Reincarnation
Wikipedia contributors · 2024 · Wikipedia
This source is used as context evidence across 4 linked claims and 7 related evidence hubs. Its citation record is marked verified; that verifies the source trail, not the truth of any linked claim.
Summary
Cross-cultural survey of reincarnation beliefs, religious variations, and modern research on cases of the type studied at UVA DOPS.
How this source is used on the map
Useful for the breadth of the concept across traditions, and for keeping doctrinal reincarnation distinct from empirical child-memory case research.
Citation record
- Authors
- Wikipedia contributors
- Year
- 2024
- Publication
- Wikipedia
- Source type
- Secondary summary
- Map role
- context
- Credibility level
- secondary
- Citation status
- Verified
- DOI
- Not recorded
- PubMed
- Not recorded
- Not recorded
Linked claims
A popular comforting belief among grieving pet owners. No documented case archive on the order of human past-life cases.
If past-life cases are taken seriously, reincarnation is the most economical narrative — but several other models also fit the data.
A New Age doctrine that pre-birth agreements — sometimes elaborated into detailed 'life plans' — explain difficult relationships and life events. No empirical basis beyond suggestible regression.
A widespread spiritual interpretation. There is no independent way to test whether lessons are being assigned, completed, or graded.
Related evidence hubs
Children's past-life memories, birthmark cases, and the rebirth interpretation.
Past-life memories, karma, soul contracts.
Animal consciousness, plant cognition, animal psi.
Whether anything of mind continues.
World religions and traditions, scored as systems.
Growth, suffering, synchronicity, calling.
Determinism, free will, destiny.
Related research reports
A source-linked synthesis of past-life memory cases, birthmark claims, reincarnation interpretations, and skeptical alternatives.
A careful synthesis of free will, determinism, compatibilism, fate, soul contracts, karma, life purpose, suffering, and the claim that everything happens for a reason.
Related sources
Companion to the consciousness-animal entry; useful for claims about animal navigation, recognition, and inference.
Direct background for any claim about whether something of the person survives death, and a useful guardrail against treating survival as a single simple proposition.
The leading academic group publishing on cases of children claiming past-life memories and on Greyson's NDE work.
Any claim about surviving death or being reincarnated presupposes a theory of personal identity. This entry sets the terms.
Use this as the conceptual guardrail for destiny and 'it was meant to be' claims. It separates fatalism from causal determinism, which popular spirituality often blends together.
The standard reference for any claim about life-purpose, growth-through-suffering, or meaning-making; it keeps existential claims distinct from evidence claims.