Summary
Contents
Subject index
Dying is a social as well as physiological phenomenon. Each society characterizes and, consequently, treats death and dying in its own individual ways—ways that differ markedly. These particular patterns of death and dying engender modal cultural responses, and such institutionalized behavior has familiar, economical, educational, religious, and political implications. The Handbook of Death and Dying takes stock of the vast literature in the field.
Reincarnation: The Technology of Death
Reincarnation: The Technology of Death
According to the social historians Joseph Head and Sylvia Cranston (1977), one-half of the world's population believes in some form of rebirth, and as of 1981, according to a Gallup poll conducted in that year, 23% of Americans also claimed a belief in reincarnation. Today, few analysts of religious institutions would doubt the significance such beliefs hold for the contemporary experience.
The importance of such statistics is demonstrated in the discussion of reincarnation and death that follows, which is based on sociological research that I conducted during a 13-year period at the University of California, San Diego (Dillon 1998).1 This qualitative ethnographic study was designed to focus on the meaning reincarnation has for Americans who believe deeply in this phenomenon and how a belief in reincarnation affects their daily activities of work, marriage, parenting, citizenship, social action, personal morality, and death. The data are based in part on extensive, in-depth interviews that I conducted with monastic and lay members of the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), one of the oldest and most firmly established “Eastern” religious groups in the United States.2
In the following sections, I present portions of these interview data to provide the reader with an overview of the Western Yoga movement that brought the concept of reincarnation to America and the meaning of the reincarnationist worldview to people who have adopted it.3 In addition, I discuss the role of the reincarnationist perspective in the greater Western society.
The Reincarnationist Perspective
The concept of reincarnation has traversed the continents from Asia to Europe and the oceans from the Indian to the Atlantic. Mistaken for centuries as simply a core belief of the Hindu religion known as “transmigration of souls,” the representation of reincarnation as taught by Paramahansa Yogananda has attained authoritative status in the West with the universal appeal of Yogananda's work. Fitting comfortably with Western scientific, religious, and philosophical traditions, Yogananda's Kriya Yogic understanding of reincarnation has been widely accepted by millions of Westerners and is now being reintroduced to the peoples of India and Asia. Yogananda's Self-Realization movement has gained significant attention in the West over the past eight decades and is currently experiencing phenomenal growth.4
Issues that are frequently raised regarding reincarnation include the meaning of this important concept, how those who believe deeply in reincarnation live out their daily lives and confront the normal processes of living and dying, the process through which one is reincarnated and the form taken, whether it is possible to recall one's past lives, and the future of the reincarnationist perspective. To begin this discussion, I present several noteworthy points pertaining to reincarnation and death as a foundation for understanding the reincarnationist worldview.
First, from a reincarnationist perspective, there is no death; there is only a transition to another life-form. The essential Self is eternal, part of Life Itself. As is known in the field of quantum physics, time and space are relative concepts, products of our perceiving what we see as one fixed reality from the perspective of our own particular fixed time and place. From a cosmic perspective on life, there is no separation, no division; all life “flows” in one continuum, one creation, within which are infinitely diverse multiple realities and multiple dimensions that take form on the physical plane. Death, as an end to Life, in such a system is simply a misnomer, the reflection of a misunderstanding of and about Life.
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