Atman

Atman in hinduism is that core of life in absence of which the existence of the body itself gets negated. Atman in hinduism stands for our soul which resides in the heart within the body. For that matter... every single living being... be it the form of an insect, plant or an animal... the presence of atman is a confirmed fact. It is this fact of atman which makes India... the spiritual centre of the world. Why? Atman is the only true existence of life. Without an atma... everything in the Cosmos becomes inert matter. At the time of the birth of a being... the body gets activated by the soul within. The pumping of a heart is directly related to the presence of the soul within the heart. Right from the beginning of the cosmos with a big bang... it is only the journey of atmans that led to hospitable planets like mother earth being born. The big bang resulted in all the souls existing in the Cosmos getting scattered all over the Cosmos. As the environs become conducive for a life to germinate... the atman settles down. This relationship between every atma and mother earth is very unique. Unless mother earth permits every atman... none can germinate itself culminating into a beautiful living being. The journey of life (by the atman) from the first manifestation as an amoeba to the last manifestation... the 8.4 millionth manifestation when life reaches its pinnacle... the stage of an enlightened one being born... is the only crux of life one needs to understand!

The stage of enlightenment is when the atman within a body liberates forever from the cycle of birth and death. It becomes free never to manifest a body again. The soul having gained enlightenment lives in the kingdom of God... known as Vaikuntha in Hinduism. The story of manifestation of a body by an atman is best explained in the doctrine of Bhagavad Gita... the doctrine put forward by Lord Krishna in the battlefield of Mahabharata. This one doctrine is sufficient for mankind to understand the journey of life from the first manifestation to the last. The cosmic journey of 8.4 million manifestations by an atman (equivalent to an earthly journey of about 96.4 million years) is the real essence of life. The whole concept of Hinduism is based upon this journey of soul from beginning to the last manifestation.

The significance of the body compared to the atman inside the body is almost negligible in Hinduism. The prime reason why utmost significance is attached to soul alone bares the fact that the physical existence of a body is only as long as we have the senses and the mind. The moment the senses and the mind cease to exist... every body becomes inert! In the world of atmans there is no place for a body. It is only because no atman soul can cleanse itself of the impurities within... it needs a body! Every soul manifests body one after another until it reaches the cosmic end part of life when it finally liberates from the cycle of manifestations. Having become pure this atman need not manifest a body again! As we require the requisite mining machinery to remove the impurities from the core to separate the metal out of it... every atman requires a body to cleanse itself of the dross within. The journey from the stage of an amoeba to the last... the stage of Lord Mahavira, Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ and Prophet Mohammed are all meant for that. The physical manifested life... the life of a human being is best lived if we recognize the presence of an atman within on its cosmic journey. We need to understand that we must never try to superimpose our

ego over the requirements of the soul within. The journey is being undertaken by the atman and not by the body. The more the interference... more are the tensions faced by a human being in practical life. To know the ABC of the world of atmans... one needs to delve deep into the bottomless pit of Bhagavad Gita... the doctrine put forward by Lord Krishna. This one document is sufficient for one to understand the cosmic crux of life forever. Having learnt of the truth in Bhagavad Gita... there is nothing else to be learnt in life in any of the manifestations. Bhagavad Gita is an end unto itself. For gaining enlightenment one needs to understand the underlying meaning within the every shloka (verse) of Bhagavad Gita. Only then the cycle of life for the atman within completes. Be it atma hinduism hindu viveka buddhism consciousness innerself... everything bogs down to... all point towards the true essence of life... the soul present within the body! References: www.godrealized.com/define_atman.html

Reincarnation
Is the religious or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after biologicaldeath, begins a new life in a new body that may be human, animal or spiritual depending on the moral quality of the previous life's actions. This doctrine is a central tenet of the Indian religions and is a belief that was held by such historic figures as Pythagoras, Plato andSocrates. It is also a common belief of pagan religions such as Druidism, Spiritism,Theosophy, and Eckankar and is found in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Siberia, West Africa, North America, and Australia. Although the majority of sects within Judaism, Christianity and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Kabbalah, theCathars, and the Shia sects such as the Alawi Shias and the Druze and theRosicrucians. The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of the Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism,Manicheanism and Gnosticism of the Roman era, as well as the Indian religions, is unclear. In recent decades, many Europeans and North Americans have developed an interest in reincarnation. Feature films, such as Kundun, What Dreams May Come and Birth, contemporary books by authors such as Carol Bowman and Vicki Mackenzie, as well as popular songs, regularly mention reincarnation. Some university researchers, such as Ian Stevenson and Jim B. Tucker, have explored the issue of reincarnation and published reports of children's memories of earlier lives in peer-reviewed journals and in books such as Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation andLife Before Life. Skeptics are critical of this work and many, like Carl Sagan, have stated that more reincarnation research is needed. The word "reincarnation" derives from Latin, literally meaning, "entering the flesh again". The Greek equivalent metempsychosis() roughly corresponds to the common English phrase

"transmigration of the soul" and also usually connotes reincarnation after death, as either human, animal, though emphasising the continuity of the soul, not the flesh. The term has been used by modern philosophers such as Kurt Gdel and has entered the English language. Another Greek term sometimes used synonymously ispalingenesis, "being born again". There is no word corresponding exactly to the English terms "rebirth", "metempsychosis", "transmigration" or "reincarnation" in the traditional languages of Pli and Sanskrit. The entire universal process that gives rise to the cycle of death and rebirth, governed bykarma, is referred to as Samsara while the state one is born into, the individual process of being born or coming into the world in any way, is referred to simply as "birth" (jti). Devas (gods) may also die and live again. Here the term "reincarnation" is not strictly applicable, yet Hindu gods are said to have reincarnated (see Avatar): Lord Vishnu is known for his ten incarnations, the Dashavatars.Celtic religion seems to have had reincarnating gods also. Many Christians regard Jesus as a divine incarnation. Some Christians and Muslims believe he and some prophets may incarnate again. Most Christians, however, believe that Jesus will come again in the Second Coming at the end of the world, although this is not a reincarnation. Some ghulat Shi'a Muslim sects also regard their founders as in some special sense divine incarnations (hulul). Philosophical and religious beliefs regarding the existence or non-existence of an unchanging "self" have a direct bearing on how reincarnation is viewed within a given tradition. The Buddha lived at a time of great philosophical creativity in India when many conceptions of the nature of life and death were proposed. Some were materialist, holding that there was no existence and that the self is annihilated upon death. Others believed in a form of cyclic existence, where a being is born, lives, dies and then is re-born, but in the context of a type of determinism or fatalism in which karma played no role. Others were "eternalists", postulating an eternally existent self or soul comparable to that in Judaic monotheism: the tman survives death and reincarnates as another living being, based on itskarmic inheritance. This is the idea that has become dominant (with certain modifications) in modern Hinduism. The Buddhist concept of reincarnation differs from others in that there is no eternal "soul", "spirit' or self" but only a "stream of consciousness" that links life with life. The actual process of change from one life to the next is called punarbhava (Sanskrit) orpunabbhava (Pli), literally "becoming again", or more briefly bhava, "becoming", and some English-speaking Buddhists prefer the term "rebirth" or "rebecoming" to render this term as they take "reincarnation" to imply a fixed entity that is reborn. Popular Jain cosmology and Buddhist cosmology as well as a number of schools of Hinduism posit rebirth in many worlds and in varied forms. In Buddhist tradition the process occurs across five or six realms of existence, including the human, any kind of animal and several types of supernatural being. It is said in Tibetan Buddhism that it is very rare for a person to be reborn in the immediate next life as a human Gilgul, Gilgul neshamot or Gilgulei Ha Neshamot (Heb. noitanracnier fo tpecnoc eht ot srefer ( in Kabbalistic Judaism, found in much Yiddish literature among Ashkenazi Jews. Gilgul means "cycle" [15] and neshamot is "souls." The equivalent Arabic term istanasukh: the belief is found among Shi'a ghulat Muslim sects.

References: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation