Pythagoras and Plato believed in rebirth long before most Westerners heard of karma
Belief in life after death splits into two great families. In one, the dead travel to another realm, sorted by gods according to how they lived. In the other, they come back in new bodies, again and again. That second idea was held not only in India but by Pythagoras and Plato.
At its core the afterlife is the proposal that something essential about a person, whether a fragment or a whole soul carrying their identity, carries on once the body dies. Views on what survives, and where it goes, come from religion, esoteric traditions and metaphysics. Most theists expect some form of continued existence, but belief in an afterlife does not require a god; some largely non-theistic religions hold it too.
In the first family, which includes many pagan traditions and some forms of the Abrahamic faiths, the dead go to a particular place, perhaps a paradise or an underworld, assigned by divine judgment of their deeds and beliefs. Heaven takes many names, among them Jannah, Tian, Valhalla, the pure lands and the Summerland, and is usually pictured as a higher, holier place opposite to hell and the low places. Some traditions let heavenly beings come down to earth, and a rare few mortals are said to enter heaven alive.
In the second family, reincarnation, a person's own actions directly shape the next existence, with no god handing out sentences. In Hindu teaching, the soul passes through a series of human and animal forms, learning in each life until it is purified enough for liberation. Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism each have their own versions. Rebirth also appears in Spiritism, theosophy and Eckankar, and among peoples from Siberia and East Asia to Australia and South America.
Even within Judaism, Christianity and Islam, where most denominations reject reincarnation, some groups embrace it: followers of Kabbalah, the medieval Cathars, the Druze, the Alawites and the Rosicrucians. Researchers have probed how these groups relate to Neoplatonism, Gnosticism and other Roman-era movements. Rosicrucians describe a life review right after death, before the silver cord snaps, followed by something like a final report on the life just lived.
Source: Afterlife
