Concept of Karma & Reincarnation

___Matthew V: 18

And, it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one title of the law to fail.

___Luke XVI: 17

To what law might the foregoing scriptures be referring? According to Langley (1967), they are referring to the law of cause and effect often referred to by Eastern philosophers and mystics as the law of "karma." Regarding karma, Woodward (1986) states:

The word "karma" is used philosophically to indicate conditions in the present stemming from thoughts and actions in the past. Its Sanskrit meaning encompasses both action and reaction (or consequences). Its Hindu meaning encompasses work, or the labor of the soul seeking to attain union with God. (p. 13)

Karma has been directly linked to reincarnation by most metaphysicians (Steiner, 1992). Simply put, reincarnation refers to the process of the rebirth of the soul into another physical body at some point following the death of the body the soul currently occupied.

It is said that karma is connected to reincarnation in the sense that the thoughts and actions of one's past life or lives shape many of the events and circumstances that comprise one's current or present day life. In other words, any given life is part of the process that creates the circumstances one encoun

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ning in them which, following the experience, sensitized them more and more to the veracity of spiritual principals in general and reincarnation claims in particular. Finally, some people who have experienced near death state that following the experience, they became interested in exploring alternative perceptions of reality. It was the searching through diverse metaphysical and spiritual books which they stated led them to the conclusion that reincarnation was true. Mills, Haraldsson, and Keil (1994) investigated three replications of Stevenson's studies of children spontaneously speaking about a past life. In the first replication, 60 cases in Burma, Thailand, and Turkey were studied; while in the second, 25 cases in Sri Lanka were reviewed. In the third replication, the authors explored 38 cases in India. Analyses of these cases tended to show a high degree of correspondence between the child's recollections and the characteristics of a deceased person unknown to the child or the family. It was concluded that in some of the cases, the children had no normal way of knowing about the person with whom they identified themselves. Given the foregoing, it seems reasonable to suggest that with respect to the empirical lit
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