40 Fun Facts About Reincarnation

Which American World War II general believed he had fought in past lives, perhaps as a Roman legionary?

George S. Patton thought he might also have been a military leader killed in action in Napoleon's army. A staunch fatalist, he said he had fought in earlier battles and wars before his own time.

Which Indian independence leader set up a commission to investigate Shanti Devi, a Delhi girl who recalled a past life?

Mahatma Gandhi's commission travelled with Shanti Devi to Mathura in 1935 and reported that she was a merchant's late wife reborn. A later researcher disputed the finding.

Which Greek mathematician and philosopher was mocked for claiming to hear a dead friend's voice in a beaten dog's cries?

Pythagoras taught that every soul is immortal and enters a new body at death, so an animal might house a friend. The jibe comes from a satirical poem by his contemporary Xenophanes.

In which Nickelodeon animated series is the boy Aang one in a long line of reincarnated masters of four elements?

Avatar: The Last Airbender has its hero reborn into the next nation in a set order: Fire, Air, Water, then Earth. If he were ever killed while in his most powerful state, the line would end for good.

The word reincarnation comes from a Latin term that literally means entering again into what?

Flesh is the root: the Latin caro, carnis, which also gives English its word for meat-eating animals. Greek thinkers used a different word that spoke of the soul changing bodies.

Which Tibetan Buddhist leader is held to be a living emanation of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion?

The Dalai Lama is believed to return life after life, and searchers test candidate children. The 14th was picked out aged two after asking for prayer beads that had belonged to the 13th.

Which country supergroup with Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson is named after a song about one soul's four lives?

The Highwaymen took Jimmy Webb's song, whose narrator returns as a sailor, a Hoover Dam builder and a starship captain. Their 1985 recording won Webb the Grammy for Best Country Song.

Which Sanskrit word, literally meaning action, names the law by which deeds in one life shape the next rebirth?

Karma covers both a deed and its consequences, so good intent and good deeds bring happier rebirths. It means action, not fate or destiny, and the idea runs through the Indian religions and Taoism.

Which Oscar-winning actress described her belief in reincarnation in the 1983 memoir Out on a Limb?

Shirley MacLaine's book won acclaim and criticism for its candour about meditation, trance mediums and even UFOs. After it came out, former president Jimmy Carter encouraged her to talk about UFOs.

Which Buddhist term for release from the cycle of rebirth literally means blowing out or quenching?

Nirvana pictures a person's passions being extinguished like a fire, which ends suffering and the round of birth and death. The same word is also used in Hindu and Sikh teaching.

Which Roman general wrote that the druids of Gaul taught that the soul passes after death into another body?

Julius Caesar added that the druids thought this belief robbed death of its terrors and so bred the highest courage. He called it the principal point of their teaching.

Which religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard teaches that each person is an immortal thetan with many past lives?

Scientology holds that a thetan takes on a newly born body after each death, and its auditing sessions aim to relieve traumas from earlier lifetimes. It began in 1950 as a talk therapy called Dianetics.

Which actor played Prince Siddhartha in Little Buddha, a 1993 film about a Seattle boy believed to be a reborn monk?

Keanu Reeves appears in flashbacks as the prince before his enlightenment, while monks from a monastery in Bhutan search for their late teacher's rebirth. Bernardo Bertolucci directed the film.

Which bestselling W. Bruce Cameron novel follows one dog reborn through four lives, including one as a golden retriever?

A Dog's Purpose spent 49 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and became a 2017 film. Its narrator also lives as a feral puppy, a police search animal and a Labrador.

Which Hindu scripture, a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, likens rebirth to changing worn-out garments?

The Bhagavad Gita has Krishna steady a hesitant warrior prince by saying the embodied self simply casts off old bodies and meets new ones. The talk takes place at the onset of the Kurukshetra War.

Colorado housewife Virginia Tighe claimed in a 1950s trance to have been which 19th-century Irishwoman from Cork?

Bridey Murphy became the subject of a 1956 bestseller, and reporters went to Ireland to check every detail. Researchers concluded the memories were probably cryptomnesia, forgotten things resurfacing.

Past life regression, dismissed by doctors as a source of false memories, relies on which technique?

Hypnosis and leading questions leave a subject prone to distorted or invented memories. One subject described life as a Japanese fighter pilot in World War II yet could not name Hirohito as emperor.

In Greek myth, the dead drank from which underworld river to wash away their memories before being reborn?

Lethe means forgetfulness in Greek, and it was one of five rivers of the underworld. Virgil's hero Aeneas travels to its banks to meet the shade of his father.

Which actress starred in the 2004 film Birth as a widow approached by a boy claiming to be her dead husband?

Nicole Kidman earned a Golden Globe nomination for the role, which she wanted as soon as she heard Jonathan Glazer was directing. She had loved his previous film, Sexy Beast.

Which David Mitchell novel links its main characters across centuries as one reborn soul, marked by a shared birthmark?

Cloud Atlas was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and its title came from a piece by Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. Mitchell bought the CD just because he liked the track's name.

Which Sanskrit word, meaning wandering, names the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth in Indian religions?

Samsara is less formally pictured as running around in circles, and escaping it is the shared goal of the Indian faiths. Each tradition has its own name for that release.

Which American director made Kundun, a 1997 film about a Tibetan boy recognised as his people's reborn spiritual leader?

Martin Scorsese planned to shoot in Ladakh in India but filmed in the mountains of Morocco instead. China's leaders objected so hotly before its release that Disney later apologised and limited its distribution.

Which Indian religion of strict non-violence reveres 24 tirthankaras, teachers who have conquered the cycle of rebirth?

Jainism calls its 24 teachers ford-makers, and its vow of non-injury covers every living being. Most lay followers aim for a better rebirth as a step closer to final release.

Which dialogue by Plato ends with the Myth of Er, a slain soldier's account of souls choosing their next lives?

Republic closes with Er reviving days after dying in battle to report what he saw. Animals chose human lives, while humans often picked the seemingly easier lives of animals.

Which clairvoyant, the subject of the biography The Sleeping Prophet, described clients' past lives while in a trance?

Edgar Cayce gave thousands of transcribed sessions on healing, dreams, Atlantis and future events. In 1931 he, his wife and his secretary were arrested for pretending to tell fortunes, but the charges were dismissed.

Which University of Virginia psychiatrist collected three thousand cases of children who claimed to remember past lives?

Ian Stevenson also studied birthmarks that seemed to match wounds on the dead person a child described. He called reincarnation the best, though not the only, explanation for his strongest cases.

Which Miami psychiatrist wrote Many Lives, Many Masters about a patient who seemed to recall past lives?

Brian Weiss says he was a sceptic until a patient he calls Catherine described earlier lifetimes that seemed to explain her nightmares and anxiety attacks. He was head of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center.

Which Greek word for the transmigration of souls is a recurring theme in James Joyce's novel Ulysses?

Metempsychosis joins the Greek meta, change, with a verb meaning to put a soul into. Joyce's 1922 novel returns to the word again and again.

Which body of Buddhist stories recounts the Buddha's previous births as kings, outcastes and animals?

Jataka tales show the future Buddha practising a virtue in each life, and the Theravada collection alone holds 547 poems. Scenes from them are carved on the 9th-century monument of Borobudur in Java.

Which Tibetan word names the in-between state after death and before rebirth, the theme of the Tibetan Book of the Dead?

Bardo lasts at most seven times seven days in classic Buddhist treatises. The book's Tibetan title means Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State.

Which Arab religious community of Lebanon, Syria and Israel holds that a human soul is reborn only in a human body?

Druze count reincarnation among their main tenets, and the few who claim to remember an earlier life are called Nateq. They revere the biblical Jethro as their chief prophet.

Which Jewish tradition teaches gilgul, the transmigration of souls expounded by Isaac Luria in Safed?

Kabbalah made the belief universal among Hasidic Jews, who hold its texts sacred, though it is not an essential tenet of traditional Judaism. The Hebrew word gilgul means cycle.

Which medieval sect of southern France, crushed by the Albigensian Crusade, believed souls were reborn until saved?

Cathars held that a soul was reborn again and again until it received the consolamentum, a baptism given when death was near. The Inquisition claimed to have eradicated them by 1350.

Which Russian-born mystic co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875, spreading Indian ideas of rebirth in the West?

Helena Blavatsky at first denied, in her book Isis Unveiled, that people return to Earth after death. She later taught that the soul comes back again and again until it wins release from the cycle.

Which Chinese dynasty introduced the Golden Urn, a lottery for choosing Tibet's reincarnated religious leaders?

Qing rulers had names drawn as lots from the urn, ostensibly to prevent cheating and corruption. The method also cast the Qianlong Emperor as a religious authority over who was chosen.

In which West African people's language does the boy's name Babatunde mean that a father has returned?

Yoruba parents use the name for a boy seen as a returning male ancestor, such as a late grandfather. Their most widespread rebirth belief, ipadawaye, means the ancestor's rebirth.

Which Sanskrit term names the eternal, unchanging self that Hindus believe is reborn, a concept Buddhism rejects?

Atman is the true, innermost essence of a living being in Hindu thought. Buddhism's doctrine of anatta holds instead that no unchanging self can be found in a living being.

In Buddhist belief, greedy people may be reborn as which beings with huge bellies and long, thin necks?

Hungry ghosts have enormous appetites, shown by their swollen bellies, but slender necks that stop them from ever being satisfied. Their Sanskrit name is preta.

Which Bollywood star played a 1970s bit-part actor reborn as a film superstar in the 2007 film Om Shanti Om?

Shah Rukh Khan's character dies in a suspicious on-set fire and returns 30 years later to punish the person who lit it. The film was also Deepika Padukone's Hindi debut.

In a Japanese light novel and anime series, murdered salaryman Satoru Mikami is reincarnated as what kind of creature?

A slime named Rimuru Tempest is his new form, and he goes on to gather allies and build a nation of monsters. The story began as a web novel by the author Fuse.