Reincarnation, literally to be made flesh again, is the belief that some essential part of a living being like the spirit or soul, survives death to reborn in a new body. A new personality is supposed to develop during each life in the physical world, but some part of the self remains constant throughout the successive lives. Rebirth is the doctrine that the consciousness of a person , upon the death or dissolution of the aggregates (skandhas) which make up that person, becomes one of the contributing causes for the arising of a new group of skandhas which may again be conventionally considered a person or individual. The consciousness arising in the new person is neither identical to, nor different from, the old consciousness, but forms part of a causal continuum or stream with it. Whether reincarnation is the same as rebirth is for you to interpret but that a person can be reborn as a human is considered a very lucky phenomenon. It is definitely better than to be reborn as a toad. So, unlike Denise, I wouldn't mind coming back as Jennifer Horton who probably does not even exist; that is if this is just the character in Days of our Lives ...
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