At the 5th Ecumenical Council in 543 CE, the Roman Emperor Justinian I condemned Origen as a heretic and ordered all his writings to be burned. This condemnation caused teachings on reincarnation to be banned by the Church. Later on, the Roman Catholic Church proclaimed in paragraph 1013 of its Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), “It is appointed for men to die once. There is no ‘reincarnation’ after death. [italics added for emphasis]” The belief in reincarnation was a real threat to the Church because if people learned the truth about it, they would no longer need the services of the Church. Despite the fact that Origen was declared a heretic and his writings were banned by the Catholic Church, evidently for his teachings on reincarnation and universal salvation, leaders of Christian churches today deny that these were taught by Origen. A professor of Early Christian Thought speaks to this issue in the following lecture: Flesh and Fire: Reincarnation and Universal Salvation in the Early Church.

Religious organizations typically do not provide their members with much information on the afterlife. But independent exploration into reincarnation is offering a fascinating look at reality beyond the physical plane of existence. Today, the Catholic Church is still trying to enforce CCC 1013, but it’s losing its hold on its followers. Fortunately, in this day and age, no one in the U.S. need fear being labeled a heretic or pagan under the threat of persecution. Now that education and information have become widespread, 38% of Catholic adults in the U.S. believe in reincarnation according to a 2021 Pew Research Center report. Afterlife research has exploded in recent decades. A brief look at overall afterlife research can be found in The Absolute Freedom of the Soul and Reincarnation in Chapter 12 of Unveiling Christianity.

Note: This section comes with several qualifications. In Earth’s three-dimensional material world of linear time, reincarnation is traditionally viewed in terms of current and past lives. However, in the non-material existence beyond space and time, all lives and experiences are simultaneous. Therefore, ultimately, reincarnation is a relative truth: It is relative to the incarnate soul or spirit in which consciousness happens to be localized, but the highest frequency levels reveal a single field of consciousness in which past and future lives exist simultaneously.

The books and videos referenced in this section are from a variety of sources. They include children’s memories of past lives, past-life and between-lives hypnotic regression, mediumship, research on earthbound souls, and historical documentation on reincarnation.