Q. What is reincarnation?

A. The Bhagavad-Gita states that life does not begin at birth nor end with death. It is eternal. The soul is constantly transmigrating from one body to another according to its desires and quality of activities (karma). The Vedas further explain that the soul in the material world moves through a cycle of 8,400,000 forms of life. The human form, however, is the only birth which affords one the chance for self-realization. Lower-than-human species are not endowed with sufficient intelligence to understand the self as different from the body.