Do human beings live only once, or are we granted the opportunity to return after death and experience many different lives? Reincarnation is an anglicized word of Latin derivation, meaning "reinfleshment," the coming again into a human body of an excarnate soul . Today approximately 30 million Americans, one in four, believe in reincarnation. The process of reincarnation is the continual rebirths in human bodies, which allegedly continues until the soul has reached a state of perfection and merges back with its source either God or the universal Soul. The question of reincarnation has been examined for thousands of years and has been embraced in various degrees by numerous religions. The belief is thought to have been a necessity among primitive peoples. Scientists speculate that even the people who lived during the New Stone Age, the time period of 10,000B.C.E to 5,000B.C.E. believed that once a person died, their journey had not yet concluded (DeArteaga 62). It is known that the Egyptians believed in reincarnation or the transmigration of the soul. They thought the soul transmigrated from body to body and this was a reason why they embalmed the body in order to preserve it so that it could journey along with ka, an animating force that was believed to be counterpart of the body, which would accompany it in the next world or life. The ka might be considered equivalent to the term of soul. The Egyptian Book of the Dead mentions the travel of the soul into a next world without coming back to earth. As it is well known, the ancient Egyptians embalmed the dead in order that the body might be preserved and accompany the soul into that world. Gradually the concept of a soul developed with a further realization that the soul departed the body at death and entered the body at birth. Soon it was thought the soul leaving a dead body would seek another body to enter, or enter an animal of a lower life form. It was also th...