Discuss the concept of karma and reincarnation.

One of the purposes of all religions is to explain the unexplainable.  The most basic question that a human asks in their lifetime is what happens after death.  It is the one inescapable fact of life; you will die.  From the very moment you are born, you are on your way to a fate that is yours alone.  The one thing that no one can do for you or even tell you what really happens.  It can be terrifying to a person who has no security in their belief of what happens when they cease to have a physical existence.  Religions have struggled to answer this question since the beginning of time.  Many various religions have definitive doctrines on their views of reincarnation; others support the idea of reincarnation but do not have clearly stated views.

Another aspect of all religions is guiding people to behave and think in a certain way.  The idea of Karma can be a powerful tool in making people think before they act.  If they believe, like many pagan religions, in the law of threefold return, it will make a person take a pause before doing something that will cause harm to another for the simple fact that they do not want to face the return.    The idea of how karma returns to you is varied.  It could be in this lifetime or the next, today or next week, one never knows when the karma debt will come due or when karma will pay off.  Another view of karma suggests that it is like smut that gathers on your “soul”.  Ones deeds and behaviors are always changing their karma by adding smut from bad karma and adding clarity by clearing it.

The beliefs regarding these two intertwined philosophies are as varied as there are religions and branches of those religions.  Scientifically, neither of these can be proved or disproved.  There are cases of past life regression that claims to have proven reincarnation but because hypnosis is not considered a reliable scientific method, it remains classified as unproven.    

The only aspect of either of them that can be proven is the existence of energy.  Death is loosely defined as when the electrical impulses stop; the electrical impulses that cause the brain to function are energy.   Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only change form or be converted into another form.  This is the Law of Thermodynamics. So if all the energy in the world existed since the beginning of time and none can be destroyed or created, it would make logical sense for some to conclude that reincarnation is a given fact.  It could be surmised that each person’s electrical impulses or energy has been here since the beginning of time.  The next logical step would be that the energy that makes part of a person’s soul would make a circuitous route through many lives, otherwise the sheer number of souls in heaven, hell, earthbound, or some other realm of existence would be nearly incalculable.  Before asking if a soul can come back, perhaps a better question would be, where does the energy that becomes part of your soul come from?   What makes your soul a unique type of energy container and can it hold its form without the physical body to keep it captive?  Does it change to another type of energy when it leaves our body?  If it can and does, then who knows where that energy might end up.  If it cannot change into another type of energy then where does this “soul energy” go?  What makes the soul energy different from any other kind of energy?  Energy just simply IS.  It is a property of a system rather than an object in and of itself.  Therefore, it either must be part of something i.e. the soul or it dissipates to be used elsewhere. 

All in all, there are as many theories as to what happens after death as there are people, but that is all they will be, are theories.  No one knows,  nor is anyone likely to know until their own fateful day, at which time, they can’t tell anyone the secrets that lie on the other side.  At that time any knowledge we seem to gain, certainly does not return with us if reincarnation does exist.  If karma is a fact then it seems to balance things out quite nicely here on Earth most of the time.  It would certainly go much further towards explaining all the suffering in the world than any other explanation that I have yet to hear.  Unfortunately, even karma and reincarnation cannot fully explain that one.