Belief in reincarnation is common to the religions born in India: Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. This is the belief that the individual soul passes from one earthly life to another, each life conditioned on the deeds of the previous lives.
Differences in fortune, wealth, social position, and endowments are the consequences of actions done in previous lives. As the cosmos revolves in its cycles, the wheel of samsara turns for each human being as he or she rises and falls through countless births and deaths—sometimes as humans, sometimes as animals or even insects.
On the other hand, Christianity largely rejects reincarnation, holding that God provides everyone the opportunity for salvation within a single lifetime.
Even the Buddha spoke against easy reliance on reincarnation as a comfort to misbehaving sinners, thinking that they could easily obtain a second chance.
According to the doctrine of reincarnation, souls have the opportunity to progress to the ultimate goal of perfection only when they are incarnated as human beings. Thus, spirits seek out human bodies in which to be reincarnated, in hopes of a chance to right wrongs and make progress on the path.
Father Moon also teaches that spirits can only progress while linked to a human body. However, instead of souls transmigrating from one body to another, he describes a process of spirits descending to cooperate with earthly people, which he calls “returning resurrection.”
Through assisting people on earth who face similar difficulties, spirits can resolve their unfinished business and be liberated to rise to a higher level. Sometimes this is a painful and even punishing encounter for earthly people, who have to deal with ancestors whose agonizing experiences they never imagined.
Believers in reincarnation simply misconstrue the spirits’ thoughts and experiences as if they were their own deeds in an earlier lifetime.
Regardless of where the truth lies, to see oneself as inextricably bound up with the lives of others—extending from the distant past into the future endless future—leads to an attitude of humility and patient endurance.
According to his deeds (karma) the embodied one successively assumes forms in various conditions. Coarse and fine, many in number, the embodied one chooses forms according to his own qualities.
Each subsequent cause of his union with them is seen to be because of the quality of his acts and of himself.
Svetasvatara Upanishad 5.11-12 (Hinduism)
The universe is peopled by manifold creatures who are, in this round of rebirth, born in different families and castes for having done various actions. Sometimes they go to the world of the gods, sometimes to the hells, sometimes they become demons in accordance with their actions.
Sometimes they become soldiers, or outcastes and untouchables, or worms or moths….
Thus, living beings of sinful actions, who are born again and again in ever-recurring births, are not disgusted with the round of rebirth, but they are like warriors, never tired of the battle of life.
Bewildered through the influence of their actions, distressed and suffering pains, they undergo misery in non-human births. But by the cessation of karma, perchance, living beings will reach in due time a pure state and be born as men. Uttaradhyayana Sutra 3.1-7 (Jainism)
“Frequently I have been born in a high family, frequently in a low one; I am not mean, nor noble, nor do I desire social preferment.” Thus reflecting, who would brag about his family or about his glory, or for what should he long?
Therefore, a wise man should neither be glad nor angry about his lot: he should know and con- sider about the happiness of all living creatures.
Carefully conducting himself, he should mind this: “I will always experience blindness, deaf- ness, dumbness, be one-eyed, hunchbacked, black, white, and every color; because of my carelessness, I am born in many births, experience many feelings.”
Acarangasutra 2.50-55 (Jainism)
There is no such thing as a return to this life for the punishment of souls… How can the return to bodies which are gifts of God be punishment? Saint Augustine, City of God 12.27 (Christianity)
Sooner, do I declare, would a one-eyed turtle, if he were to pop up to the surface of the sea only once at the end of every hundred years, chance to push his neck though a yoke with one hole than would a fool, who has once gone to the Downfall, be reborn as a man.
Samyutta Nikaya 5.455 (Buddhism)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
Nature has its causes, its directives, and it moves in cycles seeking for results. In the course of its cycles, complex directives are gathered together and mature as completed things. The universe rotates.
History likewise moves in cycles, even as it progresses. The four seasons revolve—spring, summer, fall and winter. From this perspective, how can the theory of evolution be correct when it calls only for linear progress?
Why shouldn’t the process be cyclical? Recognition that the world is continually revolving may have led to the belief of reincarnation.
It provides some reason for the belief that human beings are transformed into animals, insects or plants [and then rise again as humans] as the universe makes its revolutions. (94:11-12, June 19, 1977)
Regardless of time and place, religious people as well as all the other people live in circumstances where they are intertwined with the spirit world according to its karma. This is an indubitable fact of human life.
People of every age, whether or not they believe in a religion, witness the fact through dreams and other mysterious experiences. (131:167, May 1, 1984)
Why should we return to Earth? Because our relationships were bound on earth, therefore, they should be loosed on earth. Religions such as Buddhism call such phenomena reincarnation. However, an ascended saint like Buddha or Confucius can appear in spirit at any moment.
Therefore, it cannot be that the actual Buddha returns as another person. Phenomena that can be mistaken for reincarnation take place when a person who has not completed their responsibility in a certain field descends through returning resurrection to fulfill it by utilizing another individual. (91:276-77, February 27, 1977)
The Buddhist theory of reincarnation does not see the whole picture; it recognizes only one aspect of returning resurrection. Spirits in the spirit world want to benefit through returning to earthly people.
But for the Human Fall, humans would be creatures of great value, having dominion over the angelic world and the universe. Instead, because of the Fall, they plummeted down, even several levels below zero.
It remains for them to return to the original position, but it cannot be done all at once. They should go through many stages, step by step…
In order to go over even one stage, a price, called an indemnity condition, must be paid. Suppose a person cooperated in God’s providence to reach a certain point. Yet he or she cannot automatically rise to a next stage.
There may be an indemnity period, requiring a principled number such as 7 years, 40 years, 70 years, or even several centuries.
Since that person cannot be elevated any further until the indemnity period has matured, he or she passes on to the spirit world. That person, now a spirit, would then want an earthly person, let’s call him A, to complete laying the foundation.
Then if that person also dies before fulfilling it, he would work through another person, B, whom he had chosen. Thus the same spirit cooperates with both person A and person B. For example, suppose the spirit is Saint Paul. For Saint Paul to be elevated to a higher level, he has to return to someone of his choosing on earth, person A.
However, if person A dies without fulfilling his mission, he will have to return again to person B and cooperate with him. If this person B finally completes his mission on earth, then the spirit, Saint Paul, can be resurrected to a higher level.
There must be an indemnity period based on principled numbers. This period cannot be completed in a short time. Thus, if even person B, the second person chosen for the mission, does not complete it, the spirit will have to return through returning resurrection to assist yet a third person, person C.
Some people might regard person C as the reincarnation of Saint Paul. At the same time, if person B had left some writings or special works, people might claim that he was the reincarnation of Saint Paul…
In such a way, the spirit of Saint Paul might come down and work with a number of different people throughout the world. Some people, seeing the phenomenon superficially, call it reincarnation. But if they could grasp the whole picture, they would not regard it so. (54:277-79, March 26, 1972)
Sun Myung Moon