Another area prime fiction comes up far too lacking in is the Intaki “rebirth” process. Since we’ve got the ball rolling with some collaborative “fill-in-the-blanks” on Intaki history, I thought I’d take Ken’s advice and do the same with rebirth.
Since a lot of Intaki RP draws its flavor from Hinduism, we can start there.
According to Hinduism, a soul reincarnates again and again on earth till it becomes perfect and reunites with it Source. During this process the soul enters into many bodies, assumes many forms and passes through many births and deaths. This concept is summarily described in the following verse of the Bhagavad gita:
"Just as a man discards worn out clothes and puts on new clothes, the soul discards worn out bodies and wears new ones." (2.22)
According to Hinduism a being has to live many lives and under go many experiences before it attains perfection and becomes one with the Divine. The Hindu theory of creation suggests that creation begins when the individual souls becomes separated from the undifferentiated One. It continues as the evolution of life and consciousness in matter progresses. During this process some of souls journey back to God through the transformation of matter or prakriti in which they were hidden. The remaining souls continue their existence and rejoin Him in the end, not through transformation but through a process of great destruction. Thus the great cycle of creation, stretching over millions of years, comes to its logical end.
As I understand it, in Hinduism, every soul is reborn. It’s pretty clear from PF that this is not the case with the Intaki. This is something that would need to be accounted for to translate the tradition into the Eve Universe. However, we can draw a correlation between the Idama and someone who, in the Hindu tradition, is nearing perfection.
The Tibetan system, called the tulku, is (once again as I understand it) specific to the leadership class. In this system, Buddha's soul never vanishes, but reincarnates in succession to lead his followers and to accomplish his mission. There are a group of reincarnates called the Gyalwas and among these the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama are the most prestigious.
Tibetan reincarnation is not achieved through a ceremony, but religious rituals are used to locate the reincarnated entity. During the process, dozens of candidates are tested with the late lama's possessions; those who have amazing knowledge in identifying their predecessor's belongings win and become the final candidates. From there, a lottery of sorts is held with the name of the next Lama drawn from a special golden urn.
This isn’t an exhaustive look at reincarnation by any means, but a point to start the discussion.