. It was probably published in the 1990s or earlier. Anyway, here's my take.
Everyone is a soul that is temporarily in human form. When we die, we go through a process that has been described over and over in near-death experiences. We float above our bodies briefly trying to figure out what's going on. We are drawn to a light... something like a tunnel. We are surrounded by love. We are eventually met by loved ones who have passed before... parents, grandparents, and for Christians, some religious figure. After a joyful reunion, the soul moves on to an "accounting" where the soul experiences every good thing the soul did in human form. The soul also experiences every bad thing they did, the hurt they caused that person, and the hurt of others hurt as a result. This sounds horrific, but the soul has loving support to get through this.
The soul then leaves and travels to its soulmate group, a group of 12 or so souls of similar maturity and there is another joyful reunion. The other souls want to know what you did, what you learned, what mistakes you made. It's a nonjudgmental learning experience.
Time does not exist as we know it in the afterlife, but at some point, the soul chooses to be reborn. The soul chooses its parents, its gender in the new life, and a life path. However, once reborn, the human has full control over whether to follow the life path. For this reason, life paths sometimes split and have the opportunity of coming back together again. We all have heard about or even experienced these "coincidences" For example, when high school sweethearts go in different paths only to be brought back together years later a thousand miles away through a "coincidence."
The purpose of human life for the soul is growth. In human form, the soul experiences emotions that don't exist on the spiritual plane. With each reincarnation, the soul grows and eventually, we have old souls... Mother Theresa, Billy Graham... souls that are enlightened but not there yet... MLK, Jr... and everyone else, including new souls who are overwhelmed by the delights and temptations of physical form. These souls become criminals or hurt other people. They will learn from this in the afterlife and sometimes choose to be reborn as a victim. It's not a punishment. The soul chooses that path to experience the feelings, knowing that they will grow both as human and soul from the experience. With each rebirth, the soul moves closer to... something that can't be described... a Creator, a universal consciousness.
Sometimes, souls choose a lifepath... like a child dying in an accident... to help the parents learn something important in their personal growth. Since we have free will, the parents can fall apart or they can search for meaning in the tragedy and learn from it.
Some scholars believe that reincarnation was in the original teachings of Jesus, but reincarnation was omitted because primitive people might consider it a "do over" and a license to do whatever they wanted to do. This is also why, in my opinion, the concept of karma exists in the Hindu religion... again, because primitive people could easily understand, "Do bad in this lifetime and you'll be punished in the next!"
If anyone is aware of the name of the book that describes this, I would LOVE to know it. Bits and pieces exist in many afterlife books, but not the complete concept as I describe it here.